This post is dedicated to Richard S. from ALU in Toronto.

Our home in Washington is in a very quiet neighborhood; it’s both pitch black and very quiet by around 7pm every night. On top of this, Washington has an interesting approach to driveways; many homes don’t have a private driveway that connects directly to the road that the street is on, instead there’s often a shared driveway that serves several homes, so it’s not atypical to see three rows of homes back from a street, with a shared driveway. That’s how our home is; we are at the end of the driveway, down a rather steep slope, surrounded by trees and a ravine.

A couple of nights ago, I heard a noticeable bump/bang outside at around 1:00am – not very loud, mind you, but as I said there’s usually no noise whatsoever. As mentioned, you can’t see a thing without lights at night, so I just made sure the doors were locked, and went back to that blog post about those mobile devices. I didn’t hear anything further, so I wasn’t too concerned.

I didn’t notice it in the morning, but when Valerie came home she saw that a fence at the bottom of the driveway had been broken:

A whole section of the fence was missing, and one it’s vertical beams was even cracked. Vandalism? Seems unlikely, we’re too far out of the way, and it’s doubtful that someone would just wreck one section of the fence for fun. Large animals? Haven’t seem them around here, and doesn’t seem likely that they’d run through the fence either considering the drop off behind it. While the initial fixation was on the fence itself, as you glimpse what’s behind, all becomes clear…

Someone’s car had actually rolled all the way down the hill, through our fence, and into the ravine below. The initial fear when Valerie discovered the car was that someone might actually have been inside, though fortunately this was not the case – it appears just  to have been a car that wasn’t parked properly. That’s extremely lucky, because it’s about a 15-20 foot straight drop from the edge of our home into the ravine below! Even more surprising, the car seemed to be almost entirely intact, when the physics of the situation seemed to suggest that the car should have fallen vertically and then topped over onto its roof! Apparently, it had enough momentum even after crashing through the fence to make things happen like those slow-motion shots you see in movies when cars go speeding off a ledge…

If you’re wondering why the small trees in the first picture were intact, well, so am I. Maybe they’ve just got some elasticity to them, but because I took this on Saturday morning (a little more than 24 hours after the actual incident), someone other than us may have put them back in the ground to prevent them from dying, after this whole thing was discovered. Equally amazing we went at 9:30am when I took the above picture, and when we came back 3-4 hours later, the car had been removed with no visible signs as to exactly how. I guess this highlights the importance of using your parking brake, and angling your wheels correctly on a hill!

Not quite as entertaining, but still funny, is Google Voice’s transcription of the voicemails that Valerie sent about this:

“This hey my friend. I don’t know if you notice but The. I sent in. Mahals. So what I’m saying that he wanted nothing to me and I guess the park. I guess part of the got broken. I think must have. So,somehow a renowned to ring to our friends, anyway. Give me a call. Bye bye.”

“Hey Mike, I actually i think i’ll crash you went all the way down to be at the Valley or whatever you call it a platform cards I guess it’s Yes there but I don’t see any but he’s there anyone well. Anyway, I don’tknow what to do, call me bye bye. “

The first message was about the broken fence; the second was on discovering that there was a car sitting in the ravine below. Usually Google Voice produces useful transcriptions, but these two were pretty darned confusing!

As alluded to a prior post, a little over two weeks ago, on Friday September 16th, I said goodbye to my co-workers at Alcatel-Lucent (who had organized a moving send-off that I really appreciated). I’l stick to not really commenting about work here, but it was definitely sad to leave the office (pictured below) for the last time.

Less than six full days later, the movers showed up to pack everything in our home, and as of the following Friday, all our possessions were loaded onto a truck for transport – all 10,300 pounds of them. Just looking at that number makes me glad we were using professionals this time – when I moved back to Toronto at the end of 2001 to join VoiceGenie, we had hauled everything ourselves in the biggest U-Haul that they rent out.  I’m glad that wasn’t necessary this time!

Of course in any move, especially from one coast to another (I can only image a trans-continental move), there’s a number of days or weeks in which everything you have is in transit, so you have a home neither here nor there. While I might have opted to stay in Toronto during this period, a rule with immigrating to the U.S. is that you have to enter before your possessions will be permitted across the border. You can get around this by driving across the border and getting your visa, then coming back into Canada as a visitor and non-resident, but with lots of things to get set up in the U.S. (including buying a minivan) I decided to just head down there permanently and take advantage of temporary housing made available to me. Valerie and the kids are coming later, since with no transportation (until I bought the minivan and had it delivered) not to mention no toys, it wouldn’t have been a good start for them. Plus we didn’t want to move them into temporary housing and then again into our permanent home. My first week with Google being in Mountain View, CA also meant it made even less sense for the whole family to come down right away.

Super Elite status with Air Canada definitely came in handy for the move, because while I never check bags on business travel if at all possible, it does provide for up to 3 checked bags.  In this case, I needed it. My main carry-on was full of camera equipment, a tablet, and a net book; my personal (small) carry-on was a small camera bag with more lenses; and my checked bags housed my desktop PC, a monitor (not my 30″ sadly, which I need to wait for the truck for), and keyboard/mouse/headphones/accessories respectively. I did bring some clothes, but really just as padding for the other items :).

Now, the second part of the title of this post is a little confusing, but often when I’m travelling through airports in North America, Europe, or Asia, I’m astounded by the fact that Relay seems to have a real stranglehold on the news kiosks in what seems to be the vast majority of airports that I visit. I mean, you’ll see a Hudson’s News or something once in a while, but Relay seems to pretty much have a lock on things and ubiquity across different areas of the globe. In any other category – retailers, fast food and restaurants, money changers, etc. – there’s real variety from airport to airport, but not so with news.

Now, I’m sure that like in any corporation, even when you control most of the market, employees are encouraged to innovate. Indeed, the role of my team at Alcatel-Lucent involved innovation, and it’s no easy thing to drive. Still, I couldn’t help but laugh at what Relay managed to come up with in Pearson airport:

Perhaps they simply repurposed something and forgot to change the label, but the idea that selling candy was either “New”, or that the above could be referred to as an “Innovation Station” certainly had me chuckling. Though with the aforementioned innovation element of my former job responsibilities, and the fact that I did in fact help to stock a candy area in our Toronto offices, perhaps calling the candy area an innovation station is something I should have thought of…

A tried and true technique that retailers use to drum up business is to have a “sale” – a supposedly temporary reduction in the price that seems to be quite successful, especially in certain nuclear family members of mine, in creating a sense of greater “value” and thus the drive to buy the item in question. Whatever that item happens to be.

I suppose that’s just in line with the adage that a man will pay $2 for a $1 item they need, and a woman will pay $1 for a $2 item they don’t. Like most stereotypes, I’m sure this doesn’t actually hold in most cases, but it certainly does in mine.  But there wasn’t a starker example than running around at Costco about a month ago. While Valerie was keeping her eye out for prices ending in .97 (indicating that the item is on clearance, even though there are no other markings to suggest this), I was stunned by a price tag higher much higher than I’d seen for any beef sold by Costco. In fact, at $38.99/kg, it was close to double the regular Costco price when buying a whole beef tenderloin (which normally is the most expensive cut there). Naturally, I had to try it:

Note that I’m absolutely not a luxury goods shopper, who assumes that paying more means I’m getting more. In fact, I’m averse to anything remotely associated with “luxury” because I assume I’m paying a ridiculous premium for brand or “prestige” or something else that doesn’t actually help me in any way.  I still cannot even begin to fathom $1,000 Louis Vuitton handbags (and fortunately, neither can Valerie). But one thing that I really like about Costco is that pretty much nothing is there to rip you off when you’re not being careful. While I’m sure there’s some variation in their margins between items, almost the entire warehouse seems like it’s priced at cost plus some pretty reasonable amount. So while I could easily ignore a “Black Angus AAA USDA Certified Kobe Cut” label elsewhere as a marketing gimmick, I assumed here that the beef must just be really good. Was it?

I haven’t posted in a little while, but it’s not because I haven’t been busy. Indeed, from the day of my prior post, we purchased a new home, sold our existing condo, and I announced to my colleagues at Alcatel-Lucent that I’d be moving on to a new role at Google – working out the Kirkland office in the greater Seattle area. While some of those things were in progress for a while, others went very quickly; we listed our condo last Wednesday and accepted an offer on it on Monday. There’s thoughts I wanted to share on this from many angles – why I decided to change jobs, the real estate process, moving money between currencies efficiently, and several other topics – some of which will have to wait for a later post. But I’ll keep this post to the “why” – why move, and why Kirkland?

Choosing a title for this post was tough; I wasn’t sure whether “Champion” or “Hero” was more appropriate, I thought perhaps “Supermom” would be an appropriate title too (given an article my brother Pete recently shared). “Always Bring Your Camera!” also came to mind, and any of these would have been equally appropriate. A picture here is worth more than a thousand words:

If you’re not familiar with tennis, that’s Kim Clijsters, currently ranked #2 on the women’s tour, and the defending U.S. Open and Australian Open champion. She’s in town for the Rogers Cup, which started today (Saturday) and wraps up this coming Sunday. Today was just the qualifiers, so entrance to the grounds was free, and with the kids getting bored late in the day we decided to head out. On arriving, we were hesitant – everyone else was leaving, and the bus driver said he thought the last match was probably over or almost over. We pressed on anyways and in one of the back courts, Kim Clijsters was practicing for an upcoming game. After finishing her practice session, she graciously and generously spent some time with the fans that had discovered her presence, signing autographs and taking pictures.

To me, this isn’t just a photo with a famous person; Kim is my favorite player in all of tennis. A part of this is how well she plays; her trademark sliding split returns are just amazing, even though I think even she herself described them as something she should be trying to avoid. But the much bigger part is her attitude and character. At a previous Rogers Cup event I attended – I believe in 2005, but my poor memory is a big part for writing this blog – she was playing on center court, and the linesman made a poor call in her favor. This happens all the time, and gave us some of the defining moments in John McEnroe’s career. Kim recognized that the call was in error, and gave her opponent the point – in a tier 1 tournament with a $2 million prize pool. I’ve never seen someone with that much class despite the fierceness of competition at top levels; that move earned her my lasting respect.

As if this wasn’t enough, her return in 2009 after retiring in 2007 to have a child is inspirational to any parent (and probably to most non-parents too). From a wildcard spot, she won the U.S. Open that same year (the first mom to do so since 1973), and has taken two grand slams since then. My brother recently posted a link to “Killing Off Supermom“, which debunks – generally correctly – the notion of great mom’s that have everything under control. But I think we’d all agree, letting your 18-month old daughter hoist the U.S. Open trophy with you is pretty darned “super”.

Despite all this success, Kim is as personable as ever. As she made her way off court above, security personnel tried to ensure that she didn’t get mobbed by fans, and – doing their jobs – they tried to shoo people away. She intervened and insisted on posing with us and others, even though she’d already signed autographs and taken pictures with several other groups earlier. That’s just amazing, and it’s why she’ll be my favorite regardless of how she does in this or any other tournament.

I really owe Wen who took the above shot and wish he could have joined us in the picture too (at least we did get Linxi in there!). I also wish I had been lugging one of the DSLRs around, but fortunately the above shot from the Canon S90 still captures things fairly well! Finally, given that I’ve ranted about Rogers broadband speeds in the past, I do have to be grateful that they continue to be the title sponsor of the Rogers Cup, and in doing so, bring people like Kim Clijsters to town – today, I definitely owe them one!

I often refer to myself as a non-photographer, primarily concerned with capturing memories before they evaporate from my decreasingly reliable grey matter. Those in front of the lens, on the other hand, might actually learn that reality was a little different than they remember – for instance, that Leo wasn’t just happily eating his breakfast:

The other thing I find funny about this picture is that as usual, Valerie is using her powers of psychokinesis on the kids – opening her own mouth in order to get them to open theirs, even if they’re not looking at her. Sadly, Olivia is pretty much immune to this mind trick, and to all other forms of peer pressure. Looks like Leo was fooled, though, much to his ultimate displeasure!