Appointing a new apartment, frugally

As mentioned earlier, I am working at the Google office in Sunnyvale, and I have rented a studio in San Jose that is 8 miles away. The distance to office is comfortable (15 minutes with no traffic, and never more than 30 even with traffic.) The community is lovely and has walking areas and a Starbucks :-).

When I moved in, it was of course bare, and I had the fun and challenge of furnishing. I slept on a blow up mattress for the first couple of weeks, like a teenager. Keeps me young at heart.

I didn’t want to spend much in furnishings - - Our house is in White Plains, and this is just a pied-à-terre. Plus, taking the job at Google has already come with lots of extra expenses...travel home to NY for 10 days every month, additional rent, gas, electric, etc. in California, an additional car….So my goal was to furnish on the cheap, but ensuring the space was pleasant and comfortable for the time that I spend in it.

I started with Craig’s list. I found great and affordable furniture from various posters in the San Jose area. But I still puzzle about the logistics of getting furniture from Craig’s list...how do you pick it up? If we are talking about couches, tables, desks...these don’t fit in my car. Renting a truck? Along with 2 big burly guys that can haul the stuff? And then driving from city to city as needed?

I did find a dining room table and chairs that I liked on Craig’s list from south San Jose (30 minutes away). I had to make 2 trips...one for the chairs, another for the table. The table is solid wood. (lovely!) And heavy (less lovely). When I got back to my apartment, I couldn’t get it out of the car. I found a burly guy in the garage area (works for Facebook) who helped me get it out of the car and to my apartment. And then my neighbor Ajay next door (who works for Apple) helped me assemble it. (At the time I didn’t have tools; now I do.) So this was not a model I wanted to replicate for all the furniture.

My colleague Michelle pointed me to a San Francisco startup, moveloot.com. Sort of like an upscale Craig’s list, that *delivers.* And if you have any, they will take your old furniture, and pay you something if they sell it. So that’s how I did much of the rest of the furniture, supplemented by other online shoppng for a new mattress, bed coverings, etc. I got some of the artwork on Amazon, and at Goodwill.

I had the clever idea of decorating the wall above my desk with interesting clocks. (Shout out here to our friend John Pitrelli, who once upon a time collected unusual clocks.) I got one clock with the time displayed as a word-finding game, one “melting” clock, and one that runs *backwards*. Fun! What I didn’t take into account is that all night long, there is a chorus of tick-tocks. Lulls me to sleep….

The open office - Part 2

I don’t know the architectural history of workspace design. My guess is that once, the norm for workplace professionals was offices, with doors. And windows. And then, someone came up with the concept of cubicles, the butt of jokes about workspaces in the 20th century. They were modular and could be reconfigured, they were smaller and cheaper than full offices, and the ¾ height walls provided a modicum of visual privacy and some slight buffering of sound,

The open office space became more popular in the late 20th century, aligned with startup cultures. A cluster of people launching a new service or product concept worked in whatever space they could rassle up, the proverbial garage. There were no barriers between sitting areas. There was no need for barriers, the start-up founding team were all developing the same concept. Any work-related discussion of one member was probably of interest to all, so nothing was a distraction; or, more likely, all distractions had some relevance.

Fast forward to 2015. Startups that survived are now all grown up, and in many cases are the leading companies of our times. And the open office origins have persisted.

As a strategic design decision, I don’t get it. I do get it as a financial decision, if companies in Silicon Valley or NYC can’t afford the costs associated with building full offices in prime real estate markets. But I don’t think that companies view this as an unfortunate financial compromise; they see this as creatively advantageous.

Let’s walk through a work day in a high tech environment. Most employees split their day with the following: Coding or technical work, creating documents or reports, talking to co-workers at their worksite, talking to co-workers or others at remote sites.

Is the open office preferable for any of these scenarios? I would opine that it is not.

People that are coding or doing technical work generally prefer to concentrate, and distractions are….distracting. Employees in these spaces block out the audio distractions with noise-canceling headphones, creating a cone of silence. This serves another purpose...it notifies others nearby that the person is in “do not disturb” mode, and “please don’t talk to me unless it’s important.” The person in deep concentration also needs to resist the visual distractions of people moving around in front of him/her. I’m not sure what the solution would be for that...horse blinders? Some “tent” around the coder’s head to block out all but the screen and keyboard?

Conversations or meetings with others not on site are managed through conference calls or videoconferences. In a closed office setting, a teleconference or videoconference can be part of the flow of your workday, right from your own desk. In an open office setting, the worker needs to find a room, for any 15 minute call with an external party. If this is happening spontaneously and you haven’t reserved a conference room a priori, the search scramble begins, and the room that gets scheduled might be some distance away. Loss of time and productivity.

Then, there is talking to co-workers on site. This is probably the optimistic intention of the open workspace; the idea that there will be creative and spontaneous interchanges. And there are. The problem is, once a company has some mass, not everyone is working on the same project anymore, and the creative exchange of co-workers A and B might be irrelevant and distracting to co-workers C and D. So again, the search scramble for space in a quiet room begins. Which sort of spoils what should have been the spontaneity of the conversation.

Finally, there is what I consider the social ab-norm of open office space. In a closed office environment, people will greet each other in hallways, ask how their weekend was, share some anecdotes. People might step into each other’s offices for a 5 minute catch-up chat with a close colleague. In an open office setting, where people work in very close proximity, there is (ironically) even less chatting and catch up. Think of the NYC subway - - you are standing so near to other people, that you develop a “zone out” mindset; other people are breathing on your face in very close proximity, but you don’t engage in eye contact that acknowledges their presence. Plus, from an efficiency point of view, if every person that entered the open space broached a conversation about what everyone did on their weekend, it would be a significant time drain. And, when someone enters the space, others might be in their quiet coding zone. So even saying “hello” to everyone can be seen as a distraction.

Curious to see what the workspaces of the future will look like. I anticipate that this will not be the final solution.

Cooking again!

I guess, unbeknownst to me, I have become a cooking/baking addict. With a large family and lots of people coming and going at all times, there is always reason to be cooking and baking in NY. Despite having an active professional life, I am certain that my boys and their friends have a sort of Betty Crocker image of me, working in the kitchen at all hours, for many hours.

Then comes the Google life in California...with no one to cook or bake for. Google provides breakfast, lunch, and dinner on weekdays; on weekends I am out and about or eating very simply by myself. If you open my refrigerator here, it's pathetic...a couple of sagging vegetables. A browning banana on the counter. If you know us from White Plains, you will know that we have refrigerators bursting at the seams...upstairs, and in the basement. The disparity was disturbing. Something had to change.

I have a relatively large kitchen for a studio apartment, so that's not an obstacle. But I am short on all of the tools related to food preparation. Our kitchen in White Plains is near professional-level. We have an industrial oven, and every utensil known to cooking-man...(in triplicate)...Lemon squeezers? we have three. Pots and pans of all sizes. Every scooping and slicing and grating apparatus. (in multiples, for dairy or meat...) A high end set of knives, courtesy of Adam's summer job of 2 years ago selling for Cutco.

So --how to equip a kitchen here, afresh? I start on the cheap, with cutlery from Target. And no lemon squeezer. (You CAN squeeze lemons without one - -wonder!) It's sort of fun to start again from the ground up, figuring out what you really need, and what you don't. I told Jordan I have exactly 2 tupperware containers, each with appropriately-sized lids. (At home in White Plains, we have the standard accumulation of gazillion sizes, with tops never matching the bottoms, and piles falling upon you when you upon the cabinet and pull one out, Jenga-style. Jordan was enthralled...2 tupperware containers with matching lids sounded zen-like...)

I have been going Israeli dancing since arriving in California, Monday nights and Thursday nights. It’s fun, and it’s exercise. So I have started using that as a catalyst for cooking/baking, bringing trays of borekas or brownies to the dance sessions. (I lag behind in the dancing, but I am getting known as the food-preparer…) Plus, I catered a full middle eastern lunch for my colleagues at Google last week. I prepared 6 pashtidot for a kiddush at Etz Chaim synagogue in Palo Alto. And I have had company for brunch, this weekend and last. So I am now getting my cooking-baking fix again, and I won’t be too rusty when I return to NY again next week…

Separation of work life and personal life

I have generally had a seamless separation between work and life. This has been especially true when it comes to electronic devices. At IBM, I had one cellphone, one computer. I had my IBM email address, and a personal gmail address that I never checked. This was nice and compact, until I left IBM and somehow had to tease out which files were personal, which were work-related, and separate the two. My email address for everything at the time was sbasson@us.ibm.com, and so I had to connect with every entity that I do any business with to inform them of the change of email contact. (the bank, Amazon, Netflix, Paypal, American Express, Macy’s, etc. etc. etc.) I am sure to this day that I have missed a few.

In my new, fully separated life streams, I have a computer that is personal, and a computer from Google. I have my personal iPhone and iPad, plus an Android phone from Google. Neat and clean.

BUT - - that means that I have this array of devices to manage, update, keep charged. On any given day, my bag includes my iPhone (plus chargers), my Android (plus chargers), a backup battery just in case, plus my Mac (and chargers.) It feels like I’m a walking IT department. Plus, it’s heavy. And inevitably, one of the devices is out of juice. I feel like I’m feeding triplets, making sure that each device gets its due and adequate time plugged into the wall. So I don’t think that I would advocate this new and fully separated work-life technological divide as the ideal solution. At least, not till they come up with batteries that last for (say) a full week….

Another funny consequence -- Now that I have a work-related google.com account, plus a personal gmail.com account, I am often unsure about where a particular email was created. Add to that messages from Facebook, and sms, What’sApp, and LinkedIn, and it is a constant puzzle.  My phone will flash a message alert that will disappear, and I am left wondering “was that from gmail? Or facebook? Or….?” Comment from my son Jordan….we need a new solution to sort it all out, like “What’s-MY-App” :-)

Apartment in California: Part 2

I have groused in the past about the absurd expense of apartments in the Silicon Valley area, given the rapidly rising demand and limited supply. Well, my corporate housing benefit expired mid-September, and so I had to bite the bullet and find a place. (The amenities at Google do make if possible to live on site….lots of food, showers, comfy sofas...but that is not encouraged :-) - -

My lovely real estate agent Rita took me on a couple of days of apartment touring. My criteria were, I thought, pretty modest, and I continued to fondly believe that I could find a bargain. (I don’t care about school districts, and I don’t need much space, and I don’t need too many amenities on site - - I can even do laundry at work if need be.) I did want proximity to work - - no more than 10 miles away, given the horrific Silicon Valley traffic. People pointed out to me that I could take the Google buses (very comfortable and equipped with wifi) that shuttle Googlers all over northern California, but I am too accustomed to the autonomy of driving. I don’t want to leave work at a particular time because that is when the bus leaves from my Google campus in Sunnyvale to community X; I want to leave work when I finish what I’m doing. I no longer have babysitters that I need to relieve at a certain time...I think I was an easy client to please.

I did find one place that was a few thousand dollars/month less than other options. I thought I had found the golden nugget. But when I did a google search on the property, there were lots of reviews of tenants saying their cars were broken into; their apartments robbed; and that management was unresponsive. Representative complaints? Outliers? Who knows...But since I don’t know the communities here, and even a “nice” complex can be abutting a less desirable and more crime-ridden area, I shied away…

So that brought me back to the more expensive units.

It occurs to me that there are no bargains in the age of the internet and comparative pricing. Just as we the consumer can compare the price of a car or a washing machine at 10 different online sites, so too can the landlords. They are so savvy about pricing, that the prices shift daily (based on demand? outlooks? who knows...)

Lots of housing designed for the growing tech community has sprung up in Silicon Valley over the last few years. Since the communities are competing with one another, there are certain basic amenities that most of the units have, such as pools, gyms, media rooms, computing and print facilities, meeting spaces. Not unlike the sorts of hotels many of us stay at on business trips. Given my modest needs, and given that Google already has all of these things, I didn’t need those peripherals. But you can’t strip them away - -they come with the package. (It would be nice to have a “cafeteria plan” of options -- where you can point out that you won’t be using all the amenities, and so you need not subscribe…)

The apartment I chose is a studio that is about 6 miles from my Google office, with no scary reviews on line. The complex boasts multiple olympic sized pools that I will never use…(I’m a bad swimmer, I can’t see well when I remove my glasses or contacts, if I wear a bathing cap, I don’t hear well, if I don’t, my hair gets frizzy - -  :-) It has lots of walking paths (that I will use). And a Starbucks and small grocery on site (that I will also use.) Funny how the Starbucks actually did play in my head as an important feature. While I was in corporate housing in Santa Clara for 3 months, there were no nearby stores that were walking distance. If you were out of coffee, you had to drive somewhere. Or go without. Not a big deal, but ability to get coffee on site is a nice amenity for me. I am reminded of taking kids on college tours to select colleges. I hear from parents how their student “felt right” on one campus and “less right” on another. On your walking tour you are not seeing the reputations of professors or the special majors offered by that school. You are seeing buildings, and kids wandering around campus. I wonder how many major decisions - such as which university to choose over the next four years - - are influenced by trivia such as walking paths and a nearby Starbucks.

This studio in San Jose (which is not the most prestigious zip code in the area -- Palo Alto would have been more expensive) - - will be $2300/month. I am told by friends familiar with the area that I got a real bargain.

I have just moved in. Some pictures included.

Beauty - Continuous, or intermittent?

My friend and former colleague John Thomas once shared the following recommendation: When you have a beautiful piece of art, you should place it carefully in your home. Don’t put it in an obvious place that you will see every day, because you will habituate, and stop noticing its beauty. Instead, put it in a more obscure spot, that you won’t encounter all that frequently, so that every time you see it, you will gasp.

I wonder whether that would be a good way to run a company like Google, too. There are so many exceptional offerings, but you are confronted with them daily. And you stop gasping. And you start saying: “why don’t they have pomegranate flavored water today?” Maybe intermittent reinforcement would be better, so that there are surprises on some days and not others. When there are surprises daily, they stop feeling like surprises.

There is so much to discover, though, that there are still lots of opportunities for me to catch my breath, and delight in the fact that “Google offers THIS, too??” - -I have captured a few of these in photos. 

We were at a meeting, and I noticed a dog park behind the building. Google is, by the way, a very dog-oriented company, with employees bringing in their well-mannered dogs many times a week.

Here was another wonder-worthy moment...There are (free) gum machines in Sunnyvale. Apparently the gum had an ingredient (xylitol) that is dangerous to dogs. Google influenced the manufacturer to change the recipe, so that if gum inadvertently falls to the ground and a dog eats it, he won’t become sick. 

Note also the terraces (and the views) outside the Google NYC building.

Accumulating "stuff"

Anyone who hasn’t moved in a long time can anticipate how daunting it would be to figure out what to keep and what to toss. To the point where I know people that opt not to downsize their homes, since they don’t know where they would put their stuff.

I had the experience of packing up everything we owned (including the boxes stuck in the eaves in the attic) before we left for our overseas assignment in India a few years ago. So I observed with horror and amusement the number of things we had accumulated, that we never or rarely used or looked at. I made a silent promise to self to be more mindful of what gets saved and stored, so that I don’t get overwhelmed with stuff.

I came to California in June, with 3 large suitcases.  As part of the Google benefit, I had fully furnished corporate housing for 3 months.

As the 3 months ended, and I had to move my personal items out, I anticipated having not much more than the same 3 suitcases. But I did have more. I am watching stuff accumulate, even as I try to be mindful. Some of it is needed. Some of it is “stuff” - -not needed, but too good or too new to throw away. The “may come in handy one day” category. Shampoo and conditioner are a good example. You get adventurous one day and buy brands you have never used. You discover over time that you don’t really like them as much as your original brands, so you buy those too. But you don’t throw away the barely-used other containers; maybe you’ll use them if your favored brand runs out; or maybe you’ll use them just to change things up. Voila; your bathroom cabinets get full. As do kitchen cabinets. And the clothing cabinets. So just “mindfulness” has not been enough of a deterrent - -