dappled shade

Chaos

Okay, not so much chaos as disorder.

We recently moved down one flight of stairs and 50 feet over. Why would we do this to ourselves? We wanted a larger apartment, but didn't want to lose our location. So when an apartment opened up in the building, we jumped at the opportunity.

The great thing was that we didn't need to pack much. Most of our stuff could simply be carried down the stairs with no boxes required. And I say simply, of course, because I wasn't involved in moving the bed or larger items. I've since heard my husband muttering darkly about how we're going to hire movers next time.

The cat was moved downstairs after the large items, but ahead of the small ones. Predictably, she was highly unimpressed. She wandered around the new apartment meowing plaintively while she explored, checking over her shoulder to make sure I was still there to protect her from any roving creatures that might take a fancy to a cat sandwich. She's since settled down and actually seems to like the new apartment better (which is no doubt helped by a complete lack of menacing creatures who eat cats).

Since we carried everything down without much packing, the chaos with this move was mitigated to disorder. We still have boxes everywhere in the living room, but there are whole patches of clear floor we can walk on. And once we get new book shelves, it should all be very livable.

Blogging Again

I'm dusting off this blog, and combining personal musings with opinions on books in the hope that I'll find it easier to update. I may even throw in the occasional photo or two. And, as before, comments are always welcome.

Job Interviews

I've been on both sides of the table during interviews, and this has inspired me to write out a bit of advice for both employers and job applicants.

During interviews, what continues to astonish me is that employers do not seem to generally understand that they are being interviewed, too - if the person talking to you gets a bad impression of the position, the work environment, or you, they are much less likely to take the job.

In the interest of helping out employers everywhere, here are a few suggestions:

1) If you are out of practice for smiling, make sure you limber up your facial muscles before the interview. If you don't, your smile will look like a grimace. While this talent comes in handy at Halloween, it's probably not worth the trade off.

2) When asking for feedback about your companies website, be prepared for both positive and negative comments. If the job applicant tactfully says that something could be improved, do not turn to them and say "well, we're not going to change this!" The job applicant is probably testing you, and you just failed.

3) Be nice to people when you are interviewing them if you want them to join the company. If you don't want them to join, feel free to be as awful as you like.

4) If the job applicant is talking to the VP next, do not tell the job applicant that the VP is going to retire unless you are sure that this is public knowledge. It gets you into trouble and puts the job applicant into a very difficult position.

5) Do not decrease the salary range offered on the job between the first interview and the last. There is no way for the job applicant to take this well.

As I mentioned, I've been on both sides of the interview table and here is some (slightly more serious) advice for job applicants:

1) Write a cover letter. This creates a positive first impression and reassures the employer that you are interested in the position and have read the job description (which is not a given). If you're not interested enough to write a cover letter, don't apply in the first place.

2) For similar reasons, write thank you notes. Not everyone does this, but it creates a good impression.

3) Do your homework before you show up for the interview. Print out press releases, highlight interesting bits and bring them to the interview. Ask the people who are interviewing you about them.

4) One of the great advantages about interviewing is that you have a fresh perspective on their problems and may catch things that people at the company miss. Ask questions and air any good ideas; you'll look like a genius.

5) Be confident. Sad to say, but sometimes it's not so much what you say, but how you say it that really counts.

Hope this helps anyone out there interviewing. If you have any stories you'd like to add, post a comment.

Good luck!

Looking Out for Strangers

A lot happens on MUNI. Even when I'm trying to hide behind a book, a lot happens on MUNI. So much happens that my reactions are quicker and the book often gets put away.

About 6 months ago, there was a group of commuters riding the MUNI from downtown to the Caltrain station. An elderly gentleman got on. There were open seats so in my innocence I didn't worry about it. The MUNI train took off with a lurch (as they always do) and he fell over. Fell over doesn't quite do it justice. He toppled over, and slammed his head into the plastic siding. Fortunately plastic.

There was a nasty moment when he wasn't moving. Someone, who obviously had a bit of medical training, rushed over and by then the elderly gentleman had started to stir. This turned out okay in the end, but it left a lasting impression. Now, whenever the train stops, and people get on, I have a quick scan round to see if someone is likely to run into trouble.

This has been a good thing at least once. An older gentleman with a cane boarded the MUNI at Embarcadero and the train started moving before he got to his seat. I grabbed hold of him as he stumbled, and he held onto my arm and shoulder, so he managed to keep his feet.

Right now the MUNI trains are so crowded in the afternoon it's less of a worry. If someone starts to fall they can't go very far; they run into the people next to them. So trodden toes, but no concussions. I often brace myself against one wall in the afternoon. I'm young and healthy and always have comfortable shoes on so I'm more likely to stand and it's a good spot for a dash to the Caltrain.

On Friday, the train was already full when an older, not elderly, man got on. Old enough that he might come to harm, but young enough that he would be probably be offended if someone offered him a seat. I was standing behind and slightly to one side of him so I put away my book.

A young man who was also braced against the wall was beside me. The older man in front of us was not holding on when the train started and he lost his balance a bit. There was no thought involved, I just put up a hand to help stabilize him. I don't even remember lifting my hand. He got hold of the railing before he stumbled that far back, but the young man next to me smiled and said something I didn't quite catch. He'd obviously been watching as well and had been prepared to catch him if the older man had really lost his balance.

No crisis in this case, but it's refreshing to see people unobtrusively looking out for each other.

Graceful Courtesy

Each morning, hordes pound across the intersection from the Caltrain station to a single-car MUNI train. Everyone manages to cram in, but not everyone gets a seat.

I've seen young men sitting who have offered their seat to women. Unless the woman is old or pregnant, the offer almost always gets rejected. Even if the guy gets up anyway, the woman won't take the seat. It's a matter of pride along the lines of "My business shoes may be damn uncomfortable, but I'm still going to stand rather than be patronized to."

What does happen, though, is that in the mornings, when we're all crammed in, the seats tend to be occupied by women and men are more likely to be standing. It took me awhile to figure out why it wasn't an even distribution. Men are walking into the train, scoping out how crowded it's going to be and opting to just not take a seat. If they already have one, they'll get up and move away from it toward another part of the train.

I'm not sure how I feel about this socially, but it's certainly good manners graciously applied by some MUNI riders.

The Treachery of the Common Swimsuit

One of my ankles is a bit unreliable, and age isn't improving it. The elliptical runner with the shuffle on high is my favorite exercise at the gym, but because of the ankle, I'm moving more and more into swimming.

I started looking for a swimsuit earlier in the year. The timing was perfect - all the stores had pages devoted to swimsuits. These pages were often subdivided by "problem" areas - the waist, stomach, chest (too big or too small), and thighs. Unfortunately, nothing for an ankle so I didn't feel it was all that helpful. In the end I bought a red bikini and brown board shorts from a website that didn't worry about customers' problem areas, but did assure them that the outfit would stay on even in the ocean.

I swim for about 35 minutes and go two or three times a week. Speed is not one of my virtues in the pool as I refuse to put my head under water (water in the ears is just too annoying). But I keep moving, and get a decent workout. It also uses muscles that don't get used on the elliptical runner.

All was well with this routine until last week. After my swim, I hopped out of the pool and discovered that the colorful outside of the bikini had stretched - a lot. (Fortunately, the liner had more or less held its shape.) The bikini bottoms had had the same melt down. It looked like saggy elephant skin. Definitely not attractive, and also somewhat inexplicable. It was as if the bikini top and bottom had got together and decided to spontaneously lose all stretch, leaving a sagging mass where a cute little red swimsuit used to be.

So back to the drawing board for a new swimsuit; hopefully this time for one that doesn't fall apart quite so spectacularly or unexpectedly.

Ginger Tea Message

Note found in my Organic Ginger Tea:

"Help!! I'm a coffee drinker stuck working in a tea factory!"

Made me laugh, but not sure why it was there. The best suggestion so far is that it was an employee on their last day, but, if so, it's a weak protest. Whoever it was, I hope they found some coffee.

The Bonding Power of MUNI

Talk to anyone from San Francisco long enough and two things are guaranteed to come up in the conversation: the price of housing and MUNI. These two topics alone can get most people through a long lunch with a total stranger.

For those of you who are not from the Bay Area, MUNI is the public transport system in San Francisco. When I started my job I was introduced to the joys of this system. I have to admit, that for the first few months, it really wasn't that bad in terms of timing. The trains were usually on time and they generally didn't break down.

Recently, though, they changed the lines around. In theory, twice as many trains should be running and since the trains are running twice as often, they halved the size of the train. This sounds logical, except that people come in waves, not spread out evenly. So we all get packed in like sardines (or as one person, whose grasp of English was a bit tenuous, put it, like sausages).

I'm convinced that someone with a nasty sense of humor came up with the new system. There are two possible platforms to board the trains from; to get from one platform to another requires crossing lanes of busy, fast traffic. There is no reliable way to tell which train is coming next, so hordes of people stampede across the lanes to the train that they just spotted pulling in.

Since this is obviously extremely dangerous, they have crossing guards now, whose jobs are a little trying. One was desperately trying to get us all to stand on the pavement instead of spilling out into the street. People wanted to be in a good spot for a run to catch the Caltrain, though, so they weren't co-operating. Eventually, the crossing guard gave up and said words to the effect of: 'Fine, get hit.'

Before the re-arrangement to the schedules, strangers didn't talk to each other much on the trains. Now they do; whole conversations revolve around "What's wrong with the MUNI system" and my personal favorite "Are we going to make our connection?" One guy even successfully managed to get a petition together and showed up on the local news.

A friend of mine recently pointed out that there's nothing like a shared complaint to bring people together. If that's true, incompetence at MUNI may be a major force holding the social network of San Francisco together.

Springtime Celebrations

When I was a kid, like all children, I used to get very excited about my birthday. I was born on Easter and I would check every year to see whether my birthday would fall on Easter again. I was always disappointed. (I checked this year, though, and I'm only two days away, so that's pretty good.)

I trace my attachment to Easter to this coincidence of dates. It was helped by the fact that we never celebrated Easter in church, so I don't think of it as a Christian holiday. As a child, it seemed like a celebration of spring and new life, and it still gets me that way.

And right now in California, even with its two seasons of rain and drought, it feels as close as it ever does to spring. The wildflowers are blooming and the hills are properly green. We've also had some gorgeous weather recently.

Last weekend, my husband I went hiking out at the coast with my in-laws. We had a very nice time as we always do with them. Three of the 4 of us had cameras so it was a meandering walk involving a lot of pauses for photographs — I've attached a couple that I took.

I'm hoping to go hiking again this Easter Sunday — being outside seems the proper way to celebrate a spring festival. And while I have asked for no birthday presents from my husband, I am looking forward to this year's Easter basket.

Book Review: A Vision of Light

The other evening, before meeting a friend for dinner, I had a few minutes to wander through a bookstore. I was looking for something different to read, and came across A Vision of Light by Judith Merkle Riley.

I did my normal check on any new book that comes my way — I opened it up at random and read a few paragraphs. It was well written, and I was moderately interested to see that it was set in the middle ages with a female protagonist.

The book was entertaining and well put together, but I don't see myself buying the next one in the series.

Merkle Riley is correct that the middle ages were unbelievably misogynistic, and she portrays the worst case scenarios with great flair. The author sets up the protagonist, Margaret, as a saint, but also tries to make her a real person by pointing out her faults. (Quite literally as a saint, incidentally; Margaret communes with God.)

All the book's characters come across as flat, though, including the protagonist. They seem like modern day stereotypes dropped into the middle ages and then draped with fourteenth century costumes and ideas. This doesn't sit well as many (though not all) of the male characters are so awful, whereas the women tend to be long-suffering martyrs. It seems to me that the author isn't playing fair.

The problem may not lie so much with the book, though, as the reader. I seldom like melodramas; and Vision of Light is definitely a melodrama. This book left me with a vague feeling of irritation and disappointment as I don't find the world of melodramas — with its heroes and villains — convincing.

Vision of Light is a good read, and it certainly held my attention. It's not a book to be read to understand people better, though it does dramatically argue against a misogynistic society.