Full Circle

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A chapter in my life came full circle today as I was able to have lunch with my good friend Bruce Bartolf. Bruce is a Senior VP and CTO at Gensler, an internationally reknowned architecture and design firm with a client list that is truly impressive. Bruce went to Miami a few years before I did, and we met back in 1998 when he was visiting campus. We had a few beers uptown, he offered me an internship for the summer, next thing you know I was living in San Francisco for 3 months. It was my first insight into the IT world and I will be forever grateful to him for the opportunity. I hope that someday I can pay it forward. 10 years later I am impressed to see that Gensler has retained some of the same staff. Out here in the Bay area job market, that says a lot about Bruce and Gensler.

A wise man explained to me in high school about how people pass in and out of your life all the time, and the significance of the impressions that they leave with you, and that you leave with them. At the time, it seemed like some kind of hippie nonsense, but through the years, I've learned that it's true. Whether is someone I drink a beer with at an airport bar, or a taxi driver who's taking me around town, I always try to see if there's something interesting they have to share, and to leave them with a good impression of me.

Speaking of which, yesterday I learned that the street value of a SF taxi medallion is now over $200,000. Don't ever underestimate how hard it is to make a living driving a cab.

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