Wine Cellar Under the City

Tonight we went to a very cool place in Budapest called Domus Vinorum where we tasted Hungarian wines (who knew?) and ate dinner in the restored ancient wine cellar.

I don't drink, so I cannot comment on the quality of the wines. My French colleague was predictably not impressed, the Brits couldn't wait to switch to beer (but that's no indication) and the Italians seemed to like it. Everyone did enjoy the Bikavér, or "Bulls Blood," the most famous Hungarian wine, though apparently many consider it mediocre. That shows how much we know.

The food was good, but not great. I managed to eat two desserts, so I have no complaints.

So, although nobody thought the wines or the food were anything special, we nonetheless all thoroughly enjoyed our evening in this unique setting. Our host should get most of the credit for this. He carefully explained the details of each wine and provided some amusing anecdotes to go with each one.

Of course, he also gave us a grappa-like apricot liqueur (Palinka?), which probably helped as well.

iPoo

From Maybe You Shouldn't Buy That, now you can listen to tunes while you poo. Fabulous!

Reality Check

On Fox News Sunday last weekend, Sen. Richard Shelby repeated the tired Republican party mantra that Obama is taking the country down the road to socialism. When asked by host Chris Wallace to elaborate, he stated "So, they intervene last fall in the bank crisis. No one has ever done it on that scale before."

Um, last time I checked, George Bush was president in the autumn of 2008 and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was the architect of the banking bailout (not that there's anything wrong with that - although it could have been done differently and better).

So the truth, using Shelby's definition, is that the Republicans started us down the road to socialism (not that there's anything wrong with that). But of course, the Republican party does not often let the truth get in the way of their message.

It seems that the Bush years were so bad, even for Republicans, that their communal brain has blotted out those years altogether. In their repressed-memory reality, the US government has moved seamlessly from the Clinton years to Obama, and all of our problems are down to them.

When a Bush administration aide asserted a few years ago that "we make our own reality," I guess he really meant it!

Blunkett Gets Dumped Again

Former UK Home Secretary David Blunkett got trampled by a cow while on walkabout yesterday when the cow decided to chase after Blunkett's seeing-eye dog. The MP and former government minister broke a rib and sustained sum bruising, but was otherwise all right.

He says that the incident his given him in new insight into Labour's problems and says he's a metaphor for what's happening to the Labour party: "I have a broken rib and am bruised all over but am still walking."

"Even the animals are angry with us," he said of his embattled party. That about sums it up, but for now, Gordon Brown's government continues to cling to life.

The dog, by the way, escaped unharmed.

Jesus Loves Guns

A Kentucky pastor has told his congregation to bring their handguns to church later this month for a gun celebration. They will also raffle off a handgun for $1 a chance.

The preacher says, "As a Christian pastor I believe that without a deep-seeded belief in God and firearms that this country would not be here." Because we all know that Jesus loves guns, right?

I'm sure this will end well. No doubt we'll be hearing about this event on the evening news.

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

In the meantime, watch out for this mob!

Man v. Machine

It seems that I'm not the only one who tries to beat the sat nav system. The UK's Metro reports that 40% of people surveyed in Britain try to better the travel times predicted by their satellite navigation systems.

I guess it's just human nature. People look at the estimated arrival time and view it as a challenge. They want to prove to themselves that they're smarter than the machine.

By the way, I usually win.

Kerbside Singalong

Just when I thought city living could not get more irritating, Boris Johnson and company have come up with more lunacy that will make it just that.

The Sunday Times reports that the mayor of London is backing a new scheme where "31 pianos are to be plonked around the capital to encourage people to gather for a singsong with strangers. They will be placed at prominent sites such as the British Library, the Natural History Museum, the Bank of England and Tate Britain."

A full-time piano tuner will zip around between pianos on a bicycle to keep them all in working order.

The article goes on to say that:

The organisers believe the scheme will encourage trust. Although the pianos will be chained to bollards and railings, members of the public will be trusted not to vandalise the instruments or steal the laminated songbooks.

Colette Hiller, director of the scheme, which is part of the Sing London festival [says] “We want people to treat the piano nicely, as they would a piano in their own home, to enjoy the songbooks with care and to cover the piano when it rains.”

Right. (Can you imagine how long these things would last in Manhattan?)

Anyway, now between wedging myself into overcrowded tube carraiges, dodging motorcycles and avoiding free newspapers being shoved into my face, I can listening to screaming Susan Boyle wannabes belting out show tunes on street corners courtesy of the Mayor of London.

Thanks, Boris.

Palm London

Saturday night's dinner at the new Palm in London proved a great success. I will admit to a bit of scepticism before we arrived, and remained unconvinced that the New York steakhouse experience would travel well across the ocean. On that count, I was assuredly (and happily) wrong.

Although nothing can re-create the original (nor should it try), the space felt like a steakhouse should feel, despite the fresh paint and newly polished wood floors. Perhaps in eighty years it may even come to resemble Second Avenue - the ingredients are there.

Most importantly, the steak was the real thing and equal in taste to that served in the US. The prices are staggering, £69 for an 18 oz. New York strip (I expect that's somewhat due to importing the meat), but well worth it. The 14 oz. is more reasonably priced (relatively) at £49, and normally I think this should be big enough to satisfy my appetite.

The slightly scaled-down menu includes USDA Prime American beef (NY strips and filet mignon only), British beef and lamb, Nova Scotia lobsters, fish and many of the traditional Palm side dishes and appetisers. Fried onions and cottage fries were identical to those served in New York and the creamed spinach was very good, but slightly different (I think it had cheese in it). The authentic New York cheesecake and Chocolate fondant deserts provided a fitting finish to a superb meal.

I thoroughly enjoyed my dinner at the Palm. Best of all, now I do not need to wait until I travel to America to get the authentic New York steakhouse experience. I cannot wait to go back, but first I need to make some more money!

NYC Comes to London

Of the many things I like in and about New York, I miss the steakhouses the most. So, imagine how thrilled I became when I heard the news Friday that the Palm was opening in London that night! I immediately got on the phone and secured a booking for Saturday night. Since then, I have been in a state of great anticipation, but also high anxiety driven by the fear that the London version will fail to meet the New York original's high standard.

I've always had mixed feelings about New York steakhouses the Palm and Smith & Wollensky branching out to other cities. It can only dilute the franchises, as the copies can never measure up the original - and they don't. They also run the risk of becoming chain restaurants like Chili's or Olive Garden, which I guess they really are, albeit with a much higher level of quality.

That said, because I do not go to New York often enough but do travel occasionally to other large American cities, I really like that I can eat at the Palm or Smith & Wollensky when I go to Miami, Chicago or Los Angeles. These restaurants are close enough to the originals that I always enjoy them.

So on balance, and especially as I live in London, I view the Palm coming here as an exceptionally good thing. Not that there aren't any good steakhouses in London. I have found a few fairly good places. None of these, however, come close to the experience at the Palm or its New York brethren.

I will give you a full report on tonight's meal next week. If the London Palm stands up to the original, and if my wallet can take it (which is highly unlikely), I'm hoping spend many happy evenings there eating steak.

In the meantime: your move, Smith & Wollensky.

Cameron's House

For a cool $2.3 million, you can buy the house where Ferris Bueller launched his friend Cameron's father's Ferrari through the glass walls and into a ditch.

(Picture via The Telegraph)

Sunshine State

Some observations from Naples, on southwest Florida's beautiful Gulf Coast:

1. Everyone drives huge cars and SUV's. I'm always amazed by the number of Cadillacs and Lincolns here (and I never knew Saab made an SUV).


2. White sandy beaches and warm gulf water suite me just fine.


3. The older age demographic of both locals and tourists is noticeable everywhere (and I'm contributing).


4. These alligators look like they could easily turn a small domestic pet into a tasty snack.


5. It may take me a while to get used to dinner at 4.30 pm.


6. Warm weather beats cold weather hands down.


7. A lot of people here still really like Dick Cheney.

Return to Prague

It's been almost exactly one year since my last visit to Prague, and this time my stay is proving to be a much more pleasant affair. Last time, I found my hotel seriously sub-standard and to top it off, my trip coincided with the Champions League final causing me to miss all of the match, except the part where Chelsea lost.

This time I'm staying in a infinitely better hotel, the Pachtuv Palace, which overlooks the Charles Bridge and the Prague Castle. The room is great, the service personal and efficient and the location spot on. First rate all around. I'm enjoying myself despite the fact that I'm here on business and doing nothing else but work.

And, Chelsea has already bowed out of the Champions League (I'm still having a hard time talking about it), so I don't have that to worry about this time.

Walk of Shame

A while back, I commented about how I found it amusing to watch people who have slept somewhere other than their own bed make their way home on Sunday mornings. Now I find that doing this actually has a name: the "walk of shame."

I came across it while reading a site called Texts from Last Night. Their hook is "Remember that text you shouldn't have sent last night? We do." Recipients of these text faux-pas forward them to this site for all the world to see. Very funny, and usually pretty vulgar.

Anyway, the text that caught my attention was:

The good thing about walking home in a dress on Sunday morning is that people mistake my walk of shame as a walk to God.

Pretty good.

And after doing a little more poking around, I found that the Huffington Post reported last summer that "the 'morning after' look has morphed from ignominy to desirability -- the walk of shame has become chic."

My favourite, though, is the report in Campus Delight (albeit fictitious) that describes a walk of shame hall of fame to be opened near Boston University. The piece says:

An independent alumni group of Boston University, long known throughout the Northeast as a party school, unveiled plans yesterday to open a ‘Walk of Shame Hall of Fame’. The Hall will honor BU students who have gained a certain amount of celebrity throughout the campus for shacking up with randoms, then making that long walk home the next morning in their nighttime attire.

(Photo from Campus Delight)

Maybe they should do this for real.

The Future of Portfolio Management

Even though the world's financial markets remain in turmoil, recent rises in equity markets have re-kindled interest in stock-picking, with many investors desperate to make their money back.

An article in yesterday's Evening Standard highlights the difficulty in choosing a portfolio that will actually make money. They set out to discover "Who is better at picking shares in the midst of a major recession — a highly trained, media-friendly stockbroker, or the office cat?"

The result? Over the past six months, the stockbroker's portfolio beat the overall FTSE 100 return, achieving a 6% gain, but failed to match the cat's strong 14% gain over the period.

Separately, Metro reports that rattraders.com uses trained rats to choose whether stock prices will rise or fall by pressing levers. When they make the right decisions, the rats receive bonuses just like real traders, although the rats get food rather than cash.

Rattraders.com says:

Our program is a professional service to the financial industry; rats are being trained to become superior traders in the financial markets. Using our own methodology in accordance with well-established animal training techniques, our subjects learn to recognize pattens in historical stock and futures data as well as generating trading signals. We provide solutions for tick based trading data and day based data. RATTRADERS rats can be trained exclusively for any financial market segment. They outperform most human traders and represent a much more economic solution for your trading desk.

Potential cat-rat office politics aside, for those calling for serious reform in financial market practices, perhaps the day has arrived.

I know I'm putting my cat to work on my portfolio immediately.

More Frites Please

Tonight I'm headed to one of my favourite London restaurants, Le Relais de Venise L'Entrecôte. It's a London offshoot of a Paris original that takes great pains to remain true to its Parisian roots.

The beauty is in its simplicity: no bookings, no menu, paper tablecloths and relatively low prices. Everybody eats the same thing: salad with secret mustard vinaigrette topped with walnuts followed by sirloin steak (cooked to order - go for rare, it's that good) and some of the best frites I've ever eaten. You do get a choice of deserts. I like the caramel ice cream.

It's no New York steakhouse, but of course it does not try to be one - nor should it. The atmosphere is thoroughly French and the steaks are excellent. The atmosphere is fun and informal, and the price is right.


I cannot wait for dinner!

New Look

I've decided it's time to refresh the look of the blog. I aimed for simple, clean and readable. Hopefully this layout comes close to this.

I even impressed myself a bit (well, a lot actually) by modifying some html code in the standard Blogger template to get what I wanted.

Anyway, I'll probably tinker with it a little over the next few days as I become accostomed to the new layout.

Comments welcome. Let me know what you think.

UPDATE: If the whole thing goes to hell, you'll know I touched one bit of html code to many.

Right Track

Limbaugh, Republicans and the tea-baggers can bloviate all they want, this graph tells the story in America today.

Attack of the Birds

Today I spent a few minutes watching the Fox & Friends morning show on Fox News (I know, I know). One story they reported was the FAA's release of airplane bird strike data for the past several years. Fox reported the "shocking" number of 89,000 bird strikes on planes in America since 1990.

I'll admit that's a surprising number, but given the context of how many airline and general aviation flights that have taken place in America during the past nineteen years, perhaps I would not characterise it as "shocking."

Anyway, that's forgivable, especially as we know Fox sensationalises everything. But the trio of twits that host this show really lost the plot when the woman anchor (don't know her name, Gretchen something) called the strikes "attacks."

Attacks?! Who is this woman, Tippi Hedren? I suspect we'll now hear calls for a "War on Birds." I'm sure my cats would enthusiastically support it.

Alfred Hitchcock would be proud.

Pro-Torture

New York Magazine lists the pro-torture brigade. No surprise, it's the usual suspects.

From what I can tell, the core of their argument is essentially "Well, it works!"

Everything that happened during the Cheney/Bush years comes down to this: In order to save our values and rights, we must destroy them.

Patriots one and all.

The Will of the People

This was the view on 1 February before many realised the extent to which torture was institutionalised. I wonder how much prevailing opinion has changed today.