I Met a Greek Goddess in Nashville

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TEI DBA Ctr of Artfcl Imagn, May 12, 2008 - Juvenile Nonfiction - 150 pages
Imagine waking up in the middle of the night and wondering whether where you were in San Francisco or San Diego, New Delhi or Nashville, Amman or Emeryville? And why you were where you were?This is the story of a modern Nomad, a Hi-tech immigrant who becomes a refugee in Nashville during the meltdown of technology industry in Silicon Valley. In the last chapter, the author moves again to yet another interesting place.The author captures the contrast and similarities between the places beautifully, using both colorful words and colorful photographs, combining stunning imagery with his equally stunning imagination to convey thoughtful messages to us "the snowflakes descend slowly, floating in the air, allowing the air current to carry them with it, letting it change their paths. They have chosen not to confront their destiny, choosing instead to enjoy every second of their short lives, their journey to the ground." A funny and yet very poignant story!
 

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Page 8 - It has been snowing since the morning. I look through the office windows; I am fascinated by the soft, white, gorgeous carpet stretching for several miles in every direction. The snowflakes descend slowly, floating in the air, allowing the current to carry them with it, letting it change their paths. They have chosen not to confront their destiny, choosing instead to enjoy every second of their short lives, their journey to the ground.
Page 29 - Also, the fire was reportedly burning in an area covering a few hundred acres, about 0.5 square miles. For it to cross 35 miles across rest of Poway and reach us, it would need to grow about 10,000 times its current size. "Very unlikely,
Page 33 - The East was mostly desert and taking that direction would mean going all the way to Las Vegas, mostly through internal roads. Being new to the area, I wasn't too familiar with the highways connecting us with nearby cities. Or we could go down to Mexico, and spend some days there. But what if the Harris fire blocked the freeways going South? We slept very apprehensively.
Page 29 - The fire's location was 10 to 15 northeast of Ramona, making it 30 to 35 miles away from us. They had set up an evacuation center in Poway High School. I reasoned that if they were evacuating people from Ramona to Poway, we should be safe because a fire in Ramona would need to cross the rest of Poway to get to us.
Page 32 - Was this the end? What were our options? San Diego was running out of safe places. One of the freeways heading north was closed, the other jammed with evacuees. Even in normal circumstances, traffic towards LA is horrendous; now, we could spend 24 hours just on the freeway. Besides, the LA area had fires of its own.
Page 11 - I look through the windows of my large corner office, and watch the snow fall. The snowflakes descend slowly, floating in the air, allowing the air current to carry them with it, letting it change their direction. They have chosen not to confront their destiny, choosing instead to enjoy every second of their short lives, their journey to the ground.
Page 10 - Valley my audience nad become very quiet. I looked at the three interviewers; they were all silent, and had strange looks on their faces. Were they completely mesmerized by my powerful speech? Or did they not understand even a single word of what I said, because of my accent? Either way, I ended up with an offer in hand, a Head of Technology position, managing hundreds of people!
Page 24 - I pondered over these deep philosophical and scientific questions for the next few days, and dreamt that I was a quantum particle simultaneously existing everywhere in a 10 dimensional space-time multi-verse, with my wave function forced to collapse every time I had to specify my address. San...
Page 28 - ... I thought, and went inside, completely oblivious to the still invisible wildfire burning up there somewhere in the mountains. An hour later, I habitually logged in, and saw an e-mail from our IS department alerting us about a fire in Ramona. Fire? Ramona? I looked up the web— Ramona, pop.so,00o, described as a "bucolic mountain hamlet,
Page 23 - Is there a deeper purpose for us being where we are? Or is our location just a manifestation of the devirtualization of our existence, sort of a corollary of Descartes' "cogito ergo sum" —I think (virtually), therefore I am (physically), and hence I have physical coordinates?

About the author (2008)

Kalpanik S. is the pen name for an executive in software industry. He came to USA 20 years ago on a fellowship by University of California Regents to do graduate level studies and research in Computer Science and Engineering. After obtaining his Master's degree, Kalpanik spent more than a decade in Silicon Valley, working for both large Corporations and small startups companies. The technology industry's infamous bust early 21st century took him to Seattle, where he worked for Amazon.com. He could not get used to the gray skies of Seattle, so his journey took to Tennessee and eventually back to California, but Southern California this time. Having traveled through and lived in so many interesting places, it was only natural for Kalpanik to document his journey as books. He has a strong sense of humor, and uses his power of observation to highlight uniqueness of the places he visits and people he meets in a jovial way. He also likes playing with his readers and surprising them by mixing concepts from science, philosophy and literature in an unexpected manner, making them both crack up with laughter page after page while still forcing them to think every now and then. Many of his stories, characters or incidents have a second deeper and cryptic meaning thus adding a layer of barely visible complexity. He is able to cater to needs of both types of readers, those who are looking for something light to read and those who want to read something sophisticated.

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