San Francisco Mid-Winter Mornings

The shifting light amid our seasonal rainstorms, calf push-ups (!) and Charlie Munger on the simplicity of trust.

These last few weeks have seen our seasonal rainstorms walking over and back across San Francisco skylines on many days. Over and back like some hunched and grumpy and indecisive ogre…

I now enjoy a lofted view of the Bay, from my elegant new apartment, when stopping on the corner first thing in the morning, often just around daybreak.

It’s always a breathtaking first clue as to the day’s weather ahead, or at least the next few hours…

Rolling down the hill to Union Street, and gazing right, your eyes are pulled along a line of Stop signs and then traffic lights, skipping then across the different tones and fonts of the shop-signs of little boutiques before settling on Russian Hill in the distance.

One minute the whole scene is monochrome with greys and black shadows of the end of night, the mood edgy and discordant in some way. And then in the next you feel the warmth of first light feathering on your skin, the optimism of orange and ochre and purples creeping up over Russian Hill, and relieving the tiny hairs of your face from the chill nip of the fading dark :)

It’s a gorgeous start to the day when you can catch the moment that the sun emerges over the horizon. Some kind of welcoming fanfare in a new day opening, the opposite of the slow sinking feeling of a stunning sunset, when the birds are fading into the trees.

So, I’m finally feeling nicely settled into this transitional new apartment, which sits only four blocks up the hill from my beloved-but-tired-and-too-long-there old pad.

And I’ve started noticing just how quickly all of my synapses seem rewired to the new co-ordinates up the hill. The spacious four walls that are a new home, the extra light from the elevation and so the natural warmth all day long, the different smells, the faces of new neighbours, having a welcoming lobby and the feeling of security of an outside door, and the two flights of carpeted steps to my front door. I’ll use the steps except for the moments of lazy evening fatigue, when I’ll treat myself to the mechanical rumble of ordering the 1928 elevator, a beautiful polished wooden box to spend a minute in, with the reassuringly solid clank of its sliding inner gate closing.

The way we so quickly re-wire and adapt after choosing change is a spicy reminder of the agility of our minds, as we pull ourselves along into new choices…

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Health 🌿🧘🏻‍♂️ The ‘Soleus’ Push-Up

Had to share this gem of a tiny habit…

It went viral last autumn, in some of the health-and-fitness-webospheres….

Reach down and feel the bottom central segment of your calf, that hardens up as you extend your toes into the floor. The soleus muscle within the trio of calf muscles does the endless work of pressing the ground away in walking or running. It’s the muscle that puts a ‘spring in our step’, and so worth keeping springy.

An intricate 2022 research study (University of Houston), concluded that this small muscle has disproportionate fuel requirements for its size.

And so getting in the habit of putting in discrete sets of ‘soleus push-ups’ during the day has particularly positive outcomes for our energy and hormonal systems, improving ‘glucose regulation’ (which reduces our pre-diabetes and diabetes risk) all without anyone ever knowing you’re putting in a little work-out under the desk…:)

Put in 20 hard contractions of the calf muscle to extend your toes and press your knees upwards (both or one at a time). Take a break and repeat ad infinitum…

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Wealth 💰🤸🏾 - Charlie Munger and The Simplicity of Trust

At 99, Warren Buffett's business partner Charlie Munger died at the end of November last year.

Munger was the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the close partner to Warren Buffett since the 1970s, significantly contributing to the company's investment success and bringing a ‘Batman and Robin’ charisma to the partnership.

Munger became revered in the US for his wit and wisdom, and investment acumen, was a philanthropist and authored several essays on corporate governance and investing.

In the months before his death, he'd recorded an interview with the younger of the Collison brothers from Limerick, John - who with younger brother Patrick - founded the payments system company Stripe over here in the Bay Area.

Apart from its decacorn status - worth tens of billions of dollars in just ten years - Stripe is famous for espousing a strong writing and aesthetic culture in its employees, as the foundation to clear thinking and expression of ideas.

And so, in 2019, Stripe launched Stripe Press with the aim of publishing books that explore topics relevant to Stripe's mission and values, in the domains of technology, economics and culture.

Stripe Press last year republished Poor Charlie's Almanack, and so John Collison became one of the first (and last) people to interview the revered Charlie Munger, one of America’s quietest - and most humble - gazillionaires.

The conversation is filled with reminders as to how simply effective life can be, when solid values sit at the core - per the below comment on the culture fostered by Berkshire Hathaway in everybody it does business with…

"We like very trustworthy people. I'd rather have a brief telephone with somebody I trust than I would a 40-page contract prepared by the finest law firm in the world with somebody I don't trust. And so we like to deal with trustworthy people and to be able to count on their oral promises."

…and the podcast also includes Munger commenting on his love and practise of architecture. I hadn’t known that Munger became an amateur architect, alongside his investment career, designing his home near LA and engaging in university dorm developments too as part of his philanthropy.

You can enjoy the whole interview here, not least the contrast of a young cheeky Limerick accent and an old wise Southern Californian accent!

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Best from SF, and more next week, which clocks in at 17 weeks since my last day of work :)

So perhaps I should write about…that…?

Kevin