When Rowshan and I arrived in the US in 2001, our original plan was to stay 4 years until he got his citizenship (and a passport more widely accepted than the one he had) and then move back overseas and travel. We're 2 years overdue. Rowshan had finally been promoted to the software development department for his company's best product and was unwilling to leave so soon. I began to fear that maybe his dreams had changed and didn't match up with mine. Maybe he had decided he wanted to buy a house, have children and climb the corporate ladder. Maybe travel wasn't important to him anymore. So, a few weeks ago I asked, "What are your dreams?" He immediately answered, "I want to travel." We decided that we would travel around the world for a year or so. We would leave June '08. Our wanderlust would be sated in September with a 3 week trip to Peru. Then we would return to San Diego and have a year to plan.

I'm great at making plans. Following them is another story. The plans have a tendency to dramatically shift overnight. And on Monday they did. Rowshan got laid off. It wasn't a surprise. Half of his department got canned, including his manager. He described his meeting with the VP of development to me:

VP: Rowshan, I have some bad news for you eventhough I know you are a top performer and a very good engineer.
R: It's not bad. I know what this is about. And I want you to know, I AM SO HAPPY!!!!
VP: What??? In my entire career, I've never met anyone who was happy to be laid off!
R: Now I can travel around the world!

With that, our year of planning dwindled to 11 weeks.

-TLD