Episode 120 : Irony, or something like it

Hank is the elder brother of one of my friends from school. Like me, he wanted to work as a programmer and invariably our chats would end up talking about what we do and what we want to do.

'So if you had to choose where you could go for your first on-site assignment, where would you go?' he asked me one day.

'Europe, preferably the UK' I said without hesitating.

'And you?'

'The USA. But why the UK?'

'Old world charm is all I can say.'

'Do you realise that all software professionals choose America over England?'

I did, but I didn't care.

This conversation was all but forgotten till February last year. I had returned from Calcutta after visiting the American consulate there and a week later, my passport arrived with an American visa.

I mailed Hank about this. In his reply, he asked whether I realised that he and I possess visas that the other would have preferred to have.

I did.

He was already in the UK and remained there for a few months more and then shifted to the country he always wanted to go first.

My visa expired in February this year, unused. My chances of going on an assignment were scuttled by a fracture of the jaw.

Or so my manager wanted me to believe.

'If it is not going on an on-site assignment that is causing you to leave us, we can always send you on a business visa. Believe me; I never had any problems in sending you there. I have sent lesser-capable people' my senior manager at Hickle Tech told me when he tried to convince me to stay on.

Obviously there was some "miscommunication" between my manager and his manager. Maybe I should have told him that also instead of just saying that my reason for leaving Hickle Tech is "something else- a little professional, a little personal'.

My first assignment can still be somewhere in Europe. But realistically speaking, it will be the USA if I do go on one. Unless a miracle happens.

But then, miracles in my life are few and very far between.