“Every word I say, all day, is a lie”
Those were the words spoken by my 87 year old grandmother this week in one of my visits chatting with her during 10-days at their home in Budapest. I visited them as much as possible during my time there, but with my grandfather now 90 and deep into Alzheimer’s, visits were more brief than in the past, and could not occur every day. I was struck by the degradation of my grandfather, and how quickly he had completely changed from a fun loving, full of life, charming, warm, caring man to a hollow shell of a man paranoid about the world around him.
He now lives completely in a world inside his own mind. The reality of his surroundings is irrelevant, because his brain has taken him out of our world and into his own. When my grandmother uttered that line above, it was after an hour stretch when my grandfather paced up and down their condo, searching for things we couldn’t fully understand. At one point he said he had discovered oil in the backyard. Then minutes later he was asking where everyone went. Upon talking with him, we discovered that he thought he was working at a factory and everyone had gone home. The reason she now tells lies all day is because she has realized it is futile to try and talk him out of whatever scenario he is in. Approximately 2 years ago when he started behaving this way, she would say, no, sweetheart, we’re at home, there’s no one else here, we’re fine. Now, she tells him the workday is over so he can relax.
All of this wouldn’t be so bad if the looks on his face didn’t reveal varying levels of fear. Two of his common worries are that he is going to be executed at a specific time that day and that they are going to be evicted from their condo (which they own). This is a man who fled the 2nd World War, so in his childhood must have had some familiarity with executions- but certainly not in at least 60 years. Over those 60 years he has lived comfortably, started a family, built his own home, escaped the war and moved his family to Montreal where they successfully lived for 40 years. Executions and evictions have not been an issue for decades. Yet there he sits, stoic and unable to be persuaded otherwise. He is going to die at 4pm today.
Possibly my favorite coping mechanism my grandmother has figured out is when the execution story starts, rather than tell him there is no pending death, she now tells him “yes, but you know the government workers can’t be trusted, they won’t show up anyway, so don’t worry”. And you know what? It works. It eases his mind and he believes her. She has become quite adept at working within his unique situation to make him feel better.
But I was struck by the depth to which he lived in his own world. It wasn’t just that he had a paranoia about being executed at some point in the future by vague enemies- he would be hung at 4pm that day and they were coming to get him. I realized it was similar to dreams I would have- for example that I was back in college and had to take a test to graduate which I hadn’t studied for. I’m always incredibly worried and unprepared and it feels incredibly real. Luckily I wake up and realize it was a dream and move on. For him, that’s his world, every day. And I could see from the look on his face that he truly believed it. There is no waking up for him.
On other days, when we would travel out of the house, my grandfather took to reading things out loud. At one point he read the “Pismo Beach” name on my t-shirt, and later began reading off street signs as we drove past them. It was almost like a kid proudly showing he could read. I’m not quite sure if he was just trying to exercise his brain, or prove he could still do it, but it was funny to hear him read them off from the back seat as we drove down the road.
As the week went on and the severity of the situation sunk in, I began to feel sorry for my grandmother. I was sad that my grandfather, who I grew up adoring and who would do absolutely anything for me and my family, was gone. I would no longer be able to talk with him about my job, what sports I was playing, how my friends were doing, or any of the other great conversations we used to have. And that is awful. But for my grandmother, the man she married 65 years ago is literally wasting away in front of her eyes. She has to live with him every day, and see him go through a variety of moods, none of which reveal any of the family patriarch we all adored.
Whoever termed Alzheimer’s “The Long Goodbye” put it perfectly. Here you sit in front of the person who looks like the individual you remember, but they are not in fact there. Physically they may be, but mentally they aren’t. It has led to many a conversation in our family now about whether it is better to die quickly vs fade away in this sort of half conscious state. My mother insists that she never wants to suffer in her old age, she wants to go quickly. Which is fine, but how much is he suffering? He eats full meals, has lucid moments every now and then. The first time I saw him this week we had about an hour where he was excited, engaged in conversation and happy to look at pictures I had brought from my recent trips. My grandmother said he hadn’t been that engaged in anything in a long time. I took that as one of the greatest compliments of my life and was incredibly happy to hear that. Sadly, it didn’t last long, but at least we had that.
In one of the deeper conversations of the week, my grandmother looked at me and told me her greatest worry was that she dies first. What would happen then, she asked, when no one else could provide the level of round the clock care and compassion that she gives right now. She talked about how she has denied all requests for others to care for him, and steadfastly refuses moving him into any type of assisted living home. Finally she has allowed someone to come in twice a week just to talk with him and allow her to have some time to herself, but that took a long time to be allowed.
The dedication she has for my grandfather is something I can only hope to find in a partner. The unwavering commitment and lack of doubt with which she said she would never let anything happen to him is genuinely amazing. At 87 years of age she won’t let go. She is the one who knows him best and can provide that best care and that is that. But what if she dies first, she asked? Then what? Of course there is no answer to be given, so I asked her what she would like to have happen, and she shared that her other greatest fear is living another 10 years. “What the heck would I do over 10 years? We have nothing to do now. I can’t imagine staying around for 10 more years, I’d go crazy”. OK, so then how would you like it to happen? “One of us dies one day, the other the next.” Oh, I said. “But I’ve prayed to the good Lord and he apparently doesn’t agree or he would have given me a sign.” Why? I asked. You’re both still alive, your plan can still happen, I quickly pointed out. It made sense in my head, I don’t know if it connected in hers.
I’ve noticed in the months leading up to my visit that it was harder for me to talk to my grandparents on the phone. We used to have great conversations about what was going on in our lives- where they had gone, what they had done, who they had visited, and the same on my end. Since my grandfather has faded recently, it’s a one sided conversation with him. If he’s in a good mood, he’ll ramble on about some nonsensical thing or another, and I’ll happily listen to him talk as long as he wants. I’ll tell him a little about what’s going on with me, but he doesn’t understand the context so it doesn’t go very far. My grandmother has essentially stopped having things to say because they don’t do anything. All of their food is delivered now, they stopped eating at restaurants, they really just stay at home. So, sadly, I have shied away from calling because I didn’t know what we would talk about. I realized the past week that it’s not about what we talk about, it’s about giving my grandmother a 20 minute escape from her confined space. A chance to hear something different, talk to someone on the outside. And I now feel incredibly selfish for not calling as much recently. Luckily, that is easily fixed going forward.
On the positive side, my grandmother’s mind is still holding on strong. There are some cobwebs with memory, but overall, nothing too major. Her sense of humor is as sharp as it used to be, and the few sarcastic moments we shared illustrated that she still had it. In fact at one point, as we were looking at pictures on a digital frame in their condo, she remembered the name of an old restaurant we used to go to where I was stumped. Thank goodness she still has that.
In another great moment, we were talking about the food that had been delivered for them (they get prepared meals delivered to them 2-3 times per week) and my grandmother noticed that a big dish of creamed spinach was among the delivery today. She was talking about how she would give it to my grandfather and exclaimed jokingly, “Spinach! Who needs spinach?!” and I said, “well, what’s wrong with spinach?” to which she replied “It’s awful”. We laughed and she talked about how she would just give it to my grandfather in tomorrow’s meal. It was a great role reversal moment. As I child I always remember being told to eat my vegetables, and now here I am trying to tell my grandmother to eat hers.
Further illustrating her sharp memory, my grandmother shared some stories from her life- how my grandfather’s mother came out to live with them in Montreal, then moved over to my grandfather’s sister’s place in the US when my grandmother’s mom came to live with them. She chronicled her parents and grandparents (the Fuchs side of the family), along with my grandfather’s parents and grandparents, detailed how each (with the exception of her father) lived to relatively old age. Secretly it made me feel better about my prospects down the road! It was amazing to hear the stories straight from her, and that is something I need to do more of. Instead of her sharing stories about what they did recently, our phone calls can evolve into what they did 30, 50, 70 years ago.
I’ve said to friends many times that my worst day is nothing compared to what my grandparents went through. They were married in the basement of their church because a bombing run was taking place at the time they were scheduled to be wed. They fled Hungary and stayed in Austria for a few years, then Paris before settling in Montreal. I asked my grandmother if there was ever any thought to staying in Paris, and she said there was, but never for too long because they didn’t think the long term prospects were as good there. I can’t even imagine some of the things they went through. It gives my life a completely different perspective and I often think about them when I start to feel sorry for myself. My problems don’t compare. I will never have to leave the house in the morning, knowing I have to earn money somehow that day to feed my family. I will never arrive in a new city with 3 kids without knowing anyone and very little money after leaving my homeland because of a major war. (Well, let’s hope that never happens.)
If parents strive to make life better for their kids than they had it, then there’s some sort of multiplier that kicks in going from my grandparents to my generation. We have it infinitely better than they had it, and that is something I don’t take for granted. My grandparents escaped the war so they could have a better life, and by extension, so could we. They succeeded and I am grateful to be a beneficiary of it.
I treasure the time I had with my grandparents when they were at their best. There was truly no one better. Sadly those days are gone, but I will still treasure my time with them now, just in a different way. I want to eek out as many moments with them as I can. My grandmother told me she was very worried about the coming winter. That since they couldn’t even walk outside in the garden of their condo complex she was even more worried about them just being cooped up in the condo. I felt so helpless, I told her I would call more, and that hopefully the winter passes quickly. It’s scary to think about goodbyes as potentially the last goodbye. But it’s something I’m unable to avoid thinking about the more I see them.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
The hypocrisy of anonymous sources
I’m a big fan of articles – newspaper, magazine, on-line, wherever. I’ve always been a non-fiction over fiction guy. Love learning new things, being in the know, finding out what’s going on. But recently this trend towards using “unnamed sources” is getting out of hand. It’s not that there are unnamed sources cited in articles- that has been around as long as I can remember. It’s the way they are presented. The way the articles seem to now almost relish in the secrecy of it. Check out this LA Times blurb about Michael Jackson’s memorial:
The discussions over Michael Jackson's public memorial have now focused on a possible Tuesday service, though sources stress that the Jackson family has not made a final decision.
Five sources, who are familiar with the planning process but spoke on the condition that they not be named, said authorities are drawing up plans for a massive law enforcement deployment Tuesday morning.
And that’s a tame one. My favorite is when an article says “according to a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to comment”! That one blows me away! So not only is this person talking when they are not supposed, the author is actually acknowledging that they shouldn’t be saying it.
I’m not a strict rule follower in every situation, but this is going too far. I just did a Google News search for "anonymity because they are not authorized" and it produced 235 articles. And we’re not talking the TMZ variety in the gossip world. These are US government sources, businessmen, high ranking officials – people who are fully aware that what they are doing is not right. People who can’t use the “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to say that” argument.
So why do they do it? Sure, there’s the whistle blower argument- and I have no problem with that. But these are not whistle blowers helping injustice see the light of day. One article is about a new wireless technology, one is about a court case and one is about the Treasury Department. These are run on the mill, normal stories that would have been interesting enough alone. But with the added “anonymous” source take on a new meaning.
I actually think it goes back to middle school – the whole “I know something you don’t know” argument. Was there ever anything that made you want to punch someone in the face more than that argument? It’s like calling dibs, nothing you can do about it- unless you were bigger than the person who called it. But that’s not the point – the point is the growing human nature to reveal secrets on a massive scale. I’d venture a bet that most of these “anonymous sources” love reading the article once it is printed and knowing they are the nameless helper.
Of course, with the 24-hour news cycle we have now - comprised of cable news networks, websites, blogs, podcasts and more- the need to fill that news space is constantly growing. Which means more people are looking for information- and someone who wants to supply it can get their 15 minutes of fame, even if it’s anonymously. I’ll continue to get turned off when I see the “anonymous source who spoke on the condition of anonymity” line, but I’m sure it’s not going away.
The discussions over Michael Jackson's public memorial have now focused on a possible Tuesday service, though sources stress that the Jackson family has not made a final decision.
Five sources, who are familiar with the planning process but spoke on the condition that they not be named, said authorities are drawing up plans for a massive law enforcement deployment Tuesday morning.
And that’s a tame one. My favorite is when an article says “according to a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to comment”! That one blows me away! So not only is this person talking when they are not supposed, the author is actually acknowledging that they shouldn’t be saying it.
I’m not a strict rule follower in every situation, but this is going too far. I just did a Google News search for "anonymity because they are not authorized" and it produced 235 articles. And we’re not talking the TMZ variety in the gossip world. These are US government sources, businessmen, high ranking officials – people who are fully aware that what they are doing is not right. People who can’t use the “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to say that” argument.
So why do they do it? Sure, there’s the whistle blower argument- and I have no problem with that. But these are not whistle blowers helping injustice see the light of day. One article is about a new wireless technology, one is about a court case and one is about the Treasury Department. These are run on the mill, normal stories that would have been interesting enough alone. But with the added “anonymous” source take on a new meaning.
I actually think it goes back to middle school – the whole “I know something you don’t know” argument. Was there ever anything that made you want to punch someone in the face more than that argument? It’s like calling dibs, nothing you can do about it- unless you were bigger than the person who called it. But that’s not the point – the point is the growing human nature to reveal secrets on a massive scale. I’d venture a bet that most of these “anonymous sources” love reading the article once it is printed and knowing they are the nameless helper.
Of course, with the 24-hour news cycle we have now - comprised of cable news networks, websites, blogs, podcasts and more- the need to fill that news space is constantly growing. Which means more people are looking for information- and someone who wants to supply it can get their 15 minutes of fame, even if it’s anonymously. I’ll continue to get turned off when I see the “anonymous source who spoke on the condition of anonymity” line, but I’m sure it’s not going away.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Always on isn't always good
When exactly did I become uncomfortable sitting alone in a restaurant? Maybe that’s not the right way to say it – I don’t know that I’ve ever been 100% comfortable hanging out solo in a public place. But recently, it has become very obvious to me that I use my BlackBerry as an electronic crutch. I’ve seen a few articles about it, which I’m sure has caused me to pay more attention to it. Even so, I now realize that as soon as the person I’m having dinner with goes to the bathroom, I instinctively pull out my trusty electronic tether – my BlackBerry. I’ll see if any new e-mail has arrived, check scores on ESPN.com, respond to txts- essentially anything to avoid staring off into the distance “alone”.
Alone is a sliding scale, I suppose. You can be alone, yet not be lonely, but even being alone is hard to do. What is so wrong with sitting at a table alone, particularly when it’s for 5 minutes until someone comes back from the bathroom? Where did this come from? I started thinking back…
“It’s long distance, I have to take this”
That was a line in a recent Hitchcock movie I saw – and the contrast struck me immediately. When was the last time I said that? When was the last time I heard it? I’m lucky to have family around the world, so long distance communication has always been a part of my life. I hear about the pre-phone days of letters and think how quaint that must have been. But I have no personal knowledge of that. Even growing up, we were able to talk on the phone to grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in foreign lands. The difference, though, was we had to plan it. We had to be home, they had to be home, attention had to be paid to the length of the conversation because rates were in the dollars per minute. I even remember going into my father’s lab (office) to make calls from there to save money. It was an ordeal. Something to look forward to – “we’re going to call Hungary on Sunday!” Long distance calling was an event.
From there, I remember the start of the internet. My brother and I would see the Prodigy & Compuserve ads magazines or in stores, and beg our parents to get it. “3 months free” it screamed! What a deal! Of course, we played off the complete knowledge that it cost money after that, but it wasn’t our money, and we wanted to have it! After a while, my father relented (being the early adapter techie that he is). We bought a modem (who knew what that was at the time), installed it in the back of our computer, plugged the phone line into the computer, installed the software and listened as weird noises suddenly came screeching out. What a weird series of noises, but you got used to it. Those sounds instantly signaled you were on your way to communicating with the outside world.
Remember those days? When you had to pick between being on the phone or being on-line? Wow, that seems so long ago- especially as I sit outside connected wirelessly to my always on super-fast internet with my wireless cell phone (BlackBerry) next to me ready to connect me to any phone number.
Anyway, we had Prodigy or Compuserve (I can’t remember which) for a while, and loved it. I don’t even know what we would use it for, but it was great! I do remember having to monitor our time on it because, like long distance, there were per minute charges. My brother did a great job racking up a few hundred dollars in charges one month, but other than that, we managed to stay within the limits. I am trying to think back to what we used the on-line world for in those days, and I honestly can’t remember. It was pre digital cameras, so uploading photos is out. Reading different magazines and newspapers was one of the first things I can remember. And that was the start of the on-demand world – instead of waiting for the paper to come to you, you logged in and read it when you wanted.
E-mail quickly added to that world, with us moving over to AOL and our friends moving on-line too. But it was a different world of e-mail. You had to log in. There was something to look forward to. “Did anyone e-mail me?” – I remember the marked increases in e-mail checking in college. It went from, maybe, once a day, to multiple times a day fairly quickly. And who can forget the friendly “you’ve got mail!” AOL would greet you with when you had a message. It was always such a letdown when I heard the modem buzzing away, it logged in, and then went silent with no friendly mail greeting. Such a disappointment!
A big part of the on-line evolution was IM – the great AOL instant messaging program. Rather than e-mails that you send and wait for replies for, IMs allowed you to immediately communicate with your desired partner. That was my first sense of technology black holes – I remember hours passing by in what seemed like minutes. I would look at the clock and think, wow, I’ve been talking to this person for 3 hours!
As the dial-up world faded into the always on broadband world of the early 2000s, web usage skyrocketed. I no longer had to worry about how much time I was on-line, and as an added bonus, it was 50x faster! So not only could you forget about monitoring your on-line usage, you could accomplish a lot more because the pages loaded much faster. But accomplish might be an overstatement. You could do more stuff, but I’m not sure I ever made the connection to actually having a goal in mind. More sites were available, pictures were now everywhere, video was starting to become more popular and more people had e-mail. I was quickly getting used to being able to enhance my physical world with my on-line world. But there was still a conscious effort required on my part to “check” my e-mail.
I worked in marketing & promotions for a few years after college, and during that time, I resisted the BlackBerry explosion. I didn’t see the need. I actually liked not having my e-mail follow me around. (Ironic, considering I am a giant tech geek like my dad with new gadgets.) A BlackBerry and iPod were 2 things I resisted for a long time.
When I moved into sales, the foundation began to crumble. The need to know if a client had an urgent question, or if I even needed to head back to the office after a 3pm meeting were justification enough. I accepted my father’s offer of using the remaining 6 months on his T-Mobile Sidekick contract since he upgraded to another device. Looking back, it really was my gateway drug into the always on world. 6 months of free service were long enough to convince me that I needed to have this. There were deals I closed because I got back to clients a lot faster than I would have if I only had e-mail at the office.
I don’t even think I made it to end of the 6 months before heading to the Verizon Wireless store for my first BlackBerry. (That sounds so quaint doesn’t it? Like that whole Sony campaign a while back “My First Sony”.) It was a solid machine. E-mail showed up instantly, sometimes before it got to Outlook on my actual computer (which I always got a kick out of), and once I started exploring the new mobile websites that were exploding, I was hooked. Plus, BlackBerry does an amazing job of integrating your contacts into one place. When you want to contact Chris, it asks you- do you want to call or txt him? At which number? If you want to e-mail him, at work or personal? It was an amazing device. I quickly shifted my thinking to “how did I survive this long without this?”
Of course I now did because I didn’t know what I was missing before. Ignorance is bliss, and when you don’t know what you don’t know- there’s something liberating about that. But now that I knew it existed, I loved it! My first BlackBerry gave way to my second within a year as they came out with a slimmer model that worked all around the world. My friend Andi was the lucky recipient of my old BB, and she got equally hooked.
So now we come to the present… a place where I can’t wait 3 seconds after stopping at a red light before instinctively glancing down to my BB to see if the blinking light has gone from green to red (indicating a new message has arrived). A place where before I embark on a drive, I scroll through my mental rolodex of who I can call- a complex system factoring in time zones, length of time since I’ve last talked to people, who has Verizon (so it’s a free call), etc. Luckily my brain has grown accustomed to computing these self-imposed algorithms rather easily, so I’m usually hitting “send” and commencing a call 20 seconds after I turn the car on.
And some of these calls are to my family in Hungary. There is no more planning needed to call halfway around the world. I just dial an access code so the call only costs a few cents per minute, and seconds later am connected. I don’t need to go to a unique location to place the call, I can do it from anywhere. I don’t have to worry if the other person is there, because if they’re not, I can just as easily call tomorrow.
Now granted, not all of this is bad. My talking while driving is equal parts related to wanting to use that valuable time to reconnect with friends. I choose to use that (especially on the way home) as time to connect with east coast people since by the time I get home most of them are in bed. But my point, overall, is more to the multi-tasking nature of it. I actually feel like something is missing if I’m not talking while driving at certain times. (Other times I love it because listening to music loudly in the car is another favorite pastime.)
This occurs in other areas of my life as well – take writing this blog for example. I made a conscious decision to take my laptop outside and type on my deck rather than write it while having the TV on in the background. There are very few things I can do with sole attention. If I’m watching a previously DVR-ed TV show, that’s ok. But if it’s live TV, I quickly grow restless and fire up the laptop to simultaneously surf the web.
Even at work, on a conference call or routine phone call, my eyes begin to wander to my computer screen and wonder if I can clear off a few e-mails while I’m listening. Not the best idea, because neither is getting my complete attention, but nonetheless, my gut feeling is I need to be doing more than just talking on the phone. It’s not healthy.
On the plus side, when I was going camping 2 weeks ago I was told my cell phone might not work at the campsite. After overcoming a momentary attack of panic, I got over it and accepted it. When we got there, turns out cell phones did work, but by then I had come to terms with being off the grid for 2 days. So I left it in the car. I checked it twice a day to see if anything urgent had come up, and wouldn’t you know it, nothing did. It was a great feeling. Sitting around the campfire, just talking, staring at the crackling flames, no BlackBerry in my pocket- it felt good.
So I’m making a conscious effort to try that more often. A big thing that keeps running through my head is something I heard a while ago – just because someone sends you an e-mail, doesn’t mean you have to respond to it immediately. Despite my electronic tether, and people being used to me responding to e-mails and txts in minutes rather than hours, doesn’t mean it has to be like that indefinitely. Every now and then, I want to be ok not glancing at it and waiting to see if the light is green or red.
Alone is a sliding scale, I suppose. You can be alone, yet not be lonely, but even being alone is hard to do. What is so wrong with sitting at a table alone, particularly when it’s for 5 minutes until someone comes back from the bathroom? Where did this come from? I started thinking back…
“It’s long distance, I have to take this”
That was a line in a recent Hitchcock movie I saw – and the contrast struck me immediately. When was the last time I said that? When was the last time I heard it? I’m lucky to have family around the world, so long distance communication has always been a part of my life. I hear about the pre-phone days of letters and think how quaint that must have been. But I have no personal knowledge of that. Even growing up, we were able to talk on the phone to grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in foreign lands. The difference, though, was we had to plan it. We had to be home, they had to be home, attention had to be paid to the length of the conversation because rates were in the dollars per minute. I even remember going into my father’s lab (office) to make calls from there to save money. It was an ordeal. Something to look forward to – “we’re going to call Hungary on Sunday!” Long distance calling was an event.
From there, I remember the start of the internet. My brother and I would see the Prodigy & Compuserve ads magazines or in stores, and beg our parents to get it. “3 months free” it screamed! What a deal! Of course, we played off the complete knowledge that it cost money after that, but it wasn’t our money, and we wanted to have it! After a while, my father relented (being the early adapter techie that he is). We bought a modem (who knew what that was at the time), installed it in the back of our computer, plugged the phone line into the computer, installed the software and listened as weird noises suddenly came screeching out. What a weird series of noises, but you got used to it. Those sounds instantly signaled you were on your way to communicating with the outside world.
Remember those days? When you had to pick between being on the phone or being on-line? Wow, that seems so long ago- especially as I sit outside connected wirelessly to my always on super-fast internet with my wireless cell phone (BlackBerry) next to me ready to connect me to any phone number.
Anyway, we had Prodigy or Compuserve (I can’t remember which) for a while, and loved it. I don’t even know what we would use it for, but it was great! I do remember having to monitor our time on it because, like long distance, there were per minute charges. My brother did a great job racking up a few hundred dollars in charges one month, but other than that, we managed to stay within the limits. I am trying to think back to what we used the on-line world for in those days, and I honestly can’t remember. It was pre digital cameras, so uploading photos is out. Reading different magazines and newspapers was one of the first things I can remember. And that was the start of the on-demand world – instead of waiting for the paper to come to you, you logged in and read it when you wanted.
E-mail quickly added to that world, with us moving over to AOL and our friends moving on-line too. But it was a different world of e-mail. You had to log in. There was something to look forward to. “Did anyone e-mail me?” – I remember the marked increases in e-mail checking in college. It went from, maybe, once a day, to multiple times a day fairly quickly. And who can forget the friendly “you’ve got mail!” AOL would greet you with when you had a message. It was always such a letdown when I heard the modem buzzing away, it logged in, and then went silent with no friendly mail greeting. Such a disappointment!
A big part of the on-line evolution was IM – the great AOL instant messaging program. Rather than e-mails that you send and wait for replies for, IMs allowed you to immediately communicate with your desired partner. That was my first sense of technology black holes – I remember hours passing by in what seemed like minutes. I would look at the clock and think, wow, I’ve been talking to this person for 3 hours!
As the dial-up world faded into the always on broadband world of the early 2000s, web usage skyrocketed. I no longer had to worry about how much time I was on-line, and as an added bonus, it was 50x faster! So not only could you forget about monitoring your on-line usage, you could accomplish a lot more because the pages loaded much faster. But accomplish might be an overstatement. You could do more stuff, but I’m not sure I ever made the connection to actually having a goal in mind. More sites were available, pictures were now everywhere, video was starting to become more popular and more people had e-mail. I was quickly getting used to being able to enhance my physical world with my on-line world. But there was still a conscious effort required on my part to “check” my e-mail.
I worked in marketing & promotions for a few years after college, and during that time, I resisted the BlackBerry explosion. I didn’t see the need. I actually liked not having my e-mail follow me around. (Ironic, considering I am a giant tech geek like my dad with new gadgets.) A BlackBerry and iPod were 2 things I resisted for a long time.
When I moved into sales, the foundation began to crumble. The need to know if a client had an urgent question, or if I even needed to head back to the office after a 3pm meeting were justification enough. I accepted my father’s offer of using the remaining 6 months on his T-Mobile Sidekick contract since he upgraded to another device. Looking back, it really was my gateway drug into the always on world. 6 months of free service were long enough to convince me that I needed to have this. There were deals I closed because I got back to clients a lot faster than I would have if I only had e-mail at the office.
I don’t even think I made it to end of the 6 months before heading to the Verizon Wireless store for my first BlackBerry. (That sounds so quaint doesn’t it? Like that whole Sony campaign a while back “My First Sony”.) It was a solid machine. E-mail showed up instantly, sometimes before it got to Outlook on my actual computer (which I always got a kick out of), and once I started exploring the new mobile websites that were exploding, I was hooked. Plus, BlackBerry does an amazing job of integrating your contacts into one place. When you want to contact Chris, it asks you- do you want to call or txt him? At which number? If you want to e-mail him, at work or personal? It was an amazing device. I quickly shifted my thinking to “how did I survive this long without this?”
Of course I now did because I didn’t know what I was missing before. Ignorance is bliss, and when you don’t know what you don’t know- there’s something liberating about that. But now that I knew it existed, I loved it! My first BlackBerry gave way to my second within a year as they came out with a slimmer model that worked all around the world. My friend Andi was the lucky recipient of my old BB, and she got equally hooked.
So now we come to the present… a place where I can’t wait 3 seconds after stopping at a red light before instinctively glancing down to my BB to see if the blinking light has gone from green to red (indicating a new message has arrived). A place where before I embark on a drive, I scroll through my mental rolodex of who I can call- a complex system factoring in time zones, length of time since I’ve last talked to people, who has Verizon (so it’s a free call), etc. Luckily my brain has grown accustomed to computing these self-imposed algorithms rather easily, so I’m usually hitting “send” and commencing a call 20 seconds after I turn the car on.
And some of these calls are to my family in Hungary. There is no more planning needed to call halfway around the world. I just dial an access code so the call only costs a few cents per minute, and seconds later am connected. I don’t need to go to a unique location to place the call, I can do it from anywhere. I don’t have to worry if the other person is there, because if they’re not, I can just as easily call tomorrow.
Now granted, not all of this is bad. My talking while driving is equal parts related to wanting to use that valuable time to reconnect with friends. I choose to use that (especially on the way home) as time to connect with east coast people since by the time I get home most of them are in bed. But my point, overall, is more to the multi-tasking nature of it. I actually feel like something is missing if I’m not talking while driving at certain times. (Other times I love it because listening to music loudly in the car is another favorite pastime.)
This occurs in other areas of my life as well – take writing this blog for example. I made a conscious decision to take my laptop outside and type on my deck rather than write it while having the TV on in the background. There are very few things I can do with sole attention. If I’m watching a previously DVR-ed TV show, that’s ok. But if it’s live TV, I quickly grow restless and fire up the laptop to simultaneously surf the web.
Even at work, on a conference call or routine phone call, my eyes begin to wander to my computer screen and wonder if I can clear off a few e-mails while I’m listening. Not the best idea, because neither is getting my complete attention, but nonetheless, my gut feeling is I need to be doing more than just talking on the phone. It’s not healthy.
On the plus side, when I was going camping 2 weeks ago I was told my cell phone might not work at the campsite. After overcoming a momentary attack of panic, I got over it and accepted it. When we got there, turns out cell phones did work, but by then I had come to terms with being off the grid for 2 days. So I left it in the car. I checked it twice a day to see if anything urgent had come up, and wouldn’t you know it, nothing did. It was a great feeling. Sitting around the campfire, just talking, staring at the crackling flames, no BlackBerry in my pocket- it felt good.
So I’m making a conscious effort to try that more often. A big thing that keeps running through my head is something I heard a while ago – just because someone sends you an e-mail, doesn’t mean you have to respond to it immediately. Despite my electronic tether, and people being used to me responding to e-mails and txts in minutes rather than hours, doesn’t mean it has to be like that indefinitely. Every now and then, I want to be ok not glancing at it and waiting to see if the light is green or red.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Technology can brighten your day
When I think about gadgets that have improved my life, what pops to mind are the game changers - cell phone, TiVo, iPod, etc. All stand alone devices that require a separate purchase to acquire. What pleasantly surprises me sometimes are the improvements to existing gadgets that require no additional cash outlay.
I've been raving to anyone that asks about the Sync system in my Ford Edge since I got it last summer. Integrates with my iPod Touch & BlackBerry, very cool. But I don't have an iPhone, so the iPod only has the songs I've loaded onto it at home. Not a huge problem, however there are some great new programs that allow you to stream music through your iPhone wherever you go. (And I don't have an iPhone, so I'm out of luck.) Back in January at CES in Vegas, I was complaining that BlackBerry didn't have nearly as many cool apps. Luckily they've begun to catch up. One is called iheartradio - a simple program that turns your BB/iPhone into a radio tuner. But more than that, a national radio tuner - able to pick up stations from a variety of cities.
Full disclosure - I'm a radio geek, always have been. Since the days of Casey Casey's American Top 40 and the countdown to #1 back when I was 8, I remember loving music. I remember when John Mellencamp was John Cougar Mellencamp. Remember timing car trips from Boston to Montreal based on the number of times I could listen to Bon Jovi's Bad Medicine cassette (6, which meant the trip was 6 hours long). I remember our group's class project in 5th grade where we polled the whole school and had a Top 5 song list by grade. And, as if that wasn't enough, actually let all the other students come to our classroom and borrow any of the songs library style. I already had most of them as tapes at home, a quick trip to Strawberries later we had Fine Young Cannibals "She Drives Me Crazy" on cassingle and the collection was complete. (Why do I remember intricate details like that but can't remember major things?) I remember that Nelson "After The Rain" was the first CD I ever bought in Hong Kong when I was there with my dad and had just bought my first Discman. I remember my first concert was Bryan Adams with my friend Phil in high school (who's last name I don't even remember), with tickets I won off my favorite radio station, having my mother drive us down to Providence and my first taste of the "radio single." Mr Big came on as the opening act and the rest of their performance did not sound like "To Be With You"- their big hit.
Anyway, sorry, didn't mean to get off on a tangent, I love radio & music. So when I heard there was a new BlackBerry version of iheartradio, I quickly downloaded it to see what it could do. 5 minutes later, I was listening to Kiss 108 in Boston on my cell phone. That was cool, but not particularly practical - my BlackBerry doesn't exactly have powerful bass or play nearly loud enough. The moment that blew my mind came when I pushed a few buttons on the sound system in my car and all of a sudden the music was coming through the car's sound system. Live music from Boston, steamed over a BlackBerry, pushed through Bluetooth to my car's audio system for me to hear. Amazing. And none of it cost an extra cent more than what I was already paying.
I already owned the BlackBerry, had an unlimited data plan and had the car with Bluetooth audio capabality. But when I pieced all this togehter, I suddenly felt like I unlocked a whole new world. Like when you found a hidden world on Zelda as a kid- I felt like I really discovered something!
But all of this really paid off when I was driving to work one morning and flipped on another Boston station - Jamn 94.5 - and their "Back in the Day Buffet"- conveniently on at 9am here because of the 3 hour time difference. LA radio is notoriously bad, and when this audio treat graced my eardrums, I kept getting more excited as each new song came on!
Father MC - I'll Do For You
Jodeci - Everything's Gonna Be Alright
TLC - Hat 2 The Back
Salt n Peppa - Express Yourself
Ma$e - Bad Boy
All classics! All back to back! I was driving to work with the biggest smile on my face. As if I had tricked someone to get all this for free. I don't quite know how to explain it. I have no idea how Clear Channel is going to make any money on it - but that's not my problem, I love it!
It's the little unexpected things in life that brighten my day. This one came out of nowhere with a 5 song medley that put me in the best mood.
I've been raving to anyone that asks about the Sync system in my Ford Edge since I got it last summer. Integrates with my iPod Touch & BlackBerry, very cool. But I don't have an iPhone, so the iPod only has the songs I've loaded onto it at home. Not a huge problem, however there are some great new programs that allow you to stream music through your iPhone wherever you go. (And I don't have an iPhone, so I'm out of luck.) Back in January at CES in Vegas, I was complaining that BlackBerry didn't have nearly as many cool apps. Luckily they've begun to catch up. One is called iheartradio - a simple program that turns your BB/iPhone into a radio tuner. But more than that, a national radio tuner - able to pick up stations from a variety of cities.
Full disclosure - I'm a radio geek, always have been. Since the days of Casey Casey's American Top 40 and the countdown to #1 back when I was 8, I remember loving music. I remember when John Mellencamp was John Cougar Mellencamp. Remember timing car trips from Boston to Montreal based on the number of times I could listen to Bon Jovi's Bad Medicine cassette (6, which meant the trip was 6 hours long). I remember our group's class project in 5th grade where we polled the whole school and had a Top 5 song list by grade. And, as if that wasn't enough, actually let all the other students come to our classroom and borrow any of the songs library style. I already had most of them as tapes at home, a quick trip to Strawberries later we had Fine Young Cannibals "She Drives Me Crazy" on cassingle and the collection was complete. (Why do I remember intricate details like that but can't remember major things?) I remember that Nelson "After The Rain" was the first CD I ever bought in Hong Kong when I was there with my dad and had just bought my first Discman. I remember my first concert was Bryan Adams with my friend Phil in high school (who's last name I don't even remember), with tickets I won off my favorite radio station, having my mother drive us down to Providence and my first taste of the "radio single." Mr Big came on as the opening act and the rest of their performance did not sound like "To Be With You"- their big hit.
Anyway, sorry, didn't mean to get off on a tangent, I love radio & music. So when I heard there was a new BlackBerry version of iheartradio, I quickly downloaded it to see what it could do. 5 minutes later, I was listening to Kiss 108 in Boston on my cell phone. That was cool, but not particularly practical - my BlackBerry doesn't exactly have powerful bass or play nearly loud enough. The moment that blew my mind came when I pushed a few buttons on the sound system in my car and all of a sudden the music was coming through the car's sound system. Live music from Boston, steamed over a BlackBerry, pushed through Bluetooth to my car's audio system for me to hear. Amazing. And none of it cost an extra cent more than what I was already paying.
I already owned the BlackBerry, had an unlimited data plan and had the car with Bluetooth audio capabality. But when I pieced all this togehter, I suddenly felt like I unlocked a whole new world. Like when you found a hidden world on Zelda as a kid- I felt like I really discovered something!
But all of this really paid off when I was driving to work one morning and flipped on another Boston station - Jamn 94.5 - and their "Back in the Day Buffet"- conveniently on at 9am here because of the 3 hour time difference. LA radio is notoriously bad, and when this audio treat graced my eardrums, I kept getting more excited as each new song came on!
Father MC - I'll Do For You
Jodeci - Everything's Gonna Be Alright
TLC - Hat 2 The Back
Salt n Peppa - Express Yourself
Ma$e - Bad Boy
All classics! All back to back! I was driving to work with the biggest smile on my face. As if I had tricked someone to get all this for free. I don't quite know how to explain it. I have no idea how Clear Channel is going to make any money on it - but that's not my problem, I love it!
It's the little unexpected things in life that brighten my day. This one came out of nowhere with a 5 song medley that put me in the best mood.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Boston vs LA
I’ve been amazed that one of the continuing things I’ve heard over my first year in LA was “wow, you actually like it?” That, of course, was the follow up to the original hit “wow, I can’t believe you’re actually moving!” Both statements stand out to me, for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I’m caught off guard how surprised people are that I love LA.
Once I talk with them and explain the new surroundings, that not everyone is trying to be a movie star, and basically that the perception they have of “LA” is actually “Hollywood” and my life consists of avoiding Hollywood, they start to see the light. I tell them about the “beach communities” – Santa Monica, Venice, Marina del Rey, Manhattan Beach – all cities unto themselves that are very relaxed, laid back towns with everything you need. Compared to Boston, each one provides a unique flavor- kind of like the Cambridge, Brighton, Brookline suburbs of Boston- but much bigger. And with better weather.
Spending a few days back in Boston this week, the differences came rushing back. So I thought I’d try to identify a few of the key differentiating points between Boston & LA. And why the obvious differences – weather, traffic – are really much bigger points than I had originally thought.
Weather
So yea yea yea, the weather is “nicer” in LA. That’s an easy one. But what first caught me last summer was the consistency of it. I’ve been in Boston for 5 days now, and it was 75 on Wednesday, 92 on Thursday, 95 on Friday, a nice 73 and sunnyish on Saturday. Then yesterday was the best. Started off sunny and humid around 80, then a huge thunderstorm complete with hail rolled through, turned the street into a river, then went back to sun an hour later. That’s what you call “weather”!
LA was sunny & 75 all summer last year. No crazy heat, no erratic swings in temperature, no crazy thunderstorms. Wait, I should preface this by saying Santa Monica was sunny & 75 all summer last year. (As I learned on the ski slopes at Mammoth Mountain this winter, Californians hate it when you say “I’m from LA” – like the seemingly nice lady next to me on the lift told me “that doesn’t tell us anything! LA is huge!”) Which is actually a worthy point, because Santa Monica is right on the ocean, and stays the perfect temperature. Not too hot, not too cold. You go 10-15 miles inland, to “the valley” and you’ll get 100s. As I said, I avoid Hollywood, and will now extend that to, I avoid Hollywood and the valley.
I was looking forward to the lack of extreme cold in the winter, I didn’t realize I would also get the lack of extreme heat in the summer. I had started joking about this with friends before I left Boston- isn’t it a sign of the apocalypse when the city you live in is uninhabitable without heat/air conditioning for all by 2 months of the year? All winter you’re freezing your butt off, running from the heat in your house to the heat in your car, cursing wildly hoping the car’s heater will somehow start thawing your fingers just 10 seconds sooner than normal. Then finally there’s 1 month in the spring around April / May when you can drive with the windows down, don’t have to heat the car or the house- it’s beautiful.
That quickly moves to stifling humidity and feeling like you’re walking in a sauna. Which lasts through the summer and forces you to rush from the air conditioning in your house to the air conditioning in the car to the air conditioning in the office. Around September / October you get another 1 month stretch where the fall leaves change and you don’t need heat or AC. That changes by mid-October and you’re bundling up again and wearing a jacket for the next 6 months.
So I ask… isn’t that the sign of the apocalypse? The city is uninhabitable without heating/cooling intervention for the vast majority of the year.
I had a great little taste of that this week… Thursday and Friday were “too hot” then by Saturday night at the Red Sox game, sitting outside, it was “too cold”. The temperature swing are unbelievable. When you live here, you deal with it because you have to. When you get to LA, your eyes are opened to a whole new reality!
Santa Monica is the perfect climate. It might have jumped to 80 degrees a few times, but it always dipped down to the 60s at night. You could always sleep with the windows open and it was great. Quick story- when I was looking for an apartment, I couldn’t believe the units didn’t come with central air. I was convinced the real estate agents were trying to trick me when they said “you don’t need it, it doesn’t get that hot here”. I was so convinced that after I found an apartment, I went to Best Buy and bought one of those free standing AC units- which was used exactly 3 nights all last year. 2 of which were in October! (Don’t ask, weird heat wave.)
But the consistency of the weather really amazed me. I wore a jacket to work, maybe, 5 times all “winter”. People said I would miss the seasons, I didn’t. People said I would miss the snow, I didn’t. I went up to Mammoth twice, got my fill of snow, skiing & winter, then happily drove back to the sun and 75. You can be comfortable outside all year long. I really don’t know how weathermen survive in LA. It must get so boring! The same thing every day. Great for living, bad for meteorologists.
Traffic
This is the next big one. People complain about LA traffic. And you won’t hear any rebuttals from me. It’s awful. No two ways about it. But more than just “it’s awful”- and what does that even mean?
The first thing that struck me was the volume of cars. There are so many of them. 22 million people live in Southern California. (LA, Orange Country, San Diego) I’ve never seen such lack of correlation between where people live and where they work. A 30 minute commute is considered great. An hour is routine, and an hour and a half is not quite common, but not surprising. So “rush hour” is bad- but not in the way that Boston has predictable patterns that you can work around. Or how one side of the highway is bad in the morning, and the opposite side is bad in the afternoon.
I’ll never forget when I was visiting my dad about 10 years back, and we were driving up to LA from Orange County in the afternoon and we found ourselves dead stopped on the highway. There were 7 other lanes headed in our direction- all dead stopped- and I glanced across the highway and the opposite lanes, all 8 of those, were also dead stopped. 16 lanes, both directions, all stopped. It was amazing. And it happens all the time. My best theory is that there are just so many people, that one slight incident (someone driving too slow, someone not merging, or God forbid an accident) has a massive ripple effect that gets magnified because of the car volume.
You kind of get used to the traffic (I now know to plan at least 30 minutes even to go 7 miles) but you also avoid highways at all costs during peak times because the traffic doesn’t move. On Route 128 in Boston, even in rush hour, you’re usually at least creeping along. Even if it’s 20-30 mph, you’re moving. In LA, you stop way too often on the highway, and will often creep at 5 mph. It’s awful.
The bad part about that is it confines you to your area a lot more. I like the “Westside”- the immediate area around Santa Monica. I have friends in the “South Bay”- about 15 miles south- but rarely see them because that’s usually an hour drive. In Boston, friends would routinely drive 20 miles from north of the city to my place for a BBQ. Minus getting stuck in Sox traffic, that was an easily doable commute. In LA, you don’t do that unless you really have to. Kind of unfortunate, because it’s such a great city, and it would be even better if you could explore the neighboring communities more without worrying about it taking so long.
And a tangent of traffic – pedestrians.
Luckily Kevin warned me about j-walking when I first got to LA, because a friend of his had warned him about it on an earlier visit. People don’t j-walk in LA. They wait patiently at crosswalks for the light to change and to receive the “walk” signal. And if they don’t think they can make it because there’s not enough time in the walk signal- they wait for the next walk signal. Took me forever to get used to this.
Back in Boston this week, I was quickly reminded about what I had previously regarded as the typical way. Driving down Beacon St towards Coolidge Corner, I had 2 green lights ahead of me, a few hundred feet ahead, at each light, I saw people quickly darting across the road to cross. One of which was an older couple in their 70s, one was a mid-20 year old. It’s the norm in Boston- if you can make it, go. Makes for much more interesting driving. I found myself paying a lot more attention, especially in the downtown area where people just hop out from behind parked cars and look to cross.
Another offshoot of traffic – honking and aggression.
I had forgotten what honks sound like! I was driving with my mother, and she had the audacity not to immediately step on the gas when a light turned green because she was looking for something in her purse. Luckily, the kind gentleman in the car behind us was nice enough to alert her by laying on the horn 1 second after the light changed. I started laughing in the car. I hadn’t heard someone do that in a year.
Which leads immediately to the aggression. In Boston, people want to get where they’re going with as few delays as possible. And they’ll make that happen by honking at you, cutting you off, running yellow lights, turning left across oncoming traffic when it’s questionable if the oncoming cars will be able to avoid you, swerving around you if you slow down to take a left turn, continuing through an intersection even though you’ll be stopped halfway through thereby delaying crossing traffic and so many more. Those things rarely happen in LA. It really annoyed me at first, but I’ve come to be ok with it. People are just more mellow.
Oh, I forgot, the mellow comment reminds me of another aspect of the weather that amazes me and I am convinced leads people to be in a better mood- it’s always sunny. Always! I swear, must be 350 days a year- if not more. On the rare days it’s overcast in the morning, it’s sunny by the afternoon. So not only is the temperature always perfect, it’s always sunny. No rain, no snow, rarely wind- it’s amazing. For a long time I didn’t want to go see a movie during the day on a weekend because I was afraid I would miss out on a sunny day. I quickly realized that every day was a sunny day, and if I wanted to go see a movie, I just have to go.
Now a few non-traffic & non-weather related differences…
The ocean… in LA / Santa Monica, the ocean is a much bigger part of my life than it ever was in Boston. Both cities are on an ocean, but only in one can you walk next to it year round without feeling like your fingers are going to fall off. The outdoor lifestyle is much more alive in LA due to the aforementioned great weather. You see people walking, running ,roller blading, biking all year round. People aren’t obsessed with fitness and health (as a lot of people would have you believe) but it is a more noticeable part of people’s lives. I think the sheer fact that you wear short sleeves most of the year causes you to want a nicer body. There’s no winter hibernation where a few extra pounds from November to March are easily concealed by your winter coat.
And check out this picture of the coast. You don’t get cliffs like this around Boston. Just beautiful. It allows restaurants to be set up right on the water, where you can see dolphins, seals and the occasional whale offshore. It’s a bigger part of your life, which I welcomed.
The starting times of sporting events… this is just weird. The 3 hour time difference takes some getting used to when all your friends are back east. Calling people has to be planned, and I quickly learned there was about a 1 hour window post-workday that I could talk to my old friends. Other than that, the east coast starts to go to sleep and you’re catching up over the weekend.
When I sat down to watch my first NFL game in LA- at 10am Sunday morning- everything was normal enough. Apart from waking up and basically turning on the game right then, instead of waiting until 1pm like back in Boston, it was all pretty normal. When I got up to grab a snack, though, halfway through the 2nd quarter, I glanced at the clock and did a double take when it said 11:30am. I started at it for a second and had to remember that the game started at 10am, not 1pm. I was so used to my ritual of Sunday football beginning at 1pm that it took me a few weeks to get used to it.
Beyond football, though, it’s annoying to miss the majority of Red Sox, Celtics & Bruins games that start at 4 or 4:30pm LA time. The big upside is never having to stay up until midnight to watch the end of a game! Watching the end of the Lakers game the other night as the clock passed 11:30 I was reminded how great it was that even the World Series, notorious for going late into the night on the east coast, was over by 9pm in LA.
Now in fairness, let me mention the biggest negative of LA- earthquakes. As I got older, my experiencing truly unique “firsts” dwindled. I knocked out riding a bike for the first time around age 4, swimming at age 5, driving a car at 16- you don’t get many firsts as life goes on. But being in my first earthquake- wow, totally different. I was in my office last summer on the 10th floor in one of our conference rooms overlooking the streets below. A consultant who had flown in from San Francisco was talking, and all of a sudden the floor shook. After about 3 seconds, I glanced at a co-worker, who had similarly moved to LA 6 months before, and we both had the same look- oh crap, the ground is still moving- this is an earthquake!
After about 20 seconds or so it stopped, but I was freaked out. My first instinct was to get out of the building. My mind immediately went to 9/11 and not wanting to be in the middle of a collapsing building. That’s how freaked out I was. My colleagues who had been through earthquakes before were laughing, thinking it was hilarious that I had just lost my earthquake virginity. They said we now have to play a game where we guess how big the earthquake was on the Richter Scale. I wanted no part of that. It took me a few hours to really feel back to normal, and in the months since there have been a few smaller quakes, but I still can’t say I’m “used to it”. The ground isn’t supposed to shake.
I guess every region has their natural disasters – hurricanes, tornadoes, nor’easters, earthquakes – so you kind of have to deal with what you have. And I’ve had lifelong LA-ers tell me they prefer earthquakes because you don’t know it’s coming. I don’t know if I agree with that – I think I would rather have the chance to leave in the face of an oncoming hurricane – but it’s definitely a lingering thought in the back of my mind about when the next earthquake will hit.
Now, if you want to make things really interesting and spice of the lives of meteorologists, add earthquake predictions to their job descriptions. Have them put a little challenge in their day. I want to know not only if the temperature will be 71 or 73 tomorrow, but also if there will be an earthquake.
When people ask me about my time so far in LA, I always relay my overwhelmingly positive experiences. I tell them to judge for themselves. And after one year, I can point to my first fellow convert. A friend who came to visit on a Wednesday, by Sunday had decided he needed to move to LA. He’s moving in July. If you’ve never been, come visit LA & Santa Monica to judge for yourself before condemning it as the land of silicone and muscle beach.
Once I talk with them and explain the new surroundings, that not everyone is trying to be a movie star, and basically that the perception they have of “LA” is actually “Hollywood” and my life consists of avoiding Hollywood, they start to see the light. I tell them about the “beach communities” – Santa Monica, Venice, Marina del Rey, Manhattan Beach – all cities unto themselves that are very relaxed, laid back towns with everything you need. Compared to Boston, each one provides a unique flavor- kind of like the Cambridge, Brighton, Brookline suburbs of Boston- but much bigger. And with better weather.
Spending a few days back in Boston this week, the differences came rushing back. So I thought I’d try to identify a few of the key differentiating points between Boston & LA. And why the obvious differences – weather, traffic – are really much bigger points than I had originally thought.
Weather
So yea yea yea, the weather is “nicer” in LA. That’s an easy one. But what first caught me last summer was the consistency of it. I’ve been in Boston for 5 days now, and it was 75 on Wednesday, 92 on Thursday, 95 on Friday, a nice 73 and sunnyish on Saturday. Then yesterday was the best. Started off sunny and humid around 80, then a huge thunderstorm complete with hail rolled through, turned the street into a river, then went back to sun an hour later. That’s what you call “weather”!
LA was sunny & 75 all summer last year. No crazy heat, no erratic swings in temperature, no crazy thunderstorms. Wait, I should preface this by saying Santa Monica was sunny & 75 all summer last year. (As I learned on the ski slopes at Mammoth Mountain this winter, Californians hate it when you say “I’m from LA” – like the seemingly nice lady next to me on the lift told me “that doesn’t tell us anything! LA is huge!”) Which is actually a worthy point, because Santa Monica is right on the ocean, and stays the perfect temperature. Not too hot, not too cold. You go 10-15 miles inland, to “the valley” and you’ll get 100s. As I said, I avoid Hollywood, and will now extend that to, I avoid Hollywood and the valley.
I was looking forward to the lack of extreme cold in the winter, I didn’t realize I would also get the lack of extreme heat in the summer. I had started joking about this with friends before I left Boston- isn’t it a sign of the apocalypse when the city you live in is uninhabitable without heat/air conditioning for all by 2 months of the year? All winter you’re freezing your butt off, running from the heat in your house to the heat in your car, cursing wildly hoping the car’s heater will somehow start thawing your fingers just 10 seconds sooner than normal. Then finally there’s 1 month in the spring around April / May when you can drive with the windows down, don’t have to heat the car or the house- it’s beautiful.
That quickly moves to stifling humidity and feeling like you’re walking in a sauna. Which lasts through the summer and forces you to rush from the air conditioning in your house to the air conditioning in the car to the air conditioning in the office. Around September / October you get another 1 month stretch where the fall leaves change and you don’t need heat or AC. That changes by mid-October and you’re bundling up again and wearing a jacket for the next 6 months.
So I ask… isn’t that the sign of the apocalypse? The city is uninhabitable without heating/cooling intervention for the vast majority of the year.
I had a great little taste of that this week… Thursday and Friday were “too hot” then by Saturday night at the Red Sox game, sitting outside, it was “too cold”. The temperature swing are unbelievable. When you live here, you deal with it because you have to. When you get to LA, your eyes are opened to a whole new reality!
Santa Monica is the perfect climate. It might have jumped to 80 degrees a few times, but it always dipped down to the 60s at night. You could always sleep with the windows open and it was great. Quick story- when I was looking for an apartment, I couldn’t believe the units didn’t come with central air. I was convinced the real estate agents were trying to trick me when they said “you don’t need it, it doesn’t get that hot here”. I was so convinced that after I found an apartment, I went to Best Buy and bought one of those free standing AC units- which was used exactly 3 nights all last year. 2 of which were in October! (Don’t ask, weird heat wave.)
But the consistency of the weather really amazed me. I wore a jacket to work, maybe, 5 times all “winter”. People said I would miss the seasons, I didn’t. People said I would miss the snow, I didn’t. I went up to Mammoth twice, got my fill of snow, skiing & winter, then happily drove back to the sun and 75. You can be comfortable outside all year long. I really don’t know how weathermen survive in LA. It must get so boring! The same thing every day. Great for living, bad for meteorologists.
Traffic
This is the next big one. People complain about LA traffic. And you won’t hear any rebuttals from me. It’s awful. No two ways about it. But more than just “it’s awful”- and what does that even mean?
The first thing that struck me was the volume of cars. There are so many of them. 22 million people live in Southern California. (LA, Orange Country, San Diego) I’ve never seen such lack of correlation between where people live and where they work. A 30 minute commute is considered great. An hour is routine, and an hour and a half is not quite common, but not surprising. So “rush hour” is bad- but not in the way that Boston has predictable patterns that you can work around. Or how one side of the highway is bad in the morning, and the opposite side is bad in the afternoon.
I’ll never forget when I was visiting my dad about 10 years back, and we were driving up to LA from Orange County in the afternoon and we found ourselves dead stopped on the highway. There were 7 other lanes headed in our direction- all dead stopped- and I glanced across the highway and the opposite lanes, all 8 of those, were also dead stopped. 16 lanes, both directions, all stopped. It was amazing. And it happens all the time. My best theory is that there are just so many people, that one slight incident (someone driving too slow, someone not merging, or God forbid an accident) has a massive ripple effect that gets magnified because of the car volume.
You kind of get used to the traffic (I now know to plan at least 30 minutes even to go 7 miles) but you also avoid highways at all costs during peak times because the traffic doesn’t move. On Route 128 in Boston, even in rush hour, you’re usually at least creeping along. Even if it’s 20-30 mph, you’re moving. In LA, you stop way too often on the highway, and will often creep at 5 mph. It’s awful.
The bad part about that is it confines you to your area a lot more. I like the “Westside”- the immediate area around Santa Monica. I have friends in the “South Bay”- about 15 miles south- but rarely see them because that’s usually an hour drive. In Boston, friends would routinely drive 20 miles from north of the city to my place for a BBQ. Minus getting stuck in Sox traffic, that was an easily doable commute. In LA, you don’t do that unless you really have to. Kind of unfortunate, because it’s such a great city, and it would be even better if you could explore the neighboring communities more without worrying about it taking so long.
And a tangent of traffic – pedestrians.
Luckily Kevin warned me about j-walking when I first got to LA, because a friend of his had warned him about it on an earlier visit. People don’t j-walk in LA. They wait patiently at crosswalks for the light to change and to receive the “walk” signal. And if they don’t think they can make it because there’s not enough time in the walk signal- they wait for the next walk signal. Took me forever to get used to this.
Back in Boston this week, I was quickly reminded about what I had previously regarded as the typical way. Driving down Beacon St towards Coolidge Corner, I had 2 green lights ahead of me, a few hundred feet ahead, at each light, I saw people quickly darting across the road to cross. One of which was an older couple in their 70s, one was a mid-20 year old. It’s the norm in Boston- if you can make it, go. Makes for much more interesting driving. I found myself paying a lot more attention, especially in the downtown area where people just hop out from behind parked cars and look to cross.
Another offshoot of traffic – honking and aggression.
I had forgotten what honks sound like! I was driving with my mother, and she had the audacity not to immediately step on the gas when a light turned green because she was looking for something in her purse. Luckily, the kind gentleman in the car behind us was nice enough to alert her by laying on the horn 1 second after the light changed. I started laughing in the car. I hadn’t heard someone do that in a year.
Which leads immediately to the aggression. In Boston, people want to get where they’re going with as few delays as possible. And they’ll make that happen by honking at you, cutting you off, running yellow lights, turning left across oncoming traffic when it’s questionable if the oncoming cars will be able to avoid you, swerving around you if you slow down to take a left turn, continuing through an intersection even though you’ll be stopped halfway through thereby delaying crossing traffic and so many more. Those things rarely happen in LA. It really annoyed me at first, but I’ve come to be ok with it. People are just more mellow.
Oh, I forgot, the mellow comment reminds me of another aspect of the weather that amazes me and I am convinced leads people to be in a better mood- it’s always sunny. Always! I swear, must be 350 days a year- if not more. On the rare days it’s overcast in the morning, it’s sunny by the afternoon. So not only is the temperature always perfect, it’s always sunny. No rain, no snow, rarely wind- it’s amazing. For a long time I didn’t want to go see a movie during the day on a weekend because I was afraid I would miss out on a sunny day. I quickly realized that every day was a sunny day, and if I wanted to go see a movie, I just have to go.
Now a few non-traffic & non-weather related differences…
The ocean… in LA / Santa Monica, the ocean is a much bigger part of my life than it ever was in Boston. Both cities are on an ocean, but only in one can you walk next to it year round without feeling like your fingers are going to fall off. The outdoor lifestyle is much more alive in LA due to the aforementioned great weather. You see people walking, running ,roller blading, biking all year round. People aren’t obsessed with fitness and health (as a lot of people would have you believe) but it is a more noticeable part of people’s lives. I think the sheer fact that you wear short sleeves most of the year causes you to want a nicer body. There’s no winter hibernation where a few extra pounds from November to March are easily concealed by your winter coat.
And check out this picture of the coast. You don’t get cliffs like this around Boston. Just beautiful. It allows restaurants to be set up right on the water, where you can see dolphins, seals and the occasional whale offshore. It’s a bigger part of your life, which I welcomed.The starting times of sporting events… this is just weird. The 3 hour time difference takes some getting used to when all your friends are back east. Calling people has to be planned, and I quickly learned there was about a 1 hour window post-workday that I could talk to my old friends. Other than that, the east coast starts to go to sleep and you’re catching up over the weekend.
When I sat down to watch my first NFL game in LA- at 10am Sunday morning- everything was normal enough. Apart from waking up and basically turning on the game right then, instead of waiting until 1pm like back in Boston, it was all pretty normal. When I got up to grab a snack, though, halfway through the 2nd quarter, I glanced at the clock and did a double take when it said 11:30am. I started at it for a second and had to remember that the game started at 10am, not 1pm. I was so used to my ritual of Sunday football beginning at 1pm that it took me a few weeks to get used to it.
Beyond football, though, it’s annoying to miss the majority of Red Sox, Celtics & Bruins games that start at 4 or 4:30pm LA time. The big upside is never having to stay up until midnight to watch the end of a game! Watching the end of the Lakers game the other night as the clock passed 11:30 I was reminded how great it was that even the World Series, notorious for going late into the night on the east coast, was over by 9pm in LA.
Now in fairness, let me mention the biggest negative of LA- earthquakes. As I got older, my experiencing truly unique “firsts” dwindled. I knocked out riding a bike for the first time around age 4, swimming at age 5, driving a car at 16- you don’t get many firsts as life goes on. But being in my first earthquake- wow, totally different. I was in my office last summer on the 10th floor in one of our conference rooms overlooking the streets below. A consultant who had flown in from San Francisco was talking, and all of a sudden the floor shook. After about 3 seconds, I glanced at a co-worker, who had similarly moved to LA 6 months before, and we both had the same look- oh crap, the ground is still moving- this is an earthquake!
After about 20 seconds or so it stopped, but I was freaked out. My first instinct was to get out of the building. My mind immediately went to 9/11 and not wanting to be in the middle of a collapsing building. That’s how freaked out I was. My colleagues who had been through earthquakes before were laughing, thinking it was hilarious that I had just lost my earthquake virginity. They said we now have to play a game where we guess how big the earthquake was on the Richter Scale. I wanted no part of that. It took me a few hours to really feel back to normal, and in the months since there have been a few smaller quakes, but I still can’t say I’m “used to it”. The ground isn’t supposed to shake.
I guess every region has their natural disasters – hurricanes, tornadoes, nor’easters, earthquakes – so you kind of have to deal with what you have. And I’ve had lifelong LA-ers tell me they prefer earthquakes because you don’t know it’s coming. I don’t know if I agree with that – I think I would rather have the chance to leave in the face of an oncoming hurricane – but it’s definitely a lingering thought in the back of my mind about when the next earthquake will hit.
Now, if you want to make things really interesting and spice of the lives of meteorologists, add earthquake predictions to their job descriptions. Have them put a little challenge in their day. I want to know not only if the temperature will be 71 or 73 tomorrow, but also if there will be an earthquake.
When people ask me about my time so far in LA, I always relay my overwhelmingly positive experiences. I tell them to judge for themselves. And after one year, I can point to my first fellow convert. A friend who came to visit on a Wednesday, by Sunday had decided he needed to move to LA. He’s moving in July. If you’ve never been, come visit LA & Santa Monica to judge for yourself before condemning it as the land of silicone and muscle beach.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Life before DVR?
Spending time at my mom’s house in Boston this week, I was transported back in time… by watching TV without a DVR. I had to make a point of remembering to watch PTI at 5:30pm EST and had to deal with not being able to fast forward through commercials. I had rushed through a shower to make sure I was sitting for the start of the show (what can I say? I love PTI), but mentally knew I could finish my post-shower routine during the first break. As they were winding down the first segment, and the first commercial hit, I immediately left the room, hung up my towels- etc. I say this because it hit me that commercials- more than ever- are just an excuse to do something else. I know this has always been the case, but it’s such a start contrast leaving my DVR cocoon back home and having to watch live TV.
Interestingly, I just realized, I also left my HDTV behind at home, but somehow that doesn’t bother me as much. My mother has an old 27” Sharp standard definition TV, which is just fine. I love my HDTV, but even watching the end of the Lakers game last night, the contrast from DVR to non-DVR was much more stark than HDTV to standard-def TV.
DVR is a life changing technology- along the lines of cell phones, the internet, etc- things that you wonder how you lived without before they existed.
And being in ad sales, my mind immediately goes to the billions of dollars that are spent on TV commercials. What a waste of money. It’s been talked about to death that we live in a multi-tasking world, but I started this blog post during the 1st commercial break and finished it during the 2nd because I literally could not sit still and just watch the commercials. I suppose I could have also channel surfed, but I would love to know if there is a way to figure out how much money is being wasted on commercials that people never see. It’s now the 3rd commercial break and I honestly just struggled to remember any of the commercials during the show. I recall Castol motor oil, but just because that happened to be on during the last commercial break when I thought “gee, I wonder if I remember any of the ads”, and the iPhone, because that was just on. Other than that, pure wasted money.
Interestingly, I just realized, I also left my HDTV behind at home, but somehow that doesn’t bother me as much. My mother has an old 27” Sharp standard definition TV, which is just fine. I love my HDTV, but even watching the end of the Lakers game last night, the contrast from DVR to non-DVR was much more stark than HDTV to standard-def TV.
DVR is a life changing technology- along the lines of cell phones, the internet, etc- things that you wonder how you lived without before they existed.
And being in ad sales, my mind immediately goes to the billions of dollars that are spent on TV commercials. What a waste of money. It’s been talked about to death that we live in a multi-tasking world, but I started this blog post during the 1st commercial break and finished it during the 2nd because I literally could not sit still and just watch the commercials. I suppose I could have also channel surfed, but I would love to know if there is a way to figure out how much money is being wasted on commercials that people never see. It’s now the 3rd commercial break and I honestly just struggled to remember any of the commercials during the show. I recall Castol motor oil, but just because that happened to be on during the last commercial break when I thought “gee, I wonder if I remember any of the ads”, and the iPhone, because that was just on. Other than that, pure wasted money.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
1 year gone in an instant
I was talking to my 11 year old brother Albert today, and he was explaining to me how slowly time moves for him. Weeks took a while in his eyes, he couldn't understand what all the fuss was about with this whole "time flies" thing. I laughed as he said "I just don't get it. My mom keeps saying time goes by so fast, but it just doesn't for me". Mind you, this is a busy kid. Anyone that's met him or heard be talk about him knows he's not a normal 11 year old. Well, scratch that, he's not normal in a lot of good ways, but in the "he has his schedule packed more than any 11 year old should"- he's completely normal. Tennis on Monday, Boy Scouts on Tuesday, piano on Wednesday, etc etc etc. So I got to thinking.... at what point does time accelerate?
Back in January, I turned 30, and realized my 20's passed by in what can only be described as the blink of an eye. I remember graduating college like it was yesterday. And I have now used 2 cliches in the first 2 sentences of this paragraph and have no issue with either because they are both true. I realize I am "only 30" and have a limited frame of reference with which to judge this- but it seems to me that life accelerates faster as you get older. When I was Albert's age, I guess I was similar to him- wrapped up in the activities of my life, but without the perspective to begin wishing I could enjoy each moment more. I didn't realize how fast something will occur, and how quickly you'll be on to the next one. And how even events that stretch out over years, like college, will still come and go.
One of my favorite examples of this is freshman & sophomore year in college. I think back on the awkwardness of moving in, meeting new friends, worrying about finding people I would want to hang out with for the next four years, etc. Then we went to the dining hall and found that good food was very difficult to make 21 times a week. Boy did we complain about that food! "How do you mess up pasta?!" or "seriously it's salad- how do you screw up salad?!?!" But I've now had this conversations with a few friends, who I originally met in those freshman dorms but have stayed some of my closest friends since, and we all agree- we'd give virtually anything to go back and relive those 4 years. When we were there, we didn't know how good we had it. Now they're gone, and we only have the pleasant memories to recall.
What does any of this have to do with the here & now? Nothing, really, except that I'm more aware of time passing by. When I sat down to write this first blog, I thought I would wax philosophical about what my first year in LA meant. Things I've learned, what I thought, and I still will bring up memories from my first year here- but first I have to acknowledge the speed with which it flew by.
When Kevin & I pulled into LA after our final stop in Las Vegas in April of 2008, it felt like an adventure waiting to unfold. New cities, new neighborhoods, new friends yet to be met, new restaurants to be explored, new bars to try new beers in, just something new every day. And I half-heartedly intended to continue the blog all along, but I sort of knew deep inside it wouldn't happen. I was quickly caught up exploring my new surroundings, and writing just didn't seem to fit. 8 months had gone by before I was in Vegas for CES (Consumer Electronics Show) and was asked to write some blog posts for my company's tech blog. In 3 days I became emersed in the latest techology had to show off, and found myself loving writing about it.
Now after recently marking my 1 year anniversary of moving from Boston to LA, I have re-comitted myself to actually updating "the blog". Kevin has made agreed to guest blog from the east coast, so we'll see if we can get the bi-coastal blog working! 2 guys on 2 coasts with 2 perspectives.
On the plus side of not writing anything for a year, I now have a full year's worth of adventures, observations, sarcastic comments and wise ass remarks to share! I'll post them here over the coming weeks and months as I remember them, as well as throw some things up that I've been wanting to write about. There will be no particular ryhme or reason to it, just some fun randomness.
Back in January, I turned 30, and realized my 20's passed by in what can only be described as the blink of an eye. I remember graduating college like it was yesterday. And I have now used 2 cliches in the first 2 sentences of this paragraph and have no issue with either because they are both true. I realize I am "only 30" and have a limited frame of reference with which to judge this- but it seems to me that life accelerates faster as you get older. When I was Albert's age, I guess I was similar to him- wrapped up in the activities of my life, but without the perspective to begin wishing I could enjoy each moment more. I didn't realize how fast something will occur, and how quickly you'll be on to the next one. And how even events that stretch out over years, like college, will still come and go.
One of my favorite examples of this is freshman & sophomore year in college. I think back on the awkwardness of moving in, meeting new friends, worrying about finding people I would want to hang out with for the next four years, etc. Then we went to the dining hall and found that good food was very difficult to make 21 times a week. Boy did we complain about that food! "How do you mess up pasta?!" or "seriously it's salad- how do you screw up salad?!?!" But I've now had this conversations with a few friends, who I originally met in those freshman dorms but have stayed some of my closest friends since, and we all agree- we'd give virtually anything to go back and relive those 4 years. When we were there, we didn't know how good we had it. Now they're gone, and we only have the pleasant memories to recall.
What does any of this have to do with the here & now? Nothing, really, except that I'm more aware of time passing by. When I sat down to write this first blog, I thought I would wax philosophical about what my first year in LA meant. Things I've learned, what I thought, and I still will bring up memories from my first year here- but first I have to acknowledge the speed with which it flew by.
When Kevin & I pulled into LA after our final stop in Las Vegas in April of 2008, it felt like an adventure waiting to unfold. New cities, new neighborhoods, new friends yet to be met, new restaurants to be explored, new bars to try new beers in, just something new every day. And I half-heartedly intended to continue the blog all along, but I sort of knew deep inside it wouldn't happen. I was quickly caught up exploring my new surroundings, and writing just didn't seem to fit. 8 months had gone by before I was in Vegas for CES (Consumer Electronics Show) and was asked to write some blog posts for my company's tech blog. In 3 days I became emersed in the latest techology had to show off, and found myself loving writing about it.
Now after recently marking my 1 year anniversary of moving from Boston to LA, I have re-comitted myself to actually updating "the blog". Kevin has made agreed to guest blog from the east coast, so we'll see if we can get the bi-coastal blog working! 2 guys on 2 coasts with 2 perspectives.
On the plus side of not writing anything for a year, I now have a full year's worth of adventures, observations, sarcastic comments and wise ass remarks to share! I'll post them here over the coming weeks and months as I remember them, as well as throw some things up that I've been wanting to write about. There will be no particular ryhme or reason to it, just some fun randomness.
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