Tradeoffs!

Most articles about Google talk about the great food there. True! Some articles have written about the Google15. There's truth to this - I'm currently facing (despite my skinny frame) the Google5 - extra pounds that incrementally hit - I have a gut feeling about how this will turn out! Tradeoff -> goodg food vs. unneeded weight.

Trying to walk/run it off this evening (first activity in a while), I ran down a little creek near our home in Almaden. I saw a few mallard ducks and a family of quail scurrying into the bushes (yes quail can fly too!). Idyllic and peaceful, with the sun setting over the Santa Cruz mountains, and the water dribbling down the creek. The moon clear in the evening sky!

My eyes filled with tears, since this was hardly a peaceful, lovely day for our community - in the wee hours this morning, (around 3 am), a young boy from our community was killed in a car crash - a couple of teens were returning late when the driver, inebriated, crashed into the traffic light post. The car caught fire and the passenger, a recent graduate of the local Leland High School was trapped in the burning car - gone! Imagine this pretty day for his family and friends, and the family and friends of the driver, who is in jail. DUI!  Tradeoff? Probably one glass too many, one choice too bad, and a young man snuffed out at the prime of his life, another with this weight for the rest of his life.

We are constantly making these tradeoffs - trading off family time and relaxation for incremental importance at work ... a "career" or recognition or a fistful of dollars. I'm not able to see my parents in Bangalore for months on end, as we're here in California for a "better life" for ourselves and our kids. Our son is working very hard in high school - several hours of homework per day plus other commitments, and it's a daily tradeoff between his future and his social well-being.  More likely a tradeoff between a good UC school and another good school. Not much of a tradeoff! If he's not stressed, we're doing it on his behalf.

We're in Silicon Valley in the sun when the rains are pelting the streets in India. We've traded off the grass and the mountains for the concrete jungle and the traffic, the creek for noisy Old Madras Road, but we're losing ourselves in a meaningless quest for ... what?

We blog and tweet and only a few "followers" care about our false sense of self-importance or self-meaning. We think we're doing something important, but are we? We're only making a tradeoff - one decision at a time - that we'll be happy with or regret in the future.

This morning, I made my middle schooler get off the car and run to school so he wouldn't be tardy since all the cars had backed up on the side streets due to the accident (which we were unaware of). Tradeoff - he ran more than 3 blocks with his heavy backpack on his back, so he wouldn't be tardy!

Tradeoff -> no one was tardy today! The principal's phone message just asked us to hug our kids and tell them how much we love them, and that we should reinforce that they should use good judgment in their lives. Make the right choices! Some tradeoffs are expensive. Some tradeoffs are painful. Some tradeoffs don't leave room for others.

There's a poster and flowers at the traffic light near our house. Flowers for an immature decision, a bad choice.

Let's hope that our sons and daughters make the right tradeoffs. I'm questioning mine!

Another shift begins...

When I was a kid, I had written a poem called "Shift". Now, if blogging had existed then, I'd have published it on my blog (like ronrik), and therefore, you'd be able to evaluate my poetic instincts in their entirety. However, I had no blog at age 14, and so I have been unable to find the poem, so you'll just have to go with the few snippets that I remember.

Shift
Sirens blow, faces glow
People stream out in a pretty row
In the buses, people mop
with handkerchiefs, a sweaty drop.
...
...
A shift begins... another shift begins...
To the factory we go!

What's the basis for the poem? Let me explain...

My dad worked for ITI (Indian Telephone Industries), a very large, successful, public-sector telecommunications company in Bangalore. Here were some interesting things about that company/job:

• Given that ITI was primarily government owned, food was heavily subsidized for the employees.
• Employees took  shift buses (a full fleet of dozens of dark blue buses) to and from work. (We students took the buses into Bangalore city to our schools, and the buses brought the "workers" in for their shift.
• Most "workers" just had a desk (or not) on the factory floor.
• The siren blew loud and clear to announce the end of a shift/beginning of the next shift. It was often a reminder for us. Too late for the school bus in the morning, or dad would be back home soon, or we'd better get back home right away for "tiffin" if we didn't want mom mad!

Thinking about it - when going to work, now in Silicon Valley decades later,  I've come full circle!

• We have subsidized (free) food at the cafeteria at work. Instead of dosas vs. vadas vs. puris vs. rice, we have chinese vs. indian vs. grill vs. mexican vs. tapas. But food is food!
• I take a shuttle bus to work, and I need to be there on time, or I miss the  bus. It has Internet, but that just means that "they've" made it easier to work even on the bus! Oh yeah! It's air-conditioned, so no handkerchiefs required.
• I've gone from a wonderful corner office (IBM Almaden) to a cube (Verity) to an open cube (Yahoo!) to ... hey hey hey ... a DESK (Google). I don't even have a wall to put up my award plaques from previous jobs. Ha! Even if I did, I'd probably have to move anyway, so easier to leave them in a box or in the garage at home!

The only real difference?

There's no siren!

What's in a Foxhurst?

One of the great things about living in Silicon Valley is the wonderful sunshine.

Two of the things that are not great about living in Silicon Valley - the exorbidant real-estate prices and
earthquakes!!

However, if you have a little room in the backyard, and if it is an older house, then you may also have the fortune to have a few fully grown fruit trees. We have a few. We had a good yield this year from our fruit trees - tangelos, nectarines, plums #1 and #2, and last, but definitely not least, the grapefruit!

Now, for a couple of years, we consumed none of the grapefruit (slightly bitter), but over the last couple of years, we discovered that grapefruit is an awesome component of Silicon Valley innovation - the drink called the Foxhurst!!

Three - the ingredients in a Foxhurst (besides ice):
 - Vodka (a few oz, depending on how innovative you want to feel)
 - Fresh-squeezed grapefruit from our Foxhurst backyard
 - 2 crushed fresh mint leaves from our Foxhurst backyard

If you want a little more zing, add an ounce of Patron Citronge (Orange Liqueur). The magic with grapefruit - you can't even taste the alchohol! The negative ... you can't have it if you are on statins :-(

I'd post a photo of the Foxhurst here instead of the grapefruit ... but it's been consumed!

I'm not yet on statins.