The second leg of this spring’s western adventure took me to Silicon Valley to visit John and his family. The flight west from Fort Collins was spectacular, especially the view of the snow-capped Rockies, marching north all the way to Canada. They are always impressive; this time they had just the right amount of snow on them to perfectly enhance them. I also liked seeing Helper, Utah from the air; we (Dravo Corporation) built a coal preparation plant there in the 1970s, very close to one of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s most famous bank robberies. And I was able to pick out Yosemite Falls and Valley after we crossed the Sierra Nevadas.
It was a real treat for me to see Lai An and observe how much she has changed in the past year. She has become a well-adjusted pre-teenager, who reads voraciously and is interested in a wide variety of things, ranging from women’s suffrage to beating her grandfather in Texas Hold’em Poker. She will soon be twelve years old and is finishing fifth grade in a high-level International school where she is enrolled in the French program. This is something they really are serious about – even her mathematics classes are taught in French (making it difficult for her father to help her!). Nonetheless she appears to be prospering in this environment and is looking forward to continuing it in middle school on a different campus. Having a Chinese mother brings the requirement of significant supplemental schooling. In addition to formal classes, Lai An’s other lessons include piano/vocal, on-line mathematics, Chinese, and French via an individual tutor.
In addition, she goes to (epee) fencing lessons nearly every evening. The evening I accompanied John to her lesson, they had a mini-tournament involving sixteen students (several of whom are in her class at International School). Thanks to very favorable seeding she easily advanced to the semi-finals where she earned a tightly contested victory. The final was a different story as her opponent initially rolled up a large score against her. At the break her instructor encouraged her to be more aggressive, and the tide turned. Although she eventually lost, she was very competitive for the rest of the match. And was the talk of her class at school the next day!
I had the opportunity to shadow John at work one day and to observe the difference between his business environment and the one I inhabited half a century ago. He spent an hour participating in an indoctrination program for new employees for his company, conducted completely remotely with participants scattered across four time zones. “BeOne Medicines” is an international company with people from every imaginable ethnic group, religion, and culture. It is essential that they all understand the company’s mission and its own unique mores. John did a fine job of discussing the history of the company and the values upon which its success is based and then spent quite a while answering relevant questions from folks who had recently joined.
The office in San Carlos is one of many located across the world. In addition to John having his primary office there, several other very senior people in the company are located there. It is difficult for me to understand this sort of decentralized organization. I am accustomed to corporations where all the major executives are located in a central office, with satellite offices scattered hierarchically around the company’s area of influence. In that world, in-person meetings dominated the decision-making process. In contrast today, this process is effectively handled remotely. The San Carlos office is typical of what one might expect in Silicon Valley, with all the appurtenances of an employee-friendly workplace. The emphasis on facilitating collaboration is obvious everywhere.
Despite living in a reasonably affluent high-brow neighborhood, John and Victoria maintain a flock (ten) of chickens. It was a lot of fun to watch them wandering around the yard, pecking in the grass. More exciting was their interplay with John’s robotic lawnmower. Victoria bought this on a whim; it has turned out to be a very effective piece of equipment, as well as a great source of amusement. When it isn’t self-parked being recharged, it is motoring around the yard, even at night with a headlight burning. The chickens and Amelia, their cream golden retriever, pay no attention whatsoever to it.
The biggest excitement last week was the arrival of a pair of mallards in their swimming pool, followed by the observation that the hen appeared to be making a nest at the base of a palm tree. Victoria obtained “Caution” tape to seal off that area from visitors. As she was installing it, the hen flew off. When she checked, she confirmed that there were nine eggs in the nest. In addition to chickens, bees (they maintain two hives), and Amelia, their livestock will soon be supplemented by a pair of ducks with a brood of ducklings. Green Acres in Silicon Valley!
The flight back was particularly rewarding for me. Seeing our country from 41,000 feet on a clear day with minimum cloud cover is a continuous entertainment opportunity that will never grow old. The contrast of the different landscapes is incredible. We took off from San Jose and in quick succession crossed the Coastal Ranges, the Central Valley of California, the Sierra Nevadas, the Great Basin Desert, the Rockies, the Great Prairie, flat tableland full of corn and wheat fields, and finally the gorgeous green hills of Pennsylvania. This was a four-hour Master Class of geography and ecology. Perhaps my rose-colored glasses made our green appear brighter and more welcoming, or perhaps it was the contrast with the miles of desert and artificially irrigated landscape over which we passed; nonetheless my immediate reaction when we crossed the Ohio was one of intense gratitude for the good fortune of living here. “East, west, home’s best!”