… a work in progress

I’m starting to realize the people who work at Teavana in the Cherry Creek mall have no clue what they are doing. Starbucks seems to have a better training program. This was my third visit to the store, in the past I’ve bought some Jasmine Pearl and Green Teas. On my most recent visit I stopped in the store to pickup a nice new glass teapot which I’ve been waiting for them to get back in stock. The glass teapot was very nice, I love it. It’s very delicate and made in China but its quality is equal to that of the French made Bodum teapots. It’s very delicate however, I hope that I don’t drop it. To go with the new teapot I wanted to get their “blooming” tea called Rose of Suzhou. First the person who worked there didn’t know what the components to this tea were. Well first it’s Marigold, Jasmine, Amaranth and White Tea and second it’s disgusting. Tastes like soy sauce soaked water. I’ve had this same tea that I ordered from Dean And Deluca once and it was so gentle tasting and even more beautiful. Oh well, what a waste of $36 and 4oz of tea. After paying for the teapot and the loose teas I inquired about some Pu-Erh, some good Pu-Erh, the kind that comes in a cake and you break off. The sales person directed me to an ornamental Pu-Erh, not something you would actually drink. hmm, oh well. I don’t know much about tea either, no expert here, but did learn Teavana really isn’t a place for Tea Lovers. In addition I ordered a Jamine Oolong to-go and they didn’t start making it until the sales person thanked me for coming in and I had to remind them I had a to-go order.

When I was in San Diego, I did discover once a really fine establishment with passionate employees. The place in near La Jolla and called Infusions of Tea which is located at 8750 Genesee Ave Suite 285 next to BookStar, Starbucks and PF Changs. Infusions of Tea is setup like a bar with a bartender and all the loose teas behind the bar. I highly recommend this place if you are in the La Jolla/UTC area.

So I suppose I’m still looking for a good tea shop in Denver, I can’t drive up to Boulder every time I want a goo tea experience. I guess since I’ll be here for a little longer I’ll keep looking. Oh and speaking of Boulder a good article from the New York Times on Boulder.

Watched the documentary “A Map For Saturday” last night, great little film. It’s about a young man who leaves his job in New York City as a TV producer to backpack the world for a year on his own. It documents his travels and encounters with other backpackers. It would be nice someday to take a large amount of time off and buy a Round The World (RTW) airline ticket. The film reminded me of another documentary called “Long Way Round” with Ewan McGregor and his friend Charlie Boorman. In “Long Way Round” the two ride motorcyles around th world, the long way around. This year I plan to go to Europe hopefully twice in the fall when things slow down for work. Rent an apartment for a few weeks at a time and live with the locals.

I was impressed how light the guy in A Map For Saturday packed since most of his gear was for the making of the film. Here is his packing list. I’m not sure if this is the device he used, but it seems like a nifty lock. I’m gonna have to pick up one of these next time I go train traveling. PackSafe w/ Exomesh.

PS. The DVD version is “double” the length of the TV version that aired on MTV. The DVD also has a deleted scenes section.

I’m in San Diego right now for my dad’s birthday. I flew in last night to surprise him, and boy was he surprised. Today was spent troubleshooting computer problems for m parents. A PC that boots into the BSOD and sometimes doesn’t power up. CMOS was weird, a drive was making a noise and power supply sometimes didn’t run. Could be so many problems. Worked on another PC running Windows 98 with no CD burner. The Windows 98 PC which was running a Pentium II and a 4 GB drive was running pretty fast for that they needed it for. I stole the CD burner from the BSOD PC which is a newer P4 and installed it on the Win98 PC. Downloaded a free CD burner software and showed them how to backup some simple stuff. They had a brand new PC to replace the Win98 system and we set that up, with a nice new 20″ widescreen monitor. Tomorrow I need to transfer all the data from the two PCs to the brand new system, should go well.

Tonight we had Sushi Ota, so good! Here are some bad pics from my phone. Towards the end of the night I stopped taking photos. These are in the reverse order that I ate them.

Crab Head Soup

Tempura - Na No Hana, Shitake, Ebi

Crab Duh!

Sashimi - Shima Aji, Hobo, Japanese Tai, Japanese Blue Fin Toro

Crab wrapped in Cucumber, Tuna Meatballs. Both in Miso Sauce

I never thought that one of my most popular photos on flickr would be my Travelocity Gnome on a British Airways flight to Milan via London Heathrow. In 2005 I took this little guy with me all over Milan and Venice. I received weird looks from people, some laughs from people who have seen Amelie or Travelocity commercials. I heard that kidnapping gnomes and taking pictures of them in foreign places was going on way before I saw it in Amelie.

A couple of weeks ago I received an e-mail on my Flickr account from Schmap.com that two of my photos had been “shortlisted” for the 2008 London City Guide. This was such an unexpected e-mail, I didn’t think anyone was paying attention to my photos. I completed the photo release for them to use the photos in the guide and to properly credit me. After this process I went into my Flickr account and optimized some of the tags and keywords. Since the optimizations I’ve noticed a larger number of photo views. Well after a few weeks of waiting my photos seems to have been approved for the 2008 London Guide. How exciting for me, I never expected to have my photos shown anywhere outside of my own photo album. It’s not the cover of National Geographic Travel but I’m happy.

In the summer of 2007 I met up with my sister and her husband in Europe for a vacation. They had already been traveling for a few weeks on a tour and I met them at the end of their tour in Amsterdam. We wandered together for the next few weeks in the Netherlands, France, UK and Ireland. The first photo was taken near Borough Market at the Bramah Tea and Coffee Museum. I remember taking the photo because it was so colorful and the picture on the tin was interesting. The second photo is of a restaurant that the hotel had recommended and turn out to be the best Indian food experience to date. The place was called Memories of India and we went to the South Kensington location on Gloucester Road. Here are the two photos that were chosen for Schmap’s 2008 London City Guide and the corresponding links.

Bramah Tea and Coffee Museum: Colorful Lipton Tea Tin

Memories of India: Indian Restaurant

Bramah Tea & Coffee Museum
http://www.schmap.com/london/sights_southbank/p=2298/i=2298_4.jpg

Memories of India
http://www.schmap.com/london/restaurants_indian/p=331117/i=331117.jpg

I made Jasmine Rice for the first time ever. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but I have always loved and cooked short grain Japanese style rice.  Anyhow, it was good with the chicken I marinated the other night. Finally uploaded all of my recent photos from Thanksgiving, my two weeks in Southern California which included New Years and Christmas.

My ATT Wireless internet connection seems to be happy, I have a fairly fast connection. This weekend though I plan to hook up a Hi Gain directional antenna and access point from work across the street and point it to my loft. I hope that I get a good signal and I can cancel the ATT wireless service. I’ll update on the installation.

Happy New Year! I can’t believe it’s 2008, seems just like another day and week to me. I’ve been on a vacation of sorts for 2 weeks now and really haven’t had any spare time. I have finally uploaded a bunch of photos to my Flickr, most of which were taken on this vacation. Originally I was scheduled to be in California Dec 21st thru Dec 30th, however at the last minute I extended my trip till the 3rd of January. Here are a few of my favorite pics so far:

So I’ve been in California away from the cold Colorado weather to visit with family. My cousin is visiting from overseas and it is his first visit to America. It’s been an interesting trip for him, would have made a great movie or short film about his experience in the USA. So this trip is really all about showing my cousin from Japan a great time.

He had many ideas about America, most of which were not true or exaggerated. Or it’s possibly Californians are different from the rest of the US. But one funny stereotype he has about Americans were that we all have ice cream in our freezer. Well everyone we asked and every freezer we checked had some ice cream.

Wandered around La Jolla the first day which was Friday. Got to see some things I have not seen since I lived in San Diego, like the tide pools and sea lions. The next morning my cousin and I drove up to Claremont to pick up my Erika and Michael. My cousin Masamichi had his first experience with real Mexican food (I think it was called Brendan’s). People had brought their own pots to pick up Menudo and were lined up for the Huevos Rancheros. I suppose this is not real Mexican food, but closer than the stuff served in Japan. After breakfast we drove up to Las Vegas for one night. We stayed in the Paris hotel but spent a lot of time downtown at the Golden Nugget, Plaza and California. I guess there are a lot of Hawaiians that go to the California hotel. We gambled a little, I played some craps and video poker while everyone else hit the slots. After a few plays at craps I dropped some money on “YO Eleven!” A 15 to 1 payout and won. Nothing really funny that I recall happened in Vegas but on the drive up the traffic was horrible. It was so bad and so slow a guy jumped out of the car he was riding in, ran to a construction porta-potty in the freeway median and afterwards ran to catch up with the car.

Back in Claremont with my sister on Monday we wandered around LA, hitting up Pink’s hotdogs, K-Town, UCLA, Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, and stopped in Sawtelle. Driving consumes most of the time in LA so we head home for a Christmas eve dinner of steak at the only place where we could get a reservatio, Cask and Cleaver in Rancho Cucamonga. Christmas in Chino Hills was great, always great to see family. Pics will be updated below and on Flickr.

Post Christmas was a typical American event, shopping at the mall, looking for good deals and eating a “Hot Dog On A Stick”. My cousin has never seen a Pretzel or Mongolian BBQ, which seemed really strange to me. Afterwards we drove back down to San Diego we stopped by Tofu House for some Korean Soon Du Boo Chigae, which also my cousin has never seen.

Today was an easy day, Balboa Park and Old Town. It was Masamichi’s first time to have a Margarita, and it was a good one from Coyote Cafe. We are off to deep sea fishing tomorrow with H&M landing near Point Loma.

Update: I’ve changed my schedule and airline ticket and have decided to spend New Years (the biggest Japanese holiday) with family.  I’ve added an additional 4 days which is fine, it’s snowing and cold in Denver anyhow.

I returned back from Mexico on Tuesday safe and sound. No kidnapping or food illnesses. Took a few pictures, not as many as I had hoped since I was on the beach most of the time drinking good Margaritas and eating grilled Caribbean lobsters. I posted some of the pictures on Flickr, and have some video too which I need to compose for a Holiday Card. Overall it was a good trip, nice and warm, very friendly people, white sandy beaches, lots of tequila and being December I could go into the ocean. I went into the jungle to Chichen Itza and was very disappointed to find out that you cannot climb it anymore. I guess too many people were carving “John and Amy were here”.  I believe it’s now a Unesco World Heritage site and one of the 7 Wonders Of The World.

I’m off to San Diego on Friday for 10 days to see family and do a little road trip.

Just had Pour La France for breakfast at DIA. The place was jam packed, had the french toast and took off. I’m sitting waiting for a flight to San Diego via United. Thank goodness there is now 3G in Denver, I can surf the web without sub dialup speeds. I can do some work while I wait here. Woke up at 4:30AM, showered and went to the office where the shuttle picked me up. Considering the expected travel volume, checkin and security was quick.