DotCloud was a boiling frog. That's how [Solomon] Hykes and early investor Peter Fenton of Benchmark now describe dotCloud as it struggled in 2012. Put a frog in water and gradually heat it, the folk legend goes, and the frog won't notice that it's being cooked until it's too late.

The ABCs called us FOBs—Fresh Off the Boat—or China Bugs. Even the American-born Chinese referred to us as ‘Chinese’—as though they were not.

Why did people ride the interurban? No one knows. If you had asked a rider, he might have said "Fast, convenient, comfortable, economical“ – yet those are the same reasons that people give for riding in automobiles.

It was first light and the kitchens were alive with activity, this was Thar's day, the day of the festival of Lughnasadh, the beginning of a new year.