June 13, 1984 —JFK

I arrived in the United States on June 13, 1984.

I landed at JFK Airport from Zurich, Switzerland, on what turned out to be the hottest day of the century. The Hartford Courant later ran a headline announcing the temperature — 103 degrees.

I didn’t need the paper to tell me that.

The heat announced itself the moment I stepped outside.

* * *

I followed instructions.

I waited for the Connecticut Limousine bus, boarded it, and rode to Hartford. When the bus stopped at Valley’s Steak House, I got off, walked to a payphone, dropped in a quarter, and dialed the number I had been given.

Mary Wrobleski answered.

She arrived with her mother, Mrs. Wrobleski, and drove me to the house where I would live for the next eighteen months.

I didn’t ask many questions.

At that stage, forward motion was enough.

My two roommates were Gilberto Acosta from Brazil and Judith Olgado from the Isle of Man. Judith’s mother was Filipino. Her father was British.

The household felt like an international experiment — one that worked mostly because no one was particularly attached to being comfortable.

Two years earlier, I had been accepted into the PhD program in Computer Science at the University of Zurich. The university did not award separate master’s degrees. The Licentiate — Lic. oec. — was considered equivalent.

When I met with admissions, they asked about my background. I told them I had just graduated from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration.

“That’s a very good school,” one of them said.

“One of the top two hundred universities in the world.”

That mattered to me then.

Credentials always do — until they don’t.

* * *

During my studies, I chose a computer programming course taught in Pascal. The professor was Niklaus Wirth — the man who had created the language himself.

Pascal wasn’t just code.

It was discipline. Structure. Precision.

If you were sloppy, the system punished you immediately. If you were clear, it rewarded you just as fast.

Wirth had designed Pascal around 1970 at ETH Zurich, naming it after the mathematician Blaise Pascal. He later created Modula-2 and Oberon, and received the Turing Award in 1984 — the same year I landed in America.

At the time, I had no idea how long his influence would stay with me.

* * *

Two years into my doctoral program, I received an unexpected job offer through AIESEC.

The description was short — almost vague.

The project was in Bloomfield, Connecticut, and was expected to last about eighteen months.

The job involved designing a spare-parts inventory system for SH-2 Seasprite submarine-hunter helicopters at Kaman Aerospace Corporation, a major U.S. Navy contractor.

I didn’t fully understand what the work would involve.

After class one day, I showed the offer to Professor Wirth. He read it carefully and said the company likely already had established hardware and software systems.

“You’ll probably just be drawing flowcharts for the programming team,” he said. “Nothing too involved.”

That turned out to be optimistic.

* * *

Kaman Aerospace was headquartered in Bloomfield and had been founded in 1945 by Charles H. Kaman, an aviation pioneer known for his unconventional helicopter designs.

The SH-2 Seasprite had evolved from a small utility aircraft into a full anti-submarine warfare platform used by the U.S. Navy’s LAMPS program.

During my time there, the IT director was Bill Harrop. Reporting to him was Vaughan Marecki, a senior figure in the department.

* * *

After delivering the inventory system successfully, I accepted a position with IBM in their Information Systems and Communications Group at 44 South Broadway in White Plains, New York.

My role was to produce weekly market research reports on printers and peripherals for senior management.

That office reported up through Michael Armstrong — who would later become CEO of AT&T.

IBM was enormous.

Impressive.

And already quietly shedding people.

Around 1985, IBM introduced an early retirement program designed to reduce headcount. Full-time positions became harder to secure.

Eventually, mine disappeared.

Without a job, I moved from White Plains to Hoboken, New Jersey.

A childhood friend — someone I had gone to high school and college with — was working toward his PhD in physics at Stevens Institute of Technology.

He had a dorm room.

At night, he snuck me in after hours. I slept in empty beds and disappeared during the day.

We were broke.

We bought a gallon of milk for ninety-nine cents and a bag of flour and made yogurt and bread to last the week.

* * *

On Saturday nights, The New York Times delivered the full Sunday edition to newsstands.

I paid one dollar for the Help Wanted section and took it home.

I started alphabetically.

Computers. Software.

By Sunday morning, my cover letters and résumés were already in the mail.

Some Sundays, I hand-delivered them instead. Offices were quiet.

No one stopped you.

* * *

After months of searching, I was offered a PC analyst position at Movado Watch Company.

The salary — $20,000 a year — barely covered the bus fare from Hoboken to the Port Authority.

But it was a job.

And Movado promised to sponsor my green card.

That promise, like many others I would hear later, turned out to be empty.

But at the time, I didn’t know that.

I was just relieved to be moving forward again.