Nordic Ninjas and Finnish Meatballs

This morning, we hauled a giant box of Saori's clothes to the post office and mailed it to the US. It was the hottest day of the season so far, and the tourists and natives were out in force for the warm sunshine. We stopped at the Russian Orthodox church for a quick peek, surrounded by throngs of buzzing tourists who were happily snapping away ignoring the "no photography" icons everywhere. The chruch interior was not that impressive, I have to say, not nearly as impressive as the creative and beatuiful brickwork which made up the exterior. There was something about the simple material of the humble red brick, which cut, mitered, and moulded in various forms and laid in various bonds that created an awesome, elegant classical Russian church. The red brick really set off the green patina of the copper roof and the bright brassy gold of the onion domes and crosses.

After hiking back to Saori's apartment, we ate breakfast, cleaned up, packed up, and moved our convoy of luggage across town to a classmate of Saori's. Because Saori is staying later than the contract with her landlady, we found it cheaper to temporarily live in one of her classmate's studio's who will be staying for much longer. It's a different part of the city, so it feels more like a hotel than the very lived in feel of Saori's apartment.

This afternoon, we stopped for a light lunch of goat cheese and fig salad at Nolla, a really cool restraunt and bar close to kamppi. Finnish designer chairs and light fixtures, good food, and apparently it becomes a DJ'd dance club thursday through saturday nights.

After Nolla, we walked towards the church in the rock, one of the main tourist destinations in Helsinki. Since Saori has been here, it has been closed for remodeling, cleaning, whatever, but as we approached, the tourist busses lined up in front gave us a good idea that this was no longer the case. The church itself is a broad round space, enircled by the rough granite walls which rise all the way up to the ceiling. It was originally a granite stone mound, which had the church literally blasted into it. The entire space is capped with a shallow dome created from dozens of concrete spokes radiating away from the center of the dome. Glass between the copper roof and the rock walls allows light to to fall all around the perimeter.

Our next stop was a quick spin through the Finnish national musuem, which related a chronicle of the Finns living quietly and peacefully in ancient forests and tranquil lakes and rivers until western civilization in the form of the Sweedes, the Holy Church, and the Russians pretty much put made it a ragdoll in a three-way tug of war for most of recorded history. Unfortunately, we ran out of time before we got to more contemporary history, where silent, fast, white coated Finnish ski patrols took out Russian troops like a nordic ninjas.

It was a bit early for dinner when they kicked us out of the museum, so we stopped for a drink at a cafe in Chiasma, the iconic Holl project. My throat's been bothering me since I've been having some drainage issues and I got some tea to help soothe my throat. Afterwards, we walked over to Kuukuu for the Nice Helsinki Dinner. KuuKuu was the restaurant that Saori's architecture studio went to after final reviews, and apparently many of the big names in Finnish design also walked through the door while they were there. I ordered the Finnish meatballs and a glass of pinot noir, and Saori got the pan-seared liver. The meatballs were delicious. Best meatballs I've ever had. Served with gravy, lingonberries, and mashed potatoes, it compares to Ikea's dish like Ikea's furnature compares to the original scandinavian furnature designers'. Amazing. We finished the meal with the traditional Finnish desert of chocolate lava cake. Also, rather delicious.

Tinga Alejandro- casi tinga, pero no

Tinga is a Mexican dish, I think northern or central, which I somehow managed to almost miss in nearly twenty years of living in Arizona. It's a kind of shredded, slow cooked chicken or beef with peppers and chilis and some other ingrediants. I had it the first time prepared by a friend of mine's grandparents, who are Mexican, down south of Tucson. It is fantastic stuff. So I tried to make it.

My tinga was made from ingredients that I tried to remember in a grocery store, based on my memory of a crock pot variation of the recipe in a comment thread of a recipe I found online. So its pretty far removed from the tinga I remember. I ended up using chorizo and pork neck bone meat, instead of beef or chicken, and poblano peppers instead of chipotle. And I probably messed up the ratios too somewhere along the way.

  Tinga Alejandro is made with two cans of green chilis, one roasted, a half of a poblano pepper, a half of a yellow onion diced and sauteed with two cloves of garlic, and two tomatoes, charred on the stove and then smashed. Plus the 2 pounds of bone meat and the pound or so of chorizo.

I let it all cook for about 12 hours. The end result was really quite soupy, much more soupy or stew-y than I remember. I slapped it on some corn torillas and a dollop of sour cream, and it was so runny it ate through the torilla and most of the meat fell out onto my plate. It was still pretty good. Really really rich flavor. I put away my plate and got out a bowl, and threw some tortilla chips instead and ladled out some more of Tinga Alejandro. Pretty good, actually. Not quite as spicy as I wanted it. Up the chilis next time maybe. I think I was supposed to have some adobo sauce and chipotle pepper somewhere in there too. Next time.

Anyway, the main lesson here was: don't use pork neck bones. It makes a delicious and rich meat that falls off the bone, but then you've got to pick the bones out. I spent about fifteen minutes with a fork fishing out bones and bone fragments. Pulled out a few dozen, some about the size of a fingernail.

After dinner, after I pulled out the meat trying to separate it as muhc from the liquid as possible, I poured the liquid into my bowl and ate it as a soup. Unbelievably rich. It probably has about half of the rendered fat from the chroizo and pork. Quite tasty.

A Wee Bit o Haggis and Treacle Tart

While in the UK I attempted to sample the local, traditional fare as much as possible. This meant I ate fish and chips a few times, and a ton of meat pies. If there is one word to sum up British cuisine, I would say it is heavy. Steak and kidney pie. Mushroom and steak pie. Sausages and mashed potatoes. The vegetables are always steamed or boiled, mostly potatoes, carrots, and brussel sprouts. Heavy gravies, thick and flaky crusts. The tastes were always good, but its pretty much "stick to your ribs" every meal. 

I stuck with local ales as much as possible, which gave me mixed results. Some of the ales were so stout they could be confused with Guinness, while others were much pale. Almost all of them were served at a cool but not cold temperature, which was a little different for me. I did really like an extra bitter beer we got in one of the villages in Surrey, and while in Scotland, I drank a lot of 80/- (eighty shilling) beer. 

At one of the Edinburgh pubs, the last day we were there, I got the "wee taste of haggis" (cater to tourists much?), which was a very small portion of the infamous dish served with neeps and tatties (mashed turnips and mashed potatoes). Served with a wheat cracker, but no traditional prunes. It was actually not bad. If you made a slightly runny meatloaf with liver and kidneys, then you'd get a pretty close idea of what haggis tastes like. Of course, this is the tourist version, so instead of boiling everything in a sheep's stomach, they probably just added a few dashes of sheep's stomach extract. 

The last night in the UK, we went to a country pub/restaurant. This was in an old house, and it had low wooden ceiling beams we had to duck under as we walked back to our table. Actually, first we sat in easy chairs by a small fireplace and drank our pre-dinner tipples. I had my typical local Enlgish ale, Tay got his usual Kronenbourg, and Brit got her usual hard apple cider, although it was unusually unfiltered which gave it a really nice flavor. For dinner, we hit all the British countryside favorites like were a group of feasting young lords. Roast pheasant, roasted potatoes, ales, treacle tart, bread-and-butter pudding. Treacle tart is pretty good stuff actually. Reminded me a bit of the gooey butter cake of midwest fame.

Overall, I would say that British food is unfairly maligned, perhaps because it is contrasted with French and Italian cuisine. It's not bad, some of it is quite good, but it is more of a particular character.

Hello Ubuntu

For some reason or another, my netbook decided that it was going to refuse to start. When I would try to boot it up, it would endlessly cycle into the MUP.sys hangup and anything I tried to do to shake it up or resolve the error in the boot setup menu only made things worse.

More drastic measures were required. I recalled that it was possible to boot from a jump drive if there was a bootable OS loaded onto it, so at school I downloaded Ubuntu, which is one of the operating systsems based off of Linux. I'd always been kind of curious about Linux and other free open source software, so following a clear how-to online, I downloaded the Ubuntu OS and got it to save into jump drive that would boot whenever it was plugged in on startup. 

I was hoping to partition my hard drive and save whatever I had on my netbook before the crash, but it didn't let me do it, so I ended up letting Ubuntu take over the entire drive, pretty much erasing whatever data I had on the netbook before. I dont think I really lost anything of importance.

I like the graphic interface of Ubuntu so far, the only thing that has bugged me has been the fonts that strike me as a little weird. Chrome browser and Skype downloaded fine, although after the fact, I'm wondering how my printers will work if I don't have the driers for them...

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About a month or two ago, I helped out the landlord's dad who is playing the role of the handyman. Basically I figured out how to fix the dishwasher. Yesterday, he was here to set some traps in the attic and he gave us some money for dinner in thanks for the assistance. So tonight, Saori and I went to India Palace at the Airport. Yes, "at the Airport" is part of the restauranrt's name. Getting there is very much like being part of a shady espionage plot- one must drive out past the airport, taking a series of back roads to get to an isolated office tower next to the "Jacuzzi Suites" Best Western. In the small, empty building lobby, take the elevator up to the 11th floor. And step out into a tiki bar. Actually, the whole thing looks like it used to be a Trader Vic's with lava rock walls, woven bamboo ceilings, and palm fronds everywhere. But its an Indian food restaurant that has a nice overlook of the St.Louis Airport runway. 

Game to Game

Yesterday at lunchtime, Mexico was playing France, so one my Mexican coworkers and I went to go watch the game at a sandwich shop called Tortas El Guero ("Blondie's Sandwiches"). Saori and another one of my coworkers, Kiyomi, met us there and we at great sandwiches and watched the game along with a small but vocal crowd rooting for the Mexico side. It was a great game, Mexico delivered, leaving France, the runners up of the last world cup, on the brink of not even making it to the round of 16.

That evening, Saori and I picked up Mai from her apartment and took her to Kiyomi's house for Korean-style BBQ. Kiyomi's backyard is fantastic, tropical, lush, overgrown like a jungle with interesting things everywhere. Their entire house is kind of like that. In the middle of the backyard, there is large wooden covered pavilion that is mostly screened in, with a big table in the center with old wooden folding chairs, cobwebs everywhere, and hanging pendant lights. After a round of beer, our hosts set up a large cooking station in the middle of the table, which is essentially a large frying pan on top of a propane stove. We then proceeded to fry up shittake mushrooms, sliced green peppers, onions, Japanese squash, thin-sliced beef and jumbo prawns. Everything served with a kind of rice that has more wheat or barley in it, so its a bit like a cross between grits and regular short-grain rice. Delicious. After we'd eaten our way through most of the pan, Kiyomi brought out soba (wheat noodles) and fried them up, and then I regretted having eaten so much before. The yakisoba (fried noodles) soaked up the flavors of the cooked meats and veggies. Good stuff. For dessert, Kiyomi brought out a Japanese dish, shaved ice with condensed milk and sweet red bean paste.

We ended up talking past 11, and then we took Mai back to her apartment where we said goodbye. She'll be on a jet to Japan next Tuesday, while we'll be on the cruise. It was a sad moment, but we said "mattane" (see you later), not "sionara" (goodbye).

This morning I got up at my usual time to go into work, but the US was playing Slovakia, and when I tuned in, we were DOWN by a goal, so I had to stay and watch and lend my psychic support to the US team. Even my little brother Taylor, who is rarely up before noon, texted me to see if I was watching. It was a tense game, the Slovakians fought hard and tackled player after player after player. It was almost like the US team had never played a European team before they just looked unsophisticated in that regard. A very sleepy Saori made her way to the living room and watched with me. After a thrilling comeback with two goals to tie the score, the US scored again, but had that victory snatched from them from a terrible call from the ref, ending the game in a draw.

Performance Review and Design Forum

I forgot to mention, last week, I presented my studio "thesis" project at work during the official "Design Forum" they have every month. Basically, during lunch a person presents a place they went, a project they worked on, or something else related to them, completely optional. I took all my work and over two nights compiled it into a powerpoint presentation, which was actually the ideal format for this project, since it was best described by the flythroughs, animations, and videos I took. Most of the firm came down to see it, and it was pretty well recieved. I think I impressed the principals, at least they commended me on my presentation ability. So that was that.

This week, I had my performance review meeting, which wasn't nearly as official as I'd been expecting. I met with two principals I'd worked under, and we talked very informally about my goals, where I ultimately want to end up, how I felt I was doing, and if I needed anything or had any comments or suggestions. Went pretty well, they said they were glad to have me, and they really appreciated my abilities with sketchup.

Work is work, pretty normal. Tuesday, Saori and I met Chase and Tovah at the Phoenix art museum. Tuesday nights are extended until 9 PM and its free all day. After walking around the musuem, we had a big Chinese feast in Tempe. The next day, I met the pair again at the Heard Museum for lunch. The Heard has a really nice small cafe off the main patio, a little effeminine in touch but really good food. I got two hand made tamales with an ancho chili and hominy cream sauce. They went back to Colorado that night.

Here are some photos of my life and where I live


My Public Shoebox