Brown Motion

Ending 2018 we decided to do what we love to and can do best. Explore new foods and have a jolly end to the year. With that in mind we enjoyed Burmese cuisine courtesy a neighborhood place that opened recently. Curries do taste somewhat unique although a lot of the spice portfolio is similar to that found in India. The countries do share a border where India's far eastern states butt up on the western edge of Burma aka Myanmar today. We sampled chicken curry with Burmese masala and coconut milk, a garlic noodle prep with crispy shrimp and a green string bean dish made with garlic. The food is delicious although our server by her own claim hailed from Hong Kong and spoke sketchy English. I do find this annoying since I expect a service organization that operates in America to know its lingua franca.  It is rude to expect the customers to make accommodations to get their message across or a question answered because the servers are illiterate with language ski

In America people love their sport.  Be it a ball game or something more adrenaline inducing like going down a sharp mountain slope at high speed on a surface made of ice.  The latter is available courtesy of nature during the winter months in states that have majestic mountains to allow for said exercise. The kid had been wanting to try downhill skiing for a while.  The parents having attempted it on slower slopes in hills of Michigan were not at all keen on the endeavor.  But nothing ventured nothing gained or something silly like that made me take her on a father daughter tour of the Sierras near Lake Tahoe yesterday. She took to it like bee after honey.  What follows is a picture based narrative of the day long activity - of which six hours were spent on the slopes (by child only whilst the father was relegated to sherpa duties and amateur photog). The bus picked us up early.  5.30 AM to be precise from our neighborhood and after 3 + hours of squirming in coach class seats

Imagine all the people living life in peace.  Signature solo from John Lennon released circa 1971 is a haunting and daring and optimistic view of the world we could live in. But this is not the topic I wanted to write about.  Rather about an imaginary Jew born to an imaginary immortal figure (known to some as God) somewhere in Jerusalem this imaginary calendar day in history. It is amazing the power of storytelling.  Just imagine that most of the 7 billion inhabitants of this planet actually take a break from work letting their respective capitalist and communist machinery idle to celebrate or at least mark the birth of an imaginary figure. Imagine. Well instead of doing the imagining we took advantage of the quiet outside (since many of the denizens in our neighborhood decided to gather with like minded souls and exchange the superfluous gifts that they had purchased with imaginary currency) and went walking and exploring the neighborhoods of San Francisco. First up was a c

A common and often rhetorical question posed by Americans to fellow Americans during the course of a day.  But my intent to pose it was to list out a few things that are well - Up.  While I am at it I might list a few that are well - Down. So here we go up and down the well.. Up 1.  Porn Use - Turns out Americans, Germans and Indians are the most prolific users of pron sites.  Yes good old johnson is UP the most in these three countries courtesy of high speed streaming of porn content. I say the overall effect may be beneficial to society if the cumulative user base can get off by watching things in 2D and not exercise their muscles without permission in 3D.  Better for society if they stay close to their valuables and locked in. 2.  Virgin.  Well not that kind but Virgin Galactic.  With their latest effort, after 14 years of trying to foray into space tourism, the company founded by a Sir from England finally broke the atmospheric barrier at 51.4 miles above the earth when i

Everyone it seems wants to go to one.  Many businesses host them.  But wait.  What is it?  Why is it? Who the heck knows.  The whole notion of our species wanting to enter a rather confined space  with loud music and varying degrees of cheap (but overpriced) alcohol and sub par nourishment to spend hours is hilarious.  What makes the hilarity exponentially more funny is there are like minded folk jostling to get in on the action aka add their own exhaust to the congested space. All this in the name of some approaching holiday.  Uh? Food is piled high on tables in corners with plates that look like paper frisbees and have the same diameter as a hockey puck.  This seemingly to avoid wasting food.  But it creates for some rather frustrating customers who were hoping to load them up. Now it simply gets piled high instead of wide to allow for more mass per plate.  This leads to major accidents and waste.  So there.  Bad idea. Then comes the liquids imbibing phase of the project. 

I read the third international bestseller from an Israeli historian called Yuval Harari. A modern day thinker, this man has unpacked a lot in his writings over the past few years.  All his writings revolve around trying to answer some of history's most complex puzzles.  Who are we?  What is our purpose?  What comes next? In this latest installment he takes us on a journey way into the past to the point of creation and brings us crashing into the modern day earth and then paints a scary picture of what is to come.  Or at least a possible future. While it is hard to completely digest the entirety of this man's writings here are a few takeaways I can enumerate - 1.  Humans are really bad with large numbers.  Each of us to varying degrees has a switch that fails at computing 'scale'.  We can think of ourselves and our surroundings over a period of time but it is far too limited when appreciating our role as a species over extended periods.  Millenia, Eons etc.  Tha