BARBARIC

Yes, he was a dictator and a tyrant. But he was hanged? Really? In 2006 (almost 7), we are putting a noose around a man's neck, kicking out the floorboards under him and letting him twist in the wind?

Someone please explain to me how this is anything even remotely resembling justice.

Books and more books

As I enthusiastically enjoy these last few weeks of rest and relaxation before heading back into the workworld, I have lots of time to do what I love to do best - read. Here are some of my latest reads and what I thought of them (in no particular order):

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life Amy Krouse Rosenthal
http://www.encyclopediaofanordinarylife.com/
I loved this book! In fact, at times I felt as if this woman read my mind, or at least had the exact same brain processes I have. I laughed out loud several times. And the book's style is inventive, too, which doesn't always work but really works here. Must read.

The Wonder Spot Melissa Bank
I really enjoyed this one. I think she could have done a better job in terms of timeline - it doesn't make much sense why she goes from 10 years old to 18 years old. Especially when, at age 22, she references her best friend from those intermittent years. It has a little bit of a Sex and the City vibe, although much less stylish (in a good way), and on occasion I felt like I was reading a series of short stories turned into a novel. Maybe that is because of the timeline issue but also because of strange references she makes in later chapters to things she already told us, but as if she hadn't told us already. You know what I mean? Nonetheless, I enjoyed it. Read the entire book on my flight from Denver to SFO.

The Book of Joe Jonathan Tropper
I liked this book. It was a bit Empire Falls but still I liked it. For sure I did not love it.

Prep Curtis Sittenfeld
I did not want to like this book, mostly because I hate the fact that the author's name is Curtis and yet she is female. She used to write for Salon.com, my favorite web site of all time, and I never quite loved her work. But I was in need of a read and Robyn liked it so I thought I would give it a whirl. Much to my surprise (and somewhat to my dismay) I actually liked it. I mean, the main character is pretty annoying - she is so insecure and spineless that after about 100 pages it gets really old listening to her drivel. But the story is pretty good. And what woman doesn't like to read a book that mirrors back to her some version of what she suffered as a teenager? So in that sense I liked it. And it is an easy, quick read.

Ayelet Waldman reads way more than I do. I am not sure how she does it, especially considering she has all those kids and a husband to pay attention to (although I heard he and the nanny do way more of the child rearing than she does). Well, good for her. Seems we have the same taste in books so I will be using her site as a "what to read next" guide.

Worth the Wait

I got a job. I can't believe it. And not only did I get a job, I got the job. It was worth the wait. Yes, this summer was painful. I was often down, low on self-confidence, afraid of the future. Now, having this awesome job - CSR Program Manager at Sun Microsystems - won't necessarily make all of those feelings go away. Lord knows I have often suffered low self-confidence and held fears for the future. But at least these feelings will be more easily identified and dealt with now that they will not be buried under a thick layer of self-doubt associated with not having a job. And being 34. And single. All summer long I was just one mother's couch shy of being a female George Costanza!

And yes, a lot of my sense of self comes from my intellect, my ability to feel and be productive. So yes, all the trouble I had finding the job I want was really hard on me. So while I know that the job doesn't answer all of my prayers, at least I can start to feel more like myself again. And now I have no good excuses to avoid dating. So...

Movie Review: "Live and Become"

Thursday night Delphine and I went to the SF Jewish Film Festival to see the closing night film, "Live and Become" (its French title is "Va, Vis et Deviens"). Frankly, this one of the best films I have ever seen. Ever. Not only was this film beautifully directed and acted, the story was nearly flawless. It elicited so many emotions from me over the course of the two-plus hours that we watched it. I laughed, hard; I cried harder. I felt pride, anger, envy, joy. There were moments in this film that made me think, "I love being Jewish." At other moments I thought, "If that's what it means to be Jewish, I don't want to be Jewish!"

This epic film is about a young Ethiopian boy who goes to Israel as part of "Operation Moses," a secret operation of the Israeli military that airlifted 8,000 Ethiopian Jews out of Sudanese refugee camps in Africa and into Israel during the African famine in 1984/1985, as draught and disease was plaguing the African continent. The airlift was for Ethiopian Jews only and if someone was discovered to be a poser - in other words, not Jewish - he or she was unceremoniously sent back to the living Hell of the Sudanese refugee camps. The young boy was not Jewish. But his mother sent him anyway, because she knew it was his only chance. "Go, live and become," she told him, "and don't come back until you do." The rest of the movie is about the boy's journey to and through life as an Ethiopian "Jew" in Israel. Rather than provide too many details about the movie, I will just suggest that you link here for a brief description.

The movie won the 2005 Cesar - France's version of the Oscars. It also won the audience favorite at the Berlin Film Festival. In other words, this movie is so much more than a Jewish film. See it. I promise you will be moved.

The Job Search Continues
This is the most optimistic I have felt about my career since graduating from business school. I am in the final rounds of interviews for a job that would be PERFECT for me (and I for it!). I want this job more than I wanted Dream Job #1 - because this is the true Dream Job - the opportunity to be the corporate responsibility manager (the company's first) at a large technology company that is committed to CSR and is just starting to integrate it into the core business. This is it. This is the job. This is what I have been working for these past two years. All those projects, the independent studies, the informational interviews, the relentless digestion of CSR news, trends, etc., have brought me to this moment, this job. I want it.

Of course, I want the other job, too. The first-ever CSR manager at the world's "coolest" consumer technology brand. Quarterly trips to China. Managing a team of three. As the recruiter described it, "A pioneer within the company." Admittedly, the first job is really an ideal fit for me. This job would be a great opportunity, a huge challenge and flat out cool. The only thing that increases this jobs "cool factor" over the other one is the fact that the brand is quite possibly the "coolest" consumer brand on the market today. But this company has come to the CSR table because it has to, not because it wants to. It is under increasing pressure around the manufacture of its hugely popular - and quite expensive - products and it has been unable to quell consumers' growing concerns. The first company, however, comes to CSR because it recognizes the potential business benefits of crafting and implementing a CSR strategy on your own terms, where you get to craft the approach and the messages, not your critics.

Meanwhile, nobody has even offered me a job! I have not even interviewed with anyone at the "cool" brand, other than the internal recruiter. I have interviewed with five people at the Dream Job. One more interview on Monday morning (at 8am!) and that should be it. Although who knows because they seem to keep adding people to the itinerary. Is that a good sign? A bad sign? No sign at all? Who knows. All I can do is wait.

Oh, and I am still waiting to be officially rejected by the job for which I am not exactly qualified. They said they would be deciding by the end of this past week and since I have not heard from them yet, I am going to take that to mean that they are just waiting for the candidate to whom they offered it to accept before they reject everyone else. Which is fine. I mean, rejection always sucks. But at least I have no expectations that they will even offer me this job so the rejection will not feel so harsh. And I should be proud that I made it as far as I did considering how unqualified I am for this job. And they did give me great and positive feedback about my interviewing skills, my personality and my smarts. So all that is good. And if I take nothing else away from the experience, at least I can take that away.

Jetlag is my friend.

Jetlag is my friend. At least, that's what I am telling myself as I sit here in my living room completely annihilated by my recent trip to Europe. It seemed like such a good idea to go, even if only for a short time, since it was basically free - after all, our flights and most of our hotel and meals would be paid for by Haas in exchange for our attendance and presentation at the London Business School CSR conference. But nothing is ever free and what we saved in money we are now paying for in puffy eyes and near narcolepsy.

But it sure was fun.

AMSTERDAM
Libby and I set out from SFO on a direct flight to Heathrow, where we hopped a quick flight to Amsterdam. We met Gigi at the train station and set out to find our hotel. This would be the first of what turned out to be many declarations of, "You can't miss it!" from the friendly Dutch and us, in fact, missing it. So our hotel was a less than five minute walk from the train station and we finally found it after 40 minutes of walking.

Amsterdam was loads of fun. We stayed at the Hotel Terminus, which I highly recommend. It was clean and spacious and our beds were insanely comfortable. The Europeans do beds right, that's for sure. It was also on the same block as the police station, so we felt really safe, especially when we rented bikes and locked them overnight at the station entrance (incidentally, as we were locking up our bikes we saw three people being arrested!).

While in Amsterdam we did all (well, almost all) the tourist-y stuff. We visited Ann Frank's house, which was an incredibly moving experience for me; we rented bikes and rode all around the city; we ate "frites" with mayonnaise; we walked through the Red Light District and ogled the hookers in the windows. And we got lost. Often.

We did not, however, do any drugs. But we did go out dancing at a bar called, "Amsterdamned." How could we pass that up?

One of the most interesting things we saw in Amsterdam was the Homomonument. "What's that," you ask. Well, it is what it sounds like. A momument for homos. No joke. It is a dedicated monument down the street from Ann Frank's house that is dedicated to gays and lesbians. The Homomonument. Surprised? So were we..

LONDON
After a whirlwind three days in Amsterdam, Libby and I said goodbye to Gigi and headed to the UK. I was really excited for London because I have never been. I had heard much about it, including that it is just like New York, and so I was really eager to get there. We tried to find lodging while we were in Amsterdam but time got away from us and we ended up having to wait until we got to London to find a hotel. This, as it turns out, was a HUGE mistake. In fact, it was this mistake that almost had them turn us around at the border. That's right, we almost did not get into England! I will take the responsibility for this, as it was my snickering as the agent questioned us that led her to say, "It seems you find this all very amusing." Then she gave me some anti-American diatribe about how if she showed up at our borders with the story I was giving her they would send her on the next plane back. I wanted to much to tell her, "Come on, we hate our president, too!" but I refrained. Then Libby stepped in and calmly explained everything, somehow convicing the woman that in fact we did not have any interest in moving to the UK illegally. Thank goodness one of us was mature enough to handle this potentially serious situation!

London was awesome. Our hotel was staffed with the most imbeciles I have ever experienced in one place. But it was comfy (even if our room did smell like rocks) and it was in a pretty great neighborhood. Every meal we had was (surprisingly) tasty. The weather was (surprisingly) perfect. We even went to the theatre in London's West End!

Oh yeah, and the conference. The conference was pretty good, I guess. It is hard to tell how it went because we really were suffering from sleep deprivation - it took us forever to get our presentation finalized and, after one loooong night in Amsterdam, we were catching up on our sleep for days. Our presentation, in which we discussed the findings of our phenomenalogical research analyzing the link between corporate social responsibility and women, was not particularly well-attended (go figure, a bunch of stuffy professors don't care so much about women and CSR!), but we got pretty good feedback from Kellie and the audience and are planning on shopping it around to some other CSR conferences.

After the conference Libby and I took a many-hour nap and then hit the town. For a couple of hours and then went straight back to sleep. On Saturday we spent the day exploring London, hitting all the must-see sights - the Globe Theater, Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace - as well as some smaller, neighborhood establishments, like the Borough Market - a Farmer's Market to rival our own here in San Francisco. Saturday night we went to see Avenue Q at the Noel Coward Theatre and then, after much big talk about hitting some nightspots, went back to our hotel and right back to sleep!

We flew home yesterday and I am writing this now in an effort to stay awake and conquer the jetlag.

UN(DER)EMPLOYMENT UPDATE
I am still underemployed though I do feel like I have some momentum on the job front. But clearly I have too much time on my hand, as evidenced by this overly lengthy description of such a short trip across the pond.

Hibernation

I have definitely been in hibernation since graduation. I keep to myself and have little interest in socializing. When I do feel like having company I am drawn to my old friends, not Haas people. In fact, Haas people have been driving me a little nutty of late. Not all of them, for sure (for example, how would I have survived the past few weeks without Jenna!?). All I know is that the great friends I was supposed to have made at business school, well, I need a break from them. Maybe that's normal. I mean, Rocky said that when she graduated from school all she wanted to do was hang out with her non-school friends. But from what I can see, all the Haas people mostly want to hang out with each other. So then I feel bad and I feel, once again, different. Well, I only hope the feeling goes away. Maybe I just need a job to feel like I want to be around people again.

Job Hunt
I continue to be in the thick of the job hunt. Things are looking up - there definitely seems to be some momentum, though towards what remains to be seen. I am most excited about the one opportunity that developed this week, but I cannot be too excited because I have no clue what the job is and I am definitely not a shoe-in, though I appreciate that I am definitely in the running! Then I had a decent interview on Friday. It was the second time in the last month that I have been called for a job for which the hiring organization thinks I am not necessarily a fit. So why do they call me? Well, a better question I suppose is why do I apply for these jobs? In truth, I usually post my resume for these kinds of jobs - the ones for which I am definitely not a good candidate, I probably wouldn't even really want it if it was offered for me, and it doesn't matter anyway because they aren't going to call me because I am not even qualified - on the days I am most struggling with my unemployed status. So i see a job that sounds interesting enough, one that I think I could do if (1) someone gave me the chance and (2) I accepted such an offer. And I submit my resume and write a kick ass cover letter. And then I move on, never wondering if I will hear from them, but feeling like I was at least productive by applying - I get to fill out another line in my "job tracker" Excel spreadsheet. Anyway, all this is to say that I interviewed for one of these jobs on Friday. And I guess I am supposed to feel all kinds of grateful that they called me and "proud of myself" for the fact that even though I don't have the right experience, they called me anyway (there were 60 applicants!)! And I can't understand why they tell me this, why they tell me that my resume is unlike those of anyone else they are interviewing but it sure looks "interesting." And then they tell me I did a great job, "especially considering." What kind of backhanded compliment is that?

New Friends
Given that I am taking a Haas break, I am excited that I am also making new friends. It's not easy at this age but the way I see it, there is no reason to stop making friends (ever) and as more and more of my friends get married, I really do need to be hanging out with other single people.

The grey-haired dude of Hungarian descent from the Canada party was quite handsome. Not my type, I don't think. I can't put my finger on why. But he sure was handsome!

Brief Movie Review
Tonight I saw The Devil Wears Prada with Heidi and her friend whose name I can't remember. It was not as terrible as I suspected it was going to be. But it was not particularly good either. Meryl Street was her usual brilliant self, and in this movie she was also her very beautful self. She was absolutely stunning in this movie and she really did a wonderful job with the character. So, I didn't particularly like the movie but I did laugh out loud and I would tell other people (certain movie-goers) to go ahead and see it.

I have an itch

Sometimes my back gets really itchy. Not for any good reason. Certainly there is no good reason tonight. I just took a shower. I put on my favorite sleepy shirt (band spanking clean) and my back feels itchy. And it serves as a reminder that one of the primary things I get out of being in a relationship is the privilege of a "live-in" back-tickler. Yes, I am ready to meet someone great. I am inspired and I am poised to meet someone fantastic and have something spectacular. I know it will be beautiful and wonderful and and meaningful and fun and deep and intense and all the things relationships can be. But I have to admit, I am most looking forward to getting my back tickled. Regularly.