The Irascible Chef

Happy 40th Birthday iChef Mindy! Welcome to the club!

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I’m just not sure where to start… Maybe a, China Power In -N- Out, list!

• Janet Evans
• Business Class
• Beijing China—the People’s Republic
• The Green T
• Hotel Kunlun
• Communication or not
• 2008 Olympic (Beach Volleyball, Men’s Indiv Gymnastic Finals, Swimming—MP, the BirdsNest, WaterCube)
• Pollution and Traffic
• Yuan, RMB, $
• Johnson and Johnson
• Customs in China vs Customs in US—Airports
• The Forbidden City Tiananmen Square
• New Friends from the Old Country
• The Great Wall
• Janet Evans

Okay, I have my work cut out for me…

Technorati Tags: $, 2008 Olympic (Beach Volleyball, 2008 Olympics, Beijing China—the People, Business Class, Customs in China vs Customs in US—Airports, Hotel Kunlun, Janet Evans, Johnson and Johnson, Men's Indiv Gymnastic Finals, Pollution and Traffic, RMB, Swimming—MP, the BirdsNest, The Forbidden City Tiananmen Square, The Great Wall, The Green T, travel, WaterCube), Yuan

Something was left out of the book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. It doesn’t matter how old you get, adults behave the same way they did when they were a child in grade school. Scenarios and situations might be slightly different, but the responses and human nature don’t really change all that much. Maybe people need to learn a few more things than what they did in Kindergarten.

Did you ever hear the one about the chaperones, who take a bunch of junior high students, on an airplane for an educational trip across the country for a week? Goes something like this:

Flight attendants served the kids Red Bull and Fuel Energy drinks before anyone could stop them. And they arrived at the airport with bags of candy and Starbucks coffee, with an arsenal of electronics to beat the band. Oh, students are in the 8th grade—which means they’re 13-14 years old and going on their first coed sleep away (3000 miles from home), school sponsored, no parents, just their friends, a few teachers, candy, coffee, super caffeine drinks, electronics, their unchecked hormones, and their “I’m in 8th grade,” I’m the top dog, we need to test the fence attitude. Continue Reading »

Technorati Tags: iChef, people, planes, travel

I have been to a few vacation towns in my life. Charming little places that I’ll never forget: Montauk, NY (a personal favorite); Hampton Bays, NY—not the snooty Hamptons; Sedona, AZ; Three Arch Bay in Laguna, CA; Cape May, NJ; Cold Springs, NY; Manchester, VT; Mystic, CT; and Pawleys Island, SC to name a few. Ah, the places my parents took our family growing up and some of found on my own. Great shopping, great restaurants, great beach time, great memories…

Capitola California is such a place—Charming, small, quaint, and not commercialized. There are just the right amount of people. You have to drive out of the downtown (about a mile) to get a Pete’s coffee. Relax they have a few of their own cozy, been-there-forever spots to get a cup of coffee.

Part of their charm derives from the fact that these places, for the most part, stay the same—the communities resist commercial change. You can count on the mainstay mom and pop joints as well as the hipsters that have staked their claim—really the originals, startup operations that were copied, mass-produced, and optimized by the commercial establishment—you know the names they’re now familiar to everyone. But in the process sacrificing personalization, quaintness, and that intangible something that you can count on being how you remembered it the last time you were there. Continue Reading »

Technorati Tags: Beach, Capitola