Distractions, reflections

David Ing, at large … Sometimes, my mind wanders

2006/11/01 Unexpected alumni networking, Glendale, California

Working for one of the world’s largest corporations means that, in major cities, I can almost always count on a local office with full facilities. On this trip, the location of choice was in Glendale, California.

20061101_Glendale.jpg

Although I’ve been to the L.A. area a lot over the years — and Santa Monica was actually my primary residence for a short period in 1984! — I’ve never been to Glendale. It’s seems like a town that had a main street that got absorbed by urban sprawl. Still, it has the feeling of a real town centre, which is something missing in many California places. Through the office window, the mountains are nice, and you can see all of the obvious urban development.

20061115_Glendale_mountain_view.jpg

When I went to pick up my printouts in the mailroom, the job right after mine was for “djingram”. I’m a Kellogg School alumnus, and the number of people from my year who work for the same company can be counted on the fingers of one hand. When I got back to my desk, I looked up the name online on Bluepages, and then sent an instant message asking “are you ….”?

After lunch, I returned, and sure enough, Diana had responded to my message, and was sitting in a cubicle within a 20 second walk of mine. I had thought that she had left the company … but she’s back! Our jobs really don’t intersect, so we never would really meet each other. The coincidence of being in the same office at the same time … when my home is in Toronto … is just one of life’s interesting twists.

I asked Diana if she’s planning on coming to the Kellogg 25th reunion for the class of 1982 — next May — and she’s on the fence. I’ve got some more intelligence for the event organizers, if they’re interested in what alumni really want!

Side note: This marks the beginning of my photoblogging with a Fuji E900 camera. Although I reported getting a new Panasonic FX01, I’ve given that camera to my wife Diana. The FX01 is a great “mom’s camera” that gives sharp pictures, but (a) it doesn’t do very well inside without turning on the flash — and I’m an available light bigot; (b) it doesn’t allow me to set aperture and shutter speed manually; and (c) it only has a big LCD panel on the back, without either an electronic viewfinder or optical viewfinder — and I now have really poor close vision without reading glasses! Fuji cameras have a strong reputation for available light shooting, but the E900 is turning out to be a camera that doesn’t work well on “auto”. Tuning the camera for each shot takes me back to the old days of manual SLRs!

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • RSS on Coevolving

    • Ecological Limits to Development: Living with the SDGs | ST-ON | 2023-03-13
      The book Ecological Limits to Development: Living with the Sustainable Development Goals, published in 2002 by Routledge, was released as open access in 2023 by Taylor-Francis for readers who don’t have access to a university library. For the March edition of Systems Thinking Ontario, we were honoured to celebrate the release with editor-coauthors Kaitlin Kish […]
    • Systems Changes Learning: Recasting and reifying rhythmic shifts for doing, alongside thinking and making | JSCI
      A special issue on “Sustainable, Smart and Systemic Design Post-Anthropocene: Through a Transdisciplinary Lens” in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics edited by Marie Davidová, Susu Nousala, and Thomas J. Marlowe has been released. In that issue, the journey of the Systems Changes Learning Circle from 2019 through 2022 is reviewed. The editorial team, […]
    • Appreciating Systems Changes via Multiparadigm Inquiry | ISSS 2022 Proceedings
      In the ISSS 2022 Plenary talk, the first 25 minutes were a blast through (a) the rising interest in system(s) change(s); (b) appreciative systems (Vickers); (c1) the philosophy of architectural design; (c2) the philosophy of ecological anthropology; (c3) the philosophy of Classical Chinese Medicine; (c4) the philosophy of rhythms; and (d) methods of multiparadigm inquiry, […]
    • Sensemaking and Theory-Building | Gary S. Metcalf | ST-ON 2023-02-13
      The theme for the February online meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario was sparked from the discussion from the January session on Root Metaphor and World Hypotheses.  What does it mean to have a theory?  How does sensemaking contribute to this? Gary Metcalf volunteered to guide a conversation on these topics.  Two prereadings were to serve […]
    • World Theories as Analytic-Deductive, Dispersive-Integrative
      Philosophy underlies the distinction in the three volumes of the Tavistock Anthology:  founded on the World Hypotheses of Stephen C. Pepper, the Socio-Psychological Systems Perspective and the Socio-Technical Systems Perspectives are based on Organicism, while the Socio-Ecological Systems Perspective is based on Contextualism. This thread on contextualism can be traced from the association between E.C. […]
    • Root Metaphors and World Hypotheses | ST-ON 2023-01-09
      Researching the philosophical foundations of systems theory to understand the meanings of “causal texture, contextualism, contextural” from the Tavistock legacy led to philosopher Stephen C. Pepper. The philosophical lineage and contributions of Pepper were the focus for the January online meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario.  A deep reading of Pepper’s work (over a month!) was […]
  • RSS on Media Queue

  • RSS on Ing Brief

  • Meta

  • Translate

  • Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
    Theme modified from DevDmBootstrap4 by Danny Machal