Another Interlude

I keep trying to find time to post. I'm heading out next week to Long Beach for the SWE annual conference. I'm driving down with my friend Jacey who's flying in from Europe the day before.

Today, I had my purple touched up by the one and only Cambria! While I was under the heater, I had a chat with the 9year old son of another stylist. He's got the best long range plan that I've ever heard. Are you ready for this?

First, he plans to go to Stanford to major in astronautics. Then he's putting in the over one thousand hours that he calculated it takes to complete astronaut training. Then he's going to law school and then he's going to join NASA. I asked why law school? "So I can become president!" Me, "why do you want to be president?" He, "That's a good question." I hope I see him again when he comes up with the answer. [And yes Alan, his mom did take him to NASA last night.]

He also wants to learn Russian - he speaks English (quite well!), Spanish, a bit of Chinese and a bit of something else (I've forgotten what, sorry.) He needs to know Russian because their putting up a new Mir space station.

He's "taught" himself to fly via simulators and having a pilot show him all the controls. I managed to impress him by a) knowing that Space Camp is in Huntsville, Alabama and b) having flown a small plane for 10 min, long ago. [Yes, it's true - I did left right, front/back, my friend, the pilot did up/down - fun and scary. He also practiced stalling/drops. yikes!]

After he does all of the above, he plans to design a cruise ship. He already "has" his own airline "Jet Blue Legal". We had some money discussion. He had workarounds for my concerns about expenses. I suggested get an MBA into the plan. We also discussed the feasibility of a space cruise ship. I decided not to talk to him about Doctor Who.

I think this boy mostly Latino but part Chinese - based on appearance and the languages.

He was so bright, articulate, thoughtful - there is most definitely hope for our collective future.

Esther

© 2009 Esther A. Heller