Bangalore Souvenir

Memories of Bangalore. I do love these people. I wish everyone at The Times would drop their inital bias against outsourcing (a bad thing, in general, for jobs in the U.S.) to understand that the deed is done. All the bright young people at the IBM helpdesk in Bangalore have the same goals we do. They work to do the best job possible, get the user up and working as quickly as possible, and learn as much about 7 different business units as quickly as possible. I visited for a week in mid-December to reinforce what we need and to learn what they need.

My first stop was a last lunch at Zen, one of my favorite restaurants at the Leelah Palace. Teena and Shinil joined me for lunch. I didn't know Shinil well. I'm thinking that he is not as comfortable with English as Teena is. Sort of like my niece Tara and her husband Ivan. I'm getting good at waiting for translation. Teena and I then had a massage. I had my 4th massage from Marmee. If you are ever in Bangalore and need a massage, ask for Marmee. I'm actually not an expert, but she has a very firm hand and I think my knees appreciated her work.

Do you remember the god Ramesh? He saw me at the airport and called my name. I'm so glad he did because I had the wrong phone number for him. He gave me his new number and so he was my driver for the rest of the week. I was able to give him the books I bought for his young son. Ramesh really wants him to become good with English so he can have one of these wonderful jobs that keep popping up in Bangalore. I hope he does.

Another person who remembered me was the man at Asian Arts Emporium. In fact, all the guys in the store remembered my name. I bought some requested pashmina and bought a most beautiful one for myself. It is black with amazing embroidary. Yes, the embroidary has a lot of orange in it. It is my Bangalore color.

Just look at these folks. Bill and Avinash and I traveled to many of the other newspapers, asking them what was working well and what could be improved with the Helpdesk. We thought it might be a good idea to do the same at IBM. I had 3 focus groups over two days. First was group 1, the group that has The Times in it. Teena was there to take excellent notes.

Next was group 2. Pinaki didn't take notes. But we heard a lot of very good information from them and I did take notes. The last group was supposed to be the people who are in what I call group 12. Some of the agents from group 1 have moved to group 2 so they can know everything. It's quite a task. Remember 7 different newspapers and their work flow and specialized applications. They are so valuable we couldn't spring them all. We had an ecumenical group instead.

This was such a good exercise. I learned a lot about things that aren't working as they should and roadblocks in the way for them doing the best job possible. I also meet with the supervisors/superusers. This included Avinash and Suresh, below. They were very specific about issues they are having. Poor Bill got lots of notes and suggestions. Since I am leaving The Times, it is all on him to help these things happen. I don't envy him. Even though things are improving all the time with the Helpdesk, there is a lot to do. I will just need to learn how to successfully back out of the room.

The final pleasant surprise of the trip was to find an old friend at the airport. I will just say that Gary was loping across the airport in that bright orange shirt. It was very hard not to notice him. We used to eat lunch together often in The Gallery, the executive dining room at The Times. I don't know what happened first. Either he left The Times or The Gallery was closed. Both did happen so seeing him in Bangalore was a trip.

Also a trip was getting to fly first class for the only time in my life. Bill and Harriet think it's funny that I was so impressed. But I had no expectations of ever flying first class in my life. I certainly would never pay that much to do it. It was fun. I still won't pay that much to do it again. There are too many wonderful things to do once a person gets off a plane.

Book reading goes on. I'll tell you more about that after I tell you about my last week at The Times. Another day.

Friends and Songs

I had dinner with my previous (never old) boss, Jeanne, and her husband, Bob. They are such good people. It's one of those stupid things about everyone being so busy that we don't get to see each other as often as we should. What a shame. Jeanne's niece now has twin babies. Bob's daughter is expecting her 3rd child. This is great. And all since we last talked (except for Bob's first grandchild.) I hope it will be easier once I have left The Times.
Jeanne is traveling all over the Western States, spreading her excellent Organizational Development skills. I remember when The Times was a developed organization. Once upon a time.

Doesn't mean we don't have good people who remain. Eddie on the left is one of my favorite people. Yes, he is a chocolate freak and member of the irregular chocolate tasting group - who meet irregularly, all other habits are regular. Besides that, he is brilliant at what he does. He came in as a contractor. That was good, but a waste of our money. Better to work him into an early grave at a lower cost to us. On the right is his boss, Joe. I'm pretty partial to him as well. He came from the Hartford Courant aeons ago, so we can't hold that against him anymore. Since I have seen what a pretty little town Hartford is, I don't suppose I can hold coming from Hartford against him either. He just gave me a great parting "gift" to test and return. It is a new broadband card that is interchangeable - domestic or global. Since I am leaving for India on Thursday, who better to test? It is pretty cool; but then so is Joe. I wanted him to smile, but the sneer is more natural. The smile made me laugh. I don't think that's the idea.

Peter is also a member of our chocolate tasting group. He works for Eddie. Bill is the other member of the group. Peter used to work on the helpdesk. Too few people had the opportunity to see his magnificently chiseled body when he was hiding on the phones. Now he wanders the building, managing the Windows Server group, thereby allowing all the ladies to swoon. :)

Finally, what is it about a really good novel. What makes it be so good? This is a story about Argus, North Dakota and the immigrants who settled there between the two world wars. The story is well put together. I hate books that leave you asking questions about major plot points. Not so with The Master Butchers' Singing Club. I don't think it has that apostrophy, but it should. Somewhere. Shouldn't it?

I loved these people, but I wasn't sad to have it end. It should have ended. The story was done and the final chapter was wonderful. I will say to my reading friends, "Please read this book for your own good." :) That might be overstating it. I was talking to my friend, Brent, late last week about novels and books in general. He and I used to belong to the Times Mirror Corporate book club. That's where I first started reading novels. I'd read Mysteries, Histories and Biographies before then. Boy, was I crazy. Novels can be very good things. Like this one.

The Man Who Smiled

My nephew, Mark, is engaged to the most wonderful woman, Trina. We had Thanksgiving at his house this year and we started the festivities with a toast to the couple. The wedding will be at the end of March. We are all beyond happy.

I cooked the meal with help from all friends. It was really good. We started with a magnificent hot crab dip that Natalie made. Wow. We had olives and salami and a great cheese that Karen and I found that reminded us of the cheese vendor in a market on our canal trip. I fixed Smoked Paprika/roasted pepper soup that Adrian decorated with sour cream and cilantro. Wow that was good.
The turkey was perfect. We were very lucky to have it, since I didn't think to order it early. Karen and I went to the Ferry Building farmer's market on Tuesday to gather food for the day. I don't know why I thought this great market would have my turkey without knowing I was coming. We lucked out and got an 18 lb. bird, no doubt because I looked like I was going to cry.
I made pancetta and ciabatta rosemary stuffing. And was surprised that they liked it. We had a butternut squash layered with creamed spinash; cranberry/zucchini muffins, slaw with pears and grapes, and mashed potatoes with candied shallots. Groan, moan. Dessert was pumpkin pie with ginger ice cream (or Kool Whip) and samples of wedding cake.

Thanksgiving included Trina and her mother, on the far left of the left photo. Maggie is looking over my shoulder at the book her mom made for me to celebrate my birthday this summer. It is full of great photos and thoughts from that very fun weekend. On the right you can see Maggie enjoying her dear grandmother. Karen is a great grandmother. She and Peter played with Maggie all evening. Maggie plays great by herself, but she is hard to leave to her own devices. I read one of Natalie's favorite books to Maggie. It always makes Natalie cry. I think Maggie might have been disappointed that I didn't cry. I did love having the little sweetie in my lap, but the book was about a grandmother who puts broken special things into a cupboard. All I could think about was how strange it is to take up real estate with broken stuff. The grandmother's idea is that it is just stuff. What matters is the memories of where they came from and the memories of using them. I know I have a few special things, but it's still just stuff. Maybe the grandmother had a really big house and lots of room to keep broken things.

My dear friend, Per, is a great reader. He tends to read in languages that would look like Scandanavian scratchings to me. He likes mysteries as do I. (Did you know that?) He's been recommending books about this Swedish guy. I found a Kurt Wallender book in Audible and thought I would try it. This is The Man Who Smiled, not Mark, although I like Mark much better than the guy in the title of this book. This is a series. So I think I came into the middle of it. As with most series, it doesn't matter. I like the detective. He is a little depressed, but what Swede isn't. It is a good example of the genre. And it was fun to hear Swedish names and places spoken out loud. I even heard about a guy named Per! I appear to be pronouncing it correctly. I'm just glad our Per does not have some of these other gutteral names. I may read other books by this author. But I think I will read about the Master Butcher's Singing Club next.

Oh, did I say that I am flying to India on Thursday. :)

On The Road Again

I was able to go on a most excellent trip to visit with people from four of the other Tribune newspapers. The icing on the cake was that the trip started in Baltimore, not far from Arlington, my brother Eric and Cindy. Cindy's daughter was visiting, too, with her son Cael. Is he not a cutie? It was a really quick visit. Just long enough to become enamored with the 18 month old. Eric is good with him. He was putting on Cael's shoes and had to take a moment to give him a hug.
Eric drove me slowly up to Baltimore on Sunday. He says that Fall was late this year. It seems to have waited for my arrival, although Eric says it was even better the week after I left. We get changing leaves on our coast, too, but this was very pretty. We drove through the National Arboretum and saw this beautiful stand of trees. Nice.

Our first business stop was the Baltimore Sun. Very nice people. We listened to their complaints about the process and showed them the reports we had created to show how IBM is doing. We was Bill, on the left, and Avinash. Bill is my boss. Avinash is responsible for the Helpdesk in India. They got the brunt of all the complaints. Avinash and I got pal-ly in front of a different beautiful tapestry.

We took a train to Hartford after a morning of meetings in Baltimore. What a long train ride. It started okay, but ended up being a local once we got into Connecticut. It seems like a small state until you stop at every town. Avinash and Bill found this great "Bullet Train" on the right when Bill went out to watch Avinash smoke. That is NOT the local.

The folks at the Hartford Courant were great. They were in the middle of implementing the common news editing system. That's a very difficult process. I believe we responded to most of their concerns.

Then we flew down to Orlando. We met Jervonna from the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel on Thursday morning. She had driven up very early that morning. I really liked her. Where was she when we were in India? She would have been great. She went with us to meet with the folks at the Orlando Sentinel. Same run through of complaint gathering and showing of reports. Did I say that Bill and Avinash got the brunt of the complaints? They were plentiful. I admire their professional demeanor in the face of that. Not an easy day. But we got a lot of good information to help improve our processes.

I got to see KJ again on Saturday. She had a foot operation that Wednesday, so she wasn't at work. Her husband, Steve, brought her to meet me for lunch. What fun. She is as easy going as she was in Bangalore. Loved putting Steve's face with all the good things KJ had told me. I didn't think to take their picture until they were driving away in Steve's truck. Great picture. I flew back in time to drive up to Sunnyvale to celebrate Thanksgiving and an engagement. But that is another delicious story. No pictures. Just know the food was great, the company was better and we are all excited about having two weddings in the family next year. My oldest nephew and my youngest niece will be married; he in March and she in May. MMMMMM. It's going to be a good year.

Yep, Still Alive

Yes, I'm alive. And reading. This has been a very busy month. I will write about my travels in the next blog. I just need to get all this reading out of my brain. Help me, I'm caught in a reading frenzy. Not so much a frenzy. I've been traveling and reading keeps me grounded.

First is This is Your Brain on Music. I was talking to Karen about this. I've been trying to read this for a while. It is a good book. It is just not what I needed to be reading. Lots of cerebelum and tempo. We decided that it would be nice if they would have included real music in this while I was listening. But that would have been a different book. What I learned is that music is a part of every person's life. Who knew?

Adrian did NOT like The Second Perimeter. It was not very deep.Typical spy stuff. But I did finish it. For those who lose ourselves in mindless plotlines, it fulfilled it's purpose.

Satan's Circus is non-fiction about the cops in New York City during the turn of the century. Did you know they were corrupt? Yep, it's true. The book was good for describing a time and place. It's always good to get a better sense of what the city was like before it became civilized. Worst part was the execution of the cop who got caught in the storm. Yuck. Good to read if you think execution is a good thing.

A Ball, A Dog, and a Monkey sounds like a joke. It was not. It's about America and space after the Russian's launched Sputnik in 1957. I remember 1957. I remember the cover of life magazine that was promising a technological miracle that year. I wish I could see it to know what really came true. This is very well written. Fun to read and follow along with the politician's panic and hubris. All the push toward science paid off for my family. I don't know that science education was as big before then. It sure was when I was in school. I remember a LOT of incidents from this book.

Tom told us about this last book, A Dirty Job. So funny. I can't write some of the funniest lines. This Beta Male loses his wife in the first few pages. He is left with a daughter and a mission. The mission is to retrieve Soul Vessels from the newly- or about-to-be-departed. He takes his dear daughter, Sophie, along for the ride. Her and all his interesting employees (in a second hand store, not in retrieving souls.) It took a chapter or two to get to the "can't put it down" stage. Good writing. Strange plot. Pick of the litter.

It Depends on What You Ask

I had dinner last Sunday with "those who have gone before me." It's always nice to see Russ, Dean and Jim. I'm so pleased that they have allowed me to join them. We ate barbecue, which was pretty good. The company was best.

We talked books a bit and Dean reminded me that Alan Furst is one of his favorite authors. I happened to have The Polish Officer lingering on my Ipod, so I read that this week. I like Furst's writing too. I've already written here about another of his books. Lots of stuff happens. It is, after all, WWII and Nazis and run-away Jews are all over the place. Knock twice, wink once. The only problem I have with the books are their endings. Spoiler alert. Here's the ending of The Polish Office. And then they continued to climb to the top of the hill. I can't put quotes on that because I don't remember the exact words. But he leaves you on the top of the mountain! That isn't nice. It was nice when the Polish Officer himself went down to Southwest France. He visited places I know well, even St. Jean de Luz. It took me back to a wonderful place.
I had finished Super Crunchers before I went on that trip to WWII France. When I look for images to put here, I go to Amazon and read the reviews while I'm there. I liked Super Crunchers. It makes you think about how important data is and how important good data is. When I was reading the reviews on Amazon, one reviewer wrote the title of this blog. I don't think Ian Ayres emphasized the importance of asking good questions to get good answers. We all know that you can get pile of bad data if you ask the wrong questions. You could ask Bush about that in regards to Iraq. He wouldn't know the answer, but you would feel better. Sister-in-law Cindy works with databases for a consulting firm. I wonder if she is a super cruncher. This is a good book to read to get an insight into the impact of information gathering.


The main shell of the building across from The Times is completed. Now we have masses of men putting together the insides of that shell. They have moved the giant crane north and have started to build up another building. More pictures of that next week. A lot of concrete is going into the base of the current structure. We have lots of cement trucks lining up throughout the day. I love watching this. I am alone in that. I could really sit in the cafeteria to watch the sparks from torches flying and steel beams flying through the air.

Serial Killings, etc.

I'm afraid my reading had a theme lately. My lunch time friends had been discussing the Showtime series, Dexter. I had liked the book Darkly Dreaming Dexter, so I knew this "loveable" serial killer. Last week I got the DVD and watched the first season all weekend. It's well done. You never see all of what he is doing. What you do see is creepy enough. Adrian is enjoying it as well. We both agree that we like the supporting characters as much as Dexter himself.

I got the next book in the series at the same time from Amazon. Yes, I still know how to read books. I don't have to have all my books read to me. There are differences. Some of the characters on the TV show were killed off in the first book. Horrible things happen to others in this book. I understand from those friends who have Showtime that the new season of Dexter isn't at all like the book. I can understand why. This might be named Terribly Troubling Dexter. The sociopathic nature of these killers is, of course, sub-human and troubling. I'm not sure that I will pursue this series. The good thing about it is the perspective of the narrator. How the story is told is very interesting.

So is the story in Hit Man. I got this because Audible had a book sale and this was one of the sale items. I didn't really think about it being about a hitman. Duh. This guy is as bad as Dexter. But he seems more human. I don't know which is more troubling. He gets paid by this nice lady on Long Island and her boss to kill whomever, where ever. He goes out and does the deed. It's like short stories. He travels to the location, decides what to do and how to do it. That takes most of the short story, lots of local color. Thenhedoesit. All that happens in a sentence. Back to Manhattan to wait for the next assignment. I like the writing, but it kind of bothered me that I was following a trend. I think my next book will have to be non-fiction and not about anatomy classes. I guess it's time to finish This is Your Brain on Music.

My family has been busy. My nephew is a firefighter in San Diego. I saw this picture on The Times website of firefighters in that area who were caught in a firestorm. They have some protective cover they wrap up in during those circumstances. All the guys in this picture were okay when the fire moved on. The pictures on the website are amazing. The faces of these men and the action shots are more moving than video. I just don't know how they do what they do.
My sister wrote that Natalie and Maggie were on the front page of their local paper a couple of weeks ago. I was able to find the photo through some fancy Googling. These Campbells are very active politically. I admire their energy. I'm not sure what Natalie was thinking when this picture was taken. I'm glad the precious Maggie has good health care and doesn't need it. Maybe that was what Natalie was thinking.

Eugene and the Platypus

When I read, I think about Monty Python. And now for something totally different. It was Python who said that, right? What to follow Einstein and the British upper crust. I know, a philosophy book. A joke book. A philosophy book. Slap.

The authors describe different philosophical theories by using jokes. As always, I remember the beginning of the joke or the theory or the end of the joke. Putting them all together would take another read. I loved the beginning of the book. And got really bored near the end. I don't know if the book started to have a certain sameness or if I prefer Plato to modern philosophers. I don't even remember their names. It could have been the jokes. I'm not sure that God is always Jewish and calling everyone Bubbela. I prefer the description of a realist. A pessimist says the glass is half empty. The optimist says it is half full. The realist says the you have the wrong size glass. This book was not the right size.

The counterpoint in my reading was a mystery from an author I like. I suppose I like that there is a woman protagonist, a lawyer. That is not as rare as it used to be, but it is always interesting. She has a close relationship with her father who loves to cook. The mysteries don't usually involve savagery. Brutality is big these days. The books are well written. I really like the people in it.

Best of all, they take place in Eugene, OR. Julie and Adam live in Eugene. I go there now and then to visit with them. These books don't dwell on locale as much as I would like. Or I don't know the area as well as I would like. Guess I will have to visit them more when I am retired. Julie is back in school and doing extremely well. That makes it difficult for the moment to see them. But then, I will be in D.C. for some time. I guess I will just have to be happy with short trips until she is done with school and I am fully out of the working world.

Speaking of the working world, two of my three questions have been answered. Will I really be leaving The Times on 12/21? Yes. Yesterday I got my final papers with my final date in black and white. When will Bill and I be going to the East Coast? 2nd week of November. This means that I will be leaving Florida the weekend before Thanksgiving so that Adrian and I can drive up north to enjoy Thanksgiving with my family. We drive up Monday and then start shopping, cooking and visiting. The final question is about India. I'll just have to be philosophical and wait. Or, I can consider it all a joke.

Herr Doktor

Isn't he cute? Ladies, don't you just want to throw yourself at him? Me neither. What was the charm of this little German? I thoroughly enjoyed this book about him. It debunks a lot of old Einstein Tales. No, he didn't flunk out of grade school. He was always precociously bright.

This is what I gathered about him. He never thought like other people. He always approached problems by visualizing them in some way. I was just talking to my brother in D.C. Eric asked how I could listen to this book? How do you see the equations? I said I see them like Einstein did, in my mind (I'm not a genius, it is easy to do that with this book.) Eric said, "Ah, elevators." Yep. That's it. If you don't know what that means, you'll just have to read this book.

I also gathered that he was a man who lived totally inside his own self. He was sociable and humourous and it wasn't a trial to do that. But he only did that on his own terms. He loved women and loved being with them, but only on his own terms. He didn't appear to cater to their needs at all. He dealt with the scientific and political community on his own terms. He'd have been a lousy politician. There was no compromise in him, no politness to please another. Poor you if you weren't on is agenda.

He would have been an interesting man to know anyway. Edward Herrmann read this book. He has a wonderful voice. This could have been deadly dull, read by the some readers I've listened to. Not so here. I was never bored in the 23 hours of listening. But I did have to take breaks. This book is three segments long. Between each, I listened to a Paul Temple mystery.

These are transcriptions from an old BBC radio show. This one is from 1957. Kind of like the old "B" movies made around that time, they are full of melodrama. What could be more different from that old German Physicist, Einstein? I won't describe them. I wouldn't even recommend them unless you like this Nick and Nora kind of banter, by Jiminy.

It looks like I may be traveling before I leave The Times. Nothing is official on anything pertaining to my leaving. It appears that I will be leaving on 12/21. Nothing in writing yet. It appears that Bill and I will be traveling to the East Coast to visit four of our sister papers. Nothing in writing yet, nor a date. And finally, it appears that Harriet and I may travel to India. That is totally not official, so there is no date. Yippee, more interesting pictures of interesting place. Oh, I will be traveling on a cruise with my brother and sister-in-law in June. They are going to Alaska and have asked me to join in on the fun. That should be interesting. I'll be in D.C. then and flying out here. How cool. :)

The Other Side of The Times

My friend, Erik, has the nastiest job. He was an auditor before he came to work with us a few years ago. Yuck. Because of him I now know that all auditors are not total dweebs. It may just be him, but there could be other non-dweebs in the profession. He just had to leave us to go back to the Tribune. He must have a bff stuffed in a corner back there. Why else would he leave LA, The Times and us?

The nice thing is that he comes back to visit now again to help us prepare for audits and other harassment by the Tribune and the SOX patrol. And I get to visit and laugh with him. Considering how seldom I get up to the 3rd floor and this side of the building, it's almost like he never left.

When I do get up there, I'm most often visiting Bill. I can't do this very often because I always end up staring out his window. Yes, this is the view from his window. They tore down an old government building and opened up his view to Disney Hall. You can see that on the left. And besides, there are big machines moving old concrete and dirt around. Love to watch all this hard labor going on. I don't know how Bill and Harriet get anything done. They both have great views of all the activity. Harriet also gets to watch the myriad of strange people who come out of the court house and mosey down Broadway. They are very interesting. Instead, I'm in the black hole on the first floor, hard at work plotting my exit strategy.

Or plotting where I'm going to buy my next tomatoes, now that the season is over. I've become absolutely addicted to slow roasting these little things. They have so many uses once you do that and they keep fairly well for a week or so. I think. They don't seem to last that long. You can eat them with broiled meats or mushed up with pasta or... Here they are, neatly grouped by type, waiting to go into my very slow oven. I leave the peels on the garlic or it browns too much. Lovely.