Willem's Planet

I work for a firm (PwC, and it’s actually a network of global PwC firms) that has almost 200,000 employees in 157 countries.  So at Friday’s workshop that I attended – about a new method to help employees grow in their careers – there was a lot of discussion about cultural differences, and that it means to work in the USA for a global consulting services company.   ‘Are we sure the framework and the methods discussed here take into account a multi-cultural workforce?’ was a very good question from the floor.  In a way, with so many different cultures already present in large cities (and in our firm), the answer is yes .. but then again there is still a long way to go even in the USA, to appreciate and be aware of cultural diversity.

A few weeks ago Charles Mudede wrote in an article in the weekly newspaper The Stranger (as advice to new students coming to the city) in ‘How to Adjust to Multicultural Seattle if You’re from a Small Town’ (brace yourself) .. I understand you spent your life in the middle of nowhere. There were cows and chickens and not that many people. And if there were people, they were pretty much the same kind of people. They looked and talked the same way, they had the same religious beliefs, and they ate the same foods in the same way. Life was bleak in the small town. But now you are in a big city that has more diversity than you’ve ever been exposed to. How do you handle this new and colorful state of affairs? What should you do to avoid making a fool of yourself by revealing your provincialism? I’m here to lower a rope down into the dark cultural hole you’re in and pull you up to the light of big-city life. The advice I have to offer will not solve all of your problems, but it will make things a little bit easier.

We had a project team outing last night : attending the Golden State Warriors – Los Angeles Clippers basketball game in the Oracle Arena in Oakland.

We went in style : we had a suite with food served up, and we could each have an ice cold beer while watching the game. (Some of us paid more attention than others to the action on the court down below!).   I kept an eye out for Steve Ballmer* making an appearance at the courtside as well, but did not spot him all evening.

*Former Microsoft CEO, and new owner of the LA Clippers team

Soo .. it was the mid-term* elections here in the USA today.  The Republicans won back control of the Senate, and kept their control of the House.   But Democratic President Obama can veto legislation that comes to his desk.  So if our do-nothing Congress will actually get anything done, remains to be seen.  (I’m not holding my breath).

*Mid-term because it is in the middle of the president’s term.

In my neck of the woods in Seattle, a gun initiative to enforce background checks on all gun sales (also at gun shows) passed.   My property taxes will go up to fund a new pre-kindergarten program, and we will pay 0.1% more sales tax and a $60 car-tab fee to expand the local bus service.  South of us in the state of Oregon, legalized marijuana sales will start in 2015.

Our Saturday night flick in the Gary Theater was the futuristic Edge of Tomorrow starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt (she’s British).  We liked the movie .. as someone said ‘It’s a great movie – and I’m not even a Tom Cruise fan’ (I am not, either).   It’s also a war movie – with the United Defense Force (somewhat as dysfunctional, just as the United Nations) against alien invaders called The Mimics.  The Mimics can reset time .. so there are sequences which are played over many times.  Remember Groundhog Day (1993)?  Or Guy Pearce with his amnesia in Memento (2000)?  There’s a little of both those in this movie.

My dad would have been 80 today.
So maybe that was why I found this eulogy in TIME magazine to a storied newspaper editor called Ben Bradlee – that I did not know of – very touching.
Says the writer (of Ben Bradlee’s charisma) : ‘When he glided through the vast newsroom, faces turned towards him like a field of flowers following the sun.  Impossible to define, this essence had to be felt to be comprehended. It was a palpable something-more-ness – magical, magnetic – as rare as the South China tiger’.  

We has a stormy Saturday night in the city with broken tree limbs and power outages in the outlying areas.   It rained on and off this morning, but then in the afternoon the sun came out, and I went for a brisk walk.  It was about 52°F/ 12°C.   I will probably step out in the rain tomorrow morning when I jump in the cab to go to the airport.

Some days we work too late to go to the hotel restaurant for dinner (it takes at least an hour by the time the food finally had arrived and everything had been squared away and paid for).  So on those nights I stop at the ‘fresh&easy’ grocery store on the way to the hotel and pick up a ready-to-eat salad, a sandwich and some yogurt.   (Don’t eat in your hotel room!  said a colleague one time. It’s dirty ..people have sex in hotel rooms, you know!  I just laughed).