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I had every intention of entering a post into the “StuffWhitePeopleLike” contest in order to win a copy of the book and to also have a post featured on the site.  But they closed the contest at the beginning of Friday rather than the end of Friday, so I was unable to submit an entry.  I have to be honest and say that I may not have had time to pull it together regardless, but I like to think I could’ve.  I had several ideas ruminating in my head on this one. Some of these included:

1. Montessori preschools
2. Moby
3. Going to Late Night/24hr Restaurants in Ethnic (non-white) Neighborhoods
4. Exotic Hot Sauce
5. Adoption (but not of white kids)

I felt like I had a couple of thoughts on these that might elicit a chuckle or two, but the one that I had finally settled on was this:

Being a “Foodie”

White people are obsessed with food, though most of them don’t have the personal time, energy, or skill to make themselves a great meal on a daily basis.  Keep in mind that white people also hate corporations, so relying on those awful corporate purveyors of fat, calories, and over-sized portions is anathema to the typical advanced white person.  No McDonald’s, TGI Fridays, Applebee’s or KFC for Taite, Amanda, and the kids tonight (NOTE: For some reason, though, In-N-Out burger is exempt from this scorn because… well…. because the burgers have lettuce in them.  Or something.  Who knows?) !  No, none of that kind of food for the advanced white person because they are likely to be “Foodies.”

Foodies like to believe they have an advanced palate and that food is more than just nourishment, it is an experience.  They obsess over the minutiae of food preparation by world-class chefs and marvel over all steps of the food preparation and presentation process so that they can appreciate the holistic experience of consuming extremely expensive food.  However, many foodies are quick to point out that the “Foodie Experience” is not solely about consuming very expensive food. 

Foodies will invariably point to street food in exotic countries as part of the foodie experience, largely because there’s no multi-national corporation backing the local fast/street food.  And the fact that you can eat at a cart and not get sick – without even needing to pass a health inspection! – means that the raw ingredients used MUST be fresh and, therefore, good for you (many of these foodies will overlook the amount of carbs consumed from a noodle street cart in Tokyo, but will peel off the bun as if it were a soiled diaper from a hamburger purchased in America).  Another bonus of the street cart experience is that the foodie also feels like they’re really helping out the poor street vendor when they hand over a few coins to them and utter the few words of thanks they learned from their Fodor’s Guide.  If the white person comes back multiple times to eat at the same cart, they will feel like they’ve somehow bonded with the poor local and that the street vendor will remember them for the rest of his/her life because of the shared experience of eating some noodles or other exotic local delicacy.  It’s truly a win-win situation.

But a foodie cannot eat of street food to the exclusion of other food experiences, so it’s off to the white linen tablecloth establishments eventually.  Foodies can smell a corporation a mile away (again, turning a blind eye to the fact that ALL restaurants are corporations, just not big multi-national conglomerations), so even though a place might have flavorful food, there will always be something slightly off at the place that serves not only Thai but also Korean and Japanese fusion at the same time.  Those are places that are fine, if you’re “just slummin’ it” but those are never places one goes to have a Foodie Experience.

When engaging a white person you suspect may be a foodie, you should casually test the waters by mentioning a local sushi establishment as one of your favorites.  Be sure to know the name of the one with the least amount of seating and the highest per-roll cost.  That is typically a safe bet.  If the white person’s eyes light up and they start going on about the “rice preparation being the key” and so forth, then you know you’ve hit a foodie.  At that point, you should casually mention how you prefer the omikase since you “trust the sushi chef implicitly” and let on your distaste for fancy rolls with non-traditional ingredients.  From there, you can launch into the local donut shop “that has no parking but is so worth it anyway” and then move on to the 5-star restaurants in your local city.  At this point, the white person will have a tremendous amount of respect for your taste and intelligence and will likely invite you out to a “tasting” at some point in the future.

In my infrequent forays into blogging, I have yet to write about politics (I think).  Over the years since I was first able to cast a ballot, I have drifted ever left-ward in my political leanings.  I think perhaps that history may be more unkind to George W. Bush than the present.  It’s very likely that he will be remembered as the Worst President in American History.  Whether that mantle gives him any more comfort than being seen as one of the most Forgettable Presidents in American History only he can decide.  Perhaps it’s better to be remembered infamously than as just another name in a list that might be on the exam.  Who’s to say?

There’s no doubt that there are millions of people around the globe who feel Bush and his administration has set America and the World back.  And who knows how he might feel about that.  But I have to think that there’s at least 1 person who is pissed as hell.  And George will probably never live it down, and perhaps he even feels a little bad for the guy.  That person is, of course, Jeb Bush.  The likelihood that the country will allow another Bush into the White House after the debacle that is the GWB presidency is the lowest it has ever been.  And if it werent for the generally anti-intellectual sea of which the electorate is made up of, I would say that it’s impossible for it to ever happen.  But sorry to say that in American politics, nothing is impossible.  Nevertheless, Jeb Bush has got to be hoppin’ mad that his big brother has pretty much single-handedly killed his presidential aspirations.  Not that I worry too much about that, of course.

As a parent of a 2 and 5 year old, I go through the entire gamut of emotions nearly every day.  Children have a way of affecting you like no other power on Earth, but I have to say that a couple of things really stand out.

The first – and most clearly the best – feeling a parent gets from their child is an enormous sense of pride and love as they learn and grow and accomplish things for the first time.  These highs are pure joy, even for little things like drawing a recognizable face – complete with almost-round head, 2 eye-like things in roughly the right place, and a line or oval-shaped thing for a mouth – for the very first time, to more technically accomplished things like riding a bike without training wheels.

The other feeling is the most incredible, deepest heartbreak that you’ve ever felt because your child is/has experienced pain or sadness or frustration in his or her life.  The feeling a parent gets is overwhelming when your child is him/herself in pain either physical or emotional.

Over the last several days, I’ve noticed a story that’s been unfolding with someone whom I really only know by face and name, though we share many of the same friends.  Ellen and Matt K. had to let go of their daughter Emma, and I can only barely imagine a fraction of their feelings right now.  As a parent I can almost feel by proxy the heartache, sadness, and rage, but also the deep calm of having their other daughter Ella by their side.

Sometimes it is hard to reflect on a day-to-day basis when you’re dealing with noodles on the floor, tomato sauce on the doorway trim, snot being licked off an upper lip (our daughter’s own,fortunately), or a particularly insistent need to have scrambled eggs for breakfast rather than cereal, that these little frustrations will pass and that there’s another opportunity for joy to be had right around the corner (if nothing else, the immense joy of watching your child sleep), all that on top of whatever highs and lows one might have had at work that day along with any personal stresses stringing you out.  It is all too easy to forget. 

But due to the loose fraternity and sorority that parents share as cohorts and commiserators, it is at these times that we are reminded harshly that all of these experiences are really joys in that we would not trade them in for the alternative.  So, my heart goes out to the Kowalczyk family in this time, and I know that we’ll all hold our kids a little tighter.

Oy.  So much for my New Year’s Resolution (made early, no less).  Maybe because I didn’t make it on NYE, it doesn’t count as a resolution.

Anyway, nearly a year ago, I left Microsoft after 10 years and went to Adobe.  I wrote a whole long post about it back then that Wordpress somehow decided to eat.  Not sure why.  Fast forward to Februrary of this year (I’ve been saving up this story for nearly 2 months now).  I was down in San Jose at our nearly-annual/nearly-biennial Tech Summit, which is an internal conference for the company to gather together and see what we’re all doing.  It was pretty cool to see something like this.  Microsoft doesn’t do this sort of thing, but I suppose that would be a prohibitively mammoth undertaking to try and get everyone in the company together for a week long conference.  Never mind that everyone in the Seattle area would probably blow it off and go into the office instead.  Anyway, I digress.

One night during the conference, there was a dinner organized for all of Adobe’s Program Managers to take part in, if they so chose.  This dinner was at a hotel at a restaurant called Il Fornaio,which is one of those faux-upscale chain restaurants.  The food was oddly not terribly Italian.  Again, I digress.  The interesting thing that happened there was that there were several of us in the lobby area waiting to sign in and get our name tags identifying who we were.  While we were waiting, an older, distinguished looking gentleman stopped near us and asked us if we were Adobe employees (probably tipped off by the little Adobe sign on the table).  After nodding our heads, he then proclaimed loudly, “Love your products!”  We all proceeded to smile and mumble our thanks at his bon mots and the moment passed.  But for me, it was shocking.  I cannot remember the last time a non-relative or friend of mine indicated with any sort of genuineness that they loved any product made by Microsoft without any qualitative hedging (e.g. I love my Xbox360, but I’m on my 3rd after two RRoDs).

Which leads me to the second half of my story.  Only 1 week after returning from San Jose, I was at Costco shopping with my parents.  Since I have 10 years worth of Microsoft schwag, it’s not uncommon to find me wearing one of my many Microsoft-branded polar fleece tops, including the one that was the Windows Vista ship gift (valued at $1 from a Chinese textiles manufacturer).  On this particular Saturday at this particular Costco, I was indeed wearing said fleece.  During checkout as I was watching the register tape get depressingly longer, the ‘boxer’ (as opposed to the checker) looks at me and asks, “Hey, do you work at Microsoft?”  Generally, I answer this question truthfully when I don’t much care about explaining why me, an Adobe employee, would be wearing a Microsoft fleece.  But on occasions where I don’t feel like having a conversation about that, I just generally nod “yes” to kill the exchange, which is what I did on this occasion hoping that this is what would, indeed, happen.  Well, instead of leaving it at that, the boxer proceeded to chastise me for how expensive MS Office was and how she had to use Wordpad (which I had to guess given the hints she was trying to convey) since it was ‘free’ and how Wordpad printing was screwing up her letters.  Really not wanting to have this conversation, I mumbled some kind of apology and proceeded to cart out my overflowing Costco cart.

This, btw, is the kind of exchange I’m a little more used to when it comes to Microsoft products.  If I am not free product support for everything from Office to Windows to Money to some random app somebody downloaded from the Internet, I’m usually the target of some user’s ire over losing all their MP3’s in some computer crash (again, usually due to some random app they downloaded from the Internet).  This is generally the experience of most, if not all, Microsofties which is why the experience I had in San Jose was so totally shocking.

Snark.  Snort

Only 7 more shopping days left.  I find my parents difficult to shop for.  It’s not like they have everything already, but trying to find them what’s truly useful but not ‘utilitarian’ can be a fine line. 

I so clearly suck at this.  BFF.

I resolve to write in this blog at least 4 times a week, even if it’s only a couple of lines of inane observation (which is, after all, what the blog is basically titled). 

I want to become more consistent about it because I need something that I’m fully in control of at home to be done on a consistent basis.  Who knew kids had free will from the day they were born?

I had this big post about my last day at Microsoft and my starting up at Adobe, but for some reason Wordpress ate it.  And now I am not motivated to rewrite it.  Perhaps in a few days I can muster up the energy.

On June 29th, Andrew graduated from his preschool.  Two years ago, we had barely brought Zoe home from the hospital and had taken Andrew out of his daycare so that he could gain a richer set of experiences and education than what he would’ve gotten there.

In many ways he still looked and acted like a toddler at that time, and I remember the first few days of dropping him off and him crying as I left.  Now, he’s such a big kid.  I’m so proud of everything he’s achieved and how much he’s grown.  I look forward to the future and how much more he will grow as a human being.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.   – Albert Einstein.