After over 24 hours of traveling, I was relieved to get off the airplane, and I was ecstatic to see my family. Even though my body had no idea what time it was and I felt a bit tired from the jet lag, I was buoyed and excited to see my family.
The first thing we did was go to Wee Witches. It was really important to Lydia for us to all go and walk around Wee Witches as a family. I love how much Lydia values our experiences as a family. And didn’t she do an awesome job on her face paint?
It was FREEZING at Wee Witches. The weather really turned today in Orem. It was windy and rainy, and at night time it snowed in the mountains. We only stayed about 45 minutes because of the weather, but we had a lot of fun with the time that we had. We got the little kid’s faces painted, walked around shops (indoors!) and got donuts for the kids.
They said the wait at Archibald’s restaurant at Wee Witches would be over two hours so we went to Maria Bonitas which only had a 20 minute wait. I gave everyone gifts from Singapore in the care while we waited. I gave Clarissa a pink purse, Ammon a sushi play-doh set, Mary a golden pig figurine, Lydia earrings and Lily a hat. It was so fun to share a bit of my travels with everyone. We also ate haw berry candy and peanut butter candy that I brought from Singapore (which was delicious).
Maria Bonitas was delicious! It was so good to all be together again!
Then I went home and passed out out 7:00PM and woke up at 1:30 AM the next day, lol.
Today I ran a training, spent time with some of the people in the SouthEast Asia region and did a lot of work on my laptop to get caught up. I had a great view while getting my work done!
Right now I am mentoring a new manager in Hong Kong named Jensen. It just happened to work out that he was flying into Singapore today so we got to go to dinner together. We have become friends and it was so nice to see him!
Back at home the family had lots of fun with friends.
I boarded my plan shortly after midnight. I cannot wait to see everyone!
I have been feeling a bit travel-worn and overwhelmed with everything I’m trying to juggle, but dinner tonight with Sunil and Karn was a huge pick-me-up. We really gelled over dinner as they told me about the history of Singapore, and geo-political information about the region and as we jammed on different management topics. The Indonesian food was incredible and the server told us how many spices they used in each dish (in some cases over 15). The food was superb.
Today Georgia came over and spent time with the family. She recently wrote a memoir of her life and she is very happy to have finished it. At our house she played games with the kids.
Ammon is loving his new Ninja costume!
The kids all made gingerbread houses. I’m sorry to have missed it!
Today was a good day for me, even though I’m feeling very ragged from all the pressures of travel, my training assignments and managing my team during Q4. I was able to catch up on work a lot in my hotel room, and I also got out for a good outing to see the Gardens by the Bay, one of Singapore’s more famous attractions.
I first went into an exhibit called flower fantasy. I think they named it appropriately!
Next, I went to the skywalk.
Then I went to the flower dome. Here is an exterior picture of it from the internet since all of my videos and pictures were from the inside of it.
Next I went to the Cloud Forest. In this picture from the internet, you can see the flower dome, the cloud forrest and the famous skywalk tree features.
Here are videos and pictures of my time in the Cloud Forest:
On my way home I walked through the mall.
And I continued to appreciate the remarkable architecture in Singapore, including this unusually skinny building on the right.
Back at home the family was having a lovely day of hearth and harmony. First they ate the grape pie they painstakingly made days before. Lily said the flavor was great, but the texture was not quite what she had hoped for.
Then Mary completely on her own initiative baked a cake, and Lydia helped her ice it. They even made fondant from scratch and decorated it immaculately!
Cutting the beautiful cake was a very dramatic moment since no one wanted to see such a masterpiece destroyed. They played a fitting soundtrack to commemorate the moment.
Clarissa had fun in her new Maleficent custom. She is so cute!!
I am so grateful for the unique and exceptional time I’m having in Singapore and I’m also missing my family so much. They are my beating heart, and I’m so grateful for facetime that allowed me to praise Mary with Lily for her cake and also see how cute Clarissa was in her costume. I’m also so grateful for the blog and all the phone calls I’ve had with Lily to help me feel closer to home. I love this family!
This morning Lily woke to find that our house had been egged during the night. That is very disappointing. The police think it may have something to do with our “vote no” sign on the lawn for proposition 2, but there is no way to be sure. Lily hired a power washer to clean the walls for us.
Later in the day, Lily took the kids to Wee-Witches. I love this tradition so much and I’m so sorry that I missed it!
Everyone got their face (or in Ammon’s case, his arm) painted.
I think she likes it!
Before going to bed, Lily put out Ammon’s birthday presents. I’m so excited for my little guy to turn 7!
Over in India, I had my most eventful and favorite day in India. I arrived at the office around noon after getting things done in my hotel room. Then I talked with the head of the India office for an hour or so just discussing my observations from the trip. I sincerely hope anything I said was useful, but he’s so capable, that it’s hard to know.
After meeting with him, I worked on some things and then I gave a training on MEDDICCC (a sales methodology) to the entire India team. Here is the view from the room wherein I trained. One of my favorite memories from the trip is how even in the conference rooms I could hear constant honking from the cars outside and none of the windows were open.
At the end of my training, Navneet presented a gift to me in behalf of the India team.
The gift was a hand-crafted wooden sculpture of the Hindu God Ganesh. Ganesh is a God of good fortune and prosperity and is worshiped at the beginning of a new adventure. I was genuinely touched by the gift. I felt my trainings were haphazard, under-prepared and sloppy and that gives me a lot of anxiety. With all I have going on right now, I feel like I’m falling short in every area of my life. But I was so touched how they received me so warmly and thanked me so sincerely for my stay. I have a lot of follow-up I plan to do as it is my sincerest hope that my trip can be beneficial to the India Qualtrics team. In just one week, they became very dear to me.
Another example of how special the people are is this: Anooj (one of the managers), had already taken the day off today. He personally decided that if I didn’t get a tour of Mumbai (meaning my Mumbai experience mostly would have been the hotel and the SAP office) that would be a shame. Used some of his day off to get a driver and take me all around old-city at the South of Mumbai. In the car he told me all about Mumbai, Hinduism and much more. I didn’t feel confident navigating Mumbai on my own, and I wanted to see the city so much. I’m so grateful Anjoon took such an interest in my experience in Mumbai. Here is a catalogue of our adventures:
This is the train station that was built by the British while the occupied India. It is also where India was attacked by terrorists in 2008. In that attack, the terrorist moved onto more locations after shooting people in the train station including a hotel (which I also saw) and a cafe (which I ate in). This report has details of the heinous attack.
Here is a video that shows how intense the foot and motorized traffic is. By way of interesting comparison, after it is a downtown intersection in Singapore that I was at the very next day. Very different vibes that is for sure!
I think this is a city government building, but I’m not sure. Isn’t the way they light up buildings amazing?
This is the Gateway of India. The monument was erected to commemorate the landing of King George V and Queen Mary at Apollo Bunder on their visit to India in 1911.
Here is the hotel which I mentioned was also attacked by the terrorists in 2008. Also, Obama stayed here after the attack, and that was a meaningful gesture for Indians.
We then passed a very popular clothing market that spans a kilometer:
Then we went to a market. It was a very unique experience. The place is famous for haggling, and also I think people could tell I was a tourist and many people approached me trying to get my attention. One person complimented me on my shirt as he walked next to me, and before I knew it, he was telling me he could make a shirt like it in two hours. People were very persistent!
Then we went to the cafe where the terrorists shot more people. You can still see the bullet holes in the walls. I got chicken masala and it was superb. I also had a salted lemonade. It’s the second one I’ve had in India, and I loved it!
I like telling Lydia that Bob Marley (my favorite musician) is one of the greatest and most celebrated musicians in the world. I love seeing evidences of people’s love for him around the world.
After dinner I went to the airport. I am so grateful for the experience Anooj gave me!
At the airport, I was interested to learn that the plane taking me to Singapore was the A380, the largest airliner in the world, and a double-decker. It has four huge engines, very long wings, and you can see the multiple loading tunnels for people to board. It didn’t seem wider than other international jets, but as soon as I boarded, there was a staircase to take some passangers to the top-level, and that was interesting.
When I connected with Lily at the end of today, her big update was this: “I WILL NEVER MAKE GRAPE PIE AGAIN.”
I empathized that peeling the grapes must have been a nightmare, to which she said that was the easy part (the kids helped with that part). The hard part was deseeding each grape one by one. She said they are the most delicious pies in the world, and she did it for the kids, but she is never doing it again. Given that I will never again in my life have a chance to taste one of Lily’s grape pies, I asked her to save some in the freezer for me 🙂
In other news, the family has been putting up Halloween and fall decorations inside and outside of the house. Lily is so amazing at creating these festive memories and I’m sorry to miss them!
Ammon has been drawing spooky Halloween pictures and in the video below, you will hear him telling about them.
I’m starting to enjoy India a more as I’m getting a little more rested. I am completely captivated by how lovely the people are and I’m so grateful for all the new Qualtrics friends that I have made. Today I went to lunch with some of the top performers on the team. The food here is incredible. Not only was the restaurant amazing, but even my breakfast at the Trident Hotel each morning has been superb. There is such a complex and advanced usage of spices, flavors and ingredients that dishes burst with flavor and unique and complex tastes. I forgot the name of this desert, but they said it’s the most famous/popular desert in India. It was similar in taste and textures to tres leches from Mexico. EVERYTHING has been so delicious. I could eat every meal from India, if my stomach would allow it! My stomach continues to have serious issues. I wont elaborate except to say that I got back to my hotel room in the nick of time, and yesterday the situation was so dire, I almost did not make it back to my hotel room in time. It was a very close call.
I almost didn’t post the picture below because I didn’t realize it was Clarissa! I’m so used to seeing those curls! Ammon and Clarissa had their haircut today. Ammon especially needed one, but he really wanted to keep growing it out more.
Clarissa has really been enjoying this dress Lily bought for her recently. I think it was from Target.
Lily has been finding immense value from sessions with our therapist Vhari. She did sand therapy again.
I’m in Mumbai and surviving. The people are wonderful. The people I’m working are very hard workers, very skilled and professional, sincere and so warm and friendly. They are the best part of being here. The hard parts are the jet lag and fatigue, my incredibly upset stomach and mild headaches and balancing the India work as well my work for my team back home. It’s also difficult to know if I’m doing any good for the team out here. The leadership is so competent here, and most of them have been in sales longer than me and have worked for very legitimate organizations like Oracle or Salesforce before coming to Qualtrics. It has been a challenge to feel I’ve been bringing value just because of how knowledgeable they already are. But the experience is so unique, and I so love having an experience that is so out of the ordinary.
This morning Lily went on a hike with her beloved friend Emily. Technically she is also family as she is Lily’s 16th cousin (or something like that). Look how beautiful those colors are!
In the evening, Lily spent time with another beloved friend Thalia who lives in South Africa. They haven’t seen each other in a very long time and Lily said she enjoyed her time with Thalia so so much!
Yesterday and today were two of the heaviest work days I’ve had in a long time. The good news is that it’s because business is picking up. I felt completely worn out when I got home (at 7:30), but I was very cheered to see Lydia entertaining all the kids and all of them playing together. I felt so grateful for such incredible children.
Clarissa has been drawing and coloring A LOT lately
So, I have to gush about Lily for a little bit. In Orem there is crazy drama going on around proposition 2. Essentially, a small group of city council members, rich people and super conservative people wanting more control over what happens in schools have put a proposition on the November ballot to split off into a single city school district. There are a few problems with this (even though there are no downsides according to a feasibility study they commissioned from a friend of a friend who created the company three weeks before working on the study). The problems are:
Single city districs are extremely costly because all the extra fixed costs (data center, district building, superintendent etc) and the smaller student base means higher cost per student
Loss of special ed and other specialty services provided by the district that will have to be stood up
Lower purchasing power (Provo is single city and they buy supplies from Alpine because Alpine gets them for a great cost)
Higher taxes, other single city districts have much higher taxes
MOST importantly, almost none of the teachers, administrators, PTA school-board wants this. In fact the PTA is 95% against and took an official position against it and a majority of teachers say they would look to leave Orem if it passes for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fear of their retirements, pension, status and wages being negatively impacted.
Anyhoo, there is much more to talk about on the topic. There would be some pros to leaving like not having to fund the construction of the growing areas around Eagle Mountain, but the cons definitely outweigh the cons, and besides (as the former Mayor who joined our cottage meeting eloquently pointed out) we collaborate and scratch each others’ backs. Others in Alpine funded Orem school construction when we were booming and now we are going to help when other communities boom. That’s just part of working together as a district. Alpine will split at some point and most people think it needs to, but being a single city district seems like a super bad idea.
Lily claims that her greatest superpower is righteous anger. I can name MANY other super powers that she has, but it is true. She is good at righteous anger. She has taken a deep interest in this cause. She’s worried about educational quality, increase in taxes, property value going down, the erosion of collaboration in our communities, and the handing over of power to wealthy people with extreme political views who are not representative of Orem at large. As a result of her feelings she has canvassed our neighborhood multiple days and talked to dozens of people. She has handed out flyers, messaged all her friends, emailed the mayor, befriended the former mayor, networked with the PTA, gone to a cottage meeting with our schoolboard member in attendance and put a sign in our yard. One day I went on a walk to relieve stress and she joined me so she could canvas the neighborhood around our block. She was incredible! She was so charismatic and charming, and persuasive, but not pushy, and ultimately she informed a lot of people and got some people interested in our cottage meeting. She was so good at sales (better than me honestly) that I just felt so much admiration. I was also shocked because she has so much social anxiety and is very good at socializing, but doesn’t do it too much because of how stressful for her it is. Seeing her out in the streets fearlessly championing her cause both inspired and surprised me. Jokingly, I looked at her and said, “who are you?”
But I’ve learned that Lily has deep integrity of heart. And when she thinks something is wrong, she is prone to ACTION, and not even her own anxieties can stop her. That is one of the things I love most about Lily.
I was so pleased with the result of the cottage meeting which was the culmination of all her efforts inviting people that I had to take a picture.
