driving tension

standing in a airport store; i am watching those around me to make their purchases, last minute items with the local city name emblazoned on them. trinkets taken as memories or nearly forgotten gifts for others. it's not uncommon for me to be doing more than one thing at once. cafes, stores and queues are such natural places for me to consider life and profile the lives of others. both are done in the background, happening as the foreground moves past seemingly by itself.

holding a postcard (to be used as framed art) and and a hat i will probably never wear, i look down and see a book that grabs my attention. "traffic: why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us)" by tom vanderbilt. i shift my overweight messenger bag on my shoulder and consider the cost of schlepping one more paperback halfway around the world.

i began this trip with nearly empty bags, i am leaving with them stretched to the limit. a starbucks mug purchased as a "personal cup" for my daily caffeine break was left behind to ensure the tension of the zipper did not exceed safety specs. i am down to carrying items on my back that should have been stowed as checked baggage. but i am standing with a growing list of last minute purchases, and this last one promises to explain why we are the way we are. there was really no choice in the matter, the weight of a paperback never out weighs the promise of enlightenment.

first admission first, i regularly switches from left hand drive to right, i have been known to drive at double the posted speed limit and i have taken to reading gender and ethnicity in my temporary homeland by viewing the car and driving style from a distance. i was also carrying three new books on lie detection through microexpressions, a subject i learned about by watching psychological-CSI series "lie to me". i have also written a previous post on auto profiling. i take all of this to mean that i am trying to better understand people; including myself. here is a book that will show me how to read people even better at 73 miles per hour.

the scope and breath of this book is amazing. there are discussions of driving in the US, amsterdam, australia, china, india and random other places over the world. the fact that i have experienced the traffic in so many of these places first-hand made the conversation all the more interesting. a point well made in the book is that driving styles are cultural and are based on the rules and order of the larger society. driving may be a universal skill, but it is also a newly learned one which take cues from the drivers social environment.

there are an amazing number of things to take away from this book, many are completely counter-intuitive. an example is that a bicyclist who uses hand signals is more likely to be hit by a car, which goes against all road safety lessons i have learned and taught. the reasons, proven by studies referenced in the book, is because the drivers would actually see the cyclist as a person and begin to seek eye contact. this both slows their reflexes and brings them closer to the cyclist. this desire for eye contact is touched on throughout the book, and comes with a revelation that humans have evolved to travel at no more than 20 miles per hour, above which we lose our ability to track items and make effective use of social cues to ensure safety.

over 20 miles per hour we also begin to sample the world rather than reading it fully, this filtering process allows us to lower the amount of information we take in from the stream of input passing by our windows. as we go faster we selectively disregard elements of the environment, including road signs, pedestrians and other cues which do not trigger the risk warning systems tuned by evolution to warn us of approaching dangers.

the major point i walked away from the book with was that driving is boring, which most humans have a low tolerance for and to compensate we do two things. the first is to zone out during the act of driving, going into a semi-trance where we may simply not remember how we got from one place to another. these blank spots appear to be tied to driving while tired, suggesting that we are not zoned out as much as moving rapidly while napping behind the wheel of a very dangerous object with both mass and velocity. this is a scary suggestion for one who does as much tired driving as i do; and yes i do have moments of "how did i get here".

to counter the boredom we find ways to add driving tension, by making it more challenging. someone might choose to do this by increasing the speed, closing distances between ourselves and other vehicles, adding handphone conversations, email or IM exchanges or scanning for music on your ipod. for some of us in the lower extremes of boredom tolerance, or is that the upper extremes of fast-task-switching, we may elect to do multiple of these at once.

i was absently considering this as i drove home this week. i was listening to blues on the ipod, having a conversation with someone in the office and cruising down a street i manage with little conscience attention. that is when the motorcycle cop magically appeared at my side window, then slowed to point at my headlights. i have been waved at multiple times for my "always on" head lights, but it looked like this time i was getting pulled over. after stopping i found that the issue was not the headlights, but that driving while on a handphone really is illegal in malaysia. i then discovered that i should have gotten a local license 3 years ago, although i know of no expat who has ever done this. it has never come up when negotiating prior speed traps.

the indian officer and i had a nice chat. i showed him the book on traffic from my bag, told he that he was right to give me a ticket because it was a distraction. i controlled myself from explaining that i might actually be safer with the phone conversation because otherwise i would be without the tension required for me pay any attention to the road. i heard myself think, "you know officer, i could be asleep at the wheel, but speeding and using the phone keep my ADD at bay and allow me to be safer". my recently acquired filters kicked in, finally i may have learned that less really is more.

in the end, the officer asked me if i "wanted to compromise". shockingly this didn't mean i could pay the fine (tip) immediately, just that i should use the hands-free i had in my bag, if i needed to talk and drive at the same time. i was let go with a handshake and a smile. i drove away hoping to bump into my new friend in a cafe soon, i would like to have a longer conservation about traffic over a beer.

the way we negotiate driving is cultural, it may be related to language in the way we perceive the flow of information and expect things to follow rules so we can only half listen. adding tension might be the same way some play with words to add irony or dual meanings. needing to modify the level of complexity might help you deal better with the chaos and pace of the world around us.

but sometimes adding the tension can also help you to make new friends; unless you drive into a bridge abutment.

asian quietness

i have been in asia for 4 years. four years is enough time to graduate high school, it is enough time to graduate college, its more than enough time to graduate a masters program. but, i am not sure if four years is long enough to watch a culture and try to figure it out. it’s never really the big things, but the little ones that make me wonder like this. i am not saying i have not learned to read a situation, but sometimes i wonder if i will ever really understand.

last week i was reading a contract and discussing modifications. most of the language was completely boilerplate, and could have been written by anyone who had globally been educated to write the boringly board language of legalese. some of the language was definitely not standard, it was identifying. it had clearly been written by a dry member of one asian group. i made a comment, and with a telling smile the nicely mixed vendor told me i had read it correctly. reading between the lines has become simple.

seeing in line is also simple. this afternoon i was driving to a drink and took a side road to avoid jalan bangsar rush hour jam. a little left, right, left move that can avoid 15 minutes of creeping. as i approached the last turn i saw a small car ready to make the same left move. i took my foot off the accelerator, expecting to simply slow and swing around the corner. but the car in front came to a complete stop, and then hesitantly waited, and waited, and waited for a wide open opportunity to continue.

other than guessing gender by pony tail, i could not see the driver. but i did not need that to know that she was brought up in another malaysian group. there was no sense of absent-minded privilege or needless drive to prove direction, there was only the ability to sit and wait for the safe next move. i considered swinging around at the first and second option to move, but i waited until my predecessor crept out so i could quickly move forward and past.

these situations happen all the time. i am able to anticipate and accept situations as they come up. but this past weekend i was in a situation that i could not come to terms with. as i quietly sat and considered it, i bubbled with a need for explanation. finally i burst all self control and stood up demanding, “why are you people so quiet. don’t you understand this is supposed to be fun?”

i was in the office on a saturday night, finishing months of work which i had not been involved in. we were releasing to the internet and had staff globally ensuring we were stable. this is a bi-monthly exercise in tension, it’s the time you need to move the fastest, but it started with bags of food and snacks; something to keep the energy up. but the asians (from malaysia, india, iran and egypt (not asian but on the border)) sitting with me did not seem to be enjoying it, they were sitting as quietly as any other day showing no visible sign of enjoyment.

my solution was simple, i found music on my portable drive, copied to my sadly tunes absent laptop and began to play it as loud as possible. the weak dell speakers were adding to my sadness when i realized a set of speakers passed down through three moves back to the US were sitting in an empty office. i went to hunt them down and plugged them in. garbage, offspring, lenny kravitz and radiohead were my bass pulse for the next few hours, it helped my spirits and made me feel like i was sitting in a US development group, where people enjoy success and loudly wait for opportunities to work, something i don’t experience here.

most of them appeared to ignore the night’s soundtrack; i saw one guy open up a little and smile, but no one swayed to the music, sang or even discussed the bands. one near-westerner did say “cool” on an IM, a suppressed support for the chance to find enjoyment in life; quietly hidden in the need to be proper.

maybe i should have found a way to understand this by now, but i just can’t do it. life needs a soundtrack, death is quiet. i still don’t understand how this can be confused.

/************

at least i would have thought someone picked up on the fact that each person who owns these speakers ends up getting moved to the US to work... now let's see who is next. but, then again none of those people were ever quiet.

*** and ***

the only workplace i can think of that has the beat of life i miss from us development communities is the borneo ink shop of my recent scaring. no wonder i keep thinking about going back, they have the life i am missing.

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barber school

one of the reasons i love my job is that its not really a job, it’s a career.  this might be a subtle distinction for some, but for me it is a clarifying element to every day i spend working.  it helps me take the long view on the daily grind, and allows me to see that even when i am doing things i don’t enjoy, there is an upside.  that is, i can learn something from the experience, every experience even the ones that are no fun as they are happening.  as i continue to learn, i am better prepared for the next thing that comes down the pike.

but at moments, i do question the worth of it all.  when i was a developer i knew i could always go and find another job, or even another career.  it might not require the long days and nights, might not have as heavy stress and could allow me time to focus on life not work.  when i thought about this, i was normally under serious stress; deadlines looming with worried clients and code not working as expected.  in these moments, i had visions of goose, asking maverick for the number to that truck driving school, so they could drive the big rigs.  the idea of a less stressful life, one without a high speed pass on the tower just for the hell of it, was appealing.

but unlike goose, driving the big rigs was never for me.  driving would get me to work, not be work itself.  i always had monster drives, with clients who were 100 mi away from home, and who required serious face-time.  that meant long cycles of living in hotels and commuting in all weather.  NPR and mobile phones were the two saving graces of this, both allowing me to stay connected while mellowing on the move.  but driving eliminated the two things i wanted to be spending my personal time on, learning an instrument and reading.  i knew both where possible, i have a friend who kept a keyboard next to him as he commuted.  he could practice one handed scales while he drove.  i had other friends who listened to books on tape, but my books never seemed to be available.  there was never a large enough market for the books i read, to be able to pay someone to read them to me.

i now live 20 minutes from the office, with a mostly empty road that allows me to drive twice the posted speed limit.  this is my shortest commute since riding my bike to the beach, something i did because it gave me a total of 5 workouts a day.   but, there are downsides, first NPR takes longer than 20 minutes for a full summary of the news and worse there is no NPR to listen to in malaysia.  this is the country of no real news is the news; where a weather report is one worded as “hazy”.

other downsides are that i still don’t have time to learn an instrument or to read as much as i buy on frequent bookstore trips.  the office has a collection of wanna-be guitarists and a wanna-be instructor.  it also has very little time to move from talking about lessons to the actual lessons themselves.  we keep threatening each other that now is the time to begin, yet-another-deadline is the only thing stopping us. 

unfortunately, my reading habits are also still too eccentric for commercial recordings so i can read and drive at the same time.  with the exception of david sedaris’ “santaland diaries” that i drove through a few months ago.  they were the notebooks of a gay elf-with-attitude suffering through a holiday season in a department store.  i loved listening to them, i am sure you can see the commercial appeal they would have.  it was felt good to enjoy mainstream material.

there are moments when i think about doing other things.  as i was driving to work last week i considered all the skills i have mastered over the years and how they would serve me well if i did what i have always threatened to do.  as i said, i was never driven to drive the big rigs.  the school of choice for me was barber school, where i would learn to cut hair and give a shave.  barber school would allow me to run my own business, providing a service to customers, customers who continue to grow hair that needs to be cut.  the worst mistakes could be corrected by waiting 8 weeks to allow it grow out.  

other than the crying child, there for his first big boy haircut, there is little stress in the barber shop.  it’s a place for men to hang out, listen to the news on the radio or a game on a small tv in the corner.  it’s a place for men to socialize while waiting their turn for the chair; where everyone as equal as the egalitarian “regular boys haircut”.

it’s also a place where long gaps of time pass with little or nothing to do.  which sounds like a great retirement gig for me.  no nighttime conference calls, no stressful meetings where business people and lawyers discuss direction from 4 continents, no KPI for staff, no requirements harder than asking if it should be “tapered in back”.  barber school has always been something i would pull out of my pocket like a set of worry beads.  i would roll it around in my hand for a second, and realize that if i am too busy to read or pick up a guitar, then there is no way i have time for a two year training program that allows me to hang a red and white pole outside a storefront.

i love my job, there is still so much to do and learn.  barber school just needs to wait until i retire, which will could be sometime after i have read the books waiting on two continents.  besides, the days of the barber surgeon are sadly past. that was the job i would have enjoyed, it was when barbers were allowed to pull teeth and amputate body parts.  my day-and-night career allows me to symbolically do both of those. 

i already aggressively cut hair every day, what else could i want?  other than NPR during my drive.

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can you image a barbershop i designed?  pictures from around the world, bookshelves full of books to be shared, nice couches, good coffee and a wall mounted TV tuned to CNN or an EPL game.  we would have open wi-fi and a PC in the corner so people could google, wiki or imdb answers to debates between patrons.  clearly, the proprieties must be observed.

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masked man

i have been sick for two weeks. last week was a migraine that my doctor told me today was not a migraine, but was the first step of infection by a virus. the blood work has come back and for the 5th time in as many years i still am not a diabetic, and the current cold is not a cold but allergies or asthma brought on by the double whammy of the virus i appear to have conquered and the KL haze which has settled over the city just in time to irritate my weakened system.

all of this brings me back to the use of two different anti-histamines a-day. one for the lungs in the morning, the other for food irritants at night. i am also adding in a strong drag of steroids to start my day. smokers wake up and take a puff to start their day with the smoke they crave. i am puffing on a plastic tube filled with corticosteroids to manage my immune response, calming the bronchial irritation that flares because of simple dust. all of these meds do nothing more than allow me to catch a full breath, letting me walk around the office without needing to grab onto furniture to stop from falling over from the lack of oxygen. without the meds my lungs close and i struggle with limited lung capacity.

i almost hate this quality of life medical condition i have come to accept. auto-immune disease is in the family, a sister has lupis and a niece has alopecia universalis. so, on the scale of overactive immune responses, i think i have gotten off lucky. i have a system that reacts to dust and smoke, and considers consumption of carbohydrates as an invasion by foreign troops. it is not a surprise that a few beers in a bar with co-workers, one who was smoking, on a friday night tied in tightly with the latest burst of immune response. being run-down from the flu, sleeping in air-con and eating other carbs all at the same time appeared to be just too much, but the beers were the right choice at the wrong time.

so i have come to accept that i have to rely on self control, avoiding the things that i enjoy and crave and a healthy dose of meds to help lower the body’s response to simple things that most tolerate with ease. i don’t mind the inhaler, it’s simple to get up in the morning, open a cap and take a deep cleaning breath. i don’t mind the meds, although the ones that work for me are only sold in the US and i need to have them imported by traveling family and staff; smuggling over-the-counter drugs that allow me to breathe. these things are simple and invisible; no one notices what i am doing. it’s a quiet and personal battle.

it is visible, the steroids cause weight gain, but they also allow me to exercise, so if i can balance the breath-in and sweat-out, than even this can be hidden. laziness of not taking the meds or not exercising the weight off is the risk i am now facing. but it is not the most visible of the humiliations i am now faced with. my doctor has prescribed a new weapon in my arsenal of protection. she suggested i go to the pharmacy and ask for a filter to keep the dust of the hazy KL weather from entering my lungs and causing me to become irritated in the first place. 

i am now walking around town with a micro-pore filter mask, a respiratory valved face mask; it is white with a large 3M printed on the front. as i walked from the pharmacy to the car i received a new type of smile. the people of KL are now presented with a large, white, bald man in brightly colored shirts who appears to be over-reacting to h1n1, the halal name for swine flu, which was declared by the local newspapers this morning as a pandemic. how little they know that i am not worried about flu at all, i simply can’t breathe the hazy air in this city.

i am sure i look dumb, i am sure they have no idea why i am really wearing the mask, and i am sure i don’t care. taking a deep breath is much more important to me than how silly i look walking around town. following the lesson i learned from my 10th grade science teacher, while sitting in a lifeguard tower years later, “form follows function”. the odd haircut and the bright colors are choice, but breathing is a non-optional requirement. if the people think i am over-reacting, they at least have it half right. i have been told i need filters for years, i finally have one.

i am now a masked man; let the breathing return.