New York
April 13, 2011
At Cross Purposes!

I wear several hats. I’m a contract software trainer. I’m a game reviewer. I am a newspaper columnist. And I’m a photographer.
Almost always, there’s no problem or conflict with these various roles. They’re nice, separate boxes, without any spillover.
Except that sometimes there is. And it’s frustrating. The issue arises in the dynamic between the software trainer hat and the photographer hat.
Every now and then, there is someone at a client site, usually a law firm, that I am interested in photographing. The trouble is, there is simply no way to pursue it. I’ve thought about it from every angle I can come up with, and there just seems to be no solution. There’s just no appropriate way to segue “… and that’s how you can minimize the ribbon in the new Word 2010 interface, ” with, “and by the way, would you like to be a model for a day?” It just wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t be professionally appropriate.
Which is annoying. But there it is. Damnit.
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I’ve been having fun with my preliminary research on my dual signature quests in each foreign city that I visit: Find Tex-Mex food and go see a movie (in English if possible). It’s sometimes a challenge, but always fun, to try to achieve these goals.
Foreign Cities Where I Can Take You For Tex-Mex Food
- Munich (not very good)
- Budapest (dynamite!)
- Tokyo (bleh)
- Beijing (the Tex – great, the Mex – not so much)

Foreign Cities Where I’ve Seen Films in English
- London (duh)
- Edinburg (duh)
- Paris
- Prague
- Munich
- Budapest
- Frankfurt
- Tokyo
- Beijing
- Rome

