meh, never been a fan of the lamb. But then again, soggy bread has never made my list of most desirable food items, so that's probably a big part of it. Good pie though.
And mdler/midler/emdler.... don't think your efforts have gone unnoticed. You're almost to #4.
dammit i got hooked into going back to the office tonite to color some elevations for a meeting for a "lifestyle center" tomorrow. this office has gone almost exclusively into the black hole of the mall developer. vado's being sucked in. and that ain't my kinda sucking.
drinking with hoff woulda been good, but he is busy worker in japanese office, so we settled for lunch instead. social life in tokyo can be hard if your not allowed to have a life outside of office. partner and i can take time off whenever, cuz we have only clients to answer to, so is nice. we work long hours, but not japanese style. both of us have decided it ain't worth it and we both have family we like (some people in japan, apparently, do not)....
that link should work lars. i have only tested it on a few computers so if it is funny would be grateful to know.
I officially have a place to live in Brooklyn. It's not perfect (mainly because of the location and the fact that I'll have a roommate), but it should be good enough for a few months. It could certainly be much worse... There's plenty of space, it's clean, it's air-conditioned, and the living room has a million-dollar view of the Manhattan skyline. I'll probably fly back to Chicago sometime next month and move the rest of my stuff to NYC. Most of it will go right back into storage at this end, but some of it -- including my beloved Eames chair -- will get brought into the apartment.
Lately I've been licking my chops over the new iMacs and the iPhones... Guess you could say I've drunk the Apple kool-aid. Assuming I can stick to my budget, I'm hoping to get a 24" iMac maybe in late October (hopefully Mac OS X Leopard will be out by then), and maybe an iPhone in mid-September. I had been pining for a MacBook Pro, but I may hold off on a laptop until I'm closer to starting grad school... Most likely in 2009. More about that in a minute.
In the meantime, I just dumped 2 GB of RAM into my Dell fossil... All this time I somehow thought it already had 1 GB of memory, but it turned out to only have 512 MB. No wonder the damn thing seemed so slow... Anyway, it's much faster now, so hopefully this will suit me until I have a shiny new Mac sitting on my desk.
About grad school: I have a feeling I'll be sitting out the 2008 round of grad school angst while I save up some more money and sink some roots here in NYC. Now that I'm making decent money at a good firm, I'm not feeling as much of a rush to start my M.Arch. degree as I was in Chicago. Life is pretty good right now, and I'd like to enjoy it for a while.
treekiller,
make a pasta sauce with the chard.
chop or hand tore the chard, mix into a tomato sauce (use your dried tomatos i guess) over your favorite pasta.
or sautee it in olive oil (generous portion) brake an egg or two on it.
abra- that sounds good , I'll play with the tomato/chard ratio and see what works.
jump- your blog works. Are you the dutchman or canadian, I recall that your the canuck. Glad to hear that the hoff has landed on his feet in post-gradschool tokyo.
vado....go find some bum wad....and toke up! It makes excellent rolling paper....must be some day old coffe grounds around the office to get ya in the feeling.
yeah, treekiller i am the canuck. dutch guy is the other one. he doesn't archinect cuz he is busy being developer. probably a better use of his time...;-)
So much cooking and blogging and moving and barbequing going on in TC these days.....ah, summer.
OK, so there's only like 7 of us in my program and one might not actually stick around because his English is so bad. Except I think that another one is almost as bad at the language.....I keep thinking that people are asking him questions and he is giving answers that don't match in the least. Anyway, he just emailed to ask me what was going on with a particular assignment. I'll tell him but will he even get it? I have to say that if I didn't have a firm grasp on the language I would already be totally lost....this is some serious stuff! However, I am really enjoying it so far. I feel as if I am validating my decision because the course work is exactly what I was looking for. So, that's good.
today was my eldest's birthday, so i took day off work to take part and help a bit with her b-day party, decorate a cake, etc.
was a lot of fun. of course parents are pretty much extraneous once the kids get to gradeschool...they really are miniature adults already. very cool to watch them negotiate their new world...
but what really impressed me was when the kids had a bit of free time to do whatever they wanted. my daughter and 3 of her friends sat down in a circle and quizzed each other with math questions. they have learned addition and subtraction recently, but haven't gone past 100...so they sat there and figured out how to add numbers to 100, and how to write it (100+1 = 1001, or 101?)...just for fun. four 6/7 year old girls just enjoying testing their noodles. i was incredibly impressed.
sad thing is that curiousity will very likely be gone by the time they finish highschool, same as in North America, girls don't really do math and science in japan...but wow, right now its really something to watch.
kay, anti-rant ends here. am officially cynical again.
i don't understand the part about the curiosity being gone at all, jump. yours obviously isn't. curiosity is just a product of nurture and maintenance, isn't it?
why would it go away unless it's not rewarded - i.e., no encouragement and no interesting stimulus? from everything you've posted about your life there, i don't think THAT's likely.
tk - here's some chard ideas...btw, you vegetarian or omnivorous?
blanch the leaves whole in salted, boiling water, then cool immediately in an ice bath. roll them around a few tablespoons of a mixture of cooked and seasoned brown rice, cooked ground chorizo, chopped green onions, and maybe some diced and sauteed celery. arrange them in a baking dish like you would for stuffed cabbage, pour tomato sauce spiked with cumin and chili powder over the top and bake for 30+/- minutes at 375º. serve with warm tortillas, crumbled cotija cheese and lots of Tecate.
or...
remove the ribs and finely dice them. saute in olive oil and garlic, then reserve. slice the leaves into long strips, like fettucine, and steam them in a pan with a small bit of water in it. add 1 T or two of butter, salt and white pepper and cook over low heat, stirring to emulsify the butter for just a few minutes. if you add a bit of cream at this point, the liquid becomes the sauce for your dish. makes a nice side to go with potato puree and a piece of grilled fish too...you can re-warm the diced ribs and serve it on top of the fish.
or...
as mentioned above, sautee cleaned and chopped chard in hot olive oil with chili flakes and a crushed garlic clove, crack one egg on top of the chard and place the whole thing ion a hot oven for about 6 minutes. if it's done right, the chard should be slightly crisped on the bottom and the egg should be not quite cooked through the yolk. the runny yolk is what makes your dish delicious.
or, my personal specialty...
carefully clean and spin dry your chard. remove the ribs and dice them as above. take the leaves and wrap them around small bits of the diced rib section and carefully throw each one of the wraps into the compost pile.
the last recipe will make the garden happy- some days I feel that I'm growing more compost then veggies. Of the choice of greens, my wife tolerates chard more then collards, mustard, or kale - so that's why it ended up in the garden this summer. thanks for the ideas- now I have a few options when I get sick of sauteing with garlic and red pepper flakes (a bit of bacon also is good). So yes, I'm omnivorous, the bloodier the better but I also appreciate having more chlorophyll on the plate too.
gardening is like that sometimes, isn't it? especially with a bumper crop of something like chard. you really can only eat so much of it before going mad.
my weekly CSA box is similar...sometimes i feel like i should just throw the stuff i know we're not going to get to in the compost at the beginning rather than letting it sit in the fridge for a week first.
still better to grow your own and then compost it than to not grow it in the first place i guess.
the bumper crop this summer has been the yellow crookneck squash, I can harvest more each day, then I can eat in a week. when i was drying the tomatoes, i started drying squash too, but it isn't worth turning on the oven for 1/3rd a baking sheet of squash... so now I'm starting to let them grow bigger (was picking them at about 2-3 days big) to see if I can get full oven's worth to dehydrate. or I may just pull the vines and throw them into the heap before the first frost...
squashes are better blanched in heavily salted boiling water and then chilled in ice water, drained and packed in ziploc freezer bags for winter primavera. i never had any success drying, or rather, using dried squash.
harvest any of the squash blossoms? they're delicious stuffed with shrimp or chicken mousse, battered then FRIED! yum.
better harvest them in the mornings though, otherwise they get too brittle to work with.
i've been thinking about starting an 'ask mightlylittle' for cooking/food topics, but haven't worked up the courage to ask him. 'cook's central' works too.
I got tired of squash blossoms after 3 weeks of constant harvest- my fav was either the blossom quesadia or the blossom omlette. blanching seems like it takes less energy, but I like the space saving feature of drying the squash- planning on using them for soups during the frigid northern winter.
aww shux you guys. without wanting to go all senator craig on you, i can feel the love.
what can i say? i'm just a guy with an encyclopedic knowledge of food and a photographic memory for everything i've ever eaten...EVER.
i was born this way...and am just glad to have an appreciative (read: captive) audience.
when someone needs advice on choosing doors for a brutalist remodel, they can go to steven, i'm here for the little guy who just needs advice on how to make brussels sprouts delicious. (answer: lots and lots of butter.)
lots of people have great food advice though, so a 'food central' would be better than an 'ask mighty,' but i'm honored nonetheless. though 'ask mighty' has a pleasant ring to it.
Ah ha ha, without wanting to go all senator craig on you....
I LOLed at that line. I say start the thread! My eyes gloss over a little every time I start reading the food talk. I can only handle so much without getting confused or hungry or both. Also, I suck at cooking.
However, when someone needs advice on traveling, cat grooming, or bedazzling, they can talk to me, for sure ;o)
I like 'food central' better than 'cooking central', because that way we can bug treekiller with gardening questions as well. = )
I'm starting to freak out about moving again... it's only 2 1/2 weeks away! And I haven't sold the damned car, and I've only got a few boxes packed, and they've BILLED ME FOR TUITION. I think that's what did it, really, seeing the bill.
yeah i just billed a client and got that long awkward pause in emailing of which i am still in the middle.
nothing like seeing a bill to shock some reality into ya'!
rationalist - i have a new personal motto/anthem/mantra that i'm saying to myself a thousand times a day..."Keep it going! Keep it going! Keep it going!"
it's working for me.
i've been borderline-crazy-productive at work/home/etc, but i feel a crash and burn into lollygagging-bong-hitting-baseball-watching is on the horizon. boom and bust i guess...it is the SF bay area. ride the highs and minimize the lows!
focus on the list and the task at hand and 'afore long you'll be chillin' at the Pike Place Market throwing fish with the guys while LA (LA, right?) becomes nothing more than a hot, smoggy, fleeting memory.
I heart Pike Place, in a big way. When I was there the other week, I found a little hole-in-the-wall place (behind the spiral stair triangular intersection) that makes the BEST clam chowder breadbowls. Lots of clams, and the sourdough was strong enough that you got the flavor even through the soup. Soooo yummy. I'd like to make it out there for some freshness every couple of weeks, but apparently I'll be living right by what is supposedly the best weekly farmers market in the city (year-round, too), so that might be unneccesary.
Yeah, so I have to start setting mini-goals for myself. I vow to pack up all clothing which I do not anticipate using in the next two weeks tonight. I mean, really, am I going to need a floor length black halter dress, or a wool coat this weekend? I think not.
i hope you are right steven. but women in japan...it really is pretty much like the 50's in north america in more ways than i am comfortable with. things are starting to change but b
i hope you are right steven. but women in japan...it really is pretty much like the 50's in north america in more ways than i am comfortable with.
things are starting to change but basically a woman is expected to get paid less for the same job as a man here, to proabbaly quit job when married, and to certainly quit if pregnant (they even set up the childcare system here so no woman could actually work fullt-ime - i could say the father might stay home instead but that would be a very hard potato to peal ). there is maternity leave here, legally, but practically i don't think it works...so if my daughters stay here they will slowly come to realise that performance in any field by a woman will not be rewarded by japanese culture, no matter how much my wife and i support it...
so either things change or we move away in 5 years...
could be worse. there are cultures where women aren't even allowed to begin to learn anything important.
who knows what japan will be in 10 yrs. isn't the country in a kind of demographic pickle? it will be interesting to see what the REAL (instead of economist-speculative) effect of the country's aging population will be.
it sure seems like opportunities for young adults with energy and smarts - male or female - should be part of it.
I had dinner Sunday evening with a client who has been doing business in Japan for the past 35 years. Something like 125 trips across the pond. That doesn't include his children who are also in the business. As you are aware longevity is important in doing business. He is a very candid fellow along with his wife who has made many of those same trips. I blieve you paint a very real picture for the woman of Japan. There is no place in business for a married woman. I hope for the women of Japan this will change.
No reason to keep a humans mind hostage when they might be the key to making life better for the world.
this is so weird today we were having this same conversation. Particularly men in Japan who work hours past closing, go drinking et al, stagger home only to do it again the next day/night. Rarely seeing their family and kids. Our Japanese coworker (fem) added that it was not uncommon, and that work hours were set more like rough parameters more than set instructions. Hence why she is in the sunny Caribbean vs. anyhow she still comes to work before most and definately is the last to leave. She bluntly adds there is nothing to do at home but feed the cats and go to sleep.
some people work long hours and don't see family back in canada too. but here it is very nearly institutionalised.
so much so that women tend to not marry nor have children cuz it means they can't work anymore. so the birthrate is falling even faster than in other countries. which means that the culture may catch up and give women better opportunities. hopefully that happens. hopefully that happens while also making it easier for woment to also have children. and a family. and a life.
what would be amazing would be to create an atmosphere where everyone got to have a life and a job, and not just one or the other. it is a kind of goal for my partner and i to make an office that actually lets that happen. and also do good work. having worked for years in japanese offices we know the score and it is not as if the people in japan are any more productive because of the long hours. to the contrary they tend to be less productive, and waste a lot of time during the day to sort of pad the hours out and make it possible to go home at midnight and still have work left over for the next day.
i exagerate. slightly. but it is certainly an issue that is going to come up in near future. hopefully my kids can reap the benefits of the change, cuz my wife certainly is srtessed over the current deal. she likes to stay home with the kids for now, but she doesn't like that she doesn't have a choice in the matter. we will see how things stand when i finish phd, but moving country so we can both have a career is certainly a possibility. pity for japan. mores the pity for all the japanese who don't have that option.
its definately different here. They hit their early twenties and get pregnant. Marriage is usually reserved for their 40s or later...so not what I'm used to and after 6 years I still find it funny
a great comment from formfunction33 on the house-flipping thread: Archinectors are like a pack of hungry wolves sometimes: cynical, overly critical, indolent, brash, drunken wolves. I love you guys.
So I'm back on coffee as of this morning. The result? Two jittery, frantic phone calls to vado and Steven asking "How the h*ll do I make an ellipse in Sketchup for a meeting I have to leave for in twenty minutes?!?!?!?"
Then I realized I could do online Sketchup help. Problem solved and I have two minutes to spare to make this post.
Sorry, vado and Steven - I think I'll go back to green tea tomorrow.
I get "forbidden" on that link, techno - was it the spider on caffeine video?
My stomach doesn't like coffee anymore, though my brain does. But the green tea has plenty of caffeine, so I'm not kicking caffeine by any means - nor do I have the desire to.
Meeting went great; got the table, wall covering, and light fixtures finalized and client is happy.
Thanks for the support, everyone - like formfunction33 said, I love you guys.
lb- my dad hasn't been able to drink coffee for over 30 years, just recently he was diagnosed with acid reflux as the cause of no coffee tolerance... ask your doc if this may be your cause of having to give up the cup-o-joe...
Thread Central
meh, never been a fan of the lamb. But then again, soggy bread has never made my list of most desirable food items, so that's probably a big part of it. Good pie though.
And mdler/midler/emdler.... don't think your efforts have gone unnoticed. You're almost to #4.
its all about the mustard. I also like their cole slaw... and a great wine selection, best pour for the bucks in town.
ok no pictures of naked men yet (give me time) but I have found what may be the most beautifully designed sex toy. I was marvelled...via dezzen
ps. I'm afraid to link to this, I'm getting shy and blushing for some off reason
dammit i got hooked into going back to the office tonite to color some elevations for a meeting for a "lifestyle center" tomorrow. this office has gone almost exclusively into the black hole of the mall developer. vado's being sucked in. and that ain't my kinda sucking.
drinking with hoff woulda been good, but he is busy worker in japanese office, so we settled for lunch instead. social life in tokyo can be hard if your not allowed to have a life outside of office. partner and i can take time off whenever, cuz we have only clients to answer to, so is nice. we work long hours, but not japanese style. both of us have decided it ain't worth it and we both have family we like (some people in japan, apparently, do not)....
that link should work lars. i have only tested it on a few computers so if it is funny would be grateful to know.
Checking in....
I officially have a place to live in Brooklyn. It's not perfect (mainly because of the location and the fact that I'll have a roommate), but it should be good enough for a few months. It could certainly be much worse... There's plenty of space, it's clean, it's air-conditioned, and the living room has a million-dollar view of the Manhattan skyline. I'll probably fly back to Chicago sometime next month and move the rest of my stuff to NYC. Most of it will go right back into storage at this end, but some of it -- including my beloved Eames chair -- will get brought into the apartment.
Lately I've been licking my chops over the new iMacs and the iPhones... Guess you could say I've drunk the Apple kool-aid. Assuming I can stick to my budget, I'm hoping to get a 24" iMac maybe in late October (hopefully Mac OS X Leopard will be out by then), and maybe an iPhone in mid-September. I had been pining for a MacBook Pro, but I may hold off on a laptop until I'm closer to starting grad school... Most likely in 2009. More about that in a minute.
In the meantime, I just dumped 2 GB of RAM into my Dell fossil... All this time I somehow thought it already had 1 GB of memory, but it turned out to only have 512 MB. No wonder the damn thing seemed so slow... Anyway, it's much faster now, so hopefully this will suit me until I have a shiny new Mac sitting on my desk.
About grad school: I have a feeling I'll be sitting out the 2008 round of grad school angst while I save up some more money and sink some roots here in NYC. Now that I'm making decent money at a good firm, I'm not feeling as much of a rush to start my M.Arch. degree as I was in Chicago. Life is pretty good right now, and I'd like to enjoy it for a while.
treekiller,
make a pasta sauce with the chard.
chop or hand tore the chard, mix into a tomato sauce (use your dried tomatos i guess) over your favorite pasta.
or sautee it in olive oil (generous portion) brake an egg or two on it.
abra- that sounds good , I'll play with the tomato/chard ratio and see what works.
jump- your blog works. Are you the dutchman or canadian, I recall that your the canuck. Glad to hear that the hoff has landed on his feet in post-gradschool tokyo.
jump...the link does work now..it probably worked before, but
i got an error message and didn't retry it til now.
hey i feel like a college student im at the office(studio) at 10:30 but i'm not stoned. so its not quite like it.
vado....go find some bum wad....and toke up! It makes excellent rolling paper....must be some day old coffe grounds around the office to get ya in the feeling.
yeah, treekiller i am the canuck. dutch guy is the other one. he doesn't archinect cuz he is busy being developer. probably a better use of his time...;-)
So much cooking and blogging and moving and barbequing going on in TC these days.....ah, summer.
OK, so there's only like 7 of us in my program and one might not actually stick around because his English is so bad. Except I think that another one is almost as bad at the language.....I keep thinking that people are asking him questions and he is giving answers that don't match in the least. Anyway, he just emailed to ask me what was going on with a particular assignment. I'll tell him but will he even get it? I have to say that if I didn't have a firm grasp on the language I would already be totally lost....this is some serious stuff! However, I am really enjoying it so far. I feel as if I am validating my decision because the course work is exactly what I was looking for. So, that's good.
well don't be toooo nice, or he'll be expecting you to explain things to him forever.
The days are finally starting to slip by for me... I only have two weeks left at the office! Yikes.
dubk, you didn't say you were taking a Per class, congrats, and good luck!
is summer hols for the kids too.
today was my eldest's birthday, so i took day off work to take part and help a bit with her b-day party, decorate a cake, etc.
was a lot of fun. of course parents are pretty much extraneous once the kids get to gradeschool...they really are miniature adults already. very cool to watch them negotiate their new world...
but what really impressed me was when the kids had a bit of free time to do whatever they wanted. my daughter and 3 of her friends sat down in a circle and quizzed each other with math questions. they have learned addition and subtraction recently, but haven't gone past 100...so they sat there and figured out how to add numbers to 100, and how to write it (100+1 = 1001, or 101?)...just for fun. four 6/7 year old girls just enjoying testing their noodles. i was incredibly impressed.
sad thing is that curiousity will very likely be gone by the time they finish highschool, same as in North America, girls don't really do math and science in japan...but wow, right now its really something to watch.
kay, anti-rant ends here. am officially cynical again.
i don't understand the part about the curiosity being gone at all, jump. yours obviously isn't. curiosity is just a product of nurture and maintenance, isn't it?
why would it go away unless it's not rewarded - i.e., no encouragement and no interesting stimulus? from everything you've posted about your life there, i don't think THAT's likely.
jump she could always come to America...and go to an IVY League School....with a Math Major....
tk - here's some chard ideas...btw, you vegetarian or omnivorous?
blanch the leaves whole in salted, boiling water, then cool immediately in an ice bath. roll them around a few tablespoons of a mixture of cooked and seasoned brown rice, cooked ground chorizo, chopped green onions, and maybe some diced and sauteed celery. arrange them in a baking dish like you would for stuffed cabbage, pour tomato sauce spiked with cumin and chili powder over the top and bake for 30+/- minutes at 375º. serve with warm tortillas, crumbled cotija cheese and lots of Tecate.
or...
remove the ribs and finely dice them. saute in olive oil and garlic, then reserve. slice the leaves into long strips, like fettucine, and steam them in a pan with a small bit of water in it. add 1 T or two of butter, salt and white pepper and cook over low heat, stirring to emulsify the butter for just a few minutes. if you add a bit of cream at this point, the liquid becomes the sauce for your dish. makes a nice side to go with potato puree and a piece of grilled fish too...you can re-warm the diced ribs and serve it on top of the fish.
or...
as mentioned above, sautee cleaned and chopped chard in hot olive oil with chili flakes and a crushed garlic clove, crack one egg on top of the chard and place the whole thing ion a hot oven for about 6 minutes. if it's done right, the chard should be slightly crisped on the bottom and the egg should be not quite cooked through the yolk. the runny yolk is what makes your dish delicious.
or, my personal specialty...
carefully clean and spin dry your chard. remove the ribs and dice them as above. take the leaves and wrap them around small bits of the diced rib section and carefully throw each one of the wraps into the compost pile.
chard is not a favorite in my house.
good luck.
the last recipe will make the garden happy- some days I feel that I'm growing more compost then veggies. Of the choice of greens, my wife tolerates chard more then collards, mustard, or kale - so that's why it ended up in the garden this summer. thanks for the ideas- now I have a few options when I get sick of sauteing with garlic and red pepper flakes (a bit of bacon also is good). So yes, I'm omnivorous, the bloodier the better but I also appreciate having more chlorophyll on the plate too.
gardening is like that sometimes, isn't it? especially with a bumper crop of something like chard. you really can only eat so much of it before going mad.
my weekly CSA box is similar...sometimes i feel like i should just throw the stuff i know we're not going to get to in the compost at the beginning rather than letting it sit in the fridge for a week first.
still better to grow your own and then compost it than to not grow it in the first place i guess.
the bumper crop this summer has been the yellow crookneck squash, I can harvest more each day, then I can eat in a week. when i was drying the tomatoes, i started drying squash too, but it isn't worth turning on the oven for 1/3rd a baking sheet of squash... so now I'm starting to let them grow bigger (was picking them at about 2-3 days big) to see if I can get full oven's worth to dehydrate. or I may just pull the vines and throw them into the heap before the first frost...
squashes are better blanched in heavily salted boiling water and then chilled in ice water, drained and packed in ziploc freezer bags for winter primavera. i never had any success drying, or rather, using dried squash.
harvest any of the squash blossoms? they're delicious stuffed with shrimp or chicken mousse, battered then FRIED! yum.
better harvest them in the mornings though, otherwise they get too brittle to work with.
i feel Archinect's own Cooking Central in the offing.
i've been thinking about starting an 'ask mightlylittle' for cooking/food topics, but haven't worked up the courage to ask him. 'cook's central' works too.
I got tired of squash blossoms after 3 weeks of constant harvest- my fav was either the blossom quesadia or the blossom omlette. blanching seems like it takes less energy, but I like the space saving feature of drying the squash- planning on using them for soups during the frigid northern winter.
aww shux you guys. without wanting to go all senator craig on you, i can feel the love.
what can i say? i'm just a guy with an encyclopedic knowledge of food and a photographic memory for everything i've ever eaten...EVER.
i was born this way...and am just glad to have an appreciative (read: captive) audience.
when someone needs advice on choosing doors for a brutalist remodel, they can go to steven, i'm here for the little guy who just needs advice on how to make brussels sprouts delicious. (answer: lots and lots of butter.)
lots of people have great food advice though, so a 'food central' would be better than an 'ask mighty,' but i'm honored nonetheless. though 'ask mighty' has a pleasant ring to it.
Ah ha ha, without wanting to go all senator craig on you....
I LOLed at that line. I say start the thread! My eyes gloss over a little every time I start reading the food talk. I can only handle so much without getting confused or hungry or both. Also, I suck at cooking.
However, when someone needs advice on traveling, cat grooming, or bedazzling, they can talk to me, for sure ;o)
I like 'food central' better than 'cooking central', because that way we can bug treekiller with gardening questions as well. = )
I'm starting to freak out about moving again... it's only 2 1/2 weeks away! And I haven't sold the damned car, and I've only got a few boxes packed, and they've BILLED ME FOR TUITION. I think that's what did it, really, seeing the bill.
yeah i just billed a client and got that long awkward pause in emailing of which i am still in the middle.
nothing like seeing a bill to shock some reality into ya'!
rationalist - i have a new personal motto/anthem/mantra that i'm saying to myself a thousand times a day..."Keep it going! Keep it going! Keep it going!"
it's working for me.
i've been borderline-crazy-productive at work/home/etc, but i feel a crash and burn into lollygagging-bong-hitting-baseball-watching is on the horizon. boom and bust i guess...it is the SF bay area. ride the highs and minimize the lows!
focus on the list and the task at hand and 'afore long you'll be chillin' at the Pike Place Market throwing fish with the guys while LA (LA, right?) becomes nothing more than a hot, smoggy, fleeting memory.
I heart Pike Place, in a big way. When I was there the other week, I found a little hole-in-the-wall place (behind the spiral stair triangular intersection) that makes the BEST clam chowder breadbowls. Lots of clams, and the sourdough was strong enough that you got the flavor even through the soup. Soooo yummy. I'd like to make it out there for some freshness every couple of weeks, but apparently I'll be living right by what is supposedly the best weekly farmers market in the city (year-round, too), so that might be unneccesary.
Yeah, so I have to start setting mini-goals for myself. I vow to pack up all clothing which I do not anticipate using in the next two weeks tonight. I mean, really, am I going to need a floor length black halter dress, or a wool coat this weekend? I think not.
All that amazing food plus bong hits and basebal?
That's it, I'm moving into mightylittle's place! ;-)
on to.....
i hope you are right steven. but women in japan...it really is pretty much like the 50's in north america in more ways than i am comfortable with. things are starting to change but b
i hope you are right steven. but women in japan...it really is pretty much like the 50's in north america in more ways than i am comfortable with.
things are starting to change but basically a woman is expected to get paid less for the same job as a man here, to proabbaly quit job when married, and to certainly quit if pregnant (they even set up the childcare system here so no woman could actually work fullt-ime - i could say the father might stay home instead but that would be a very hard potato to peal ). there is maternity leave here, legally, but practically i don't think it works...so if my daughters stay here they will slowly come to realise that performance in any field by a woman will not be rewarded by japanese culture, no matter how much my wife and i support it...
so either things change or we move away in 5 years...
could be worse. there are cultures where women aren't even allowed to begin to learn anything important.
toldja i'm cynical again.
who knows what japan will be in 10 yrs. isn't the country in a kind of demographic pickle? it will be interesting to see what the REAL (instead of economist-speculative) effect of the country's aging population will be.
it sure seems like opportunities for young adults with energy and smarts - male or female - should be part of it.
Jump,
I had dinner Sunday evening with a client who has been doing business in Japan for the past 35 years. Something like 125 trips across the pond. That doesn't include his children who are also in the business. As you are aware longevity is important in doing business. He is a very candid fellow along with his wife who has made many of those same trips. I blieve you paint a very real picture for the woman of Japan. There is no place in business for a married woman. I hope for the women of Japan this will change.
No reason to keep a humans mind hostage when they might be the key to making life better for the world.
this is so weird today we were having this same conversation. Particularly men in Japan who work hours past closing, go drinking et al, stagger home only to do it again the next day/night. Rarely seeing their family and kids. Our Japanese coworker (fem) added that it was not uncommon, and that work hours were set more like rough parameters more than set instructions. Hence why she is in the sunny Caribbean vs. anyhow she still comes to work before most and definately is the last to leave. She bluntly adds there is nothing to do at home but feed the cats and go to sleep.
haha.
some people work long hours and don't see family back in canada too. but here it is very nearly institutionalised.
so much so that women tend to not marry nor have children cuz it means they can't work anymore. so the birthrate is falling even faster than in other countries. which means that the culture may catch up and give women better opportunities. hopefully that happens. hopefully that happens while also making it easier for woment to also have children. and a family. and a life.
what would be amazing would be to create an atmosphere where everyone got to have a life and a job, and not just one or the other. it is a kind of goal for my partner and i to make an office that actually lets that happen. and also do good work. having worked for years in japanese offices we know the score and it is not as if the people in japan are any more productive because of the long hours. to the contrary they tend to be less productive, and waste a lot of time during the day to sort of pad the hours out and make it possible to go home at midnight and still have work left over for the next day.
i exagerate. slightly. but it is certainly an issue that is going to come up in near future. hopefully my kids can reap the benefits of the change, cuz my wife certainly is srtessed over the current deal. she likes to stay home with the kids for now, but she doesn't like that she doesn't have a choice in the matter. we will see how things stand when i finish phd, but moving country so we can both have a career is certainly a possibility. pity for japan. mores the pity for all the japanese who don't have that option.
its definately different here. They hit their early twenties and get pregnant. Marriage is usually reserved for their 40s or later...so not what I'm used to and after 6 years I still find it funny
a great comment from formfunction33 on the house-flipping thread:
Archinectors are like a pack of hungry wolves sometimes: cynical, overly critical, indolent, brash, drunken wolves. I love you guys.
So I'm back on coffee as of this morning. The result? Two jittery, frantic phone calls to vado and Steven asking "How the h*ll do I make an ellipse in Sketchup for a meeting I have to leave for in twenty minutes?!?!?!?"
Then I realized I could do online Sketchup help. Problem solved and I have two minutes to spare to make this post.
Sorry, vado and Steven - I think I'll go back to green tea tomorrow.
nice job LB, and btw...yeah, that's how i roll. B, BH's and BB.
for liberty bell... looks like you could use a will power boost... hang in there... you can beat the coffee addiction...
I suspect this is how LB was feeling this morning (kinda like me everyday)
i am not authorized to view that page.
I get "forbidden" on that link, techno - was it the spider on caffeine video?
My stomach doesn't like coffee anymore, though my brain does. But the green tea has plenty of caffeine, so I'm not kicking caffeine by any means - nor do I have the desire to.
Meeting went great; got the table, wall covering, and light fixtures finalized and client is happy.
Thanks for the support, everyone - like formfunction33 said, I love you guys.
lb- my dad hasn't been able to drink coffee for over 30 years, just recently he was diagnosed with acid reflux as the cause of no coffee tolerance... ask your doc if this may be your cause of having to give up the cup-o-joe...
God yes. I'm only just starting to figure it out... if I had gotten married when my family and friends expected me to, I'd be miserable right now.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.