Damn These Fat Hands

 Well – OK, not really, I’ll be back in two weeks.  But I am continuing my prolonged journey to Australia, and tonight I leave for Brisbane, which will kick off a whirlwind tour of the country over the next two weeks for work.

Last week there was a holiday in Singapore, and my friend Dave and I went to Bintan for golf.  It coincided with my birthday, and another colleague *may* have tipped off the resort.  Although the cake picture below doesn’t give you the flavor of walking out of the locker room to a receiving line of clapping, singing caddies, it gives you some idea of the level of effort that was put into it.  Neither Dave nor I were prepared for the assault, so I don’t think pictures of that will make it here

Bintan was sweet – totally different from Bataam, very resort-y, and instead of a small boat crammed with gambling Malays, we were on a big catamaran with a bunch of families.  The resort where we golfed was beautiful, and I’d like to go back to hang out.

We also moved out of hotels and into serviced apartments – it has been kind of a pain logistically, but it has been pretty cool moving out of the CBD and into a neighborhood where “more real” people live.  We’re right by a bunch of schools, so I’m not sure how legit the area is, but it has given me a flavor for life outside of downtown that I really appreciate.  The pools in the complex are also pretty amazing, and if you’re willing to risk a beating and get an early swim in, the lap pool is approaching 50 meters.  The beating comes because the pools don’t officially open until 7 AM and when in Singapore… do what you’re told.

I’m a long way from trying to distill my lessons and experiences here, and I’ll be back more than once, so I’m sure my understanding of this place will continue to evolve.  Regardless, it has been a unique experience that I’m fortunate to have had.

Hmm – questionable post title as there are family members out there that might start popping champagne.

By engaged I mean “present.”  I imagine it’s really just a side-effect of being a human, but in our business – customer-facing consulting, project bail-outs – with constrained deadlines, complex communications and snatches of personal business intermixed with swaths of frantic problem solving, it can be incredibly difficult to focus. 

The apparently unrelated but soon to be cleveryly tied-in illustration commences: This morning I went for a long(ish) run, and it went really well.  A group of runners have joined the team from Melbourne (Melbourne!  I’ll have to learn a cheer or something…) and we were talking about running for a good portion of the weekend.  That put me in a good mind-set this morning, and I noticed a literal pep in my step that had been missing since some of my runs out at Studio M.  As I thought about why this run was so different, I realized that it came down to being present – being engaged in what I was doing.  Committing to the fact that I was running, that I wanted to get something out of it, and that I needed to pay attention to do so.  It made the run much easier, much more enjoyable, and I was 10 minutes faster.  Unfortunately that means I have to go farther now, so YMMV.  <– Like… you know… for real.

In my work, this is something I try to pay attention to.  When I do our Consulting 101 talks to our new joiners, I spend about half the session time talking about listening.  There are some neat metrics out there that help you realize that the notion of “active listening” goes beyond kindergarten; put a trace on yourself sometime and notice what you’re doing as you’re listening to someone – or better yet, think about what you’ve been reacting to as you’ve read this.  Are you *really* paying attention, or is the narrative in your head off on stories about your own runs, or what kind of cheer you’d do for Melbourne, or what a great listener you are and what examples you’d use to prove it?  We spend a large percentage of our time formulating what we’re going to say back before other people even finish speaking.  We do an AMAZING amount of day-dreaming and thinking about other tasks.

So – I try to remind myself to turn down the internal volume and really engage – really listen.  Being in Singapore has been instructive in that little things like turns of phrases, inflections, unfamiliar body language and so many “new” things force me to pay attention.  When the firehose is on though, it’s really hard to zero in and engage each time something that requires my attention floats by.  It must be worth working on, however, because if a little focus can make running easier for me, that’s powerful stuff indeed.

Speaking of powerful, check out this spicy Ramen!  The travellers out here are pretty well addicted to this place – SO good.

This will inevitably come off a bit corny; I’ve spent the whole week saying goodbye to family and friends, AND I just caught my upgrade back to Singapore, so apologies if I effuse.

 With that said, I have been really impressed with the quality interactions I have had this week with other human beings.  First up for your consideration – a re-finance specialist at Wells Fargo.  I called her on Monday to see if the loan papers she had created on Feb. 11 were still good.  She said “Oh, you’re one of mine – I just cancelled that today.”  I explained that I had been in Singapore, didn’t get my mail, and had tried to connect with them over email but to no avail.  She said “OK – call Kendra, tell her you want to reapply, and then just send me everything directly – we’ll get this done.”  So I call Kendra – she’s funny, relaxed and efficient.  She tells me “Look, if nothing has changed, you go back to moving and I’ll call you when I’m done.”  20 minutes later she calls me and has a rate a full point lower than the one we had locked in previously.  This morning before I left for the airport, Fed Ex rings – Wells Fargo made sure to expedite the papers since they knew I was leaving on Thursday.  Flipping awesome.

On Monday I moved – 2 guys show up, and they are just awesome.  They pack up everything, don’t even blink as I hem and haw over the age old question “should it go to storage or should it go to Melbourne?”  I believe it was Thucydides who said “Just take everything to Melbourne.”  Oh, wait, that was my sister Alix.

I called up State Farm to cancel my car insurance and establish condo insurance – the lady laughed and asked why I didn’t give her my car when she heard I sold it.  When I told her about MJV’s “issues” with apartments, she doubled my coverage.  Awesome.

The building maintenance guy in my condo , who has been there since 2005, smoothed over an annoyed board and had been stashing 2 months of mail for me.  He didn’t even blink when I said “Oh… yeah… hey, there are going to be 2 giant trucks and movers here this morning – could you reserve the freight elevator for me?”  This guy is awesome, especially when he made fun of the angry lady who hates life (and is our board president) who lives down the hall from me. 

The lady who manages funds for a family trust I’m responsible for told me a story about how annoyed her teenage daughter was that it was snowing, and said her whole family would like to come to Singapore.  She stood by the fax machine so I could know that our business was done before heading out to the airport, and she got in my face about how aggressive the portfolio was – love it.

My buddy Dave invited me to dinner with his family and I got to play legos with his oldest boy and watch his youngest son bomb around without any pants.  Look, aghast parents or not, every boy in the world at any age would really rather run around sans pants, and I salute that 18-month-old young man. 

Finally, and most important to me, some of my very best friends and colleagues showed up last Friday for an appropriately fun evening which spanned a Graduate course in Ed’s Margaritas, a night of great Mexican food at GM, and a 3AM Rock Band debacle.  Several people had lovely things to say about our times together at Avanade, and although I normally show deep emotion only during chick flicks (if you didn’t cry when the kid says “He already knows” during Marly and me then you hate America) I was deeply touched.  Joel D. gave 4 speeches I believe, and the first one was exceptionally well done.

Post golf – having been rained on through the 17th and 18th and having spent the entire day under the full Indonesian sun – I was ready for a shower and a beverage.  The ferry back was really neat, heading back as sunset… umm… set?  Happened?  Damn these rhetorical corners into which I paint myelf.

It really was a great ride, and we met some cool expats that shared the upper deck with us.  We met them when I yanked a drive into the woodw between fairways – they had done the same, and we discovered there was a Minnesotan amongst them.  Crazy.  Good people all around, and I was given resounding approval from the Aussies regarding my upcoming move to Melbourne.

When we got back to Singapore, we went immediately to the East Coast Seafood Center and had a spectacular dinner at No Signboard Seafood.  It was a little ridiculous given the amount of food we ordered, but all of it was excellent.  I couldn’t sway the team to go ‘pepper crab’ instead of ‘chili crab’ but I survived to tell the tale, so it’s hard to complain.

I suspect that everyone in the world is watching and hoping for the best as Japan attempts to respond to the devestation wrought by earthquakes and Tsunamis.  Certainly being in this part of the world is a different perspective – lots of nervous families checking in on their loved ones in the Phillipines and Indonesia, thousands of Singaporeans calling home from Japan, and of course the simplest shared experience we have – we’re all humans on this sometimes difficult planet.

For our part, Singapore is heavily shielded by Indonesia from any “ring of fire” activity in the Pacific.  We did see the Internet dissapear for several hours, but little or no water surges made it to the island.  We have some folks stranded out in the world – our two most common choices for flying here route us through Hong Kong or Tokyo, and all of those flights are heavily stressed now.  Needless to say, humanitarian flights take priority over normal commercial flights, so travel will continue to be complex in this area for quite awhile.  That’s really a very small consideration given the terrible challenges facing so many in Japan.

I remain grateful that our people and their families are safe, and I hold out hope that some good will follow in the coming months in Japan after such a terrible event.