I briefly want to share my experiences on first coming over to USA and then Canada.
Upon graduating with a science degree at Osmania University, I decided to pursue further studies in Industrial Engineering and came over to Minnesota in March 1971. On arrival I was received at the airport by Ahmed bhai & Amina. After staying over the week-end with them I moved to share a rooming house close to the campus with 4 other students from the sub-continent. Quickly all 4 of us adapted to the daily routine of sharing the cooking, cleaning and other chores in our house.
I was lucky enough to find a part-time job at the campus during my 1st quarter of studies. It was quite an adjustment to walk about 15-20 minutes to the campus in sub-zero temperatures and snowfalls in Minnesota. Being on a student visa I was restricted to work limited hours and only on the campus jobs. During the summer months I worked on two different jobs to cover my monthly expenses and the University tuition fees.
Due to my degree from India I was able to get about 2 years of credits transferred to my program and that was a big help. Upon graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1973 I returned back to Hyderabad.
In 1974, I migrated on immigrant visa to Toronto, Canada and was received at the airport by Mohsin. Again I was able to share an apartment with 3 other bachelors and my main focus was to locate a full time job in Canada. During the 70’s the economic conditions were not good in Canada and for the first couple of years I had to work at non- engineering jobs.
Having the previous experience of living in harsh weather conditions in Minnesota I was able to quickly adapt to the Canada weather. However on one occasion while going to work in my beetle Volkswagen I had a bad skidding experience with frozen up conditions on the highway. I was able to continue driving being much more careful after this scary experience.
In 1976 I married Tabasum in Pakistan and we settled in our rental apartment in Toronto. Both Faaiza & Sameera were born in Toronto. My career started with working at engineering and project management jobs at some of the multi-national companies. During my work I was able to complete a 2 year masters degree program in Management Science from University of Waterloo in 1987.
After my 21 yrs of stay in Canada, I got the opportunity and was transferred by my company (Nortel) to North Carolina in June 1995 where we all got our green cards sponsored by Nortel. After staying there for about 6 yrs I took a senior management role within Nortel and moved as an expat to Hong Kong in October 2000. By that time Faaiza was already married to Azeem in May 2000 and Tabasum had to stay back in NC with Sameera for her to complete her degree at the NC State University.
It was quite a unique experience for me to work in Hong Kong for 8 years covering our locations in 10 different countries in the Asia Pacific Region. This gave me the opportunity to officially visit our locations both in India & Pakistan during my 8 years of stay over there. To visit my family and fulfill the green card requirement I visited USA every 6 months. Sameera got married to Ali in August 2005 during one of my visits to USA. Upon completing my 25 years of service with Nortel, I took an early retirement and came over to Chicago in Dec 2008.
While living in Chicago at the guidance of Haseeb in 2010, I took on the challenge by changing my field to road construction management by obtaining the official construction certifications and started to work at Haseeb’s company on NJ Dept of Transportation projects on an as required basis. I was fortunate to spend almost 9-10 years with my dear sister Mahmooda Apa while I was working in NJ. I was commuting to Chicago every 2 weeks while working in NJ.
Due to the Covid pandemic I decided to fully retire in Nov2020 and came back to Chicago.
Now I enjoy spending time with my family, relatives, social gatherings and ofcourse playing pickleball on a regular basis. I am always Grateful to Allah (SWT) for providing me with these opportunities.