Did a mitzvah tonight.
I was in Kosher Paradise (don't even ask, but basically, buying kosher food) and the guy serving was youngish with a couple of piercings and a slightly Carlebachy-kippah. Great customer service: he told me he just likes to make people happy, and commented on my well-accessorised outfit (I responded that it's not so hard to accessorise when, basically, all your clothes are purple). We chatted a little more, he was local, his accent was just from hanging in Golders Green. He gave the impression he didn't get out so much.
Looking at him, I knew where his friends hung out. "Do you know about the Moishe House?" I asked. He didn't. I told him it was where his chevra were hanging, and he wrote it down,to check it out on Facebook.
It's like the time I got chatting to some guy on the tube who'd never left Cricklewood and didn't know that (a) his chevra were at Marble Arch, and (b) he could go to the Mumtaz Shisha Cafe on Cricklewood Broadway and have a passably good time with like minded folk.
Me, I'm a connector, innit.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Butternut squash risotto
Last night's supper - perfect for a cold and rainy winter's day in London: agave roasted butternut squash with saffron and nutmeg. Perfect with a glass of white wine. And, quite easy, as long as you keep stirring.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
I have gone retro (in the phone sense)
This is not something one should admit in the multi-functional handheld phone device age, but I have gone retro.
It's a long story. I've always been a Nokia girl, and I've been on Orange like forever, and my contract was up for renewal early last year, and I did a great job renegotiating the tarrif (more minutes than you can ever eat, plus data), but I didn't really know what to do about the phone. And the tarrif really is to die for. It reflects a unique combination of never leaving Orange with arguing the toss with the customer retention people over a decade or so, and when I originally called up to pre-order the iPhone, the customer service officer told me I'd be crazy to give it up.
Old days, phone-wise, I'd do a few days of research, visit some handsets in-store, check them out. But I was pregnant and largely immobile and running a business and worrying about labour and somehow it felt unimportant.
Mistake.
Andrew in the customer retention (aka don't leave, we'll give you whatever you want) department sold me an HTC Touch Diamond. "It's the phone for people who want an iPhone, on Orange. It's a windows phone, it's fab."
Fab, it ain't. I've lived with it for 18 months or whatever because (a) it was too expensive to get out of and (b) my brain was too full to add another research project. But it sucks.
Camera - takes photos like your prescription is -10/-8 and it's snowing. Heavily. Texting you have to do with a stupid pointy thing, which I've almost-lost a million times, and you can't forward a text message and you have to do so many clicks to do anything that you think your life is running out. The home screen gets stuck and forces you in a menu you don't like. So you reboot. And it takes about 10 minutes to restart, like desktop PCs in 1991. And when you text, if you go onto the punctuation screen, after one character, it takes you back to letters. And sometimes it just hangs, for no reason. And it phones random people in your address book even when it's technically sleeping.
And that's just for starters.
My contract's up in a coupla months, and I got all excited about the iPhone on Orange, but then realised that I'd have to give up my great tarrif, and so now I'm in a bit of a quandary.
But my HTC Touch Diamond has almost given up the ghost, and I'm so frustrated with it that I basically don't call or text unless I have to.
And then I had a brainwave. I've switched my SIM card to our backup PAYG phone: a Nokia 1650.
I love it. It's like 1996. It just phones people. And it works. It's intuitive. It doesn't overpromise and it doesn't underdeliver. It makes phone calls, does text, tells me the time and that's about it. I can't synchronise my address book of everyone I've ever met, but hey, I only really call about 25 people, and I've added them to the phone as I've made the calls. And it has cute little pixellated images I can put next to each address book entry.
So I am loving my retro phone. Costs basically nothing. Works like a dream. We understand each other.
And the iPhone? I'm waiting till something else persuades me it's worth giving up my tarrif.
It's a long story. I've always been a Nokia girl, and I've been on Orange like forever, and my contract was up for renewal early last year, and I did a great job renegotiating the tarrif (more minutes than you can ever eat, plus data), but I didn't really know what to do about the phone. And the tarrif really is to die for. It reflects a unique combination of never leaving Orange with arguing the toss with the customer retention people over a decade or so, and when I originally called up to pre-order the iPhone, the customer service officer told me I'd be crazy to give it up.
Old days, phone-wise, I'd do a few days of research, visit some handsets in-store, check them out. But I was pregnant and largely immobile and running a business and worrying about labour and somehow it felt unimportant.
Mistake.
Andrew in the customer retention (aka don't leave, we'll give you whatever you want) department sold me an HTC Touch Diamond. "It's the phone for people who want an iPhone, on Orange. It's a windows phone, it's fab."
Fab, it ain't. I've lived with it for 18 months or whatever because (a) it was too expensive to get out of and (b) my brain was too full to add another research project. But it sucks.
Camera - takes photos like your prescription is -10/-8 and it's snowing. Heavily. Texting you have to do with a stupid pointy thing, which I've almost-lost a million times, and you can't forward a text message and you have to do so many clicks to do anything that you think your life is running out. The home screen gets stuck and forces you in a menu you don't like. So you reboot. And it takes about 10 minutes to restart, like desktop PCs in 1991. And when you text, if you go onto the punctuation screen, after one character, it takes you back to letters. And sometimes it just hangs, for no reason. And it phones random people in your address book even when it's technically sleeping.
And that's just for starters.
My contract's up in a coupla months, and I got all excited about the iPhone on Orange, but then realised that I'd have to give up my great tarrif, and so now I'm in a bit of a quandary.
But my HTC Touch Diamond has almost given up the ghost, and I'm so frustrated with it that I basically don't call or text unless I have to.
And then I had a brainwave. I've switched my SIM card to our backup PAYG phone: a Nokia 1650.
I love it. It's like 1996. It just phones people. And it works. It's intuitive. It doesn't overpromise and it doesn't underdeliver. It makes phone calls, does text, tells me the time and that's about it. I can't synchronise my address book of everyone I've ever met, but hey, I only really call about 25 people, and I've added them to the phone as I've made the calls. And it has cute little pixellated images I can put next to each address book entry.
So I am loving my retro phone. Costs basically nothing. Works like a dream. We understand each other.
And the iPhone? I'm waiting till something else persuades me it's worth giving up my tarrif.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
rough road ahead...
My friend Fabe sent me this from NY. Not entirely sure if it's real or a Richard Tipping style installation.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Why is The Times having a Spelling Bee?
I can't help asking myself why the Times Spelling Bee even exists.
Also, there is a supplementary question about why the site has a very annoying and startling **loud** graphic, but hey, let's do one thing at a time.
The main reason why I think there shouldn't be a Times (or any other UK publication) spelling bee is that we are not American.
Now, some of my best friends / neighbours blah blah blah, but I'm English. Not in Nick Griffin way, just that I like it when you go to a different place and it's, well, different.
So I used to like going to New York because the shops were different and the people spoke with an accent and said cute parallel-world things.
Now, NY is full of the Gap and Bobbi Brown and Urban Outfitters, and so is London. And even though I used to get my curly girl haircare elixir from Devachan (I go to Keith at the 560 Broadway one), I can order it online even if it costs a fortune and takes forever (post-strike permitting) to arrive.
(And believe me, I've looked into taking a European franchise).
Now, people in London ask for the check in restaurants. And take cabs.
So, it's almost like, what's the point of going somewhere else if it feels like home? Or what's the point of being home if it's so internationally homogenised. The nuances of the world seem to have... faded away.
And a spelling bee in the UK? Well, that's just... I mean, it's all well and good James Harding tell us that spelling is important and learning to spell can be "frustrating perplexing and bewildering" (er, James, think there's a comma missing there) but bee isn't even (I'm guessing) in the OED, with your meaning, anyway.
Also, I think someone has told James Harding that you need less punctuation on the internet. Yes, but not that much less.
I see the truth. Some thrusting young bizdev exec thought this would be a way to "extend the brand online" and "partner with new partners" (aka make some more money, not that this is a bad thing), and make sure children in Junior school had heard of the Times. But a black and yellow site? For a spelling bee? Just a little bit too alpha-round, for my liking.
All in all, it feels a little like it's just not cricket, in some strangely perplexing way.
Also, there is a supplementary question about why the site has a very annoying and startling **loud** graphic, but hey, let's do one thing at a time.
The main reason why I think there shouldn't be a Times (or any other UK publication) spelling bee is that we are not American.
Now, some of my best friends / neighbours blah blah blah, but I'm English. Not in Nick Griffin way, just that I like it when you go to a different place and it's, well, different.
So I used to like going to New York because the shops were different and the people spoke with an accent and said cute parallel-world things.
Now, NY is full of the Gap and Bobbi Brown and Urban Outfitters, and so is London. And even though I used to get my curly girl haircare elixir from Devachan (I go to Keith at the 560 Broadway one), I can order it online even if it costs a fortune and takes forever (post-strike permitting) to arrive.
(And believe me, I've looked into taking a European franchise).
Now, people in London ask for the check in restaurants. And take cabs.
So, it's almost like, what's the point of going somewhere else if it feels like home? Or what's the point of being home if it's so internationally homogenised. The nuances of the world seem to have... faded away.
And a spelling bee in the UK? Well, that's just... I mean, it's all well and good James Harding tell us that spelling is important and learning to spell can be "frustrating perplexing and bewildering" (er, James, think there's a comma missing there) but bee isn't even (I'm guessing) in the OED, with your meaning, anyway.
Also, I think someone has told James Harding that you need less punctuation on the internet. Yes, but not that much less.
I see the truth. Some thrusting young bizdev exec thought this would be a way to "extend the brand online" and "partner with new partners" (aka make some more money, not that this is a bad thing), and make sure children in Junior school had heard of the Times. But a black and yellow site? For a spelling bee? Just a little bit too alpha-round, for my liking.
All in all, it feels a little like it's just not cricket, in some strangely perplexing way.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
jelly is good for your...
I also made jelly. As a special request from nephews/nieces. This is the before photo, obviously.
cupcakes (ginger and pumpkin, that's two kinds, not together)
I made two different kinds of cupcakes (previously known as fairy cakes, but hey, I'm flexible) for Zaphod's birthday, and displayed them in my new oh-so-cool cake plate. I am so retro.
Of course, they didn't last long on display...
Of course, they didn't last long on display...
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