Endings

What I've realized is that I don't have too much trouble starting a story, and usually through the middle things go okay. I do a little editing along the way, but for the most part, it flows out pretty well. I weave in and out on big moments and small moments, I play with sharpening dialogue. Then I spend as much time on the last 5 paragraphs or so as I spend on the rest of the piece. Maybe endings are more important to me. Maybe, I just want to make sure I leave a good impression. Maybe I subconciously just don't like to say good by to a piece. Whatever it is it's pretty frustrating at times.

Livermore Wine

Napa and Sonoma are the most famous wine growing regions of California, but there are quality wines being produced everywhere in this state. You can get wines nearly everywhere from Santa Barbara all the way up to Eureka and several places in the central valley as well. On Saturday I went wine tasting with a couple friends over in Livermore. It's a little ways East of Oakland in Contra Costa county. The wineries of Livermore were very pretty, tucked between golden hills and lush green golf courses. One of the wineries we tasted at loooked like a European villa sitting atop an Italian hillside. And on our approach to one of the other wineries, we were driving towards the ever spinnng electricty generating windmills of the Altamont pass. It's a very scenic area.

Our third stop at a winery was at a very small winery call the El Sol. We had a little trouble finding it, because it was essentially done out of someone's back yard. We approached a ranch house and there were a couple barrels visible and sign a little larger than a postcard that said there was a tasting room out back. Out back the tasting area was also the barrel room. We sat among the barrels and the fruitflies. Instead of the large mechanical storage systems, he had plastic bins which he plunged by hand twice a day.

Out back, we met Hal Liske, a former Hayward firefighter who is now 65 and retired. In addition to fighting fires he once raised bees for honey and to treat people with MS with venom therapy. However, he found driving bees around at night and lifting heavy jugs of honey too much work and decided to invest in his passion for wine instead.

Hal spent over an hour and a half with five of us, explaining the ins and outs of a small winery. He crushes nearly 82 tons of grapes a year with the help of just a couple guys. He has only bottled two wines for sale so far, but that made our tasting more of a treat. In addition to trying his zinfandel, we tried several barrel tastings. He gave us a chardonay that was still unfiltered. He gave us an ice wine (frozen grapes with a high sugar content) and many other things. He explained his philosophy on wine make in great detail. He's a believer that wine should be paired with food and he's interested in making good food wines.

In fact, my friend and I went in on splitting a case on a future wine. The wine is still in the barrel, but we'll have an excuse to go see this guy again and pick up our wine when its ready.

It's hard not to get a little infected, when you see someone doing something with such passion. If you don't have a passion, try and fine one. I recomend trying to stop out there sometime if you're ever in Livermore.

Immigrant Story

Persia is famous for its 3Cs. Cats, carpets, and caviar. This is how I learned that little nugget.

For the last six weeks we've had a temp in our office working on a filing project for us. He's an older Persian man who immigrated to the US somtime in his forties so that his children would have the opportunity to study in this country and live the American dream that he would have to sacrafice for. It's a common immigrant story. He is a smart guy and was the vice president of a bank in Iran, but because his language skills do not match his hard work he has had problems finding full time employment.

Although technically I was one of his two supervisors, I've had limited interaction with him. I haven't been giving him assignments or monitoring his progress. For the most part, I've said hello in the morning and good bye in the afternoon, and that's about it. Only once did I spend more than 3 minutes talking to him. This guy had an interview for a full time position somewhere at the University. However, he had interviewed for some positions with some related teams, and I had been told that he was a terrible interview. My coworker and I took about half an hour out of our day to do a mock interview. I asked him some questions and then we critiqued his answers. He didn't end up getting that position, but he did learn some valuable dos and don't about finding work and really appreciated what we had done. He said he would never forget the kindness we had shown.

Yesterday was his last day and he threw his own going away party. He wanted to show his appreciation for the things we had done for him. He brought in some food and Persian favorites like pistachio nuts and his homemade sweet cherry wine. We talked and he proudly told us about how his son was just about to finish his degree at San Jose State and that his daughter already had a Master's degree in Mechanical engineering. He was obviously very proud of them and what they had been able to accomplish. For them, he had turned his life upside down and come to a foreign land. For them, he spent six weeks in a cramped fileroom, going through our files one by one.

I thanked him for all his help in our office and wished him the best of luck. Although he doesn't have any permanent jobs lined up yet, his reputation as a filing guru has circulated a little and he has another temp gig lined up after the Thanksgiving holiday. I have a feeling someday somebody will hire this guy permanently.

No gas

He took the wife up into the hills Friday night. They drove through thick fog following the curves along the top of a skyline ridge. The roads were treacherous and as desolate as desolate gets in the Bay Area.

Twin fears clawed at her mind as they ascended. One, she feared the road. She pictured the car hurtling from the road like a missile crashing into one of the surrounding redwoods giants. Despite the proven driving skills of her husband, like a mantra, she repeated over and over, "Slow down."

Fear number two was one of her own doing. She had not refilled the gas tank in some days and watched the meter slowly approach empty. It was not until they were some miles on the road this night, that she remembered to pointed this out. There was nothing to be done about it. If they ran out of gas, they would disappear. No one would notice, but the carnivorous bears and mountain lions.

But by hope and prayer, eventually, they reached their destination, a quiet little oasis for the mountain traveller, a restaurant simply named the Mountain House. There was a warm fire and white clothed tables where courteous wait staff served exotic entrees like venison tenderloin in blackberry sauce or buffalo T-bone. Though the people could relax and refuel, there was no place to buy gas.

He appreciated her. He took her to this out-of-the-way location because he wanted to share something new with her. Still, she chose a common fowl, duck while he chose the venison. They talked about the ordinary things in their life. They shared this meal like they shared everything, and neither was in any sense of the word alone. He loved her dearly.

The fueltank was flashing empty from the moment they stepped back into the car for the drive home. And the fog had only worsened as they ate. Her heart raced as she wondered if there would be enough gas to reach a gas station, or even a friendly, well-lit street. They did not talk focusing on their surroundings as mile by mile they crept through the dark fog. Fortunately, their fuel efficient Prius came through for them. Driving almost exclusively downhill, they were able to coast ten miles into their local Chevron. Finally, she was able to relax.

So the story has a happy ending, but we wonder if the wife of this story learned her lesson and will remember to fill her gas tank once in a while.

Blaming the cat.

Okay, I didn't get to blog yesterday, but I blame the little feline residing in my house. While I was reading, she crawled into my lap and fell asleep, thereby imprisoning me there until she decided to wake up. In that time, I could have finished writing a great novel, I could have run a marathon, I could have discovered the meaning to life, but I was at the whimsy of the cat. She's just too adorable.

Morning stroll

One of the simple pleasures of living in the Bay Area of California. Got up this morning and took a nice leisurely walk with the wife out in the bright sunshine. We walked up to the farmer's market, where fresh fruit and fresh vegetables of all sort are there for purchase. I guess people have been taking similar strolls from hundreds, maybe thousands of years, but it's still a nice thing to do.

Where's the Dalai Lama today?

The Dalai Lama is on campus giving four different talks over the next two days. The first one is a morning meditation across the street from my office, but I am not significant enough to rate tickets to any of the events. Too bad. He is a world leader I respect and admire (though I don’t agree with everything he says) and I would love the opportunity to see him and hear his words. Most of my coworkers also do not rate tickets, which means practically speaking his visit is little more than a parking inconvenience.

Anyway, I was promising myself that I would get back to some notes on the Scott Hunt book, the Future of Peace. I’ll be jumping out of turn a couple chapters, but here are some thoughts, comments or highlights from his interview with the Dalai Lama. But keep I mind, my notes in the margin really don’t do this study justice. I would highly recommend actually reading the book if anyone wants to know about our world leaders and the struggle for peace. If I had to pull out a theme from this interview, the Dalai Lama believes compassion is the key. It could solve all religious strife and many other world problems.

Peace is not just the absence of violence. Peace involves satisfaction, happiness, and tranquility. Peace is, I believe, an expression of compassion, a sense of caring.

The very physical components of humans seem to go well with peace of mind, not with anger or hatred.

Seeing something growing makes us feel happy; feeling something decaying, dying, makes us feel unhappy. So war means destruction. Peace means growth.

We are not accepting the occupation and all the tortures and deaths. Instead, we are taking countermeasures. But we do so without losing our compassions. Hatred for the act, but not the person who commits the act.

NaNoWriMo

For those of you who haven't heard of this, this organization promotes writing by creating a deadline every year. Those who sign up are given one month to write a novel. Maybe it helps some people write something worth while, but I imagine most of it is pretty bad. I know I couldn't write a novel in a month and it would be foolish to expect more than one or two pages to be worth saving. Anyway, I either lack the drive to write something like that or I just think I'll get more out of writing less, but of a higher quality. So I am not taking up the challenge. Instead I will make a simpler pledge. I will try and make at least one blog entry every day this month. Hopefully, I'll find something interesting to talk about every day.

Letter to Junior

Dear Junior,

Loyalty. I get that. Surround yourself with like minded people and it is easier to reshape the world in your image. But loyalty has its limits. When someone commits treason (even if that treason is not clearly indictable) it is time to cut ties.

If you haven’t noticed, Karl Rove has become a liability. He’s opened his mouth when he shouldn’t have, at least twice exposing Valerie Plame’s status as a covert CIA agent. Is it worth it to argue the semantics of whether or not he violated the letter of the law? Even if not illegal, (though I would contend that it was clearly illegal) Karl’s actions and later denials were clearly unethical.

The CIA has a pretty spotty history itself, but I think it’s fair to say that Valerie Plame was serving our country’s national security. Repeatedly, you have made statements asserting that national security is your primary concern. If so, how could you let someone in your office jeopardize national security by exposing Ms. Plame?

Let him go. It may be too late to prevent your legacy as the most disgraceful president in U.S. history, but try and step up for what is right at least once. Are you frozen because Karl is your friend? Sometimes, a little tough love will do a person a lot of good. He needs to see the errors of his ways.

Derrick Lin

(For those of you who wish to share your own thoughts with Junior. comments@whitehouse.gov)

Where are the tenacious?

I think tenacity is an under appreciated character trait. In these days of touch button everything and not-my-fault whining, I can appreciate when someone goes out of his/her way to do something right. I sent someone from my team out to get someone's signature on a contract. It turns out that the address listed was incorrect. Instead of coming back without the signature, my teammate asked all the right questions and made sure someone got a hold of the doctor and hiked across campus to get that signature. I appreciate that even if I probably don't have the fortitude to do that myself.

We don't seem to have tenacious kids in my neighborhood. Had one trick or treater all night.