Monthly Archives: September 2013

The cook matters. In large Japanese restaurants even more.

Posted on by

I’ve posted in the past here about my positive experience when eating at Akai Hana in Rancho Bernardo.
When reading some negative comments I was very surprised as they were not matching my experience and I was unable to imagine how it was possible.
This changed one day last July that I was there alone, but accepted a table anyway contrary to my habitude of eating at the sushi bar.

I ordered a few of my preferred types of sushi and because I had no one distracting me from the food I had the time to focus on it.
I noticed several differences in the cutting and the assembly of the sushi compared to the way I was used to in that place, and the taste was not matching what I had just a day before.

I guess that the large difference is tied to the way the food is prepared in a Japanese restaurant compared to Italian restaurants where I’ve never experienced such a major swing in the taste of the food with the exception of changes of ownership.
While in a large Italian restaurant you find a number of people working in the kitchen the preparation of an individual dish is seldom a one-man process end-to-end and the chef supervises the activity of all the cooks so that the end result for a given dish is always the same.
This likely is not the way it works in the kitchen of a large japanese restaurant due to the nature of the sushi preparation.
For sure this is not happening when eating at the sushi bar where the cook is preparing the sushi and sashimi (and several other dishes) end to end without external collaboration.

Lesson learned: I’ll keep waiting for Hiro-san when eating at Akai Hana: they are very kind and let me have my hot tea while waiting.
I suggest that anyone going there gives them a second chance if not satisfied with the dinner at the table and wait for the sushi bar with my preferred cook.

Swatch out, Skagen in.

Posted on by

I’m not a big fan of watches and I can live without one most of the time when I’m home.
I can check the current hour on the computer screen, on the alarm clock in the bedroom, in the car dashboard, on my mobile and so on.

There it is a situation where I don’t have access to any of them: when I fly.
For most people this is relatively infrequent but for me it’s the opposite, so I feel the need of a wristwatch and it has to be the least intrusive possible: the thinner the better, the lighter the better, no need to remove it when taking a shower. Not too costly is another nice addition.
The Swatch skin was a good fit for my needs and when I started with my current job I swapped the battery of an old one that was in a drawer for a few years and started using it.

The watch was working ok for a while until one day it started to get water in and then the front glass (plastic actually) unglued completely.
I believed that this was due to the fact that it was pretty old and the plastic and glue likely degraded.

After a few months I was in Amsterdam at the airport with some time to kill and there was a Swatch shop with a few skin available: I picked up one and took my airplane to go back home happy with my purchase.
The happiness lasted only a few months as the watch soon demonstrated the same problem with the front plastic popping out: I contacted the Swatch assistance in Italy and found out that they were not planning to support under warranty my watch purchased in another EU country.
The almost new skin went to the trashcan and I decided to never purchase a Swatch again in the future.

I learned to be careful when purchasing outside my country: even if on the paper the international warranty is provided if the item is of limited value the effort to get the item serviced may be worth more than the item itself.

Unfortunately I was left with the issue of getting a new watch and after a bit of research I decided to try a Skagen Titanium without date.
It’s a bit thicker and heavier than the skin but still very light especially considering that it has a real glass and is completely made of metal.
After six months of continued use it’s still like new (actually better as the wristband is now more flexible) and I’m quite happy with it.
Funny enough I paid less for it in Italy than I was asked for in Denmark where the swatch is produced.

Doppio misto. Autobiografia di coppia non autorizzata by Claudio Bisio and Sandra Bonzi

Posted on by

It’s a light and easy book about the life of a wife and a normal, albeit famous in Italy, husband.
While the episodes appear often paradoxical and excessive it’s actually very close to the reality of a normal family.
At least of an italian one.

I’ve read loud to my wife several pages and she found them very amusing.
Book strongly recommended (if you speak Italian)

Alcestis by Euripides

Posted on by

Last weekend I was looking for a relaxing reading and picked up this old classic.
I was lucky to find an old edition (Neri Pozza editore, 1968) with an introduction written by Carlo Diano and that was worth reading.
The story in itself is well-known and can be easily found online.
But the most interesting elements reside in the details of the dialogues of Adameto with his father and with Hercules and the actual reading is needed to fully appreciate them.

If you’re looking for a quick read (it took me only a couple of evenings) it’s a good alternative to recent instant books that it’s not difficult to read but still provides some food for thought

Democracy: the god that failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Posted on by

When I started reading this book I was a bit shocked.
I was raised, as most people of my age in the western world, with a few clear ideas including that democracy is the best form of government.
For this reason i thought that the title of the book was intriguing, but I was not prepared to the full, systematic demolition of democracy that the author has carried over.
The first few chapters I was having a sort of cognitive dissonance because the reasoning was sound but clashing with my education about government forms.

Reading Tocqueville in the past has provided me with a good perceptions of the risks of democracy but only to the point of getting me to believe that much care was necessary to avoid them while keeping democracy in place.
Hoppe instead attacks democracy from the foundation: for him it’s not a problem of deviations from the right implementation that make democratic experiences bad, it’s the very nature of democracy that leads to the actual implementation problems that it’s easy to spot in most (if not all) countries of the western world.

While progressing with the reading I got more and more convinced by the reasoning.
There it is a major weakness that I perceive (and it’s not unique to this author’s reasoning): assuming people to be part of the “homo economicus” specie and hence to take rational decisions.
Behavioral finance was born because most people is unable to be rational even when dealing with money and numbers: I doubt that more rationality can be expected when other elements with no defined market value are added to the mix.

Overall it is a book worth reading and I recommend it.