Its been three weeks since we played Andrea Bocelli's "Time to Say GoodBye" as each of us left for the airport in Sofia. The Bulgaria 1 CSC team's assignment in Sofia is over. But this is just the beginning of a life long friendship for us, the "Young and Crazy" #CSCBul1 team. We are busy making plans for a reunion in Tokyo in 2020 with us staking claim to different corners in Shiori's small apartment in Tokyo. Poor Shiori is not being given a chance to say no. Naveen said it well "We worked together as friends, and lived like a family" during our month long stay in Hilton, Sofia.
People ask me, "Why do you think CSC is such a great program?" and I have to say, I still can't bottle up and articulate the reason why I am so bright eyed and bushy tailed since coming back from my assignment. Was it the work I did with the Bulgarian Agency for Transplantation, in developing a roadmap for them to make intelligent use of the data they were gathering so that more transplants can be facilitated and lives saved in Bulgaria? Was it the knowledge I gained from my colleagues about areas that each of them is an expert it - Design Thinking tips from Neha, Ricardo and Shiori; Powerpoint skills from Ricardo; Excel, Business Intelligence solutions and Python scripts to massage data to extract patterns from Gilberto, Tao and Alex; photography skills from Shiori; story telling tips from the Caro, the master story teller; professorial presentation skills from Naveen; Marketing tips from Jason and Josephine? Or was it just the feeling of being outside my comfort zone and spending most of my waking hours having fun with folks from seven different countries I had not met before for one whole month without the distraction of daily life? How can I forget our local guardian, Angel Spasov, from Pyxera Global who was charged with looking after us. Each and every person we interacted with from the people at the Non Profit Organizations we worked at, to the local IBMers, were warm and welcoming.
There are people all over the world who are working hard to make a social impact in their society. Each of us has the power to make a difference and political and cultural boundaries fade away when we all join hands in community service.
I am very thankful to IBM for providing me this opportunity to leave my day job behind and experience this month long philanthropic immersion in a foreign country. I am also thankful to my management chain and teammates for picking up the slack when I was away. And I am thankful to my family for supporting me as I embarked on this trip.
It may have been "Time to Say Goodbye" to my CSC family, but rest assured, we have many more collective memories to be built.
