This week has been horribly hot and humid, so I've been staying inside the cool air-conditioned confines of the hotel and meeting rooms. Unfortunately, I need to go outside fro time to time, and last night I spent a sweaty half hour walking up the hill to the cliff at the edge of the city. I really shouldn't have worn jeans and a long sleeved shirt - or I should have had one of these.
It's a special suit that cools your body when the outside environment is
too damned hot. Canada's DRDC probably didn't have me in mind when they developed it. They were probably thinking about the troops Canada sends around the world on UN peace-keeping duty. Nonetheless, there have been a few times this week when I'd have been happy to buy one.
In the shops in time for spring break next year?
I just found this video from the 2002 Grammy's. It's sad that there's been no improvement in the last five years.
It is characteristic of committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them and that every member's recollection of them differs violently from every other member's recollection. Consequently we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those that that have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials. From which it emerges with an elegant inevitability that any decision which has been officially reached will have been recorded in the minutes by the officials and any decision which is not recorded in theminutes has not been officially reached even if one or more members believe they can recollect it. So in this particular case if the decision had been officially reached it would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials and it isn't so it wasn't.
Maybe Sir Humphrey had it right and attendees shouldn't get the opportunity to review the minutes before publication? I would make life so much simpler :-)
The good news is that the murder rate over here has dropped to the lowest it's been for a decade, according to the Dutch Central Bureau for Statistics. Just one person in 100,000 was murdered last year, while 1.5 people were murdered per 100,000 in Britain and 5.6 per 100,000 in the US. That's pretty good, although I hear that Norway is the most peaceful country in the world, so there's some way to go.
The bad news for me is that men tend to be murdered more often than women and most victims are between 20 and 40 years old. I fit into both categories so I'd better be careful for the next few years. I'd get myself one of these nice protective vests but the Dutch meteorological office apparently plans to deliver a very warm summer and I'd probably sweat to death.
Show us a smooch.
When I was in London last week my father told me about a trick he'd heard of for poaching eggs perfectly with relatively little effort. This morning I gave it a go and compared it against the traditional method. To poach an egg using my father's method you will need:
- A pan of boiling water
- Eggs
- A small mug
- Butter, margarine or vegetable oil
- Cling film
- Salt and pepper
Take a sheet of cling film and press it into the small mug, then lubricate the film with a bit of butter, margarine or vegetable oil. Crack your egg into the cling film whole and twist the cling film closed. Lift the little package into the boiling water and wait for up to four minutes. I waited for about three as I like the yolks to be nice and gooey.
Lift the cling film package out of the water and peel it open. You may want to do this on a towel. Then lift the eggs from the cling film to wherever you want to serve it and season it with salt and pepper. As you can see, the resulting egg is fairly circular and no mass has been lost to the water.
Furthermore, it doesn't taste of vinegar - or cling film.
I also decided that I should compare the cling film method against the traditional method of cracking an egg into some boiling water and waiting for it to cook. I did this and was not surprised to find that a lot of the albumen bloomed into very thin sheets and broke away from the main body of the egg.
Again, I waited about three minutes for the egg to cook before lifting it to a serving dish. It was a little smaller and a little more messy but tasted about the same as the egg that had been cooked in cling film.
I think I prefer the results of the cling film method but it is a little bit more awkward as it involves a few extra stages and is not so easy to use if you want to do several eggs at once.
It is great.
If a waiter stopped by right now to take your order, what cocktail or drink are you having?
A few weeks ago I'd have had a nice dram but today is far too hot. Far too hot! I need long, icy cold drinks and I need them once every 20 minutes until the heat goes away, I tell you.
Mojitos, caiprinhas, even gin'n'tonics. Just make sure they're served in pint glasses and have lots and lots of ice.
Take a look at this picture. You can see a US 3-pin plug going into a converter that plugs into a UK 3-pin plug socket at the Holideck lounge at LHR T4. This sort of thing might be acceptable in a small non-transit airport but it is absolutely wrong at a lounge at any transit airport.
Any time that someone needs to transit through one country to reach another there is a chance that the electrical outlets in that country will be different from both their point of origin and their destination. Meanwhile, by transiting through the country in the middle they bring revenue to that country's airline and transit airport. And in such cases the transit hub should be thinking about the traveler's needs and providing simple conveniences like multi-format power outlets at transit lounges.
When I attend technical conferences they normally provide power outlets that will accept US 2-pin, US 3-pin and European 2-pin plugs. They often also provide UK 3-pin power outlets, too. If one-off meetings can do this sort of thing you'd think it would be relatively easy for someone whose business was providing services to as many itinerant workers as possible.
I hope this sort of closed-minded attitude and the resulting poor customer service is on its way out.
Paul's getting married in the autumn but as the autumn isn't such a good time to have a stag event we gathered together for a trip to the Epsom Derby, yesterday. Marc hired a car for the trip, and considering the off-roading we went through getting back out and onto a metalled road it was a good investment. You can go anywhere and do anything in rented car :-)
Despite arriving a little late we managed to get an excellent position on the hill, not far from the fire service who very kindly gave us a couple of gallons of water to help us keep our beer cold. We were also right by the parking lot of the helicopters that ferry the jockeys
between all the different race courses on a race weekend.
Marc's excellent driving saved us at least two hours of waiting in a line of traffic that wasn't moving because the traffic marshals by the exit gate weren't doing anything and had handed control over the a large, fat, tattooed man with a can of beer. With Paul's navigation and the willingness to drive a rental car down a track that had toppled tress in the middle of it we got back to Richard's place in record time...
