Mae Phim Thai

Mae Phim
My favorite restaurant.

Where I fell in love with Thai food fifteen years ago. Lunch prices all the time. Dinner and weekend hours.

Fifteen years ago, I ate there several times a week.

The owner has resisted the urge to change. Same menu, almost the same prices.

In Seattle for a weekend last month, I found time for thom ka kai. Nothing could live up to memories of soups past but I wasn’t disappointed.

Working hard, doing the job well, and unspoiled by success.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

An excellent software developer’s creativity emerges from a passionately felt “higher need” to become their fullest self.

Maslow

“The specific form that these needs will take will of course vary greatly from person to person… It is not necessarily a creative urge although in people who have any capacities for creation it will take this form. The clear emergence of these needs rests upon prior satisfaction of the physiological, safety, love and esteem needs.”
A Theory of Human Motivation, A. H. Maslow (1943)

When an employment situation does not ensure a person’s basic needs (family security, self-esteem), sustained invention goes out the door.

“The urge to write poetry, the desire to acquire an automobile, the interest in American history, the desire for a new pair of shoes are, in the extreme case, forgotten or become of secondary importance. For the man who is extremely and dangerously hungry, no other interests exist but food

The Opposite of Agile

NYC settle a lawsuit to compensate poor families for food stamps they were denied by mistake beginning in 1999…

…as many as 34,000 families could have been affected, with the settlement ranging from $8 million to $71 million depending on how many people were involved. The city has said that it corrected the computer problem several years ago — NY Times

  • Make mistake effecting food for poor families.
  • Correct mistake approx. 5 years later.
  • Acknowledge mistake 8 years later.
  • Blame others but retain liability.

WNYC story