A couple of weeks ago, I found myself standing in line at a store in Oaxaca, Mexico that sells boxes and packing tape. I was at the tail end of a one-week trip and I had three bottles of mezcal and two packages of mole that weren’t going to make it back unless I packed and shipped them so this was a critical mission. I took two years of Spanish in high school and two more years in college and had gotten to the point where I could read novels in Spanish, but my skills had gotten rusty. This was a time to push myself with some real-world interaction. The shop I visited wasn’t a tourist place and the people in line all seemed to be locals going about their daily business — the only common factor among us was needing boxes and packing materials.

I planned my conversation in my head and was able to say that I needed a box to pack some bottles along with tape and bubble wrap. I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself until the clerk asked “¿Cuantos metros?” (how many meters?) referring to the bubble wrap. My scheme broke down when I couldn’t think of how to ask “how wide is the bubble wrap?” I froze and pulled out my phone and was able to power through using Google Translate’s Conversation feature (which is amazing). I finished my purchase and ended the conversation by saying “Gracias por su paciencia con mi español” (thank you for your patience with my Spanish.) The clerk smiled and I left with a little better Spanish though at the cost of the overall efficiency of the establishment. (btw, if you ever need boxes and packing materials in Oaxaca, Pepe Cartón is the place).

Fast-forward to several days later and I found myself standing with my 11-year-old son at Newark Airport waiting for a pre-arranged airport pickup after a visit to relatives in North Carolina. It was late and I had that tired please-get-me-home feeling that all parents have at the end of such trips. I was messaging with the driver in the ride share app and I noticed that each response to whatever I said was, “OK, got it!” with “translated via Google Translate” under it. I looked at his profile and it was all in Chinese.

A lot of time passed and I wondered why he hadn’t picked us up yet. I noticed that the app had told him to pick us up in Terminal B so he was circling there — but we were in Terminal A. I’ll save you the play-by-play of how we finally connected but by the time the driver found us, he was pretty stressed and so was I. But it was then that I had a moment of recognition: the driver was me standing in line at the packing store in Oaxaca, doing his best to communicate but not quite getting there. I remembered how the clerk in Oaxaca smiled at me as I stumbled and I decided to extend the driver the same human courtesy. I could tell when he picked us up that he expected us to be angry but I just smiled and said, “Thank you.” I assume he understood because he seemed to calm a bit.

There was definitely a distinct part of me that wanted to rail against the situation and be angry — I am paying for this ride and it should “just work” and why is this happening? I could feel the energy within me of the guy we’ve all heard in airports railing to someone on the other end of a call about the indignity of all of the travel pain he has endured, which is usually not that much in the grand scheme but always told in dramatic terms that rival the epic sweep of the Aeneid. But life is full of miscues and mistakes and here was a guy who had the bravery to come to a country where he didn’t know the language and get out on the road to try to make a living. When I thought about this, my mood quickly switched from irritation to admiration.

Finally in the car, I pulled out my phone, put Google Translate into Conversation mode, and said, “Thank you for driving us home.” I translated it to Chinese and played that translation for the driver. He smiled and thirty minutes later we were home.

I almost never do podcasts but when the Omni Show called and asked me to talk about a piece of software that has been essential to my life for 15+ years (OmniFocus) I had to say yes. OmniFocus is how I manage my day-to-day life and I couldn’t live without it. Here is how they describe the episode:

In this episode, we learn how he uses OmniFocus to help manage his workload and bring order to his life.

Chad shares personal insights he’s gained as a CEO, including the importance of living an authentic life and staying true to oneself. We talk through the belief that personal improvement doesn’t happen by accident, and how the right productivity habits can keep anyone optimally engaged.

Here’s the podcast (audio and transcript at link but also available in the usual places you find your podcasts).

You might have heard a couple of weeks ago that NY Governor Kathy Hochul came out in favor of banning gas stoves starting in 2030 or 2035, depending on the nature of the project. This kicked off a firestorm of alarm, consternation, and misinformation, adding another log to the culture war fire. I’ll leave the culture war to others but wanted to write here about my direct experience switching to an electric stove after using gas stoves for most of my life. I’ve been using an electric stove (induction specifically) for two years now so everything below is from direct hands-on experience. In short, I love my induction stove and it feels like a serious upgrade from gas.

When most people hear “electric stove,” I’m pretty sure they think of the 1980s version of an electric stove, with the coils that turn red when you turn the knob to high. I grew up with one of those and have occasionally stayed in Airbnb’s with them. Those electric cooktops do, in fact, suck and are terrible to cook on. Induction is a completely different experience.

First: a simple $69.99 step to make such a decision easier

When we were renovating our house, we had to make many decisions that we knew we would have to live with and one of them was what kind of stove we would use. Our idealistic selves wanted an all-electric home using as much clean energy as possible. I have used gas for nearly all of my life and was skeptical of induction, mainly because I hadn’t used it — but I was curious. I fretted a little about the decision and then my wife had a great idea — we could buy one of these single-burner induction cooktop from Ikea for $69.99 and actually test it out instead of speculating. Our renovation was going to take multiple years and we didn’t have to make our final decision just yet, so we put that $69.99 Ikea induction burner on the counter beside our gas stove and started using it to cook our usual foods. Once I had direct experience, I never looked back. Induction is awesome (and it was the linchpin in being able to have what is now an all-electric home).

Update 2/23/23: One library in Northampton, MA now lets patrons check out induction cooktops for free (1, 2). Very cool. I hope other libraries take note.

Speed of cooking with electric vs. gas.

Electric (induction specifically) is much faster than gas. I know this from direct experience doing everything from boiling water to searing a steak. There is no “debate” to be had here.

You can see a live demonstration of the speed difference below on this “Ask This Old House” segment:

Precise control when cooking

While I’m not a professional chef, I cook a lot. Even simple things that I cook require fairly fine-grained temperature control. For example, I know from reading recipes that pancakes cook best on a 375° surface. Of course, you can cook by “feel” with induction but I like to be scientific about things when I can. I have an infrared gun that I point at the pan as I turn the heat up (see photo) to get the surface temperature.

I’ve noticed that when I dial up the heat on my induction cooktop, the temperature moves very predictably. And when I accidentally go a little too far heating up a pan, it goes down just as predictably when I turn the dial the other way. I’m able to hit 375° reliably when I’m making pancakes and they come out great every time.

Top chefs increasingly love induction. In “The Case for Induction Cooking, Versus Gas Stoves,” you can read about how Eric Ripert, the chef of Le Bernardin, renovated two of his homes and opted for induction. “After two days, I was in love. It’s so much more precise than watching a flame. You can really focus on your cooking and pay attention to what’s inside the pan, not what’s underneath it.”

On this topic, also check out “Professional chefs tout the culinary — and environmental — advantages of induction stoves.”

Practical shortcomings of induction

The only practical shortcoming I’ve identified from induction is that cooking in a typical wok on an induction stovetop isn’t really possible. Induction depends on direct contact with the pan so a round-bottom wok on a flat induction surface doesn’t generate the intense heat on the rounded sides of a wok. There are solutions for that, though. You can see a consumer-grade induction wok demonstrated here by Jon Kung that you can buy yourself. There are commercial options available, too, if you’re super-serious about wok cooking.

If you’re in a position where you’re making the same gas vs. induction choice we did and you feel a little nervous about it, give induction a try. I think you’ll be really happy with it and be very pleasantly surprised.