Where's Wally?

I’ve read interesting blogs where I’ve then had to spend a good many minutes googling to learn more about the author, to try and make up my mind about what the author's context, expertise, experience, depth of knowledge and authority on the topic at hand might be. It isn't enough for me to see what is being said, it is really important to know who is saying it and from what vantage point. If you are like me, and context is important to you, I’ll save you the trouble to google anything, by sharing this note on where I am, physically and metaphysically.

I’m a woman in my early thirties, born and raised in India. I’ve spent the last 15 odd years in the United States. I have a masters degree in computer science. I have worked as a software engineer for the last decade or so, and have a successful career by most measures of how careers are measured. My somewhat unique hobby is flying airplanes. I enjoy reading espionage and historical events based fiction, and philosophy and memoirs from modern feminists in non-fiction. I like to dabble in various creative endeavors: painting, singing, dancing, carpentry, low-carb vegetarian cooking, with varying degrees of expertise. I am married to a kindred spirit, also a computer scientist, and we are currently being raised by our 1.5 year old lab and 9 month old baby.

In the summer of 2021, my spouse and I both quit our Silicon Valley jobs, got on COBRA health insurance for our family, and started a hiatus from our professional life. We expect the hiatus to be less than a year. We are spending the next 6 months of this time on Oahu in Hawaii, and have relocated here recently.

I mentioned health insurance, which might seem odd, but is an important facet of life tied to your employment, if you are in the United States, immigration being the other one. We are fortunate to have no employment restrictions on our immigration status, which enabled us to take this hiatus.

This hiatus was a few years in the making, and we called it Nomad, since the original idea was to travel for an extended period of time, like nomads. I will be writing more about the planning behind Nomad, and what we hope to accomplish. I will also be writing about what we are experiencing on this hiatus in follow up posts.

Hopefully, this has given you a brief and helpful orientation of who is writing anything you read here, and where I’m at.