San Anto

Just getting back from a full week of activities back in the hometown of San Antonio. I know it’s only been a little over three months since I last left TX, but it seems like a lot longer has passed. For starters, it’s weird to be able to go out and not have to count pennies (this summer as a vagabond) or go out with friends who also happened to be home for the holidays (a classmate of mine held a brief unofficial class reunion).

Let’s review a bit. The most annoying part of this is that I both departed and arrived from San Jose airport, even though I live a good 60 miles away from the damn place. On the other hand, I did get to TX and back for under $250, and I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. In about an hour and half, I will be arriving home to the apt in SF. That will be almost 4 hours since I arrived at the airport. American Airline’s insanely slow service doesn’t help matters, but you get the picture.

So anyway, back to last week. I got up really early, traveled a couple thousand miles, and got in just in time for dinner at my aunt’s house, and was able to take my aunt’s Toyota and pick up Miles and head to Hamilton’s house for a solid jam session. I’ve always admired Ham’s musical gifts, and this night was no different as he had some how gotten his hands on an accordion, and had picked up the instrument’s intricacies with ease. We had fun playing guitar, playing music and talking high school.

Thursday morning I got up an hour before an important client call at noon, probably said about two sentences over the course of the meeting, and went back to sleep for four hours. That night Miles and I were off to a new bar(for me at least) called Limelight. I have to say, it’s probably the coolest bar I’ve been to in San Antonio. On Thursday there was a solid hipster presence (I felt oddly like I was back in SF) and some great house music being spun by a local DJ. The Lone Star beers were only $2 and the company was great. There was Dave C. behind the bar, and we later met Evelyn, Roseanna, and a host of her friends from St. Mary’s and elsewhere. Somehow, the whole lot, along with Miles, invited me and convinced me to come to a quinceñera of sorts for Evelyn that Saturday night. Evelyn is 21 years old. So I gave her crap about that and made a lukewarm commitment to attend.

Friday morning was more sleeping in, a little more work, and lot more sleep. Love it. That night I was pleased to meet up with some good friends that were actually in my graduating class – Austin and David. We met up at a place called Boneheadz. It was a classic San Antonio dive bar that probably only survives because of nights when they show Spurs games. I convinced the two to head to Limelight, where I had had a great time the previous night. Except on Friday there was a goth/metal band that was scaring away pretty much everybody. We got a couple of Lone Stars and then left. Austin was tired, but David and I went back to his parent’s place (so high school!) to watch a movie. The Simpsons movie was played, but none of it was watched as we caught up and reminisced. I bought David a bottle of some good California sparkling wine to celebrate his graduation, but we plain forgot to drink it that night.

Saturday all the family began to arrive. And the tamalada started. My aunt and uncle’s house way out in far west San Antonio was taken over by almost twenty hungry Mexicans, eager to cook tamales and share stories. It was good company, but that night I had plans. By seven I was out the door, on my way to Miles’ house to get dressed for the fake quinceñera. The only problem was, I had rsvp’d to Drew, another classmate of mine, much earlier to attend a reunion of sorts at his house. I really wanted to see some of the people that were going and I had promised to go. So I got dressed in one of the Donnelly’s finest tuxes (it was a black tie event for crying out loud) and headed over to Drew’s casual party. Miles and I were, of course, way, way too overdressed. But hey, I always say better over than under dressed. S we sucked it up and schmoozed for about an hour. I saw tons of people I wanted to talk to more, but of course, there would never really be enough time to catch up, so Miles and I headed off to Club Gireaud (or something like that). It was a classic, old school, Alamo Heights-type event. I would say about 2-3 hundred packed into a gorgeous club, with great food and free booze. Everyone was looking stunning (especially the ladies, if I do say so myself) and bragging about their family’s accomplishments. A few things stood out to me: 1) Where else in San Antonio would there be so few Mexican’s? 2) Almost all the kids went to TX for college (props to Ms. Fitzsimmons for bucking the trend), and 3) despite initially feeling like an outsider, I think was like a fish to water and had a great time chatting and socializing with San Antonio’s Heights crowd. By around eleven all the old folks were beginning to trickle out and the bars started getting longer lines as my-age type folks took full advantage of the hosts’ generosity. We danced, drank, and met good people. Miles and I also took a cab home that night. And I can’t speak for him, but I sure was feeling that party the entire next day.

Sunday was more family time as most of my actual immediate family finally arrived from Colorado. In keeping with tradition, they barely escaped a major snowstorm to reach us in TX. The rest of the tamales were finished and the conversation carried on to everyone’s plans and current goings on. It was the last night before Christmas Eve, so it was probably my last night to see people other than my family (even though I do love them, I gotta get away at night). So Emma, Britney, Miles and I met up at Zuni grill that night for pink margaritas. Yes, this would be the same Zuni grill that three out of the four of us worked at approximately 4.5 years ago. Unfortunately, there was a recent round of firings, and it appeared that every single person we worked with had, sadly, left. So we chatted with the waiter, and bounced by the time we were the last people to still be sitting down at the restaurant. Luckily, a group of other folks was, at that same time, meeting up at a martini bar called swig. This was probably the classiest place I had ever been to in San Antonio. And still cheap drinks – I was happy. There we met up with Matt Stolhandski, Trevor, Lauren, Delaney, and Jacki Deer. It only seemed appropriate that I finished out my trip with folks that were a year older than me at ISA. Everyone seemed to be doing very well with their latest adventures in life. A few of us weren’t quite ready to call it quits so we headed back to Delaney’s place for a last round of beers and high school gossip. But at 3, it was time to say goodbye and we headed home.

Christmas eve and Christmas day were the usual affair of food, beer, fun, and sleep. Santa brought me a brand new iPod classic, which made me very happy. But there a few burnt out pixels, so Santa is bringing it back to the shops to beat the elves and get the problem fixed. Should be back soon. I put a lot of thought into the presents for my family, and I think they were very pleased. My favorite was a painting I made of a favorite picture that my mom has of me and my sister in classic Jalisco traje and dress. I wasn’t sure if my mom was going to dig it, but I think she did. Props to Tim for introducing me to the world of painting about a month ago.

So after an hour and a half, the album I’m listening to is about to end, and the train is finally about to arrive in the city. I look forward to a weekend of rest (wasn’t I just on vacation?) and a couple of good New Year’s parties coming up. I guess I’m back home in San Francisco. But I think I left my heart in San Antonio.

Work

It was about nine at night. Tiredness usually started to set in at this point in the night when consecutive late nights at work seemed to pile up with no sign of letting up soon. The tunnel was dark on both ends. I decided to get a final tea for the day, about my fourth, to push through the last bit of work.

As any good consultant might do, I was crunching through some numbers – nothing difficult – but they just weren’t working out. Our team had a hypothesis that product A made up to 90% of a business’ revenues. But when I ran the numbers of a few different clients, some fell in line with that hypothesis, and some were completely off. The equation to calculate for the monthly spend of product A was particularly confusing. I was spinning my wheels here and if it’s one thing we learned over and over again in training, it was to not let those wheels spin and ask for help. Plus, if one thing is sure about my co-workers, it’s that they’re incredibly intelligent and could easily help me through any confusing math.

My particular section (product A and product B) for the project was shared between me and another senior co-worker. He was fresh out of prestigious business school X and was eager to show a young college-grad all that he had learned in the three extra months that he had been working before me. I liked him, and for the most part we work well together. But, like any person you spend close companionship for a sudden and endured amount of time, we had a couple small, well things, and might have snapped at each other a little bit. It didn’t help that this young MBA was dealing with a college-grad that has been describe by his peers as ‘maybe too confident for his experience and age.’ By nine at night, there were already a couple of snaps recorded for the day.

But I relented, because even this maybe-too-confident associate isn’t too proud to ask for math help. I went over to my partner’s desk across the floor to ask for help. We went through all the calculations. Of course I was wrong. And he was wrong a little bit (but not nearly as wrong as I was, although I would never say anything). We worked everything out, but darnit, the end answer was still the same. Different clients had different revenue mixes. I took a quick break to go back to my desk and find some literature that might help.

That’s it! The revenue mix depends on how much of product B you have because product A was static.

I ran to tell my partner and drew out a quick graph, showing a straight line for product A and a slope of about 2x for product B. “It makes sense, but product A is not static.” Oh yeah. Shoot. “Well,” he told me, “let’s add it up. These fees are fixed for product A. One, two, three. Then there is a $1 charge for each of product A. 1x. Then there is a $.50 handling fee for each of product A. 1.5x. So y=1.5x+172. Product B doesn’t have any fixed costs. There is again a $1 charge and a $.50 handling fee for each of product B. So y=1.5x. Hmmm.”

The first graph was erased and a new one drawn up. But if they both had a slope of 1.5x, then they were parallel and the difference is always the fixed costs of product A. As I was drawing the graph, my partner told me, “That doesn’t make sense. Not when the different client revenues are added. The difference isn’t $172 every time.”

“Well,” I said, “there is always an addition to product B, for archiving purposes.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s call that z. y=1.5x +z.. But that still gives us the same slope and a parallel line, just higher.”

“If the x axis is months, then z will always be added each month. So it’s a function of x.” There was no need for that extra caffeine, this puzzle got my brain pumping again.

“Yes. Actually, it is x.”

“Yeah, that’s right, since the same number of product A is archived and lumped into product b at the end of the month.”

“That makes y=2.5x for B.” A third and final graph was sketched out with line A starting high and slightly increasing while line B started at the axis and climbed quickly.

That’s it. It just depends on the number of product A and product B to get a client’s revenue mix. So simple. We gave each other congratulatory high fives in honor of our intellect – or rather our ability to remember seventh-gade math. We quickly rang our manager, who was delayed at the airport, to give him our findings.

“That’s good. Our client will want to know that. But there’s one problem. We want to know about the revenue mix for the entire market, not just one client of theirs.”

Ugh. Our heads dropped at the same time. “But, it depends,” I tried to plea.

“It depends for a single case study, but we need to know where the market is.” It was no use, he was completely right.

I set back to my desk, fresh algebraic equations in hand, to work out some more numbers and try to get a sense of the market. There’s just no pleasing anyone in this line of work. That’s what is so frustrating some times. But then again, that’s why it’s fun and stimulating as well.

I’ve been enjoying my job for the past three months.

TX get ready...

I'm heading back in a little less than six hours now. Can't freakin' wait.

Musings

It was around 7:30 pm. Darren and I were both home after each attending different sessions of 24 hr fitness. We were both tired, sweaty and hungry. I was already rousing up some pasta with a ground turkey meat sauce, and Darren busted out the pre-packaged salmon, ready for the Foreman grill. We shared a packaged caesar salad. I had wine and he had milk. As the soundtrack to 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' played in the background, we reviewed our day, upcoming events, and weekend plans. It was a great dinner. After finishing all I could possibly stuff into myself, I commented to Darren, "You know, it's only 8:15. And I don't really have anything to do. I went to the gym. Work is done and dinner is made. I feel I should have something to do."
He replied, "You know what this means it means we should start dating... [5 second pause as I awkwardly glance at him finishing his food and reviewing the previous sentence in his mind]. Girls that is. We should start dating girls."
Oh, the city bachelor life.

Denver, Denver

It's a nice town. I can't really talk too much smack about the town since the rents now reside there and my brother will be finishing out high school. But really, what's there?

This past Thursday afternoon, as I arrived into Denver international, I was reminded, firstly, of how I dislike the new trend of placing airports significantly outside of the city center, so that major hubs can be established. And it is nice to be able to find a direct flight to Denver from everywhere, but is it really necessary to have my parents drive 45 minutes from their house to pick me up?

On the ride "home" (I had still never seen the place) we passed through older suburban neighborhoods, saw downtown in the distance, and passed easily on the four and five-lane highways that serve as the city's transportation lifelines. Our Toyota Highlander Hybrid got us home with speed without the guilt of carbon emissions from a non-hybrid SUV.

We got home and had a wonderful meal. Have you ever shelled out for a Butterball brand turkey? It was the first time that my family had done so, and I gotta say, I think it turned out very yummy. Even the white meat was extra juicy. Anyway, dinner was great and we had a very pleasant thanksgiving at our new home, just the immediate family. I was already kinda getting ancy by the end of that night.

The next day would turn out to be like all post-Thanksgiving Friday's - we would promise ourselves that we would get up with all the other deal-finders to take advantage of door-buster deals and then relent to get up around 9am and join the throngs of people circa 10am. Given my family's history of sleeping in, this in fact was, an early morning. So we arrived at the mall, a good mall, if I may so say so. It has everything to fulfill the shopping needs of the upper middle-class Denver suburbanites. I got some great Christmas shopping done. For once I think I'm going to get my shopping done before Dec 23; a drastic improvement on my behalf. I took the little brother with me and we brainstormed on good gifts for the immediate and extended fam. Having recently moved into my own abode, I was on a kick of fine home-living materials, so we hit up the Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, and Williams-Sonoma. I have to admit, I was more looking for myself, but my final purchases ended up being for family.

The rest of the Friday was filled with naps and disappointing football from the longhorns. Good thing the leftovers were still awesome at that point.

For the next day, my family had initially invited me to come try the new mountain that my little brother and father are going to try this season. It sounded like a great idea, until I heard multiple news reports last week reporting on the lack of snow in the Rockies. Great. Lucky for me, Wednesday and Friday brought significant snowfalls and the mountain declared the open season on Friday. But I hadn't bought any gear. Nothing. The fam has a lot of spare ski clothes, but not a ton, so without anything on my own, I decided it best to forgo the skiing. Sat was another day, mostly in the house, otherwise getting a fresh haircut, and watching the football team blow another come back.

I never made it downtown. Come to think of it, I never made it past two miles of the new house. Except for the ridiculously far airport, that is. And I do love my family, but I was only reminded of how when I did last live with them in high school, I was out of the house already most of the day, every day.

After a wonderful weekend in Denver, all I really have to say is that I'm def looking forward to Christmas back in TX.

Painting

With some free time (OMG!) lying around here and there, I feel it is important to engage myself in ever new fields, so as not to get in a rut of working and watching TV. After an amazingly fun housewarming on Saturday, I decided to act on this and take my good buddy Tim Wood with me to a local art supply store on Van Ness ave. FYI: It's called Blick Art Supply, and it is wonderfully stocked with everything you could possibly need. So Tim isn't really an "artist" per se, but he's gotten a few pointers from friends that took a bunch of classes and has been able to translate that into a passing hobby of amateur painting. And it's really good. So good, in fact, that I commissioned Tim to do a painting for our apartment. When I say "commission" I mean pay for the supplies and collaborate on a theme. But anyway, that's how the trip started out. But before we even got there, I got interested in the whole painting dealio myself. It didn't seem easy, but it seemed a great way to express myself in a new and interesting way. Lord knows, when it comes to writing, I barely have the attention span to update a blog every once in awhile. I already finished my first small painting, and I have a nice new canvas to start on my next project. Can't wait.

It's time to start another blog!

Since I never really capped off the last one, I feel it’s imperative to let you know that I am officially no longer a vagabond. Rather, I am a rent-paying citizen of the city of San Francisco. Can I get a hell yeah?

Thanks for that resounding vote of confidence. I’m now on the Caltrain on my way down to Stanford to attend an MBA admissions panel. Never too early to start thinking about the next step. In the meantime, here’s the latest:

Darren’s and my flat can be found in the lovely neighborhood of Russian Hill; at the intersection of Union and Jones. This location is ideal for us as it is three blocks away from the vibrant Columbus St., four blocks away from the hopping restaurants and bars of Polk St., seven blocks away from a Safeway, Trader Joes, and 24 hr. fitness, and right on the street that houses the buses that both of us need to take to work. Speaking of work, it’s ~15 min door-to-door on the bus and 25 min door-to-door by foot; yes, SF has some terrible traffic that makes it only slightly faster to take the bus. No worries, I still find myself a frequent user of SF’s public transportation as it is necessary to get anywhere else in the city. I must say though, the whole network is a little unorganized. Awhile ago, a great site called 511.org popped up to satisfy the needs of everyone who takes public transportation in the bay area. The concept is great as it links the myriad of bay area transit systems and will give you customized itineraries no matter where you’re going. Only thing is the site is pretty old and if you want to just get a general overview of the city’s public transport system, you’re a little bit SOL. All I want is a city-wide map outlining all my transport options (and there are a lot: Bus, light rail, metro, cable car, street car) in the city. This is impossible to find on the 511.org website. And all the SF transportation authorities have defaulted to 511 for their info needs. Funny how a city in the center of the technological world needs a bit of technology updating.

Work is good so far, except that I have had a bit of trouble getting off my butt on the weekends to actually explore this city like it’s meant to be explored. Sure I’ve done all the normal touristy stuff (and I live by most of that crap), but I want to explore the beaches, hike through Golden Gate park, find the best Mexican food in the Mission, etc. etc. etc. Last night, when I had a good six hours of free time, I chose to sit my butt on our newly-moved couch and enjoy the cable TV that I pay for but rarely enjoy. It was fun. I caught up on all the new crap reality shows on Vh1, saw a new episode of family guy and enjoyed South Park for the first time in awhile. But even though I was on my computer throughout the night, taking care of cyber-errands, I couldn’t help but feel a little lazy by getting nothing really accomplished, and still having a stranger’s relationship with this fair city.

I have a lot of hopes and aspirations for this new life in SF. I want to play a little rugby again. Training starts in less than a month. I want to continue my Russian language development; there is a strong possibility that Moscow will be the newest L.E.K. office to open in approximately a year, and I wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity like that. I want to dabble into painting a little. I want to get to know my guitar again. I want to be a ski bum again for the first time since high school. I want to sell my old cars and fix up a new one. And as expressed already, I want to get to know my city. Plenty of things to do that should keep me fairly busy. My only hope is that work will give me enough time to tackle these things, one activity at a time.

On my way back to the city and I have some more things to tell you about. First of all, today has been a wonderfully productive day. From being a little late to work, I got done some very necessary Admin work for a case that just got finished up. This whole next week is “Client Development” – code words for getting out at a decent hour the entire week. Yes. I think after today I will study GMAT at night to get myself back in the mood. This Sunday I will finish up my last two classes and hopefully take the test before Christmas. It’s gonna take a little bit of devotion on my part to get myself back into the studying mood, but it’s going to be so much better if I get my stuff done before the break when work winds down for the Holiday season.

Anyway, back to my productive day. So at a prolonged lunch break today, some of us from the office were treated to a lunch at One Market (very nice!) to meet the new HR manager for the west coast. Of course I’ve already met Chi Chi and I think she’s great, but who can say no to free (awesome) lunch? Anyway, mid-way through my duck ravioli, who walks in but Joe Montana! Of course this is a classy place, so we couldn’t exactly go asking for autographs and stuff, but we could admire, as he was sat at the table right next to us! Selina, our resident football super fan (unfortunately also a Kal grad) was practically hyper-ventilating. Haha. I relayed my story of meeting Jerry Rice once in a bathroom in a bar in Palo Alto. I told him “what’s up.” He nodded and said “what’s up” back. It was cool. Famous people are cool.

This Saturday Darren and I are subjecting our new apartment to its first official Fiesta with our house-warming party themed “From Russian Hill with Love." We invited way too many people on Facebook and you’re invited too! One of our main goals is to gather all the yuppies from my work and all the hipsters from Darren’s McSweeny’s (sp?) crew and observe how they interact with each other. The only thing we can determine so far that they have in common is an inclination to drink too much on the weekends. Should be lots of fun. Of course all the Stanford peeps are invited as well.

As I enjoy a little bit of free writing time and some Radiohead (download “In Rainbows” already!) on the Caltrain, I’m realizing that I didn’t give this regional transit puppy a fair gig last time. I was grumpy from very little sleep and hating my commutes on the Caltrain every day. Now I’m realizing that this time is actually pretty valuable to me. I get to listen to sweet music, complete a sudoku puzzle (haven’t done that in forever!), and write a new blog entry (been even longer since I’ve done that!). Darren’s in the middle of participating in National Novel Writing Month, where participants are challenged to write an entire novel during November. No stopping, no editing, just pure writing. He’s inspired me to at least pick up my writing a little bit as well. Although I could never write as well or as long as he does, it’s great to be in the practice of expressing your thoughts on paper, or on hard disk. I do so much damn formal writing now at work, that writing an incomplete sentence, speaking in idioms, or writing with contractions has a bit of a feel of freedom.

Ok, no more ramblings for now. I think I’ll enjoy my Radiohead for the rest of the way back to SF. I promise to check back in soon.