Month: October 2021

In a change from my recent reading fare of all nonfiction, I virtually picked up a Hemingway book this week. He is one of my favorite authors and his writing style has heavily influenced my own. I don’t write with the “write drunk, edit sober” ethos attributed to him, but the directness of his prose is something I try to emulate. I am not reading one of his great novels that I first read in high school or even one of his myriad short stories that packs such a wallop. No, this is Green Hills of Africa, a fictional book that it is in many ways more real than nonfiction. Several of Hemingway’s books are like that and the best fiction always is.

This particular book centers around narratives within the context of a larger African hunting safari, the sort of safari that was possible a century ago but would be unthinkable today—multiple lions, rhinos, leopards, and buffalo in addition to a large quantity of plains game from zebras to various antelope. The book, at least what I have read of it so far, takes place in landscapes that I have seen with my own eyes yet it is a world that I can never experience for myself. That is its beauty. It is an experience I can put myself into, the way you can make yourself a character in a great film, and for a few minutes at a time I am not sitting in my recliner but am walking through grass taller than me with nerves tensed trying to listen to see if the bull buffalo I am tracking has circled back and is now behind me.

Green Hills of Africa is not the first travelogue I have read (if I may stretch the genre to include Hemingway’s work of fiction), and I enjoy them. I don’t enjoy them so much for the descriptions of the places themselves (alas, I am a child of the television age and my mind requires video for that), but for the reflections they contain—about the places, the smells, the tastes, the people, the authors. Places change, landscapes change, but the human condition does not change so quickly and many of the great travel writings were written by people about my age and with roughly my temperament. It may be me projecting myself into the stories, but I find it helpful to read how others dealt with periods in their own lives that are in some manner similar to what I face in my own.

I chose now as the time to read this particular book to give myself a final kick of motivation to finish a personal project that is now four years longer in the making than I had planned. If all goes according to schedule, there will be an announcement about that in the coming weeks. In the meantime, if you want to read about a journey to a world that no longer exists written in beautiful prose and are willing to do a little outside reading about the basics of Buddhism, may I recommend The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen. This was the book that got me started in the genre and has led to me daydreaming more than once about returning to the Himalayas.

We attended a demo night on Monday evening, the sort of event where a large number of organizations have individual tables in a large convention hall. The theme was Internet of Things, a concept loosely associated with the theme of a larger conference taking place Sunday to Tuesday. Internet of Things is an umbrella term that includes things as varied as water level sensors in rivers and the smart refrigerator that might be in your kitchen—any device that is communicating over an internet signal. Engineering is not my specialty and I don’t know enough engineering concepts to pretend otherwise, but we go to these sorts of events anyway because it can be fun to see new devices and projects in their nascent stages and it is only really possible to make a chance connection with someone if you are in the same room.

Alas, we did not have one of those magical chance encounters. Many of the exhibitors were also companies whose products I don’t understand—I have never assembled components on a motherboard or tried to solve for signal interference. That led to some stilted conversations, but one group was noteworthy. It was a group of high school students fidgeting at a table with a robot that loosely resembled a tank in the floor in front of their table. I didn’t have extracurricular opportunities like that and I probably would not have participated even if I had, but I was curious and so we approached the group to hear their spiel.

It was a rehearsed speech that they must have taken turns giving. I surmised that based on the level of enthusiasm, but I would have felt the same way. This was a team, maybe even from different schools, that came together to compete in a national robot-building competition where the robots are designed to compete in a designated game. This particular robot was designed as a mobile frisbee cannon with a top-loaded magazine since that was the contest for the year, and the kids were nonplussed that they were forced to turn the power way down inside the conference hall. The coolest thing for me was how the robot moved around. It was built using Mecanum wheels (yeah, I’d never heard of them either). The wheel assembly was basically a wheel with a bunch of rollers installed at an angle instead of a tread. The result was that the robot could move in any direction or even go in circles without having to turn.

This post isn’t so much about the event or even the frisbee launcher. Instead, it is an admonition to find opportunities for young people to be involved with technology whenever possible. It can be a robotics club at a school, Legos or Lincoln logs, simple Python scripts or Canva, but the tools are out there. And with the power of the internet, you can make a lot of money selling things that seem very simple. I am seeing this first-hand as our mergers and acquisitions practice continues to grow. So if you know someone of school age, expose them to and encourage them to explore technologies both established and emerging—one just might become their true passion.

During the second half of last week, I took the opportunity to travel and “work” alongside one of our major clients for a few days at their operations hub in the San Francisco area.

Thursday was mainly work meetings and strategy sessions. My hosts picked a lunch spot and we took the food (no indoor dining in San Francisco presently) to a spot overlooking the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. The wind was blowing so hard that soup flew off of spoons when the attempt was made, but I decided to face into the wind anyway so I could enjoy my wrap looking out over the bridge and the bay. Dinner for me was In-N-Out for a hamburger. It was my second experience at the west coast institution, but even though I now have a t-shirt I still don’t understand what all of the hype is about. Maybe people from California feel the same way about Chick-fil-A?

Friday was dollop after dollop of insanity. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and past Sausalito into Mill Valley, an area I didn’t know existed until Friday morning. It put me in the mind of a great western or even Alpine ski town, but one where there can be a playground shaded by redwood trees across the street from an elementary school. Lunch was a really good salmon/egg/capers combination atop a croissant. Given my inability to speak or read French, I had to play the idiot and ask the waitress for help in reading the menu. I can’t talk about the coolest part of the day yet (I anticipate big news coming soon though!), but the day also included two of the most serendipitous encounters I’ve experienced. These meetings were so coincidental that even if I described them you wouldn’t believe me; I hardly believe they happened and I was there. That was followed up by game-changing sushi at dinner that had very thin slices of lemon atop the fish. Unfortunately for me, I’ve never seen that on any other sushi menu and now I know how glorious the combination is.

Saturday was more relaxed. We took a drive down the coast, hiked overlooking the Pacific, and ate at Half Moon Bay before circling back via San Mateo. We stopped for ice cream that was meh (though the olive oil flavor I sampled was just plain weird) and drove back towards the city.

The last thing I did during the trip was to dominate at a pitch and putt golf course on Sunday. Blue jeans, sneakers, rented clubs, no distance control, and the best contact I have ever made with the golf ball—it was hilarious for me but probably not for my playing partners. I just wish I had taken them up on the offer to place some wagers. Then a rush to airport and straight to the boarding line at the gate for what would be a very bumpy flight back after the craziest few days I’ve had in a long time. Now, if only my sleep schedule had managed to readjust after flying back across the country. . . oh well.

Overall, I’m not sure I have processed the experience yet. It was great to connect in person with members of the client team since, as we have all discovered in these last two years, Zoom and teleconferencing have their limitations. On a more personal level, it was great to feel the mental stimulus that only comes with being in unexplored territory. This trip involved both physical and intellectual unexplored territory, but you don’t have to fly across the country to put yourself in a new place. A good book can do it. A great movie can do it. Even a well-made YouTube video can do it. I wish that each of you is able to experience some unexplored territory yourselves this week.

Over the weekend, I drove a few hours from Raleigh to stay with some friends. Well, more like I drove a few hours to meet their baby, but semantics. This little guy is the only “COVID baby” in my social circles, but given our activities I didn’t find out if he understands that it is the same person both with and without the mask (he is able to grasp this about wearing and taking off glasses, so that suggests he would). He isn’t quite walking, but I suspect that within a few weeks I’ll get a video of him doing so as he can just about stand up without support.

What I took most from interacting with him was how much fun babies can be when they are happy and smiling. They have an energy that doesn’t manifest anywhere else and are like a campfire given how you can’t take your eyes off them. After that, what I took from my time with him was how normal it all was. He was teething so he woke up in the middle of the night crying, wasn’t keen to go down for a nap, ate about as much food as he threw in the floor, and crawled around like someone was chasing him. COVID has had a limited impact on the little guy, and he won’t remember any of it anyway when he gets older. The world into which he will grow may be different now, but it will be the only world he ever knows and he will grow up to thrive in the world he will face.

Watching him offered a reminder of how adaptable people are and how people can accept much change and still pull through. I keep needing reminders of this myself as everything in my own life is moving slower than I would like. We continue to make pivots in the business as new challenges emerge and new opportunities arise, but I want a torrent of success while we have only a small river for now. I keep trying different ways to build the personal life I want to live here (the curling season is off to a rough start, but maybe my team will break my personal duck tonight). I am starting to travel again; this week I will be going on my first business trip in years so I can work alongside a client instead of with them over videoconference. I’m looking forward to it, to making that a part of my new normal. And so I, along with you my audience, will continue to adapt and move forward. Besides, what other choice is there?