Melih O.

A day in Madrid

I woke up today at 4:30am, and got downstairs. The driver and I (a huge Arsenal fan who also skipped last night’s game) picked up Ian, and headed to the airport. We hopped on the flight, and headed to Madrid!

It was probably the best possible way to get the most time. The full 2 hour plane ride was diving deep into process, organization, and strategy. I asked a million questions. I got a million and one answers. We went deep, we went wide.

When we got to Telefonica headquarters, I got my badge (which is a process), setup camp, and kept going.

Right around the non-Spanish lunch hour of noon, we bought got hungry. Ian didn’t think the cafeteria would be open, but we said screw it, and headed down there. Got some fried rice. Talked about life.

Ian had a meeting to hop into, and I was going to catch Jorge to talk shop as well. Ian headed out, and apparently I passed out. Next thing I know it’s 4pm (the meeting was at 3:30), but it all worked out, we met up, and we’re off.

When we got back to the UK, Fiona picked us up, and we headed to Bray. We went to a fancy pub, and ate good food, and laughed the night away.

Good day.

Life Updates, Uncategorized 0

Landing in London

One of the perks of being bought by Telefonica is definitely their international presence. Ian got pulled up into the machine, and so I headed out to London last night to do some product team jam sessions with him.

I landed, hopped into a car, and I was at the office “fresh” and ready to go.

I hopped into a few meetings with other folks across the org, and then got about an hour of organization and story telling feedback. Headed to the hotel with every intention of passing out… but… there was an Arsenal game at the Emirates which is just 2 miles up.

I desperately wanted to go, but a 4:30am wake up call, and a flight to Madrid tomorrow made my decision.

So Arsenal have won their game 3-0. And I’m heading to bed 🙂

Life Updates, Uncategorized 0

This week in review

I’m off to London. I’ve totally missed posting this week because it’s been crazy with sickness, Wendy heading out of town, and the like. I’ll just post a few photos, and call it a blog post.

Fatherhood, Uncategorized 0

A day at the farm

There’s a place called Slide Ranch by Muir Beach in the North Bay… and it’s amazing!

It’s a working farm, and today they held an open house for kids. They were showing folks how to make pickles, milk goats, sheer a sheep, and a bunch more. We went to gym, hooked up with the Greens, and then made our way over to Muir Beach.

I get so nauseas going north on CA1. It’s just too windy for me. But we were only on it for 10 miles or so to get to the farm. We got our stickers, and headed straight for the goat milking. I tried to get the kids to do it, but they wouldn’t. I jumped in, and it didn’t go so well 🙂

The babies got face paint done. Amelia got a black sheep and a bee. Luka a tiger!

We had a picnic lunch, checked out the bee hives & chicken coop, and then ended our adventure by trying to felt a cat. That went awfully 🙂

It was tons of fun though!

Now for the pictures…

just thinking out loud, Uncategorized 0

Rainbow Girls

I always make fun of Saket when he does music posts because it’s always some random, obscure artist no one has ever heard of. Well now it’s my turn 🙂

This weekend when we went up the coast to Jenner, we came back down CA-1, and found a cute little bakery. This group of gals setup shop, and started playing, and the music was quite good.

It’s a bit Dixie Chicks, but also a bit more musical and a bit more blue grass. The music was great. Amelia and Luka both got into it, but were quite embarrassed about putting money in the tip hat. So it goes. When he finally got the guts to do it, Luka didn’t want to stop (a.k.a take money out and then put it back in). Silly boy.

I would generally say don’t listen to me when it comes to music, but I know I’m right on this one – this is a cool group of gals to spend an evening jamming to.

Life Updates, Uncategorized 0

This week in review

All photos, all the time 🙂

Well, maybe a little intro. We headed up to Jenner, CA for Easter weekend, and we had an awesome time. No cell phone connection though. On the way back, we got cell coverage for about 100 yards in Bodega Bay where I got a text message saying that a candidate had accepted an offer to join the team.

Man that’s a huge win!

And now photos 🙂

just thinking out loud, Uncategorized 0

Happy birthday Geoff!

We celebrated Geoff’s 70th birthday tonight.

We actually missed the real deal back in February. We just couldn’t make it back to the UK, and ended up missing two big milestones (Dan turned 30 as well). Instead, we’ve broughtÂ Wendy and Geoff up to Bodega Bay (their favorite), and found a cool house (with a hot tub) to hang out.

We spent today at Goat Rock State Park. It was epically windy. But man was it fun. Folks have built a bunch of lean-tos, and other structures. We hid behind a dune and had an awesome picnic. It was a really great day with the family, Wendy, and Geoff.

Then we cooked an awesome Turkish dinner – kofte, shepherd’s salad, yogurt, and then had some dessert. It’s a great weekend to celebrate a great guy.

Happy birthday Geoff.

just thinking out loud, Uncategorized 0

The power of sport

Mike shared this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU4oA3kkAWU

with me yesterday. I forgot where he found it, but it’s an amazing story.

People talk all the time about how sports bring people together. The power of the Olympics, the World Cup, an exhibition game amongst once bitter enemiesÂ and now tentative friends.

And yet, large sporting projects usually lead to massive gentrification of neighborhoods. Mass protests in Brazil marred the Confederations Cup. The money that’s in the sporting leagues these days. Empty stadiums because sponsors couldn’t possibly give away enough tickets.

I think stories like this are the exception, and no longer the rule. Sports is becoming a bottomless pit of money. The purity of the games is left to kids playing in parks, streets, and boats around the world.

And I think that the power of sport is in giving those kids the dreams. Too bad the realityÂ is becoming so sour.

just thinking out loud, Uncategorized 0

Some reasons to choose

Some oft cited reasons to choose to stay together:

Kids
I know plenty of folks disagree with this. But kids are a great reason to choose each other. Not for the kids sake. But for your own sanity. Someone to talk it out with. Someone to share it with. Someone else to be responsible. So in a really, really selfish way, I actually buy this one.
Love
Emotions temporarily making choosing to be together easy and difficult all at once. Love tells us to stay together. Other emotions pull us apart.

I think we’re so perfectly taught that love fixes things; love overcomes hurdles; etc. that we turn love into the choice. I choose to love her, and therefore I stay with her.
Sunk cost
When leaving is too much work, or the inertia of choosing something else is too overwhelming, we decide to just let sunk cost make the choice for us. It’s a bad place to be, but one that I see a lot of people come to peace with and continue.
Because the pros outweigh the cons over a running average
The idealist in me says this is the only reason we should ever choose to stay in it. It’s never this simple, but man oh man I wish it could be.

It’s critical that it be a running average because any given incident is likely to be all pro or all con. It’s hard to see the silver lining in the moment.

I don’t think we’re very good at calculating running averages, but in a lot of ways I think the best relationships that I’ve seen are the ones that can understand their past and predict their future based on the running average.

But none of these feel very satisfying to the larger thesis. So there has to be something else to it. I just haven’t found it yet :-/

just thinking out loud, Melih gets married, Uncategorized 0

What is it that binds us?

This blog post is 6 days late. It all started when I got sick, fell behind, and Iâ€™ve been playing catch up ever since. Some of these catch up blog posts are relevant to the day. Others are just random musings.

I’ve had friends get married and divorced much quicker than I thought would happen. There was one that didn’t surprise me at all, and others where I couldn’t believe it. The profiles of the folks are totally different, and while the sample size is small, I’m not convinced there would be many patterns even if I went looking for them.

Fundamentally it came down to the individuals changed at a quicker pace than the relationship grew to accept these changes.

So I’ve been asking myself quite a bit about what, in today’s world, glues relationships together.

It turns out the negative cases are a lot easier to find than the positive ones. Once upon a time a woman had no choice but to stay because she couldn’t support herself and her kids otherwise. Then as that changed there were cultural and religious expectations that aÂ divorce was unacceptable regardless of the situation. We all know that that gave undue power to the abuser in the family (whoever it was (and whether it was emotional or physical)).

But if religion no longer stops us from getting a divorce, and society no longer shames us, then what keeps us together?

Choice.

I’ve thought about it for a while, and it really does come down to the fact that every single day individuals in a committed relationship make a choice to stay together. Marriage is 100% a legal entity for worst case scenarios, and to protect & share assets. But monogamy, which used to be tightly coupled with marriage, is a daily choice.

And I think that’s why it’s so easy for individual growth to outpace the relationship. We so easily make different choices from the ones we made yesterday – americano instead of latte, caesar salad instead of garden salad, taking the highway instead of city streets, etc. – that it’s become really easy to just choose to end the relationship.

We’re great at changing our minds. We’re great at being convinced that a choice we used to always make – wearing front-pleated trousers – is something that we should (and can) quickly change. And it applies to big decisions as well (marriage & divorce in fact).

And so the follow on is… why do we make the choice we do? And that’s tomorrow night’s blog post 🙂