Chat with a Friend in San Diego

I was talking with a friend of mine in San Diego, who has a son and a daughter. Of course I complained about Winston getting sick often now that he's in daycare. He told me that when his daughter was sent to daycare, she was sick almost every week for 3 months. Since they could not deal with it any longer, they moved her to a small family daycare center with just a few kids instead of over 100 kids at the first place. Then she no longer got sick. Maybe that's what I should have done with Winston as well.

We talked about the biotech companies in San Diego, as he works at one of them which is going through a difficult time. It is unclear what is going to happen to the company, but he's a great scientist and should certainly find another job even if this company does not make it in the end. Speaking of career and family, he is one of those people I know for sure that could be a great success if he is willing to move back to China, because he is not only technically competent, but also a great manager and a terrific people person. However, he has two young kids in San Diego, and for that reason alone he has decided to cope with the under-appreciation for his talent in San Diego. I still have my house in San Diego (rented to a super neat lesbian couple), and now that I have Winston, I realize that San Diego really is an ideal place to raise young children. That's the sacrifice that he has decided to make. It is also possible that he is so humble that he does not realize his potential. I have encountered so many people bragging about their credentials and backgrounds and ideas who are overall so much less competent than he is, and many of them still managed to be very successful because of the desperate need for talent in Chinese life science industry.

Then I thought of people I know who did move back to China and who did build careers that they never even dreamed of themselves. How are their kids now? I wonder. San Francisco Bay Area is not exactly an un-materialistic place, but the major Chinese cities are so materialistic that I do wonder about their influence on young and impressionable minds.