In September, 2001, the company I co-founded, Submedia, was installing its first display in Atlanta for our first big launch. We anticipated a lot of press. Giving away part of how the story ends, we did get a lot of media attention. The night before launch was crazy — we had a few hours to finish installing the display, we had to prepare for the Fire Marshall’s inspection the morning[…] Keep reading →

Do you ever find yourself trying to get someone to let go of something, to relax, or something similar, but they don’t? You know if they just didn’t worry so much or stopped caring about something so much, they’d have an easier time with the project, relationship, life, or whatever, but they just don’t let go? You may be motivated by compassion, but I suspect a lack of empathy may[…] Keep reading →

The other day it rained and I skipped playing ultimate frisbee in Shanghai. It reminded me of playing in college and after. In the Northeast of the U.S., especially in late fall, leading to Regionals, it rained and snowed a lot. Weather didn’t change that you simply went to practice. We practiced and played in snow, wind, rain, etc. I played disc the year I lived in Paris, taking a[…] Keep reading →

The other day I saw a post for a headline that caught my eye “On Scale of 0 to 500, Beijing’s Air Quality Tops ‘Crazy Bad’ at 755” because I was just in Beijing. I remember early one evening looking up in the sky and seeing a low flying airplane. Actually, I only saw its lights in the smog. I got confused looking at it because it looked close, so[…] Keep reading →

This post is about one of the best experiences of my life. I couldn’t have planned it, but looking back I realized I had spent years preparing for it. When you’ve prepared, sometimes you only need to show up. One fall in the mid to late 90s, when I was playing ultimate seriously, I was looking for a team to play with. A good friend of mine told me about[…] Keep reading →

Learning Chinese as I am, I’m learning a lot of rules of that language. If you’ve spoken to me in person over the past few years, you’ve probably heard my fun-with-language game to purposefully conjugate the verbs to be and to have wrong. I often say “How is you?” or “I has to go to the store.” I’ll be the first to admit the mis-conjugation is affected, but it’s also[…] Keep reading →

Entering a public bathroom in China means your clothes and hair will smell like smoke all day. It feels barbaric to me. Does that overstate things? It just gets to you after a while. I can’t believe how smoky they get. Do you get the same feeling?