Going by Yahoo! Maps instructions and driving at / around the prescribed speed limit (who cares about +20 anyway?), it should have taken just over 3 hours and I should have reached Rags’ latest by 3 pm. Put food, gas in NJ & evening traffic into this equation and 3 hours become 7 hours. Yeah - I stopped for food at couple places, but all gas stations in New Jersey are full service (thanks to Mike Larsen for this info) which means they (service station personnel) fill the gas for you. This act of gas filling (acutally waiting in queue for this) took nearly 90 minutes (an hour and half). This invariably put me in the evening rush hour traffic and it sucks to drive. Eventually, after a bit of searching around, I find Rags’ place in Parsippany around 6 pm but not Rags.

After several failed attempts, I finally get to talk to him and spend next 40 minutes or so with his roomie, Punit, discussing about Rags’ heroics. (Rags, I am living upto my word that I would b!@#$ about it in the blog - more of it will follow). Eventually, I get to do something that I had never imagined while growing up — meeting my friends (Rags and Vathsa in this case) outside India. Next couple hours went by as we did the usual catching up and Rags, as he has been for the last few years, was busy working with his customers (in simple words, working from home, after a full day’s work, on a Friday evening). We (Vathsa and myself) finally pull him out of the house and drag him to Taco Bell - which was just minutes away from closing. In the two hours that followed, I wrote couple of scripts, one for log-rotating mail back ups and the other called MiME (Moving in Made Easier) - to help setting up accounts on new (linux) machines easier, while Vathsa and Rags bowled in Hanover Lanes. Important thing to learn, about driving in New Jersey area, was that one has to make a right turn to make a left turn - funny heh? As Rags had to work on Saturday too, Vathsa and myself would go to NYC early next day morning and go to Atlantic City later in the evening….

I strongly second Vathsa’s hypothesis that Rags has lost respect for time, money as well as for work. His boss doesn’t know that he works on weekends, and his clients don’t care to put in a Thank You note to the company. But poor Rags thinks without his weekend work, his company’s image will take a nosedive…