Still going after all these years.
Better late than never. A set of pictures from the Mozart Tanglewood residency is up at Flickr. This is different from the previous set primarily in that there is sunshine, so the pictures look like something other than mud.
Still to come: pictures from this residency, provided it stops raining; pictures from our recent kitchen cabinet demolition; and maybe even pictures of me in a white tux jacket looking spiffy. But don’t hold your breath about the last one…
I wrote a nice long screed yesterday about the joys of traveling in and out of Logan now that the tunnels are closed. I didn’t get to post it thanks to a very long day out of Internet contact, but here are the highlights:
Bottom line: left the house at 9, back at 12:15 am when I should have been back by 9 pm. I’ll take the 3 hour shlep to the Berkshires any day.
Just found a post I wrote on my transatlantic flight last Friday, June 2, that was never posted, and thought it still was worth reading:
Interesting that on a Lufthansa flight, on an Airbus plane, I am using an in-flight Internet service from Boeing. Somewhat less interesting but more frustrating is that it is as slow as molasses. I am currently experiencing the joy of synchronizing my corporate Outlook account over this slow connection and it’s excruciating. It’s like giving yourself a paper cut and waiting until you bleed to death.
I had an uneventful last night in Munich. My business for the last two days had me at the Munich airport hotel, the Kapinsky, a nice if expensive facility (in room Internet: 20 euros/day; free WiFi provided by what must have been a single router with approximately the same range in coverage distance as your average American Idol pop singer shows in emotion. It was slow in the morning and impossible by the afternoon. Why is it that an $89/night hotel in rural Ohio provides free wireless Internet that works, while a luxury hotel anywhere in the world provides sub-par service and makes you pay for the privilege? Is there a theme emerging here? Am I turning into a Johnny One-Note? Maybe so, but over the last ten years the Internet has inched closer to being an indispensable utility for me, like electricity or conventional telephones, while at the same time hotels and the companies that provide their services remain in the dark ages. At least Lufthansa and the Boeing Connexion service have a technical excuse–they are providing their Internet service over a satellite connection where the base receiver is moving at 600 mph. (Though I should note that conventional satellite-based high speed Internet services provide speeds as much as 100 times greater.)
At any rate, I did something shameful last night. For the first time in eight years of international travel, I had an American fast food meal in a foreign country. (The horror.) My excuse is that our conference wrapped up at 4:30 and I spent the following two hours resolving last minute discussions with our business partners, then had to climb onto back to back one hour calls with the US at 7 pm. With the half hour before the first call, I had to find food quickly, so I took the path of least resistance and grabbed a chicken sandwich from the Burger King outside.
At least I made up for it the previous two nights. My first day in Munich I spent the afternoon at our corporate offices downtown, then headed back to the Marienplatz and a meal of wursts, kraut, and Dunkelweiss at the small Augusteinerbräu beerkellar in the shadow of the Frauenkirche. And the food on Wednesday night was quite good, if absurdly filling.
I’m always torn when I come to Munich. I would love to be able to stay another few days to explore the countryside and the city and practice the language, but at the same time I cannot wait to return home.
The dinner event last night at the conference I’m attending was a tour of the Erdinger Weissbräu facilities, followed by traditional Bavarian food and “Bavarian olympics.” Misgivings that conflated Bavarian olympics with Beer Olympics gave way when I learned that (here, anyway) Bavarian olympics meant finger-wrestling, sawing wood, hammering nails, holding a 10kg beer stein, and, um, milking a cow (not a real one, thank goodness, but a dummy like the one shown here). Our team won, for reasons having very little to do with me. (Lots of houseblog practice to the contrary, I still can’t hammer a nail quickly to save my life.)
So here I am in the airport hotel in Munich, my home for the next three days and nights, and I can hardly think.
It was kind of a whirlwind Memorial Day weekend. We spent the time dragging the last few waterlogged and moldering things out of the basement; demolishing some of our existing cabinetry and completing the installation of the first round of our new Ikea cabinets; and otherwise just kind of having fun. The Project is on the Us, with U2 completed shortly before I left for the airport yesterday. And now, after a quick direct flight (shout out to Lufthansa—yo, my homies), my brain is buzzing but my body is dragging dragging dragging. This is the weirdest jetlag ever.
I think a nap is in order before I head downtown. And before I destroy any more neurons trying to figure out the public transportation system.
How was it that I missed the Zuni Cafe the last two times I was in San Francisco? Oh my goodness. Oysters. Pappardelle with duck sauce. Goat cheese with fennel. Oh yeah.
I consciously split the oysters across species lines this time— Pacific oysters, kumamotos, and Virginicas. You know, the Virginicas? Really really good. In fact, they tasted a little like home. I seriously had one of those Proustian moments; tears came to my eyes. There was something about the taste that brought back the Atlantic to me (if not the Chesapeake). Had really nice discussions with the waitress about fennel, about appropriate wines to go with pappardelle with duck sauce…
In addition to a good conference week, it has been a great food week here. Monday night I went to the Thirsty Bear, which had moderately interesting beer (the ESB and Maibock were quite good, but the Märzen was weak) and good tapas (marinated anchovies and small portions of hangar steak).
I took a quiet night on Tuesday, but last night George took me to a neighborhood sushi restaurant that was to die for. The proprietor served us three rounds of sushi, each more special than the last—flying fish, butterfish, yellowtail, and “pencil fish” sashimi, followed by a round of unusual nigiri (the Japanese suzuki particularly was excellent), wrapped up with a round of phenomenal inventions. The two outstanding options here were the Alaskan King Crab Remix, a bundle of crab in a thin wrapper topped with salmon (I think), and nigiri-style Kobe beef that was seared under a blowtorch and that simply melted in the mouth. George, if you can remind me of the name of the place I’ll be eternally indebted.
Afterwards we tried a few glasses of wine at the California Wine Merchant, including a surprising Rhone blend from one of the Sonoma wineries and a Zin/cab sauv/merlot/cab franc blend called Paraduxx that was just outstanding. We ran into an old friend, Chris McCall, there and had a relaxed, civilized time. (In fact, it’s been Old Home Week here, what with my Microsoft friends and Wahoo Kurt Daniel, who now works for SWSoft on their virtualization product, on the expo floor.)
Tonight: I’ll try the Zuni Cafe, a food institution I’ve meant to visit for a long time, then head to the airport for my red-eye, which should be a rude awakening. Maybe I can con United into upgrading me for free again.
I really really hate United.
I decided to postpone my flight to San Francisco for the Gartner ITXpo from last night, with the hassle over the basement and everything. I am now waiting at a gate at Logan for our flight to show up at the gate. It was supposed to have taken off 20 minutes ago.
Why is it late? Is it the weather? Is it a delayed crew? No. It’s late because it’s taken 45 minutes to tow it from a hangar to our gate. I’ve already missed my connecting flight.
I really, really hate United.
I proved that it is possible to work five hours in New York City, six hours on a train, and still get back in time for a 7 pm rehearsal. You have to get up at 4 am to do it, though.
Another discovery: the parking lot at South Station, which is nearly deserted at 4:50 am.
When I got into town last night, I was thinking what a shame it was that I wasn’t here during SxSW and missed all the opportunities to rub elbows with the powerful and interesting. That was before Quentin Freakin’ Tarantino wandered into the taco joint on South Congress where we were having dinner (I had grilled quail with a shrimp enchilada, which needless to say was spectacular).
It was a fairly quiet night otherwise, wrapping up with a drink at the Intercontinental. But I definitely feel like I could come back here and have a good time. Preferably on a trip where I could get away and take in some live music….
No big travel events yesterday, fortunately. We flew to Baltimore, had a meeting in the Maryland suburbs, flew on to Memphis, caught a connection into Baton Rouge. All that took us until almost 9 am Central time. It’s amazing how what sounds like a relatively small amount of travel can really wear you down.
We did, however, arrive in time to check out Juban’s. Getting there was probably the most exciting travel of the day. I browsed to my blog on my phone to verify the name of the restaurant, then Googled it and found the phone number. As we were hopping on I-110, I called Juban’s, verified they were still open, and got directions. All was well and my colleagues were impressed—until we realized that I hadn’t got directions on which way to take I-10 when I-110 ended and we were winging our way across the Mississippi. We got turned around, found the restaurant (with some hesitation, as we drove down to the end of the strip mall that it sat in, and started to wonder if we had made a good choice), and stayed to close it down. I was pretty impressed—I had the Hallelujah Crab, which was pretty outstanding, and the smoked chicken, duck, and andouille gumbo, which was sublime.
Today: a few hours of work in the lobby of the hotel, an appointment downtown… then back on the plane to Austin.
I’ve got a business trip coming up this week, one of those three states in three days things. One of the days (and nights) will be spent in Baton Rouge, which I’m pretty excited about—both because I’ve never actually been to the Red Stick (though I did spend a few memorable days in New Orleans 14 years ago) and because I’m looking forward to contributing to the Louisiana economy while we’re there. I mean, with restaurants like Juban’s and Mike Anderson’s, I expect to be contributing rather a lot…
It’s a good thing that the next night is in San Antonio (where I haven’t been since the late ’90s) Austin or I would probably have a hard time tearing myself away.
Update: San Antonio? God only knows how that got stuck in my head but I’ve been saying it all day. Good thing I’m not flying the plane.
I’m on the road again, and ran into two Internet service concepts for travelers that I haven’t seen before. The first: JetBlue’s free WiFi at JFK. Now this is an airline that knows how to inspire loyalty. I only had 20 minutes before my connection boarded, and normally I would hate to buy WiFi just to start downloading my email and then get on the plane. Being able to do that for free? Brilliant.
Second, the wired high-speed service in my hotel room (a Hyatt). The service is paid (boo!) but they allow you to have a fixed IP address without NAT (yay!), which is pretty cool. The service is by GuestTek, whom I hadn’t heard of before but who certainly have the right message for their institutional customers: “Attract more guests and increase customer loyalty with high-speed Internet access.” Now, if they could just get across the part where it shouldn’t have to cost the customer $9.95 a night…
I’m just back from another blitzkrieg trip to Las Vegas. Fortunately there was no food poisoning this time. But I’m so jetlagged that (aside from a post I queued up on the plane) I don’t expect there to be much written here for the next day or so.
Las Vegas is the negative shadow of Wall Street; gambling is the negative shadow of market capitalism. If the market is a benevolent “invisible hand” that levels prices and matches supply and demand, Vegas is a bejeweled invisible fist that flies out and punches you or stuffs chips in your pocket with a predictably unfair distribution.
Vegas today shows this shadow even more strongly. Going up and down Las Vegas Blvd, at right angles to the Strip, you pass through downscaled, totemic versions of western world capitals, as though invoking the ghosts of the place that rationally deal with money to encourage you to spend it. And the real shadow economy of Vegas—the immigrant service workers, the enormous flow of underreported cash tips, the dancers, the exotic entertainers—is everywhere just out of sight, like the escort service fliers and business cards that turn up everywhere, even on the bollards surrounding the lake at the Bellagio.
If capitalism is our collective western religion, a demanding protestant religion that preaches a cult of abstemious rational consumption, Vegas is the Carnival, the Festival of the Flesh—not just in its general party atmosphere but in the explicitly irrational exuberance toward money that is encouraged in the visitors. For once, one is supposed to think, I can cast off the shackles of predictable income and loss and take a chance. I can get lucky.
Of course, the odds are in favor of the house. Even in this most exuberant place, there is cold business at the bottom.