Thanksgivings Past

Another holiday season is here, and I don’t feel ready. This is supposed to be a special time of year, my favorite time of year. It always was growing up. Now I have my own family and new traditions to create and uphold. Since coming to New York we have been the invitees to numerous [...]

Old Milwaukee

I visited Milwaukee for the first time this past Wednesday for work. I met with some very nice people and was impressed with the company in which I was introduced. As for the city itself, I was underwhelmed. Some of the area around Lake Michigan was nice, but overall, the city’s glory days are long [...]

Las Vegas and Back

I was in Las Vegas last week for the first time since 2003. The infamous strip has changed since then, but was still, in so many ways, the Las Vegas I remembered. If there was one change that stood out, it was that the raunchiness and open debauchery was more prevalent than what I previously [...]

Quote of the Day

“You can’t kill love. You can’t even kill it with hate. You can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness. You can kill them all, or numb them into a dense, leaden regret, but you can’t kill love itself. Love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel [...]

Homeward Bound Again

The below post is something I wrote over two years ago. I hate to repost old thoughts, but some things are worth repeating.
There is usually only one good thing about working late: the car ride home. Most days I leave the office around 7:00 pm and take the subway up to GCT to catch the [...]

Year Thirty / Year Three

I am amazed at the power and speed in which you can reach out to people these days. This past week was my wife’s thirtieth birthday, and for several reasons, I hadn’t yet gotten her a gift. I had something in mind for her, but hadn’t had the time to pick it up.  On the [...]

A Trip to Berkeley

Last week I had the chance to visit the campus of one of the great public universities in the country – the University of California at Berkeley. It was my first trip to the city and the campus and was a memorable one. Not only does Berkeley’s hilltop location provide an excellent view of the [...]

Postponed Getaway

Another vacation is here. While I have traveled quite a few times this year for work compared to the recent past, I have done so each time on my own. Tomorrow morning, I am on the plane with my wife and two young daughters. For a six-hour flight. To California. My prior flights have been [...]

Fall Memories

This past weekend marked the six year anniversary of the weekend my wife and I first hit it off together. I will always remember it. It was fall, I had just started law school and love was in the air. The cooler weather and changing foliage each October always reminds me of those days. I [...]

Visiting Milan

I am currently in Switzerland for the fourth time since last September. But I have yet to leave Confoederatio Helvetica, the Latin name for what is now the state of Switzerland, during any of my trips here. That changed this past weekend when I traveled to Milan, Italy. Although I had visited Italy more than [...]

Hey Mr. DJ

I was reminded this week of an old ambition of mine – I used to want to be a radio DJ. Not one of the morning talk show DJs or even an afternoon let-me-solve-your-problems DJ, but a late-night, slow-jams-playing, small-audience-listening DJ. The type of DJ not hired for their voice, celebrity appeal or wittiness, but [...]

Music’s Medium Through the Years

I look back at my relatively short life and am amazed at the changes in how I listen to music. I don’t go back to the days of vinyl records or 8-tracks, but I do clearly remember the days of cassette tapes. I remember having several briefcase-like containers that I could insert my tapes in. [...]

Happy Anniversary

Today marks what would have been my parent’s thirty-first wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, they never had the chance to make it this far as my mom passed away fifteen years ago this past spring. But that does not mean their anniversary is something to be forgotten. The marriage was a success that ended in sadness and [...]

The Difference a Year Makes

It just occurred to me that it was one year ago this week that I gave my two-week notice to my last job (first out of law school) and made the move. Looking back, I am glad I made the switch. Like with anything new, I had some uncertainty prior to the move and knew [...]

A Greener Kind of City

I spent a few days earlier this week in San Francisco and for the second time in six months was struck with how much more environmentally friendly of a city it is compared to New York. Sure, New York has its proponents of living a green lifestyle, and it has made strides towards greenliness over [...]

O-bon Odori

Ten years ago this week I was in the neighborhoods of Osaka doing the O-bon odori, the dance performed at the annual Japanese festival of the dead. All across Japan, from the end of July to early August, neighbors and families gather to dance the night away and welcome the souls of their ancestors back [...]

Amazon Vine

I have been a fan of Amazon.com since 2001, when I made my first online purchase through Amazon. Back then, Amazon mostly sold books, CDs and DVDs, far from the range of products Amazon offers today. In the spring of 2001 I finished a book I really enjoyed (‘The Brothers K’ by David James Duncan, [...]

Three Decades

This is it. Three decades of life are behind me and I have entered number four. I am now 30 years old and there is no turning back. My life so far has been good and I know there are many good days ahead of me. But youth, I feel, has passed me by. I [...]

Yearning For Simplicity

I had always wanted to live in New York. Now I’m in my sixth summer here, and while I have never actually lived in Manhattan, I have spent the vast majority of my life the past five years studying, playing, working and commuting on the island at the center of the world. But I feel [...]

A Tribute to Michael Jackson

There was a heated discussion today at lunch regarding Michael Jackson. The question on the table was whether you grew up listening to Michael. Almost everyone in the room was around my age, and so, naturally, in my mind, they all should have grown up listening to Michael (and they all did except for one [...]

A Growing Problem

Last week I drove to Washington D.C. from New York. The traffic was out of control.  I left Thursday late morning, well after the morning rush hour. Getting out of the Bronx and across the George Washington Bridge took much longer than expected because of traffic. There were no accidents or construction projects. The delays [...]

U.S. Soccer

As I sit here and watch the U.S. vs. Spain semifinal soccer match of the Confederations Cup in South Africa (I work at a European firm and so we can watch soccer in the office), I must say that my allegiances are somewhat mixed. If it was any other team besides the U.S. national team, [...]

The Timepiece as Art

Since I have been periodically traveling to Switzerland for work the past many months I have become fascinated with watches. Switzerland is the gold standard for watchmaking, with Japan a distant second. No other country has a monopoly on displaying time like Switzerland. But it is not just my fascination with knowing what time it [...]

Vacation Days

Last week someone from my office returned from Argentina and another colleague is in Italy at the moment. Someone just flew back from Australia a few days ago. Another person in the office has a trip to the Galapagos Islands later in the summer and even others are traveling to China, the Bahamas and [...]

Rise and Shine

I have always been a night person. I grew up that way and it’s how I am wired. But I am trying to change that little by little. I am finding that life with two kids leaves me very little time for myself. With our first child, there was a point each day that she [...]