November 26th, 2009
November has been one formidable month. No other way to describe it. Getting settled into my new job (which I love), learning how to be a dad (although I’m pretty sure you never stop learning how to do that), and of course, a crazy 9-day trip to South Africa for work.
It was great to be home, but doing a 70 hour roundtrip journey across a gazillion time zones in 9 days is not recommended. Turns out I’m not Superman… I think I also figured out what hell is going to be like. Here it is: In hell you will be in economy class on a full Boeing 747, flying around the world for all eternity. Or worse — just stuck on the tarmack, the captain coming on every 10 minutes to say that you’re “almost ready for take-off.”
But enough about that. The month has been one of the more exhausting in recent memory, but as I mentioned in my last post — this is the story Jess and I are writing for our lives right now, and we need to embrace it wholeheartedly. Sometimes you get thrown a fast ball though, a plot twist gets inserted into your story without your knowledge, and it ends of bothering you much more than it should. For me, this unnecessary fast ball is John Mayer’s new album, Battle Studies.
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Posted in Music | Posted by Rian
November 11th, 2009
So go unlock the door
And find what you are here for
Leave the great indoors
Leave the great indoors
I started this blog when I first moved to the US with only a backpack and my guitar almost 6 years ago, and I named it “Leave the great indoors” because these John Mayer lyrics resonated so well with that strange mix of bewilderment and excitement you feel when you start a new adventure that turns your life upside down (and makes you feel so ridiculously alive).
A lot has changed over the past 6 years as I got married to my lovely American wife and we got settled into day-to-day life. But unfortunately so much has stayed the same, and over the past year or so Jess and I have grown increasingly restless in our comfortable indoors. It is a testament to the success and brilliance of America just how easy it is to live here. Everything just, well, works. Sure, America is not without its problems, but let’s agree on one simple fact: it works.
Ironically, in that blessing that is the American Dream also lies the country’s biggest curse: the undeniable draw into all-consuming consumerism and complacency. You can end up defining yourself by things like how big your car is or how quickly you can get promoted at work — and let’s face it, there are more important things in life. It is this slow descent into just another branded life that brought Jess and I to a point where we finally made the decision we always knew we’d make at some point in our lives: moving back to South Africa.
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Posted in South Africa | Posted by Rian
October 24th, 2009
Aralyn is now just over 5 weeks old. And during a few rare moments of silence while she is sleeping on this beautiful Bay Area Saturday afternoon, I realize that I haven’t blogged in quite some time. I thought I would write so much more, but life, as it usually does, had other plans.
Aralyn is healthy, beautiful, sweet, and we love her to death. She also has colic. Which means that our lives have become very much like a Vegas casino in many ways. We never sleep, it is always daytime, and our victories with her are few and far between. I won’t lie and say that it’s been easy. I can’t pretend that we are happy campers when it’s 2am and she is in her fourth hour of inconsolable crying. But I am also amazed at how ridiculously much we love her.
You see, there is nothing wrong with her. She is strong, she eats well, she grows and poops just like she is supposed to. It’s just that her personality is, well, I guess you could say “spirited.” No one knows what causes colic, but there is universal agreement on two things: (1) it peaks around 6 weeks, and (2) it goes away completely by about 3 months.
So this means that we are about to enter the 6-week peak. It is amazing how our tolerance level for crying has gone up exponentially, and surviving on less than 3 hours sleep per night has just become part of everyday life, even if I still work full days every day up in San Francisco.
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Posted in Family | Posted by Rian
October 5th, 2009
Many of you know that I have developed quite a passion for vinyl records. There is so much to love about vinyl — the warm sound, the artwork and inserts, the patience it requires, etc. I should probably write an “I love vinyl” post at some point, but this isn’t it. This post is about a specific album I recently bought, and how it is really challenging me on so many levels.
When it comes to jazz music, it doesn’t get much better than Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” album. It is almost cliche to talk about it as the “quintessential jazz album,” but it really is. For some reason I’ve been holding out on getting the 200g vinyl re-issue of this amazing album, but this weekend I went ahead and bought it. Partly because of its greatness, and partly because I needed to introduce my 2-week old baby girl to jazz music, and I couldn’t think of a better album to do that with. And it sounds absolutely brilliant. Magical.
What makes this album so remarkable is how loose yet completely structured it sounds. Consider this from Bill Evans’s liner notes:
Miles conceived these settings only hours before the recording dates and arrived with sketches which indicated to the group what was to be played. Therefore, you will hear something close to pure spontaneity in these performances. The group had never played these pieces prior to the recordings and I think without exception the first complete performance of each was a “take.”
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Posted in Music | Posted by Rian
September 30th, 2009
Today is my last day of paternity leave, which means that two weeks have passed since the birth of our beautiful baby girl, Aralyn. I do believe someone is playing a trick on me, like that episode of The Office where they turn the clocks forward to make the boss think it’s 5.00 pm so that everyone can go home. Because surely it has not been two weeks since we brought her home from the hospital.
Speaking of hospitals, let me begin by saying this. Although we received excellent care at the Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara hospital, I did question their judgment when they told us we can go home with the baby. You mean to tell me we’re allowed to take a whole human being home with us, without anyone supervising us? Highly irresponsible of them, if you ask me. But I digress.
Speaking of digressing (and I’m allowed to do that since I didn’t sleep last night), here’s another observation. When you first tell people that you are about to have a baby, their initial reaction is always a wonderfully self-affirming excitement, followed by the universally agreed-upon “when are you due?” question. (Or, as one friend put it, “When did it happen?” None of your business when it happened, buddy!).
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Posted in Family, Featured | Posted by Rian
September 18th, 2009
Yesterday at 5:09pm the beautiful Aralyn Leigh Van Der Merwe said hi to the world with one magnificant scream. Aralyn means woman with song, and in her less than 24 hours on earth, she has already proven that she has the lungs to go along with the name (no, we did not get much sleep last night, and the prognosis appears to be very similar for tonight).
Aralyn is, quite simply, a rock star. She is alert and awake, eyes darting everywhere, and I kid you not, she seems to recognize us already. Not so much our voices, but she is so responsive to our touch. It is magical and terrifying and exhilirating.
I am still trying to wrap my mind around this miracle, but I will say that time came to a standstill for about 45 minutes this afternoon. Aralyn’s temperature was a litle low, so the nurse told me to warm her with my body heat (skin to skin contact). I think that was the moment I utterly and completely fell in love.
Lots more to come, but for now I will leave you with her beautiful profile:
Posted in Family | Posted by Rian
September 6th, 2009
I have been searching the vast expanses of the Internet (and even the written word) to try to find solid advice on how to be a good father. Jess is now 37 weeks pregnant with our first daughter, so we are apparently officially on Baby Watch.
In some cases I have been successful in my quest: BabyCenter has been an invaluable resource, despite their continued bizarre practice of measuring our baby’s size and weight in fruits and vegetables no one has ever heard of, much less eaten. The Know-How Book for Dads has also been extremely useful. In other cases, my earnest search for knowledge has come up short, like with The Expectant Father, which is apparently a “classic” book about preparing to have a baby, but the only thing classic about this book is its Hitchcockian nature of scaring the crap out of you. No, not recommended.
Anyway, in desperation I recently turned to an unlikely source for advice: photos from my past. There is one family photo in particular that I have been staring at for a while now. Let me show you the photo and then we’ll discuss it on the other side. Sound ok? Good. Here it is: Keep Reading →
Posted in Family | Posted by Rian
August 26th, 2009
Today we woke up to the tragic news of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s death at age 77. Sen. Kennedy’s death is a huge loss to the United States. Like all of us, he was not without his flaws. But unlike most of us, he never stopped fighting for the rights of those who cannot fight for themselves. He leaves behind a legislative legacy in the United States that makes him the most influential senator of our time. But the Kennedy legacy goes beyond that, and the family’s impact on South African history should also be remembered. There are two events in particular that I would like to mention.
Speech to South African youth on Day of Affirmation in 1966
First, the news coverage of Sen. Kennedy’s death led me to the eulogy he gave at his brother Robert’s funeral in 1969. In his eulogy Sen. Kennedy quotes from a remarkable speech entitled “A Tiny Ripple of Hope” that Robert Kennedy gave in Cape Town on June 6, 1966 on the “Day of Affirmation.” Here are some excerpts from that speech – powerful words that may just as well have been spoken yesterday to the current generation of South Africans:
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Posted in Social Justice, South Africa | Posted by Rian
August 16th, 2009
Two very different articles in today’s New York Times made me think about how our rushed, 24-hour lives might be affecting our concentration and ability to solve problems, so I wanted to write a quick post about it.
The first article is a fascinating profile of Rahm Emanuel, Pres. Obama’s chief of staff. It describes Mr. Emanuel’s remarkable ability to multitask (“He can juggle 20 or 25 things in one day, in part by delegating and in part by picking only the things that matter”). The part I found particularly interesting was this:
Aides estimate he talks with 50 people a day by telephone and sends hundreds of e-mail messages. Phone calls often last a minute or two, just long enough to deliver a point or extract information. E-mail messages are often a word or two.
I smiled at that last part, because it reminds me of a good friend who we always tease because he uses only two words in emails he sends around to his team: “FYI,” or “Thoughts?” On rare occasions he would combine these two words (“FYI… thoughts?”) in which case you would know he is very serious and a proper response is definitely required.
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Posted in Social Media | Posted by Rian
July 22nd, 2009
I’m not usually prone to blowing things out of proportion… well, ok, yes I am. But this is different. Of all my fears about becoming a dad, the fear of diaper-changing has been the most consistent of the proverbial fear-flies that just won’t be swatted away, no matter how many times I wave my arms around in a really intimidating way. But I’m not completely to blame for this fear. Some recent external factors converged to create the perfect baby poop-storm:
First, a blog post from Dad-Blogs.com (Stocking up on disposable diapers before your baby is born) informed me that most new babies use 8-10 diapers a day! That’s about 250 diapers per month! And I also hear that babies don’t change themselves. So this could be a problem.
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Posted in Family | Posted by Rian
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