Music suggestion: Changes, David Bowie
Drink suggestion: Sapporo Premium beer

Have you ever dreamed of opening a restaurant? It’s a common fantasy for many of us foodies I believe. For this postcard I interviewed the owner of a new restaurant in Aix with a very uncommon background for a restaurateur. And, because we are discussing the food business, I thought I would share with you the food on my lunch table today, fresh from the open air market behind my flat: a small baked tart of spinach and local goat cheese, sun dried tomato tapenade spread on warm baguette slices, local green olives marinated in garlic, a small side dish of mache (lambs lettuce) mixed with my secret vinaigrette (happy to swap recipes), a sweet clementine from Corsica (the best!), a wedge of creamy Tome de Provence (goats milk cheese), and a glass of white wine from the Burgundy region (chardonnay). Food for thought and inspiration.

I first noticed the Naruto Japanese Restaurant last Autumn while wandering the narrow back streets near my favorite hotel in Aix-en-Provence. I was making regular weekend excursions here from Fontainebleau at the time to look at apartments, and got a quick chuckle from the restaurant name. For readers without kids, Naruto is a popular Japanese Manga series that approaches cult status amongst adolescent boys, and both of my sons have passed through the obsession. Looking for your 11 year old? Chances are good he is at the Borders with his hoodlum friends, planted on wooden benches with pages pulled open over their knees, plowing through Naruto paperbacks one by one.

I made a mental note at the time to try Naruto when back in Aix more permanently with Jess and so we did. The backstory on the small restaurant is interesting, and I have decided to introduce its owner – Koiche Kunibe – as my first Passion in Action profile. I am curious about the personal missions others pursue, like to hear about their challenges and triumphs, and learn what I can from their experiences. I look forward to sharing more of these profiles with you through the Postcards blog.

Koiche Kunibe was born and raised in Osaka, Japan.  He earned a degree in chemical engineering there and like many ambitious Japanese moved post-graduation to Tokyo where he was hired by Fujitsu, a global conglomerate and leading supplier of semiconductors and electronic systems. Koiche continued his career in semiconductors with Tokyo Electric, which also built the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station that has been occupying the news.

Koiche was a successful European business manager for Tokyo Electric and would spend 90 days at a time, as much as his travel visas would permit, on the continent living out of hotels. Under the strain of this transient life, he requested and received a permanent transfer to the south of France, an active centre for the semis industry, in 2000.

We sat down for a chat over espressos last week, just before opening hour at Naruto. I anticipated a tortured story of young ambitions denied and mid-life chances taken, a gutsy tale of sacrifice and perseverance. What I learned was less quixotic, but equally bold and impressive. Koiche did not grow up harboring dreams of being a famous restaurateur. Rather, he was frustrated with lack of promotional head room in his engineering career. He is ambitious and was not finding the space to accomplish, and get rewarded for, his ambitions within the conformist structure of Tokyo Electric. The French countryside is dotted with beautiful old estates and Koiche would love to be a lord of the manor someday in a grand bastide. This was unlikely to happen on his engineer’s salary, but Naruto offered that possibility, …. if successful.

Why a restaurant? Well, why not? Koiche had a close friend with a Chinese restaurant in the area and his business was flourishing. The more they spoke the more Koiche considered the logic of a new Japanese restaurant in Aix, a city with many walk-ups offering mediocre sushi take-out, but few quality Japanese restaurants also offering donburi, yakitori, udon, and other traditional Japanese selections. What did Koiche know about the food business? Absolutely nothing (say it again). But there is little that plenty of careful planning, focused training, and a pair of big cahones cannot accomplish.

In an earlier postcard I wrote about the need for a Passion Plan before embarking on our personal Missions. A well thought-out timeline of milestones that provides a map from now, time 0, to one’s target second-life destination. Koiche had such a plan. He first needed to learn the restaurant business from the bottom up, so took an entry-level job with a Japanese restaurant in Marseille, washing dishes, serving customers, and finally preparing sushi in the kitchen. Hearing about this “career transition,” I imagined his wife’s face when explaining that he was giving up his comfortable, stable engineering position to take a minimum wage job waiting tables.  Come again? He considers the year spent at the Marseille restaurant a painful but necessary internship.

Koiche also needed an understanding of French rules and regulations around restaurant ownership and management, and an idea of the food chain in the food business: where to buy what from whom and under what terms and prices. He got some of this information from his Marseille experience, some from his friend, and much from plain trial and error.

Koiche will tell you that setting up his business was a struggle, he made many mistakes, and was manipulated and taken advantage of more than a few times. He has a good laugh when friends, envious of his success with Naruto, suggest with a certain glib dismissiveness that maybe now they will open their own restaurants as well.

I find Koiche’s story particularly inspiring. He took a daring leap of faith into an unfamiliar sea because he refused to accept a lesser (albeit comfortable) life. I too believe that sometimes we just need to jump. Fear of change and paralysis by analysis often gets in the way of dreams being pursued, much less realized.

This was one hell of a risky move on his part, with a wife and 2 young children under 10 to support.  Koiche insists that his wife was incredibly supportive from day one. The kids? Personally, I think it’s an invaluable life lesson to see one’s parents pursue their dreams, even if they fail, and not just tread water for the comfort of their children. Consider this question: if your own children’s potential and ambitions were compromised by themhaving kids, would you still want them to have kids? Are you paying for their private schools, piano lessons, and college extortion (I mean tuition) so that they can self-limit and underachieve? Do you counsel them to temper expectations about what is possible and prioritize instead around family comfort and well-being? Is this responsible parenting, or bounding their potential? If we don’t want our children to hold back, why do we hold back? This gets to a bigger question that I struggle with: what is our responsibility to our children when it comes to pursuing passions and living to the fullest? I’d love to get comments on this question.

Koiche thought outside the box and made a dogged commitment to his goal. Who amongst us would consider a career move from chemical engineer to restaurant waiter sane? This was the first painful step along his Passion Plan. He realized he needed a better feel for how restaurants operated, and there is no better teacher than experience. Still, the move must have required lots of explaining. We can be swayed by the opinions and advice from friends, family, and coworkers. It’s easy to be worn down by a relentless tide of “what, are you crazy?” and “here’s what you need to do”, particularly when making changes as radical as Koiche’s. In the end, we will be remembered by the actions we took, not by the advice we followed.

It is 9 pm on a Friday evening at Naruto. The small space is full and customers without reservations are being turned away. And I am not surprised. My udon vegetable soup is savory and hot and the 2 tempura shrimp sitting at the bowl’s edge are light and fresh, perfect with my frosty tall Supporo. Jess has the larger sampler plate – being a growing teen – and says Narotu has just made the “place we bring friends” list. Check it out, we think you’ll love it.

Naruto is located at 19, rue de la Verrerie, 13100 Aix-en-Provence

Bill Magill
Aix-en-Provence

Postscript: If you knew your death date, how would this knowledge affect your ambitions and sense of urgency? Obviously, what is done is done, the past is written. What about the future years, months, days, and moments left? Let me give you a reasonable date if you are an American and 40-50 years old: your 80th birthday plus 6 months (men subtract a year, women add a year; on average people live a half a year beyond their final birthday). Find that date and day of the week, write it on a piece of paper, place it in front of you, and take a look. Now, who is going determine the remaining content of your life story between this moment and that date?

Music suggestion: All This and More, The Dead Boys
Drink suggestion: Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne

Fair warning: my grandfather was an Irish preacher and has been clearly channeled in this postcard. If you don’t want a sermon, skip it.

I am posting a short card this week, as I am on the road and spending time with family in San Francisco. It is eye opening to visit the US after months away. Stepping off a plane, the striking impression is one of dimension. We live at 4/3 scale. Large people driving big cars to huge homes. We shop in warehouses, drink in gallons (the 20 oz. Big Gulp has graduated to the 44 oz. Super Gulp, the 64 oz. Double Gulp, and now the truly staggering 128 oz. Team Gulp), and drive in urban tanks that evoke testosterone-driven power and adventure (Ram, Hummer, Excursion). For foreigners who shop at local farmers markets, sip 1 oz. espressos, and squeeze into tin cans with names reflecting small size and economy (Ecomotive, Smart, Mini) it can be overwhelming. To truly appreciate the heft of our culture, spend a few months elsewhere, anywhere.

I am no social anthropologist, but the desire to define ourselves through the things we acquire seems almost universal. We don’t have a monopoly on materialism in America, we just work harder at it, are prouder of it. In fact, we are the world’s pornographers of consumption, in my opinion, shameless of our accumulation of toys and accessories whose true redeemable value is self-aggrandizement. The grand monuments we build to ourselves, and curious we cram into them, validate the little lies we repeat about our self-importance.

I struggle to exorcise this fetish myself and am a hypocrite to preach otherwise. All things equal, I prefer bigger to smaller, more to less, faster to slower. I lived in a comfortable 2,000 sq. ft. home in San Francisco. Yet, every time I walked through the neighboring upscale community of St. Francis Woods, I imagined the beautiful life in one of those Mediterranean style mansions. I still miss my Mercedes sedan, and now carless look enviously at the new models gliding past. Our modest apartment in France has a compact fridge that holds perhaps a 2 days’ supply of groceries, a small clothes washer tucked under the kitchen counter, and no room for a dryer or dishwasher. Do I do miss my American comforts? Absolutely, but I also appreciate that the low-maintenance, nimble lifestyle for which I’ve traded these accumulations away is permitting a far richer experience. We do become slaves to our possessions, which limits our options and bounds the possibilities for what comes next.

Maslow famously portrayed the hierarchy of human needs in his pyramid, and we can witness its ascent now by the emerging middle classes in China and other high-growth economies.  Regrettably, the attainment of self-actualization – of realizing one’s full potential – is most commonly viewed through the American lens of buying bigger, faster, more lavish stuff; an outward display of prosperity, not personal development. Heft is our most pervasive export, and our newly-prosperous neighbors who covet the American lifestyle are sucking up more oil, eating more beef, driving more cars, building bigger homes, and on and on, to live the image that we have so magnificently framed over the past 50 years. This ballooning demand is sending shivers down the backs of climate scientists and natural resource managers.

To believe that the pursuit of pleasure through materialism will diminish, that the tendency to establish one’s caste through the possession of bigger, faster stuff than can be attained by the lower castes who mow our lawns and wait our tables, is as foolish as imagining an end to pornography. But we don’t flaunt our indulgence in porno (Charlie Sheen excepted). Imagine a world in which giddy, gratuitous purchases of superfluous stuff, mostly done to show friends and neighbors that we are loaded enough (hence, deserving enough) to purchase this stuff, carried the same stigma as a download of Debbie Does Dallas. It might not stop us from doing it, but we certainly wouldn’t boast about it.

What about American exceptionalism? Are we still capable of great things? Could it extend to fresh thinking about global responsibility and how one flourishes in a new sustainable manner? In an era of rising temperatures, falling fish stocks, dwindling water resources, and the spread of the McWestern diet (and corresponding diabetes and heart disease, fat bottoms and big bellies), is it possible that we could once again lead by example? Churchill observed, “you can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.” What do you think?

Bill Magill
Aix-en-Provence

Music Suggestion: Across the Universe, The Beatles
Drink Suggestion: Anchor Steam Liberty Ale

Every Monday morning I rise at 4 a.m. to catch the first train for Paris and then on to Fontainebleau, where I spend 2 days on campus. On Super Bowl Monday (in France) I was up even earlier. The siren call of the big game dragged me from slumber at 3:15 as the fourth quarter was getting under way, and I enjoyed the final 15 minutes of play over a bowl of Cornflakes and glass of Provence apple juice. My son Jess will tell you “dude, that stuff totally kills,” which is a good thing. To say that the French love American football is grossly untrue, but the game was live on national television, much to my amazement, starting at midnight. It was also playing in a few bars around Aix-en-Provence, which has just enough Americans to warrant the effort.  Given the early hour it may have made more sense to bypass the bed, watch the game over a few pints at the Wohoo Bar, then sleep them off on the train north. Alas my head was clear and sober as I made my way down Cour Mirabeau in the early hours before dawn, unlike a few bleary-eyed revelers stumbling home in the chill air. Getting older can be a mixed blessing: less fun, better feeling.

You may be surprised to learn that France has an American football league, and we are blessed to have a club – the Argonauts – right here in Aix. Jess and I joined the small throng of loyal if not slightly confused fans on opening day at their small home stadium. American football in France is a different experience. No, brats and beers in the parking lot are not replaced with brie and white wine. In fact there was no tailgating at all, which is a great missed opportunity given the French love affair with food and impressive picnics.  Music was blaring constantly during gameplay, including a heavy rotation of AC/DC (always stirring when blasted at max volume through a stadium sound system). The announcer made no pretense of impartiality, leading the crowd through throaty cheers of DEFENSE (clap clap clap), DEFENSE (clap clap clap), and playing the Florida State Seminoles war theme as fans broke out the tomahawk chop. What the hell? This required a timeout and fact check with my history expert – Jess – who is obsessed with all things Greek and Roman at the moment (a little math obsession wouldn’t hurt). Any thread connecting the mythical Greek Argonauts (450 BC) to the Seminole Indians (1800s)? No, none that he was aware of (this after a 5 minute lecture on the golden fleece, Jason, and the historical distortion of his voyage as presented by the Hollywood film). Okay, back to the game.

In French American football running backs are coureurs, a down is a tentative, and referees are arbitres. Many of the terms are similar however: ballon (ball) and receveur (receiver) are logical enough, and quarterback and touchdown are unchanged. Even the linguistically challenged can follow along easily …or so I’ve been told.

Seattle native Adam Kruse is the quarterback of the Argonauts, starting his second season this year. He had a stellar college career at University of Mary (NCAA Division II) before joining the Tacoma Cobras (PDFL) as a stepping stone to the NFL. He’s an impressive athlete, throwing the ball on a wire with laser accuracy or tucking it on for an evasive scramble up the field. Adam was unstoppable that Sunday, as evidenced by the final score: 44 to 0 for an Argonauts win.  I was curious to know more about his motivation to pilot a French football team so offered a beer as trade for an interview at the Wohoo the following week. Fascinated as I am with the whys, whats, and wheres of career fulfillment, I hoped for some pearls of young wisdom about aspirations and limitations.

One key to a sense of fulfillment is success and a key to success is the setting in which one thrives. All too often we shoehorn ambitions into a box of convenience bounded by where we live and what we do now, and what we consider possible. Fall into this rigid frame of thinking and you may spend more than a few sleepless nights anxious about the future, unhappy with professional and personal situations, and at a loss for new options. Sound familiar? We get anchored by family, home, job, and the material things that accumulate. Anchors are great for mooring us in place, a heavy drag when under sail. When I felt compelled to sail I didn’t just raise the anchor, I cut the chain.

Refuse to be tied to place or role (personal or professional) and a world of new possibilities open up. You don’t have to cross an ocean, but be open to leaving your haven of safety. There is indeed value in enjoying a comfortable life near family and friends, parents and grandchildren, but there is greater value, I believe, in finding your Mission and making the most of your potential; exhausting your well of resources while still operating at peek. In fact, at ages 50 or 60 you are better set to tackle a Passion Plan than at 25.  Experience and maturity play to your favor, and the engine remains strong with some attention to diet and fitness. The world benefits from each of us excelling, not simply sacrificing our ambitions for others and letting ourselves out to pasture.  J.S. Bach had 20 children and was still breaking new musical ground at 65 when he passed away. What a loss to us all had he decided to live through the many accomplishments of his talented kids. Great people take deep dives into their personal genius to achieve great things and we are all the richer. Isn’t it worth asking the question: what is my personal genius? Isn’t it an obligation?

Picasso’s belief, that every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction, is not required in all situations. When contemplating an encore career, consider porting your skills and experience to an adjacent universe, one defined by laws more amenable to your natural lifestyle (hours, uniform, pressures, possibilities, etc.). You don’t have to become a potter, painter, or poet, unless the Milton or Neruda inside is aching for expression. I know a burnt-out banker who loves the relaxed mentoring of university life, whose reward is no longer the year-end 7 digit bonus but the reverence of students. I met a career mathematics professor who felt stifled, under-challenged, and under-compensated, and who now thrives in the pressure cooker and possibilities of a high-frequency quant trading firm. Neither job is better by definition. Both individuals made late-career transitions to adjacent universes defined by very different laws, but did not involve a complete reinvention of self. The moves were not seamless, but possible without undo upheaval. The individuals have transferred their experiences to a new dimension and as a result are blooming.

Change of location offers a similar opportunity to break from the anchor. A good friend has taken his considerable talents as venture investor from Silicon Valley – where he felt undistinguishable from the hundreds of hypercompetitive and accomplished (or hoping to be) investors – to a city in the Midwest, where his valley experience is greatly appreciated by and singular amongst his peers. He didn’t hate his profession, he hated feeling mediocre. Don’t we all? As mentioned above, I believe that a key to happiness is success, the opportunity to demonstrate excellence. But to realize that success one needs to operate in the right universe.

Physicist Brian Greene – a pioneer in string theory and author of a new book on the multiverse (The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos) – discussed in an NPR/Fresh Air interview recently that the cosmos can be imagined as an infinitely large loaf of bread, with each slice representing a different universe, similar in many aspects but governed by very different laws of nature. The way I see it, as the years tick by and we pass through that membrane of core careers to what comes next, we may need to operate under a very different set of laws to flourish. A change in universe may be warranted, to a universe who’s laws are more amenable to our maturing ambitions and the challenges of meeting them. When we feel sandwiched between the needs of kids (soccer practice, college tuition), parents (doctor’s visits, grandchildren time), and spouse (his/her career, personal pampering), it is easy to compromise our own goals. As children move on and parents pass on (and you decide on the spouse part), there is a liberation effect. Does your universe and the laws that define it feed that liberation?

The Wohoo is filled to capacity on Wednesday at midnight. Given its tiny size, the Wohoo is probably close to capacity when it’s just the staff setting up. The street level bar entry is smaller than my bedroom, and the downstairs cavern is divided into 2 cramped spaces that appear carved out of the rock. It’s here that I find Adam holding court after an evening Argonauts practice. He is what my mother would have called “a very nice young man:” courteous, well spoken, engaging, and interesting. Why is he playing American football for a small French audience? Simple, he loves to play football and he loves to travel. The Argonauts pay him a modest salary, he gets in 5 months of play during the US offseason, and if the team does well it will look good on his scouting report. As to my 2 burning questions of momentous import: the tomahawk chop??? He has no idea either, but anything that gets the fans involved in the game is a good thing. The multiverse? Well, we didn’t get to the multiverse, but Adam would probably find that all a bunch of high-minded horseshit. He just likes playing football and living in the south of France. I can’t argue with that.

Postscript: perhaps somewhere in another universe, a universe parallel to our own, a slice next to our slice, Seminole Indians watch a Grecian ship break the horizon. Who knows?

Bill Magill
Aix-en-Provence

Music suggestion: It’s My Life, The Animals
Drink suggestion: Pastis Henri Bardouin

Do you ever dream of doing something radically different? Are there nagging suspicions that your life/career trajectory is on a path of its own, with you as a passenger not pilot? Do the words escape and renewal find particular resonance?  If no, then chapeau to your good fortune. If yes, then join the club.

The sense of entrapment took serious root as I approached the age of 50. It was a snare of my own making, and one that I felt empowered to break, albeit not without disruption. I simply wanted to pursue my own passions, and so I have. This blog is created for others who feel that passion pull, too often lost in dreams of adventures not pursued, destinations not explored, and stuck in rut that has been dutifully dug with one’s own shovel.  Whether on a new path of your design or still in the career closet, you are invited to subscribe to this blog and join my Passion Plan Alliance. Through mutual encouragement and support, this alliance can lead to greater confidence in all of us to pursue and realize our personal Missions.

So here I sit, a chilled glass of pastis for inspiration, at the end of another sunny day in the south of France. I feel a lifetime away from my decision point 3 years ago in bustling San Francisco. Little things have changed: just the where, what, and with whoms of everyday life.  I have adjusted relationships, changed my career, moved across an ocean, and dragged my oldest son Jess along for ballast. Before leaving San Francisco I sold my beloved Miata and abandoned all worldly possessions, save my guitar and prized Laguiole cork puller. We’ve settled into a noble 18^th century flat in the historic center of Aix-en-Provence, one of the most charming cities in Europe (humble opinions permitted). This venture is incredibly stimulating, incredibly challenging, and conducted often in a second language. Yes, there is also the overhanging threat of total implosion, my pirate ship splintered upon the rocks. But I wake every morning not quite believing that my favorite place in the world is abuzz just outside the window, I have time to plan and organize my encore career, and most importantly I am in control of my heading.

And now you. Is it time to join the club, to journey forth upon your Mission? Even if obligations – real or perceived – prevent the launch today, begin to consider your Passion Plan; the map that will guide you across the sea of change. To be clear, I am not talking about conventional career motivations. Salary and title should play no part in your personal Mission. I’ve promoted myself from overcompensated venture capitalist to underpaid academic and aspiring life coach, and am ecstatic. Restaurateur, writer, winemaker, woodsmith, bed and breakfast owner; none of these will likely bring you prestige and fortune. But they, or whatever occupation or craft you crave to pursue, can bring deep and profound fulfillment.

If you die tomorrow, will your purpose have been realized? Will your funeral remembrance capture the life you were meant to live, reflect your true gifts, your personal genius? Okay, that is depressing; let’s say you don’t die tomorrow. Instead you wake up and have to pinch yourself from the joy of what you are doing, where you are living, and whom you are with. What does that life look like? Paint that vision in your mind’s eye. Nothing stops you from putting the first step in place now, today, towards enabling that dream.

Through this blog I will be recording experiences and observations from the field, from my new center of operations – the local cafe – in Provence. It will also provide the anchor for the Passion Plan Alliance, a platform for readers to solicit help and share ideas, ambitions, contacts, and advice about the pursuits of their personal Missions. We’ll need a better exchange for that as readership grows. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Finally, this blog will serve as resource center, with links and references to the latest thinking on happiness and fulfillment by Seligman, Csikszentmihalyi, and other thought leaders in this emerging area of study. Please feel free to contribute when ready and inspired. Not inspired yet? Well, try the pastis.

– Bill Magill
Aix-en-Provence