Shopping for Home Items

Well, today was a busy day, and not a whole lot got done...

I stopped by the apartment with a backpack load of stuff, just to make space in my suitcases for the dirty laundry that's no longer nicely folded and takes more space.  There was a paper from the landlords with a "welcome to the neighborhood," some instructions about the doors and basic information about garbage disposal and stuff, with a bottle of red wine to hold it down.  They'd opened the windows last night as well, so there was fresh air inside the place.

Then I took the subway into Manhattan.  I wrote down the addresses of the four Apple stores in Manhattan (none in Brooklyn) and the one on West 14th Street was the easiest to locate on a map and match up with a subway stop, so I aimed for that first.  A mariachi band got on at one the stations and played some songs while moving up the car and the doors to the next one.  I got off the subway at 14th Street and Union Square, where there was a weekend fair sort of thing going on, people playing music, vendors selling lots of fresh made snacks and things.  Across the street I saw a Bank of America so I popped in to the ATM there to get some extra cash.

Then I headed up the street to look for the Apple store, and went the wrong way.  It took a bit to realize I was going east on East 14th Street, but once I noticed the shop address numbers and matched that with the direction of the sun (still morning, so the sun would be south with a bit of east) I realized it and turned around.  It looks like 5th Avenue divides east from west on the streets.

Unfortunately, west of 5th Avenue the blocks were gigantic, so even though I only had to go four of them, it was quite a long walk.  The Apple store's sign was sort artsy, and in the bright sunlight and a little dazzled and tired, I kind of missed it and walked an extra block too far.

Once I realized that I turned around and went in.  I asked at the entrance for iPhones and the workers sent me up to the second floor (first floor by Indian counting) where Gemma asked if I needed help.  I told her I wanted an iPhone and she went over the plans and all that.  She was quite helpful and fascinated that I'd just come back from India.

Towards the end, she had to call AT&T to activate the account, and they asked her to put me on the phone, which was something she'd never experienced in selling iPhones.  The AT&T woman said she would ask me a few multiple choice questions and I should give the best answer.  First was which mortgage lender held the mortgage to my property, and I said "I don't have a mortgage".  Then she asked something else about another financial loan and I said "I don't have a loan," and Gemma looked pretty puzzled about the half of the conversation she heard.  I thought for sure they'd looked up the wrong Kevin Rubin in some database.  Finally, the last question was "in what state was your social security number issued?" and I said "New Jersey" and the AT&T woman said "congratulations, you've answered all the questions correctly."  So, instead of mistaken about me, they were trick questions to verify I was me and not someone else pretending to be me.  Gemma speculated that having been out of the country the credit report AT&T had on me to activate it was probably too empty, since I wasn't paying bills or anything in the U.S. for longer than 7 years, so they wanted some extra verification.

So, I got the iPhone 4.  It seems pretty cool so far.  The screen is very, very sharp.

After leaving the Apple store I had a long walk back to the subway station at Union Square.  I stopped in at a Red Mango shop for a green tea frozen yogurt that was pretty tasty.  I stopped there for a while and wrote in my journal a bit.  While I was doing that I faced out the window to watch traffic go by.  At one point a black Lamborghini sports car stopped in traffic, and five or six people all whipped out their cameras to take photos of it, including a guy on a motorcycle who took one next to it, then backed his motorcycle up to get more shots from different angles.  Then the light turned green and they all left...

From there I went back to the apartment (the other night I was talking to the realtor about not having any recent rent payment receipts or check stubs because "we own our flat in India" and she said she liked how I called it a "flat" it sounded really fancy and foreign, and she said she had an English friend who told her not to refer to her flat in London as an apartment or people will think she's extremely posh).  I used the phone to call my parents.  I'm not clear if it's just a bad signal in the apartment from AT&T or if I had the iPhone antenna problem, but they could only hear me if I stood in one part of the apartment, and the call got dropped twice...  Not a good start...

It was also kind of loud...  Yesterday I'd noticed the signs posted on the street about no parking on Saturdays.  Today the street was blocked off at both ends with police barricades and a whole block party was in action.  Many, many families out, kids playing all kinds of games in the street, one family had their stereo outside, pumping out Mexican tunes, and a huge barbecue going on in front of that one.

Once I got off the phone with them I headed up to a nearby grocery store.  It was small, without a huge selection in most departments, but had many of the basics I wanted, like Cheerios, some yogurts and Silk chocolate soy milk.  I bought paper towels, soap, shampoo, 409 spray cleanser and dish soap.  Someone left paper plates and plastic knives and forks in the kitchen already, so they were less urgent.  I dropped those things back at the apartment and went out again.

This time I wanted to find several items:

• pot
• pan
• coffee mug
• pillow
• sheet
• blanket

And those things are hard to find there.  I checked in a lot of stores but none of them had any of those.  Up and down, no one had those.  Some people were selling stainless steel pots and water filters on the street and I asked one of them.  At first she said "they're stainless steel.  You do know what stainless steel is?" and I said "yeah, I know what they are, I'm more concerned with can I buy it now and take it home?"  She went on to explain that the water filter "holds 50,000 gallons of water" and I stopped her to clarify that it doesn't hold 50,000 but will filter 50,000 gallons before it needs replacement and she agreed to that change.  Unfortunately, they only had demo models, and would ship the real ones to people who buy them, so I told her that wasn't really the time frame I was looking for, thanked her and kept walking.

Eventually I decided to call it quits for the afternoon, stopped and got some pizza slices and went back to the apartment to pick up my backpack and head to the hotel again.

The R train to Atlantic-Pacific was easy, but this weekend the 3 train isn't running at all, and its routes are being serviced by the 4 train, but that meant the 4 train came on a different platform than usual, so I waited on the wrong one until I saw one, but didn't make it down the steps and under the tracks fast enough to catch it and had to wait for the next.  And it was hot down there, like an oven.

I got off the train one stop earlier and took some time to find my office so I'll be ready for Monday.  I know where it is now...

So, I'm back at the hotel.  I had a good shower after being so hot and sweaty and I don't think I'll be up late tonight.  I'm tired and I need an early start tomorrow.  For those missing items I think I know where there's a Target that'll have all of them, right near the Atlantic-Pacific subway station so I can check that out.  It's just one train from my apartment so I can do that after I check out of the hotel and get my suitcases into the apartment (that's going to be a bit of a challenge, they're heavy and it's a steep, narrow stair case, but I can take them one at a time into the building, then one at a time up the stairs).

Signing an Apartment Lease

So, all that work looking for an apartment yesterday didn't work out quite right.  I called the broker late this morning to find out the status and she told me to call another agent at the same company, Mark, who was the one to contact the landlord.  The landlord, however, is Jewish, and today is a major Jewish holiday, Rosh Hashanah so he's not doing any business.  Mark said Monday would be the earliest the landlord could possibly look at the application.

I told him that didn't work well for me, since I start my new job on Monday and I want to focus on doing a good job, not spending all day worrying about apartments and mounting hotel charges and all that sort of stuff.  I asked him what he could do for me.  He said he had one apartment in the same neighborhood, Sunset Park and said he could show it to me and that he knew the landlord quite well and could easily rush things.  I agreed, and he said to meet there at 2pm.

I looked up how to get there and it didn't look too bad, although the two times yesterday I took the subway anywhere on my own I made mistakes, so I figured I'd better leave a little early to be safe.

Out on the street by the hotel lots of well dressed people were going to the church across the street and some preacher was on the steps with a microphone and PA system preaching.  For several blocks up to the Utica Avenue station women were out trying to give me tracts, which I politely declined.

I got to the apartment around 1pm, with plenty of time wander the nearby neighborhood.  I found the right address and it was a nice, clean brownstone building that looked in good shape on the outside.  I liked it instantly.

It's between 4th and 5th avenues (I don't know if I've lived anywhere else where street vs. avenue was significant, it'll take some getting used to) and I wandered up to 5th.  Lots and lots of shopping all up and down, lots of people all over.  Very mixed ethnically, but Spanish seemed the predominant language on business signs (including many of the Chinese restaurants).  Lots of places to get pizza by the slice, lots of small grocery stores and not very many chain stores.  I liked it.

By 1:45pm I waited outside the apartment until Mark showed up.  He was dressed more casual than Brian was yesterday, but he quickly asked if I was Kevin and introduced himself.

I was disappointed by the inside of the apartment.  It wasn't one that had been recently renovated like all the previous ones I saw, so the kitchen didn't have shiny, new stainless steel appliances.  It had a weird sort of wooden vaulted ceiling like it was added inside a non-vaulted one, and dark, soft carpeting in the bedrooms.  The smaller bedroom has its own door to the common part of the building, probably originally set up for being rented out by whoever lived in the apartment.

We talked a bit and I wasn't quite sure.  But with a six month lease, I won't be locked in past March, and I can look for something more modern, more fancy inside before Leena gets here.  And I was in something of a hurry anyway, because I start my new job on Monday and want to be moved in immediately.

After leaving the apartment he said the landlord could come to his office at 5:30pm to sign the paperwork.  And I agreed to go there at that time, about three hours later...

That gave me a lot of time to walk around.  I walked on 5th avenue up to about where their office was, but it wasn't only 33 blocks so I was there by 3:30pm, still way too early.  I kept walking, went down closer to the industrial part of Gowanus near the river, but it didn't look like there was access to it except through various industrial yards, not public, and there's no riverfront park down there.  The Statue of Liberty was visible from many intersections, between buildings.

I took a break at a Dunkin Donuts, bought a Boston creme donut and a vanilla been "coolata" (whatever that is, exactly) and sat near the window writing in my journal for a bit and half listening to some guys behind me talking about how they hate all the various people who were different from them, etc...

Sitting there still didn't eat up all my time so I walked up and down streets some more for a while.  I kept passing a funeral home with a fancy Cadillac convertible two-seater sports car out front with the title "funeral director" on the frame around the license plate.  Seems odd, I would expect a funeral director, especially using a car for work purposes, to have something a bit more solemn and staid...

I showed up at Rapid Realty's office around 5:15pm and waited in their reception area until Mark showed up and took me into one of the private offices.  We started going through the lease, making a few modifications to the standard one (e.g. standard says no pets, but he said pets were allowed in this one and I plan to get a cat) and initialing them.

A bit later someone named Carlos turned up, who I gathered was associated with the landlord and the property.  He told me some about it, and he initialed the lease document in the role of the landlord.  We talked about Sunset Park a little and how it's become more gentrified.  Carlos told a story of earlier in its changing demographics, shortly after he and Luis, the landlord, moved there he was on the subway and someone else was complaining about the new, weird people moving in and how the neighborhood was going downhill as a gay couple moved there.  At some point in the documentation, Mark asked Carlos about whether Carlos could sign something or if it had to be Luis, and Carlos said "it's our bank account".

Finally, once Luis turned up, the hints got clearer about who Carlos was...  Not Luis's lawyer like I thought a possibility, but his gay lover.  The two of them live in the ground floor apartment together, so they'll be my neighbors.  They were nice guys to make small talk with while doing the paperwork, both educated and intelligent, and probably good enough neighbors to bump into going in and out.  We chatted a bit about my experiences in India and they said they know some good Indian restaurants where I could get good food, though they understood when I pointed out that it's currently the taste of American food I'm looking for for a while.

Once we finished signing everything they handed over the keys to me and offered me a ride there if I needed it, but I said I was heading back to my hotel in Crown Heights, which is way out of their way.

I took the subway back, and this time didn't make a single wrong move on the subway.

Getting back to the hotel, a few women came out of the elevator in white dresses and hats that looked amazingly like wedding cakes.  On the way in there seemed to be something going on at the church across the street with lots of people in formals, so maybe they were going to that.

Now that I've seen my face in the mirror at the hotel, it's obvious that I got a bit of a sunburn while out walking around Brooklyn.  My nose especially is shiny red.

New York Apartment Hunt

Whew, am I tired...  Although we got off to a late start, the apartment broker, Brian showed me a bunch of apartments around Brooklyn.

He arranged for us to meet two subway stations from the one nearest my hotel, which was a ten block walk.  Unfortunately, the map didn't show that it was ten blocks up hill...  I was pretty tired by the time I got to the station.  I bought a $20 subway pass, which is good for a few rides (anything over $8 gives a discount per ride).  But then I got on the wrong train, one that didn't stop where we arranged to meet, so I had to get off at another station and wait for one going back again.

I still got there before him.  It'd told him to look for me, a bit short, a bit chubby, wearing a green shirt and blue jeans.  He found me alright.

We started off with a freshly renovated, very modern one not far from the hotel and my office, in Crown Heights.  Inside it was quite nice, and the owner's broker was there to try and sell me on renting it.  I very nearly did, but politely asked if Brian could show me some more so I could see what was out there before deciding.  Brian kept saying how that one had the nicest kitchen of most of the apartments he's seen anywhere, and only $1,500 a month.  He said it was a good deal.

I was really thinking about it...  Although I didn't feel immediately comfortable with the neighborhood, he said it was still a safe place to walk at night.

Then we took the subway to another one near Sunset Park, on the ground floor.  I liked that neighborhood better, and the entrance hallway into the building had some nice, attractive tile work.  Inside was okay, one decent sized bedroom and one tiny one.  The view from the tiny one and the kitchen was awful, though, the wall of the building right next to it.  The view from the main bedroom was a bit better, since it was on a hill it overlooked other buildings' yards and some of the city in the distance.  It's very close to several subway stations with easy access to Manhattan.

Next we were a bit early for an "open house" at another building not far, where the owners were showing four different apartments.  Brian bought me lunch, a good New York style pizza at a small, non-chain restaurant.  I got a root beer, too, something I haven't had for quite a few years in India.  We talked about apartments and I talked about some of the differences between them and ones in India.

From there we walked up to that other building, but no one was there.  He made some calls and it turned out the open house was from 4 to 5, not 3 to 4 like he was originally told.  So we had some time to kill and continued walking up to Sunset Park to look out at the city.  Nice view from up there.

It was around there that I got out of breath from walking up hills and it dawned on me that the first, 4th floor apartment might not be suitable...  I didn't think Leena would like carrying things up four flights of steep, narrow stairs...  Or my parents when they come visit me, either, especially my father.

We stopped at a small dinner he knew a few blocks away and we got some hot drinks, him a coffee and me a hot chocolate and waited around for 4pm.

Shortly before 4pm some of the other brokers started showing up outside the building with the open house, and some with their clients.  I chatted with one of them who asked me how different India was and stuff.  Then the owner's agent showed up and opened up the flats.

We looked at a 1 bedroom and a 2 bedroom on the ground floor.  Their interiors were nice, all brand new, fresh wood flooring, new fixtures in the kitchens, great stuff.  But the one in front was too close to the door, too much noise of people being buzzed in and the door slamming.  No way, it would drive me nuts.  The one at the back had a very weird layout, with a bedroom-like room between the living room and the bedroom, if that makes sense.  But it wasn't possible to see the sky from any of the windows, because of all the other nearby buildings.

Then we looked at a two bedroom one on the second floor, and it was better.  It was right over the entrance, though, so had some of the same problems with the door buzzer and slamming.  Then we looked at one on the 4th floor, which had the same weird layout as the one at the back of the 1st floor, and from which the sky was visible.  But again, no elevator and it was a tiring walk up.

From there we hopped on the subway to the South Park Slope neighborhood near his office.  His office entrance was like a night club or Italian restaurant, with a narrow hallway and bricks lining it.

He got a key for another one not far, for which the only thing he knew was "it's carpeted," and we walked and walked and walked, all up hill till the road ended at a cemetery, and on the last block there was an old fellow doing some kind of yard work at the entrance.  He asked where the broker was, and Brian told him he worked with the regular one the owner used and was showing it, and showed him we had the key.

This was a two bedroom apartment in what seemed like a house.  As soon as we he opened the door we got a little dizzy.  The floor was tilted at a nearly impossible angle, and dipped a little with almost every step we took in the apartment.  Whenever we opened doors they were difficult to close because they didn't fit right in the frames.  It was dusty all over, the carpet (yes, it was carpeted) was dark, dingy and stained.  This was a definite rejection...

We thanked the old guy outside and walked back to his office, thinking of all the funny selling points someone could use for that apartment...  Well, cleaning up spills could be more convenient because the water would simply run down instead of spreading all over...  That sort of stuff...

By this time I'd decided on the second one, the ground floor one with the nice tiling in the entrance.  Of all the ones I saw, it had the fewest negatives.  Others were nicer, but no way could I see Leena or my parents happy walking up four flights of stairs, and others on the lower floors had no views at all, and wouldn't get much sunlight.  It's not perfect, but it's not bad, I'll just get some drapes or blinds for the windows on the side that have an ugly view.

Brian started my application process, and then had another woman there, Charlotte take over.  She walked me through all the paperwork. I put down a $1,550 deposit, which they said would make the landlord less likely to reject my application due to the oddities (no recent rental history, salary slips in rupees instead of dollars, etc...).  It's refundable if the landlord does reject the application and I'll get it all back.  She was pretty sure it would be acceptable, that showing three salary slips shows that I'm reliable and can keep a regular job, and the ING Vysya bank statements show us paying our bills on a regular basis, the things a landlord really wants to see, while the Kashrus employment letter shows that my new salary is in the range.

I'll follow up tomorrow and see how it goes.

This one is two train rides from the office, or a good hour walk, through safe neighborhoods.  I liked the look and feel of the neighborhood, it felt safer than some of the others.

So, we'll see...

After I left their office Brian was outside for a smoke break, so we chatted for a bit.  He said that the building I did pick one in has no laundry facilities, but there's laundromats nearby and dry cleaners.  He said he uses a dry cleaner all the time and it only comes out to around $10-15 a week, and he wears mostly suits to work, plus they come back pressed and folded like at a clothing store.

Now I'm quite tired.

On the way back from Brian's office I got on another wrong train once.  Only to get off and go across the street to the one going other direction and realize the first one was the right train.  After that it went okay, and the walk from the train station down Utica Avenue was pleasant with the sun having set and a cool breeze blowing.

Some of this neighborhood is interesting.  Lots of West Indian restaurants with things like "Beef Roti" on their menus.  At a few of them there were cooks with 50 gallon drums converted into barbecues out on the sidewalks cooking meat, with flavorful smoke wafting all over the place.  A few of those had stereos in front of their restaurants playing reggae music as well.

Incredibly Stupid - Very Lucky

Ok, so I did something very stupid today, and I got lucky.

Getting out of Customs Hall at the JFK airport terminal, I exited into the main waiting area where there were lots of people waiting to pick up passengers.  I obviously looked a bit confused, staring up at the overhead signs looking for taxis.

First one guy asked me if I needed a taxi and I said "yes" and he asked where I was going, but when I said Brooklyn he said he was going to Connecticut and they're not the same place.

Then after set my things down and put my passport into my handy-dandy document case in my backpack another guy asked "do you need a taxi?"  I said I did, to Brooklyn and he said "this way."

He led me to another guy, said something about Brooklyn to him, and the second guy said to come with him.  I followed and asked him "how much?" and he said $45, which okay, in the range of what I expected after checking online and finding there's no fixed formula and the taxis only have a fixed rate between the airports and Manhattan, not any other part of New York City.

He wasn't wearing a uniform or anything, and I didn't really think to ask for ID.  Once we got to his minivan he tossed my suitcases in the back, and said to go ahead and get in the front seat (not gruff, friendly, but it's hard to portray that in this...).  His car wasn't marked as a taxi in any obvious way.

I did, but there wasn't any obvious sign that it was a taxi, no radio, no meter, no stickers or anything...

I started to worry a little, but as he'd asked for the map Leena had me print out from Bing, I had it out and was keeping a careful eye on the roads we were taking and always he went in the expected direction.  And it was reassuring that he did not ask me to reimburse him $3 for the JFK parking lot.

We chit chatted a bit.  He seemed pretty friendly.  Part way through the drive we were talking about job security, after I mentioned that I didn't choose the job with the highest offer and joked "being competent and underpaid is the perfect job security".  He said he knew what I meant, he'd lost his previous job driving a company truck when they kept the lower paid drivers on, and he had no job now, except doing the unofficial taxi driving for a friend, but with that he never knew if he'd earn $2,000 a week, or as little as $100, and if anything happened to his car it was out of his pocket.

In the end, everything worked out, but if it hadn't, I would've only been able to blame myself for not thinking, not paying attention and not acting smart.

Travel

I carry a journal with me whenever I travel and write things down...  Here's what I have for the flight...

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
Well, here I am at the airport in Mumbai waiting for my 12:45am nonstop flight to New York City.  At times I can't actually believe I'm doing this, it seems too unreal.  But I'm so happy to be heading back to the United States again.

We had lunch with Leena's family, said the good byes and then finished my packing back at our flat, while I gave her some last minute computer instructions.

Kalesh and the driver came about 4pm, loaded the suitcases and I was off on my way.  Traffic in Mumbai was heavy, but we planned for that, and no problems until we got to the road leading up to the airport.  My itinerary from the travel agent said Air India was in Terminal 2, but after some construction, there were signs for gates A, B, C & D, rather than 1 & 2, but it was marked clear enough that Air India was in A (although once inside I had to walk from A past the B entrance to get to Air India's check-in counters, so 2 or B would've been more accurate...)

I got to the airport too early and couldn't check in right away, so I had to stand around for about an hour with my bags.  Once I did check in there was no problem with my overweight bags, about 50.1 kg, over the maximum of two bags of not more than 23 kg each.  The agent at the counter didn't mention it, and neither did I (though I saw the readout on their scale).

The Immigration desk was another story...

The agent noticed that I'd been in India a while, that my last entry was stamped from February 2009 (my last business trip to the U.K. to learn about the BPM).  He asked me to confirm that I was traveling on the 10 year business visa in my passport, which I did, and again, when the last date I entered India was, and how long I was there, which was about a year and a half.  He asked what I was doing in India that long and I told him I was working for a software company, and he asked what company, so I told him it was Tieto, but that I'd quit the job last week and was going back to the U.S.

He asked for my FRRO registration form, but I told him I didn't have that.  He then reconfirmed all the previous details, and I confirmed them, and that I didn't have an FRRO registration because my visa is stamped with a funny stamp:

With that stamp, the FRRO refused to register me when I tried.  Everything online says that with a Business or Tourist visa valid for more than 6 months, then any foreigner has to register at the FRRO within 14 days of arrival, unless the visa is for "long term" when registration is not required if the visit is less than 180 days.  But the FRRO simply said that whatever is on the visa overrides what's on the website, and the stamp simply says that registration is not required, without conditions.

So, the agent grabbed all my papers and said "follow me."  I've had other agents in the past question this also, and make phone calls, but this is the first time one led me away from the main area and into the duty officer's cabin with the huge window where the thousands of people in the room could see me being led away...

The instant the duty officer looked at it he told the agent that it was perfectly legitimate and there was no problem.  They had further discussion in Hindi that I couldn't quite follow, and told me to sit down on the couch in the office.  The duty officer sent the agent to xerox all my papers while I waited there.  In the meantime another agent brought some other chap in with visa problems and I heard the duty officer grill him pretty bad (in that case it sounded like the guy stayed in India longer than his visa was valid and had no good explanation) before letting him go.

After the agent returned with copies of my papers they talked more, then both of them left for a few more minutes, with my papers, before returning and the agent said "follow me" and took me back to his counter, where he stamped my passport with the exit and reminded me that my visa expires in a few months, so if I return next year I need a new one.

Once he let me go, there was the main security check to get into the terminal.  Nothing unusual there, just the normal chaos, confusion and inefficiency.  I put my laptop and sweatshirt in a tray, and then several other people's trays got between that one and my backpack while I waited in line for the metal detector and the hand scan...  I think this was the first time I've ever been felt up to that degree by security...  And I have no idea why the hand scanner was beeping heavily near my left pants pocket, it was my right one that had a key and a ring, the left one was empty!

I tried to get a quick pizza at Pizza Hut in there departure terminal, but everyone else kept cutting in front of me in line, so I gave up and got a chocolate chip cookie instead from another restaurant.

I was on the phone with Leena when I noticed some activity going on at Gate 3, where I knew my flight was being handled.  It seemed early, but when I looked the signs all pointed to my flight, AI 141...  So I said good bye and dashed off...

It was yet another slow, inefficient security check, this one with us removing our shoes, getting our bags x-rayed again, and yet another hand pat down.  The family with children before me added to the chaos as they tried to hand the sleeping baby back and forth, and their trays with shoes and bags and jackets got all scattered amongst the trays from the rest of us.

Then one more security check, comparing our faces to our passports and another quick pat down and we were onto the plane.  And another family with children had things all confused, with one parent standing there, while security told the other to go back out to the terminal and get whatever they were missing and "leave the trolly here...".

On the plane I quickly found my seat, 18A, with two people already in the aisle and middle seat.  Both of them had to get up so I could squeeze my way in, next to the window (I always ask for window seats so I can look out).

After a while the fellow next to me asked me about my visit to India.  Turns out he's a software developer also, working from Connecticut, but was in India just for the long weekend for his brother's engagement in Punjab...

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

Getting everyone on board and everyone's luggage stowed was a long process for the flight attendants.  And then getting everybody to sit down was harder.  Once the plane left the gate the flight attendants started the safety demo, but one elderly woman wouldn't sit down, so after finishing it in both English and Hindi they started all over again after a more senior flight attendant got the woman to sit down.

And then the plane started picking up speed, and then a senior flight attendant ran full speed up the aisle, and then we stopped.

The captain came on the intercom and apologized for the delay, but there was a technical problem with the airplane.  After some more waiting he brought the plane back to the gate where we started.

2am - Aw fuck!  We're still on the ground and they've just announced meal service.  That means there's no chance of leaving before that's all finished.

4am - We've just moved to another plane at the next gate.  Lots of police security to watch us walk through the terminal and keep everyone else out of our line.  Maybe this one will fly.

4:45am - The captain came on the intercom and said another twenty minutes or more, due to paperwork involved in changing planes and refiling everything with customs.

5:35am - We're finally about to leave.  Not bad for a 12:45am flight...

This plane isn't as comfortable as the previous one, the seat has a nasty, metal lump in it and the padding is worn out.  The entertainment console controller is all beat up and the arm of the chair that holds it is smashed, the vents near the floor look like they've been crushed and there's more stains all over.

I keep half expecting the captain to come on the intercom and say "she may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts," but hopefully not "I've made a lot of special modifications myself..."

2:20am New York Time (moved watch back 9.5 hours) - Oiy vey...  Not been a great flight so far.  Although the sun rose shortly after we took off, they structured the flight as "night" with the lights off and window shades closed.  Most slept, but kids screamed and yelled all "night."  Now it's "day" in the plane, and day outside.

And we ain't even halfway there!  Actually, we're in the neighborhood where most Tieto travelers are "almost there."

7:15am New York Time - Now we're at the point where we would have landed if everything had gone smoothly and we didn't have the five hour delay in Mumbai.

Some of the kids are sleeping, but at least one is in a super cranky mood.  Probably bored out of her skull, since we've been sitting in this plane (flying, or on the ground) for about 16 hours.  Can't they just give her a drink so she passes out and sleeps?

I've slept off and on for much of the flight.  But been woken up by screeching children.  Ashish Gupta, next to me, has slept a lot better than me, pulled the blanket over his head and seemed relatively oblivious.  I can't stay comfortable for more than a little while when I am awake, the seat's just miserable.

Yammer in the Enterprise

For the last year or so at Tieto (which I just left on August 31st, in preparation for my returning home to the United States) I used an online micro-blogging site, Yammer, with my company account.  Someone in Tieto in Europe had already set up a company "network" within Yammer and somehow I found out about it (I don't remember, maybe I read it on the company's internal blog or somewhere).

It was fun, I enjoyed it.  There were occasional technical discussions and a sometimes helping others with Java and sometimes getting help from others where I was stuck.  Most of the discussions had to do with bigger corporate things, like knowledge management, about which I don't know a whole lot, but interesting to read ideas from some very smart, very skilled people.

Most days I posted something when I first got in, "ah, Tuesday..." with a bit of a description about my commute to work, or something about life in the office in India.  Some was for me to vent, some was just things I figured someone who hadn't worked in India would find interesting about working in India.  While there was rarely any follow-up comments from others, I got a few emails in private that people enjoyed reading those, so that felt pretty good, especially since I enjoyed the writing.

Probably what I got most out of it was finding out that Tieto does more than just the project I worked on, and the few physically around it. I mean, I knew that, but had no idea what the rest of this company was other than "they" or "everything else". It turned Tieto from a gigantic company of mostly totally faceless "other" people into a bunch of people I never worked with but were real people.

Before using Yammer I knew that Tieto was quite big, but the only things I saw were my project and some of the other ones at the Pune office, which is only a tiny fraction of what Tieto does.  And the people I interacted with were only a tiny portion of Tieto's 17,000 "experts" (as we were all called).  And after I found there were a lot of good people there, and while my team was fantastic there were others I'm sure I'd have enjoyed working more closely with as well.

So, I'd recommend Yammer for anyone who works in a company or organization that's too big for everybody to know everybody else.

Exiting Tieto

Tuesday was my last day at work at Tieto.  The exit process was a real pain in the neck (this ties to my earlier post where I said my team is pretty insular, so I hadn't dealt heavily with other departments at Tieto for a while...).  There was a lot more paperwork involved than when I quit First Insight (my employer before that went out of business, and I got fired from the one before that...).  I had to get a half dozen signatures from various managers around the office in different departments.

Three of those managers were people I'd never met and didn't know on sight and didn't know where their desks were located.  Not one of them would be helpful enough to give me instructions on how to find them in the office.  One, the payroll guy, was nice enough to tell me that his desk was located "in the office" (uh, yeah, duh!), but cut off all communication when I asked for somewhat more precise directions.  Fortunately one of the women in HR, Vijaya, was assigned the task of following up on my exit paperwork and asked if I needed any help, so she gave me good instructions how to find them.

I had a couple of project related meetings in the afternoon, so I waited until after that to get the IT department's signature, in case they took my computer, which I needed.  Good thing, too, when I went to their office and said I needed to do the paperwork they cut off my network account before I ever made it back to my desk.  Fortunately I'd already copied the document I was working on and had to hand off to another teammate to the file server first, and I also emailed it to three people just as a backup.

Before that I also wrote a couple of farewell emails, one to my team specifically and one to all the people I've interacted with in the office, whether teammates or even just people I never talked to but always shared a smile with in the hallways...  That came out to over 50 people...

My department had a small party with cake to celebrate the department's birthdays and give me some flowers.  I made a lousy speech that I was unprepared for.

Then I went to the HR department for their signature, only to find their office empty.  Someone sitting nearby said they were all in a meeting.  That was about 5pm.  I went back around 5:10pm and they were still out.  At 5:15 they were still out and I started to worry that they might return, but being late in the day just pack up and leave without checking emails or things.

So, I sat patiently on a filing cabinet outside their office until their meeting finished at 6:35.  And even then the paperwork wasn't done.  There was some confusion about my missing a signature of a nonexistent manager.  The form had a space for a "configuration manager" but neither my solid-line manager nor my dotted-line manager knew what that was, let alone who that was.  By the time HR got back and explained that my solid-line manager needed to sign there with "not applicable" my solid-line manager had already left for the day for some follow-up medical tests (he was really sick earlier this year, with typhoid plus a serious kidney infection simultaneously that left him hospitalized for a few weeks) so it wasn't possible to get that.

The HR guy said he'd follow up with my solid-line manager the next day and get the forms, email me a PDF and courier the original to my address...  Of course, now Thursday is finished and I haven't received it yet...

After that I turned in my ID badge and key card, then the HR people escorted me out of the secure part of the office, into the reception area.  I guess they do that for all exiting employees.  They didn't make me feel like I was suspicious of anything and chatted cheerfully on the way out about my experiences in India and what my plans are for going home.

Then I waited there for a while for my teammates to finish work so we could all go to La Pizzeria for a team dinner and a farewell for me.  My original plan was to go home, shower and things, then get picked up at my apartment, since they have to drive right near it anyway.  But with HR's extended meeting I just waited for another fifteen minutes in the reception area instead, without taking a rickshaw home.

Dinner with my team was fun.  I guess since I joined Tieto after I was already getting homesick here in India I'd never really talked to my teammates before about the good memories I had of earlier in my stay in India, so a lot of that came out.  Someone even commented that they never imagined I'd eaten at as many restaurants as I talked about, since by the time I joined Tieto I was rarely ever eating out anymore.

Tuesday turned out to be a strange day to finish a work week.  It's left me quite confused as to what day is what since then...

Apartment Building Monthly Dues

Our apartment building here has monthly maintenance fees that everyone pays into every month to handle the common, shared expenses.  The standard formula is one based on the size of the apartment, which at first glance might sound fair.  But it's not...

The architecture of the building is that the largest apartments are lower down and they taper to smaller sizes as the building gets higher, this way everyone gets an uncovered balcony.  That means, of course, those of us lower in the building have the highest monthly payments.

However, thinking about it differently, I can see one alternative formula that would most likely be more fair, basing the monthly payment on the floor of the apartment, the higher up you go, the more expensive.

Two of the major expenses are the elevator and pumping water.

Those of us lower down in the building, especially the family on the ground floor, benefit less from the elevator than those higher up.  Similarly, it costs more to pump the water higher up, so again, the distance the water has to go is based on giving water to the higher up apartments and doesn't do much for those of us lower in the building.  If the building was lower we wouldn't need to pump the water so high.

So, those higher up in the building get more benefits for less money, get better views, more quiet as they're farther away from the parking, and to top it all off (pun intended) they get to throw their trash down on our balconies.

Final Follow-up with the Neurophysician

A couple of weeks ago we followed up with the neurophysician about how the medication-based treatment of my headaches has been going. I quickly found on previous visits that when he'd ask me how things were going he wouldn't let me really talk and say what I felt I needed to say, before cutting me off and him talking. So, I got in the habit of writing the details.

This visit was the first one after we got the printer, so I was able to elaborate even more by typing instead of hand-writing, and include a picture, found using Google, to demonstrate what I was trying to say.

With the last visit you increased the dosage of Amitone from 10mg per day to 25mg per day. But we still had a strip of unused 10mg pills, so you said to take two a day, or 20mg, until they ran out, then get the 25mg pills.

The first week, using 20mg a day, I had no headaches whatsoever.

When switching to 25mg per day, I started with the same headaches I had on 10mg per day. After a week of that I went back to 20mg per day, but no change, still had the same headaches, and then after a couple of weeks went back to the prescribed 25mg per day.

Overall I'm still getting headaches a couple of times most weeks. Usually they're not as severe as they were before the month-long one that prompted us to go to you, and the Suminat 50 almost always halts them.

With the increase of Amitone from 10mg to 25mg, the unpleasant side effects are also noticeably worse:

• The confusion and disorientation when waking up after dawn in the mornings is much worse than when taking 10mg, and that was much worse than not taking anything. If I happen to see myself in a mirror at those times, I don't recognize myself and think there's a stranger in the room.
• The ringing sound in my ears is louder and more persistent. My ears were ringing pretty steadily for some months before we visited you the first time, but as the dosage has increased, so is the ringing.
• I've gotten very fat… Despite actually cutting down my meal portions and eating a lot less junk food (e.g. potato chips, Kur Kure, etc.) I'm gaining weight and getting fatter and fatter.
• When I'm tired and the lights are dim I'm getting more and more hallucinations. These include seeing insects and spiders crawling all over the bed and my arms, though I know they're not real so I don't panic, or seeing things, birds, bats, butterflies, some look real, some look like glass, floating up and into the ceiling.
• When I look at many things that are brightly colored, they sparkle at those times, too, shimmering like they were covered in glitter, looking a bit like this photo:

At first he started answering me about the hallucinations, that they were absolutely normal and everyone experiences them, and write the medical term on the sheet, something including the root "som" which I know has to do with sleep.

But then he said "this is really well written" and handed it to an assistant (or intern or whatever) and said "insert this into his file, I'd like to keep it on record".

After discussing with him I asked if we could work on eliminating the medications altogether and he put together a plan, one week on 20mg a day of Amitone, then down to 10mg a day for a month and then stop it. He recommended keeping on with the Betacap, which he'd actually forgotten he prescribed until we asked about it, as well as recommending I keep using the Suminat when I get a migraine.

He wrote down what he thought were some of the brand names for the same drugs in the U.S. but didn't know which were prescription-only and which might be over-the-counter. He also gave me an address to email him if I need any advice while I'm in the U.S.

How I Lost My Faith in God

At one time I know I believed in God, but I don't any more. Sometimes I wonder what happened.

I guess the first part of it is when I was 9 and we moved away from New Jersey. In New Jersey we used to go to Etz Ahaim synagogue on a regular basis. I went to Hebrew school there every week and we attended all the high holy day services there.

But then when we moved to Waldport, with the nearest synagogue being well over 100 miles away, in Portland, we no longer went to services at all. My parents got me several tutors over time to help prepare me for my bar mitzvah, which we also had at Etz Ahaim in the summer when I turned 13, for which we flew across the country and stayed with my grandparents.

Looking back on the tutoring, though, it was focused solely on my being able to read my Torah portion. During that time I didn't learn any more about Judaism, being a Jew or even Hebrew vocabulary, only what I need to read my part, without understanding it. And to keep from taking it appropriately seriously, my father used to time me with a stopwatch when I was reading it, always pushing for faster and faster times as the goal, rather than the usual, normal sing-song rhythm.

Sometime around then, too, my parents started making me earn my TV time by reading "approved" books. For that I had to read 45 minutes for every half hour of TV I wanted to watch, in advance. Most of the books my mother picked were about the Holocaust.

And there, I think was another major reason I lost my faith. How can a youth read all those books about death and murder, with little or no guidance, and still think there really is a God?

As I became a teenager, while not consciously thinking about not believing, I was also reading a lot of swords & sorcery literature and some horror. For quite some time I felt H.P. Lovecraft had the perfect description of what I thought in the story Herbert West -- Reanimator, in which he states 'that all life is a chemical and physical process, and that the so-called "soul" is a myth.'

There's times when I think about what I believe and I really hope I'm wrong, that there is a God, heaven and all that stuff, as the idea of absolutely nothing after death is kind of full. But there's quite a difference between hope and actually believing, and I simply don't believe.

And seemingly at odds with that, I do enjoy some of the rituals of Judaism, and symbolism. That's in some ways part of my identity, as I grew up with my family celebrating the Jewish holidays and going to services, at least before we moved to Oregon. In that regard, one of my favorite stories is about Hillel the Elder, who was challenged to teach the Torah while standing on one foot, and he did, saying "The whole of the Torah is to treat others as you would be treated, the rest is just commentary" (there are quite a few variations on the story, whether it was him or his student who stood on one foot, and slight changes to his actual quote, although they all have the basic idea.)

With further thought I've come to decide that I believe in God as a symbol, but not as an entity.

Cross Cultural Training

At work when my project first started preparing to be working in a distributed fashion, some of us put together a page on our team's wiki about cross cultural difference to help each side communicate with the other... I just thought I'd share it... I'm the author of much of the language part (but it definitely wasn't me who wrote about the shorts... (if it was it would've been miniskirts...))

Cross Cultural Training

IS IT ALL ABOUT JOHNSONS TANNING LOTIONS IN THE UK???

OR IS IT ALL ABOUT THE FAIR & LOVELY CREAMS IN INDIA???

OUR GUIDE TO MOVING BETWEEN THE TWO COUNTRIES!!

	Moving to the UK
1	Dress-Code in the TE-UK office is Business Attire. Friday's is dress down day, so you can wear casual once a week
2	Football is the sport that the British are crazy about
3	Most high street shops will close in the UK at 5pm. Shopping Centres usually on the outskirts of the cities will stay open till 8pm/9pm.
4	You will most often have to call for a Taxi in the UK, unless you are in the city centre. You cannot flag them down anywhere like in India
5	10 Downing Street is the prime minister's residence and office.
6	The British say 'Holiday' not Vacation.
7	The english do not use heavy spice or masala in foods, so people from India will often find it very bland.

	Moving to India
1	Dress-Code in the TE-India office is Casual. If you are lucky, you will even see guys in shorts
2	It is common for people to have a dependancy on others, Drivers, Maids, Service People
3	Cricket is a religion for people in India
4	"Two minutes" doesn't really mean two minutes, it's just an expression.
5	10 Downing Street is one of the prime nightclubs in Pune
6	In Pune, the rickshaws will only use their meter for charging for longer distances. You will have to agree a price for short distances, out of town or night time. The meter formula is to multiply the meter amount by 6 and add 2 to get the fare in rupees.
7	You Don't have tip anyone unless you feel like. Unlike America where Tipping is mandatory!
8	Don't assume "Yes" means "Yes."

	General Business Rules Cross-Site
1	Time – Everyone should be on time both for physical & non physical meetings
2	Bank Holidays in India differ to those in the UK

Other Useful Hints

Certainly another sort of cross-cultural thing is English word usage… Indians often use English translated almost straight from their mother tongues, Hindi or Marathi (or others from different regions) which to a native English speaker sometimes doesn't make sense, or makes sense but isn't quite right.

An example, was when one guy was not feeling well and came late, someone said "he would be in later". In U.S. English, that would properly be phrased as "he will be in later" with "would" leaving some doubt, like "he would be in later, however…". Indians use "would" the way we'd use "will".

Indian English is also a lot more passive than the more active American and U.K. English seems to be… Like someone might say "this computer is having 2 MB of RAM" compared with American or U.K. English where it's "this computer has 2 MB of RAM".

In India "there" means "here", while present and future tense are intermixed. For instance, if someone in the office wants to tell people they will be out of the office the next day, they say "I am not there tomorrow" rather than the English or American, "I will not be here tomorrow".

In India the word "doubt" is often used to indicate a question, such as "I have a doubt about story XXX". English and Americans interpret "doubt" not as a question but a concern, saying you have a doubt about something means you think it is not right.

The word "some" is used differently in different types of English. In American and U.K. English "some" often means something is unknown. For example, if the ICT fellow writes "users cannot connect to the system for some reason" then that means they don't know the reason. In Indian English, "some" often means the writer knows but isn't saying, such as "the meeting is canceled for some reason" means there is a definite reason the meeting is canceled, but the writer isn't telling you.

The word "keep" can also be used differently. In American and U.K. English, keep means not to give something back. Saying "I kept the phone" means you did not return the phone and it stayed in your possession, while in Indian English, "I kept the phone" means you hung up the call and physically put it back where it belongs (e.g. the receiver on the cradle, or back on the charging unit).

When discussing multiplication in arithmetic, English and Americans say "times", while Indians say "into". So, in India, to calculate the rickshaw fare when the meter says 5.00, an Indian would say "5 into 6 plus 2" to get 32, but English or Americans would say "5 times 6 plus 2" to arrive at the same answer... The confusion comes in that for Americans and English, "into" would indicate division more than multiplication (e.g. 5 goes into 30 6 times, that is, how many 5's are in 30).

Don't assume "Yes" means "Yes."

"We'll try," is the "diplomatic way of saying, ‘We really can't, but we don't want to tell you.' Indians have a certain aversion to saying, "No."

Americans/British want a direct "Yes" or "No. For Indians, the tendency will be to say, "Yes," and try to make it happen at all costs. That can create wide miscommunication and variances in expectations.

iPad - What's in a name?

I recently read a friend's blog post in which he found the "shape" used in a number of hoardings around the city to be "offensive". And bearing that shape in mind, it got me to thinking about the early issue of the iPad's name.

I read a few things at the time of the iPad's announcement in which people compared the name to the simple short form "pad" for a something completely unrelated, and why the iPad was likened to that, while things such as notepads weren't.

What I think it comes down to is something like a notepad has a significant first part, note, and when we think of that, it's "note" that has more prominence in our minds than "pad" so it's a pad for taking notes. Similar with a legal pad. The "pad" part is less important what type of pad it is, and "pad" simply completes the name.

A launchpad is focused more on the launch than it is on the pad. It's a place to launch something, rather than a pad being launched.

But when it comes to the iPad, the "i" simply isn't significant enough, it's not a word or a concept in its own right. While there's "I" for ourselves, we know that's not what that "i" is, so it doesn't stand alone, basically leaving just a pad.

Useless Dwarves in The Hobbit

Rereading The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien earlier last year, for the umpteenth time (and having listened to the audio tapes of it hundreds of times) it occurred to me for the first time that most of the dwarves are useless and are only there to fill out the numbers, without actually doing much of anything else. Maybe it's been discussed in other criticism, but I've never really read any.

By the end of the story I noticed that there are only four distinct, dwarven roles in the story.

• Balin and Dwalin are interchangeable in the role of the oldest dwarf, and the ones who take the best care of Bilbo.
• Fili and Kili are interchangeable in the role of the youngest dwarf, and the most active and quickest moving.
• Thorin is obviously the leader, the King Under the Mountain.
• Old fat Bombur is the bungler, the one who's appetite and clumsiness get them into situations that only Bilbo can get them out of.

The rest are just filler to get the number thirteen.

Sure, they're used in places, like to make the unexpected party amusing and fun and show us more about Bilbo as a host, or later to get Beorn to accept them. And of course, how would the goblins' song sound "six birds in five fir-trees..." it definitely wouldn't ring as well as fifteen.

Nor would Smaug's observation "why not say 'us five' and be done with it" be nearly as impressive as his distinguishing the smell of fourteen distinct entities. And that would eliminate the title "Mr. Lucky Number" which I suppose is what makes Bilbo, Bilbo.

Still, it's one of my favorite stories anyway...

Food Poison on Thursday

Ug, really rotten day yesterday, Thursday. Food poison from breakfast. I was cutting up tomatos and some of them were kind of black inside and I threw them out, but one only had a little black stuff, so I trimmed around it. Big mistake...

After getting to work I had a headache, by late morning I was shivering and sweating, the headache got worse and a bit of nausea... My computer mouse was disgusting to touch, slimy from my sweating hands...

I called Leena to pick me up and take me home shortly after noon, then sat out in the sunshine near the entrance to the office building. She picked me up a few minutes later, dropped me at home and went out to run errands (she offered to stay home, but I said I was just going to sleep, so there was no need).

Once in bed I couldn't sleep, just tossed and turned, feeling absolutely rotten and uncomfortable. I was freezing cold, shivering violently at times, while sweat was running off my body in rivers, soaking the sheet and the blanket on top of me.

What I really wanted was a nice, hot shower, just sit under the hot water. When I don't feel well, that almost always helps, the water beating on my aching head helps relieve it, when my stomach's upset, the hot shower eases that off. I guess it just relaxes me. Unfortunately, it was Thursday, which is Pune's day for long power outages, so there was no hot water all day.

Eventually my burps had the flavor of the cantaloupe I ate before work, but as though it was rotten, a sure sign my digestive system wasn't working right. And a bit after that the vomiting started... Each time I vomited I felt a little bit better afterwards.

After the third time, around 4:30pm, the worst seemed to ease off and I felt more calm, and less cold, less sweat. Leena came home shortly after that from running errands.

I got up from bed around 6pm when the power came back on (it'd been off since around 8am), hallucinating a bunch of glass hummingbirds floating around the room. I got a nice, hot shower for a while, and that lasted till the power went out again and I used up all the hot water in that bathroom...

Then a cold coconut cut open to drink the water inside, followed by a three hour or so nap. By 10:30pm I was able to eat a little bit, nothing with powerful flavor, of course. And I drank a big glass of water and Electrol to replenish the salt and sugar I lost from throwing up. I stayed up reading a while till I thought I could go to bed without getting up to use the bathroom a number of times after the drink.

Now it's Friday and I feel a lot better. Not altogether well. Still a bit of a headache, and Leena said I'm warmer than usual, so the fever's not completely gone. She called the doctor who recommended I take paracetamol twice a day to bring the fever down, but wants to stay away from strong medicines if I can shake it off more naturally.

However, she didn't ask him my burning question... What about single malt Scotch whisky?

Total Recall of the Future

I recently watched the movie, Total Recall again for the first time in eight or nine years. I've enjoyed that movie since the first time I saw it at the theatre near the college campus. But this time I was struck most by some of the director, Paul Verhoeven's 1990 vision of the future.

What made me think to watch the movie with this in mind is the London Underground from my last few trips to the U.K. In Total Recall there's video advertisements all over the subway station, with monitors and video instead of the old paper advertisements. The same things were alongside the escalators in some of the London Underground stations. Many of the real ones were timed so that as you move up or down, each monitor you pass is just a little farther in the advertisement than the previous one.

Near the beginning Arnold Schwarzenegger as Doug, and Sharon Stone as Lori, have breakfast in front a wall that's a TV. Doug keeps turning it to a news channel to find out what's happening on Mars and Lori keeps changing it back to a pastoral scene of a lake in the mountains. While science-fiction back then is a reality now (though maybe not cheap).

Throughout the movie the characters all talk to each other via video phones. While most of our stand-alone telephone units don't have video yet, we're on our way there. At work we have video conference units that are kind of similar, and for my recent job search I used Skype with video sharing.

Then in the movie there's the scene with Lori practising her tennis swing, following along with the hologram. There isn't much detail there, but somehow that makes me think of the Nintendo Wii. I've seen photos and read descriptions of the Wii, but haven't actually seen one yet. But it looks like fun with its controller that you wave around to control the games.

At one point when Doug checks into the Hilton on Mars the clerk says there's something of his in the vault. Both of them put their thumbs on a small scanner and the drawer opens. I don't know if they had biometric stuff like that in the 80's, but now in 2010 I get into the office door using a thumb scanner.

Of course, some of the futuristic stuff is kind of corny. The cars in particular look silly and look like a cheap shell put on top of a real car. The guns the agency operatives use look silly, too.

Sports

While not much of a sports fan myself, having been away from the United States for an extended time, I've recently realized why the sports that most of the world love just aren't popular in America.

We Americans like our sports much faster paced than everyone else.

For instance, take the recent FIFA World Cup football (soccer to Americans...). Two hours for one, single goal? That's nuts. That's boring! And that's hardly unusual in terms of soccer games, which are usually relatively low scoring.

The nearest equivalent to soccer we have in the U.S. is ice hockey, with typically low scores and it probably ranks last in terms of popularity among professional sports. If it didn't have regular fights, it'd probably be less popular.

Compare soccer to basketballs, another near equivalent in terms of game play. Both have the ball in almost constant movement as the teams move it up and down the playing field to get it into a goal, with the game's duration based on a clock. In basketball they update the rules on a regular basis to make it more exciting for spectators, including a 24 second shot clock, requiring a team that gets possession of the ball to make a goal attempt within 24 seconds or risk losing the ball. And looking at the FIFA world cup again, with 31 goal attempts, in two hours? Yawn!

Baseball vs. cricket, again two sort of similar sports, with bats and balls and similar ideas in terms of offense and defense.

Cricket has two main variants, test matches and one day international matches. Test matches take several days, while one day ones take, well, one day... From my experience watching them, they're slow and dull.

With one day matches, first one side does all of its offensive play while the other does all its defensive play, then they swap, with each "innings" taking roughly 3 to 4 hours. So, even if one team is much worse than the other, it still takes almost the full day to see them lose, especially if they're second at bat, when they may use the whole set of overs to chase the better team. By the end of the game both teams are tired and not playing at their best, so we never see a more even match up between them.

Compared with baseball, in which each team alternates offensive and defensive play, swapping each time there's three outs. Most games take between two and three hours, only going longer if they're pretty evenly matched.

With baseball we get to see each team play both offense and defense when they're fresh at the beginning all the way till they're tired at the end, so it seems like a more even and fair match between them.

So, overall, it just seems that American sports are geared towards a faster pace and more exciting entertainment. But then, I guess we're more accustomed to instant gratification...

The Job Choice

At the beginning of the past week I had two job offers in hand from New York and I had to pick one. The two were:

1. A mortgage lender in Long Island, Reliance First Capital.

2. Kashrus, a Brooklyn company providing software to help kosher food manufacturers

I was really interested in the Brooklyn one, Kashrus, for a few reasons:

1. Kashrus is a small company, and after some thought I've realized I like the working environment of a small company more than a big company.
2. It's in New York City.
   • Most of my career I've worked in the suburbs or the edges of cities, while wishing I was in the city proper. The mortgage lender is in Melville, NY, outside of New York City, while the kosher food company is in Brooklyn. It's not Manhattan, with its skyscrapers, but it's still within the city.
   • That reminds me of when I worked at Maynard Rigby, which was in Portland rather than Hillsboro or Beaverton and I liked the location better.
   • And in comparison with my business trips to the U.K. where the office and places I stayed were in Dunstable, which was just too inconvenient to ever go into London on the workdays due to the distance and expense of train tickets.
   • So, being in New York City itself will make it easier to get around, for instance if the Brain Surgeons have a show on a worknight, I could go.
3. Reliance has some of the team scattered around the world. And while that doesn't mean they're bad developers, but I've spent the last ten years doing distributed work, from the remote sites, and I think having the whole team in one place will be a pleasant change for me again, eliminating that particular challenge.
4. Reliance is doing the same thing I've been doing for the last three years, the exact same kind of software, mortgage origination. Kashrus is something completely new to me, and I found that appealing. Never before in my career have I had two jobs in the same business domain.
5. Doing a Google search for Reliance turned up mostly job ads, and about the only exceptions to that were blog and news articles about them being a "predatory lender" founded by some people who caused mortgage lending problems at their previous company, and I had to wonder how that would make me feel.
6. Last but definitely not least, the interviewers simply impressed me more. When it talked to a couple of guys at Reliance they asked me what things I worked with, what kind of software and what-not, but those interviews were easy to breeze through. When I interviewed with the Kashrus people they challenged me. I had to read online documentation while we shared my desktop in order to solve programming problems they gave me, live... By the end of the interview process I felt like I'd already put a lot of myself into this job application.

So, with all of those, I got the idea that on a day-to-day basis I'd be more satisfied working at Kashrus instead of Reliance.

The Kashrus offer came a little later and at first it was $15,000 less than Reliance's offer, and even including the $5,000 they'll pay towards insurance is still quite a lot lower. Money isn't my prime motivating factor, but that was just too large a difference, especially in New York City where things are really expensive and it might be a difference between living comfortably and struggling with monthly payments on things.

I wrote to the Kashrus fellow and told him that, and within about 20 minutes he came back with an offer that was $10,000 higher than the first one, so that was good and I wrote back to accept it.

Chat - Going back in time

I hate chatting on instant messaging system. Sure, they're fine for light stuff:

Kevin: Can I bum a ride home?

Vehicle Owner: Sure, I'm leaving in 5 minutes

Kevin: Perfect.

But when you get longer things and you see something like:

Other Person: Thank you

With a message at the bottom "Other Person is typing a message" and you wonder, "are they still typing? That 'thank you' seems the end. Do I wait? Do I type?" What do I do?

Maybe with the new, modern technology we should go back to "over" and "out" to indicate when someone's finished, sort of like on radio communication. It works there, and chat really is structured like two-way radio, only typing instead of talking.

This would be useful, too, when someone's fired a complex or multipart or series of technical questions at me via instant messaging. Sometimes I can't tell if they're done or still adding more on. And then when it looks like they're done and I begin typing a reply, my replies are usually long and detailed, they start off quickly with "r u there?" because I don't send back an instant, fast but wrong or incomplete answer.

Or they ask one question, I begin typing the answer and then they start sending more before I'm done. How do I then keep my answers tied with the specific, unnumbered, unstructured questions?

At least an "over" and "out" would clarify who's turn it is to talk. Or maybe we need instant message programs to use a token, whoever has the token can talk, and when they're done they pass it. This can keep the conversation structured for easy reading of questions and answers.

On the other hand, I prefer email. For just those reasons. For things with complex answers, email is just a lot easier to keep structured. Questions can be bulleted or numbered, answers along with them. Text can be formatted and doesn't have to fit some arbitrarily small number of characters.

Yeah, much prefer email over chat.