teabowl

I’ve been visiting beautiful Frankfurt, Germany over Christmas. Well, I’ve been staying with my relatives in Offenbach, which is 20 minutes to Frankfurt by transit. Been having a great time… an excellent way to take a break, great shopping and great culture. I went to see two exhibitions at the Schirn Kunsthalle - one about the discovery of abstract painting (Turner, Hugo, Moreau) and another entitled ‘Art Machines Machine Art.’

Here are two more random pictures from Frankfurt:

This is pretty sweet: Sign up for a jajah.com account, and you get Skype-like telephony but on your home phone. The calls are initiated using the web site, and both parties’ phones ring. Essentially, the service carries the long distance portion of the call using the Internet and feeds the ‘last mile’ through the local phone network under fair use inter-telco agreements.

It’s incredibly cheap from and to most de-regulated countries: $1.50 for an hour from Germany to Canada :)

http://www.jajah.com

I was served this delicious and very rich vegetarian dish tonight. It stems from an out-of-print cook book by Mary S. Atwood called Adventures in Indian Cooking (1972). Well worth making. Tonight, it was served with basmati rice, spiced green beans in tomato sauce and home-made naan.

4 eggs
4 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon clarified butter
2 medium potatoes, cooked and cut in half-inch slices
2 medium onions, sliced
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cloves

2 tablespoons ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ginger, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
pinch each of turmeric and cinnamon
1/2 bay leaf
1 1/2 cups coconut milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon lime juice

Beat eggs, milk and salt together. Melt butter and make an omelet. Fold in half and cut into 1/2-inch strips. Heat oil and brown onions. Remove half of them and set aside for garnishing. To the remaining onions in pan, add cloves, coriander, ginger, chili powder, turmeric, cinnamon and bay leaf. Fry for a minute or two. Put in coconut milk and salt; simmer for 5 minutes. Add potato slices and omelet strips and continue simmering until thoroughly heated. Remove from heat. Stir in lime juice. Garnish with reserved browned onion.

Variation: Instead of omelet strips, poached eggs can be added just before serving.

His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) (His Dark Materials)

Philip Pullman. Knopf Books for Young Readers 2007, Hardcover, 1312 pages, $36.74

(Direct URL: http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0375842381/)

The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Michael Pollan. Penguin 2007, Paperback, 464 pages, $8.00

(Direct URL: http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/0143038583/)

While I’m typically a big Starbucks fan, a devoted (some might say slavish) follower of the McDonalds of internationally standardized, excellent coffee-to-go, I never buy their beans or ground coffee for home. I get my home supplies from Whole Foods Market, in keeping with my objective to consume more organic things - and also, quite simply, because Whole Foods’ coffee is much, much better than Starbucks’.

This begs the question: why can’t Starbucks sell ground coffee that tastes good at home? Admittedly, I’m a snob and I have high expectations. Here in Toronto, there’s enough on offer in terms of coffee (organic, fair trade, micro-roasted on the premises, etc.), and it all costs more or less the same, so it’s not necessary to buy beans from Starbucks.

This week, as the result of an embarrassing lack of planning (or an unawareness of the dire state of my coffee supply), I ended up getting some Starbucks ground coffee, sort of at the last minute. ‘Buying’ isn’t quite accurate, because a kind colleague had given me a Starbucks Christmas gift pack containing a small bag of coffee beans and a gift card. To get it ground, I went back, bought a second bag, and had the baristas grind it all up for me (who, incidentally, appeared to be scared of their industrial grinder - funny given that they handle high-pressure coffee makers all day long).

But, the truth is: at home, the coffee just isn’t anywhere near as good as it is when Starbucks brews it up for you. Here are some theories to explain it all:

1. Starbucks uses different beans/blends for its own brews in-store.
2. Starbucks has better/different brewing equipment. Or better water. Or those baristas really know what they’re doing.
3. The packaged experienced of asking for a “grande mild,” being asked, “Do you need room for cream or milk?” and getting a steaming paper cup with the brown sleeve actually creates much of the value of the experience, and that’s what you’re really paying $2.00+ for. The flavour is in fact secondary when it’s embedded into the experience.

I’m not sure which one it is, but I’ll admit that the third one seems most likely to me. I prefer to think of it not as a critique of globalization or a conspiracy theory, but rather a kind of postmodern irony that I joyfully choose to engage in several times per week :)

Maybe I’m in one of those moods, or maybe it’s because Christmas is rolling around and gruff voices and abrasive songs are a welcome antidote to ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,’ but I’ve been enjoying three classic Tom Waits albums again recently. I remember being introduced to these by my friend Rustum Kozain who, incidentally, writes eloquently about our musical explorations while listening to University of Cape Town student radio in the late 80s/early 90s - a shared experience - in his blog.

These three Waits albums are his ‘departure’ pieces, a move into a more abrasive, harder to swallow, edgier style. For the non-initiate (if one is to imagine there are people who’ve not heard Tom Waits at least once…), his style is a combination of blues, cabaret and a sort of deranged, clangy circus music that’s both gritty and deeply musical. Noise and poetry combine into powerful music that’s emotionally raw and goes directly to the heart of its subject matter. Impossible to really classify, I struggle each time I rip a Tom Waits CD with what genre to put it into. (’Rock’ typically wins as an unsatisfactory default choice.) Maybe Tom needs his own genre.

Franks Wild Years

Tom Waits. Island 1990, Audio CD, $5.14

Swordfishtrombones

Tom Waits. Island 1990, Audio CD, $5.06

Rain Dogs

Tom Waits. Island 1990, Audio CD, $5.29

Each of these records features such incredible music, and they’re each so highly recommended, that it makes little sense to provide a blow-by-blow. I will pick three representative songs, one from each CD, just to give a sense of why I appreciate them:

Swordfishtrombones (1983) has my favourite Tom Waits track of all time, ‘Shore Leave.’ All about the debauchery and regret of an off-duty weekend while the narrator is in the army (presumably in Vietnam?), this is beautiful and lyrical in its sparse instrumentation and mumbled lyrics, yet so powerful when the xylophon-driven chorus underscores the feelings of love and longing, of being “so far away from home, and I love my baby so.”

Rain Dogs (1985) features ‘Jockey Full of Bourbon,’ an incredible, hard-driving rhumba with strong percussion and dry, ironic rhythm guitar. While the lyrics - try as one might - don’t exactly offer any obvious insights as to what they may be about, lines like “I’m on the lawn with someone else’s wife” and “I’m full of bourbon, I can’t stand up” may provide some clues. Like all superb poetry, knowing what it’s about is the least important thing.

Finally, Franks Wild Years (yes, it really doesn’t have an apostrophe; 1987) offers the unforgettable “Way Down in the Hole.” A mock gospel tune (or maybe the truest gospel you’ll ever hear…), this showcases one of the cleverest uses of a horn section to provide rhythm I know. Against the stark background of just a shaker and a double bass, these horns are both sarcastic commentary and the grooviest thing you’ll hear all week. And, of course, don’t forget to take note of the guitar solo (you’ll have to hear it to know why it’s great). “He’s got the fire and the fury at his command, but you don’t have to worry if you hold onto Jesus’ hand…”

Abrasive enough to appeal to any punk yet lyrical, fragile and sensitive at the same time, Tom Waits is and remains thoroughly unique. His latest, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards, is possibly his strongest yet.

A few weeks ago, on a Saturday morning, I woke up to CBC Radio 1. That’s what my clock radio is set to play every morning at 6. Even though the hosts’ accents are a bit pompous and there’s a daily quota for news items about Stephen Harper’s foreign policy, I prefer these bits of highbrow programming to the canned, predictable and formulaic play lists of corporate music stations.

That morning, they were playing new Canadian music. Still half asleep, I heard a strikingly good song called “These Roads” by Dave Gunning, a singer/songwriter from Nova Scotia. I grabbed my Blackberry and keyed in ‘Dave Gunning’ so as to not miss it :)

A few days later, I went to Dave’s website at http://www.davegunning.com and ordered his latest CD, “House for Sale,” which arrived within the week (I only figured out later that it’s all available at my friendly local HMV, thinking - obviously - that I was onto something cutting-edge and indie :). It’s an exceptionally well-produced, great-sounding album. If I were pressed to peg the style, I’d say it’s somewhere between Blue Rodeo and Great Big Sea with a little Hank Williams Jr. thrown in as seasoning. It’s got a certain East Coast earnestness to it, but also a wonderful melodic clarity and precise, crisp songwriting. The arrangements are well-judged and played.

This doesn’t happen to me often, but this CD has been playing in my car practically nonstop for a few days now. I may just have been in the mood for something with a little twang (I have times in my life where no particular genre in music satisfies me and I meander around aimlessly but frustratedly until something random really resonates and I really get into it). But I’d certainly recommend Dave Gunning warmly to anyone interested in that Canadian folk-country-rock nexus or good singer/songwriters. I think it’s good enough to transcend any genre-skepticism you may have associated with ‘country’ or ‘folk.’
In the meantime, I’ve also bought Dave’s previous album, “Two-Bit World,” and it’s just as good. Very impressed. (Yes, I know the album covers are a little cheesy :)

Recently observed at a Starbucks inside a Chapters (sorry for the crappy Blackberrycam pic). There’s practically nobody in this picture who’s not using a laptop. It’s a little puzzling and disorienting: there used to be a time when I would have thought this was really cool. You know, wireless network access, everybody collaborating or telecommuting (or just hanging out with their buddies on Messenger :)

These days, these people strike me as a little… I don’t really know what word to use. It’s just a really far cry from what the Viennese café society or the salon were meant to be - public spaces (or, in the case of the salon, invitation-only spaces) to hang out and debate. I somehow feel they should rather be talking to each other… but of course there are few suburban scenarios where that would happen :)

Spending time in a McCoffee shop staring at a laptop screen seems a little sad when you think about what a coffee shop represented about 100 years ago.

And I don’t mean to come across as all Luddite here - I’ve done it too. Although I’ve always resented being ripped off for wifi access.

And, well, at least the two in the foreground appear to be pointing animatedly at their laptop screen. Wonder what they’re talking about about. Maybe the next big web 2.0 startup :P

I was in New York in October and ran into these sculptures in Madison Square Park. They’re quite beautiful: life-sized shiny metal trees that oddly blend into the surroundings. I had no idea they were there… it had been one of those long walking days in the city and I sat down on a bench on the North side of the park to give my tired legs a rest.

Through the trees I saw something shiny, so I decided to check it out. It was an interesting moment - ‘discovering’ these sculptures quite innocently, and being genuinely surprised to find them. I wonder if that was the artist’s intention.

The work is called ‘Conjoined’ (one of three - the others are another, bigger tree, and a pile of rocks) and will be there until the end of December, 2007. Although I can’t imagine that it’s as nice in the middle of winter as it is in my picture. Link to the park’s site here.

I just saw an interesting piece on Deutsche Welle TV. Researchers at the Institute for the Foundations of Architecture at the University of Stuttgart in Germany have successfully built a rudimentary building using live trees and other materials. Dubbed ‘Baubotanik‘ (’Building Botany’), the idea is to exploit the natural characteristics (including growth) of living plants in conjunction with regular building materials in order to create a new kind of building.

So far, the group from Stuttgart has created a free standing bridge in 2005 (’Steg’), and a birding observation tower in 2007 (’Vogelguckhaus’). Pictures can be seen at their home page or on DW TV’s video on demand (German only).

I think this is very evocative and constitutes an interesting type of future construction, especially in areas where a low ecological footprint is required, such as nature reserves, zoos or botanical gardens. I was especially impressed by the idea that these would be ’self-repairing’ constructs - hurt trees can heal themselves, compensating for any harm by growing around it.