Namaste

Shalin Shodhan Thumbs Up 

What to do?
Originally uploaded by Chaim Gingold

Sometimes things start in unlikely places. This is my good friend Shalin. He's really cool, and only partially because he's from India. Last night we had dinner at Namaste on telegraph. Double thumbs up to the food, or something. We were talking about Ahmedabad, his hometown, because he's traveling there this weekend, and I'll be visiting his family later on in this trip. Also, our friends Dan & Sarah will meet him there. Awesome.

"Excuse me," says the lady at the table behind us, "are you talking about Ahmedabad?" Well, yes, we are. Turns out she and Shalin are from the same hometown, have lots of friends in common, but don't know each other. It's a small world, earth, and a nice place to visit -- just don't drink the water, since the people who live there have poisoned it. Soon we'll all be friends on facebook.

Shalin suggested that this trip needs some backstory, explaining why I'm doing this, so here I go, part one of N. The ultra-condensed back-back story is that it's been over four years since I finished my MS, and have been working for EA. I intended to start a new project, take a long trip, and leave EA after Spore was in the box, but a few complications came up. First, the game kept slipping, while the editor design, which was my main contribution, was basically done. And I was awesomely bored at work. At a certain point I came to the conclusion that I had accomplished most of what I intended when I came on, and it was time for me to move on.

This turned out to be a hard problem. When would I leave? Where would I travel, and for how long? Where would I return to? What would I do? Would I meet Shalin in India in December? Should I buy a new couch? Would I move? Should I get a new housemate since Nadav moved out (and took said couch)? This made my head hurt. My long anticipated vacation was turning into a Problem. Then, while in Montreal, working with Vander and his team at EAM, I had a realization. I was facing a web of interrelated problems with no clear solution -- a system of equations with too many unknowns. In a flash of insight, I realized that as a professional designer, my job is to solve such non-trivial problems. That's why they pay me. So, I dug around in my designer's chest of problem solving tools and drew the above diagram. As you can see, the solution required pens of two different colors.

So, taking advantage of the fact that I was switching projects at EA, I quit, so as to minimize my departure's impact. I decided to move out of my apartment, put my things in storage, travel for three months to India and Israel, and then return to Berkeley to work on my own project for a year. And to make a clean break of it, it all starts on Jan. 1, 2008.