From the article-
“Because Gehry’s so daring, you figure you’ve got to be daring, too, if you’re a client,” Campbell said. “You know if you hire Frank Gehry there are going to be new kinds of problems.” But he said clients accept the risks because “they’ll get a building like no other building.”

The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles too had its share of architectural flaws. The word being used to describe this building is ‘hot’- the glare from the steel was roasting the sidewalk, causing sunburn, and doubling air conditioning bills in the neighborhood. In 2005 these were dulled by lightly sanding the panels to eliminate unwanted glare. At least here, Gehry partners themselves were asked to come up with the solution for the glare. It is deemed ok to pay a small price in flaws for something as magnificent as Gehry’s buildings.

This reminds me of an article that I read during the recent San Diego Wildfire. A resident was asked why he chooses to live there in spite of the knowledge that a wildfire is bound to happen sooner or later, he says it is worth taking that kind of a chance instead of living someplace boring. The reasoning seems similar to that of people in San Francisco bay area. The earthquakes and the skyrocketing housing prices don’t seem to matter for a chance to live in such a beautiful place, as discussed in an older post.

Sketches of Frank Gehry, is an interesting documentary made by his friend Sydney Pollack which captures the artist’s work in an interesting fashion.

I always thought all cubicles in the cube farm are bad for humans. But, some cubicles are really really bad. Here’s Wired magazine’s sad cubicle list.

According to the article in Sacramento Bee, Dixon in Solano county seems to be the ground zero for the Mediterranean fruit fly, which is a dreaded agricultural pest. In order to cease the movement of the fruit fly from the affected area, agriculture officials have placed a quarantine on certain produce within a 4.5 mile radius. This places Eatwell Farm within the quarantine, and they are not allowed to move any tree fruit, eggplant, tomatoes, or peppers off the farm. The potential cost to Eatwell Farm is about $8000 to $10000 for the next six weeks, until the summer produce runs out. Read my farmer’s blog for more insight.

An infestation by the fruit fly can make fruit inedible and cause it to drop too early from the tree. Supposedly, the fruit flies got a free ride from Hawaii in the bags of vacationers, who could not help bringing some mangoes back to California.

PS If the Sacramento bee asks for a login(damn!), try dontbugme/dontbugme as login/password.

Then, I look for ads that do not call for an open house. There are no guarantees even here. When the owner gets too many emails from people looking for a place, they call for an open house eventually. This is what happens in most of the cases in SF. Anyway, I chanced upon an ad that sounded so good.

$1500 / 2br - Amazing apartment! W/D, D/W, A/C, 1300 sqft, all is included, parking (noe valley)

I am delighted reading this that there is parking and dishwasher, usually missing in a lot of apartments and this place is one block away from the happening 24th street in Noe valley and super close to public transportation. I responded eagerly that I am very much interested in this place. The apartment was worth easily more than twice. In the back of my mind, I am thinking this is too good to be true for SF. I am thinking that this place might be in rent control or something similar that the owner cannot arbitrarily increase the rent and hence the low price.

I get a response back from the owner which has no constraints at all and actually gives me options. I can rent it furnished/unfurnished, short,long or flexible lease, can have pets, all utilities(gas,garbage,water,electricity,heat) are included and asking for $3000 deposit. This sounds so good that I respond asking the owner to show me the place. After a couple of days, I get a message saying that the owner actually lives in Athens,Greece on a 5 year project and that he would send me the keys via FedEx so I can check out the place. This sounds reasonable to me and I send him my address. This is where it gets interesting.

I get a response saying he is having second thoughts about this and is not comfortable sending me the keys, nothing personal, he assures. He suggests that we use www.rent.com as a third party and deposit my $3000 into their escrow account.When he gets notified that there is money in the account, he would send me the keys. I have 5 days to check out the place and if I don’t like it, I would FedEx the keys back and that rent.com would send my money back. I am thinking this is getting way too complex just to rent a place and I look online to see what kind of services rent.com provides for such a situation. I could not find anything in the FAQ and I googled for rent.com and escrow. I get to see a page with very interesting information.

So, this has been a scam. I realized if something is too good to be true, it is. I decide to send an email to the customer support of rent.com and I3C Internet Crime Complaint Center. I got to know from rent.com that the property I am looking at is not a valid property and they ask me to stop all communication with this man. I did stop emailing this man and realized how the SF renting market has made it so easy for the fraudsters to make money. Luckily, it has only been a waste of my time and not the money.

The fraud sends me an email again asking me to pay the money to rent.com using moneygram money transfer, which has the email address of noreply@rent.com and it has the eBay logo and looks superficially correct, except for the email id that I need to send the moneygram transfer information which is athens-rent.com@california.usa.com. What I don’t understand is how anyone can get an email id like noreply@rent.com.

—————————————–
Here’s the scamster’s emails-
From GalenHalla@aol.com

Hi,
The apartment is available now, flexible lease, i am the owner, not a share, fully furnished, i can rent it unfurnished too, same price if unfurnished, parking, all the utilities are included ( water, garbage, electricity, heat..etc). Pets are allowed. I am renting the whole apartment for $1,500 per month. I am asking for 1 month rent payment plus 1 month as security deposit, this is a total of $3,000. If my terms are ok with you please reply back, if you have questions please free to ask. Here is the description of the apartment and pictures: http://pictures.aol.com/galleries/galenhalla
Thank you.
Galen

Hi again,

Just a few more info. Equal size-2 bedrooms/2 bathrooms, washer/dryer in unit, A/C, dishwasher, parking–2 spots included in the rent, safe neighborhood, nice neighbors, very quiet, no noise, building has maintenance. The lenght of the lease is flexible-long/short term. I have to tell you that i am in Athens, Greece, i am here with a 5 years job contract, i come to San Francisco every 6 months for 3 or 4 days to see how things are going with the apartment and if you rent it i am going to stay to a hotel during my staying there. If you want to see the apartment i would need your address to FedEx-overnight the keys to you so you can view it because i have no one there to show it to you and no one else have the key and i am afraid that this is the only option, we will talk about the payment process for the $3,000 and about the other details, but, first, if there is somethig else that you want to know please feel free to ask.

Address:
3973 23rd St
San Francisco, CA 94114

Thank you.
Galen

Hi,

I am having second thoughts, i am not feeling comfortable just sending you the keys, sorry, nothing personal. Let’s use www.rent.com –ebay’s rentals site/company as a third party: you send them the money, they put the money in their escrow account, they let me know that they have the money, then i send you the keys via FedEx, i will also give the tracking # to rent.com, by the time you’ll receive the keys you will have 5 days to go and see the apartment, if you like it you have to notify rent.com and they’ll release the money to me, if you dislike the apartment you will also have to notify rent.com and you will have to fedex me the keys and provide me the tracking #, you will also have to provie the tracking # to rent.com so they can track it too, when i will receive the keys i will notify rent.com that i received the keys, then they’ll send you the money back. What do you say? If you agree i will contact them and they will send you an email with all the information….let me know. I found an agency of rent.com here in Athens which is good, i spoke to them and everything is great, they ‘ll take care of everything so we can both be protected. The next step is to give me the ok to start this up with them and they’ll contact you.

Here is a snippet from the NY Times article,

“Jeremy Orme, who runs Fried Creations, the home of the Combo Plate, introduced a new item at this year’s fair: deep-fried Pepsi. He rolls out his Pepsi-based dough, dips it in a batter made with Pepsi and deep-fries it for 90 seconds. His oil, made of soybeans, is trans-fat free as required, and on the front of his booth he has posted a local newspaper’s account about the fair’s trans-fat ban”

Notice that it is deep fried for sure, but it is trans fat free. So, no guilt involved, even if you have to get yourself an all new wardrobe after the fair.

While on the topic of deep fried everything, I read that French fries are not really French. It is supposedly a Belgian marvel and the French stands for the type of the cut, which means to cut in thin, long strips. I guess a lot of time was wasted after 9/11 renaming French fries and French toast(which is also not French) to Freedom fries and Freedom Toast.

These tomatoes are ripened in the plants and harvested 24 hours before it gets delivered to me, they are so juicy and flavorful when I cook them. I got to know tomatoes should not be refrigerated as chilling stops the ripening and kills the flavor of the tomatoes . That leaves a short and finite time before I need to cook them. I did try my favorite ones like the tomato pickle, tomato rice and the egg curry with plenty of tomatoes. I also had to find new ones to use up all the tomatoes and have been figuring out how to can the tomatoes so I can use them during winter. The New York Times had an interesting article with recipes So Many Tomatoes to Stuff in a Week, this will surely come in handy now.

Although the tomatoes have been overwhelming, I am very happy with the farm box without which I would never had the courage to try Swiss chard, fava beans, leeks, arugula or rutabaga(what a name!). I do not like all the vegetables I get, but I do try them and have liked many of them. It has been an interesting experience so far.

The words eggplant and bell pepper always reminded me of the word bootstrapping from my college days, where you reuse the few words of a language to write something else. I like a little more imaginative words like brinjal, aubergine(sounds like a pretty girl’s name), capsicum(I don’t want to go there).

I was going through such a trauma with the names of the vegetables and I hear Okra. What a magical name for my favorite vegetable and it is of West African origin. That’s when I realized not all names were bad. I was used to calling it Lady’s finger, ughh.

I saw the original white egg variety recently at a farmers market and it made sense as to why they are called that. But still, eggplants should have been named something else.