Intense and concentrated work with a team of mostly men who seem to love working 24 hours a day … flying in from Atlanta, Georgia … a $200 million project that is critical to the survival of the two companies competing for the work. Excitement to be part of something important while knowing there really isn’t enough time to do a superior job, only one that will be adequate because the team director spent too much time talking and not enough time preparing the response!

Flying into San Francisco,the view of the water always a treat. The ride over to Oakland in a taxi and seeing Lake Merritt for the first time. On other visits to Oakland while living in Sacramento, somehow I’d never seen the lake. What an oasis in the middle of commercial development and crazed business people, rushing around much too fast and seeming to be way too tense.

But no time to enjoy the lake for two days … 12 hours inside the high-rise, “executive lunches” (purchased from the machine - chips and soda - because no-one thought anything else worthy of stopping). The staff back in Atlanta asking about what we’d seen and what good food we’d had …. NOT, we say! They said, “I’d give anything to see San Francisco” and we say “We’re not there … won’t have time to see it … can’t even see the lake in Oakland.” They don’t believe us, of course, but we have to go back to work..

Day 3, insisting on a lunch break outside, I actually get to walk to the lake and see it, feel the cool water, watch the birds and ducks, and a calm comes over me that water and nature always bring. Rejuvenation … thank goodness it’s here, even if we can’t get to it very often … whoever insisted that it be there in the middle of the development deserves my thanks. A great legacy.

Nothing new to think about water and nature rejuvenating mind and body. Nothing new to steal a few moments by something beautiful like the lake. Nothing new to tell someone about it. Nothing new to write about it. What’s new is a new place to talk about it, that makes it part of an organic city … hadn’t thought about that term before.

There are so many parts to a city. London has hundreds of millions … I know some of them well. I know it well enough after 16 years of living there to be able to talk about how the pieces and people fit together in certain parts, but one can never see the whole picture. One can only fit pieces together as this website is doing. Fascinating project. Thanks for the chance to say something on the site.