world of good

I never thought I'd be so excited to say this... I got a new job. You are looking at the regional sales manager of World of Good, a fair-trade handicraft import company started by my friend Siddharth (whom I met when we hired him as an intern at Informix back in 1998) and his former classmate at the Haas School of Business, Priya Haji.

Wait, what? Sales? OK, I'll admit, it's a bold leap.

I majored in English in college. I often found myself answering the question, "So what are you going to do with that?," causing me to doubt if my $28,000/year education was buying me any marketable skills. I had visions of myself donning a paper hat and offering fries with that. (I now know that a liberal arts education was absolutely the best choice for me, but confidence was not always so high.)

Having discovered the joys of the VAX system in 1993, I spent an unfathomable number of hours in the computer lab fingering new friends across the country. I became a computer geek. My personal life revolved around 'talk' dates that overflowed my Day Runner. I failed freshmen macroeconomics. My friends almost ran an intervention. I got a job working in the computer lab so at least I could get paid to waste time.

In addition to great entertainment and a giant time suck, I also saw my love of computers as an opportunity to improve my typing skills, be an early-adopter of this newfangled technology and perhaps make myself more marketable after graduation. It worked out pretty well for me. I spent the seven years after college working for various technology companies. From my first job fresh out of college at Dataviz to my current contract gig at Siebel, I've always worked in high tech.

It hasn't been all bad, kicking it in my cubicle, living in Office Space, drinking the Flavia. I've been pretty happy. I've learned a lot. I've become 'tech-savvy.' I've had excellent mentors and brilliant co-workers who became good friends. I've partied like a rock star on free buffets and martinis, collected armloads of corporate schwag and anticipated the rounds of the Friday beer cart.

But the time has come for me to move on. My plush 3-day a week contract gig at Siebel will come to an end. I'll begin shadowing Priya on sales calls, getting versed on our products and target market. I'll be driving all over the Bay Area, scoping out potential outlets for our concept and keeping current customers happy. This opportunity gives me the chance I didn't know I was looking for. To meet new people. To help create and drive strategy. To do my part to invoke social change. To be truly excited about something.

This is scary. I may suck at it. Wish me luck.

Beware the Ides of March!

This is one of my favorite days of the year because I get to walk around with a look of consternation, a foreboding furrowing of my brow and warn in my best soothsayer's voice, "Bewaaaaaare the Ides of March!" What can I say, I'm a Shakespeare nut.

Unfortunately, just like Julius Caesar, I was unable to remain ensconced in my bedroom chamber today and had to make my bi-weekly commute down to work in San Mateo to complete the prototype and functional specification document for a publishing automation solution I'm.... zzzzzzzzz. Whoa, sorry, almost fell asleep on my keyboard there.

Here's some happy news. Thanks to the encouragement of some good friends, a few weeks ago I checked out photo contests online and entered one for an online travel magazine called InsideOut. A week or so after entering, I checked the site and discovered they are based right here in San Francisco and were hosting a travelers' happy hour at a local art gallery. As I stood there nursing a Cosmopolitan and watching the slideshow of all the entrants, one of the magazine staff introduced himself and informed me my photo had won Photo Editor's Pick. (I'd only entered the one shot of the goat herder, but they asked me for a few more to complete their page layout since everyone else had entered 4-5 shots.)

Evening addendum to today's previously published happy news: in addition to my photos, I just got some writing published online. I'm on a one-month trial writing for Nitevibe and had my first 'weekly pick' chosen as a Featured Event (see Get YER Freak On!). OK, so my editor made a little tweak here and there, but most of it's actually mine. Please note the (AF) at the end and the credit under 'Field Correspondents" at the bottom. Wahoo!

Last night I went to a Q&A/book signing at Cody's Books in Berkeley to hear Robert S. Boynton, author of a new book entitled The New New Journalism, and Eric Schlosser, author of the best-selling and deeply disturbing Fast Food Nation delve into topics such as questioning the increasing preference among readers and editors of non-fiction over fiction, and the emergence of blogging as a new brand of journalism. This topic is quite popular on NPR these days as the controvertial question, Are Bloggers Journalists? rages on. To what standards of ethical and factual reporting could and should bloggers be held? Must they reveal their sources in cases of distributing certain types of sensitive information? My friend danah is a subject-matter expert on this stuff so I'll leave it to her to go there, but all I can say is this all reminds me of the days when the record industry was freaking out about Napster. Hello! Welcome to the 21st century! Opponents of technological evolution who have nothing better to do but try to quash freedom of information/data exchange make my head spin.

catch up potpourri

I've been avoiding the computer. My fingers and wrists are acting up again. Nothing serious, just a little numbness and stiffness due to my horrific ergonomic set-up both at home and work and the fact that I never really did learn to type properly. Hmm, that's 11 years of incorrect form on an almost daily basis. That can't be good. Right now I'm sitting on a comforter to try to raise myself up a bit, but it's a fluffy comforter and I am sinking down into it pretty far. Now lamenting I didn't buy a deeply discounted Aeron chair when my former employer Scient shut its San Francisco headquarters in 2001 and liquidated all its top-of-the-line dot-com era office accoutrements.

On Saturday night I danced like a fiend with Mattia, Michelle and my roommate Amy at Burning Solstinox. "The Saturday night halfway between burns, when we are equally distant from two burns and farthest away from any." Chillout tents, art installations, hoola-hoopers, faux fur and fuzzy coats, friendly interactions and wacky, wonderful individuality and creativity coalesced to produce that comfy, playful, open playa vibe that left me feeling like I was halfway home.

After giving my neighbors a free show for the last week, I bought curtains for my new room. I went ahead and got a shared storage unit with Amy, and aside from the couple of boxes stacked in the corner of my room, I am pretty settled in. I'm loving life in the big city and am relishing being able to leave my 1991 Honda Civic with its dents, cracked windshield and sagging bumper parked, and walk places for a change. One caveat: unless I want to go to the poorhouse, I must learn to be mindful of the posted parking regulations. Ranging from rush hour towaway zones to street cleaning zones to "2-hour parking 9 AM - 9 PM Monday through Saturday, except vehicles with Area S Permits," this city is full of ways for drivers to carelessly indebt themselves to the San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic. Don't get me started on the fun involved in parallel parking on the left-hand side of a busy one-way street during rush hour.

Yesterday I got out to enjoy the early spring warmth and walked to Union Square to freshen up my wardrobe for spring. Usually, I shop like a man. I know what I want, I go to the store, I buy it. Sure, for big ticket items and things that come in a variety of colors or designs, I may hem and haw a little but cut me some slack, I'm a Gemini. Yesterday I shopped like a woman, or really more like a high-school girl, and spent three hours combing the racks at the new Forever 21 on Powell Street. This place is the ultimate outlet for "now" clothing that's designed and priced to fall apart in five washings, which is no problem since by the time they do, they're out of fashion anyway. There's been a Forever 21 in the little mall near my sister's house for years, but they've hit the big time and recently opened huge, multi-level stores in New York City and San Francisco. I imagine the styles currently adorning the mannequins bear a striking resemblance to what they must've stocked in 1984 when the company, then called Fashion 21, opened its doors in Los Angeles. I can't believe I am living through my first decade resurgence.

Walking down Market Street, I saw an ad for Bud's new beer with caffeine, ginseng and guarana extract. According to Anheuser-Busch's press release it's a "distinctive new product for contemporary adults who are looking for the latest beverage to keep up with their highly social and fast-paced lifestyles." We all know what that means. Just for fun, I Googled the properties of Ginseng and was immediately invited to peruse some Penis Enlargement Articles. Go on, down a few of these babies and let the good times roll!

Last night I watched a wonderful Icelandic film entitled Noi (Noi Albinoi) about a brilliant but bored 17 year-old-boy who dreams of departing his barren, isolated fjord and, when not gazing longingly at scenes of palm tree-lined beaches through his ViewMaster, concocts various clumsy attempts to escape with his hot girlfriend Iris. Aside from being beautifully shot and directed, it's fresh, honest, human, tragic, and laugh out loud hilarious. Go get it.

Upsizing: Backpacks to 10' UHauls

I moved apartments this weekend and while my DSL is functioning properly, my mind is not. I'll make this snappy. The past week has been a blur of packing, organizing, cleaning, trips to Goodwill, the dump and other various outlets that have graciously received bits of my overwhelming accumulation of things. The friends who helped me move were alarmed at the sheer volume of stuff I still possess even after paring it down.

I'd like to point out that I have lived in San Francisco almost my entire life and have never had to sell everything in order to pack off to begin a life in a new city with only two duffel bags and the clothes on my back. There's no family home where the memorabilia of my youth collects dust in an attic or garage, far away from storageless urban apartments. I know some people who have rooms in their family homes that have remained untouched for over a decade since they left for college; relics of the past frozen in time like some sort of suburban domesticity museum. Nope. Wherever I go, my parents' gold-leaf wedding china goes with me. Wherever I lay my hat, I lay my father's collection of antique cameras and my mother's photographs and letters from her years in the first Peace Corps mission (Ethiopia '62 - '64). I wouldn't have it any other way- but I might begin giving some thought to a storage unit.

One note on my new place before I hit the hay. My bedroom is an exhibitionist's dream. There are at least ten apartments that can see directly into it from a multitude of angles. Time to unpack my binoculars and invest in some curtains.