Yesterday, we had the first hybrid meetup, the first not-completely-virtual event since February 2020. It was an experiment, and I had a lot of fears about how it will go. In the end, there were only two people in the room for the “live” part. I suspected it could be the case because in addition to the pandemic, we are now in a new building with tighter security, and people had to comply with lots of new rules. At some point, I thought – is there any good reason to try so hard to make it hybrid? Now I can tell that it really felt differently.
I am not sure why but being in the office while streaming made it feel like everybody was right there. Most speakers complain that it is difficult to get the audience’s feedback when on zoom and that you feel like talking into the dark…
To be honest, I do not want summer to run forever. I do not want to live in Florida or California. But I love that summer lasts through the whole month of September!
This week, I finally gave away my early morning biking, but I have been devouring these last biking mornings for the past two weeks. I had an amazing long ride on Labor Day, and I finished my early mornings seasons last Sunday, watching the sunset on my way back.
I’d just say – living by the lake in September is priceless 🙂
I was a consultant, and in September 2001, I was assigned to a project in the Daley Center. One of my fellow consultants, Chuck, used to come very early and leave early. On September 11, when I walked in and sat at my desk, he turned to me and pointed to his screen: look, a plane crashed into a building!
From the picture, it was impossible to figure out the size of the airplane and the size of the building, and also, there was zero smoke. So I reacted like weird … I wonder why… and turned my computer on. At 9-15 AM, Cindy, a City employee who was our main point of contact, rushed into the room we sat. Her face was grey. She said: we want you guys to be out of the building immediately! We looked at her: what about our billable hours?! She said: we want you out! We do not know what it going to happen!
We all were commuting, and we looked at our watches and shrugged: we just missed the last morning train back; there will be no trains for another hour and a half. Nevertheless, we walked back to the station. The whole city was moving in the same direction, but we were still far from grasping the magnitude of events. Only when we came to the station, we realize how problematic our departure was going to be.
People were standing on all platforms. One of the newsrooms in the station had a giant screen on the wall; they were broadcasting one of the news programs. There, around 10-30 AM Chicago time, we saw the second tower collapsed. Everybody gasped; many started crying.
The trains started to arrive at the platforms. Later, one of the conductors told me that they all headed home after the last morning train pulled up to the city, but their management called them back, and they showed up again. There was no schedule. A train would pull in; people would get on board, and when the train was full, it would head out, and the next train would pull into the station.
Inside the train, people were standing, but nobody tried to squeeze in; there was no panic. I walked into the full train and leaned on the wall. The train started moving shortly after that. It stopped at each station, but most passengers were going to the suburbs. At one of the stations, a person asked from the platform: what’s going on? Aren’t there any trains to Chicago? You do not want to go to Chicago now! – somebody shouted.
The was one man with a prosthetic leg; I saw him in Palatine most of the mornings. He was telling something and pointing at me; I could not figure out what it was. I thought he was asking me to move and let him through to look for a seat, but he waved me off: no, I was just telling him to move! I told him I couldn’t see a pretty woman! I still think about this dialog as the best compliment I ever received :).
Somebody in our car had a transistor radio, and we listened to the news and learned about another plain – the one who didn’t reach the Pentagon. Nobody knew how many plains could still be in the air, and what could be other targets. We worked on the 27 floor of the Daley Center; that’s why we were ordered to go home.
I managed to call Boris. It was not easy back then; I had to key in a long sequence on my cell phone to connect to a discounted service.
In the evening, our director called all consultants and told us to stay home. He told us we would be paid for that day. The kids had school. I stayed at home, lying on the couch in front of the TV and crying. I could not bring myself to doing anything productive. I was staring at the debris, listening to the commentators, and lying there paralyzed with greave. For many days after, the most distinct feeling was this absence of joy in life. You tried so hard to be cheerful, go shopping, get ready for Halloween – and you could not. That part of your existence was missing.
Among of gazillion subscriptions I purchased for the upcoming season was Music of the Baroque 50th season. I was a subscriber many years ago, but then I dropped this subscription because it felt like “too much” – I didn’t enjoy the concerts when I knew I had to come home very late several times a week.
This season, I am so hungry for music that I even asked Boris to stop me from purchasing too much:). I ended up purchasing four concerts. I also marked the calendar for a free concert in Millennium Park.
Two weeks ago, I received an email from Music of Baroque, which said that since I am a subscriber, I can get VIP seating for this concert for free. Of course, I RSVPed yes!
The concert was yesterday, and since the weather was perfect, I took mom to the concert. At some point, I was slightly hesitant to go because I had so many things to do for work and the Postgres community at large, and I am so glad I went!
I never sat on these VIP seats so close to the stage – and that’s an extraordinary experience. Dame Jane Glover was even more enthusiastic than ever to be reunited with her orchestra! In the course of about 75 minutes, Dame Jane gave a preview of the whole season, featuring Hendel, Bach, Mozart, and Purcell, including excerpts of classics, like Music for the Royals Fireworks and a brand new commission dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the orchestra – Spectacle of Light by Chicago-based composer Stacy Garrop. A young cellist Ifetayo Ali-Landing was amazing!
I was waling out of the concert thinking: why there were times when I thought that I do not really need this subscription?! Why I thought it being “too much of the same stuff” and sometime boring?!
Do you know what does performance calibration means? If you are reading this blog post on professional social media, the chance is you know! And if you are not sure about what a performance calibration is, you know what an end-of-year review means.
I can’t imagine anybody could like these end-of-year reviews, and the only reason we put up with them is that we hope that our achievements will be noticed. That means we need to have some objective criteria to compare marketing specialists to accountants.
Although everybody hates writing self-evaluation, it is a necessary evil: there have to be some ways to quantify the quality of each person’s work. And when some objective criteria are in place, a person with ambition would strive to check all boxed and match all requirements for a promotion. But that’s where calibration kicks in. Apparently, it is impossible to have too many employees…
Yesterday, I forgot to add Igor’s pictures which he shared with me, and he made much better ones. Besides, he had a chance to see the cars (this one accidental ticket I got from a person who didn’t need it)
For many years, Igor and I visited Pullman on one of the Labor Day weekend days – they always had something interesting going on. Last year, there was nothing because of COVID, but that year, it was going to be a big celebration: Pullman officially became a Nationa Monument.
We decided to go on Saturday because according to the museum website, the actual ribbon cutting was supposed to be on that day. Also, they were going to give away free tickets to tour a factory and Florence Hotel, and also there were going to be old Pullman cars tours. It turned out that the ribbon cutting was scheduled for Monday, and as for the tickets, people stood in lines from 7-30 AM to get them!
We didn’t get any – they were all gone five minutes after we arrived. However, one lady happened to have one extra ticket for the cars tour, and I gave it to Igor.
Still, we managed to see a lot on the museum grounds, and we were shocked by the amount of restoration work that was done on the site!
Since the Siskel Center reopening in August, they screen so many interesting films that I want to be there every other day! One of the series is called Chicago Favorites, and last Saturday, they screened “Contagion” with special guest Dr. Allison Arwady. It was a little bit surreal to see her live after seen her on-screen almost every day for the past 18 months :), and the conversation was exceptionally interesting. At the time when this movie was filmed, she worked as a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer, just as Kate Winslet’s character in the movie.
People asked Dr. Allison how close to reality things are presented in the movie and whether at that time she thought that such things could happen for real (her reply: absolutely, it was not the question of if, but when). She mentioned that quarantining Chicago in the situation described in the movie wouldn’t make sense and that as for the movie’s food shortage, she said: we grow our own food! So although the supply chain disruption is real as we see it, it won’t end up in the food shortage and people breaking into the stores (that happened for different reasons!) You know what I like about Dr. Arwady? She is in front of people almost every day. She is never falsely optimistic, but she also never panic, and her explanations of the Chicago Health Department policies are clear and making sense. That e-being said, she is very optimistic about our future, and she says vaccines work exactly like expected, and we couldn’t even hope for such an outcome, And we will get through it.
Since Nadia is all about dinosaurs these days, we planned a visit to the Field Museum. Going there on Tuesday was a great idea – the first day of school was Monday, and the museum was almost empty. One thing neither Anna nor I could predict was how long our visit would last. We thought about 2- 2,5 hours, and we were even thinking about going to the Maggie Daley park afterward (since we didn’t go there on Saturday), but we ended up spending six hours in the museum! Nadia could not get enough of it!
We started from watching a 3D movie about titanosaurus. Then, we saw the Pacific nations exhibit, then Evoving Earth, Jade, a gemstone exhibit, the Ancient China, Jane Goodall exhibit, the Underground adventure and I think I forgot something :). Nadia kept exploring
Hettie's Reflections 