It's Not How Well the Dog Dances

Learning German

12 August, 2019

We were up on the Sky Deck last night, grilling of course, and met some German folks who were also grilling. I was reluctant to approach them at first because I haven’t really gotten confident in my ability to carry on a conversation in German, which is silly because of course English is available as a fallback. Anyway Kim finally insisted that I go speak with them and they turned out to be lovely people of course. Hopefully they will turn into friends, which would be nice because we have made very few here in Boston. (Unfounded assertions about the unfriendliness of Boston will be the subject of a different blog.)

Anyway the thing that struck me in attempting to talk with these folks was that my comprehension is relatively good — most of the time I had no trouble understanding them. My speaking, though, was halting at best. It takes longer to have the vocabulary to say something than it does to have enough words to understand what someone else is saying.

Part of this is obvious — when listening, you can puzzle things out from context, which obviously doesn’t work when speaking — but part is a more interesting problem: We don’t actually speak in words. We speak in phrases, in idioms, in things that tradition has jumbled together for us that convey meaning by metaphor and analogy and, well, tradition. Each language has a different set of these phrases, and to speak you must learn them. It is the thing that makes languages fun, and also the thing that makes them hard.

I’m relatively proud of my ability to use phrases like “C’etait le fin des haricots” (“That was the end of the beans,” translates roughly to “That was the last straw”) in French. It was a lot of work memorizing them all, and I still get a little thrill when I can throw one in and get a nod of appreciation from the French person I am speaking with — I imagine they are thinking “He knows real French, he must really understand me.” Of course, they are probably actually thinking “This idiot thinks he can speak French, hilarious, haha…” but I will continue to hope they are not.

In German though I am just beginning to climb the hill, and it is daunting and exciting at the same time. Fortunately I have plenty of German colleagues here in the office to practice with and teach me the naughty phrases. Did you know that in German you can call someone an “Arschgeige”? It means “Ass Violin.”

Mmm Oysters

10 August, 2019

Fresh Wellfleet oysters at Mac’s Shack, Wellfleet, Mass.

Heading home from a week at the Cape today about which there is so much bloggable material… but I have to pack, load the car, clean the rental house, etc. so will get to it later. Meantime though, a moment please to cherish the amazing, delightful pleasure of eating Wellfleet oysters. What a wonderful thing, that these exist, and that I can eat them.

Millennial Towers

9 August, 2019

We have decided, after some debate, that “Millennial Towers” is the right name for our new apartment building. Why? Well, there are two Towers (I guess 14 stories qualifies as a Tower, right?), and they are both full of Millennials. Plus it sounds rather grand.

I won’t generalize about Millennials, for two reasons: generalizations about arbitrary age-based groups of people don’t really hold water in the end, and more importantly it makes me sound like a cane-waving geezer. (Oh, look, an age-based generalization! This is going to be tricky.) However I can make some assertions about the occupants of Millennial Towers, based on our observations of them at close range since we moved in in April:

They do a lot of grilling, even when it’s freezing cold outside.
They all have dogs. Not the kind you grill, the kind you have to take for a walk, even when it’s freezing cold outside.
The ones who don’t have a ton of money (Millennial Towers has some affordable housing set-asides) are much more interesting and pleasant than the ones who do.

Wow, this post is just going to keep drifting into unsupportable generalizations, isn’t it… Let me just qualify the third point a bit by saying that we’ve met a few people who live in Millennial Towers who also frequent the “Sky Deck,” as we do, and the ones we would want to talk to again are in occupations (ballet, social work) that can’t possibly pay enough to cover the astronomical rent. More about that rent thing in another blog…

Our choice to live in an apartment building that strongly resembles a hotel (and in fact has some corporate housing units that can be rented like hotel rooms) might seem a bit odd, but it’s kind of perfect for us. We are both super-busy and don’t really want to spend time on home ownership, we don’t really intend to stay in Boston for the long term, and we like the Amenities. The Sky Lounge, the Sky Deck, the Pool Deck, the Mezzanine, the Bike Storage — these are all lovely things that we can enjoy without having to maintain them or worry about them. It turns out that Things you have to Maintain and Worry About take a much greater toll than I ever expect them to… so the fewer the better.

One thing I do find strange though is that when Kim and I were the age that most of the Millennial Towers residents seem to be today, we were up to our armpits in Home Ownership. We bought our first house in our twenties and spent a ton of effort decorating it, caring for it, worrying about it, and so on. We had some family help acquiring it, but it wasn’t financially out of reach for us to keep up. Maybe most importantly, we learned a lot of lessons, some more painful than others, about what it is like to own a house and property, what you get out of it, what kind of toll it takes on you, and so on. I, for example, learned that I never ever want to own anyplace with a yard. Like seriously what a waste of effort…

Anyway from what I understand the residents of Millennial Towers, through no fault of their own, are entirely priced out of this experience. Some combination of student loans and skyrocketing housing prices has pushed the price of even a modest home in a barely acceptable neighborhood out of reach for most people in their twenties or even their thirties. This seems unjust — although I don’t subscribe to the theory that home ownership is the backbone of our society, I do think it should be a reasonable option for young-ish people who are interested in it, not a crazy dream to be put off until middle age.

I suppose all this will resolve itself at some point — we will finally build enough housing where people want it that the price will start coming down again, or cities will figure out ways to provide reasonable commuting times from less-expensive areas, or both. In the meantime though I will continue to observe the quirks of the Millennial Towers residents. We have decided that the collective noun for them should be a Scene of Millennials, because that is what you have when three or more of them assemble. (I first thought a Situation of Millennials would work, but that’s way too Gen-X-ish…)

A note: I apologize sincerely for the long hiatus here — I fell off the wagon when we moved in April and it has taken me this long to climb back on. I still would like to post every day, but I may need to set a less lofty goal for the next few months. I am flattered that a few of you noticed my absence!

Not Having A Car

6 April, 2019

We checked out a Zipcar and drove it to Jamestown RI on Thursday to visit the in-process refit of Confetti, my father-in-law Ron’s boat. Beautiful weather, lovely day for a drive, and I find I actually enjoy driving more than I used to mostly because I never do it I think.

On the way back Friday morning, I found myself reflecting on how easy the whole process has become. If I decide I need a car for some reason, I can reserve one within two or three hours of needing it. I walk up to the car with my special card, the car reads the card, lets me in, and off I go with it. I have no idea why the big car rental companies haven’t adopted the same model, honestly — why do I need 15-30 minutes of human interaction for something that is apparently possible with a few clicks on a website?

It’s true that Zipcar is expensive — we spent $100 for the privilege of taking this car to Rhode Island overnight and returning it the next morning. Compared with the actual cost of owning, insuring, and parking a car in Boston, however, it’s a serious bargain. And that doesn’t factor in the time and worry that come along with owning something (you may own things, but they also own you).

I guess our recent decision to rent rather than buy in Boston is based on the same logic. I like being unencumbered, even though in America it is costlier than owning a place. (This is not true for example in Europe, where there is no subsidy to the home-building industry in the form of a mortgage interest tax deduction, and as a result many more people rent.) I wonder if one day renting an apartment will be as easy as checking out a Zipcar? Will the differences between a hotel and an apartment and a house continue to blur?

Now that I think of it, we’re going through the same thing in our Boston office at Red Hat right now. We’ve been blessed with strong growth there, which means that we are outgrowing our current space, and that means that some of us — managers like me, in particular, who spend much of their time on the phone anyway — will switch to “mobile desks.” This doesn’t mean the desk is actually mobile, which is too bad because that would be hilarious. (Especially if motorized… imagine managers wheeling around the office while talking on the phone…) What it means is that there are decent well equipped desks available in the office that no one can “own.” You just walk up to the thing and use it, and leave it clean when you’re done. I’m actually looking forward to this because it will mean I can’t pile useless junk on my desk.

I guess what all of this leads me to is, isn’t it interesting that I am moving into a world where there are fewer and fewer barriers to me moving around as much as I like, wherever I like? And what exactly is it that is making that possible or comfortable or desirable even? Is it that I have a strong network of “neighbors” that I do neighborly things with, online? Is it just that transaction management is so much easier in a computerized world?

What I find even more interesting is that the moment all this is happening is the same moment we find reactionary forces trying to rebuild the old walls around “nations” and “cultures.” I wonder if there is a measurable difference in car ownership rates, between folks who want more walls, and folks like me who want fewer?

Three Moves Equals A Fire

3 April, 2019

Also, where the hell did all this crap come from and who brought it into my house? Oh, I did, you say? WHAT WAS I THINKING.