Net-Net

In a conversation with Bonnie today, she told me her company's worst biz-glish offender is "Net-Net". I'd never even heard of that before. It means, "and the result was...."

Example: We implemented X, Y and Z. Net-net: we signed the client.

Low-hanging Fruit

I was at a day-long meeting today, sharing best practices across the company, which is great. I heard the phrase "low-hanging fruit" at least twice an hour.

What's your favorite over-used biz-glish?

Crackberry addiction

Has it gone too far when I'm making blog posts from the jungle via Blackberry? I'm sort of tickled and sort of embarrassed.

Jungle eats

Ok, I'm not quite in the wilds yet. Dad & I are in Manaus waiting to get picked up to go by boat to our jungle lodge for the rest of the week. So, in our very non-exotic hotel in .anaus, I had Piranha soup for breakfast! It is a spicey fish soup with lots of green onion that you squeeze a good bit of lime into.
Piranha, by the way, is a Tupi-Guarani word that means fierce fish.

Only in Japan

I was addicted to Tetris in college. This was found by Maria, my college roommate who watched me waste many hours playing it.

Meet and Greet around the world

From the International Herald Tribune, so apt and so funny

Tyler Brûlé : The best and worst in meeting venues

By Tyler Brûlé

Friday, October 12, 2007

If you live in the northern hemisphere October means autumn, if you're south of the Equator you're in early spring and if you reside in that special place called "medialand" it means the season of the list. At this very moment on editorial floors stretching from Taipei (my current location) to Melbourne across to Santiago and back up to Vienna, writers are busy compiling their year-end lists for December and January issues.

Not to be outdone, I've been working on a list of my own. But instead of making you buy this paper sometime between Christmas and New Year's, I'm going to save you the suspense and give you my ranking of the world's most and least hospitable places to conduct business meetings. The following criteria were gathered over the course of the past two months while on assignments in Asia, Europe and North America:

1. Venue. The meeting had to be held in the client's place of business.

2. Friendliness of reception staff. Points were deducted for offices that had laid off their receptionist in favor of a staff list stuck to the wall and a lonesome looking phone.

3. Security procedures. Points were deducted for silly measures like having your photo taken.

4. Waiting time from the moment the receiver was replaced to the time someone came out to greet guests.

5. Waiting time from being placed in holding room until the moment the host materialized.

6. Greetings. Points deducted for not having a business card. Further points deducted for avoiding eye contact, fishy handshakes and untucked shirts.

7. Coffee, tea or? Extra points for additional catering. Points deducted for not offering anything. Automatic failure for showing up with your own beverage but not offering anything to your guests.

8. Pacing of meeting. Automatic failure for starting the meeting with: "Just so you know, I'm a little pressed for time so I'm going to have to be out of here in less than 20."

9. Focus and engagement. Extra points for putting your mobile phone on silent and placing it face down and disqualification for taking a call in the middle of a presentation.

10. Farewells. Full marks for seeing a guest all the way to the exit and marks deducted for leaving them to get lost in a maze of partitions and desks.

Over the past few weeks I've visited the following countries: France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Britain, Denmark, Sweden, the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Finland, Singapore, Spain, Belgium and now Taiwan. While you'd think there'd be a global corporate standard for receiving and hosting guests, the following reveals that a few countries need to enroll in finishing school. Here's how five of the 16 fared.

GERMANY German receptionists tend to be efficient and to the point. Hosts usually show up promptly and security is kept to a minimum, though some banks have started to behave like American companies with their security measures. Business cards are the norm rather than the exception and coffee, two types of water and apple juice tend to feature at the center of the table. In wealthier companies there might be chocolates too. Mobile devices are kept at a distance and ignored. The host will usually escort you to the lift and offer a firm handshake goodbye. Score: 9/10

SWEDEN Blame it on efficiency or cost cutting but many Swedish firms have resorted to the "call me on my mobile phone as you enter reception and I'll come down and get you" school of meeting and greeting. Sometimes a meeting that was supposed to be attended by three will only feature one person because one is off sick with a cold and another is home looking after a child with the flu. Meetings start on time and there's always fizzy Ramlösa on the table. Mobile devices are peered at occasionally. Meeting rooms are always well equipped with extension cords and full wireless and chairs tend to be ergonomic. The host will show you to reception and will often ensure your transport is sorted. Score: 6.5/10

UNITED STATES Receptionists increasingly seem to be off-brand and might be better suited to running their own nail bars than greeting visitors. Security measures are too heavy-handed - passports are required for crossing borders, not riding in elevators. It's become industry standard to make guests wait before sending an assistant out to fetch them and an all-too-common practice to make them sit while the host paces around the office on the phone. Guests are seldom offered drinks but the host(s) usually show up with towering coffee thermoses or water bottles that indicate they know something about a looming drought that you don't. Meetings are prefaced with odd sayings like "I'm going to have to jet in about five minutes but my colleagues will fill me in after" or "I'm glad you reached out today and came to see us." Blackberries will be consulted throughout the session and quite often the visitor will have to repeat main points several times. Guests leave meeting rooms parched and bewildered. Score: 4/10.

JAPAN Hosts are occasionally waiting in reception already and there's always a juggling act of dealing with shuffling umbrellas and bags while pulling out business cards. Meetings occur in rooms that are uniformly gray on gray on gray and tea (hot or cold) or coffee (hot or cold) will be brought in by a young girl teetering on Vuitton heels while balancing her tray of beverages. If there are four to six hosts, one will usually nod off during the presentation but this will be compensated for by colleagues who will make all kinds of grunts and gasps. You won't be quite sure when the meeting has ended, but eventually everyone will put hands on thighs, bow and visitors will be escorted to reception and hosts will bow till the visitor is out sight. Score: 7/10

ITALY Reception is often a man's job and the mood can range from personable to not particularly interested. Waiting times in Italy get longer the further south you go but are never as bad as you might expect. A good coffee is always a feature, more so than even water. Mobile phone calls will be taken and callers will be told off accordingly for ringing during a meeting, and visitors shouldn't count on meeting rooms featuring a broadband cable let alone Wi-Fi. Guests will be sent off with much animation and excitement. Score: 7/10.

If I were to draw up another list, it would be for business opportunities in 2008, and a global chain of workplace etiquette schools would top the ranking. My first campuses would be in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Free Rice

So here's a website, where you can do good for yourself (improving your vocabulary) and good for others (donating rice.) Check it out, it's fun.

Free Rice

Ma and Wally

My godson and his great-grandmother. So cute.

The Rhubarb Trilogy - Jam

The things you can find on YouTube! How to make rhubarb jam, every step including picking it in the garden. I found this after watching the clip above.

Pick your candidate

If you haven't seen this yet, it's a short quiz on your political beliefs, which gives results of which political candidate you most closely agree with. Select a Candidate 2008

Peace Prize

I have to say I'm disappointed with the choice of Al Gore for the Nobel Peace Prize. I've spent my career in the areas of environment and alternative energy, so a number of people approached me on Friday morning, smiling, to talk about it. Yes, it brings further attention to issues of the environment, which is good. But Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth is misleading and emotive. He lacks scientific rigor and just goes for the heart-strings. I'm not a big fan.

I was pleased to see that they tempered it by sharing the prize with the UN's IIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but the whole thing strikes me as political and Hollywood.

Duck Fat

I have a feeling this new job is going to keep me running. On the morning of my 3rd day, Wednesday, my alarm was set for 4 o'clock so I could make a 6:30 flight to Los Angeles, where I met a colleague from the Washington, a major client and a whole scad of other people. That said, I haven't had a chance to give you any edifying posts until now. This one will only be useful to those of you in/near Chicago, but it's worth it.

Saturday, George and I went to Hot Doug's (The Sausage Superstore and Encased Meat Emporium) for lunch. It's a sausage/hot dog joint in the middle of industrial/commercial nowhere on the NW side of the city. You drive along these empty streets until you see a place with a line out the door and around the corner. Now I had heard great reviews of their homemade specialty sausages and the Fri/Sat specialty of Duck Fat French Fries, but I had no idea I'd be spending 40 minutes in line waiting for them. It was worth it. We waited in line, mostly with folks who looked like hip Bucktowners getting over their hangovers. We were the only ones with combed hair and un-ironic shirts. We got recommendations from the 20-something bleach-blond guy in skinny jeans in line behind us, and ordered from the list of daily specials. Our favorite was the Saucisse de Toulouse with carmelized onions and brie.

Cooking for One

I recently picked up a book called, "Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone." There's great freedom in cooking for yourself - you have no one to please, you don't have to sit at the table, use a fork or turn on the stove.

When I'm alone I eat one of the following:

• Pasta, with a sauce made from what's in the cupboard or freezer
• Bread and cheese
• A huge pan of roasted asparagus

One time I had some hard boiled eggs on hand, so I spent the entire evening making empanadas to use them up. (I'm sure there's an easier way.)

So, what do you eat/cook when no one else is looking?

Politics, Religion & Theater

Mom and I saw a very interesting play on Sunday, Passion Play by Sarah Ruhl at the Goodman Theater. It presents plays within the play, showing the towns, actors and politics around putting on Passion plays in Elizabethan England, early Nazi Germany and post-Vietnam US.

Elizabeth was anti-Catholic, but mostly just trying to get both politics and religion under her control. In Nazi Germany, Hitler visits the passion play in Ober Ammergau, and congratulates the town for its emphasis in attributing blame for Jesus' death on the Jews rather than the Romans. In post-Vietnam US, the actor playing Pontius Pilate wonders why Pilate doesn't take responsibility, and Ronald Reagan says he, like the play, will bring hope to the country.

How much of politics is theater? How is the theater used for political ends? How is religion used in the discourse of politics, now and through the ages? How does politics influence religion, in a time when pulpits have been used to endorse candidates? Is there a separation between religion and theater in the Passion Play?

What does the most recent famous version, Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson, say about our time? He has been accused of anti-semitism, and indeed his portrayal of Pilate and the Jewish crowd are similar to the one portrayed in Nazi Germany. He emphasizes blood, gore, death and suffering, not resurrection, hope and rebirth.

I'm reading a book review in last weekend's WSJ of The Stillborn God by Mark Lilla. The book explores the history of political theology, noting that Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was the first one to try to separate politics and religion. In the 1960's books were being written predicting the end of religion altogether, but the last quarter of the 20th century to the present has seen religion take a major role in politics in Iran's Revolution, the Christian right in the US, and the Hindu nationalist BJP party in India, to name just a few.

Salade Nicoise

Here is a beautiful blog entry with pictures and recipe for a Salade Nicoise. It really is the perfect meal, combining so many of my favorite things - green beans, tuna, tomatoes, potatoes, and olives. (Admittedly, sometimes I skip the hard-boiled egg.)

George made a confession a while ago, that he had thought for many years that Nicoise was a misspelling of Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus where he grew up. So, he never tried it because, of course, he already knew what a salad from Nicosia would taste like.

Terracotta Warriors in London

For any of you who have not been to China, but might be going to London any time soon, be sure to go to the British Museum, where the largest ever exhibition of the terracotta figures outside of China will be held until April 6.

I visited China in the summer of 2000 with my mother. It included a few days in Xian, where the army was discovered. When the figures are first unearthed, they are quite vividly colored, but the paint quickly fades with exposure to the air. They are leaving some portions of the army unexcavated, in the hopes there will be better technology/methods to preserve that color in the future.

In Tribute to the Late Great...

Pavarotti singing Ave Maria by Schubert. Enjoy!

Slav Clarification, More Dubrovnik & Zagreb

My good friend Ron, who knows much about many things, including Russia, Slavs and European history, left a comment that I'll reproduce here. In my last post, I'd been blathering on about northern and southern Slavs as if I knew something about the subject. (Thank you, Ron, for educating me.)

Russians btw are Eastern Slavs, with the Belorussians and Ukrainians while the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks are Western Slavs.

Here are a few more Dubrovnik pics. Also, here are some pictures of Zagreb, which I'll admit that I knew zero about, but figured it would be very communist looking. We spent just 1/2 a day there, between a flight from Dubrovnik and a train to Ljubljana (of which, more soon.) What I, unfortunately, do not have pictures of are the wonderful fruit & veg market in Zagreb in a central square and the lanes and lanes filled with outside tables of coffee shops.

A view from the walls of Dubrovnik to a fortress protecting the western approach.

A view of Dubrovnik's harbor from the walls.

A famous Zagreb church with (questionable) roof tiles from the 1890s depicting the crest of the city.

The Zagreb cathedral.

Islands off Dubrovnik

Due to popular demand, pictures as well as observations on culture and cuisine.

Culture: I certainly won't pretend to be an expert, but it was interesting to hear George say, multiple times, It's like Greece in some ways and not in others. Geographically and culturally, Croatia is between Greece and Italy, though of course the language and people are Slavic. (I guess when I think of Slavs, I think of Poles, Russians, the northern Slavs, whereas Croatians, obviously, are southern Slavs.) Whenever there was traditional Croatian music being played, it sounded Greek to George, except for the language.

I don't think I can fairly comment on the people, given that we were in the most touristy place at the height of the season. Service and friendliness were in line with what you'd expect. It seemed to me "post-Communist." The attitude was, I'm doing my job, but I'm not getting paid to smile at you. That said, certainly noone was rude or unpleasant, just very busy.

The food tended more to the Italian - grappa, amazing ice-cream, risottos, pasta, espresso. Mostly, though, there were plenty of Mediterranean staples, like fish, tomatoes, salad and wine.

Below are pics from the day we took a boat to 3 islands off Dubrovnik. I will post more pictures, including Zagreb and Slovenia in the coming days.

Here's a view into a walled garden on an island about 30 minutes by boat from Dubrovnik. George got the picture by climbing up some stairs across the road. Notice the wonderful grape arbor.

Here is the harbor of that same island. This was our view as we had an afternoon espresso.

An artsy shot for you - burnt-down candles in a monastery church on the island of Lapad.

A view of the water and harbor from that same monastery on Lapad. The water was refreshingly chilly given that the air temp was in the 90s.

I couldn't help myself - another artsy shot. The monastery was under renovation and there were stacks of copper pipe lying on the ground under some low palms.

Dubrovnik

Here is the main square in Dubrovnik on a Saturday afternoon.


Much to George's dismay, many of the so-called streets in Dubrovnik resembled nothing so much as extended stairways. Here he is with his coffee in a cafe/stairway.

The beautiful cloisters at a monastery in Dubrovnik, which also housed the 3rd oldest pharmacy open to the public in Europe (which now looks much like a Vienna drawing room.)
Check out the nice capital here with the dogs.

My favorite picture of George and me from this trip, also in the monastery cloister.

The street our rooms were on. Those are a lot of stairs after a long day of sight-seeing.

Vacation!!

And so, I'm off for 10 days to Croatia and Slovenia. I already know that Slovenia is beautiful having visited it in 1994 (backpacking after college,) and I understand that Croatia is magnificent. You can be thinking of me gazing at the blue Adriatic.

I'll let you know....

Killer Whales

This is spectacular. Here are pictures of a superpod of orcas off the coast of Washington photographed in July.

Edith Piaf

I saw the movie La Vie en Rose last night, a biopic of Edith Piaf. Here's one of my favorite songs by her.

How to

I like #6.

Top 10 "How to" Searches in the U.S (4 weeks ending 7/21/07)
1. How to tie a tie
2. How to have sex
3. How to kiss
4. How to lose weight
5. How to write a resume
6. How to levitate
7. How to draw
8. How to get pregnant
9. How to make out
10. How to make a video

What does it mean to be Black in America?

Pundits are talking about Barack Obama not being Black. What does it mean to be black? As I think about this and read what other's have to say, it seems in the face of Obama, people are quickly readjusting their definitions. Being African-American is not enough, you have to be descended from West African slaves brought to the US. Are the pundits collectively redefining because Obama breaks the boundaries, including the assumed ones of class and power? For example, here is a quote from an article proclaiming that Obama is not black:

Not descended from West African slaves brought to America, he steps into the benefits of black progress (like Harvard Law School) without having borne any of the burden...
- Deborah Dickerson, Salon.com, Jan 22, 2007

Is Black really a class issue instead of a descent issue? Notice that Deborah Dickerson does not point out the reversal of Jim Crowe laws, which pertains to all African Americans, as evidence of black progress, but refers instead to Harvard Law School, which applies to a miniscule minority of Americans of any color. Although she does not say so explicitly, she's talking about Blackness as a Class issue. Yes, Class, which is something Americans don't like to talk about.

These questions come to me in vivid relief as I think about my brother and how he compares with Barack Obama. For those of you who don't know my family well, my brother, who sees himself as black, was adopted as an infant by my white parents.

Similarities between my brother and Obama:

• Bi-racial, half African descent, half European
• Raised by white family, at times overseas
• Both will be followed by security guards when they walk into a store
• Both will be pulled over more often than I will
  

The differences between my brother and Obama:

• Obama is white collar and has political power, my brother is blue collar and does not have political power
  

Other than the fact that pundits won't get on TV talking about my brother, on paper, my brother and Obama are alike in background except for their chosen career paths and subsequent rise in the socio-economic structure.

So, give me your thoughts - What is Black? Race? Ethnicity? Family history? Class? Some intersection of these?