10 Years on Facebook

On May 29, 2005, I decided to sign up for an account on a relatively new social media site called The Facebook.  A "facebook," if you didn't know, is a yearbook for incoming freshmen, to be used to attach names to faces among your fellow incoming class (and, truth be told, to identify cute guys or gals that you wanted to introduce yourself to).  Facebook the site was a digital version of that, a way to make connections with people you shared interests with.  Indeed, my prod to join myself was my student interns at the time, who were meeting each other virtually even before they started working together because their shared connection to the non-profit where I was working created an opportunity to connect and learn about each other. 

At the time, Facebook was only open to people with .edu email addresses at certain schools.  Since I was a grad student at Penn at the time, I was able to get an account and I quickly signed up, added my interns as friends, and populated my profile.  

You could say I've added a few friends since then.  Facebook, of course, has exploded in the past 10 years.  It's had its hiccups, but largely it has become an incredible resource for connecting with people and sharing life together.  (By the way, when "News Feed" was first implemented, there was an uproar; now, it's hard to imagine Facebook without it.)

To my Facebook friends, thanks for connecting with me.  Please continue to post pictures of your meals, kids, and vacations; please rant about politics and social justice; please celebrate highs and mourn lows.  You make my life richer from it all.

City Car

It is not unusual to use Google to figure out what car to buy.  But I'll bet "what is the shortest car that has a third row of seats" is not a common search.  Yet that was what drove (no pun intended) our recent purchase of the Mazda 5.  Asher's arrival rendered our 2006 Chevy Aveo obsolete, and while we were newly in need of that third row of seating we dreaded the endless circling that would be required to find a parking spot near our house that was big enough to fit a minivan.

Hence, Google.  And, hence, the Mazda 5.  Our Aveo was super stubby, able to fit just about any parking gap on the street.  And yet, unbelievably, the Mazda 5 is only 14 inches longer than that. 

Sure, it's a squeeze for us inside, which will only worsen as the kids get older and bigger.  And we haven't yet piled everyone in the car and a bunch of luggage.  So it's not without its downsides.

But it's a nice car, and a nice-looking car.  Aaron and Jada like being in the very back and having more room than when they were crammed into the Aveo.  And Amy and I like looking back and seeing our little baby Asher snug in his seat.

And most of all we like seeing spots on our block that we used to be able to squeeze our old Aveo into and be able to squeeze our new 5 into.  It may seem a strange way to pick a car, but maybe you can relate if you live in a city too. 

Converting to Digital

I am a long-time hold-out for physical books over e-books.  I say all the same things old book lovers say, that there's something comforting about holding something in your hand, turning the pages, even smelling the smell of old paper.  But it turns out that cost was my main concern, and once that was negated and even flipped, I converted to e-books instantly.

Let me explain.  I am very thrifty.  I feed my reading fix by buying dirt cheap used books, both at shops and in person.  E-books, while convenient, cost money.  End of discussion.

Except that my dear friend who I caught up with last weekend reminded me that e-books don't have to cost money, because they can be "borrowed" from the Free Library.  I gasped aloud when he shared this blazing insight with me.  And, once we hung up, I made a beeline to my computer and confirmed that this is true.  Within minutes, I had bookmarked a couple of dozen titles and downloaded my first e-book, "Lean In" by Sheryl Sandberg.

And, within hours, I had completed reading my first e-book.

It helped that the book is really good and really interesting.  (This is a post for another time.)  But, while I probably prefer turning pages and viewing letters on paper, reading on my phone was actually not bad.  Plus, it is obviously more portable.  And did I mention that this is all free with a library card?

Obviously, this changes the whole equation for me now.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm well on my way to finishing my second e-book, "One Summer: America, 1927," by Bill Bryson.

Our New Personal Connection

I'm reposting my guest post at HapaMama which was first posted there two weeks ago.

***

America still has a long way to go when it comes to matters of race, gender, and sexual orientation. But we have come a long way too, and in a remarkably short amount of time. I am barely 40 but still plenty old enough to remember (and, I must admit, participate in) some awful stereotyping of people. We’ve made some incredible progress. I think it’s because we have more regular contact now with people different from us. Where once we huddled with others like us and let our biases harden, now we have normal discourse with a wide range of people at work, at church, and in the neighborhood. Those seemingly innocent human interactions not only break down walls between us but also enable us to empathize with those different from us. Not only do we not think ill or make fun of others anymore, but when we hear of racism or sexism or homophobia we become angry and protective. It’s because those being hurt are no longer some vague concept of “them” but rather a very real “us”: our own friends and loved ones, with whom we have a personal connection and with whom we hurt when they are aggrieved.

My wife and I are in an interracial marriage: she is white, I am Asian. We live in a progressive and diverse urban neighborhood in a big East Coast city, exposing us and our children to a wide range of people from all walks of life. We adopted our first two kids from Asia: Jada from China in 2005 and Aaron from Taiwan in 2007. We talk about race freely and often, as befits its importance in their understanding of themselves and of the country they live in. They have friends of all races and ethnicities, and have traveled around our city enough to see how race, ethnicity, income, and power intersect in this country. My wife and I are grateful that they have had these early exposures, and we pray they will carry these experiences into an adulthood that is marked by respect for all and a desire to participate in the progress we are seeing in our nation.

Recently, we added a third child to our family. Asher is our first domestic adoption and our first newborn. He is also our first African-American child. He is an absolute angel, and in this adoption journey my wife and I have been buoyed up by the prayers, encouragements, and kind words sent to us by so many friends and family members. All of us are aware of the tragedies and complexities that make up the current experience of so many black men in this country. But adopting Asher into our family has, for my wife and me, lent these tragedies and complexities a new relevance. We now process news stories as not just journalism or statistics or social commentary but also with our new personal connection. Maybe our friends and family members will grow along with us too. With these greater human ties, may there be greater compassion and greater connection and, ultimately, greater healing.

Lazy Linking, 148th in an Occasional Series

What I liked lately on the Internets:

148.1 A nice piece deconstructing the cost of making 1 Apple Watch bit.ly/1bSfv6F @hushev

148.2 Think ag can never be mechanized so at least humans will always have those jobs?  Think again on.wsj.com/1zRoiMd @wsj

148.3 Why don't the poor attend arts events? If it's because of TV, is that good or bad? bit.ly/1IhbSWj @createquity

148.4 A cautionary tale about econ dev that chases promised job creation bit.ly/1RRmZrT @margrev

148.5 Why do bike share users skew white and rich? bit.ly/1Fe5ECZ @voxdotcom

Quantitative Tools is On Again

Later this morning will be the opening session of my Quantitative Tools for Consulting class at Penn.  That's right, three and a half hours of Saturday morning discussion on analytics all summer long - sign me up for that! 

Indeed, I am looking forward to meeting the bright young women and men who have done just that.  If you want to follow us on social media, I've included the links for the course's presence below.

Twitter

Facebook

LinkedIn

Recommended Reads, 20th in a Quarterly Series

Stuff I've read lately that I'd recommend:

His Excellency: George Washington (Ellis).  A nice one-volume primer on America's first great man.

The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present (Seabright).  What biological differences between men and women have meant for how men and women interact.

The Wisdom of Crowds (Surowiecki).  All of us are smarter than any of us.

Transition Game: How Hoosiers Went Hip-Hop (Wertheim).  From Hickory High to AAU.

 

What Am I Working On

As has become my custom every three months, here's what I'm working on now at work. I won't repeat anything from last time that I happen to still be working on, and for confidentiality's sake I have to blur some of the details for some of these studies.

* What do new billboards contribute to a local economy

* How does a fast-growing public university create positive impacts for its host municipalities

* What is a tax-free zone worth to office tenants on a per square foot basis

* How can a city reorganize its various departments to more effectively combat urban blight

Topical Part B

FWIW here are some topics I would like to blog about but just haven't had the time:
* How millennials' preferences are transforming the commercial officemarket
* The impact of driverless cars on land use patterns and real estate markets
* What triple bottom line business models have to do with talent recruitment

And...here are some topics I know nothing about so will not be blogging about any time soon:
* Summer movies
* The NFL draft
* ISIS

And just to clarify...the first list is things that are definitely interesting to me and I have some opinions but just no time to express them.  The second list is things that may or may not be interesting to me but I have neither any information on them nor time to gather said information in order to form a decent opinion on them. 

Responsible Banking Act 2015 Analysis (Part 1 of 2)

My firm has spent the year so far looking at banking needs in New York City, and our first of two reports is now publicly available.  You can find the pdf here, and here's a page that explains the whole effort behind our work.  The second of two reports will be ready by year's end, and will focus on how individual banks are doing in serving New York City and particularly its low-income communities. 

Guest Post at HapaMama: Our New Personal Connection

I am honored to have had the chance to guest blog at HapaMama, which is run by one of my friends Grace Hwang Lynch, who like me is a child of Taiwanese immigrants and a muser on matters of race in America.  I encourage you to check out all of her posts, going back and going forward; I find her writing to be very wise and very informative.  Here's a link to my guest post, entitled "Our New Personal Connection."

Huang Family Newsletter, April 2015

The big news of course is Asher Jia-Shi Huang's arrival into the world, into our lives, and into his new home in Philadelphia.  Jada and Aaron are over the moon to have a little brother to read to and dote on.  Amy and Lee are just glad to be home although intimidated by the piles of catch-up they must now get on (and with far less sleep to boot!).  Ah, but life is very, very good.