rantlust

Posted by john on February 28th 2006 in Europe, Food & Wine
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Ahhhh, there’s Scotch whisky and then there are the others. Now a distillery on the island of Islay is preparing a potent mother of all Scotch single malts, with a quadruple-distilled, limited-edition product. Bruichladdich (pronouncing the name right is enough to cause the room to spin) will produce the potent distil of at least 92% alcohol, following an ancient recipe in their possession. Now a taste of that might just be something worth bragging about because it apparently is not going to be made again. Yeah right, if it is a best seller, watch it be introduced as a regular Bruichladdich product. Reports say that it is going to retail at around $700 a case.

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Posted by dharpe guje on February 28th 2006 in Developing Nations, Humor, India, Rants
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So as part of hanging out in India a few weeks back, I indulged in something that I had not done in a long time, no I didn’t pull (pun intended) a George Michael, travelling in a public bus. Travelling by city buses is a typical and widely used form of transportation in all major Indian states. Usually the state governments manage the service and barring a few exceptions, most end up running into huge losses, thanks to gross mismanagement and corruption. But the service itself is a primary means of transportation for a significant number of intra and inter state travellers.

Growing up I travelled exclusively on these city buses, which is a typical means of travel for most Indian lower and middle class families. It’s major advantages were that it was cheap and generally a reliable means of transportation over other options that were non-existent. I travelled about 10 kilometers to get to my school (for about 4 years) and likewise about 20 kilometers to the college (for about 4 years). The distance of 10 kilometers was typically covered in about 50 minutes to an hour and the distance of 20 kilometers was covered anywhere between 90 minutes and 2 hours. So in short a lot of growing up happened on buses.
(Read more…)

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Posted by renéejo on February 28th 2006 in Gadgets, Music, Technology
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Why pay €2000 for a big home theatre speaker system when you can have the affordable iPod Hi-Fi? Apple today announced this new product (among others) for a complete iPod experience. A perfect companion for my Nano. I am not an audiophile but the frequency response doesn’t seem that great (53Hz to 16kHz). Though, for the price, this seems like a great product.

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Posted by anupcs on February 28th 2006 in India
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Bihar maybe the most notorious state in India but it has some ingenious people. Raghav Mahato is illiterate but he operates an FM station with equipment costing only a dollar. He transmits Bollywood and devotional music and even local news from his electronics store. He didn’t know that it is illegal to operate a radio station without a license. His listeners don’t care and want him to continue the operation. He has become a local hero.

[thanks to harpoonflyby for the link]

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Posted by dharpe guje on February 27th 2006 in Developing Nations, India
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As history goes, forget it and you are condemned to repeat it. The recent trends in globalization and flattening of the world are ridden with unmistakable signs of temporary amnesia or a case of not adequately learning from the past. I think, a nation will be condemned to repeat mistakes if it doesn’t take the necessary steps to understand what it is transitioning into.

The price of progress for up and coming nations will be steep if they choose to ignore the macro economic factors that govern such economies. A country like India which has a history of using agricultural reforms to sustain its economy over the past several 100 years and in a organized manner in the past 50 years will need to figure out a way to seamlessly transition its vast population into the future where the ground rules are significantly different. This process will be both tricky and painful. (Read more…)

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Posted by riyer on February 27th 2006 in Disasters, Humor
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For those of you not in the know, it is common among friends in India to split a cup of coffee. Where I come from, the concept is dubbed ‘by-two’. It is common among my friends to simply say “Let us grab a by-two” in the local language to mean “Let us share a cup of coffee”.

I wonder if Mr Eriksson had similar thoughts when driving his Ferrari over the weekend. Check out this story. Don’t miss the photo gallery on the right side of the story. If there ever was a worth while ’slow-down-and-rubber-neck’ for a car-crash this would be the one.

PS: I didn’t know how to categorize this story Disasters? Humor?

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Posted by eugenia on February 26th 2006 in Food & Wine
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I love eating but I am not very fond of sweets. This is true for chocolates too as surprising as that may sound. Yesterday we attended a talk on chocolate at COPIA in Napa. The speaker was Robert Steinberg, co-founder of Berkeley-based fine chocolate maker, Scharffen Berger. The beginning part of the session was dry. Then, it got interesting when the sampling plate was brought to the table. This plate consisted of chocolates of varying cacao strength from Milk (41%) to Dark (82%). We also tasted chocolate nibs (the roasted cacao beans) and cacao powder. The nibs were very bitter but crunchy. I liked the crunchiness. As it turns out, Scharffen Berger does produce chocolates with nibs in it, called “Nibby Bar.” The milk chocolate, shunned by the purists (as is white chocolate), was the smoothest to eat.

From the talk, we learned some facts about chocolate. . . (Read more…)

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Posted by jcaldera on February 26th 2006 in Parenting, Random, Sports
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This is not quite about the most accepted meaning of the phrase. My son Sebastian has a passion for balls. Since his early months when he was able to recognize some things rather than abstract objects in the space, he developed a passion for balls. Coming from South America, with a Colombian wife, football, and I mean the one where you actually use your feet to hit, go figure, a ROUND ball, is a must. So, football is a must for Sebastian, and now that I think about it probably snowboarding and volleyball are too, but that is a different topic.

As he’s grown older his passion has become stronger, after books and stories, balls are his big thing. He recently discovered a yoga ball we bought during Vanessa’s first pregnancy. For those of you that don’t know, these balls are big, made out of rough thick rubber, and they are pretty heavy in general. I guees there are different sizes, we have a big one, so big and heavy that he can’t really play with it unless you are there to mostly play with it and he is there to watch. What surprises me is his stubbornness to play with this ball in particular. Watching him feel frustrated becase he can’t really play is heartbreaking, but watching him try in many ways to do it is so rewarding that it is all worth it. One thing I can tell about him, he doesn’t seem the type of giving up, which of course it makes me very proud.

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