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Kiddo’s third birthday #

Yesterday was such a great day for me. It was kiddo’s third birthday and I had a lot of fun with him. He too said the same and that made me even happier!

In the morning, I was hanging out with him while his mother prepared a little surprise for him - with cake and balloons - in his room. In the evening, I got him a giant “happy birthday” balloon and he was genuinely happy playing with it. For Diwali, we lighted up a few sparklers - his first, wore traditional kurta-pajama, ate chole-puri for dinner and read a book called “How to cheer up dad” which we recently got from the local library.

Other than all this, we called him “birthday boy” and were “excited that he turned 3”. He has numbered magnets and, for the first time, he arranged them from 1 to 10 by himself on the fridge!

EB-1A #

Just a few days ago, my EB-1A petition went through. When I first learnt about it at the start of the year, I wouldn’t have believed if someone told me this would happen. But here we are. I still find it unbelievable, especially that the petition went through in the first attempt, without any RFE.

For the record, I wasn’t desperate to get PR (i.e. permanent residency). The wait times for Indians like myself, who weren’t managers outside the US or who didn’t come to the US long ago, is so long that I wasn’t spending any of my time thinking or worrying about PR. But when this EB-1A idea came in, I decided to give it a shot because this was one of the only things in my control. Still, I didn’t have any hopes because I know at least 3 people whose cases didn’t go through in the first attempt.

I don’t know how much time it’ll take for us to get PR and later US citizenship. I also acknowledge that a few months or years after PR, I’ll likely forget my current state of mind. Life with PR will become the norm and there’ll be other things I’ll worry about. But that’s just how life is.

Nice year, so far #

A few months back, I was wondering how good life would be if my promotion to Principal Engineer at work and EB-1A petition for PR both went through. Well, here I am in November, and both happened. So, life should be pretty great, no?