In my "Life without Penny" series the four male principal characters in TBBT split up. Only Sheldon stays at Caltech, Leonard returns home to Princeton, Howard moves to the Kennedy Space Centre and Raj returns to his alma mater of Cambridge University. What happened to Raj? Part 4 - Leaving California.

###############

After Raj got the news from Cambridge things started to happen quickly. Raj got the official job offer, with help from Cambridge Raj quickly got his visa to work in the UK, his earlier student visa helped to speed up the process. He had just under 4 months to get things in order in California prior to his departure.

Raj kept up with his Science, he got a couple of papers finished and submitted before he left. He also had his annual remote telescope time in Hawaii with his Caltech and Stanford colleagues. They were all in favour of continuing the collaboration with Cambridge in the future. Raj had lots and lots of data to analyse from the telescope time. However, instead of trying to analyse it all himself he looked at the data to see what would be good for a future postgraduate student project.

Every couple of weeks he would have a video chat with Professor Anderson and his future Cambridge colleagues. He also persuaded Wolfson College to let him live in college accommodation for a few months until he found somewhere more permanent to live.

In spite of having such a busy life he kept up his friendship with Leonard and Sheldon. He would join them for lunch most days, he never missed "Anything can happen Thursday". For Raj's last full weekend in California he had a 48 hour video game session with Sheldon and Leonard. Then it was Raj's last day at Caltech, there was a farewell party for Raj where he received an American English-British English dictionary and a Union Flag tea mug as farewell gifts :-)

After his last day at Caltech Sheldon and Leonard took Raj out for a final meal. They were greeted by a blonde haired waitress.

"Hello my name is Penny, welcome to The Cheesecake Factory…."

###############

Thirty-six hours later Raj had a video chat.

"Hello Mummy and Daddy, greetings from Wolfson College, I am back in Cambridge…."