Arrogance through ignorance

I've bitten my lip several times in the last weeks when it comes down to the American commentary on the World Cup. Leading the pack of the ignorant are Pete Wilson and Rich Walcoff (on KGO AM810 radio).

I've been creating my short list on why Americans do not like the game. Here's what I came up with.

• In soccer, size or quantity does not matter

"The low-scoring thing, I get that now, how cool one goal can be when you have to work 90 minutes for it. Hey, when a guy goes to a singles bar, is it a disappointing or boring night if he doesn't walk out with 83 women?" - Scott Ostler in the San Francisco Chronicle

• In soccer, there is no script.
  "Make some noise" does not need to be announced on a big billboard. You do not get regular beer breaks or commercials. Only half time. Anything can happen any time. Supporters will respond to the game, not to a dancing monkey or chicken. Cheerleaders would however be welcome ;)
• In soccer, stats do not count
  Nobody soccer fan I know keeps track of how many tackles a defender makes. Or how many times a team in the last 10 minutes came back from a 2-0 deficit. Or the total weight of the defenders on a squad. Goals, yes, they are tracked per player, or how often a player is selected.
  
• In soccer, loyalty is part of your blood. Teams do not move
  Teams are rooted in the town. Can you imagine Manchester United to move out of Manchester? Lately, I've seen some soccer teams merging: i.e. two neighbouring towns join the teams into one stadium close to both town centers. But you will not encounter a move like the Raiders moving from Oakland to Los Angeles for a couple of years, and back to Oakland.
  

Day 1

06:00AM - Korea vs Togo (2 - 1)
08:00AM - Say bye to my wife and kids + Coffee
09:30AM - Stroll over to RTI on the 6th floor of the Mission Towers at Freedom Circle

10:00AM - First day at RTI

My new little office, all ready to go.

Second Harvest

Over twelve thousand pounds of food! That's how much food we sorted and repackaged last night at the Second Harvest Food bank in San Jose. With a group of ten Belgians and one Italian, we joined a team of volunteers to sort through pallets of donated food. And although the work isn't very difficult or strenuous, everybody was working at an incredible pace, as if Hurricane Katrina was looming around the corner. There wasn't much chit-chat going on. Instead all you heard were the grunts of everybody hard at work: from creating and preparing boxes, to sorting the food, cleaning up the trashed items, to handling pallets and empty boxes.

The Second Harvest Food bank is an amazing organization, unlike anything you find in Belgium. Check it out (More statistics on their website):

• Each month we serve an average of 163,500 people; enough people to fill Candlestick Park more than twice. Of those that we serve:
• 60% are low-income families
• 37% are children
• 20% are seniors
• The average income of the households we serve through our direct service programs are: $1,270 for a family of four; $900 for a two-person senior household; $700 for a two person volunteer household.

• We are the primary source for donated, surplus and purchased foods for non-profit agencies and our direct service programs. In fact, we distributed 27 million pounds of food to our local communities last year.

Power

Yesterday, we hosted a get-together for the group of Argentines at my wife's company : un asado argentino. Mind you, this is a Saturday. A Sunny afternoon. The sangria is ready. A big bucket is full of chilled beer. And the barbecue is already cooking the sliced zuchinnis.
An hour late (which is expected - la hora argentina always runs about an hour late), people start trickling in ... with their laptops. And not immediatly thirsty for a beer. No no, thirsty for power, to recharge the batteries. Only in Silicon Valley. And yes, we did dive into the sangria and had plenty of grilled meat and beer afterwards.

In a month, we'll celebrate yankee doodle day - Belgian style. There won't be a problem of electric power: Belgian still run on primarily on ethanol.

While on Saturday, we cooked on a traditional American Webber barbecue, I couldn't help it to add a picture from our recent visit to Argentina: an asado en El Trapiche, San Luis, Argentina:

The number: 2687

On January 29, 1999, I joined officially Sun Microsystems. I had interviewed months before that, accepted the employment offer as soon as the traditional first quarter hiring freeze had passed, and had been awaiting the transfer of my H1B visa. I have worked in Market Development Engineering the entire time. I have had three different positions in the organization: first in the I/O Technologies group, then in the eBusiness team and finally in Horizontal Technologies.


A few days ago, I tendered my resignation from Sun Microsystems and have decided to take on an exciting new job at Real Time Innovations in Santa Clara.
Ironically, RTI headquarters are located in the big Mission Towers building next to highway 101, with a big "Sun Microsystems" logo on top of it - although there aren't any Sun offices anymore in the building. (In Silicon Valley, big building facade has important advertising value). It's a little freaky: the offices, the furniture, the layouts, even the carpet I believe: it looks all too familiar.

June 9th will be my last day at Sun. All together, I will have been 2687 days at Sun Microsystems.

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