Eat San Diego

I'm down in SD visiting my friend Dan (who just graduated from SDSU, congrats!). We managed to get out to a few interesting spots. Here are some of my favorites:

Turf Supper Club

If you like to cook your own food, and don't mind sharing a grill with hordes of tong-wielding hipsters; then this is the place for you! The cocktails aren't bad either... the Esquire martini with blue cheese filled olives was choice. Tip: the grill seems to be crazy hot and will sear and burn steaks to a crisp, while leaving the inside rare/bloody. Try putting meat near cooler spots near the edge of grill and resist urge to spray it with various supplied sauces too often.

Sorry about the picture quality, I was trying out the camera on my new G1 phone. The camera quality and control is surprisingly shitty for an otherwise cool phone.

The Tractor Room

We visited this place for breakfast after a late night of fun. This is the place if you want a good benni, and an eye opening bloody mary. The portions are HUGE, and the cocktail list is comprehensive. They have a number of custom bloody marys, including a $22 behemoth that drinks like a meal, and another called the 'Tractor Buffalo Mary' that includes Buffalo jerky. Tip: be prepared for a long wait due to the popularity, if you don't mind sitting at the bar, you can eat much faster.

Red Fox Lounge

While the food and drinks aren't going to win any awards, the main attraction here is the atmosphere. This place has it all... dimmed red lights... check! rat pack-esq music to get you in that loungy mood... check! bulbous vinyl seating and huge booths that are easy to lounge in... check! Look up lounge in the dictionary and you'll find a picture of this place. Tip: this place is great to unwind and do a bit of people watching and socializing after a long night of partying.

Dark Side of Dubai

Dubai: A thriving coastal city metropolis, exploding with skyscrapers, all the western comforts you can imagine, along with the job and paycheck of your dreams! OH yeah, and there's no taxes!

Sound too good to be true eh?

Check out this article that my father forwarded to me:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-
of-dubai-1664368.html

Really scary stuff that will give you nightmares if you read it before bed.

Peruvian Dogs

Peru has some of the coolest, chill, urban dogs I've ever seen. No biting, no barking, super smart street dogs. They all look cool too. Katrina had mentioned something about native Peruvian dogs being hairless, and also quite warm to the touch. Apparently they're used in some sort of native heat therapy. Images of a jacket with these dogs strapped to it popped into my head. We ran into a couple of these strange, unique dogs in Cusco. Yes, the are hairless; Yes, they are quite warm to the touch; they also tend to be more skiddish then the other street dogs. Not sure if they're scared, or just cold.

Fun, Furry, Food?

Over the years my family has had a number of pets... hamsters, birds, dogs, cats, lizards, frogs, and Guinea Pigs. I can't really explain it but when I was young and had a Guinea Pig, I always wondered if it would taste like a real pig. Was there little bacon in there? Cute and edible; the Guinea Pig or as Peruvian's call it 'Cuy' is considered a delicacy here. I decided to fulfill this childhood fantasy and try some out. My first impressions... kinda like dark chicken meat, and not a lot of it... more bone then meat. The skin is also tough and chewy. This one was roasted and I believe there are probably other, more interesting ways to prepare it.

Peruvian's are serious about their sauces. They've all been excellent so far. The green one on the left seems like some sort of garlic aioli, the middle one was my favorite and was slightly creamy kinda tangy mustardy, the one on the right was fruity and possibly had mango in it. All of them were yummy.

Nuevo Conquistadors

McDonalds, KFC, VISA, Mastercard, ATM's, Papa John's, Coke, Tommy Hilfiger, Ninja Turtles, Super Mario, etc. It never ceases to amaze me how in all my travels abroad, the Western world's capatalistic tenticals are forever grasping at new and un-tapped markets. It amazed me to see small, and otherwise beautiful rural shops that would have VISA logos plastered all over the place. Even the wait staff's clothing would have VISA logos on it. I've seen a number of grown Perivuan women wearing tight tee-shirts with various Super Mario, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle logos in gaudy gold and silver. Where do these shirts come from? What factory owner decided to poop out these abominations? These shirts probably never make it past the sales rack at Ross in the USA and then get shipped down here as some sick Western aid package. Some of these people have forsaken their beautiful roots, and locally sustanable economies in an effort to appear more modern, and Western savvy. BLah!

At the end of a hard day though... it's hard not to enjoy sitting down at Mc D's and have an ice cold coke and some nuggets while I use their free WiFi to write this blog. What!? Did someone just yell hypocrite?!

Touchdown in Peru

Ah finally! Nice to stretch my long legs after being flying for hours and hours. My driver (Diego), was waiting and ready with a smile in Lima and took me to a very nice hostel in the heart of Miraflores, located on a beautiful hilly strip of coast line 30 min outside of Lima. Miraflores is the place to be.... safe, relatively clean, near some great surfing spots, excellent cuisine can be located all over; it's unfortunate that I was only here for one night. I plan on coming back and exploring it further.

This photo was taken from an excellent restaurant recommended by the lonely planet guide called 'La Rosa Nautica', located on a pier. This place was top-notch, and the only thing that I can think of to complain about was the dated Acoustic Alchemy nu-jazz playing in the background. Service, cleanliness, layout and ingredients... all very well done. Even the prices weren't too bad. For about $40 USD (including taxes & tip) I ate like a king.

The menu was entirely in spanish, and I could only make out about 5% of it. I saw something that looked like 'traditional ceviche', and another one that sounded like it was 'grilled conch', so I ordered both. I also wanted to try some peruvian wine, so I had the waiter recommend a good cab.

Those rows of big looking corn-like things are in fact huge 'Corn Nut' sized corn kernels. They were tasty and a little bit sweet. The ceviche was excellent and the sauce was tangy but not too bitter. I tried eating one of those green leaves but they didn't taste good. The orange thing is a pepper cut to look like a flower, I tried a little bit of this and it was yummy.

While these don't appear to be conch shells (even though I saw another couple get some in their meal), I was still very happy with this plate. The sauce was AMAZING! The stringy stuff on top appeared to be roasted stringy green onion on a bead of sea salt. There was some amazing fresh bread that they served that I used to lap up all the juicy goodness.

I finished off the night with a traditional cocktail called Pisco Sour. Pisco is a traditional form of grape brandy. A pisco sour is to peru as the margarita is to mexico. While a refreshing drink, it is not really my taste. I'll probably try it again, but it's pretty sweet and the egg froth weirds me out.

I did a little research and found a basic recipe for pisco sour: 1 part lime juice, 3 parts pisco, ice, sugar to taste, 1 teaspoon egg white for frothiness, Angostura bitters. Combine the lime juice and pisco in a blender. Add sugar to taste. Add plenty of ice and blend. Spoon in egg white and blend again. Serve immediately in a nice glass, use a drop of the bitters on top for decoration.

Baby Laptop

Strange how all of a sudden 'netbooks' appeared on the scene over night. I've been in the tech industry for almost a decade now, and even this little revolution has hit me by surprise. It's a positive tech revolution though! Considering a good deal of what internet savvy people do is now part of what is called 'cloud computing' (another term to appear almost overnight). All the applications the vast majority of people need are online now anyway. The netbook revolution and it's timing makes perfect sense. Laptop manufacturers have been getting away with selling SUV equivlant laptops with high profit margins for years now. It took non-name brand firms such as Asus, and MSI based out of Taiwan to rock the boat, and now everyone including Dell and HP have jumped onboard. I don't think most of us need all those features anyway, but just like people that buy an SUV and drive it in town all the time, I think there was a feeling of safety knowing that you had it all just-in-case.

For my trip to Peru I wanted to have something that would last 3-6 hours on a charge, was baby small and easy to tote, had built in WiFi, and had enough CPU power to play back all my favorite video standards. After doing a bit of research and price searching I found the MSI Wind.

After searching high and low for the best price, I ended up getting the fully loaded version (6-cell battery, 802.11N wifi, bluetooth) directly from CostCo's website for $399 including free ground S/H. I read reviews of it getting between 4-5 hours of battery life, but so far I've only been able to get around 3 hours 30 minutes out of it on a full charge (I was watching DivX video, or using WiFi pretty much the whole time though). Not bad, but I think that with a little tweaking of the power/eco settings I could probably squeeze out more. I'm happy with it so far, and am using it right now to type of this blog in a hostel in Cusco, Peru.