Aradhna in Raleigh NC

For the last several months I have been planning on Aradhna coming for a visit to the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle in NC. I ran an ad in the local Indian magazine called Saathee for the last three months. I ran the same ad in the local Indian movie theater called Galaxy Cinema. For the last couple of weeks before the event, the same as was run on Nazar TV, which shows Bollywood videos from 3-4pm each Sunday afternoon. Lastly, the NC State radio station has Indian music from 10-noon each Sunday morning on WKNC for a program called Geet Bazaar so they announced the Aradhna concert also. It took work and money to do this. So on Sunday night five days before the concert, I get a call from the president of the Hindu temple telling me I could not have the concert at the temple which was where all of the ads listed as the location of the event. So I have to make a mad rush to find another place in less than a week. It was very stressful to say the least. I felt like I wasted my time and money and energy. We finally decided to have the concert in the same location for both Friday and Saturday night on the NC State campus in the middle of the graduate housing buildings. I invited all of my Indian friends to the new location and was very disappointed when not a single friend of my showed up. On Saturday morning, the Aradhna tabla player told me the house would be packed for the second night and it was hard for me to believe it after the sparse crowd the first night. Sure enough the crowd kept picking up as time went along and before I knew it the whole room was full. That was a great feeling although quite different from my disappointment the night before. Because the crowd was excited, the band fed off the energy and the performance was special in many ways. On Sunday morning, I drove two of the band members to WKNC radio studios to meet Afroz Taz and John Caldwell as both of them had been in India and had not responded to my emails. I was beginning to panic that yet another planned event was going to backfire. We decided to drive to the studio and just show up. Thankfully, Afroz was there waiting for us. They had a short but great 10 minute session and sang parts of two songs. On Sunday afternoon we had several friends over to meet the band at our house. Our kids were so happy to attempt to play Chris' sitar and then play Rock Band with them. A sad start but a strong finish.

Aradhna @ Raleigh

Aradhna in Raleigh NC

The big move : one last time

Nearly two years ago we completely the big move yet one more time, and hopefully for the last time. Moving half way across the USA just is not fun any more. It was hardly any fun the first time, but three times just is not acceptable. We learned a lesson from our Raleigh to San Antonio trip about using U-Haul trucks, so this time we picked ABF U-Pack movers. It was the best moving decision weever made. For a couple of hundred dollars more than renting our own truck, we paid to have a huge container delivered to our home. At our leisure, we packed the truck by walking the boxes into the container. When we were done, we called ABF and they came and hooked up the tractor and pulled away. We drove our van and car across the country, without any animals like cats this time and the trip was actually enjoyable.

Once back in the Raleigh area, we stayed in an extended stay hotel, while I worked and my wife looked for a house. We moved into an apartment with a short term lease so would not feel pressured to buy the first house we found. All of the kids wanted to go to the same schools they had attended previously in Fuquay Varina. We finally found a house just two miles from where we used to live! One thing the boys wanted to do was build a shed like music room, so we had to find a house with land so we could tackle that project. That will be a future post as that was quite an event.

A really good friend of mine found a job for me at GSK with a group he already had in their RTP location. I was a usability specialist working at a contractor through Role Model Software. One of the things that was appealing to me was trying to incorporate usability with Extreme Programmers, of which the Role Modellers were the best I have ever met. Usability and interaction design could appear to be contrary to pair programming and XP, but the whole year I worked at GSK with Role Modellers was the best experience for me. It can be done and I am proof that it can succeed. The business owners at GSK benefitted as well.