Camel from Kyzylkum

Washington, D.C.

IT WAS THE SPRING OF 1998. I still hoped to land a job in the IT industry. My friend, Lenny, had just moved to the Washington, D.C. area, and she said to me, “Come over. You might find a job here. You can stay with me while looking for a job.” First, it felt like an impossible task: leave everything that was familiar in Buffalo and move to the unknown again. But events in my personal life propelled me to make a quick decision. I started the preparations for moving and also started a job hunt around the Washington, D.C. area, sending out my resume for jobs advertised in the newspapers or online. There were plenty of jobs around the Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland corridor. I even got some feedback. One day, when I was ready, I hopped into my Toyota Corolla and drove to Washington, D.C. It was the first time I had to drive alone for such a long distance—around 400 miles. Smartphones with navigation systems were not yet known. I used a map, but I still got lost a few times. It was stressful, but I made it. Lenny was kind enough to give me one bedroom with a bathroom in her two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in the northwest part of the city. While I was looking for a computer programmer job, I got a job in a department store, where the hours were flexible, and it gave me the possibility to make some money.

After two months of job hunting and countless interviews, I got three job offers. I accepted the offer for the position of computer programmer/analyst from a company in Maryland. It was called “The Emmes Corporation”. Emmes is a Hebrew word; it means truth. Emmes Corporation was (and still is) a company that provides clinical research and biostatistical services, infrastructure, and professional support for successful clinical research around the world. When I was hired in the summer of 1998, it was a small company with fewer than 100 employees. When I retired from this company seventeen-and-a-half years later, it was a mid-size company with around 800 employees.