Thanks to Joe (and I am going to tag his wife Pam on this since I know he stalks her FB account and reads my posts there 🙂 ), I was able to meet the very bright and young CTO of Amtrak – Sovan last evening. On the business front, we work with railway companies and I wanted to see how we might be able to help. But let’s not get into business here.

I got to know of Sovan’s journey from India straight to Minnesota and then how he settled here and recently has moved to DC area with his two very young kids. It was great to get the perspective of a CTO’s vision of challenges for a unique company like Amtrak. Since I knew Joe before Sovan knew him, I could highlight some of my past memories with Joe to him.

Joe and I worked in a previous job and he actually led all the Government sales in our business that time. We have both moved on ever since. But not before we spent a lot of time together on the road. And therefore, I got to know the personal life and the very funny side of Joe. And I made him repeat some of those stories last evening.

The most inspiring one I remember was his upbringing. His dad was – what he refers to as a “blue collar” worker living right outside Baltimore city. (Joe still lives there). But the story was how one of his elder brothers got into Duke and the first time he came home, talked about how Duke would take care of all expenses for financially disadvantaged families for the good students. From that day on, the fourth grader in Joe (I think he was in fourth grade) was maniacally focused on getting into Duke. As he told us, everything he did from that day on was totally about getting into Duke with full ride.

And he did get into Duke.
“How much was the cost those days?”, I asked
“All in, $20,000 per year”.
“And how much was your dad earning?”
“He retired with peak W-2 earnings of $19,500”.

WOW!!

He even talked about how they could not afford long distance phone calls those days and in his entire four year stay in Duke, he got exactly one call from his parents!!!

Little surprise then that Joe has been so successful in life. Under the gentle, funny self of Joe, there is some sheer Grit !! Speaking of which, we talked a lot on the topic of Grit.

I also told Sovan the story of Joe marrying somebody off. I think it was in the last year that we worked together. Joe went to online courses and became an ordained pastor. Yes! Apparently, you can do that. Of course, that Joe would be an ordained pastor – that too thanks to the internet was very funny to me. But I did ask him – “Okay. You are a pastor. But to marry somebody off, you need stuff – you know certificates, seals and so on”.

“Oh! They send you a starter kit”, he had said.

“Starter kit????” I remember taking a few minutes getting myself off the floor. I guess they sent two certificates and all that to give a kickstart to his new career. Seriously though, he has married off four couples. I believe he is headed to Europe to marry off the next one.

Another marvelous thing about Joe is his ten year volunteering in prisons to wean people off recidivism and violence thru faith based teachings.

Again, these kind of meetings always seem short. But there was somebody else from my office waiting for me at the bar in the same restaurant to work on some financial matters.

So, I had to say bye. But I can’t wait to get back with Joe and Sovan again!!!

Nikita was in Savannah for some school program and she was not going to be back till the next day. After finishing up my work around 8PM, Sharmila wanted to know what we wanted to do. Of course, the road warrior that I am, I always vote for staying home. And since she is stuck with the daughter’s stuff during the weekdays, she always votes to go out. And like in every tried and tested marriage, during a one-one vote gridlock, the wife wins. I think there is some kind of electoral college system that defines a marriage.

Sooner or later, we found ourselves at a bar that Arup and Sanjib had introduced me to a few weeks back. This was my second time there. I had settled down but for a few seconds – when a familiar voice behind the bar piped up – “Uh! Oh! There is trouble again!!” It was good old Kay!! She was our bartender the previous time. And her comments were squarely directed towards me.

Sharmila had that “What did you do now?” look at me and I let Kay explain as we placed our drinks. It was a slow middle-of-the-week night. So both of us spent a lot of time talking to Kay. Apparently, the previous time when I was there, I had way too many of my cheesy jokes at her expense! In any case, I was glad it was a slow night since both Sharmila and I got to know her life story and her aspirations in life.

An hour and a half later, it was time to start wrapping up. But, of course, it was also time to take a picture and document in my blog to remember these moments much later in life. As Kay came over to our side, a gentleman who was sitting on the other end all this time and reading something saw us and volunteered to take the picture for us.

Which he proceeded to take. And that is where things could have ended. Not when I am around though. I, of course, had to get to know the gentleman – Rich was his name – a little more. Found out quickly that he was the head of after sales parts and services for Bentley. Since he is a road warrior himself, the bonding was very quick. We talked a lot about life on the road and all that. But most of the time was spent in myself learning about Bentleys.

I was aware of the British roots of the company and the current ownership by Volkswagen but what I was not aware of is how many of these high end and very premium priced cars are sold every year. Apparently only 12,500 or so. About 3,000 of them in US. To put that in perspective, somewhere between 15 to 18 million vehicles are sold in US in a year. I was able to guess the regions of the world that buys most of the Bentleys fairly accurately, though. Learnt a lot from Rich on how to maintain customer identity and customer satisfaction for such very niche markets.

And one more half an hour rolled thru just like that while talking to Rich!! We exchanged our business cards and then of course, came the mandatory picture!! And the hope that we will run into each other on the road again sometime!!