Ms. Etiquette: Polite Vulture Hints

Right around lunchtime, I saw a memo pop onto my screen: "food available in the Casablanca conference room." There was some other text in there, but I didn't bother reading it. After all, as soon as that memo went out, other vultures and scavengers would be converging onto the conference room for a piece of the corporate carrion. I was the first one to arrive. The door was closed, but since I knew that the meeting was cancelled (hence the free food. It was too soon to cancel the catering), I just burst right in.,,,

And found my boss. And her boss. Engaged in an intense conversation, grave looks on their faces. Like in an old-style western where the stranger waltzes in through the saloon entrance, it was as if the music abruptly came to a stop and all patron eyes were cast at the interloper. Hello, I say, as I tug nervously at my collar. Hello, they say. At this point, I'm already committed. Just as I cannot half-puke or half-sneeze, once that trigger is pulled, there's no turning back. I had to make that sandwich. As I put together the bread, and the meat, and the vegetables, my fingers trembled. The mustard and mayo pattern on the coldcuts betrayed my unease -- no clean lines of condiment here; just some quick squeezes on the disposable packets that got more on the table than on my meal. We sell VoIP gear here, but in those awkward moments, I could sense, in 5-bar signal quality, the communication mechanism of the future. No more of this Voice over IP thing. It will be Voice over Eyeball Penetration (VoEP). Thankfully, a colleague made the same blunder and burst into the room. I took that opening as a way to make my graceful exit, and left her to experience VoEP.

I must add that the sandwich and BBQ potato chips were good though.

Nintendo or PC version?

Photo from a school buddy.

Does it make me old skool, or just a dork, if I'm expecting geometric shapes to come falling from the skies?

Public Safety

this morning, I noticed shiny new laminated signs lovingly placed on the restroom doors.

"Severe Weather Safety Area"

Call me crazy, but in the event of a hurricane, I think I'll take my chances outside...

Tofu-Bologne

It's not half as bad as you may think. Which of course is still pretty bad if your imagination is more vivid than mine.

Be that as it may, let it not be said that my culinary habits cannot change to incorporate healthy alternatives! Today, my eyes were opened to the fact that with the right condiments -- mustard, mayo, lettuce, tomato, quarter-pound hamburger patty, fried onion ring, and a side of french fries -- tofu bologne is very much edible.

Robitussen

One of the staple foods in my daily routine is the humble microwave popcorn. There's an endless supply of gratis genetically engineered goodness in the office breakroom, so I find myself gorging every now and then.

Thing is, those kernels have an uncanny habit of lodging in my throat on the most inopportune moments -- like just when I'm about to deliver a rousing discourse on the merits of using semicolons in marketing copy.

Yo GAHHH

This morn, I attended my first yoga class. Impetus for this came from my last physical. Cardiovascular and strength-wise, I did okay; slightly better than the norm for my age range. On flexibility though, there was a bit left to be desired. The doc had me sit down and put my feet against a metal box about 1 meter long (for folks on US units, that's 6.82 hotdogs). On the topside of the box, gradients were marked off. The idea was for me to stretch as far as I could, and the doc would see where on the box my fingertips could reach. Since I can't touch my toes, that particular exercise didn't fare well. The doc, after realizing that it wasn't due to my lack of English comprehension that I didn't commence (actually I did, but I was DONE already), furrowed his brow and sagely proclaimed that I had the flexibility of a 60 year old male. To make me feel better, he added that maybe it was for a Robust 60 year old male.

Taking that as a New Year's resolution thing, I signed up for Yoga.

The instructor was totally authentic -- had the look of an enlightened guru-type that spent years subsisting on nothing more than water and nan bread. He also spoke like Yoda, in that his instructions were delivered in grammatically backward English. This also added to the Authentic Indian Yoga experience:

"Stretch you will, and pain you may feel"

He interspersed his direction with the expected effects of each pose, which the class and I found very informative.

"Daily you practice, constipated you will not be"

Good to know. Thanks.

Incidentally, it is now 5 hours after I attended this class, and my back and legs are SORE.

all I want for Christmas...

Rei lost his first baby tooth yesterday. He was chattering away about how the tooth fairy is gonna help him stick it to the Man and make him rich, but he was a little hard to understand because of the air whistling through the newly formed gap. Because of this, it caused some issues at bedtime. "tooth fairy is a'coming" sounded more like "too scary is a'coming" and caused Anna to stay up terrified for a good hour past bed time...

Thank you HAL

As a newly minted graduate, I gained access to the school's Alumni Website.

Eager to look up former grads that I know or work with, I registered and signed on.

I dutifully tapped in my name, address, garduation date, etc, and pressed the register button.

"Welcome Hideo, class of '05", it said. Thank you, polite website, I think to myself.

I looked at the What's New section and noted that the site now has the capability to link Friends and Friends-of-Friends together in a seven-degrees-of-separation kind of way. Cool, I think, and click on the link.

"Hideo, You currently have No Friends" the website states.

Taunted by mere lines of code, I sigh dejectedly.

Tomorrow, perhaps, someone will let me sit with the Cool Kids at the virtual school cafetrial lunch table.

Until then, I sign off and carry on with this loverly 13th of Friday workday.

Tagging is the New Black

ack, tagged! I've got a bit of a writer's block going; I've been staring lifelessly at the flickering glow of my LCD screen, willing my work to complete itself. So...this tag is a welcome diversion/procrastination.

What were you doing 10 years ago?
Roughly 10 years anyway. Fresh out of University, just completed a degree in Eng Physics -- that's Nukleeer as George Bush Jr. pronounces it. I've entered a field directly related to my studies: Sales! And telesales no less! Parents un-thrilled. Creditors also un-thrilled.

What were you doing 1 year ago?
Ha! Turns out that there's no market for Nukleer types as defense spending dried up in the early 1990s. As careers go, moved from telesales to channel sales, then to marketing about 5 years ago. School debts paid off; both parents and creditors off my back. Feeling that I am getting too much sleep, delved into night classes.

Five snacks you enjoy
Salty, Fatty, Sweet, Fried, and various combos thereof. Deep Fried Mars bars in Scotland is something that I must try beofre I die. Though that will likely be the cause of my death.

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics
Thomas the Tank Engine
Alphabet song (ok, I know all the letters)
I'm a Little Teapot
Baa Baa Black Sheep
Thunder Road (so sad that this is the only one of *my* songs that I can recall verbatum)

If I had one million dollars?
I'd buy a plot of land large enough to park my bicycle. I live in California, ya know. We measure housing pricing and land in terms of deaths: "Hmm, that nice fixer-upper is a steal at 3.2 life insurance payouts!"

Five bad habits:
1. email! This is an addiction. I get nervous when I'm on vacation like I'm gonna be all Rip Van Wrinkle when I return. As if I'm that important in the scheme of things.
2. Driving before coffee. If someone is tailgaiting me, they are a jerk. If someone is driving too slowly, they are also a jerk. But that would make me one too.
3. Coffee. I get a splitting headache if I don't get my fix. And I get really cranky.
4. Not following directions.

Five things you like doing:
1. Run. I dunno why, because I used to hate it. Now I'm hooked and training for my second half-marathon in February.
2. Sleep. Those of you with young kids, I don't need to explain. Everyone else, trust me.
3. Read. Books with more words than pictures. That's a rare treat that I only get to do on airplanes these days. But I can quote "Green Eggs and Ham."
4. Eat. One of these days, my metabolism will slow down. But until then, I'm gonna chow. Or until I reach that holiest of holies -- the Deep Fried Mars Bar mentioned above.
5. Seeing our young'uns in their classroom. It's so cool to see Rei and Anna in class-- they're so different from how they act at home. And they're getting smart. I better read up before they make me look stoopid.

Five things you would never wear, buy or get new again
1. mohawk. For one week in college. And it wasn't one of those tall pointy ones but just a tuft of hair. Looked like a small animal died on my head. Went no hair soon after, then grew back to where it is today (functional and fast-drying, but not much else).
2. a 1979 Toyota Celica. The engine actually sprung a hole on the highway, vaporizing motor oil onto my windshield. It was like the old arcade game SpyHunter. The car was worth almost as much as the quarter it costs to play.
3. another iPod. But since my willpower is made of jelly, as soon as the next thing comes out, my 20GB, Shuffle, and Nano will likely gain a sibling.
4. Another subscription to a magazine. I get so many and I never get to read them all. It stresses me out to have an ever-growing pile of mags that I have to force myself a daily quota of articles to read. And to think I subscribed because I wanted to enjoy them...
5. All those suits I wore as a salesperson in Japan

hmm

I remember when I was a kid, passengers used to clap when the plane landed. Were pilots back then just learning, thus less likely to land correctly?

Flashback!

I dunno why my wireless connection dies more often in Dallas Ft Worth airport, but there it goes again. And here I am again, suddenly tetherless and abruptly jerked back into the real world. I look around the lobby and see mostly other business-folk. Heads down and typing, or talking to disembodied voices via their earpieces (mine's out of batteries from an earlier call...). No one makes eye contact.

Last time I felt so isolated within a crowded room was back in University final exams. At the time, I had a pretty effective system of waking up at the crack of noon, missing morning classes and using nothing more than academic bulemia which involves quickly ingesting class notes then retching it out for the exams. For that particular day, the analogy was an opt one, as the concoction of 50 hours sleep deprivation and heavy caffene use (we used to make espresso by the mugfull) was causing me scholastic dry heaves. Try as I may, nuthin' was coming out of my brain! I remember looking up from my test paper and feeling utterly alone and helpless amongst a sea of heads-down students and the desolate chorus of pencils scratching paper...

Fortune Cookie

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

....but this certainly helps.

Wilderbeasts

Over the weekend in a rented cabin in Lake Tahoe. It would have been the first time the child units Rei and Anna would have been exposed to snow, so we were looking forward to this for a long time. Alas, the weather did not cooperate, and we got rain. Tons of it.

So...rather than do the sledding/skiing/snowboarding thing, we spent most of the time there holed up indoors and drinking hot chocolate. And watching Dumbo and Nemo over. And over. And over again. I gotta admit that by the end of the second day, I started to emphasize with Jack Torrance and felt the itch to grab an axe and come bursting through the bathroom door.

Just then, a diversion! I was approaching the door, garbage bag in hand. It was one of those flimsy black plastic kinds with no handles, so you had to be careful lest one side tears and you dump all 46 used hot chocolate paper cups and assorted halfheartedly consumed snacks all over the floor. At any rate, right as I turned the knob, I froze. Maybe 10ft (for those outside the US, that's equal to 3m, 1.7 Swiss faden, or 0.9 pants wetting) from where I stood slouched an adult grizzly bear. He (or she. In my panic I forgot to ask) was a big bugger, easily the size of a kitchen fridge. He heard the twist of the knob and slowly turned to face me. We made eye contact. For what seemed like an eternity, we locked gazes; I was forced to experience the majesty of nature and how small my existence is when faced with evidence of something so primal. In turn, the bear probably had equally compelling and profound thoughts...likely summed up as Eat/No Eat.

Luckily, Grizzly chose the latter option, turned around and got backed to its task of rummaging through the trash dumpster. I quietly set aside my rubbish bag for later, quietly closed the door, and watched Dumbo again.

How wars start

I read an article this morn about how the the variances in local dialects makes business transactions difficult even within the same country. This made me recall a conversation I had, back when I worked in Tokyo eight years ago. {Flashback sequence, trigger wavy visuals and harp-strumming music}

grandma:
"So how are you adjusting to your first month in Tokyo?"

me:
"okay I guess. There's a ton more people than I'm used to, my entire flat is literally the size of my old bedroom in NY, and we work 14 hours a day. Yeah I'm a little stressed."

grandma:
"Sorry to hear that. Have you made any friends?"

me:
"Oh yeah, I've been going to a Health Club after work, and met some nice people there."

grandma:
"...I see."

me:
"Different kinds of folks than the ones back in the US, but at least I know we're all there for the same reason. Makes for easier conversation anyway."

grandma:
"Maybe you should find another hobby?"

me:
"How come? Nothing wrong with getting a good sweat going! It's a great stress-reliever and really energizes me. I get sore sometimes, but still, I go almost every other day!"

grandma:
"I...I..have to go. I need to speak to your parents."

me:
"okay, tell mom and dad I said hello."

I was a little puzzled at the reaction, but gave it no further thought. Days later, I found out at work that languages have a funny way of growing stale when one is not plugged in, so to speak. In my geographic isolation in the suburbia of Rockland county, New York, I had not realized that the word "Health Club" came to mean "Brothel" in Japanese slang.

Dallas Ft. Worth; 10:12pm

So my flight is delayed again. No big deal, par for the course. They let us off the plane, with an explanation that "nothing to be concerned about. One engine is...uh, loose." That's probably a technical term designed not to confuse us laymen with fancy words like ,"forgot the bolts that hold the right wing to the fuselage." I did feel a little uncomfortable that all the crew vacated and were standing 100ft from the plane, but that's just fatigue making me jumpy of course.

At any rate, I'm thankful for a chance to stretch my legs. Entertainment was presented by a fellow passenger, red-faced and belligerent, arguing with the gate attendant.

"Everytime, I fly, you guys do this! What is the problem here? Why is this happening?!!! I demand an explanation!!!" Of course, all of us realize that the delay is the sole responsibility of this one gate attendant, and that she holds the power to make things better - she may even be able to provide a better hairpiece to this argumentative gentleman. To her credit, the attendant remains calm and let's Soon-to-be-dead-with-a-stroke-Angry-Man sputter away into incoherence. We board soon after and we go on our merry way.

The Little Voices in My Head

Today was one of those days. I didn't want to talk to anybody; I wanted to be heads-down, glued to a monitor, turn off the fluorescence, and tap tap tap away at my keyboard in quiet passive aggressiveness. Heck, if I had made the concession to wear a Linux T-Shirt, my mood would have allowed me to blend in with the more technical coding-types in the building. I dunno what it was, but I was just in a snippy state of mind; I'd respond to friendly good mornings with a WHAT????

This is most unhealthy. And not the best way to keep my printouts and photocopies from being dumped in the recycle bin.

That's when I stumbled upon Innovation of the Highest Sort. The lowly bluetooth headset can be used as the Tech Worker's Mosquito repellent. As long as the blinky blue LED flashed in my ear, I found that most people would start to talk to me, but quickly pull back: "Hey did you watch the game last ni...whoa sorry, you're on the line." Even better, as long as I muttered something under my breath or nodded now and then, I didn't even have to be engaged in a phone call! I felt a little touch of insanity creeping up on me as I mumbled to myself and occasionally rocked back and forth in my chair, but the blessed silence was well worth it!!

And knowing is half the battle

There he was! One of the folks who inspired one of my earlier posts. The paragon of multi-tasking, the one-man booster of the nation's productivity numbers! Just like when I saw him six months ago, this undoubtedly high-powered exec had his bluetooth headset on and was dispensing his wisdom while running a 8 min mile on the treadmill. Not to eavesdrop or anything, but I just wanted to bask in his greatness, so I started to run on the machine next to his. I hoped to catch some snippets or hints on how I might achieve success as well. I ran slowly, at a leisurely 9min pace, so that the sound of my own breathing won't mask the utterences from my guru neighbor.

huuuuh huhhhhh hhh ahhh ahh tomor huh roow or ahhuh Fr-Friduhha huh ayy...

A fortune-cookie piece of sage advice if I ever heard one. Perhaps I will have it embrolidered or framed.

Gassius Clay

Going up the elevator in the Fairmont hotel. I had parked my car down the street (waaaaay down the street, as it turns out, as I mistook the Hotel where the meeting was supposed to be and parked a few blocks away), so I rode the elevator from the ground floor. Six or seven Silicon Valley tech types board. They all have khakis on, a cellphone clipped to their belts; a few have bluetooth earpieces on with those blinky blue LEDs. Like a flight of lemmings, we all instinctively face the same direction, and stare silently at the Floor Display number. And then it happens. Barely noticeable at first, but then, like bad cologne, the odor wafts throughout the cramped quarters of the cabin. For the record, it wasn't me. We all notice, but we all maintain a poker face and continue our vigil of the display. Some squint slightly as a sign of discomfort.

After an interminable amount of time, the car arrives at the Lobby floor. All but I pour out into the fresh air. The look of relief on their faces are unmistakable. I need to get to the 1st floor, so I stay on. But right as the door is about to slide shut, a woman squeezes in. She too catches a wiff of the lingering odour. I see her flash a look of disgust at me. I want to shout, Hey Lady it Ain't Me! There were six other guys in here! It's one of them!! But that would only make me look more guilty of the crime. I am framed. I am mortified. The elevator arrives on the 1st floor and I scurry out, head hung in shame.

Happy Monday

An inspirational bit on a Hallmark card I received from the local sporting goods store.

"When your feet are in the right place,
your mind will follow."

During my run this morning, I stepped in a nice steaming gift from a local canine.

The cosmic implications are mind-boggling.

Two More To Go

2.5 more hours. 150 more minutes. 9000 more seconds. 6.3 glazed looks. 2.2 streams of drool from a slack jaw with mouth 1.2 inches agape.

That's how close I am to finishing my 3 years at grad school and to finishing my MBA. I can almost smell the sweet fruits of my labor! No more cog in the big machine! No siree. Not this guy! Grandiose visions of me with my new degree, strolling into the office, and settling down in my space between the off-beige cloth walls, into the plush industrial Postur-Wreck (tm) office chair, and unleashing my newfound skills on the world. Oh yes, my simple cog days are over.

I will now be a *shiny* cog in the big machine. Dream big, I say.