Michael-in-China-in-pictures

Hiking up to the Miao villages in Leishan (Guizhou province)









Miao reception line!














Happy old ladies!









No tour of China is complete without a trip to the Chengdu engine-block factory!









Kids in Guizhou, vamping for the camera.











The secret of my international travel success--my high-tech squishy neck pillow!











Long live the 10-course meal!








Jin Xing -- Shanghai's best-known female dancer. Star, entrepreneur (founder of Shanghai Dance), impresario, cultural critic, concerned mother of three, and former man!







Aboard the 300-mph magnetic-levitation train from downtown Shanghai to the airport!










Juniors at a public high school in Shanghai. None of these kids has any siblings.

Hey, what happened to the just-in-time travelblog?

Faithful readers,

No, I'm not still in China. Yes, I have much to report. And yes, I have committed the cardinal sin of blogging (so I hear) -- not updating regularly!

I have an excuse, I swear -- there is a mysterious firewall in my apartment that stops my shiny, pretty, PowerBook G4 from accessing blogger.com!

Am working to resolve issue -- please return!!! I have VOLUMES of witty brilliance to share and I promise something really good!!!!

Your host,

Michael

Beijing gets ready for its close-up

24-hour party people, Beijing version

Sometimes staying in a nice hotel gives you a very limited view of reality. But in Beijing staying in a nice hotel gives you a pretty accurate picture of one aspect of contemporary China, its headlong rush to the future.

Staying on the sixteenth floor of the Hilton, I had a very clear view—literally—of China on the move. From my room I could gaze down on a giant construction pit for one of the zillion new skyscrapers being erected all over Beijing. Lines of men in hardhats hammered away underneath two giant yellow cranes swinging their cargo back and forth. (These looked scary and oddly friendly at the same time, bringing to mind a favorite book from my childhood, "Mike and His Steam Shovel."”) Perhaps classical Chinese paintings done a thousand years from now will feature the motifs of these industrial cranes, replacing the swans and mountains of Guilin that have represented ChinaÂ’s essence for the past few hundred years.

"I'm ready for my close-up, Max"

China has been on a roll for a while, now, but preparation for the 2008 Olympics has given things a whole new push. China is getting ready for its close-up and it wants everything to be perfect. There's a lot left to do--—building several new subway lines, opening a new airport, eliminating air pollution--okay, we might put that last one on hold. But things are happening. We read about this all the time in the states but it's quite another to be in the thick of things, watching construction gangs move piles of pipes at two in the morning.

China has many problems and challenges, but laziness and a sense of entitlement do not figure among them. If American parents are pressuring their kids to achieve now, that'’s nothing compared to how they would be if they could actually see the competition up close.

And speaking of American parents...

One night in Beijing I had dinner with an American friend from business school, her husband and her two daughters. I'll call them Susan and Todd.

Susan and Todd have lived in China for about 18 months now. They used to live in Palo Alto and one day decided to move to China. That was basically the decision process. They didn'’t know what exactly they would do, and their kids were not thrilled, but it was an idea that had been percolating for a couple of decades so they did it.

From my brief visit, I concluded that they have created an extremely fabulous and meaningful life in Beijing. They started a media company that appears fun and successful and their daughters, who are ten and eleven, speak Chinese fluently with perfect "biaozhun" accents. They can read and write as well. The kids never watch television, except for Chinese-language shows. I know what you'’re thinking, and you're right: two fewer places for everyone else at the top colleges when these two girls apply.

Their house is gorgeous and totally reflects their own esthetic and experiences. And perhaps most significantly, the experience of living together overseas and creating a new life seems to foster a kind of intimacy among parents and children that I rarely see back home--what people are thinking when they talk about quality time.

Of course, not all expatriate families are like this. Having seen many over the years, I can accurately assert that many are somewhat paranoid, critical of local cultures and get little out of the experience. But Susan and her husband show how wonderful this kind of international experience can be.

Though their move seems dramatic, I think that it's much more possible than most people would think. In the past 20 years, world travel has become about 10 times easier than it used to be, thanks to email, ATMS and better flights.

And there are clearly opportunities in one of the world's fastest growing economies. Things are happening here--I am not sure exactly what they are, but they're definitely happening! Talented people who are comfortable with a certain amount of risk and uncertainty can find a much more ample space for expressing their interests and skills than might be the case back home.

Next stop: Shanghai

"Brokeback Moment" and America's next Oprah moment

The Oscars are coming and I, along with everyone, is predicting the same thing: "Brokeback Mountain" will walk away with most of the major prizes. I thought the film was beautiful, brilliantly made, and moving but this is only part of the story. "Brokeback Mountain" is going to clean up because the movie happens to be at the right place at the right time to express a much bigger cultural phenomenon: America's Oprah moment regarding gay rights and acceptance.

What do I mean by this? Let me start by briefly reviewing our cultural history.

Two decades ago, Oprah Winfrey burst onto the national scene. An Oscar-nominated turn in "The Color Purple" more or less coincided with the national broadcast of her talk show, which previously was local to Chicago. About five seconds later, she became anchored to the national consciousness and we haven't let go since. It's hard to imagine an America without Oprah Winfrey--who else would we aspire to be friends with?

While Oprah is great (love her!), her success isn't really about her. It is about what she represents to an entire culture, and what that culture needed at the time she showed up. Media may influence the culture but often it lags behind it. This was the case in terms of race in the mid-1980s. Before Oprah came along, African-Americans had a limited presence in the media. To the extent they were included in television shows or movies, they were mostly tokens. They were people to look at, not people to connect with. (How easy to forget that MTV for years was essentially all-white, and that it was Michael Jackson who integrated it!)

By the time Oprah came around, people--meaning the white majority as well as other minority groups--were yearning for more authentic connection across race that they didn't find in the media. They wanted, on some level, a more real expression of certain basic principles of our society--justice, equality, acceptance regardless of race. The culture needed someone to be Oprah, and she stepped up to the plate. Tens of millions of people greeted her with open arms. Most American still live in racially segregated neighborhoods and attend racially segregated skills, but in this limited way we now connect across race.

What does this have to do with "Brokeback Mountain?" This year is the Oprah moment for gay acceptance. For twenty years, Americans have steadily become more comfortable with homosexuality and bisexuality, and the idea that different people are just different, not evil. At the same time, gay people themselves have become more out and more proud, and focused more on living our lives rather than fitting into someone else's image of what we are supposed to be. This is the state of the culture as a tearfully romantic movie about two super-attractive cowboys has coming riding into town.

"Brokeback Mountain" is a colossal hit because it's the country's stand-up-and-be-counted moment. It's a cultural touchstone, a chance for people to define themselves as for or against, as with the program or against it, as part of the solution or part of the problem. And as it turns out, tens of millions of people are quite comfortable saying where they stand.

It's not at all paradoxical that all this is occurring a year after Republican (and some Democrat) politicians stoked fears of gay marriage to rustle up election victories in Ohio and therefore the nation, and in the same year that the president tried to write discrimination into the Constitution. The political world came up with one result, but the culture has come up with another.

Why everyone needs a personal assistant

Nothing has quite so captured the imagination of my public than my recent hiring of a personal assistant. “How very Hollywood!” people think. “How indulgent!” and of course, “Is Michael pioneering the next big thing? With his finger constantly on the pulse, as it were? Do I need to get in on this before it’s too late?”

The correct answer is, of course, the last one. Personal assistanthood is not new to me; it’s just that I was usually on the other end of the pay-stub. With the hoary benefit of hindsight, I realize now that I have been a personal assistant numerous times in my life, such as my college “research assistant” job working for Prof. Catherine Clinton, where I spent a fair number of delightful hours picking up photos from the film store and reselling complimentary publishers’ copies of books to used bookstores for big bucks. And certainly, being a first- or second-year corporate attorney at an elite, white-shoe law firm is much like being a personal assistant.

Why is there so much personal assistanthood in the world? Well, because hiring a personal assistant can really change your life. Everyone imagines how freeing it would be to have someone go to the post-office on your behalf or pick up the dry-cleaning, but those are merely the most pedestrian, unimaginative value-adds.

Here are some of the things that my personal-assistant-to-the-Star, Jennifer Tuttle, has recently done for me:

--Gone to the bank to pick up two rolls of quarters (laundry money)
--Made FedEx refund me $132 for a package sent to Tasmania that arrived five days late
--Helped me figure out my 2006 corporate workshop pricing (“Go higher!” she insisted.)
--Updated my contacts and filed my filing (n.b. this takes several hours a week, which explains why for years I put off and dreaded these tasks. Now my business SINGS with efficiency!)
--Did secret competitive research into how much other coaches charge, by posing as a PriceWaterhouseCoopers consultant with an MBA and CPA
--Had a lively discussion with me on the merits--nay, the necessity!--of my purchasing a Hugo Boss suit
--Discussed with me the merits--nay, the necessity!--of creating a “reel” of me in action to share with agents, television bookers and high-end speakers bureaux, which—conveniently—she and her talented boyfriend Ryan can put together for a reasonable fee.

It is no surprise that Jennifer herself has an extremely busy, productive life as an actor, singer, film producer and now reel-creator-for-self-employed-people. She needs a personal assistant herself.

I would go so far as to say that personal-assistantness is a core economic principle for our age, much like the Keynesian “money multiplier” that I learned about in college. Forget your Razr V3 phones and myspace.com accounts—this is the hot new thing!

Bill Clinton, global superstar!

(Photo: my mom, following the Clinton trail)

Here’s a truism of contemporary travel: wherever you go, Bill Clinton has already been there.

On my recent trip to India, this maxim held true. On a quick visit to the sumptuous Oberoi Amarvilas in Agra, a palace of a hotel that is the spitting image of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, my mom and I ran into Bill’s smiling photo in the lobby. Bill’s photo also greeted us in Jaipur, Delhi and Bombay.

I’ve seen Bill Clinton’s photo in Hanoi, Shanghai and Istanbul. I’ve seen it in Moscow, Buenos Aires and Paris. He traveled a lot as president and he continues to do so, and wherever he goes the paparazzi are snapping away. He’s the global It-Boy.

Foreigners love Bill Clinton. From Amman to Zanzibar, mention his name and the locals smile. I have never heard a single person oversees say anything negative about him. Ever! He's basically our Gorbachev--revered abroad but not at home as a historic, powerful figure. What gives?

Why foreigners love Bill

People overseas like Clinton because he’s the face of a positive America. He's considered brilliant and powerful but also someone who actually cares about foreign people and foreign countries. He’s remembered in numerous countries (e.g. Ireland) as a peacemaker. And he knows his stuff—his view of the world marries business, economics, government, diplomacy and a clear understanding of global problems. He’s able to help businesspeople understand and contribute to the resolution of social problems, and he’s able to help government and nonprofit people understand the value of free-market economic growth. His speeches are filled with substance, rather than the tedious and often dangerous clichés of our current president.

From their somewhat distant vantage point, foreigners see the legacy and gifts of Bill Clinton a lot more clearly than most Americans do. Across the world, Bill Clinton lives!

An aside

A skinny teenager working at a tourist shop in Kerala inquired, “I must ask you one question: what do you think of George W. Bush?”

“I loathe him!” I responded, my arms flailing to convey my angst and frustration. “I can’t stand him. He’s awful.” I shuddered involuntarily, as we liberals often do nowadays.

The salesman’s eyes twinkled and he bobbed his head left and right. “Every American people coming here is saying same. Why then is he president?”

Why indeed. “Because all the people who vote for George W. Bush are the kind who never leave the country! Just as he never did before he was president!”

This just in...

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What I'm reading now ... Are You Ready to Succeed, by Srikumar S. Rao

A friend of mine recently asked, “How can a cycle-rickshaw driver in India be happy?”

This question was not a hypothetical one. This person had recently traveled to India. One detail that struck him most was his interaction with a cycle-rickshaw driver in Varanasi. My friend told a joke, and the driver—scrawny, prematurely aged and extremely poor—burst into a wide, authentic smile.

Was the rickshaw driver a happy person, despite a life of grinding poverty? I have no idea. But he made me think.

“The question isn’t how can Indians be happy,” I said. “It’s how can Americans be so unhappy.”

We looked around at the breakfast crowd at Balthazar—surely a place of “making it,” New York-style. The patrons sure looked busy, but they didn’t seem all that happy. Shouldn’t we be a whole lot happier, given how much better off we are than most of the world?

All of which brings me to a book I recently read, Are You Ready to Succeed, by Srikumar S. Rao. He analyzes why people are so unhappy with their jobs and lives in the U.S., and what they can do to change things.

Rao’s book is based on a popular course he’s taught for the past decade at Columbia business school. Whereas most books that dare to use variants of the word “success” in their titles focus on mastering the external world, Rao’s book is all about mastering yourself. He rejects the core Western belief that achieving more of something (more money, more recognition, more free time, more skinniness) will make you happy. Instead, his goal is to help you transform your life by dealing with your biggest impediment to happiness—you!

If I can boil Rao’s prescriptions down to two basic elements, they are: (1) mastering your own mind, and (2) accepting the idea that the universe is a cooperating, positive force rather than an indifferent or antagonistic one. The book argues that one’s perception of reality is merely a construct and that it’s possible to change this construct, for positive results. Many of the exercises in the book aim to help the reader master his or her mind, by reexamining our stories about how our life actually works, overcoming negative chatter, surrounding to reality rather than fighting it, and so forth. Ironically, it’s by achieving self-mastery that we finally are able to achieve what we want in life.

Rao establishes up front that all of his insights have come from other, greater teachers. His book is consistent with principles of acceptance and detachment found in Taoism and Buddhism, as well as the teachings of numerous Christian, Muslim, Jewish and nonreligious sages over the centuries. As I read the book, I was reminded of a number of other influential works, including The Artist’s Way (Julia Cameron), The Power of Now (Eckhardt Tolle), Wishcraft (Barbara Sher), Finding Flow (Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi) and Authentic Happiness (Martin Seligman).

What Rao contributes to this literature is a coherent definition for what personal mastery actually is, and a coherent plan for achieving it. Hence, I’m reading it for the second time, and this go-round actually doing all the exercises!

Rao is clearly focused on an educated, professional audience, the types who are likely to be skeptical of books like this and therefore the ones in most desperate need of their teachings. I recommend it. If you’ve ever wondered why, no matter how you try, you always seem to fall short of “making it” in a way that is personally meaningful, this book offers plausible explanations and workable solutions.

A New India, or just New Year's Eve? (Part 2)

The party gets going…

Our first day in India was New Year’s Eve. We were resigned to letting jet lag claim us but, as night approached, Cheryl and I started to get that old New Year’s Eve feeling of “hey, we want to do something!” Our hotel was holding a major fete, stretching across its three restaurants and all public spaces. But despite the lure of the thumping bass notes, the thought of paying a hundred bucks for dinner and the possibility of getting caught on the ActionCam being broadcast in the lobby were deal-breakers. And frankly, the handful of early attendees made it look more like the Davis Polk employee Christmas party than a must-attend international soiree. So we hoofed it to a nearby mall.

First we dined at “Punjabi By Nature,” a packed restaurant where we sampled various tandoori delights to the background of American rap music. I allowed myself a Blue Lagoon cocktail and a big pile of naan to get into the mood. Then we popped by the record store to check out the latest in Indian pop music. “What’s essential? What should we bring home?” we demanded. It turns out that Indian record-store guys are like record-store guys all around the world. They conferred and debated in Hindi and then ran around the store pulling out various party mixes, soundtracks and bangra hits. I demurred on Fifty Cent’s “Get Rich or Die Trying” but did purchase “Everybody on the Dance Floor!” Then we wandered over to Passion for Tea, a tea shop that featured employees in Baskin Robbins-type caps and a karaoke machine! Though nearly empty, this was clearly the place to be!

It’s showtime in New Delhi!

A young guy in a brown polyester suit manned the machine. His commitment to singing song after song in the face of complete public indifference led us to believe that he was the MC. Though he had some melodic challenges (“Hotel California” is a stretch for the best of us), he did maintain a consistent level of enthusiasm, and we respect that! He gladly yielded the mike, and Cheryl and I stepped up to sing “Take Me Home Country Road.” The crowd, ever-growing, responded with cheer and enthusiasm to the slick New Yorkers, and hip Indian girls burdened with boring dates boldly made eye contact with me. I later attempted “The Greatest Love of All” with far less success, but my voice-cracking didn’t seem to matter. No attitude here, the party was on!

The average age of the crowd dropped with the mercury as the night wore on. Yuppies gave way to twenty-something couples, who were replaced around midnight by skinny adolescents wearing low-rise distressed jeans, rocker t-shirts and international teen expressions of utter ennui. Still, we all managed to blend and appreciate our diversity in the big crazy world that is modern India.

We chatted with the MC. He revealed that he wasn’t a tea shop employee at all, but rather a college grad working in his family’s plastic bags manufacturing company. Passion for Tea was his personal clubhouse. After a long day manufacturing bags, he came here to chill and be artistic. As my personal trainer Doug might say, “Nice.”

Equally fascinating were the karaoke videos themselves. Instead of the usual blond people walking around Japanese parks ponds in Japan, each one featured—perhaps as a special Korean branding device?—three rubberish grey cartoon characters who performed ever-changing aerobic routines to the rhythm of the music.

These rubber characters were transfixing, yet their weirdness raises a broader question: where the hell were we? Were we even in India? Or were we just gross tourists hanging out with Western wannabees? What’s real in India?

What's real, anyway?

Even though I tend to resent these kinds of question when I get them from other travelers (especially “sandalista” types—Euro, American or Australian backpackers who talk about “sustainable travel,” rarely wash their hair, and seem appalled that I have an American Express card) I have to admit they are legitimate. When I read articles written about other parts of the world, the reporters always seem to be interviewing doctors, professors and architects even if they’re in, like, Kurdistan.

It’s easy to think that India is on the fast-track to the first-world when you eat at “Punjabi by Nature” or read Thomas Friedman’s book, “The World Is Flat” (currently the number-one seller in English-language bookstores in India). We Americans make all kinds of excited generalizations about whatever country is in the news, and now it’s India. We hear regularly about the hundreds of millions of people in India’s middle class. We see Indians increasingly as smart and successful people. You can hardly throw a Frisbee on U.S. campus without hitting an Indian person with an 800 GMAT. Columnists like Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristoff exhort American kids to get off their fat, lazy asses, given the fact that hundreds of millions of Indian and Chinese kids are busy studying and planning their entries to the Intel Talent Search rather than playing Grand Theft Auto. India is happening!

The context…

Those facts are true, but here some others: only five percent of Indians speak English “comfortably” (in the words of writer Gurcharan Das, the former CEO of Procter & Gamble India, and author of the great book, “The Elephant Paradigm: India Wrestles with Change”). Another ten percent operate in English with minimal proficiency. Eighty-five percent don’t speak English at all. There are close to 200 million people in the Indian middle class (more on this later); at the same time, 260 million Indians live on less than a dollar a day. Seventy-six percent of Indians don’t have access to flush toilets, and more than 40% of the country is illiterate, including more 50% of women. (These are mostly 2002 data.) Out of 162 countries, India ranks 127 on the UN’s human development index. So India isn’t Europe, it isn’t Taiwan, and it isn’t Mexico.

That being said… we Americans had better get off our fat, lazy asses because change is a-coming.

India is different now. It’s more prosperous, more worldly and, most of all, more confident. In the late 80s, I heard a lot of things like, “We have five thousand years of civilization, what else could we need?” You don’t hear this much anymore. Instead, you hear the buzz of activity: new construction, GMAT coaching schools, and social and political change, in addition to the economic ones.

A key part of this is the emergence and growth of the Indian middle class. Observers say that the growth in the middle class is the key to transforming a poor country, and they are right. The middle class increases in numbers when poor people move up. The average middle class person in India, placed in the U.S., would seem really poor in material terms. But being middle class really has to do with aspirations and values—using education, hard work and savings as methods of moving forward—and as far as I can tell, the 200 million or so members of the Indian middle class have these in spades.

One middle-class story

I’ll give you an example—a friend from my foreign service days I’ll call Pradeep. He never graduated high school, and his wife is illiterate. Seventeen years ago, Pradeep was a contract laborer for the U.S. Embassy. He worked as a gofer and earned 20 rupees a day (less than US$2). Now, at age 43, after nearly 25 years of service, he’s risen to data entry clerk, and is an employee of the embassy rather than a contractor. He earns about US$300 per month.

But here’s the thing. Pradeep is building a house. His son and daughter are in private schools on an extended day program. They go to school from early morning until 5 or 6 pm. After homework and dinner, they are allowed watch cartoons for half an hour before they go to bed and start all over again. Pradeep’s household does not have a car, does not have a washing machine, and has extremely few material possessions. But they basically have everything they need to move ahead in life. Pradeep used to be poor and now he’s not. His wife is illiterate, but his daughter reads Harry Potter. I’m confident both his kids will go to college. The family is movin’ up.

Return to India! (Part 1)

I’m in India and have so much to tell. But first, let’s talk about me!

I usually think that the biggest benefit of travel is that stepping out of your normal world changes the way you look at yourself. Usually upon my return from some place foreign, I’m all set to launch the newest New Michael Melcher. This trip, however, gave me an opportunity to do something even better: revisit the Old Michael Melcher, or at least a particular vision of myself I’ve been carrying around for a couple of decades.

I shall explain.

First, a bit of background…

My first real job was as a junior office in the Foreign Service. Just months after I turned 24, I was dispatched to Calcutta with a black passport and a zeal to see the world. As an employee of the U.S. Information Agency, I was charged with public diplomacy, which consisted of informational and educational…well, it wasn’t all that clear what I was charged with, which turned out to be part of the problem. Anyhow, I did spend nearly a year in India, mainly in Calcutta with two months in New Delhi. Afterwards I went off to Taiwan.

Living and working in Calcutta were difficult for me or, as we say in resumes, “challenging.” I had a difficult, WWII-vet boss (and was inexperienced in “upward management”), went through big culture shock (despite my image of myself as an experienced world traveler) and was pursuing a dramatic, long-distance relationship, which I had—naturally—started just a few weeks prior to leaving the U.S. At the four-month mark I got really sick, which depleted my remaining reserves of confidence and peppiness. And there were some additional factors, such as institutionalized homophobia of the Foreign Service under the Reagan administration. (In a bizarre, Kafkaesque scene, the U.S. government once put a friend on mine “on trial” for being gay, with the intention of yanking his security clearance and thereby ending his career. Though he managed to keep his job, this is not the kind of thing that encourages one to make one’s career with the government.)

Anyway, even though things improved quite a bit at about the halfway point, I was very relieved to leave India. A year later, I left the Foreign Service altogether. Because things had not worked out the way I wanted them too and I had gone through moments of pain and confusion, I tended to think of my Foreign Service experience as a sort of personal and professional failure. When I’d recount my time overseas, I would mention a few interesting anecdotes but typically emphasized the negatives. If people exclaimed about the unusual and interesting aspects of my experience, I would often make (or think) self-deprecating rejoinders.

I also made the great error of youth, which is to over-generalize and over-personalize everything that happens to you. (It’s all about me, right?) I therefore made many of the inane assessments you can make in your 20s about work and life. I had fallen behind, had fallen off track, was not where I should be, had some explaining to do about my choices, blah blah blah BLAH. Now in my glamorous and enticing adulthood, even hearing myself think about this kind of juvenile negative self-absorption makes me tired!

Now, on to the insight!!!

Well, guess what? It turns out that story I have been carrying around since 1988 about my year in India is….wrong. It’s a significant misinterpretation of what actually occurred. Sure, the remembered episodes took place—assorted gastrointestinal conditions, culture shock, air pollution, low staff morale, a boss that told me not to speak Bengali to our Bengali constituents because it would be “counterproductive” (you figure that one out), not to mention the nagging, gross sound of crows outside my window every morning. But lots more happened as well!

This became quite clear during the five days I recently spent in Bombay with our wonderful hosts Ranjana and Sanjeev. Ranjana is a sweet friend from my Calcutta days who is now a high-powered (yet fun and caring) business exec. We hadn’t seen each other for more than a decade, since she was studying for her MBA in the U.S. When I lived in “Cal,” Ranjana was part of a group of American, European and Indian students and hangers-on who boarded at a place called the Ramakrishna Mission (nicknamed the Swamiramayana Dingdong Institute for Meditation and School of Hotel Management). I used to have bunches of them over to my enormous apartment for dinner, partly for company and partly to provide professional fulfillment to my cook, who found it boring to cook for me alone.

Ranjana and Sanjeev are the consummate hosts, attending to our every need—car, driver, cook, shopping tips, and most of all warmth and conversation. My travel companions—my mom, Trini and my friend, Cheryl—and I ran around Bombay doing various things but also spent several hours each day just talking with our hosts. What I discovered was that Ranjana and I could crack each other up for hours just remembering and reviewing that year. Some of it was recalling the internal dramas of the Ramakrishna mission crowd; my cook Jan Alam (who wrote “happy birthday Melcher” on the special cake he made for me); the boring, self-important people who hang out at Consulate functions; the tendencies of Bengali intellectuals and their foreign groupies to overhype everything related to Rabindranath Tagore; the diet contest I organized at the consulate, the female Indian student who stalked me when I got home. You know, challenging people and wacky experiences—your basic entertaining dorm chat.

We also talked about current things: economic and political reforms in India, the cultures of the nonprofit vs. private sectors, and the parallel between self-important Washington DC and Delhi on the one hand, and fabulous, free-for-all New York and Bombay on the other.

These conversations exploded the way I had been remembering my India experience. I saw a much more complex and positive reality. My year in Calcutta had been challenging, sure. Who wouldn’t be challenged? But all things considered, I did pretty well. I managed to create an interesting, vibrant life. I made good friends. I learned tons about India and the world in general. And I didn’t hurt anybody! Things didn’t work out that way I planned, but when do they ever? In fact, I’m going to give myself a post-hoc “A” for that year. Just because I can.

My two little coaching takeaway points from this:
(1) If you focus too much on how things are supposed to be, you miss the great things that are actually happening,
(2) It’s worthwhile to reexamine the stories you tell about your own life. They might be totally wrong.

Calcutta in the late 80s was really a trip! I’m glad I was there. :-)

Owen the hippo and his best friend Mzee (the tortoise)

In case you haven't yet seen this teardabilicious story, read on:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0105_060105_hippo_tortoise.html

How to get a job (secrets from Craigslist)

Recently, I accomplished my longstanding, Hollywood-living-style goal of hiring a personal assistant. In addition to changing my life, going through the hiring process reminded me of something I've articulated before--if you want to know how potential employers decide whom to hire, try hiring someone yourself.

I placed an ad on Craigslist seeking a personal assistant. I listed a number of the tasks I wanted performed--basically, anything that frees me up to do higher value-added things--as well as some basic characteristics, along with the salary description and projected hours. I asked that candidates send an email describing why they were qualified and why they wanted the job.

And the torrent was unleashed! In the next 24 hours, I received more than 100 responses. A bunch of them were from clearly qualified people and it was hard to see how I would even select among them, so I took the post down. I felt some duty to make a rational decision, both for my own interests and to reward the best candidates, so I selected using a process of elimination.

First to go were any resumes that were simply attached without explanation. If someone wasn't going to spend five seconds to write any kind of cover, I didn't feel an obligation to review them, nor did I sense any great likelihood that they'd be any good. Next to go were those resumes that had a one or two sentence cover email of the generic, "here's my resume, I look forward to hearing from you" variety. Same reason.

Also dead-on-arrival were cover letters with major typos or grammatical errors. (Two applicants with B.F.A.'s from NYU in screenwriting wrote cover letters filled with sentence fragments and typos.) You get a wide variety in Craigslist, so these were divided between people who were merely sloppy and those who seemed to lack certain basic educational skills. Though I felt sad for the latter, I was not going to hire them.

I still had a hefty electronic pile to process. So I began identifying the ones that I actually liked, as opposed to ones that I could get rid of without guilt. There were a number of extremely, if not bizarrely, qualified candidates, including a lawyer who had gone to Oxford. So at this point I began to look for "fit" -- some sense that this job would be match for them. (If it wasn't, I would expect them to lose motivation or eventually find something else.) So the next group to get booted were candidates who, upon greater perusal, were probably looking for (or clearly needed) full-time jobs. Thus, several recent graduates of Vassar were screened out.

At this point, I had about a dozen candidates who met the criteria: they seemed professional and reliable, and they also seemed to want this type of limited part-time job with someone like me. Looking more closely again, I distinguished between the ones who thought it would be interesting to work around a cool career coach (hooray!) versus those that indicated the need for career coaching themselves (too high maintenance).

Finally I picked three women and one man for phone interviews. I added one more when she made a follow-up inquiry (extra points for effort). I asked four basic, "behavioral-style" questions: I asked them to illustrate times when they'd shown resourcefulness; done things that required trust (like handling money); performed tasks that were tedious but managed to get them done; and handled some kind of office-technology-software issue. Most did very well on these questions, although one found them difficult.

Then I decided on my two finalists, whom I met for in-person interviews. The first one was great. The second one arrived 15 minutes late. Easy choice.

So the big takeaway point here is: in the end, basic professional behavior and tailoring one's application for the actual requirements of the job can make a big difference, even with a giant internet pool like Craigslist. Employers are really looking for a reason why a candidate can fit a particular position; the more you articulate how that works, the higher your chances are for getting the job.

What secrets does my DNA hold?

I'm sitting on the edge of my seat...

A few weeks ago, I received the DNA testing kit I'd ordered from the National Geographic Society. I scraped the inside of my cheeks with the little scraper-thing, deposited the tip into tiny test tubes, and mailed them off! Now I'm waiting for my DNA code to be received, split and classified.

For those who haven't followed this particular scientific development, there are now all kinds of services you can use to trace your origins and determine your ancestry. And apparently, there are many surprises since our ethnic identity, like so many other things, is basically just a convenient label for much more complex and hard-to-classify mixtures.

My initial motivation was to answer the age-old question: is Michael Melcher secretly Jewish? (I'm Catholic on both sides... or at least that's what they tell me.) Did I have some ancestors who couldn't quite take the heat, so they switched over? Like many Americans, I have only the vaguest idea of my ancestry beyond my grandparents. I have a Mexican line (with a Basque surname) and a German line but am not really sure what-all is going on there. So this is an opportunity I could not pass up!

The National Geographic test takes you WAY back -- apparently all the way to your emigration from Africa, 60,000 to 120,000 years ago. I have no idea how they actually determine this, but I am quite eager for the results!

Stay tuned!

What my dentist and Pauline Kael have in common...

I have the best dentist in New York City. During a recent visit to his office, I was reminded of some advice I heard several years ago from the former New Yorker film critic, Pauline Kael.

First, some background about my dentist, Dr. Jonathan Ferencz. It's not your typical gross, underinvested medical practitioner office. His office is gleaming but sedate, has a view of the Empire State Building, a professional and friendly staff, and really good magazines. (No old issues of "Modern Maturity.") And his appointments always start on time. ALWAYS. I initially came to Dr. Ferencz for an implant, my final resting place after a long and painful journey that had featured a botched filling replacement, multiple failed root canals, a strange pus-filled bubble in my gums (don't ask) and a split molar that had to be removed by an oral surgeon. Oy! But these worries were forgotten when I was placed under his capable care. He charges significantly more than my previous dentists but it's more than worth it.

Why do I bring this up? Well, after this morning's appointment (gold inlay following a distal crown lengthening by the periodontist), I was reflecting on how, even though going to the dentist is kind of scary, it's not really scary when you have complete confidence that your dentist knows what he or she is doing. And of course, this is true generally--trust is worth a lot. It's really quite an amazing experience when someone takes his or her profession seriously enough to do their best, and make investments to deliver high-quality service.

Which brings me to Pauline Kael. Some years ago, when I was living in Calcutta, I happened to see a video interview with her. Someone asked her about the career of being a film critic, and she said something similar to the following:

"Ninety percent of the people in the world are just punching a clock at work, whether they're film critics or bricklayers. But the remaining ten percent do really amazing work and contribute something meaningful. So in thinking about your career, you ideally want to aspire to be part of the ten percent, rather than looking at the ninety."

I've followed this advice over the years. I've been in some careers that are prestigious, and other careers that are nontraditional if not bizarre, but in every case I've found her words to be true. Ignore what most people do. Instead, if it's something that works for you, aim to be your own best self. It doesn't matter if you are selling real estate or decoding DNA. Be part of the ten percent, not the ninety, and stop worrying what other people think.

Be like Dr. Ferencz!

What I'm reading now... A Whole New Mind, by Dan Pink, and I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe.

One characteristic I still retain from my childhood is that I read a lot of books. In a media-saturated world, books are still the best source for interesting and well thought-out ideas. I'll post some of my current and long-time favorites here. I'm also listing, where relevant, my inspiration for reading particular authors.


Nonfiction
A Whole New Mind, by Daniel Pink. Pink argues that traditional employment over the past 50 to 75 years has focused primarily on left-brain jobs--things like finance, law, software development and medicine. But as a result of automation, the growth of Asian economies and a higher level of prosperity, these jobs are going away and in any case are no longer stimulating. He argues that going forward, employment will incorporate six right-brain skills, including design, story telling, empathy, and symphony (i.e. synthesis). Although I was initially skeptical of Pink's macro assessment of the world, every one of the chapters on right-brain skills described my own personal and career evolution.

Fiction

I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe. Wolfe's treatment of college life at a thinly disguised Duke University is very witty and unexpectedly riveting. A great airplane read, although, to be brutally honest, less true to life than The Student Body, the novel about a non-disguised Harvard College that I co-authored several years ago under the pseudonym, "Jane Harvard."

Unleashed upon the world...

Greetings!

The Michael Melcher blog is here! Look out, world!

Okay, let me go and find some stuff to put on here. Not to worry, this will be a HIGH-QUALITY production. I'll do the editing so you won't have to!

-- Michael

The man, the mystery

portrait
Originally uploaded by michaelmelcher.