Unpronounceable volcanoes

My ability to withstand infuriatingly unhelpful travel agents continues to amaze me. Yesterday I stopped living in 90 min. increments (average wait time for an operator), and resigned myself to the fact that I will get home when I get home. This means that I'm no longer splitting time between keeping my bags packed in case my flight leaves from Munich, walking around the city entertaining myself, and wasting away on hold on the phone. This is a better approach anyway, since now I can relax and catch up on email, and spend time surfing the web again.

I arrived in Switzerland last week, and eventually moved to Germany for meetings. I was supposed to fly out of Stuttgart on Friday, connect to Munich, and then go straight to San Fran by Friday evening. That's when that silly volcano with that unpronounceable name started to mess with a finely tuned aviation system, and all air travel went haywire. Since then, I've taken a train to Munich, scrambled for a hotel over 1,000s of other people (and with the year's biggest convention starting here this week), sat around for three days while my rescheduled flights were cancelled repeatedly, contemplated taking the 8 hour train to Greece or Turkey (only places functioning close to normal), commandeered a rental car, and will be driving to Zurich tomorrow.

We have an office there where I should be able to camp out - perhaps literally as I have not found a hotel room yet. The second-biggest problem right now is finding lodging. People who were supposed to leave, haven't. And people who were in transit have arrived, which means availability in cities is tight. Still, being productive in an office, surrounded by my coworkers who speak the language and can help with travel arrangements is bound to be better than being useless in Munich.

I was on the phone with our travel agent for the umpteenth time this morning, re-booking yet another flight, when she mentioned that I should look into cruise lines. Apparently some forward-thinking passengers booked themselves on ships last week when the airports started shutting down, and many of them are already arriving in the US. Craziness. And it's not like the airlines know more than the rest of us - yesterday I ran into a pilot from Delta and stewardesses from Continental who had no idea when they would be leaving. When I used my Blackberry to look up the latest info on Lufthansa's website on airport closures, they were grateful because it provided them more of an update than they were getting from their HQ. I learned that flight crew are provided with company-issue laptops or cell phones, and instead just rely on wherever they get internet access.

By the way, I'm looking forward to my 3.5 hr drive tomorrow, since the only car that was available, and which I snagged, was a Mercedez sedan. The problem is that it's a manual transmission, which I last drove when I was in high school in Pakistan. I'm not worried though - I maintain that anyone who learns to drive on the streets of Karachi can out-maneuver James Bond in a car chase. I'll get to put my theory to the test tomorrow as I try to navigate out of Munich's old-town , with its classic windy, narrow, European streets, and onto the autobahn.

Possibly the worst part of all this (other than trying to convince my wife that no, secretly I'm not having the time of my life) is that I can't swear at this f#$%!@* volcano properly. It's not like, "Damn Mt St. Helens!" or "shit Pinatubo, why did you have to screw things up?". No, the ridiculous name of this volcano is impossible to pronounce, which makes venting of anger near impossible.

Maybe I'll dial my travel agent again.

i-Yawn

I wanted to wait a while before posting about the new i-Pad. So much hype preceded the launch of the latest device from Apple, so it wouldn't have been fair to discuss it without some time going by and letting thoughts settle.

But really? An oversize iPhone is all Apple could come up with? Granted the pricing is attractive, but netbooks continue to drop in retail price, and satisfy the needs of the casual websurfer just fine (albeit with some performance issues, but these should diminish with time). So Steve Jobs couldn't have thought this was going to displace the mobile computing marketplace (especially since the iPhone is already leagues ahead of competition in this regards).

No, I think the real value of the iPad is going to be in the eBook space, and the skirmish this has started with Amazon. There are several things going for the iPad in this regards - the iTunes-like store for books, the ePub format, and an interesting revenue-sharing contract with publishers are a few of them. Amazon doesn't need to worry about it's online bookstore engine, but the proprietary Kindle format and its pricing agreements with its publishers is of concern. I own a Kindle, and love it, but already the iPad has forced Amazon to move away from its loss leading $9.99 price for eBooks. I won't be too happy to see prices for books go up, so I'm waiting to see what happens.

Extra competition is good, and eventually you'll see innovation drive advances in the electronic publishing industry. As a consultant, I worked on eBook projects in 1999, but the platforms just weren't there, and projects fizzled. Now, with the iPad and Kindle going at each other, I'm looking forward to some true change (I haven't played around with the Sony Reader or the BN Nook to form much of an opinion on those devices).

But to come back to my original reaction to the iPad. Only the Apple fanboys can truly believe they are getting a successor device to the iPod and iPhone when they buy the iPad. For the rest of us, it's the shot fired across the electronic publishing world that should get us salivating.

What defines career sucess?

In the next six months I’ll be making a transition in my career. I’ll be staying at the same company, but will be moving off from a program that I’ve been part of for the last three years. The opportunity is a rare one – there are only so many times in one’s career where there is the opportunity to choose from multiple positions, knowing that some of these can take one’s career in a completely different direction. However, let me be clear - given the economic environment, there are multiple candidates vying for these same opportunities, so it’s important to network with senior management and get your name out there.

So last week I set up time with a Senior Manager to discuss opportunities on her team, but more importantly to get general career advice regarding the division in which I am interested. This individual has been at Abbott for a few years now, and has several staff reporting to her. Most of the half hour conversation was spent discussing my strengths, and what sort of a fit positions on her team (if they materialize) would be for my goals. Towards the end of our friendly conversation, she asked about my transition to California, and how the experience here differed from other places where I had lived.

When I mentioned that I had started out on the East Coast, her eyes lit up. Probing further it turned out that we were alums of the same institution – the University of Virginia. She mentioned that she obtained her MBA from the Darden business school at UVA in 2002, and I responded that I had attended UVA as an undergraduate.

“So did I,” she said.

“Really?” I asked. “I graduated in 1998 from the Engineering school. You?”

“1998. From the Engineering School.”

Although I should have been excited to find an alum from the same school and program all the way out in Santa Clara, CA, I felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. Here I was, having spent 30 minutes getting career advice from a personable, accomplished Senior Manager who had clearly achieved success. And yet we were the same age, and had started our careers at the same time. And she was my senior (by quite a bit).

I tried to recover a little by expressing surprise at what a small world we lived in, and asking who else I should network with.

“Do you know X?” she asked. Of course, I replied – he was a General Manager in charge of our Asia-Pacific operations, and I had heard his name mentioned often.

“He also graduated from UVA. 1998”

I don’t remember the rest of the conversation, other than her telling me to stop by if I had any other questions in the future. I was too busy trying to figure out where my career path had slowed down relative to these successful individuals, to do anything other than meekly thank her and leave.

So that remains the question. How does one define career success? A title, a corner office, multiple direct reports? A high salary, great responsibility? Personal fulfillment? And what timelines should be attached to those goals? I understand that I switched careers – from consulting to healthcare – and that I should not measure my path directly to the Senior Manager I met with, since she graduated with an MBA three years before I did. But how should I advise my daughter as she grows up? Should she try to get to b-school as soon as she can? Is working for seven years before grad school (like her dad), going to slow down her career trajectory? Or is the perspective that comes with time in the industry reward in itself?

Whatever the answers, I know I’ll continue networking. After all, I have lost ground to make-up.

H1N1 success ... at last

Burned twice, nothing was going to stop me now. I was a freaked out parent on the prowl, willing to go to any length to get my child that elusive vaccination I had been seeking for weeks now. I'm sure part of it had to do with the paranoia sweeping California regarding the virus, and part of it had to do with me not willing to consider the scenarios where I *could* have done something, but didn't.

So it was off to the Santa Clara fairgrounds again, where yet another free clinic was being held. Except this time I showed up at 6:30am. And this time I was ready. I had my cold weather gear (it was 35 degrees), I had my lawn chair, and I had my New York Times (the Sunday edition takes me hours to read cover to cover). Once the line started to move, I planned to call Saeeda to drive over with Nuha, and then the three of us would hang out until we got the shot.

As it turned out, my showing up that early was a good idea, because there was already a ridiculous line of people waiting before me. And with that line came the associated entrepreneurs, selling everything from churros to eternal salvation (some Church group or other passing out pamphlets). One guy was even dressed up as a Subway sandwich and was handing out coupons.

By 9am, I had called Saeeda, who arrived with an unsuspecting Nuha in tow. It was a good thing they got there when they did, because the line had started to move, and beyond a certain point the police were not letting anyone hold places in line for anyone. There were a lot of distraught parents, one of whom had been holding a spot only to realize that they had gone past the point where they could usher their family in later.

It was around 11am by the time we finally made it INTO the fairground building where the shots were being administered. The scene was surreal, and instantly made me think of a Hollywood disaster flick - queues of confused people in a vast hall being directed by authoritative staff and conflicting signs; nurse stations quickly processing vaccine administrations; doctors and emergency personnel standing by in the wings; relieved patients walking out quickly, just glad that the ordeal was over.

The unsuspecting victim before heading inside:

The line inside:

Uh oh:

All done!:

The Quest for the H1N1 vaccine #2

Wizened by last week's H1N1 experience, Saeeda and I spent the last few days strategizing which clinic to attend to get the vaccine for Nuha. I know that we've moved beyond the rational with our panicky approach, but we're parents. We're not supposed to be rational entities anymore.

Son on Friday, after poring over the clinic information and mapping out distances to each, Saeeda and I settled on a Sunnyvale clinic. At 6:30am on Saturday I was awake and dressed. Armed with a water bottle and some reading material, I was ready to be dropped off to hold a place in line for the vaccine.

Saeeda dropped my off by 7am, but already there was a line wrapping around the clinic building. The staff had resorted to handing out numbers to people so that entire families did not have to wait in the morning drizzle. You took the number and came back with your family at the assigned time. However, it was the line for these numbers itself that wrapped around the clinic.

By around 8am things started moving as the folks at the very front of the line began to receive numbers (the clinic wasn't set to open until 9:30am, but they decided to hand out the numbers earlier). Still, the going was slow because people were being interviewed about the number of high risk individuals in their family that needed the shot. Given that not everyone spoke English fluently, and things started to slow down.

While waiting, I decided to strike up a conversation with the guy in front of me. It turned out, to my surprise, that he was an alum from the University of Chicago. Not only that, but since he had gone on to study law at Northwestern, he knew my cousin (alum of U. of C) and many of my friends who were lawyers in Chicago. Small world.

The line kept moving, the rain kept falling, and I continued texting Saeeda with status updates. But around 9:30am something changed. The line started moving a lot faster, and no one knew what was going on until we rounded the corner and saw that a police officer and clinic staff member were turning people away now. They had run out of vaccine, and were therefore no longer handing out numbers. There was no point in waiting anymore.

I silently cursed fate as I dialed Saeeda to come pick me up. Two weeks now, and I had nothing to show for all the waiting around I had done. Today, the vaccine was gone in 90 minutes. What would this country do if there was a true virus outbreak of pandemic proportions? If California couldn't handle the situation for a limited at-risk population, what would happen if everyone were to need a vaccination because of a lethal virus spreading through the community?

Boggles the mind.

The Quest for the H1N1 Vaccine - Attempt #1

Perspectives change once you become a parent. I detest getting flu shots for the very logical belief that I'm Wolverine and no earthly malady can lay me low for long (I know, I'm asking for it). However, this H1N1 thing has me and Saeeda concerned about the little one. At the end of the day, should something bad happen because Nuha went unvaccinated, I don't know how I'd live with myself. Somehow I don't think saying, "but the odds were against this happening..." would make feel any better.

As far as the swine flu - for some reason California trails the rest of the developed world and is rationing out its H1N1 vaccines. Supply is outstripping demand and those pediatrician offices lucky enough to receive a stash are only handing it out to pregnant women or mothers of little ones under 6 months old. The rest of us have to resort to a scouring of the internet to locate free weekly clinics where the shots are available to the remaining high-risk population - kids between 6 months and 24 years of age. Which begs the question - why the hell are 24 year olds considered high risk - doesn't the fact that they've survived college grant them immunity from all known toxins?

Saeeda found a listing for a clinic that was being offered at the Santa Clara Fairgrounds, so this morning we decided to check things out, hoping to get Nuha vaccinated and then to move on to other errands we had for the day. Oh, how naive we were.

Admittedly, we rolled up to the Fairground at 11am, which we thought was relatively early. But already the line of people stretched outside and wrapped for at least a half-mile outside the parking lot. Families were camped out with lawn chairs, blankets, toys, food - had I not known, I would have guessed it to be a national holiday of some sort, with the families waiting for the parade to start.

I rolled down my car window and asked a departing family how long it had taken them before they received their shot.

"4 hours. We've been here since 7am."

?!

I looked at Saeeda - getting in line now was futile. The wait would be even longer. Maybe not wanting to wait in line would make me a horrible father. But another, more reasonable part of me just said to wait until next week, when we'd be able to properly plan for a clinic and actually show up earlier. With that, I turned the car around to head home.

The Quest to get the H1N1 Vaccine was on.

Feeling young again

Does U2 put on a show or what? Saeeda and I had never been to a concert together, so a while back I had bought tickets for the Irish band's stop in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA. Getting to the concert brought with it some trepidation - I was simply worried about being too old to even be at such an event. After all, aren't people of my demographic supposed to gently ease into listening of NPR and to start attending classical music performances?

But I was pleasantly surprised to see that most people were like us - middle-aged and having grown up with the music we were about to hear. The venue was amazing, the stage was cool, and the opening act - Black Eyed Peas - pumped up the crowd with energy. I didn't know half their songs, but that didn't matter. People around us muffled my mutilations of the lyrics.

Then Slash from Guns 'N Roses took the stage and kicked off that classic guitar riff from Sweet Child. Pure sweetness, even for someone like me who knows so little about rock. And then there was U2, a band that justifiably occupies a spot in history as one of the iconic musical acts of all time. 24 songs, ranging across both decades and albums, almost all of which we spent listening to while on our feet.

The funny thing is that Saeeda and I left the concert energized, almost as if a few years had fallen off our shoulders. This music thing was cool, and going to concerts didn't have to be a struggle against a tide of humanity. To some degree, the experience has caused a mini-transformation, and we're now on the prowl for other great musical events to attend. Ones where being middle-aged will be irrelevant. Ideas?