On Interns And The Future

 This past week I was asked to speak to the Summer Interns.

I was a bit of a last minute substitution:  the original speaker (a member of the Site Leadership Team, or LT) had something come up at the last minute and they needed a substitute.  One of my coworkers with whom I am friends (and manages the program) asked if I would be willing to speak.

Of course I said yes.  After all, I like my friend. Also, there was free lunch.

---

The format was similar to "Meet the X" in years past when I was a student:  I sat in front of around 30 interns at a U shaped table, uncomfortably the focus of their attention.  Each of them went around and introduced themselves:  Name, major, college, year in school ("X" year student is now the norm, not "junior", "senior", etc.).  Then of course it was my turn:  name, rank, brief job history.

And then, open question time.

The questions were likely the sorts of ones you would expect to hear in these sorts of things:

- "What was one of your greatest challenges in your job?"

- "How did you get into the industry"

- "What do you recommend to help you succeed?" (No surprise here:  I recommended "Be nice" and "Be kind".)

- "What do you look for in a resume?"

- "Do you have any books you would recommend?" (Again, likely no surprises to readers here:  The Enchiridion (The Handbook) by the Stoic philosopher Epitctetus and Go Rin No Sho (A Book of Five Rings) by Miyamoto Musashi. I think at least one of the interns wrote the titles down.)

We also had a fascinating discussion about Iaijutsu.  I do not think I am actually supposed to use the term "Blood Throw" (Chibori) in a professional setting, but there you go.

I will say they were all very polite, well-mannered, and seemed to pay attention (very minimal phone checking that I could see).  

---

Later in the week, they did their poster displays (to show what they had been working on in their time there).  Typically I do not go to these, but felt obligated as I had spoken to them.

Every one of the posters was great. There are a lot of smart young people out there ready to take on the world.  Lots of great and applicable projects to the work we are doing at our site (as an interesting side note, lots of use of Artificial Intelligence).  

The biggest thing that surprised a number of them that they did not expect to learn during these projects?  How important communication was and how many different stakeholders there were.

---

I left both happy and sad.

I left happy because - contrary to what one may see on social media (I say that; I largely avoid the news now), not all young people are hating on the world and society.  Some really are trying to do good and useful things - and they seem like are ready to take on the world (as we all were, once upon a time).

I left sad because of the same future.

In Spring 2025, it is estimated that 1,028, 185 students graduated with a B.A. or B.S. Of those, STEM programs (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) as well as business are among the top majors.  And while STEM jobs are growing in need (and apparently we are woefully behind in graduating them), we are also dealing in world where multiple countries are graduating STEM graduates (China, for 2025, produced 3.57 million STEM Graduates).  Add to that the burgeoning use of Artificial Intelligence which will automate a great many things, and I think it is going to be a tough job market in the future.

---

I am grateful I had the opportunity to speak to them and see the work that they are doing.  It did fill me with a bit more confidence about the future and about the younger generation.  

Hopefully they, in turn, walked away with a little more appreciation that there is a world outside of a career and the things you have to take to get a degree.  

After all, no-one dies wishing they had just one more day at their job.

2026 Failure Day

Here at The FortyFive, besides all the standard holidays, we celebrate a few that are unique to this corner of the InterWeb.  One of them, instituted this year, is TB The Elder Day, the birthday (and commemoration) of my Father.  

The other is Failure Day.

Failure Day, as longer time readers may remember, commemorates 02 August 2005 when I and my business partner laid ourselves from the company we had started 16 months earlier.

After 10 years in the Biopharmaceutical industry, jobs mostly with long commutes (up to 120 miles roundtrip), I made the decision to set it all aside and go into commercial real estate with my friend of long standing.  He was doing well at it, so I was (of course) going to do well at it.  There was little standing between us and wealth beyond our dreams, and I planned (and lived) accordingly.

Until, of course, that fantasy came crashing down.

In the course of 16 months, I managed to burn through all the money I had set aside, buy a new house we could not really afford, and find out that I was really not that good in real estate.  By the the time the whole sorry story had played out, we had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in home equity, savings, and lost wages.

God was gracious in spite of my idiocy; within a month I found another job back in the biopharmaceutical industry (with a commute, of course).  And He "unburdened" us with a house we could not really afford by conveniently arranging a layoff and move across the country to New Home 2.0 (which saw us lose all of our equity but - thankfully - not owe anything else on the loan or sale).  And slowly - very slowly - we rebuilt our financial life.

Am I sorry I tried?  At some level, no.  I learned a lot about contracts and real estate finances and how investments work (even if my own investments were not well handled at the time).  And the confidence to at least try something new has stuck with me, even if the stakes are now much lower.

At other levels of course, yes.  The decision to leave the job I had at the time?  In retrospect, likely I would have been laid off within a year anyway (as happened to my former work colleagues), so maybe no.  The financial foolishness? That is 100% on me and was 100% the wrong decision.  I got greedy, got starry eyed, and did not listen to wise counsel (mostly TB The Elder, who kindly did not "remind" me of this when everything collapsed).  Even in my "I have a new job" phase, we could have made more responsible life choices that would not have left us so financially vulnerable.

And so, once a year, I celebrate failure.  Not just this failure but all the failures.  All the times that I tried something and it did not work out.  And remember those things I did not try and maybe should have - because you never know what might happen.

Over the years, a quote I read from Gouveneur Morris (1752-1816, a signer of The U.S. Constitution) in the book An Iron Will by Orison Swett Marden has stuck with me:  

"If I were to wipe out twenty acts, what should they be?  Should it be my business mistakes, my foolish acts (for I suppose all do foolish acts occasionally), my grievances?  No; for, after all, these are the very things by which I have profited.  So I finally concluded I should expunge, instead of my mistakes, my triumphs. I could not afford to dismiss the tonic of mortification, the refinement of sorrow; I needed every one."

I too, need the memory.  Because at some level, what are we without our failures?

Happy Failure Day.

End of July 2026 Garden Update

 End of July update of "How does my garden grow?"

Scattered among the leaves and sticks are (I hope) the small green starts of spinach:

Cherry tomatoes!  I now have more tomatoes on vines than I have had in total for the past 5 years:

The beans have done remarkably well. I thought I spaces them out enough; I need to go farther next year:

My onion seedlings are hanging in there:

Buckwheat.  I wish I had planted them with more sun; only a few have gotten tall:

Soybeans:

I have four patch of corn.  Interestingly, the one of the left was planted before the one on the right, yet has not done as well:

Another "planted later" patch that is by far the most advanced:

I am not sure what the plant with the white flowers is.  I have several; they were all volunteers.  My dearest hope is potatoes. It is kind of exciting to wait and see!

The beginnings of leeks:

I have already started planting and planning for Autumn and Winter.  I need to think about a better arrangement of things for Spring next year.  But for $45 a year and 8 hours of community service to the garden, this is one the best deals I have found in years.

July 2026 Grab Bag

 It is shockingly hard for me to believe that we have already are about to enter the month of August.

 I cannot tell you why I feel like this year is racing by, but it certainly feels like it is.  That is probably a combination of several factors:  A busy Spring and Summer, work (in general), and the sense that (in the very best of ways) I seem to doing something now from the moment I get up to when I go to bed.

For whatever reason, the feeling seems to also be coming from the fact that we seem to have had a mild Summer to date.  It already feels like Autumn, some days.

This past weekend was the first of four weekends that the Grandmaster of my sword school is at our dojo for training.

I am one of the most fortunate students I know of in that I have three opportunities to train with him a year: once in New Home, once in New Home 2.0, and once in Japan.  It is a luxury that is pretty much the result of a series of accidents.

I am likely no better for having all of these opportunities to train, but at least I have multiple opportunities for correction.

(This little dude was not in New Home 2.0, but at my former boss' house about two hours North/Northwest.)

It is that time of year that we have to perform mid-year reviews.

I always struggle with mid-year reviews, especially here as our goals our somewhat...fluid from the beginning of the year to the middle of the year.  Everyone adapts as needed, but sometimes finding a way to link what someone is working on to what they were originally supposed to be working on can be a bit of a challenge.  And even harder is trying to predict if the next 4-5 months will remain on this track or something else will swoop in and disrupt this game plan

I am fortunate to have good people that are doing good work.  My job is to bridge the gap between their work and what we ultimately have to report up the chain.

A follow up to a comment by reader Passing_Peanut who commented on about noting that I have been writing more on Sundays now and the nature of this being a day of rest.

I have alternated in the past writing every day and writing several posts at once and then posting them (as I do when I travel).  It ebbs and flows based on what else is going on in my life; at the current time no matter what I do, my time in the mornings (before I go to work) continues to get a bit shortchanged and I find my ability to write either curtailed completely or being done in almost paragraph blocks.  That works for a single post; it is much more difficult when I am trying to post daily (which I consider for myself to be a good discipline).  Writing on Sundays after church gives me a solid 3-4 posts written and possibly another 1-2 drafted (especially the travel posts, which seem to take the most time).

The pendulum will likely swing again at some point and I will be back to more daily, thinking "How can I sit there and write so much at a sitting?"

A Year Of Haiku (XXIX): Trumpets

 

The petaled trumpets

of Summer silently sound:

Autumn's distant roar.

2025 Cambodia And Vietnam: Tonlé Sap (II)

Approximately 1.2 million people live in the Tonlé Sap region, where most living by fishing (the Tonlé Sap provides 60% of Cambodia's total freshwater fish intake and 60% of the country's protein intake).  The region also supports rice growing.

There is also a population that dwells on the lake itself in boats.  It is possible that has always been the case; currently the bulk of that population are those of Vietnamese descent who have lived here a very long time (but had to flee during the reign of the Khmer Rouge 1975 -1979).

As part of our trip, we went through one of these floating villages.

The repurposed boats were a surprise to me:

Use of older boats as gardens:

A sampan, a traditional wood bottomed boat:

The blue floating building was a church:

2025 Cambodia And Vietnam: Tonlé Sap (I)

The Tonlé Sap ( ទន្លេសាប, "Fresh River" or "Great Lake" in Khmer) is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia.  The size of the lake varies during the year, anywhere from 970 to 1160 square miles/2,500-3,000 square kilometers in the dry season to over 6,200 square miles/16,000 square kilometers in the wet season, seeing an increase in lake level up to 33 feet/10 meters.  The lake is considered part of the Mekong River system, connecting with the Mekong river through the 75 mile/120 km long Tonlé Sap River.

(Source)

An interesting fact:  The bulk of the water that inflows into the lake is due to the Mekong River (over 53%).  Due to the nature of the weather, in the dry season the Tonlé Sap drops below the level of the Mekong River and thus effectively the flow of the Tonlé Sap River is reversed (sort of) until the restoration of the water through the monsoon season.

Departing - at least where we did - seemed like leaving any dam related dock I have left in my life.

The buildings were a mix of businesses and residences.  The poverty of the countryside was more visible here.

Once we got beyond the shore it began to look more like a large body of water.

This is, I believe, a radio station.  The pillars on which it stands suggests the extreme difference in the water heights.

At some point we entered the main body of water.

A Buddhist Temple. Again, the pillars are impressive and suggestive of the seasonal change.

A Visit To A Former Boss

This past weekend I went to visit my former boss who retired earlier this year.

The drive was approximately 2 hours North/Northwest of New Home 2.0, over the major river in this area, past a port or two, and into a lovely green part of the world largely forgotten by almost everyone but its inhabitants and logging companies.  It was not "remote" in the sense that it is far away, but it is in a valley isolated from freeways, towns, and tourist destinations. Likely no-one goes there except for a purpose - I, myself, would not have found the place without a last minute text letting me know to go beyond where The Computer In My Pocket's instructions ended.

It was not quite the end of the world, but I think you can see the end from there.

---

I have, on the whole, been blessed with a series of excellent bosses.

I use the word "boss" by choice, both because that is the word I started with all those years ago with my first job in high school and partially because it covers any range of titles (from supervisor up to VP or Head) that had authority over me.  "Manager" truly is a job title, not a necessarily a role, and the more modern phrase of "People Leader" seems precisely wrong: not all people are leaders, and not all people leaders lead their people, or at least, lead their people well.

My bosses have indeed been excellent bosses overall, full of knowledge and insight and understanding - and where they were not excellent bosses (or even good ones), they were generally good human beings outside of their role as my boss, which helped ease the strain a bit when friction arrived; if nothing else, you can find some humanizing element to center on in difficult conversations.  From all of them I have learned - mostly good things both in terms of knowledge and wisdom, from others simply how not to be that kind of boss.  Most of them lightened the load where they could, taught me things that only experience can teach one in an industry where the practice is as much an art as a science, and most importantly taught me in turn how to (hopefully) be a good boss as well.

Much like any teacher in school, in some way they live on through me (although, to my knowledge, all of my current industry bosses are still with us).

---

We had the most of splendid of visits.  She showed me her property with its various outbuildings and places she practices her various arts (now much more full time), and her extensive garden (the picture above is what she sent me home with, which represents. 0.00000001% of her output:  cabbage, three kinds of onions, three kinds of garlic, shallots, and jams and salsas). 

We chatted about work, both over the lunch that she just "whipped up" of onion soup made with fresh onions and shallots from the garden and homemade bread and later after the tour.  She offered some wisdom, gave some suggestions, listened to me kvetch  about the current state of work affairs - which has not really changed since she left (of course they have not) - and gave me insight into thinking more about what my own next few years might look like  - if there is an advertisement for "retire as soon as feasibly possible", she and her husband are prime examples.

I am grateful, of course.  Grateful for the conversation, grateful for the gifts (sauerkraut is now in the crock and cabbage soup has been made and I now have garlic to plant for Winter) - but mostly thankful for her kindness and guidance and, by extension, the kindness of all the bosses I have had.

You really never know how each and every relationship will influence those on the other side of it, even years later.

A Year Of Kindness (XXVIII): Be A Memory Of Kindness

 

(Source)

Nine months into my first industry job, I evacuated the entire second floor of a building.

It was an innocent enough thing:  removing a 4 L bottle of nitric acid from the acid storage cabinet, it hit the floor at just the right angle to crack it.  The acid began to leak out. I was not sure what to do, so I looked at it, dithered a bit, then went and found my supervisor.  Within 10 minutes the lab was shut as the acid outgassed and the second floor evacuated. All on the day of the company Christmas party, where I when scheduled to be Santa's stand-in but instead got my fingers taped up for (very) minor acid discoloration and sent home. 

Over the weekend, the rest of the team came in and completely wiped down the lab and everything in it.  No-one asked me to come.  No-one said a word about it afterwards.  It was just part of what people did.

I have memories like this scattered across my life and memory:  The Director and Uisdean Ruadh who looked after me at my worst, friends who guided me when I was being an idiot, a young tow truck driver who offered me half his sandwich when I was cold and miserable looking after I hit a curb and bent my rim the day before I was to leave for Japan, my coworkers after my being laid off.

A thousand stars, lit in the darkness of despair.

I have lost track of many of those people.  I doubt some of them remember the acts they did at the time.  But those acts keeping me thinking of them at odd moments and in the moments when I castigate myself for mistakes.  

It costs nothing to be kind.  But the act and the memory will live on long, long after events and perhaps even the acquaintance.

Be someone's inspiring memory.  Be kind.

The Places We Love Most

 

(Source)

There is a place in the far Northwest of California the runs along the coast where at one time, military bunkers were installed.  I cannot completely tell you the place now and the pictures and names I look at do not look familiar to me, but I would know it in an instant if I were to see it again.

That spot was the last time I took a trip with three of my college friends.

Two were my roommates from college, one a young lady that we had all more or less taken up as one of our own.  We hiked in along the coast, spent the night, then hiked out the next day.  I say hiked; these days likely I would have called it a day trip.

But there was a moment here, a moment of passing that was not reflected in any of the other activities of graduation or moving or traveling on would reflect in the weeks ahead. 

It was not that this was home.  But it set with me that for all the change that was coming forward that we had enjoyed two wonderful years living together (at least the three guys as college roommates).  It was a marker, a place to both say goodbye to and go out from.

---

There are places that figure in my life because of my memories and associations there:  my house growing up, my grandparent's house in town, The Ranch, even my hometown.  Those hold a lot of joy and memories for me as the represent the people that were there as much as any other thing about it.

But there are other places as well, places that were not necessarily "people" based but I can see and feel them even how, places that somehow grounded me at points in my life.

The woods behind my best friend's house during middle school where we ran amuck as young boys should, tearing through the forest, building forts, camping out.  The Director's House in high school, where I spent many a day (and night) in harmless shenanigans and planning as the world was our oyster at the time.  The track around my hometown high school, where Usidean Ruadh and I would walk for hours and hours, talking about everything and anything under the sun.

Sometimes it was - or is - the streets around the places I lived, where I could walk and think and allow my emotions to work themselves out.  A Rabbit Shelter, where I felt useful every Sunday no matter what the week was like.

Places that gave me some sense of belonging to someone or something, places to turn where the universe felt cold and uncaring.

---

Not every place is like that of course; there are a score of work locales that have merely been places that I exchanged time for labour, churches where the relationships were deep but I moved on due to a change in location, the "favourite" restaurant that - for various reasons - was not longer visited.  There are memories there too of course, often good ones.

But never the sort that reminded me of the rather important point that somehow I was grounded, that I belonged.  

That, as the quote says, I was never as lost as I believed.

Having A Plan

The whole thing started in late May when I broke a tooth.

I am a stress consumer of snacks and - conveniently - at work there is a large container of mint Life Savers.  I was stressed and not thinking and bit down; off came a part of a molar on the right side of my mouth.  I did not crack the tooth (fortunately), but there was a new set of sharp edges in my mouth which created problems for my tongue.  I tried to manage it for a day, then made an emergency appointment at the dentist.  She ground it off and reminded me that I needed to not do that (also, that my enamel was pretty much gone there and any future repairs would be less "delightful".

I resolved this was not going to happen again.

To help manage this process, I did two things.  The first was to reload the food tracking app on my phone and make myself use it to keep track of everything I ate (and hopefully shame me into not gulping Life Savers like candy).  This also drove to the fact that with a hike coming up in the near future, I needed to carry less of "me" around. (Which seems to be working:  I have completely stopped consuming Life Savers, reduced my overall snacking, and am down almost 10 lbs.).

The second - tracking my food as I was - is that it re-ignited more fully using my bullet journal to track my overall activities.

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I have used a bullet journal - or dot journal, or (I am sure) a host of other names - off and on for six years.  In short, there are a multitude of ways to use it (which really appeals to my "Let me keep trying things until something sticks" nature); the core is using a series of "bullets" or check marks to track activities that need to be done, are not done, or need to be moved.  There are as many ways to do them as there are personalities and plenty of resources to do it (Dot Journaling:  A Practical Guide).  

The other great thing about them is that one keeps a table of contents up front and then enters information as it happens - no matter what; thus it becomes less of a daily planner and almost more of a journal or information source.  In mine, I have weekly plans, conversations with my career coach, items from a book, plans for things - all there in sequence and a table of contents entry, ready to be recalled.

A challenge of learning to use it for planning has been "what" to include in a weekly plan.  Over time, I have learned that activities that I will always do as a routine need not be there - reading the Bible in the morning for example, or studying Old English.  Other things - things that I might let slip or find a reason not to do - benefit greatly from being an item to check off.

It really is true:  there is something indefinable about checking something off that actually creates more of an incentive to complete things.

---

The system of writing things down and getting them done was working - in fits and starts to be sure, but working (one of the great challenges for me in this system is to accept that everything does not get done and sometimes an arrow pushing something to next week is okay).  I felt like the needle was starting to move in parts of my life.

And then, last weekend, I took an outing.

The outing was not the issue.  The fact that I spent money on the outing was not the issue (this was known up front).  What was the issue was the fact that I had not planned out how much I intended to spend.

No, it was not astronomical and no banks were broken.  No gambling was involved and no large sums of money were lost.  But it forced me to recognize there was a gap in the system.  

Planning was not just for the things I wanted to accomplish.  Planning was for those things that were fun as well, if for no other reason than insuring I left with the same sense of fun I had planned for.

---

It was a good lesson for me - especially after the relative success I feel I have been enjoying with the system I have cobbled together.  It is really good practice for whatever not doing my main line of work will look like, whenever that day comes (I keep hoping more quickly, but we will have to see).

It is good to have some level of spontaneity.  It is a better to have spontaneity with a plan.

A Year Of Haiku (XXVIII): Slow Motion

 

Summer's fireworks

explode at the speed of blooms:

lingering petals.

2025 Cambodia And Vietnam: Meals In Siam Reap

Between our visit to Angkor and our visit to the Museum of Angkor, we had two lunches:

Sadly for the first lunch, I have no notes.

Possible similar to a fried wonton?:

Soup:

Fish, vegetables, and rice:

Fruit for dessert.  I cannot remember the dish to the right:

The second lunch (fortunately this time, I took a picture of the menu):

Deep fried chicken with sauce:

Vegetable Korko creme soup (Green papaya, jackfruit, pumpkin, eggplant, ivy gourd, long bean, cream):

Stir friend chicken with ginger and Khmer field rice:

Dessert was (wait for it...) - fruit!: