What happened to work?

Nobody wants to go to work anymore.  Ok, maybe not nobody, but it sure feels that way.  It's one of the great ironies of our technology-fueled modern life that, while what we do for our livelihood ("work") has come to occupy more and more of our time and attention, it has simultaneously become less and less attractive and meaningful to many of us.  This is largely anecdotal, but it recently occurred to me that nobody I knew spoke positively about their work. It was always about insensitive bosses, incompetent co-workers, impossible schedules, politics, and on and on.  Perhaps cynicism is in fashion and at least some people may just be taking this stance because are afraid of seeming naive by expressing satisfaction in their jobs. I certainly allow for that and my trained coach's ear does register this undercurrent in a few people but, in my experience, they are in the minority.  The vast majority seems to go to work each day with a sense of futility - with no expectation of being fulfilled or enjoying what they are about to do.

A clarification is in order before I continue on - while I talk in general terms about work, I am really thinking of the modern day technology and service sectors. It stands to reason that almost every industry is feeling the impact of high tech (& in particular the efficiencies wrought by the internet), but I have limited exposure to many of those fields. 

OK, back to my main thesis.  Of course, there are numerous reasons for this state of affairs.  One prominent one is that many people are engaged in jobs that they themselves feel are useless - i.e, not really contributing to the company or indeed, society at large.  People engaged in such jobs are convinced that nobody would be able to tell the difference if they or the job disappeared overnight. David Graeber, a Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, went so far as to formally define such jobs and propose a theory around it. Eschewing normal academic restraint, he somewhat provocatively terms them "Bullshit Jobs." He originally proposed this theory in a 2013 article for the online magazine Strike! and then developed it into a book length treatise in 2018.  The motivation for the book was additional "research" that the author did since the original essay (which caused a minor international stir when it came out).  I haven't made it through the entire book yet, but I can safely say that you will get the essence of the argument from the essay. Graeber presents some startling survey numbers. Somewhere between 37-50% of respondents in various western nations felt that their jobs did not make any meaningful contribution to the world! The bare number is eye-popping enough, but then consider that the vast majority of doctors, nurses, policemen, teachers, fire fighters, sanitation workers, etc are unlikely to think of their jobs as "pointless." This then suggests that the percentage of people engaged in other jobs who don't believe their work has any value is much higher than the overall average.  Declaring your job to be a "Bullshit" one is rather definitive, but even without that, workers report that an increasing part of their jobs are not related to their primary responsibility (& hence, lacking purpose).  The author quotes from the US edition of the 2016-2017 State of Enterprise Work Report:  American workers reported that from 2015 to 2016, the amount of time that they spent on their primary work responsibility fell from 46% to 39%. Admittedly, some of this is probably just bellyaching about some process that the employees do not want to follow and indeed, it is impossible to be a 100% efficient in the allocation of time when the team is large enough.  However, a number like 39% ought to cause everybody to take notice.

Prof Graeber clearly has labor-friendly views, but even dedicated capitalists shouldn't really be surprised by his thesis.  Human beings are intrinsically driven to create value, to have an impact. The march of science and technology have ensured that mere survival is not the driving force for humankind at large.  It's not enough for us to just get through each day - we all want to know that we are making a difference.  Daniel Pink summarized this very ably in his 2010 book - Drive - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. There he coins the acronym, "MAP" - "Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose" for what motivates workers.  In our context here, the key is the last one - "Purpose." Pink's claim (bolstered with various studies) is that we are not going to be motivated if there isn't a strong sense of purpose behind our job.  It only gets worse if we harbor the conviction that our job is essentially pointless, let alone merely lacking a strong purpose.

Another contributing factor to the sense of malaise that many people feel about work is the impact of, for want of a better phrase, Silicon Valley.  While the actual geographical location and its most recognizable denizens are very much a part of what this phrase captures - it is quite a bit more than that. It's the internet, it's ubiquitous wireless connectivity, it's the hyper pace of technology startups that have done away with the traditional sense of what means to build up a successful business.  What this has done is to strip away the sense of family and community that companies had tried to foster.  We were all in it together - if one family member was in trouble, we would take care of them.  Now, it is almost entirely about yourself and doing whatever it takes to advance, or failing that, protect what you already have.  Because, that's what everybody else is doing, isn't it?

 

Lab Rats is an entertaining and irreverent take on the management culture promoted by various Silicon Valley oligarchs.  This is a follow-up to the author, Dan Lyons’, previous book about working in a internet-era start-up: Disrupted. Dan admittedly goes on a bit of rant and he pulls no punches in describing the “profits-first” and “people-last” philosophy of the Silicon Valley types.  He draws a sharp contrast between the approach taken by the entrepreneurs of the past – the likes that ran HP, IBM, Ford, and indeed, my erstwhile employer, Qualcomm, and those of the darlings of today – Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, etc.  Being familiar with this sector, his stories were not a total surprise, but the audacity and sheer hubris displayed by these new age business experts is still breathtaking in scope.  Lyons reserves particular ire for certain management techniques such as "Agile" and "Lean Startup" and gives multiple examples of how these (and other such) techniques have come to literally destroy the lives of many employees.  Agile, for instance, was developed as way to get better predictability for software projects, but instead has evolved into one of the hottest management fads (particularly in Silicon Valley), applied to every aspect of a business. My own experience with Agile, is that, for software projects, it is indeed a better approach than the traditional ones.  However, even within that, blind adherence to "rules" and "process" is counter-productive and as with everything else in engineering, the tool has to be adjusted to the needs of the team and project (& not the other way around). For anybody who still thinks the Silicon Valley approach is the way to go, this book is mandatory reading. There is a chapter on the "Holocracy" methodology that is over-the-top funny.  As part of his reporting, Dan attended an Holocracy workshop run by its founder, Brian Robertson. He calls it the "closest thing to pure madness that I have experienced."  I literally burst out laughing many times and this chapter alone is worth the price of admission. 

Entertaining though the book is, it is hard not to feel depressed about the situation that Lyons describes.  He may be cherry-picking, but these are real people with real lives to lead and real families to support. 

What is one to do?  Some will simply quit the rat race.  Some may take the second option that Hamlet so famously grappled with and take up “arms against a sea of troubles”.  Occupy Wall Street and its sister protest movements come to mind.  The grand gesture though, is not for everyone.  Most of will just soldier on and hope for the best.  

I don't purport to have the answers, but I do believe there is a way to deal with this. Many of our identities are tied up in our work and therein lies the cause of most of this angst. This may sound counter-intuitive, but putting some distance between ourselves and our jobs is the first step to recognizing what it is about the job that is still meaningful to us. Even if we question the value of the job itself, the satisfaction of a job well done is hard to deny.  Taking the time to clearly understand what our personal values are and making sure that we stay true to those (as much as we can) is a fundamental step.  While it may sound grandiose, each of us has a purpose in life - it could be something monumental like "cure cancer" or it could something like "take care of my kids."  For some, it could be something as simple as brightening up the days of the people around them by simply smiling at them and having a positive attitude.  You would be surprised how much of an impact such a person can have. Whatever be it for you, the key is that it is your life purpose, and it will be your North Star to a more fulfilled life.

What I describe above is not easy - we have to be willing to break out of the same stories we have told ourselves time and again. The hard truth is that the answers we seek lie within and not in the world around us or the circumstances we happen to find ourselves in. It may feel self-indulgent, but it is OK to ask for help.  Many people seek out a coach to help them through this, but you may be somebody who can do it on your own.

It has been ingrained in all of us (Ayn Rand followers excepted, of course) that being selfless is the highest moral code. But in fact, when we are not in right state – physically or mentally – we are not of much use to anybody else.  You have heard this in the safety advisory of every flight you have taken: “First put on your mask before helping those around you.”  There is much wisdom in that.  

Why I Will Never Buy A Kindle

Knowing my love of books and reading (there is a distinction), not to mention, gizmos, many friends have asked why I don't have a Kindle. My answer was always that I would at some point, just not now - I wasn't quite happy with the current form and functionality. Last week's New Yorker has an article about the Kindle that is very negative. Some of the complaints the author has ("Text is greenish grey") seem rather petty, but even after filtering those out, it crystallized my discomfort with the Kindle.

The best part of the Kindle, I have always felt, is the wireless connection that is always available and for which there is no explicit fee. This wireless connection is enabled by Qualcomm and that of course has an added appeal. In fact this model is considered so revolutionary, that it has coined a new term in the industry - "Kindlize," which is basically to add seamless wireless connectivity to a device and not have the owner pay a recurring service fee. And there are the usual pros about e-books: can have a whole library with you, reading a big book doesn't come with the challenge of holding up 4 lbs of paper, etc.

But, I dislike the Kindle - sometimes with a visceral intensity. It is in some ways a most cynical expression of locking the owner into a closed system under the pretense of freeing them from the shackles of traditional books. The Kindle uses a proprietary format for its books that can only be read on the Kindle - there is an open format, but Amazon decided against that. Until the DX, they didn't support PDF either. The books you buy for the Kindle, can only be read on your Kindle (or your iPod) - you cannot lend them out, cannot give it away, cannot donate it to a library after you are done, cannot resell it. One of the joys of books and reading for me is to share the experience - talk about the book and allow somebody else to enjoy it by loaning them the book. You cannot do that with a Kindle book. This is not just about borrowing books from your friends. Think about it - you have all your books locked in your Kindle - what is the trigger for your spouse, your kid, to pick up a book from the shelf or the nightstand and start perusing it, perhaps reading it all the way through? How often has it happened that you are at a friend's house and notice a book lying around and it piques your interest? Or maybe you notice what somebody traveling with you is reading? Recently P&V announced that they were going to get a Kindle for S. I wonder - how will little s be able to pick up and read a book that her older sister is reading? In fact, how will she even know what book is being read?

Even economists ("Freakonomics") have made a case for the value (in terms of positive impact on the kids) of just having books in the house. Where goes that value when all your books are trapped in a little plastic box that makes every book look the same?

The Kindle does many other things to destroy the reading experience, but they are common to e-books in general. Page numbers have no meaning, the physical feel and heft of the book are lost (I often picture the actual book in my head when I think about a favorite book - what happens with an e-book?), but I know these are aspects that will cease to have much importance over a period of time.

RD announced recently without an hint of irony that the new Kindle almost made him want to read a book. I do see the value in e-books and maybe there will be some future incarnation in which the pros will outweigh the cons. The Kindle is not that.

A Fleeting Life

6-year old Arjun to Malini: "Amma, what happens when somebody dies?"
Malini: "They go back to God."
Arjun (after mulling over it): "When does he send them back?"
Malini: "He doesn't. He keeps them with him."
Arjun (in tears now): "No! He doesn't keep them! They'll come back!"
How do you respond to that? All Malini could do was to try and calm him down with some platitudes.

When I heard the above exchange, my immediate thought was that at least in this respect Arjun takes after me. Malini was a bit startled hearing this, but matters of aging and death have always bothered me - even as a kid. Very early I sensed the transitory nature of life and this used to affect me greatly. My sister and I grew up in various cities outside Kerala, but would visit most summers. Those were carefree days and I would look forward to spending days and days playing with cousins and other kids in the village. Then one summer everything was different: the same games that had so fascinated us just a year ago seemed juvenile and uninteresting. The kids I used to play with, all seemed to have other interests and didn't care much to hang out with this once-a-year visitor. One of my favorite cousins was several years older than me and I could sense the distance that developed as she reached 'marriageable age.' I can still recall the sense of betrayal I felt when I learnt that she had been secretly seeing somebody. I realize now that I was being selfish and should have been supporting her instead of being upset. Not that my support would have counted for much - her family opposed that marriage and she eventually married somebody else. Her story is one of life's unexplained tragedies - she is bright, goodlooking, loving, and with nary a character fault, but the thwarted marriage was only the start of her miseries. They continue even today.

For several years after Malini and I were married, I was ambivalent about having kids. Sure, I enjoyed playing with children and I could charm almost every child I met, but was I prepared for all the non-fun stuff? I had a clear-eyed view of what having children meant and was not convinced that I was up for it. There was always pressure from parents and relatives of course, but I could resist that. Then my BIL gave me a reason that resonated with me: Its through our kids that we renew ourselves. Suddenly I found a way to deal with my always-present undertow of melancholy over the changes that time wroughts.

And that is what happens now: As I watch Arjun and Abhi do their antics and enjoying life, my worries about the passage of time fade to the background. Of course they never really go away - Attending Arjun's kindergarten graduation, I had to fight my thoughts about how he was changing and would soon be ready to fly the coop. Malini sometimes tells the boys, "I just want you to stay like this and never grow up." A sentiment expressed by and shared by many a parent, for sure. At such times, I keep silent - I know exactly how she feels, but the pragmatist in me refuses to give voice to such thoughts.

Much has been made of the 'power of now' (something our yoga master Sashi often alludes to), but there really is no better way to live life. Of course, this is easier said than done.

The Wisdom of Sashi

While I have been mulling over a series of blogs about the teachings of our yoga teacher Sashi, this particular post was triggered in direct response to this post from Vanee: time & money. Her basic thesis is that citing the example of highly successful (& hence busy) people taking the time out for exercise (or other seemingly non-critical tasks) to guilt people like us into making time for regular exercise is essentially hollow. I will circle back to this later, but for now I want to focus on the narrow point of exercise or more generally taking care of our bodies.

This indeed is the inspiration for the title of this blog - I am really ghost writing for Sashi here. One recurring theme in Sashi's class lectures is how we ignore our bodies. It has taken years of listening to him to actually start hearing him. The truth is that we are controlled by our brains/minds and don't always do what is good for our bodies. But our body is the only real thing that we have. I am sure that this argument can be extrapolated to all kinds of people, but I am speaking just to our demographic - highly educated and financially sound. We can find all manner of rationalizations to avoid taking care of our bodies (& I do), but that does not make it ok. I certainly believe that wealth makes a huge difference to our priorities (its been a running theme in my political blogs), but I also believe that all of us have sufficient money to avoid making that a constraint to regular exercise.

Ultimately it does come down to priorities, doesn't it? Human beings are a very smart race - we will find a way to medicate ourselves to longer and longer life spans independent of whether we treat our bodies right or not. But that is besides the point - the question is really whether you believe in the power of your body to heal itself and take care of itself. More importantly, do you have the discipline and self control to allow this to happen? This is hard - its far simpler to pop a pill or get a tummy tuck, but to the receptive person, the rewards are much greater. Unless you are a professional body builder, there will never be a time when there is nothing else to do but exercise. We can wallow self pityingly on the difficulty of waking up a bit earlier to get some exercise in, but that's all that really is - self pity. Or in the words of Sashi, "poor me", "why me?"

Actually, I think our use of the words "exercise", or "work-out" are a good hint about why we fail at this. This is not something 'additional' that we have to do, but the price we have to pay for our lifestyle. Stop using your car, couch, bed, and start growing your own produce and you can safely avoid what we call exercise. Hardly possible today, is it?

Back to the success story examples - my thesis is a bit different than Vanee's: My contention is that the reason they are able to devote time to exercise or other mundane tasks is the very same discipline and drive that made them successful in the very first place.

On gold, Rolexes, & the meaning of life

I made my maiden visit to Srini & Shubha's house this past Saturday and a Pongal themed pot luck dinner was preceded by some unusually animated discussion. The topics seemed innocuous enough - purchasing fakes (watches) from China started us off and for some time the debate was about how easy or difficult it was to tell the fakes apart. A surprisingly forceful Sanjay expressed the thought that he couldn't see any reason for buying such expensive watches. My counter was that it was useless to try to see a practical or pragmatic reason behind most decisions made by human beings. I contended (& still do) that practical considerations account for a very small fraction of the rationale behind most of our choices. Sanjay and Srini were quite vehemently opposed to this claim and examples and counter-examples were thrown around. I asked Sanjay about his MR2 purchase - which to my eye is not a practical choice - but he was quite firm in his conviction that that was not the case. I had clearly touched a nerve here (perhaps he had had to defend this choice before?), so I let that subject drop and moved on to my favorite current gripe - the Indian obsession with gold jewelery.

I have never been a big fan of gold (no doubt influenced by my father's opinion on this) to the point that the only time I have actually seen all of Malini's gold jewelery is on our wedding day. Except for a couple of small pieces, we left all of it with her parents in India. A recent article about gold in the National Geographic reminded me of my distaste for the Indian obsession with gold. I was rather dismayed to learn that my home state of Kerala is in fact the epicenter of this obsession and resultant trade.

On most occasions, people just gloss over my overwrought arguments ("Oh, there goes that loud mouth again..."), but not this evening. Folks were skeptical and wondered why I found this desire for gold so troubling. (In a confusing move, Srini challenged my stand on gold with my choosing to work at Qualcomm. I am still puzzled. :-)) The question was posed, "So what's so wrong with liking/buying gold jewelery?" I was about to expound on how obvious it was when I realized that I had not thought it through. I tend to have instinctive reactions and have learned to trust my instinct, but could I now defend it?

I was able to crystallize my thoughts - its what the obsession over gold does to people that bothers me. People at every economic level spend a substantial amount of money to feed this obsession and this of course unfairly affects the people at the lower levels. So many poor families get into life long debt in trying to put together enough gold for their daughters' weddings. This is money that could be used far more effectively to raise their standard of living by investing in say, more nutritious food, better housing, education, etc. What makes this more pernicious than other society-imposed compulsions is (as the article makes clear) that the impact is beyond just the consumers. The mining and extraction of gold is done at a huge cost to people and the environment.

As human beings we are constantly searching for meaning - either explicitly or implicitly. We want to feel that our actions and choices are justified by some overarching theme or principle. I contend there is no such thing - each of us but a random jumble of wants/desires/compulsions and it is fruitless to attempt any rationalizations.

As the discussion wound down, Sanjay had an interesting thought to share. He wondered if we were affecting some essential balance in the make up of our physical environment by all the extraction of minerals and other materials. Would we at some point in the future be spending our efforts on putting back all that we have taken out? A little too Jack Handey perhaps, but still food for thought.

Going With The Flow

Surprising as this may sound to some folks, I am not one for planning. Sure, given a trip or some immediate task I'll do as much planning as the next guy (maybe a bit more), but when it comes to the "big" things in life, I am mostly likely to just go with the flow. Since I am wont to be less than generous about my motivations, I have generally put this down to laziness. Or perhaps even a reluctance to face facts and make hard decisions. If you just go with the flow, then you have to put in less work up front and there is less scope for disappointment.

I am curious - how widespread is this approach? Do most people have a "life plan?" Did you know what you wanted to do in your life, when you wanted to reach the traditional milestones (graduate, job, marriage, kids, house, etc)? How many people know today what they want to be doing 5 years from now, 10 years from now?

Much in my life seems to be the result of some accident and some of these have had a profound impact on how my life has evolved. A good example is how I got a job at Qualcomm. In late 1992 and early '93 the job market was bad, especially for non-residents who needed an H-1. So my search was mostly limited to the big names - Microsoft, Intel, etc. In those days on-campus interviews at Va Tech worked as follows: Companies would shortlist students for the interview from all the submissions they got. If all spots were not taken, anybody was free to sign-up for those spots on a first-come-first-served basis. This was only on one day of the week - Wednesday, I believe - and on that day, students would line up very early in the morning (sometimes as early as 3am) to ensure that they got the spot they wanted.

Now, one week in January '93, Mr.Murty (Vinay) wanted to sign up for some company, but he didn't have a car and it was too cold to walk to school. I had a car, but wasn't really interested in signing up, especially since I already had an interview with Intel lined up. Vinay gave me the hard sell (promised me a donut I think) and I went along. Even though we got there around 5am, there were already several people in line. After chatting with some of them I realized that all the spots for the company I was targeting would be gone by the time my turn came. I had to find an alternative, even if only to justify sacrificing my sleep and standing for 3 hours in the cold. I went over the list again, but couldn't identify any company. As I wondered what to do I noticed another mutual friend who had just joined the line (it was past 7.30am now). I went over and asked him what company he was targeting. He replied, "Qualcomm." Me: "Really? What do they do?" Friend: "Not really sure, something to do with communications." Well, as you can guess, I ended up signing up for the one spot that was open.

Then came the day of the interview and I still had no real clue about this company or indeed what position I was interviewing for. There were two interviewers - one for hardware and one for software and as luck would have it, the spot I had signed up for (without any awareness of it) was with the software person. I obviously did well enough to get an invite to San Diego. (The h/w interviewer invited nobody back.) I knew I had done ok on-site because I was asked to meet with a manager later in the day and indeed the recruiter confirmed this after I got back to Blacksburg. But for a while there was no offer. Apparently, Franklin who personally signed all offers during that time, was not too happy about making a software engineer offer to somebody with an EE degree. Finally the recruiter (Michelle Fleck) pulled a fast one on him - told him that I had another offer (which of course I didn't) and that they would lose me if he didn't sign the offer. He relented and here I still am, almost 16 years later. Ilan Peer used to be the CBS SW lead then and pretty much the first thing he told me was, "We had to fight a lot to get you here."

There were any number of things that if they had turned out differently, would have resulted in me not coming to San Diego. Heck, if I had actually gotten an offer from Intel (which was very close) or Microsoft (not so close) I would almost certainly have taken those over Qualcomm.

So then, we have the question: Is everything just "meant to be" and we are mostly fooling ourselves if we think we are in control? Or is this thought too disheartening and we attempt to plan and establish order just to feel like we have a say? Maybe the Matrix was not too far off!

Chasing after sunk cost

One trait that distinguishes humans from animals is that humans care about 'sunk cost' while animals don't. There is actually serious research that underscores this: See paper. Basically, we humans tend to keep investing in lost causes simply because we have already invested in them. This is clearly self perpetuating - the more you invest, the more the unwillingness to pull away. Animals don't seem to exhibit this behavior - a predator chasing its prey will pull up and stop if the prey starts pulling away and not simply keep going because it has already chased the prey for a while. Marketers love to study such compulsions on the part of humans because it gives them insight into what kind of campaigns will succeed. I am wondering if this insight could apply to a number of our everyday actions.

Take the obsession with not wanting to "waste food." This is often used to justify shoving down that last morsel, well past the point of over eating. The sunk cost in the food is not going to come back whether the food is consumed or not. That starving child in Africa is not going to be satiated because you overate. Will consuming the food in a manner unlikely to yield the intended benefits really constitute "not wasting?" Or are we simply investing more resources (weight gain, bloating, indigestion, or whatever else one gets from over-eating) to justify the already sunk cost (of the prepared food)? Perhaps a more rational response would be to monitor what actually gets consumed and then prepare the next meal accordingly.

Another instance that may be particular to parenting goes as follows: you take the effort to plan an outing (park, zoo, beach, where ever) that you think will appeal to the kids. You get there and they are not that interested in the available activities. How do you respond? Many parents get all worked up and angrily announce that if they don't start cooperating and having some fun, then darn it, this is the "last time we'll ever take you anywhere!" Of course, it is the frustration talking and of course, part of it is for the effect - maybe this threat (even if clearly unenforceable) will get them to realize that all this effort was for them to have fun. I contend that this is just another case of taking on additional cost (loss of composure on your part, kids feeling bad about being yelled at, etc) in order to justify the sunk cost of planning and executing the outing. Better solution? Enquire calmly why they are not enjoying the outing. Suggest that they should have told you before you headed out. Remember this for the next time. Also, remember that kids don't always have to make sense - can we adults explain all our actions/reactions at all times? (ok, this last point doesn't have much to do with the main theme of this blog, but it kinda felt germane.)

My yoga master is often commenting on how humans have made their bodies slaves to their minds. I believe this is the fundamental cause for the above described irrational behavior. The positive thing is that we can use the power of that same mind to realize this and not repeat such actions. Can we really be totally rational? Of course not - that would make us robots and not very interesting. But watch out for the cases of chasing after sunk cost in your day to day life - I am willing to wager that you will find them to be more common than you might have expected.

Dutch Courage

I took a flight to San Jose earlier today and originally this was going to be a mildly humorous post about the minor mishaps I had getting to my flight, but that can wait for another time. I seem to be always dashing around airports and gates - there is got be a blog in all those near misses.

Anyway, our flight boarded relatively early for a commuter flight, but as we were getting ready to leave, one more guy joined us and occupied the seat across the aisle from me. What struck me immediately was the smell of alcohol coming off of him. He was dressed quite well - suit, overcoat, and a top hat, but seemed a little fidgety. I put it down to the drink. I focused on my magazine and didn't pay him much attention. After take off, he had a murmured conversation with the flight attendant who then brought him some vodka. I overheard him say that he had flown from NY to Chicago, Chicago to SD, and now SD to San Jose.

I was listening to some podcasts for most of the flight and didn't really look much at our friend. I did notice that he got another little bottle of vodka just before we started coming in. I had to switch everything off for the approach and it registered on me that the flight was coming down quite rapidly and that made me a little queasy. Apparently that was nothing compared to what was happening to the guy across the aisle. Something was clearly bothering him - his eyes were screwed shut and he seemed to be fighting something down. Occasionally he would puff as if to work through some pain. Sometimes he would violently shake his hands and other times he seemed to be fighting down something welling up in his throat. I was fairly convinced that the guy was going to hurl. Seeing him struggle, I was wondering whether I should offer him the barf-bag - surely he knew about it? He was so close to me that I was sure I was going to get the brunt of it if he did puke.

His mannerisms got increasingly panicky and didn't really stop even after we landed. I saw him scrounging around his coat pocket for something - probably something to throw up into, I was convinced. I kept glancing at him (mostly to be prepared when he decided to hurl) and as we were taxiing in, he was still clearly unhappy. I realized he had noticed my glances when he suddenly looked my way and said, "Sorry about all that, I am just not a good flyer, especially in such a small plane." That explained a lot - what we had been seeing were near-panic attacks.

Silence followed and I felt compelled to ask, "Do you just get nervous during take-offs and landings?" No, he said, it is pretty much the whole flight, especially in such a tiny cabin. Then he added, "My fiance and her daughter were killed in a plane crash last year. Since then it is hard for me to fly." I didn't know what to say. He took out a picture of a kid, kissed it, and put it back in his wallet.
Eventually the door was opened and he sprang up to leave - I let him go ahead since he clearly had a more urgent need to be off that plane. As we were leaving, the cockpit door was open. He walked up to the door, reached into his coat pocket and took out some money. I was thinking, is he going to tip the flight attendant who helped him with the drinks? He wasn't. Instead, he reached into the cockpit and handed the money to the pilot with the words, "Pilot, thanks for bring us in safely. Have a drink on me." So much for first impressions.