Today’s office is a bench perched on pavement outside our new Los Angeles apartment. It’s surprisingly cool for a So Cal winter’s day on that fine line between warm-enough-to-wear-a-t-shirt and cold-enough-for-goose-bumps, with a haze in the air not as you might expect the result of a particularly strong city wide smog – but from the winter’s mist rolling in from the Pacific. If, perchance you needed a dose of bright sunshine (hei Helsinki) then the winding commute up Topanga Canyon soon takes you out of the mist and, eventually to Nokia’s Xanadu – the home of our advanced design team, my work-base for the next two years.

The reason I’m out here braving goosebumps and not in there scorching my lips on a fine cup of earl grey and trying to solve the biscuit-dunker’s conundrum is that the delivery truck has left the ~50 boxes that represent our physical possessions spilled on the pavement and road – moonlighting as a security guard frees up an extra pair of hands to get the job done. That and needing to get my thoughts down fro an upcoming presentation in Boston.

In a stoopless part of the city my bench provides an ample and possibly only opportunity to kick back and enjoy the street view: from the petit Asian lady who has jogged by four times and counting and whose rhythm is as regular as clockwork; to the white lo-rider that keeps cruising the block – it’s occupants slowing eyeballing me and my cardboard cargo.

In some cities you learn how to drive; in LA you learn how to drive by.