For my English-speaking readers: in the post below, I’m raving about the excellent Russian movie called Mermaid that we just saw at the Seattle Film Festival.

Друзья, на этой неделе открылся Сиэтловский кинофестиваль – который уже третий год как является гигантским событием в нашей с Ириной, в среднем, размеренной жизни. На три недели мы бросаем все – и как последние идиоты, стоим в очередях по часу на каждый фильм, ложимся спать в полночь в рабочие дни, ну и проявляем другие симптомы абсолютного психоза. Read the rest of this entry »

Mom gave Irina and I an awesome present for our 3-year anniversary: a super-fancy tea pot. We’re severe tea drinkers (especially me), and have quite a few leaf teas in our drawers, but we didn’t use them nearly enough since we didn’t own proper equipment.

In particular, the super-cool Aveda tea comes to mind: you might have tried it – they offer you a little cup of it when you come into any Aveda store.

The aromas are amazing, but the issue is, it has an enormous amount of little, ahem, pieces of crap that stay in your tea no matter how hard you try not to let any out through that metal filter -

The issue is that the holes are just too big. And don’t start on the whole “good teas have leaves in them and that’s it”. This one is a great tea, it just has lots of other non-tea additives in it, which are small.

So, this new tea kettle that mom gave us has a special compartment where you place the tea (essentially, a glass inside the kettle). Inside that glass, there are tiny, carefully made slits (in the actual glass material!) that are sooo much smaller than holes in the ugly metal thing above.

Anyway. Here are the results – no “crap” in the tea cup, just the way I like it (thanks again, mom!):

Experimenting with a different genre of a blog post.. Here’s a map of our walking adventures for one of the days in SF:

Man, 6 miles of walking a day is just TOUGH. My feet are designed to press the gas pedal of a sports car, come on.

And no, I don’t believe investing in good shoes. I believe in limos and airplanes.
Fiiiine. I do enjoy a good walk once in a while. I’ll admit it.

Did you ever stay at a hotel where the width of the building is, well, approximately comparable to the length of your car?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad thing. It’s just an unusual, and rather cool. This means that the 6-story hotel we were at only had 30 rooms. And that, my friends, can either turn into a nightmare bed and breakfast, or a very pleasant tiny little hotel with personal service. I’ve done lots of research in advance – let’s just say I don’t like unpleasant surprises . And TripAdvisor reviews go a long way in helping with that.

440 Post is indeed an unbeatable address. Just look at the aerial map – the green stuff in the middle is the block of the Union Square; the building to the right of the red arrow is the Inn at Union Square hotel where we stayed:

Amazing breakfast. Beautiful, tiny room with the charm of an east-coast hotel. Aveda products in the bathroom (major score for Irina, and I – admittedly – am quite impartial to their stuff).

First place: North Beach. For the first time in years, I had a chance to spend a significant amount of time in Italian Quarters of the City (San Francisco city, of course). As you know, Irina and I are major fans of fancy coffee, simple-but-amazing sandwiches, and french desserts.

Man. Did we come to the right place.

Pictured, from top to bottom, are: hungry me; the best gorgonzola and pear sandwich I’ve had in my life (walnut bread plays a big part here); freshly squeezed orange juice well worth the $3.50.

The place is called La Boulange. Irina claims their Napoleon was just as good, but I was only mildly impressed by the fruit tart. I am quite spoiled, yes.

…..

Second place: Nordstrom near Union Square. Unlike our Downtown Seattle Nordstrom, this place has a fancy-upscale-dinner establishment. They get the spot for the location, amazing service, and the views. Food was just OK; Irina liked their seafood pasta; my asparagus and shrimp risotto was not bad.

But the views!

….

Honorable mention: mushroom soup on Santana Row. Nothing can compare to La Fontana’s mushroom soup. But this one came really, really close. Upside: the bill wasn’t the usual $120 you get for two people at your friendly next door La Fontana .

Last March, Irina and I went to Los Angeles – and I took a few pictures and even made a video. And yes, it took me a while, but late is better than never .

Here’s the video that I made (Windows Movie Maker is not that bad of a tool, btw):

You’d expect that after getting a bartending certificate I would want to organize a party to show off the “mad skills”. Well, there weren’t really any skills yet, just some basic knowledge of the process, and desire to entertain .

So, Heiwad and I decided to co-host a party, and with lots of Irina’s help, here’s what turned out.

Evite:

Bar Menu (we had a few “signature cocktails”):

Some party pics (the rest is here):

We asked guests to bring their favorite bottle of hard liquor, so we had a few bottles remaining… I guess we’ll have to throw another party soon

My friends, I have recently went through a class and received a “licensed bartender” title. At the point when I received the Liquor Board license in the mail, that title sounded so much better than “Program Manager” .

No, no, I’m not planning to quit Microsoft and start a bar. But doing bartending at home-thrown parties is just the way to go.

So, a bit of history: my old-time UCLA buddy (and now a Microsoftie) Heiwad suggested we take the “Professional Bartending” class in the Bellevue Community College. And man, this was a good idea.

Some snippets of the class for you:

1) Bottles of alcohol. Everyone has two.

2) Water. Loads of water everywhere. Some in the bottles (did you think you’d be making cocktails from the real stuff? hah!), some on the floor – from successful experiences.

3) Small pieces of sponge are good for practicing your “garnishing” skills.

4) Metal shakers: real bars usually don’t have them, because bartenders steal them . So get used to having a “pounder” glass (why is it called pounder? cause it holds a pound of beer) and a plastic top to shake your martinis.

Do you really know what a classic martini is? Well, I personally had no idea that it’s just straight-up 2 shots of vodka. The few drops of vermouth don’t count (everyone in the US considers vermouth yucky, not sure why – Europe is completely different). Basically, when you’re ordering a martini, you’re just asking for two shots of vodka, but you’re too… embarrassed to call it just that – “martini” sounds so much cooler .

And don’t tell me that the olive changes the vodka taste.

More fun stuff from the class:

• Majority of the people taking the class work for Microsoft (uhhh, surprise) and Boeing.
• When looking for a bartending job, if you’re a Microsoftie, you have to say “I sit in front of the computer all day! I NEED PEOPLE!”. Apparently, bar managers relate to that very well. Computers give them a headache.
• More on the bartending interview: it’s almost encouraged to say things like “is it OK if my parole officer comes for a visit once in a while?”. Or, “I need to start working tomorrow – my car is about to get repossessed”. If you work in a bar, you need to be interesting.

I went to the Seattle Mind Camp conference today, and heard of this very interesting service called OpenDNS. The Internet is based on an ancient DNS technology, and every time you type in an address in your Internet Explorer, your poor PC has to go to through a few servers to determine what you were looking for. This usually takes a while; OpenDNS aims to improve on this.

The OpenDNS thing really works, I’m pleasantly suprised, and it was super-easy to set up – literally, 1 minute. And the net is noticeably faster. Enjoy!

By the way, about the mind camp: I took a picture of a funny drawing on the whiteboard, here it is:

На ковре из желтых листьев, в платьице простом, – пел когда-то всем известный тов. Розенбаум. Говоря о Бостоне, надобно признаться что никто в простых платьицах не ходит. Все тааакие стильные, что больно смотреть. Не, это я в хорошем смысле слова, не поймите меня правильно . Джентельмены в костюмах, никто не ходит в шлепках и футболках по улице (и не только потому, что холодрыга стоит ). Read the rest of this entry »