Fayetteville/Bentonville Then and Now
- Going to Arkansas after 15 years, once I crossed into the Arkansas from the Missouri border, you could see beautiful parks and golf courses. You can smell the richness.
- The state has changed in the last 20 years completely. Now a lot of shopping centers and hotels on the side of the road. I remember the time when we have to go to Joplin to eat Italian food in Olive Garden :-)
- Nice bicycling trails connecting the university with different sections of the town and took on one such trail with Dr. Selvam to Lake Fayetteville.
- The university has grown really big from 14K student enrollment to more than 25K student population. The time where I spent my married life in the University, Carlson Terrace, is completely gone but the Summit Terrace where the bachelor life was spent is still the same.
Meeting with Friends
Drove around the university area with Dr. Selvam and walking around the graduation pathways to identify my name. My last name was spelled fully in one place and shortened in another.
Meeting Dr. Selvam’s kids, Sanjoy and Bala, was very special and these are the kids I used to enjoy playing with when they were small. Sanj
oy was telling me that he had nightmares about me throwing him up and down, and I apologized by having a ice cold beer with him in this trip :-)
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| With Dr. Carol Gattis and Dr. Jim Gattis |
Breakfast with Dr. Jim Gattis and Dr. Carol Gattis and meeting them after 20 years was special. Without Dr. Gattis’s support they was no way I could have completed my graduate degree and he provided all of the necessary financial and moral support.
Donuts with Dr. Bowling, who motivated and helped me in the field of distributed systems in Computer Systems Engineering, and able to discuss the old stories was nice. Could not believe that he’s a granddad now but he looks the same.
Also met with Meng Tang, my colleague and manager in Wal*Mart, and Sridhar Bas. I have been told that the working culture at Wal*Mart has changed but it’s hard to believe.
After spending two days in Arkansas, I left to Kansas city without much talked Art Museum in Bentonville.
