As I Please III

Time flies when you're having fun. I can't believe it's been five months since I last took the time to write something here. I've been living the curse of living in interesting times.

Life has been hectic and busy and I can't seem to catch up no matter how fast I run on the treadmill of life. Honestly, I'm finding it difficult to fathom how I completed a masters degree because if I were in school right now I'd probably undergo spontaneous combustion.

Ever since convocation I've been feeling like I need something to do, and so I've signed up for the WSET "Level 3 advanced certificate in wine and spirits", which I will likely follow up with their formal diploma in wine. Fifteen weeks, over 140 wines, all starting on March 31st.

I also took Foodsafe level 1 last weekend.

Life has me in a bit of a reactive mode at the moment. I'm working on getting my time under my control so that I can work towards my goals rather than have what I'm doing dictated to me. Wish me luck!

Priceless

Application for grad school: $75.00
Tuition and fees: $8,367.71
Almost 100 books: $4,000.00 (est.)
Printing and binding thesis: $97.96

New friends, knowledge, wisdom, and being published): Priceless

The Cursed Kandsinky

In Paris recently, I went to the Pompidou (modern art museum) and bought a poster, a
reproduction of a this Kandinsky painting:


I then promptly left said poster on the train in Montpelier. I figured I'd just get a replacement back in Paris our last nigh in France, but the museum (and bookshop) were closed due to a strike (the cleaning staff shut the place down that particular day).

When we got back, I ordered a canvas print of the Kandinsky poster, from allposters.com. It arrived today. I paid $14.18 in brokerage fees (COD of course) and when I opened it up... it was the wrong print. The thumbnail on the bill was right, but not the print itself.

I'm perhaps destined not to own this particular piece.

Tasting Sweet

In the movie (and the book) Iron and Silk, Pan Qin Fu asks Mark Salzman if he can "eat bitter" when Mark says he wants to join the Wu Shu dojo.

In typically enigmatic fashion, the question has many layers, and by the end of the book, Mark concludes with the thought that you to eat bitter means you can taste sweet.

I successfully defended my MA thesis yesterday, but will be attending convocation this fall as the deadline for the SFU library to get everything submitted is the 10th, and even had I received the list of revisions from my defense committee yesterday, there just simply isn't enough time to get everything in order, edited, approved, signed off, and all necessary copies to the library between now and then. Which is a long way of saying I'm drained and tired and want to go on my big trip to Europe at the end of the month and work on the edits at my leisure this summer. Besides, as I'm not eligible for the employee transit pass at my new job until the fall, it'll be nice to have a UPass for the summer, not to mention access to the library.

My defense is a blur. I know that I was talking and answering questions for a good hour, and my wife and all my dear friends who came to wish me well said they were all impressed with my poise and my answers, so I will take them at their word.

The biggest surprise was that I felt like this huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders - I guess it's just a matter of taking on a little at a time until there's this huge mass, and getting through the defense make that lift off.

It's also a strange feeling to be done. I mean, it's not really the end - I have a very long list of books I want to read, movies I want to see, and music I want to listen to, all of which were somehow related either directly or tangentially to work I've done in the program.

I never expected this program to be so life-changing, but it was definitely one hell of a ride. I met my challenges of taking courses in subject areas I had no expertise in, and taking chances with the work I did, and on the whole I'm very happy with how things worked out. I've also made some deep personal friendships, much to my delight.

I know I will miss the classroom, but on the other hand, what made courses in the program so special were the people I took the courses with. The program has a cohort model where only 20 people a year get in, and after spending a year together you then meet again as each takes their own personal journey in the program. That is of course the joy of the program, and even if I were to continue taking courses (I'll audit a few now and again I'm sure), I wouldn't be taking courses with the people I've become connected with and close to.

Thank you GLS - I'm not the same person I was when I started, and I'm not finished yet.

Ten Things

Ten things I love about my new job...

... it's close to home! Only 3.6km. The bus takes 5 minutes.
... the benefits are awesome.
... I have the best boss ever.
... and his boss, has vision.
... my colleagues are very happy smart upbeat people.
... I feel good about what I do (somehow, I sleep better at night knowing that I'm doing something that's of net benefit to society and not just something to make some anonymous shareholders happy).
... no more cubicles!
... I don't work on an artificial calendar anymore (no more "it's quarter end!" pushes).
... my office is close to numerous lunch and coffee possibilities.
... the work is both challenging and interesting.

An Italian Girl in Algiers

Last night my wife and I went to the opening night of An Italian Girl in Algiers at the Vancouver Opera.

The show was brilliantly funny, very well staged, and the singers and the orchestra really outdid themselves. In particular, the sweet voice of tenor John Tessier and the amazing range of mezzo-soprano Sandra Piques Eddy in the lead role were a real delight to hear.

Of course, I forgot to bring my Christmas present, namely opera glasses. They're now safely stowed in my suit jacket pocket for the next production, Fidelio.

Generosity

A measure of friendship is how people treat you when you're down and out. I am happy to say that I'm extremely blessed by very good friends indeed.

Ten Things

In no particular order, ten things I've done over the holiday season instead of work on my thesis:

• taught my daughter to play Uno
• made a huge Christmas turkey and then made lots of good things with the leftovers
• played board games with friends
• read several novels
• watched movies with my daughter
• watched "Yes, Prime Minister" with my wife
• converted my old how-did-I-ever-get-a-job resume into a great functional resume
  
• played a lot of "Scrabble" on Facebook
• went to "thesis therapy" sessions at the pub with fellow GLSers
• procrastinated some more by blogging about ten things I've done instead of working on my thesis...
  

Marc Tempé Gewürztraminer Rodelsberg (1998)

For my birthday dinner, to complement the scallops with orzo and caramelized carrots, we had a bottle of wine - a 1998 Marc Tempe Rodelsberg Gewurztraminer.

I've had some really tremendous white wines before, and this one definitely qualified. It's a common misperception that you cannot age a white wine.

This one had a beautiful golden colour, wonderful smooth mouth feel, heady aromas you typically expect in a Gewurz, and on the palate had an extremely long finish and hints of minerals.

A lovely wine. I wish I had 10 more in the cellar.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today's been a truly nice and relaxing day.

For dinner tonight - pan seared scallops finished with lime and dill, orzo with a nice light tomato cream sauce, and caramelized carrots. Paired with a 1998 Marc Tempe grand cru Gewurztraminer from Alsace.

My 40th birthday party

This coming Wednesday, the 12th, I turn 40. Since a mid-week party isn't really reasonable, I had my party last night.

Almost forty people came and wished me well and shared food and wine and laughter.

I am truly blessed with good friends.

Automated Rejection

Yesterday, I visited SAP.com to see what kind of job opportunities they had, and one of them was the generic "please submit your resume so we can keep it on file. So I did.

A short time later, I received an automated email from their site that said:

Thank you for your interest in exploring a career opportunity with SAP.

We have reviewed your background and experience as compared to our position requirements. Upon review, we have decided to pursue other candidates that we believe are stronger matches for this position. We felt it was important to advise you as soon as we made this decision so as not to delay your job search.

SAP is continuing to grow as a dominant leader in technology and further opportunities will develop. Please be assured that we will retain your application in our database for at least six months should a job opportunity develop that matches your background.

Feel free to continue to visit http://www.sap.com/usa/employ for future opportunities.

Thanks again for expressing an interest in SAP and we wish you much success in finding a position that matches your career objectives.

Sincerely,

SAP Talent Acquisition

Nothing like automation I say.

The Pike Brewing Pub (Seattle) Review

On Sunday, one of the Seattle sights we visited was the Pike Place Market. At one end of it is the Pike Brewing Company, and they have a pub... So Gerry and I stopped in for lunch.

The place is nicely appointed with lots of Pike Brewing paraphernalia, and reminded me favourably of other brewpubs I've been to, such as Swan's and Spinnaker's in Victoria, and Wild River in Richmond.

The menu was replete with the usual pub fare one might expect, with a Pacific Northwest emphasis on local cuisine.

I ordered a bowl of the dungeness crab chowder and the "half" Rueben (the full Rueben has double the meat!), Gerry had the chowder as well and halibut & chips. I couldn't decide between the wheat ale and the Belgian style tripel so the waitress brought me tasters of both. Gerry had the stout. I settled on the tripel, though the wheat was one of the better ones I've tried.

The soup came fast, and it was hot! The mains were both ample and delicious. In short, it was nice simple fare, well prepared.

Recommended.

Ratings:
Service: 4/5
Ambiance: 3/5
Food: 7/10
Price: $$

Score: 14/20

Taphouse Grill (Seattle) Review

During my weekend with Gerry in Seattle, as part of the experience was to go to Bottleworks and buy and taste beer, we decided to check out the Taphouse Grill. We visited the location in downtown Seattle. Taphouse Grill's claim to fame is that they have 160 different beers on tap.

Writing a good restaurant review is easy, but writing a negative one is one fraught with a little more peril; it is not sufficient to just say bad things about a place, one has to be specific about what made the experience bad.

The easy rating is ambiance. The place has a nice atmosphere to eat and drink in, and there was nothing wrong with the decor. The pictures on the website paint an accurate picture.

However, everything went downhill from there.

Gerry and I arrived around 3pm, which is definitely the dead zone in the restaurant world. Our waitress was very friendly and nice enough, but service goes beyond ones individual server. My first mistake was to ignore Gerry's sage advice to not order the sampler. I'm used to samplers from places like Swan's, Wild River, Spinnaker's, etc - brew pubs where the samples are beers they brew. The sampler at the Taphouse was a mistake.

It was a mistake because of the four beers in the flight, one was off, one was flat, and one I didn't like. The one that was off had the classic wet cardboard aroma I've experienced with wine, but never with beer. Of course, Gerry's the beer expert, whereas I'm more of a wine guy. Also, none of the four beers in the flight was on the list of regular beers (they do say that some 10 or so taps are for whatever seasonal or special ales they have going).

I told the waitress to please take the flight away and bring me a glass of porter instead. She brought it back to the bar and Gerry and I saw the manager and she discuss my "concerns" and the manager even took a sniff of the off beer and make "that face" and put it down.

So when he came over and told me that all the beers "poured like they should" (i.e. that they were all ok), I knew he was lying. I didn't bother arguing - I just wanted my porter and my lunch.

And that was the other part. It took over an hour for Gerry and I to get out food. What did we order that took so long? I ordered the potato cakes and lentil soup from the daily specials menu, and Gerry ordered a beef dip sandwich. In other words, nothing that should take an hour.

When the food finally arrived, I was disappointed. The potato cakes were a little spongy, and the soup (very good) was only warm.

After the beer complaint, we were basically avoided by our waitress and she looked apologetic when she presented our bill. The faulty flight of beer was still on the bill, and I just gave her my credit card. When she came back she'd taken the flight off.

Too little, too late.

Ratings:
Service: 1/5
Ambiance: 3/5
Food: 5/10
Price: $$

Score: 9/20

A note: Having 160 taps is certainly impressive, but with that many, you're simply statistically going to have some bad ones there - especially since some of them won't be very popular. In contradistinction, as we went from the Taphouse to Elysian Fields, a brewpub right by Safeco Field, they have about 20 taps, but half of them are their beers, and the others are "guest beers", and they were all busily poured.

Seattle

Some six weeks ago, my friend Gerry and I made plans to go see the Mariners play a game and spend the weekend in Seattle. Little did we know at the time that the Mariners, who had a clear 4 game lead in the wild card race, would go on an extended losing streak and be out of the playoffs or that the Canadian dollar would reach parity with the US dollar.

In any event, we had the tickets and the hotel booked, and off we went. It took a little over an hour to get through the south bound customs lineup, and it was probably much longer by the time we finally got through at 9am!

We stopped and shopped a the "Seattle's Best" outlet mall and found some bargains. One of the nice things about "guy shopping" is we know what we want and if they don't have it, we move on. I found some shoes (long overdue to get replacements) for cheap at Eddie Bauer, and a new lasagna pan (Le Creuset, at an outrageously good price) which will last me forever, complete with roasting rack to go with it.

The game was good and featured everything I want to see at a baseball game - the home team winning, and a home run. (Mariners 5-1 over the Texas Rangers). I also didn't know that Sammy Sosa played for the Rangers (as their DH) so I actually got to see him at bat.

Safeco Field is a great baseball venue, and the thing that impressed me the most was that the concessions were a mix of stadium facilities and local franchises (e.g. the Ivar's fish and chip place, and the barbecue place whose name escapes me but had a fabulous pulled pork sandwich). There were also other options available, like sushi.

The most surprising though was that while Bud and Coors were the "default" beers, one in three taps featured a local microbrewery's craft beer. Very shrewd marketing!

The hotel we stayed at was close to the Space Needle so we were able to walk everywhere, including a late lunch at the Taphouse Grill (reviewed separately) and Safeco Field.

On Sunday we had lunch at the Pike Place Pub (reviewed separately) and checked out the market and the Science Fiction Museum.

The Science Fiction Museum was a lot of fun, and most of the collection is from Paul Allen, whose brainchild it is (as well as the Experience Music Project). Notably absent from the collection was anything British (Dr. Who, Space 1999, Blake's Seven, etc), and with the exception of a couple of minor items, nothing Babylon 5. Lots of Star Trek (old and new) and Star Wars, and the queen alien from Aliens. Well worth the admission ticket.

Coming home, the border lineup was a mere 30 minutes, and the customs guy, after checking the trunk to see all the beer we bought, waved us through. Lots of people being pulled over to go pay sales tax at the customs office though.

I really like Seattle, and it had been 14 years since I'd last visited. It won't be that long before I go again!

Jethro Tull at the River Rock

Last Friday (the 28th of September), I went to see Jethro Tull at the River Rock Casino.

The concert venue at the River Rock is fabulous - it's very intimate, and I can't say that there's a bad seat in the place, although I had a truly premium seat in row three.

The seating is part of an elaborate $10 million system (so said the promo guy who came out to tell us about the lineup of artists coming soon) that lets the room be configured pretty much any way they liked - from music, to boxing, to a cabaret, it's all possible through automation. On my way out after the show I got to see the inner workings as the crowd filtered out through the exit corridors.

The last time I saw Jethro Tull was during their 1991 tour (at the Orpheum). I was pleased to be able to see them live again, and I expect that it will be the last time I get to see them in concert.

Ian Anderson was in fine form, cracking many jokes, and poking fun at their age. They opened their show with "Some Day the Sun Won't Shine for You" from their first album (This Was, 1968) and then joked their next one would be from "their more recent album from 1969".

I wrote recently about Al Stewart's musical talent, and I need to make the same comment here. Everyone in the band can play multiple instruments, and play them well. I know that Tull's music isn't everyone's cuppa tea, but there's not denying their musicianship.

Ian Anderson's voice isn't what it used to be, but he's adjusted his singing style and his passion for his music is still apparent. Their playlist did feature more instrumental pieces than one might normally expect at a rock concert, but for the better part of two hours, they provided great entertainment.

Here is the set list from the show...

Someday The Sun Won't Shine For You (Ian & Martin only)
Living In The Past
The Donkey And The Drum - from their new album, "to be released some time in 2012" [joking]
Thick As A Brick - from the eponymous album, a rather lengthy excerpt and very well done
Pastime With Good Company (King Henry's Madrigal)
Mother Goose
My Sunday Feeling
Bourée
Sweet Dream
After You After Me - from one of Martin Barre's solo albums
Aqualung - a new arrangement with lots of flute (Ian noted that this song, probably Tull's most famous work, features no flute in its original incarnation)
America - From "West Side Story", an arrangement by Emerson (of Emerson, Lake, & "the other lawyer in the firm")
My God
Budapest
Locomotive Breath (the obligatory encore finale)

The Mathematics of Finance

When I look back at my undergraduate days and do a mental inventory of the courses I took, a select few really stand out.

One of them, which was an elective, was a second year mathematics course called "The Mathematics of Finance".

Of all the math courses I suffered through (calculus, linear algebra, statistics), this one was by far the most useful one I've taken. Mortgages, declining balances, amortizations, simple and compound interest, stocks, bonds, coupons, strips, and so on.

Over the years, this course has been worth its textbook's weight in gold (probably literally) in helping me make smart decisions about money. It has saved me literally thousands of dollars on my mortgage (a tale unto itself).

Recently, I've begun working with a professional financial planner. I know about stocks and bonds, and to avoid mutual funds like the plague, but there is simply too much inherent complexity in the system for a retail investor like me to deal with intelligently - at least if I don't want to simplify my life with just investing in an index ETF.

My financial planner calls me about once every two weeks or so and he's been educating me about the markets on the whole. Jim educates me about the markets for two reasons - one so that I feel confident in his recommendations, and two so that if he's feeling bullish on a particular investment idea I have to be able to understand what the idea is. Because as he says, if I don't understand it and he can't explain it to me, then it might not be such a good idea after all.

Thanks to that math of finance course, I can make intelligent decisions with Jim's help. That is an amazingly useful tool.

On Making Sausage

Today I made sausage for only the second time ever. The first time was at the tail end of the Dubrulle "serious amateur" 6-day advanced culinary class.

My cousins Anita and Karlheinz from Germany are visiting my parents and so I took the adorable granddaughter to be doted upon and took up Karlheinz's offer of showing me how to make classic German bratwursts (his rendition of them naturally). He'd made a batch before our trip out there last weekend, and they're really awesomely good.

I brought along my KitchenAid stand mixer as it has a stronger motor than my dad's, and after lunch, we set to work.

First is the meat (all pork) - the ratio is 8 parts shoulder to 2 parts belly. If you want slightly moister sausages you can go 7 to 3. You want the meat ground coarsely - I learned that commercial ground meat is actually twice ground, but as a general rule for sausage you just want it run through once.

Then after mixing the secret seasoning recipe (secret = I'm not going to post it) you sprinkle it over the ground meat (we had 6.5kg of it), you knead it. Like bread dough. Aggressive, hard, making sure you mix in all the seasonings well and thoroughly. And you know what - if you want to see how the taste is, to make sure the seasoning is right, you taste it. Raw.

Now, I'm sure lots of people will freak out - but that's because we've been conditioned to avoid raw meat, especially chicken, as if it were radioactive waste. But let me tell you something - it was GOOD. So good in fact, that last week I spread some of the "we ran out of casing" sausage meat straight onto bread. Mmm mmm mmm. It's really no different in any fundamental way from steak tartare.

Once the meat has been worked, it becomes quite firm, very much like bread dough when it's ready. The proteins in meat have the same reaction to the kneading as the glutens in flour.

We let the meat mixture sit for about an hour to let the flavours infuse (that, and we went and had lunch). After lunch, we went down and set up the KitchenAid with all the attachments and got to work.

Slipping sausage casing onto the end of the nozzle where the meat comes out suggests and looks exactly like what you think it might, and no doubt contributes to the notion that those who love the law and sausages should watch neither being made.

Once the casing was ready, you need two people - one to feed the meat into the machine, one to deal with the extrusion of meat into the casing. To process 6.5kg of prepared meat took us about 40-45 minutes. I joked at the start that I would probably get the hang of it about the time we were almost done, and I was right.

It was interesting to me that we did the links only after the casing (about 2m long) was filled. At Dubrulle we made the links as we went along (using artifical collagen casing), but Karlheinz did it after the fact and showed me the easy technique to do it - at least it looked easy, kinda like how an old Italian grandmother makes fresh pasta look easy.

After the sausages were in links, they were hung to dry. The sausages "settle" into the casing, and also change colour. The sausage recipe we made is very flexible. You can cook them as bratwursts of course, but you could also let them dry out in a cool room and in about eight days they'll go from fresh to coated in white (salt) to turning red (cured). You can also cold smoke them (aka Mettwurst) and then cook them or spread it raw on toast (sprinkled with a little bit of onion, mmmm...).

The local JN&Z deli said any time I want sausage casing I can just book ahead, and that if I like they'll make me 50lbs of sausage to whatever recipe I like. I might just take them up on that, especially as I'm not getting a side of pork this fall.

Nostalgia for Sale - SOLD!

In my last year of high school, I became best friends with "the new kid". Mark's step dad was the manager at CKDA, 1200AM, the local rock station. AM radio was still cool in those days, albums vinyl things you had to flip over half way through and came with covers with cool artwork and liner notes. CD's were on the cusp of becoming mainstream, and mp3's and iPod's weren't even a glimmer in Steve Jobs' eye - heck, he and Wos were still selling Apple IIe's.

One of the perks of being the manager of the local rock station was free concert tickets. One of the perks of being best friends with the son of said manager was getting to go to the concerts with him (until he got a girlfriend, but then that's how these stories go - I still remember her breaking up with him just before Dire Straits was in town the day "Money For Nothing" hit #1 on the charts, so I got to thank her for that ticket).

It was March of 1985, and Mark said "Hey, my dad got me some tickets for the concert this Saturday, wanna go?"

"I guess so. Who's playing?"

"Al Stewart."

"Who's he?"

"I dunno, never heard of him."

"Ok!"

I need to mention that this was the first "real" concert I'd been to - ever. I loved music, had tons of LP's, but I'd never been to a rock concert.

That Saturday, my musical landscape changed. Al and his band totally blew me away - and Mark too for that matter. I didn't stop listening to the bands that I'd always listened to before, but something had definitely changed - an appreciation for the sense of musical craftsmanship was born. It was a musical epiphany, the like of which I did not experience again until I heard the Comedian Harmonists (through the biopic The Harmonists on New Years Eve 1999).

As Fate had it, I was looking on eBay yesterday and I stumbled across ... the promotional poster for that 1985 concert. It was being sold by one of the guys who was on stage that night, Steve Recker.

I bought it. It was obviously meant to be.

Book it Danno

We've been planning a trip to Europe for a while and we've finally booked our tickets. We used Aeroplan points to do it - 180,000 points and $849 later, we're all set for next April/May.

$849 might sound like a lot, but the regular fare would have been $3187.78. We can spend some of the over $2K savings on good food and wine while we're over there.