Restructuring

It’s one of those sad days where your company takes a different direction, which results in many of your colleagues involuntarily leaving. I can honestly say that I’ve been through a lot of layoffs over the last nine-plus years, one of which directly affected me, but I’ve never felt as sad as I felt today, probably because I never cared as much as I do now — both about the people and the company. We let go of some extremely smart and talented people in our office today.

And because our office in New York is already so small compared to San Francisco, it’ll be a drastically different place to come to work to tomorrow.

Workplace

Last week while having a Cuban dinner in Miami, one of my colleagues and I got into an argument. We weren’t yelling or raising our voices, but it was obvious we were having a huge disagreement around roles and responsibilities, and who should be speaking about what during our scheduled Friday meeting with a customer. I tried really hard to be controlled and not to make this a personal issue, and in the end, we eventually did come to a semi consensus and let the meeting go where it went. Today, he called me to discuss follow-up items from the meeting, who should take charge of what, and also… to apologize for arguing with me. He said he wasn’t in a good head space, was having some personal issues (I recently learned that one of his best friends died from cancer), and that he was a bit scatter brained as a result and inadvertently took it out on me and didn’t mean to.

I’ve had a couple heated arguments at my last job, a company and job I never truly respected, and they were always hostile, rooted in sexism, probably racism, and hierarchical bullshit that I’ll never quite agree with. They never, ever ended in an apology, not even the slightest, even when the other person was clearly out of line and overstepped his bounds (and even got called into HR for a formal talk). The people, particularly the men in inflated roles, never really had any self-awareness, and they refused to admit they were wrong.

I will probably have many more disagreements with colleagues while I am here… because I am not a doormat, and that’s okay as long as everyone is still smart, ambitious, respectful, and driven to do the right thing, and wants the best for this business. I kind of believe that really is the case here. I never believed that to be the case where I left. It’s almost like I’m so much more grateful for what I have now because I always had to deal with so much garbage at the last place. When I get mad at work now, it’s rarely because I think people are stupid. It’s never because I think they are sexist (I have yet to feel even an inkling of that). This feels like a good place.

Preparing food

Even though Chris would be leaving for a work trip today, I still wanted to make use of the leftover potatoes I had from a few weeks ago and make an egg curry, but I felt it was probably going to be too much food for just me to eat on my own. So I decided to invite two of my friends over to join me. Since I had more company, there were more things I could make, like the garam-masala roasted broccoli and cauliflower dish using my own mixed and roasted garam masala, and the Indian-style roasted eggplant that turned out really good and super spicy. The more people you have, the more variety you can have because more mouths will eat it. Otherwise, I’d be eating egg curry every single day this week.

We’ve been discussing flight plans at work, which also asks questions about what you’re generally passionate about outside of the “work place.” I love preparing food for people, and I really like seeing their reactions to my cooking. I get a kick out of their facial expressions, and oftentimes, even with my closest friends, I’m surprised by what they really really love vs. like. One of my friends who came over tonight said his favorite thing on the table was the mashed eggplant. I wasn’t expecting that at all from him, but I think he said it was because of how many spices there were in it, and how hot it was (it used fresh chilies and chili powder).

Glamping

Our team is going to unite with our San Francisco counterparts the last week of November for a “glamping” team-bonding retreat. What this means is that we will all be driving about 1.5 hours south of the city to a retreat camp, and sharing bedrooms with about four beds each.

As soon as all three of us learned this in the New York office, we looked over our monitors at each other and grimaced a bit. We’re city people. We like our own spaces, the limited amounts that we have. The idea of sharing a room with anyone not a close friend or Chris makes me a bit uneasy, especially now that I am in my thirties. I embrace my alone time and my time away from “outside people,” as my mother says.

This just means that in my single night hotel stays between the glamping outing, I will be savoring my room even more now.

Body aches

And the day after having our friends over for dinner and too much drinking, I have woken up with massive body aches. This is just a sign I am getting older and cannot recover the way I used to.

Or maybe this is a sign that I should have followed my doctor’s instructions to stay away from alcohol, especially in the evenings, two weeks after I stopped taking antacids and Tums for my laryngopharyngeal reflux. My body is rebelling against all this alcohol, and now it’s making me feel decrepit and achy everywhere.

 

Serving food that not everyone knows about

I’m a sneaky friend. I will never, ever serve you food that I know you are allergic to. If you are pescatarian, I will never give you food that has chicken broth or pork bits in it. If you are deathly allergic to crustaceans, there’s no way I’d sneak it into the food I serve you because I don’t really want anyone dying or dialing 911 while at my apartment.

But if you claim to dislike something when I know there’s a strong possibility you would like it, especially when it’s made a certain way, I’m probably going to try to serve it to you. Why? Do you know how many people everyday utter statements like “I don’t usually like <lamb or insert some other food they think is gross>, but I had it at <fill in the restaurant name>, and it was soooo good!” Isn’t that a sign that you probably could like it if it was prepared a certain way?

So I made banh cuon, a Vietnamese steamed rice crepe traditionally filled with minced pork, shrimp, wood ear mushrooms, and shiitake mushrooms tonight — a very laborious dish that takes a lot of time and preparation, and I decided, what the hell, I’m going to keep in the shrimp even though my friend coming tonight says she refuses to eat it. When I described all the dishes at the table, I left out the fact that this dish had minced shrimp (she’s probably going to read this blog post now and call me out on my trickery). I felt a little guilty, but I did it anyway.

So she served herself, and she ate it. And she went back for seconds and thirds. And then she raved to me afterwards and even after she left via text how amazing the food was.

She just happily devoured shrimp. I wonder if she had any clue or inkling. I’m wondering if I should tell her this, or if I should just keep it a secret.

 

Trick-or-treat

In our new building at this time of year, they allow units to volunteer and sign up to give out candy to kiddies who will be trick-or-treating on Halloween afternoon or evening. So I decided to volunteer our apartment. I bought two different types of Kit Kats and a bag of variety M&Ms for the kids. And I told Chris that I want us to re-use our his-and-her matching banana costumes from five years ago so that we can greet the kids in our own costumes. He didn’t seem to be a fan of this.

In my adult life, given I have lived in New York City for all of it other than the years in college, I’ve never really had the joy of greeting trick-or-treaters, reveling in their interesting costumes, and handing out candy to them in their enthusiastic states. I feel like this is an “adult” thing to do to participate in our building’s activity. Now, I just need to get Chris to participate, too.

After the Blast

Tonight, we went to see After the Blast, a show at the Lincoln Center about the aftermath of a huge devastation that happens on earth that results in all human beings needing to retreat underground to survive. No one is able to feel the sun on their face again, or see a blue or grey sky, or even see wind blow through trees or bushes. Every “experience” is simulated, and everything is regulated from the amount of water you drink per day to the ability to move forward and get pregnant and have children. The two protagonists in the play are struggling with fertility, as they’ve been rejected many times by a council in their request to get pregnant. The wife is suffering from depression and wants very badly to go back to earth again, but at the rate they are going, it could take over 100 years to get there, and she will obviously be gone before then.

A few things struck me about the play. One of the first comments she makes when she’s having a seemingly two-sided chat with a robot who has been rented to help her is around stupid things that humans say that are actually terrible. Why do we say “having a blast” to connote “having a good time”? After having a massive explosion on earth that resulted in everyone who survived needing to retreat, that saying has taken on a new meaning for her. And why do humans say “shits and giggles” to mean “having fun,” as well? Is “shit” fun? And when her husband Oliver asks if she remembers when they used to sit in restaurants and have water immediately poured into their glasses.. and then quickly refilled once even half a glass was consumed… isn’t that just the craziest thing, to live in a time and a place where the amount of water was not regulated, where you could drink freely and no one ever admonished you or measured what you were doing?

And then I remembered — that water comment is specifically about the U.S. When I’m in other countries like Australia, they don’t just pour water freely without asking into your glass and throw it out when you are gone. They have carafes of water at the tables with empty glasses at your place mats so you take what you want and leave behind what you don’t. This fucking wasteful country. We have no idea how good we have it and exactly how wasteful we really are.

Opioid crisis

I live in the land of plenty: plenty of food, people, money and general wealth. I live in a country where it’s easy to turn a blind eye to the things you don’t want to see or choose not to see. I also live in a country where, in a population of about 320 million, as of last year, we dished out about 236 million opioid prescriptions. That’s over 70 percent of the population of this freaking country. And that’s just prescription pain medication. What about the people who are taking and eventually overdose on over the counter pain killers?

That’s just the amount of pain killers and opioid prescriptions, though. What about the actual dosage levels in the over-the-counter medications we take? I honestly never thought much about until I went to Australia and had to get prescription medication for my pertussis two years ago, and I started looking at dosage information. I was told that dosages are much lower in other countries than in the U.S. And, I was reminded of this when I ran into a colleague at our conference in Vegas this week who is originally from the Midwest but now lives in Sydney, Australia, and she complained endlessly about how “weak” the over-the-counter and antibiotic prescription medications she had there were, how they “did nothing” for her, and how every time she comes back to the States, she literally packs a huge empty suitcase to fill up with stronger over-the-counter medications, antibiotics and prescription pain medications (her sister is a doctor, so she can easily write whatever prescription she wants), and liquor (liquor is really expensive in Australia). She experiences frequent pain, has difficulty sleeping more than an hour or two at at time, and relies on these American levels of pain medication to keep her going.

She’s discussing this with me and two of our American colleagues who have never been to Australia before. They know nothing about healthcare outside of the U.S. I’m not criticizing them by saying that, but it’s true; before Chris, I didn’t know much about healthcare outside the U.S., either, other than in China, Hong Kong, and Vietnam, only because I’ve either visited or had family there who told me about what it’s like in those places. So, they are shocked and think Australia must be a crazy place to see a doctor or get any Rx filled. I painted a very different story of what I’ve experienced my time getting treatment there, as well as in New Zealand. I also made a joke about why we now have a national opioid crisis and literally tens of thousands of people are dying because of their addiction to pain medications. She didn’t seem to find it funny or get how that was relevant to what she was talking about.

At the end of the day, we all have our own opinions about what healthcare should be and what makes sense. But the numbers don’t lie: the U.S. sucks when it comes to healthcare, both cost, treatment, and preventive care. There’s a reason we have an opioid crisis. There’s a reason infant and new mother mortality is so high here across industrialized nations. There’s a reason we have a shorter life span than our industrialized nation counterparts. And it’s not because we’re better. It’s because we’re fucking worse.

So yes, I do like my colleagues overall a lot more here than I have anywhere I’ve ever worked. But I don’t think all of them are smart or have perspective or even see how flawed  their arguments are. This one was down right neurotic and ignorant. You always think that traveling and especially living abroad would give you more perspective, but when you just take all your nationalism with you, doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose? If it’s so much better here, why doesn’t she just come back and live in the greatest country on earth with the greatest president on earth?

Long week ahead

Tomorrow, I’m off to Vegas for our annual user conference. It’s the first time our conference has been in Las Vegas, so a lot of people are very excited. Given that I do not enjoy clubbing or staying out late to get trashed, Vegas has never really been my scene. But I have a feeling I’m going to be seeing a number of customers lose a lot of money at poker tables and colleagues get so drunk that they won’t remember what they said or did the night before.

We actually had a long training session last Friday on all the procedures for Opticon. One of the things that our head of human resources said that I’d actually never heard before was, you know how people always say, “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?” Well, in our case, what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas because we’re bringing our office to Vegas. For that three-day period, all of Vegas is our office, and so that is how we should behave.

It honestly sounded a bit parental, but I think we all know that we usually don’t have 4-6 drinks with customers in the office and ink deals that way. That’s done at restaurants and at conferences like these.