tenminusone

Intelligentsia has in many ways perfected espresso and how coffee is prepared and served. Their attention to detail, design aesthetic, and the quality of their product are setting a new standard in the coffee shop experience. This video gives a glimpse into how they do it and why they’re my favorite coffee shop. Kudos to the Department of the 4th Dimension for a well done video.

Those of you interested in using a Syphon coffee maker should look here.

More 35mm B&W Photos from my recent trip to Japan.

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You may know Aaron Neville from the three recordings he made with Linda Ronstadt (which never seemed to stop playing on the radio) back in 1989. What you may not know is that he also created one of my favorite (chill) funk songs. Although the track blurs the line between Funk, R&B, and Soul, I’ve seen it included on some New Orleans Funk compilations so I’m calling it Funk. Whatever you call it, it has a chill groove and a slick dose of Soul/Funk accented by Neville’s unique voice. Enjoy.

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This is real.

Over the past 6 months I’ve been exploring Funk music, getting to better understand the genre and enjoying the many ways it was interpreted across the globe over the span of about three decades. It seems funk made its way to nearly every country and had a fairly decent presence starting from the late ’60s all the way through the early ’80s. The funk bass line, guitar riffs and vocals have the magical ability to get people (at least this person) moving and jerking around to the beat–in almost any language. » Read the rest of this entry «

Finished Product

Kirala, is a Japanese Restaurant in Berkeley, CA where I learned to appreciate seafood. Prior to my first bite of Sushi there, I had never been fond of Seafood and barely ate any at all except for the occasional Fillet-o-Fish (does that even count as seafood?). Nearly 11 years later, seafood (particularly fish) makes up a large portion of my diet.

It didn’t take long before I became a regular at Kirala and the one dish I almost always ordered was the “Butterfish” or Miso Marinated Gindara (a.k.a, Black Cod or Butterfish), a dish Kirala and their robata masters had perfected. Since moving out of the Bay Area, I’ve been searching for a worthy equivalent to Kirala’s Butterfish and I was starting to lose hope until I decided to attempt to create my own using some extra Gindara we had from nabemono the night before. » Read the rest of this entry «

35mm B&W photos I took at the Tsukiji Fish Market in December.

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The whiteness is like the soul, people say; it should not even be stained with soy sauce. Its relationship with fish reflects a shared provenance: water. Rice is part of the concept of harmony and communality that the Japanese hold so dear. It is the only dish that is shared from a common bowl. A famous proverb written about rice serves as a metaphor for humility, a virtue the Japanese hold dear: “The heavier the head of rice, the deeper it bows.”

An excellent article from the Economist (here) regarding Japan’s cultural and historical ties to rice and how the relationship with rice is changing in modern Japan. {Thanks to Rudy for forwarding me this great article.}

I recently stumbled upon a Business Week article from 2006 when Carmine Gallo sat down with Google’s Marissa Mayer to gain some insight into how Google optimizes its meetings. Although some of these techniques wouldn’t apply to every organization and many (if not all) of them are part of most manuals on efficient meetings, the execution of a few of the techniques is rather unique and worthy of  consideration (e.g., #5 and #3). I would be interested in learning how these “keys” have been enhanced over the past 4 years.

Marissa Mayer’s Six Keys to Running Meetings

1. Set a firm agenda.
2. Assign a note-taker.
3. Carve out micro-meetings.
4. Hold office hours.
5. Discourage politics, use data.
6. Stick to the clock.

My recent trip to Japan was my second time in the country as a tourist. Having photographed many of the sites I visited with my digital SLR during my first trip, I decided to photograph the same sites using B&W 35mm film this time around. The camera I chose to shoot with was my Nikomat EL which was purchased by my uncle during one of his trips to Japan in the early 1970′s. It became my first camera when he gifted it to me some 20 years after he purchased it, and it accompanied me back to the country from which it was purchased almost 40 years ago.

It is by far my favorite camera (rugged, solid build, great optics, and simple mechanics) and I will be posting some of the images I captured with it in the coming weeks.