[Ed. Note: Also check the previous post to listen to her awesome puppy yawns & see pix and video ]

Baozi Snoozes

Pet’s Name: Baozi (包子)

Adopted by: Amandeep & Kimberly

From: SPCA, San Francisco, Calif.

Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve wanted a dog¹. Growing up, my Mom never allowed us to get one because she feared she’d be left to take care of it. In hindsight, I can understand, as my brother and I were plenty of work as it was².

My entire childhood was thus spent longing for a dog & getting all the B-list pets I could get my Mom to sign off on. A menagerie of parakeets, fish, hermit crabs, snakes, lizards, toads and jumping spiders paraded through our home, but none filled the void. (Many of these hapless creatures were captured from the woods near my house.)

As soon as I moved out on my own, I thought about getting a dog, but with adulthood came a dawning realization of how much work that would entail. I knew I wasn’t quite ready. But still the idea persisted. Every friend’s dog that I baby-sat tested my resolve. Every girlfriend I had was measured up as a potential puppy-mamma. Every “sidewalk-adopt-a-pet” event I passed on the street was a crisis.

Eventually, I realized that having a dog was doable, but given the unusually active life I lead, it would be hard to get a puppy and give it the time it needed. I began strategizing. Perhaps an older dog would be the best choice for me given my lifestyle and my various time commitments? Maybe I could pay for a dog-walking service? Eventually, I decided that I should wait until I lived with a girlfriend to truly give this a go, just to have somebody to split the responsibility with.

Early on in my relationship with Kimberly, my current girlfriend, we discussed our mutual love for dogs, and agreed that if we were to ever get a dog, it would be from the pound or from one of the many rescues we know of. There are simply so many dogs that need good homes and so many health issues with purebreds, that we knew we wanted to get a mutt. In this vein, I also tried to convince her that we should get an older dog, since they might have a harder time getting adopted. She was sympathetic, but was dead set on the “puppy experience.”

As our relationship deepened, we kept coming back to the dog idea, but mostly to tease the other person by playing puppy brinksmanship: One of us would dare the other to go with them to the SPCA that very day, implying that the other person was the sole impediment to doggy-happiness. The other person would inevitably be stuck, reluctantly having to play the role of “responsible adult,” since they were the only defense against making a change we actually weren’t ready for.

Finally, earlier this year, we decided to get married(!) & in talking about eventually having kids, the subject of a dog came up as well. Kimberly signed us up for “Puppy Owner Orientation” at the SPCA & a few weeks back, we went. The class was thoughtful and informative and we left sobered at the sense of how much of a change a puppy would be, and how much responsibility & complication it would add to our lives. We really treasure the way our lives work now & wondered if we should gamble with our happiness. We talked about it and let the idea sit on the back burner.

Then three weeks ago, Kimberly got one of the periodical “new dogs” emails from the SPCA & saw a series of little german shepherd mix puppies that were adorable. She forwarded me the email with many exclamation points. I took one look at the puppy pictures and knew we were at the precipice. That night, I spent a lot of time thinking about my life and the directions things were heading and wether I was truly ready to be the parent of a puppy. I realized that I could be, but that it would entail a lot of change. I also realized that I had a great partner to take this step with and if I didn’t do it soon, how could I possibly be prepared to have kids in the near future either. In the end, I realized that now was the time.

The next day, we went to the SPCA & played with one of the little puppies from the litter we liked so much, and visited with its mom (who was also at the pound)³. We quickly fell for the little dog we were playing with: she seemed playful, sweet, inquisitive, and mild-tempered. We talked about adopting for a few minutes and decided to do it. We reserved the little pup so we could go home and prepare. The next day, while I was away at an event, Kimberly formally adopted her & brought her home.

–

We’ve had our little girl for 2 and a half weeks now, and it has been fantastic. I took the first two weeks off from work to get her acclimated & that was a life saver. The first few days were quite the adjustment & I learned a lot about myself and my cute little dog. Kimberly and I have been a great team and have learned a lot about how to work with each other, and what each of us wants out of a dog. The dog is a joy and worth every second of it, even when she is being frustrating (not wanting to pee/poop because it is raining!). We named her “Baozi”, pronounced “Bow-dse”, which means “little stuffed bun” in Mandarin. She’s sweet and fun, and is learning the ropes fast. She’s getting really good with house training (very few accidents!) and we’re very happy with crate training. This week, I’m back at work and so we’re adjusting her to being at home in her crate for long stretches. I’ve set up a little webcam to watch her while we’re at work to see how it is going and, so far so good!

Everyday, we each rush home to play with little Baozi & compare notes on how she’s doing. She’s so much fun to have around and is so adorable we can barely stand it. She doesn’t have all her shots yet, so her time outside is carefully limited and monitored. We (and she!) can’t wait to get her out into the world for walks and meeting other dogs. We are just starting full-on training & commands and are looking forward to that as well.

We are at the beginning of this adventure, but are just so happy we made the leap. It is certainly true that our lives are already different, but none of it has been bad so far. We are already figuring out how to fit our schedule with hers, and hers with ours. We are learning a new life as we go and it’s great. A dream come true? Why yes, yes it is.

‘deep

^1. I think it is was because I’ve always loved animals, and mammals in particular can really connect with you. And nothing says connection more than a dog!↩

^2. Ironically, many years later, long after I left the house, my Mom ended up taking care of my brother’s dog for a while, fell in love with it & adopted it in the end.↩

^3. There were 4 sisters in the litter and they were already popular: one was adopted as we walked in the door & the other 2 were adopted soon after we adopted ours. The mom was adopted as well!↩

Baozi at Mission Pet Hospital for a Checkup

Deep & Baozi

Some involve…. (drum roll)…

PUPPY YAWNS!

(click here to hear the goodness)

The last one is the best actually

I’ve always wanted a puppy & last weekend Kimberly and I adopted little Baozi* from the SPCA here in San Francisco. She is as adorable as you might imagine. These yawns are compiled from two of the early morning (2:45am and 5:15am to be exact!) “take her out to pee!” runs (iPhone Voice Memo app FTW!)

*It means “stuffed bun” in Mandarin & is pronounced “Bow-dzuh”! She’s a German shepard mix…

[Ed. Note for potential suppliers: I'm just using the term "RFP" because I have delusions of grandeur - don't worry, I don't necessarily need a formal "proposal". This is really just a framework for discussion.]

History

For almost 5 years now, I have been enjoying Trikeasaurus, my roving tricycle-sound-system.

Trikeasaurus was initially conceived as a simple way to transport my sound system to my FlashDance events. Flashdances are free, outdoor dance parties I put on in various locations in San Francisco every month or so during the spring & summer.¹

As it has turned out, Trikeasaurus has become a much more general purpose source of fun and I use it often, not just for FlashDances. Watch this video to get a sense:

Trikeasaurus in its Natural Habitat

The video shows Trikeasaurus mostly in its initial configuration, a cheap, Husky adult tricycle with a small, custom metal-work speaker mount system.

Two heavy Yamaha Stagepas 500 speakers were mounted on metal tubes that were attached as a U-shape to the bed of the bike. This Trikeasaurus configuration had several critical problems:

• Eventually the metal speaker mount tubes cracked.
• The wear and tear I was putting on the cheap tricycle caused the frame to crack.
• The sharp edges of the speaker mount tubes damaged the speaker housings.

To solve these problems I purchased a heavy duty industrial tricycle from Worksman & began using it. Its bed was large enough that I didn’t need a speaker mount. That version of Trikesaurus is pictured here:

(click for more pics)

Unfortunately, the Worksman tricycle was just too heavy. Though it did, in fact, feel very solid, it rode really slow and was a pain to ride all around town. It felt like the slowness had more to do with internal resistance than weight.

Eventually, I had a much lighter sound system made (using a digital amp that required no inverter & took less power), and improvised a PVC based speaker mount (that I planned to replace with custom metal work) and returned to my original lightweight tricycle (after having the cracks in its frame repaired.)

(click for more pics) Here is the new PVC mount system I made.

I was using this until recently when the frame cracked again (in a new location) and the PVC mounts failed:

(click for more pics)

Thus, I need a new tricycle and have decided to seriously investigate having one custom made once and for all. The simplest & cheapest option would be to remake my PVC mount & try again with a similar tricycle, but it I’d prefer a better solution that would last & look great.

Requirements

I’m interested in either a custom built trike from scratch or a modified (strengthened!) version of an off-the-shelf trike. I’m willing to pay for quality, durability and aesthetics. Ideally, the builder would be as excited about this project as I am.

MUST HAVES:

1. Heavy duty & designed to take a beating. Fundamentally, I want something that is really reliable & doesn’t require a lot of maintenance.
2. Rides nicely. This is where the Worksman fell down, it was just slow and heavy feeling & it felt like there was resistance other than the weight.
3. Light as possible, given requirements 1 & 2. This isn’t as important as the first two, as long as 2 is true, but nonetheless, light is good.
4. 3 Speed at least.
5. Speaker mounts/bays: I have at least one idea for how to mount the speakers (see the PVC mount pictures) but am game for something better:
   • I need easy mounting/dismounting of at least one speaker, for stereo separation & coverage at dance parties. Preferably both.
   • I already have a sound system I am using which I can provide dimensions for, but I’m also open to other sound system recommendations & am also exploring other sound system options. Currently the sound system I use is approximately 500W. Here is more info on how it was made.
6. Parking brake, for temporarily leaving the bike unattended.
7. Fits inside 24th Street BART elevator. Basically this means I could get it in a box 72″ wide by 58″ deep (so the diagonal length is about 84″.) The BART elevator entrance is 42″ wide. My original trike fit, albeit snuggly and only on the diagonal with the front wheel turned in. The Worksman version did not. Let’s say 53 inches tall.
8. Sparkle metallic paint job: I’m a big fan of the metal flake glitter paint often seen on cars. Here are some examples.

NICE TO HAVES:

1. Standing pad: see the picture above where my girlfriend is sitting on top of the speakers. That is overkill but if there was just a small pad she could stand on maybe the size of a small doormat and hold on, that would be great. (think chariot)
2. Push points: Often on Critical Mass & Bike Party, other bicyclists help push me up hills. On some of my tricycles this is easier than others. My Indian rickshaw has small horizontal posts sticking out the back sides that makes this easy. Something like that could be very helpful. Pictured here.
3. Builtin LED lights for entertainment & visibility
4. Removability of sound components to make a useful cargo trike (note: this is much less important, because I’ll probably buy a cargo bike & I’d rather this trike look perfect, but it can’t hurt to ask…)
5. Unique styling (Indian rickshaw? Dinosaur? Discoball?) (see photos below for ideas). I have a small collection of classic Asian rickshaws (pictured in the photo set) & am of Indian descent.
6. Something that you are proud of and is a testament to YOUR creativity.

^1.This video is from my last FlashDance on Halloween. Note that since Trikeasaurus was broken (pix above) I used one of my rickshaws to transport the sound system.:↩

.ps
While I wait for Trikeasurus Rex to be built, I’ve been using Temporaryasaurus (rickshaw + speaker!):

(photo courtesy of Adrienne Johnson)

Glamsters! Thank you all SO MUCH for making my GLAM Party such a huge success. So many of you! So many rocket-packs! So many aliens! SO. MUCH. GLAM.

A few quick thoughts:

• I LOVED SO MANY OF THE COSTUMES. SO GREAT! I think Liz won on overall Rocket Glammiest and Best Rocket Pack! (& bringing the hotness!)
  
• I get an honorable mention, coz I LOVED my costume, and it did not turn out looking like a GLAM SPACE CHICKEN as I feared. If I wear it everyday going forward, someone please intervene. My best Glam Costume to date!!!
  >
• I also was SUUUUPER happy with the playlist (see below) I hope you were too!
• So I’ll post a few random shots here, but for gods sake, at least check out the BEST 50 Photo Booth Shots here on Facebook
• Here is the full set of photo booth shots on Flickr – honestly there are closer to 85-90 GREAT shots in there!
• Sorry the photo booth was a bit balky (& the first chunk of shots were out of focus) – we just got it & it will be in better shape for the NEXT GLAM Birthday Big thanks to Adrian & Kimberly & all the volunteers who took pix!

Big thanks to Kimberly for all the hard work in making this happen (and putting up with the fact that we made it happen “my” way ) You rock babe! (And damn you’re hot!)  And you make the best ridiculous facial expressions in the photo booth shots.

ROCKET GLAM!

‘Deep

.ps For those of you who still don’t understand, here is why (as I said after my 40th Birthday GLAM of the Dead party):

Q: Why GLAM? A: GLAM – because I love bright shiny things. When i turned 31 I decided to reclaim my love of all things shiny, sparkly & bright. Guys (at least straight ones) aren’t supposed to love that stuff as much as I do. Yeah. Whatever. It’s been all GLAM ever since

You can find pix from all my GLAM parties here.

.pps

And here is the playlist. Like I said, twas one of my best!

• Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a Long Long Time) – Elton John
• M.I.A.’s Lips Ain’t Sealed – DJ not-I
• Good Morning Rhythm Hit – Ghetto Funk presents Bobby C Sound TV
• Rang de Basanti – Chitra & Daler Mehndi
• Take Me To The Casbah – Ghetto Funk presents Bobby C Sound TV
• Lose My Breath – Destiny’s Child
• I Got It from My Mama – will.i.am
• Our Story: Enga Yeriya – Dhanush (Rap Prem Gi Amaren and Yuvan Shankar Raja)
• Put Your Hands Up for Detroit (Radio Edit) – Fredde le Grand
• Gifted (Steve Aoki Remix) [feat. Kanye West, Santigold & Lykke Li] – N.A.S.A.
• Suffragette City (Illuminoids Remix) (David Bowie Vs. Illuminoids) – The Illuminoids
• Harder, Harder, Harder, Harder! (Daft Punk Vs. Passions) – Electrosound
• There’s a Party (Funkglorious Remix) [feat. George Clinton & Chali 2na] – N.A.S.A.
• Billie Jean vs Last Night A DJ Saved My Life (Michael Jackson vs Indeep) – UPDATES SPIN
• ‘Mr Wendal’ (D-Funk Mix) – D-Funk vs Arrested Development
• Black or free – Mighty Mike
• Night By Night – Chromeo
• Moves Like Jagger (Studio Recording from “The Voice” Performance) [feat. Christina Aguilera] – Maroon 5
• Deewangi deewangi – Shahrukh Khan, Arjun Rampal, Deepika Padukone & Shreyas Talpade
• Dil Le Gayee – Jassi
• Do The Thang Thang (Bhangra Remix) – Shakti Feat Bikram Singh
• Yo Viviré – Celia Cruz
• Soy Callejero (Mark Pistel Remix) – Los Mocosos
• You Make My Dreams – Hall & Oates
• Things I Do for You – The Jacksons
• Born This Way – Lady Gaga
• Bulletproof Dude (La Roux Vs. Loony Wise Men) – Sugamotor
• Guns N’ Roses “Welcome To The Jungle” (Jells Mayhem’s Serpentine Edit) – Guns N’ Roses
• I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do) – Hall & Oates
• Hombre is in the groove (Deelite vs M.I.A.) – DJ Prince mashup
• Day-O (Banana Boat Song) – RJD2
• Ace of Base vs Pink vs Kim Carnes – Raise your sign – amoraboy
• Walkin’ Out Yo Girlfriend (Unk Vs. Avril Lavigne Vs. Toni Basil) – Lobsterdust
• Do You Wanna Cuz It’s Tricky (Franz Ferdinand Vs. Run-DMC Vs. The Knack) – Thriftshop XL
• Do That There (The Young Einstein Hoo-Hoo Mix) – Lyrics Born
• That Dude – The High Decibels
• When I See You – Macy Gray
• Remember The Time – Michael Jackson
• Dance Wit’ Me – Rick James
• CelePlanes (M.I.A. vs. Rare Earth) – dj lobsterdust
• Bonkers – Dizzee Rascal & Armand Van Helden
• MMMTipsy (J-Kwon Vs. Hanson) – King Of Pants
• Chain of Fools (Unedited Album Version) – Aretha Franklin
• Mack The Knife (Digitally Remastered) – Bobby Darin
• It’s Not Unusual (Single Version) – Tom Jones
• Billo Rani – Anand Raaj Anand & Richa Sharma
• Dhoom taana – Shahrukh Khan, Arjun Rampal, Deepika Padukone & Shreyas Talpade
• Rock With You – Michael Jackson
• Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe – Barry White
• This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) – Talking Heads

Ed. note: Numerous people have asked for “the story” of me proposing to K, so I thought I’d write it down. It feels a little odd to write a blog post about such a moment, but we here at deeptrouble.com are all about giving the people what they want. Also, this post allows me to explain why we have unexpected pictures of the proposal itself.

Updates 2/16/12:

• The pier is actually Pier 7
• For the story of how we met, go to www.kimandeep.com/prequel – also WEDDING INFO!

I’ve been thinking about asking Kimberly to marry me for a while now & I told myself that if I felt like asking her 5 times or so, I should just do it. In the end, it ended up happening half by intent and half by serendipity, like many of the best things in our relationship.

Unexpected Proposal-Cam! (courtesy of Hannah Tries)

I originally thought to fly her somewhere romantic (Paris? the National Parks in Utah?), but didn’t want to add more to our carbon footprint after our big trip to China, so that was out. Then I thought maybe I’d drive her somewhere here in CA over the holiday (Yosemite? Big Basin? Muir Woods?), but we decided to not go anywhere for the vacation, because we both wanted downtime. By then I had already almost asked her twice.¹

As it became clearer that I was really going to do this, it dawned on me that I should ask her family first, so I managed to pull Dad, brother, and sister each aside during their family Christmas Day gathering, and call Mom while she was vacationing abroad. Thankfully, they were all excited (thanks Conleys & Haydens!) Once I had asked them, I knew there was no turning back (fire in the hole!) & that I’d be asking her soon. Besides, by that point I had already had a few more near-asks.¹

The week after Christmas was warm and gorgeous and Kimberly decided that we’d go on a long walk from the Mission to the Golden Gate Bridge (on Friday.) Given that, “Ask Her On The Bridge!” became The Plan of Record.

But then, Friday turned unexpectedly grey & foggy and we decided to go on a less scenic walk to a restaurant on the far west side of the City, and I decided to not ask her yet (though I almost did anyway.)¹

Frustrated, that night, I asked her if she wanted to go on a late night walk, and figured the view in Dolores Park would be perfect. But she said no.

The next good candidate seemed to be the next night, Saturday, on New Year’s Eve. I decided to ask her on our big New Year’s Eve bike party/ride. The only concern was that our roving street party is big, loud, and *VERY* public which is much more my speed than hers. Nonetheless, I thought I’d try to just pull her aside quietly right after midnight, in the middle of the rambunctionating. New Plan of Record + Slight Misgivings.

I woke up Saturday, realizing everything was set & all I needed to do was wait. The day was stunningly beautiful & we found ourselves at the Embarcadero Farmer’s Market after a nice walk and a lovely lunch with friends. As we were buying fruit, I suddenly realized that now was the time: the day couldn’t be more perfect, we were near one of my favorite spots (Pier 7)², and it would just be the two of us, which she might like better than the big party planned for later.

The only problem was that we were running late for a scheduled delivery at our house & any suggestion that we become even later might result in a remarkably inopportune argument (she’s really good at staying on schedule & is often frustrated that I’m not.)

Nonetheless, I asked her if we could walk to the pier since it was so beautiful & braced myself for the worst. Fortunately, she was game & so we headed over. As we made our way to the end, I noticed a couple sitting nearby chatting away happily and some folks fishing a little ways away, but it was private enough & lovely.

After talking for a few minutes, Kimberly turned away to look out over the water, so I stepped back & got down on one knee & waited for her to turn around. She didn’t for a little bit & so I continued to wait. I decided that the nearby couple might be wondering if anything was wrong, so I turned and flashed them a smile & a thumbs up.

After another few seconds, Kimberly turned half way around to see where I was & finding me down below her, looked at me quizzically. I motioned for her to turn around fully. “Kimberly Hayden Conley, will you marry me?” At least that is what I planned to say. She says I did. I was a good bit more nervous than I realized, so I don’t actually recall. I think she said “Of course I will.”

–

Amusingly enough, the nearby couple realized what was going on when I flashed them the thumbs up & took a few pictures for us during the moment How lucky (& kind) is that! Thanks Hannah!

courtesy of Hannah Tries
^1. Some of the Near Misses:

• a bike ride through Golden Gate Park and the Dahlia Garden
• cuddled up watching movies on a snuggly night at home
• a beautiful sunset on Bernal Hill
• a few really awkward moments (Eeek! Rings!) in jewelry stores while randomly window-shopping.
• on our Friday walk through the Inner Sunset as we were geeking out about the Sunset Reservoir (we’d never seen it). (Luckily, good sense prevailed & I decided that the locale wasn’t “us” enough, even though it was awesome that I could geek out about urban infrastructure with a hot girl.)↩

^2.Google & Facebook say it is Pier 5, but my iPhone says it is Pier 3. I think Apple is wrong. [Also note that some of the pix on the linked Google page are of the wrong pier. Grr.] ↩ UPDATE (2/16/12) : IT IS ACTUALLY PIER 7. Way to be wrong Google, Facebook, and Apple!

[Update 3/16/2012: "The Story of Trixie" has come full circle, as the blog where we got her inspiration has posted about her See the epilogue after you read this post.]

Trixie in her natural habitat, the ‘Deepistan National Parklet (& in front of our temporary construction mural by Adrian Cotter.)

When I started my front-of-home renovation project, my architect Jane Martin surprised me by asking if I was interested in doing a parklet. The irony was that though I spend plenty of time involved in issues related to urban spaces & livability (and thus I run in parklet-y circles), the thought never occurred to me! Luckily, it did to Jane & I immediately loved the idea.

Months later, as the parklet project was really making progress, Jane proposed doing a “succulent sculpture” for it. And since she was so dead-on about the parklet, I immediately said sure! I thought “Ummm – a what?” Jane excitedly explained that our parklet needed an artistic focus & that it should be plant based. At that point, seeing her vision completely, I said “sure!” I said “Ummm – hmm” & started trying to figure out how to say “no” to something she was so enthused about.

Sensing my skepticism, she showed me small models of vague blobby shapes & and I said “I don’t get it.”

Resolutely, she then showed me one of her succulent sculptures: a large mass of succulents cleverly and attractively agglomerated into a hanging sphere a large vague blobby shape made out of plants. She loved it, so I went with “It’s very nice.”

As I explained to her that I just wasn’t all that excited about a giant blob of succulents or the cost, she asked “well, what shapes do you like?”  Immediately, I said “animals!”¹ and Jane said “we can do animals!”.  Finally we were getting somewhere.

I pretty quickly thought “dinosaur!” but couldn’t think of any that would look good as rounded blob of succulent plants other than my least favorite types, the big, boring, sauropods (think “brontosaurus”).²

Giving up on that, the work of Benny Bufano came to mind, as he’s very popular in the San Francisco Bay Area:

Bufano “Bear & Cubs” Sculpture in Fremont, CA
I tried to imagine a Bufano-like design that would look good for one of my favorite animals (gorillas, killer whales, elephants, ravens, etc.) but couldn’t, probably because I’m not actually a world-class sculptor.

Thus, I turned to my friends for answers & the consensus was: “Dinosaur! Duh! You LOVE dinosaurs!”.

Halloween 2006: Deepasaurus
Halloween 2009: Glamosaur
I patiently assured them an interesting dino-shape couldn’t be done well as a “succulent sculpture.”

Then, one day, while perusing my favorite dino blog, I saw this:

Wim en Annelien provided inspiration from Belgium (thanks to the Smithsonian’s excellent “Dinosaur Tracking” blog)
Boom!  Immediate win!!:

• Serious cuteness
• Soft lines, easy for rounded blobby forms
• Triceratops was my childhood favorite & is still right up there for me.
• Jane liked it
• the pro-pelican lobby (my GF, Kimberly) was even excited.

It was on.

Soon thereafter, we made a small model out of clay.

Clay Model by Me & Adrian Cotter, Deepistan’s Artist-In-Residence
From there, the model was sent to a metal worker to make the frame:

Mastermind Jane Martin, and Chief Deepistan National Parklet Ranger Kimberly Conley

After that, Jane began making it real: she added a mesh skin, filled it with a mixed dirt & plant matter substrate & then began plugging in all the wee plants.

Frame + Mesh

Adding substrate
Trixie pre-plants
Adding the wee plants

After about three weeks, we had her moved to her habitat in the parklet! I had always wanted a real live dinosaur of my very own & now I had one !!
After that, it was all over except waiting for her horns to grow in & picking a name (thanks Nadine Mellor!)

Trixie with her recycled redwood horns…
“Yay!” to my architect, Jane, pushing to make this all happen! “Booo!” to all the passers-by who think Trixie is a rhino.

-’deep

[Epilogue 3/16/2012: "The Story of Trixie" has come full circle, as the Smithsonian's "Dinosaur Tracking" blog ,where we got her inspiration, has posted about her Click here for the post. We <3 "Dinosaur Tracking" ]

^1.In hindsight, it’s surprising that my favorite shape, “girl,” was never even considered, but probably because it has been done to death in sculpture ↩

^2.Yes, I know they are really “apatosaurs” you pedants.↩

[Ed. Note: This post is 4 months late. The trip was 8/15 to 9/10/11. Now that no one cares, I thought I'd post about it. I've been trying to write this for months, but really I was too focused on this project at work to make it happen...  If you want to just look at my PICTURES, here they are, but I think the pix are better if you read this post & vice versa...]

[Ed. Note II: I was in China for less than a month. I saw a tiny, tiny, fraction of the country in terms of square miles.  I met maybe 150 Chinese people.  I had more than a "Hi, can I buy that?" conversation with maybe 10 (being REALLY generous).  Nonetheless, I'm about to post something now that makes vast sweeping generalizations about an entire nation of over a billion people and thousands of years of history, with languages I can neither read nor write.  So please accept everything I say here as gospel from someone who knows everything.  I certainly do.

In all seriousness: I hope I don't offend anyone (esp. my Chinese friends) with my thoughts and impressions - I really am just trying to understand what I saw & felt while in a fascinating and very different place.]

Our hero in the Great Taklamakan Desert

A few months back, I was whisked off to China by my girlfriend to experience her step-mother country.  Kimberly, although pretty damn white, has studied Mandarin since she was very young & then majored in Chinese studies in college & lived there for a total of 8 years.  I knew she was missing China, so it should have come as no surprise when she hijacked our planned trip to India by taking us to China instead.

I recovered from this by planning to trade her for a panda. Perhaps two.

Unbeknownst to me, she subverted that plan by having us head to the far western deserts of China along the Silk Road.  Pandas are NOT in the desert. Sigh. (She’s tricksy!)

Luckily, I found a new fascination soon after arriving in China: looking for signs of happiness.

But, before we get into that, a brief map:

View China Trip 2011 in a larger map
We landed in Hong Kong, then flew to Beijing, spent a week or so there, and then started heading consistently west, more or less along the route of the Silk Road: We took an overnight train to the ancient capital Xi’an, spent a couple of days there, then took a 26 hr train ride to Dunhuang (sort of the gateway to the West). We then flew to Urumqi, the most remote city from any sea in the world according to Guinness, and the biggest city in Xinjiang, the western-most province. From Urumqi, we flew to Kashgar near the border with Pakistan, and spent a few days there exploring the edge of China, before flying east to Shanghai & then back to Hong Kong.

Our first stop in the mainland was Beijing, a striking and enjoyable city, vibrant and culturally alien with fascinating sights and sounds.  It immediately made me think of my closest relevant context: large Indian cities like Bombay & New Delhi.

It was similar to those Indian mega-cities but a lot cleaner (well, not the air) and less chaotic. But whereas Indian cities are chaotic, boisterous, and aggressively vivid for all 5 senses, Beijing is a much more somber place, a city made of grey brick and intensely polluted grey skies.

And while a good chunk of the lack of chaos might be explained by the remarkable lack of animals¹, that did not explain the collective lack of exuberance: Though the younger generations seem to be having a bit more fun, any forms of public joy, from the small scale, like two people laughing loudly amidst their banter, to something larger, like a crowd enjoying a street performance animatedly laughing and joking, were scarce, at best.²

As this fact began to dawn on me, I became increasingly fascinated. Also, on some level, it was depressing: for an exuberance-based person like myself, I really wanted the Chinese to be having a blast somewhere, sometime. Obviously, just because I wasn’t witnessing it, that didn’t preclude it from happening, but it felt that way pretty strongly & that is how I took it. And additionally, it was alienating: The lack of tangible public displays of happiness made for an even deeper sense of “I don’t belong here”. In hindsight, this makes me realize how much one relies on seeing people emote to connect with them.

The alienness in particular was driven home on the second night in Beijing, when we came across a quintessential piece of my world, done Beijing-style: a large, public, dance party!

Note: This is not my photograph, but it is very to similar to what I saw… (courtesy of edsailor on Flickr)

That night, as we were coming out of a sports arena³, we came across a large group of people of all ages, though mostly older, in the parking lot, dancing.  There were somewhere between 80 & 150 people congregated outside to dance.  Big speakers were set up, and there was one woman dancing on top of a platform,  executing very specific ballroom dance moves.  Before her were rows and rows of people following as precisely as they could.  Not a single one was smiling that I saw.

I couldn’t imagine they weren’t having fun, but it was really strange.  The format looked more like an aerobics class for all ages than anything else, but an aerobics class where everyone was on Ritalin.  Even more striking was the second group, maybe 50 feet away.  This group was couples dancing & were doing it UP.  The leaders were a couple, again dancing efficiently and with great purpose and energy, and all around them were couples & singles executing similar moves with various degrees of skill.  Again, if I had to bet money, I’d say they were having a blast, but for the life of me, they gave no sign.  It was bizarre.

A few nights later, as I was free-roaming Beijing by bike, I came across another such pod of couples-dancers.  The sound system was a large boom box, and this one was just on a wide street corner.  There were maybe 15 couples, all going at it.  (All lack of exuberance aside, the coolest thing about this was the fact that large groups of Beijingers have awesome, public, dance parties, on the neighborhood level – that’s pretty cool.  I wonder if is some hold over from Mao-era public calisthenics or some such.)

My time in Beijing got me thinking about public exuberance & it was in the back of my mind the whole trip. I wondered if its absence might just be a Beijing thing?  Maybe just as Parisians seem to be more cynical than the average French, or New Yorkers seem more brusque than the average American, maybe something like that was at play?  But as we went west, the lack of public joy continued.  The cities were perhaps less grey, mostly due to the lesser concentrations of grey bricks, though the skies of China never improved much (that is enough to make me scream actually), but the people never seemed much more exuberant.  I think Kimberly and I expected China to become perhaps poorer as we went West, but also somehow, more idyllic, and with that I expected more people who seemed happier.

I realize that this notion is a loaded, bourgeois conceit: that life might get harder and poorer yet simultaneously more happy and soulful, yet I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t in the back of my head. And as much as it is overly romanticized and perhaps a naive expectation of the over-privileged, I do know that my other experiences in developing nations, from Central America, to Africa, to India, were full of poor people with a lot more public expressions of joy in their lives. Thus, as we continued on in China, I was really hoping that we’d start to see the lack of exuberance start to wane, and that we’d stumble across a publicly happier and more relatable existence somewhere.

Xi’an downtown in a storm – one of my pictures from the Flickr set.

Our next stop was Xi’an, the capital city of the first real Chinese emperor (of Terra Cotta Warriors fame (loved them!)). Here, we came to our first Muslim market area, which was lively and fun, full of new foods to try and fascinating things to watch (how do they make that? who are those people? what is that!?).  We then proceeded to Dunhuang, which was described by friends as a gentle, slow paced oasis (both literally and emotionally) at the beginnings of the great Western deserts of China.  But the Dunhuang we arrived at was a brand new implanted “if-you-build-it-they-will-come” city of the future, Chinese style, that had supplanted the Dunhuang of old. It was oddly empty, but we were assured that this was a merely a vagary of the tourism schedule of Chinese nationals. In the end, the sand dunes & caves near Dunhuang were beautiful & wondrous, and were certainly worth every minute, but again, no signs of exuberance.

After Dunhuang, we headed into Xinjiang, the vast Central Asian province, home of the ethnically and culturally distinct Uighurs.   Urumqi, the capital, was a brief stopover for us, notable mostly for a serious security presence (If I were a Uighur, it would definitely feel like it was “Occupied Urumqi”).  We then headed to our “official goal” of the trip, the old central Asian city of Kashgar & Lake Karakul⁴ nearby.

Kashgar was a fascinating city with an older, dirty, charming, messy, Uighur, Muslim Old Town that would have been at home anywhere from the coast of Africa, through the Mediterranean, to northern India: Islamic architecture, tiny windy streets, old stone construction, outdoor vegetable markets & food-stalls, animals being butchered, cooked and sold, a crush of scooters and pedestrians, and the crazy melange of people.  Here in Xinjiang, life didn’t seem as somber somehow, but honestly it didn’t seem like much fun either. That being said, here the lack of joy seemed to be more of a sign of the political realities of the region rather than cultural: The Old Town had been partially destroyed and rebuilt new-style by the Chinese government ostensibly in the name of “progress”, but that decision seems to have been rescinded or at least halted, in the face of Old Kashgar’s increasingly understood tourist value.  Nonetheless, a massive and concerted program to makeover the rest of Kashgar into a modern (and sadly routine & dreary) Chinese city was well underway.  Additionally, the government was clearly very keen on making the vast demographic switch from restive Uighur to a Han Chinese majority as soon as possible.

After Kashgar, our travel superpowers finally decimated by the kryptonite that is Chinese hotel rooms, we flew out to China’s showroom city, Shanghai, and thus back to the first world. Perhaps I was biased a by a gracious host at the end of a long trek (thanks Alan!), but the juxtaposition of history, hypermodernity, and a global power trying so hard to impress, made Shanghai a fascinating delight. The fact that I was finally in a real dense urban center with access to a decent bike would have made Shanghai a favorite, but the additional fact that I could go on really long bike rides late at night and see many layers of Shanghai also brought a sense of connection to a Chinese place that was perhaps the best I’ll ever get.

Thus, between Shanghai’s modernity and my ability to bike it, Shanghai seemed the least alien of all the places I experienced in China.  Here was someplace I could see a life I understood and appreciated. With my greater level of connection, I was much less jarred by the lack of exuberance. Shanghai just seemed busy, rather than unhappy, as Beijing seemed, or grim, as the West did. In fact if the “Deep-Approved-Way-Of-Life” (note intentional semi-ironic arrogance) had to start somewhere in China, I’d bet on Shanghai (Why not? Chinese Communism started in Shanghai & ‘Deepism is much more fun.)

So that was it for our time in mainland China.  I never found the public happy.  I’m not sure why or what that meant. It certainly was depressing though. I think a lot of it must be a cultural reserve.  Maybe the Chinese have a lot of fun in the privacy of their own homes, but dial it way back in public – I’m sure that is part of it & who am I to judge?  I also am convinced that the Cultural Revolution must have done a lot to disabuse everyone who survived it of the notion of making any waves in any loud public way.  That in and of itself seems so sad.  Maybe it was actually more of a lot of little reasons – certainly just in our trip I got a sense of subtle shifts from the somberness of Beijing, to the grimness of the west, to the too-busy-to-smile feel of Shanghai.  I really just don’t know, but I’m certainly intrigued.  I’m looking forward to going back someday & maybe exploring the South?  Maybe more tropical climes will shake things up….

-’deep

.ps

I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Kimberly’s family, Gene & Marsha (& Juanita!), in Hong Kong for providing a vital staging area before our trip and a much needed decompression zone on our way out.  I haven’t written much about Hong Kong, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t fascinating, just that I’m tired of writing (this may have been my longest post ever!)

And none of this would have ever happened of course without Kimberly, and if it did happen it wouldn’t have been a thousandth of the trip it was. Interpreter, sherpa, sparring partner, tourist attraction, comic relief & partner in crime, in the end I learned she makes a pretty decent panda substitute too:

K tries to convince me that she is, in fact, a panda.

^1. My guess is many Indians eat practically none & thus India has animals coming out its ears, while China seems to eat anything that isn’t people, and thus it has few?↩

^2. I was going to write that crowds having a blast were simply not found, but K reminded me of a great little moment in Beijing. We came across a (presumably) Chinese pop star giving a public performance with maybe 200-300 excited fans packed onto a tiny plaza in front of a mall. They were actually having a good time & K recalls how excited that made me.  I think I was also excited by the fact that as she was singing, I was the one who got the “overhead clap along” going which she great fully acknowledged from the stage ↩

^3. Duke Basketball in China!! Woot Woot! When we scheduled our trip, I knew my beloved Duke men’s basketball team would be in China for some friendship/exhibition games, but we had no idea the timing would work out so perfectly!  We had a great time at the game though it was a very, very one-sided affair – K even got a tiny moment in the WSJ’s coverage! (click here for video.)↩

^4. So it turns out we went to Karakul Lake in China which was a modest lake surrounded by beautiful mountains and a few yerts.  And though we didn’t know better at the time, we didn’t realize until I sat down to write this(!!!) that we never made it to the “real” Lake Karakul, as we intended. That lake is large and probably VERY impressive, and is also across the border in Tajikistan ↩

[Ed. Note III: Ok so I'm sneaking in an extravagant 3rd "Ed. Note." I actually have a lot more little tidbits and  brief thoughts on China, so I made them into a separate post. If you're interested check it out here - or come back some other time I promise it will at least be amusing You must learn of Clio Coddle!]

As I said in my other post: I hope I don’t offend anyone (esp. my Chinese friends) with my thoughts and impressions – I really am just trying to understand what I saw & felt while in a fascinating and very different place.]

• Unsurprisingly, knockoffs of Western brands were plentiful but this is my MOST FAVORITE ONE EVAR: I give you Clio Coddle.
  When I first saw it I simply chuckled, but something about the name really stuck with me and I had to think about it for a few minutes. Suddenly I realized the “Clio Codile” was probably an Asian L-R-switch attempt to pronounce “Crocodile” – it is simply a filtered onomatopoeia! This cracks me up no end.
  

• Historical repeating: My lovely assistant, Tom Radulovich, had given me a good book on Chinese history (John Keay’s “China: A History”) which I was reading on the trip, & it helped us appreciate the other most interesting theme of our trip: the constant sense of history repeating itself along our way:
• Hist. Repeating I: The fact that we were following in the path of the Silk Road in our travels was definitely a theme, but it was remarkable in that the FIRST ad we saw as we got off the plane in Beijing was a giant sign for the “1st China-Eurasia Expo” in Urumqi, our penultimate destination. This trade show was clearly the modern echo of the Silk Road, underscoring the importance of trade with Central Asia and points west, now as much as then.
  
• Hist. Repeating II: Additionally it was the security for this trade show that gave the Urumqi it’s “occupied” feel. Many, many troops (and even more disturbingly, what appeared to be local citizen’s militias) were on hand to prevent Uighur separatists from causing an incident. Chinese history is full of Emperors sending troops to the West to curb unrest & discontent & this felt as yet another episode.
• Hist. Repeating III: Similarly, though more pleasantly, there was a fascinating sense of continuity as we visited the famous Magao caves near Dunhuang, known for their impressive carved stone buddhas and paintings. These artworks have been funded throughout their history by wealthy individuals of the day, for some combination of reasons such as religious commitment, as status symbols, and out of a sense of philanthropy. In fact, the faces of these benefactors were often painted in as characters in the artwork. Notably, as we exited the site, there were large placards with photos of wealthy benefactors of today, detailing their donations for the restoration and upkeep of the site, no doubt for reasons not so dissimilar.
• Hist. Repeating IV: At the same site, there were historic structures which had been refurbished by the Chinese government fairly recently for purposes of tourism. At first I was appalled at the lack of respect for the historical purity of these structures. Soon thereafter, it was explained that those structures had been refurbished for the first time since the last time they were refurbished in the 1920s. And presumably they had been refurbished before that, and before that stretching back since they were originally constructed. So was restoring them making them somehow less historical, or somehow more historical in that light?

Gateway at the Magao caves, built ? refurbished in the 1920s and now again in 2011…

• Highlights: (many of these are covered in my PICTURES)
  • Hutongs in Beijing
  • Beijing architecture
  • Xi’an city wall bike ride
  • Xi’an night market & food
  • train rides
  • Terra Cotta Warriors (& hopefully Emperor Qin’s tomb someday soon!)
  • The sand dunes in Dunhuang
  • Magao Caves
  • The Old Town in Kashgar & eating fresh naan & melons (for which Xinjiang is famous)
  • Roaming Shanghai by bicycle
  • the City Planning Museum in Shanghai: a scale model of the entire city, always kept up to date! Urban Planning Geek out!
• I have often wished I could have seen China when the bike was king, but those days are gone sadly. That being said, there are still plenty of bicycles and utility tricycles all over China.
  • a huge percentage have been converted to electric bikes by after-market electric motors. Almost all the utility trikes were electric.
  • Every bike rental we ever had (other than Shanghai Bike Share) was a totally crappy bike
  • The much trumpeted Shanghai Bike Share program, was, like many things in Shanghai, incredibly useful on paper, but all the implementation details pointed to the fact that the program was really just for show. The bikes were decent though and worked well for what I needed – so thank god for that!
• As much as I give chain stores a bad rap, Starbucks became a big part of the trip for us & were very much appreciated wherever we found them: You could pretty much always count on free Wifi, and more importantly they were often the coffee shop that you could find as a tourist that was guaranteed to be relaxing & mellow. There didn’t seem to be a lot of “local options,” though when we found them we certainly appreciated them too – but of course they always allowed smoking indoors. Super-bleech.
• Facebook is blocked in China but (except, I’m told, in high end hotels that cater to foreigners, so they don’t notice the issue.) but luckily proxy websites are easy to find that worked around this issue.
• The Chinese grow food EVERYWHERE, even in freeway medians. Unfortunately it is mostly low-grade feed corn, mostly for pigs. China loves pork!
• While we were flying over the Western regions I noticed theses strange large scale patterns in the terrain, that were obviously man-made, but I couldn’t figure out what the hell they were. Gizmodo and others are now reporting similar mystery structures – check it out!
• China foolishly squanders money that any sane nation would use to pay for oil wars in the Mideast by investing heavily in energy technology and national infrastructure. Every stop in the west had a vast new airport & new construction was rampant.
• Throughout China, though especially in more affluent Beijing & Shanghai, Apple was everywhere. iPads and iPhones are *THE* thing. Buy stock. Seriously. (yes, I work for Apple, but I mean it nonetheless.)
• On a related note, I was really struck by how much of the dominant technology I was seeing in the advanced, more affluent parts of China were Western technologies: laptops, cellphones, TVs, iPads, cars. Most of them 20th century technologies. How long will this be the case? Will this hegemony of innovation continue? Will it equalize? Will it shift to Chinese/Indian dominant in the next century?
• Every square inch of of “new” in China seemed to be a mall, or a facility “with a mall built in!”  K suggests that in the absence of religion, consumerism has filled the gap. It certainly looked that way to me.  Sigh.
• The two biggest pieces of advice I can give a traveller to China are:
  • For the love of god, bring a bed roll (like a camping Thermarest). The beds in all but the highest end hotels are hard wood slabs covered by a cruel taunt of a pad. I mean it: Thermarest.
  • Though it will seem innocuously amusing at first, do NOT read the English-language t-shirts that everyone wears. Although it is fascinating to see literally millions of people wear t-shirts in a language only a few of them understand, and although some are amusing, eventually you won’t be able to stop reading them.  Then you will accidentally read something out of the corner of your eye, that will cause your brain to lock up. Or you’ll read things that are unintentionally disgusting – to wit (google it at your own risk):
    Actually, this was taken in Hong Kong, outside a burger joint advertising it’s newest “delicacy.”
• I’m afraid to consider Chinese pop music. On most trips to most countries I’ve been to, there has been some sense of local popular music that was at least intriguing. Not China. Every single pop song I heard (or watched on ubiquitous video screens) was a truly horrible syrupy pop ballad of the worst Western style. My kingdom for something with more emotional range than a Hallmark card sent by a 15 year old girl.
• On a related note though, it was really cool to see that Chinese pop culture was beginning to get a sense of its own value. In various more hip shopping districts such as Nan Louguxiang in Beijing, Tai Kang Lu in Shanghai & the Hong Kong chain Shanghai Tang, there was a really cool burgeoning sense of “Cool Intrinsically Chinese things” or cool mashup “Western Meets Chinese” things where both sides had equivalent value. That made me really happy.
• I had a fascinating conversation with a man in Kashgar who explained that most people used to eat donkey meat because it was so cheap, but then had to start sending it all to Beijing for the 2008 Olympics. He then explained that the price had never returned to normal, so now they don’t eat as much of it: As impressive as the Beijing Olympics were (& wow were they), they were willing to impoverish their entire country to stage them.

[PLEASE NOTE: The opinions below are entirely my own & do not represent those of anyone else, much less Apple, Inc.]

Over the past 9 and a half years, I’ve often fantasized about sitting down at lunch with Steve Jobs. I frequently walked past him eating with Jony Ive at the Apple cafeteria and considered it.¹

The last time I saw them having lunch together was a few months back, but that time I didn’t experience the wild flash of “what if I just sat down and started talking!?”.  That time, I could tell something was very wrong: just seeing the sadness in their eyes and the silence between them made me hurt. I convinced myself that it was just that Steve wouldn’t be coming back to Apple. I think I was very wrong.

Since Steve died last week, I’ve been surprised at how much it has affected me, and in the aftermath I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why.  What was he to me? I’ve been having a hard time finding the right word.

The first word that comes to mind is “hero”, but Steve was no hero of mine.  He could be too mean too often for that.  I’m sure a lot of people will start calling him one, that seems inevitable, but I dislike the process of whitewashing his story.  It’s so disingenuous and ultimately devaluing.

So what then? “Pioneer” – too impersonal. “Eminence” – meh. “Mahatma” means “a person regarded with reverence or loving respect” but even besides the fact that Gandhi has that covered, it captures none of the “why” since it is just an honorific.  ”Visionary” is pretty good but fails to capture the real world drive he imparted to my life.

So what is the word for someone for inspires your best, focuses your creativity, and creates the standards by which you judge yourself and the world around you?

In the end, something I often said in jest, to defuse criticism, makes the most sense to me. I’ve always been sensitive to the fact that my reverence for him was dramatic and that my need to find out everything he said and digest it could be easily mocked.  I was also aware that to critics, we Apple people were just simple-minded thralls animated by Steve Jobs. We’re often dismissed as a cult or at least a cult-of-personality.  So a good while back, I started referring to Steve as “Maximum Leader,” in hopes that I could preempt such criticisms by co-opting the term ironically.  It was a “wink & a nod” that said “I know you’ll just think I’m a fan boy, but I’m smarter than that. You can tell because I’m using irony.”

But in the end, I guess the irony is that that is how I felt, and the joke was the truth:   Goodbye, Maximum Leader.   In some part, I’ve been following your lead since I was 15. Thank you for all that you gave me.  It has made all the difference.

—

I saw my first Macintosh in late 1984 or early 1985 in a dorm room at my high school, and it changed me the first time I used it.  The promise of the Mac, and of the graphical user interface it brought to the world, was the idea that humans could be empowered by technology to do great things.  Or as Jobs put it, computers as “bicycles for the mind.”  I was hooked.

In college when I picked a major, I decided on Computer Science and Political Science.  From the get go I wanted to be a Macintosh programmer.  Later on, my love for animation and cartooning melded with my software engineering side, and the other thing I wanted was to be a programmer at Pixar.² Though I knew Steve Jobs was involved at Pixar, I didn’t make much of it at the time.

After college, in 1991, I moved to California with hopes of eventually working at Apple or Pixar.  While working for a Mac game company, I almost got a job at Apple, but failed to & quickly relocated to the far-more-stimulating pastures of San Francisco. In the 11 years that followed, it seemed unlikely that I’d ever work at Apple, but I remained a Mac programmer even as Apple was dying because I loved the Mac so much, and still believed in it.³

Then in 2002, 5 years after Steve Jobs’ return to Apple, someone from Apple called & asked if I’d be interested in working on iTunes.  Apple was still struggling mightily at that point & it’s future was far from certain. The iPod had just recently been introduced, but was nowhere near the cultural phenomenon it would become, and the iTunes Music Store was still a year away, so very few people believed Apple was going anywhere & the industry press was still waiting for Apple to fail. But, despite a lot of smart advice not to, I did it. The chance to work on software that I loved for a company that I loved was never much of a question.

It has been 9 and a half years now, and Apple has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me.  Very quickly, I realized that I was working on software that brought thousands (now many millions) of people joy⁴: a better convergence of my personal and my professional aspirations is scarcely plausible.  But even more than professionally, my time at Apple has transformed the way I think and the way I see the world.

In that time, I’ve been a part of the flourishing of the iPod, a simple device that has brought a lot of real joy, the introduction of the iPhone, I think the greatest transformational device I’ve ever seen and a hell of a lot of fun, and finally the iPad, which is coming into its own as the true “computer for the people” that Steve set out to build so long ago.  It is not correct to say that Steve “made” all these – because I know better, but it is true that without Steve, we at Apple wouldn’t have made these things as well as we have.⁵

On some level, these things represent what I think of as Apple’s values, and Apple’s values were cultivated by Steve Jobs. Over time, a  good many of these values have become some of mine as well, while others have strengthened values that I already had:

• empowerment
• excellence
• beauty
• delight
• humanity

I’ve learned that making powerful things simple and accessible enriches lives.

I’ve learned that excellence in what you ask of yourself is the only excellence that ever matters.

I’ve learned that the more you care about something, the more honest you should be with it and about it.  This certainly applies to things, but even more so to people.

I’ve learned that the honesty of a made thing is quickly evident and that the beauty evidenced on the outside should match the beauty of the thing on the inside and vice versa.

I’ve learned that the greatest joy someone who makes things can have is to delight people, both themselves and others around them.

I’ve learned that technology is at its best when it fosters, empowers, and connects our humanity.

Goodbye Steve.  Thank you.

- love ‘deep

The small memorial I made at my office. I don’t usually wear so much black. (Update 10/21: Indians wear white at memorial services. I thought about wearing white at Jobs’ memorial here at work, but realized I was too American to feel legitimate in white & too Indian not to wear a kurta: So I wore a black kurta: amusingly ‘Deepian.)

——

Things to watch…

Crazy Ones, narrated by SJ

Bicycles for the Mind

2005 Stanford Commencement Speech

I loved this commencement speech when I watched it back in 2005, and love it even more now.  I’m happy to say that my life so far has stacked up pretty well against his advice, except maybe the “death” part.  I’m unfortunately still too scared of it to contemplate it as a useful tool.

^1. So no, I never had lunch with him: I respected him too much to intrude and also I liked my job too much.  I did fumble through a brief elevator conversation once and he smirked at one of my Disco Ball costumes one Halloween. The only significant interaction was when I asked him a question about Apple’s behind-the-scenes approach to corporate giving at a company meeting.  We had a smart back and forth about it, but I’m not allowed to discuss it, since company meetings are confidential.↩

^2.The late 80′s were many years before any of us had seen “Toy Story,” and thus many years before anyone other than computer geeks had heard of Pixar.  It was known to our people for its animated short films, which were part technology demonstrations and part art form.  As a cartoon maven, the combination of computers and animation was (and is) electric.↩

^3.By then, I no longer believed that we were going save the world ecologically simply by making new technology (we must change ourselves first), but technology still had a role, perhaps even a big one, and I still believe that personal computers can empower people.↩

^4. And yes, some pain I’m afraid.  We’re sorry – truly.  The best way to let us know of bugs and other problems in iTunes is here. And yes, we really do read what you send in.↩

^5.Now we’ll make new things.  Hopefully, we’ll live up to Steve’s standards.  We have a pretty good shot.↩

[Ed Note:  What follows is just a lot of blather about how I decided to remake my classic Disco Ball costume - if you just wanna see it in action CLICK HERE for the 1 minute video for all you need to know , otherwise see ALL THE PIX HERE.]

So every year around Halloween three things happen:

1. I start wondering what costume I’ll do for Halloween since it’s my favorite holiday.
2. People from all over the interwebs find my Disco Ball costume online, and start emailing me for advice on how to make one for themselves*.
3. People start asking me if I’m going to do my Disco Ball again…

(Click for more pix)

In response to 1, I always have to do something that makes me happy.  That usually means it has to have high production values, it has to be ambitious, and it has to ”wow” people. Ideally, it is somehow interactive, and even more ideally it is something I can wear on my bike**….

The Disco Ball costume has always been one of my favorites but, but it seems to be far and away everyone else’s most favorite (as seen from items 2 & 3 above.)  People just respond to DB more than anything else I ever do.  Maybe it’s the built-in sound system, maybe that it is such an iconic thing, or maybe it’s just how much fun I have while in it , for whatever reason, it’s what the people want!

In any case, every once in a while I realize a way to make it better and that usually sets me about making a new version.  There was the initial “I’ll be a disco ball since I’m bald” 1.0 version, then there was 2.0, the first body sized version (paper maiche), then there was 3.0, the first attempt at a sturdy version out of foam, then there was 4.0 – the new and improved sturdy version.

  

 
Disco Balls through the years 1997 – 2010. Click on the image for more info…

I was crazy happy with Disco Ball 4.0 when I made it & figured that was as good as DB costumes would ever get.  There was one really obvious problem with it though: the mylar squares I used didn’t look quite “disco ball” enough.  The fact that they lay more or less flat on the curved surface of the ball, kept it from being perfect in my mind.  The only solution I could think of was to buy real glass mirror squares, but that would be ridiculously heavy and even more ridiculously expensive, so mylar it was.

But recently I realized that instead of glass, I could use plastic mirrors & that my local plastic supply shop, TAP Plastics must carry them (no matter what I’m doing for Halloween, I always seem to end up at TAP for something!).  On top of that, I could reuse the ball from 4.0 since I was very happy with it & my costume would be EASY to make for once! Woo hoo! This year there would be a Disco Ball 5.0!

Since I knew it was going to be easy, I decided to procrastinate.  It has been a really intense few months with work & local politics, and I just didn’t have another project in me.  So a week or so before Halloween, I went over to TAP and ordered 425 2″ plastic squares.  Unfortunately, they were MUCH more than the $50-$100 bucks I thought this was going to cost.  MUCH more.

But at this point, there was no time to do another Halloween costume & I did really want to make the ULTIMATE Disco Ball costume, so I ponied up.

I ripped off the old mylar squares, and glued on the new tiles one by one (using special mirror adhesive so as to not ruin the mirrors themselves), made some internal improvements to the speaker mounting system inside the ball (added straps to hold the components in better) and voila – Disco Ball 5.0 was ready for the world!

Yes, it was crazy expensive and it is honestly pretty heavy - but I think the results are worth it Is it the ULTIMATE Disco Ball? Well, we’ll see…

(Click for more pix)

* Really! I get emails from everywhere – this year I got a bunch & amusingly enough, one of the people who made one lived in SF AND I ran into her at random as I was walking down the street in costume!  Her pic is here (you looked AWESOME LULU!)

and here is another excellent one – nice work Jennifer!.

** I have yet to live up to this goal – I really want to be able to ride Halloween Critical Mass in full costume glory, but that never happens & I always feel lame… “I really have a cool costume back at home guys! It just doesn’t bike well!”

.ps If you are looking how to make your own Disco Ball – start with the instructions on Disco Ball 4.0 & then decide if you want to upgrade to Disco Ball 5.0 – the mylar squares were $1 a piece plus tax. Also make sure you buy special “mirror adhesive” – other glues will destroy the mirror’s silvering…