Blog I

'm indignant. Is this century 21? Are we beset with 'Branding' everywhere? Well, if these brands are so big and important, (to the point of seeing all the minor competitors off the adjacent shelves..) isn't there an obligation for those big names to make sure their place in the shelves is always full/well stocked/at least some stock to choose? It is not high summer where I am, but the Raid brand of 'plug in insect repellant' which I hate for it's market position, is currently out of stock in the four supermarkets I checked this morning. We are in the middle of vinyards, which are in the middle of the harvest/winemaking cycle, and on these progressively cooler evenings we are being increasingly occupied with an insect population keen on a warmer space, and human protrusions to land on make a night's sleep a bit disturbed. I personally will slap my head till my ears ring, but my partner is rendered miserably itchy for days, reacting badly to all insect bites, so in the name of peace we installed a Raid device in the next room, which deals to quietening the whole apartment, and gets us both a night's sleep. Until now, that is. The tiny bottle of liquid, half the size of the one it came with (whose plot is that?) expired too rapidly; the big bottle special is no longer available, the ridiculously expensive small bottle refill is off the shelves, and short of paying for a second plug in unit with the tiny bottle, which is in stock in one supermarket, we stew in our insect bothered sleepless nights, and Raid, bless their black little hearts, cannot be emailed in any shape or form in my corner of Europe, and yet no alternatives exist anymore. There is a malicious monopoly, and I particularly object to big names not caring about their customer(s). A similar event occurred when we needed an accessory or two for a Mac computer, and the french Mac dealership we've dealt with in the past would not send to Slovenia. (Both EU countries). I cannot start to imagine the time and difficulty involved in ordering a non-Slovenian keyboard from a Slovenian distributor, nor the complexity of detailing the connection cables between totally dissimilar language sets for such terminology. This might seem nitpricking to some readers, but let me assure you, Slovenia has no communications networks in place that even recognize Mac OS, and it is only Mac's incredibly proactive processors that allow us to operate such computers here. Yet read Technology Review, the 100+ year publication of Massachusets Institute of Technology, and their contributors hardly can concieve of a person who would continue to use a PC, when iTunes/iPhone/iEverything is rampantly dominating the technology market where it matters...(you do the math).
Am I alone here? Do you plod on with a computer handed on from your cousin, a dot matrix printer and a dial up modem? We have an A3+ HP printer, with a rack of A3 papers, cards, photographic paper, A4 ditto, plus 6x4 photopaper for snapshots, an Epson scanner, an iPod we just drove the car over, and the iPod runs the best of the bunch; we can't get the HP to print dead straight on the page, and we waste close to 50% of our paperstocks, (something I recall when I first employed specialists in desktop publishing in the early 90s), and our scanner has just been redeemed from the scrapheap (15 months new?) by a third party software upgrade, which mollifies me a little, but honestly, HP AND Epson can go whistle when we seek a new printer, and scanner, as big names in the 21st Century are 99% bullshit and 1% the goods. Nuff said.

Blog H4

What do you know about hygiene? A fair few years ago I ran a small and entertaining pub in a ski region, and had a funky little restaurant that specialised in cool jazz on the soundsystem, backgammon evenings with fondue, and some pretty crazy nights prompted by beer tanker driver strikes, plumbing explosions and other hazards of the funky pub trade. I also had a crazy local Swiss guy who brought me his backdoor special sausage which graced my pizzas, and I'm sure contained at least 50% donkey meat which, as anyone knows, makes the BEST sausage, along with a load of other secret ingredients. No one ever got sick from the food at my place; and anyone drinking up to and over a reasonable limit got supplied a free meal to keep things in perspective. So when the health inspectors came and impounded my collection of knives, all nice handmade stuff I'd gathered over a few years of kitchening, all with rosewood handles, as WOOD  was capable of harbouring GERMS, and took my superb fine grained beech chopping boards, as they were the same health hazard, and insisted I replace them all with plastic/Polyshitelene products, I got out of the trade; they even closed up the Swiss guy; Horror! Donkey meat?  I have never cooked in a commercial kitchen since. I've been a maitre d', waiter and bartender, and I did a lot of restaurant and bar fitouts, BUT ONLY AFTER THEY ANNOUNCED THAT PLASTIC WAS A HEALTH HAZARD IN COMMERCIAL RESTAURANTS. I've been a wood person all my life; sure I like a bit of hitech here and there, but if I can resurrect an old piece of wood, or age a new piece, or reuse some plank or other, I'll go for it, as I see all of that melamine/PVC/plastic imitation stuff costing way more than the real stuff every time. My partner has just complained of the stench emanating from her plastic chopping boards, but will not use the wood ones I made for her as they're too beautiful. I'll go out tomorrow and find the oldest hunk of cast aside spruce or beech I can, and trim it down to a board she will use. Expensive? Hygiene? You do the math. Nuff said.