Boston...are you kidding me... snow in October?!?!?!

Dear Boston,

You have a great small town feel for a big city. Your politics are really liberal that your conservative credentials include Mitt Romney, the originator of single payer guaranteed health care, and Scott Brown, who's really more center than center right. You have great food. You do. A lot of the great food are just hole in the wall spots or small restaurants with 6-12 tables. I love you. I really do. You are truly an intellectual city. There's not much I don't enjoy about you. Except one thing: Your fucking winters. Look... I understand you snow before thanksgiving and this bullshit continues for 6 months. I understand that you're so far up north that it's dark by 4PM. I accept all that about you. But guess what, fucker? Snowing on 27Oct is completely unacceptable!! WTF?!?! Right now, it's rainy and weatherman predicts rainy snow in Boston and accumulation in Worcester. TOO MUCH! Cut that shit out Boston.

With tried patience

Zao

Any who, beyond that, capoeira with CM Toca and Prof Calango was really good yesterday. I can't say that my game has progressed anywhere, but at least I'm not being a fat ass anymore. It's exercise, hooray exercise!

As most people know, I hate my capoeira game, I really do. It's completely confused, and I don't do anything to help that. My Angola looks like contemporary, and contemporary looks funky. I feel like some point I need to choose a style and stick with it. I got my ass kicked yesterday by Prof. Calango, more so than usual. I'm just in a serious funk with my training and can't seem to get out of it. The good news is I'm back to training. This week has been really good with both CECA and MdP...shhh... don't tell them I train with the other one. Next stop, St Louis with Jesse and CECA St. Louis and hopefully this time with CdO St. Louis as well.

MdP has treated me well, even with the not so pretty split 2 years ago. I ended up leading Mestre Chuvisco's class on Saturday, which is really AWKWARD, but turned out with a good conversation with Mestre Chuvisco about being the only person in your group and training. I am also glad I finally went to Compasso's class at Harvard, I forgot how good he was at teaching.

I've also come to the conclusion that I have a upper limit to how many nights I can stay in a hotel. That number is 5. Anything more than that, I have a problem sleeping. I don't know why, but I haven't gotten any good sleep for 2 days. THANK GOD I'LL BE HOME FOR THE WEEKEND!

Basta Pasta with a.....rasta?

Boston never fails to surprise me, even though I've lived here, twice, and come here at least once a month, if not more. This time, though, my friends Laura, Omar, Alina, and Cais found a great friggin place for great pasta in Cambridge for cheap. Basta Pasta was great. They have a sauteed calamari, served with something like pita bread, was surprisingly good. This might be one of 3 times I've had calamari not fried, 1 time in Philly sucked horribly and 1 I can't remember, which isn't a good thing. I got the chicken ziti with broccoli tossed in a garlic and oil. It was slightly salty, but for $12.00, it was fucking great. Everyone else's food was equally as amazing for a really great price.

The next day there was brunch. The initial idea was Cafe Luna, which got great reviews on Yelp and looked great, but it was a 1.5 hour wait, so that was a no go. We managed to find a place next to Harvard Square that was phenomenal. The Cellar, which we considered for dinner but scratched off due to price, had great home fries and chicken fried steak. Regularly, no one notices home fries unless they REALLY suck, a la Original Pancake House, but if they are good, people don't really mention them. This place, however, used yellow fingerling potatoes, were well seasoned with onions and a TON of butter. I ordered the chicken fried steak, because as anyone who reads this knows, I'm really southern inside when it comes to food. For something that was cooked well in New England, they did a good job. The only problem was, they should have used a chopped steak not a real steak, but they did a good job with sausage gravy and free range eggs are always a good decision. We also ordered some pancakes for the table, which were some of the best I've had in a long time, and some rye French toast, which was not that great. Rye bread does not make good French toast, it makes a great Reuben, that's about it.

This weekend was also filled with a lot of great capoeira. Thank you to Mestre Chuvisco and Contra-mestre Toca do Capoeira Camara Angola. They are all really good friends and always a great time. I love those guys, and if you get a chance, check them out. I'd say do both, but many people would disagree with me, so choose your flavor.

The weekend culminated with HUGE traffic on the Mass Pike, a car fire, getting stuck at Logan Airport, and paying UP THE ASS for a one-way ticket to DCA.  

An Ode to Steve Jobs

I think for anyone who knows me, I hate Apple. I hate Apple for all it stands for, I refuse to buy their product (now), I have never went into an Apple store out of my own fruition. But, with the passing of Steve Jobs, I have to say, he is an amazing human that has revolutionized our world as much as Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, and John Rockefeller.

Steve Jobs gave us a new form of thinking. He was Apple. There's no doubt about it. He epitomized what Apple is about and what they stand for. He first thought of the personal computer that was easy to use for non-computer people. Bill Gates and Co. gave us a great computer, but it was Jobs' first MacIntosh that allowed the every-man to use a computer. It wasn't a smashing success, but made people realize that usability is as important, if not more important, as functionality. To him, usability is king and if your product is not easy to use, then it's useless. Jobs first epitomized this in the tech world. Everyone else, followers.

I think it will be a banality to speak of the success of the iPod and iTunes, it was great, I had one. But moving on. The innovation of Jobs is amazing. He had the ability to see opportunities and applications of new technologies that no one else even fathoms. The first time the multi-touch touch screen came out on TED, no one, not even the inventor, knew what to do with it. A year after the debut on TED, iPhone came out. It was revolutionary. Nothing touched it until iPhone3G. Everyone else, including the benevolent gods of Google, was late and a copycat. Jobs had the insight to see an opportunity that no one else even fathom what was happening. The only reason why Google and HTC can get large market share is due to pricing, and not innovation.

Steve Jobs is also not without failure. In fact it was his triumph from failure that ranks him with the greatest entrepreneurs in human history. Let's list the failures of Apple: iMac, G-series towers, the partnership to make a Intel Inside computer, every MacIntosh, PowerBooks, iBook, the list goes on and on. But he triumphed, through all of the failures. Most people would have stopped after any one of those failures, probably no one could have gotten new investments after any one of those failures. But Jobs did. Again and again. He defied the financial analysts, pundits, bloggers, everyone.

Finally, Jobs had pancreatic cancer. He's a person known for guarding his privacy. We don't know how long he has had it, but the last time he went on sabbatical and got a liver transplant, the smart money would bet that the cancer had metastasized in his liver. He carried on, for years. And this is a cancer with a 93% mortality rate in the first year.

Steve Jobs, I salute you and mourn a great lose. May you rest in peace and continue to inspire.

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Boise and Salt Lake City ALL IN 4 DAYS!!!

So, as many of you know, I've been living on a plane for the last 2 weeks. I've spent a whopping 2 days at home, it's been great! (sarcasm). DISCLAIMER: I spent all of 24 hours in each of these places, and 14 of those hours were at work, I might be biased.

Boise. It's boring. It's horribly boring. Granted, the place is actually really pretty, and there's a lot of outdoors-y stuff to do, but Boise proper is boring. And underdeveloped. Apparently, Micron and Boise paper are the largest employers. It is, however, the third largest city in the northwest, behind Portland and Seattle (how many qualifiers does Boise need to be ranked in anything?) The only cool thing in Boise is this: 

Yeah, don't ever insult or even give an awkward eye to Boise State. The QB is a hero. The coach is a god. The blue field is the pantheon of greatness. 

If I had more time, I would have liked to go hiking and check out the parks, but I don't. Unless I win the account there, I plan on not going back.

I flew to Salt Lake City and stayed in a Hilton. This isn't important if it wasn't for the food there and the bartender. The Hilton Salt Lake City has, hands down, the best non-independent restaurant I've eaten at. They made a medium done double-cut pork chop that was AMAZING, and greatly contributed to my ballooning weight. I'm not a stereotypical Asian, so no picture of food, but this time it might have been justified, with the emphasis on MIGHT. 

The importance of the bartender was to take me through the APE-SHIT CRAZY LIQUOR LAWS. In his words, there is no separation of church and state in Utah, and it shows. In Utah, all liquor bottles have a pre-measured pouring device with a counter on top, you will be fined if your sales numbers don't match the bottle numbers. You have to go BEHIND A WALL to MAKE cocktails so that kids don't see it. You can't have an open container anywhere outside of a designated area in a bar/restaurant, or its a $500 fine for you and $10,000 for the establishment. 

Multiple people told me to go out to Park City, where Sundance Film Festival is held, and check that out. Good idea. It's what Utah could have been with out Mormons. It has a liberal, independent, small town, with a homely feel. The sales guy that was travelling with us lives there and he claims that they have most restaurants per square miles, and considering the space and there's 170 restaurants it maybe true. We had lunch at Sundance resort, Robert Redford's resort space, and it was REALLY NICE. In the summer, the ski resort is a mountain biking path. It is absolutely worth going back too, especially if I pick up skiing. 

Overall, Utah makes me want to win my contract beyond just the money value of it. Boise, pretty, but I can live without.

And now here's Zao trying to be artsy again, with his HTC EVO4G camera-phone....

OoOOoO Zao's artsy

Salt Lake City Airport, Salt Lake City in the distance