Attention Deficit David

Travel weary

Travel is starting to get to me. In reality I did more last year, but less of it was to teach. Maybe teaching is getting the best of me? I'm not sure, but something, while I'm in a hotel room in some city that doesn't have my house and my hammock is getting to me.

Maybe it's cause last year we were starting up a new business, so many of the trips were business idea and planning, and the educational ones were new. This year the students are decidedly coming to the classes with more information already, and each class they seem already more familiar with the subject material, so that's good. But it's wearing on me.

Spent some nice time with Josh and Wil this week in Tampa, a strange, strange place if ever I saw one. Like many southern cities, empty after work hours. But also empty during work hours. Ybor City, THE tourist destination? Empty. It was as if the Rapture had just occurred and we had just found out that watching too much web porn was a sin after all.

It was so empty that Wil and I played a version of our popular game Craneo (where we have to pick out five construction cranes in a row without getting blocked) as "Pedesterino" The goal was to get to 25 on one walk, and we failed. We got to 11 and then found a street festival, which clearly made the people there not pedestrians, so much as attendees of something.

By the way, as you'll notice from the sidebar here on the left, I'm now Twittering as a result of peer pressure and frequent distance from a computer. davidjschloss is my tweet stream, or my "twit" as i prefer to call it.

bored

Tampa is dull. I'm bored bored bored bored bored.

What's up with Ybor City, there are no people in it!

Die Hard with a Tulip

You'd think after the exemplary care I got from Herr Doctor Preggnantsthein yesterday that I'd have been a bit more forceful about not going back to the clinic. Really, a $150 office visit to get no treatment? I can do better just laying on the cold floor of the bathroom.

But doctors orders are doctor's orders, and the good doctor told us that I should come back to the clinic if I were to get a fever.

I got a fever.

A mild one, mind you. Just 38.7, but still, Abby got me a cab, and took me over there. This...was a mistake.

We'd figured that the quality of care could not possibly get worse during the day, perhaps the odd semi-treatment I'd received was just because they were closing and the Hippocratic oath machine was empty for the day. But no, it seems the standard of care remains the same—lousy.

We entered the clinic to be told to sit in the waiting room. So we wandered over to the big area with lots of comfortable looking chairs near reception. This is not the waiting room we were told by a nice Dutch EMT who told us to follow the signs to the waiting room. All very well and good except we don't speak Dutch.

Finally finding

the cramped icky space, we took a seat and very soon were seen by Doctor Casual, dressed in a nice turtleneck and jacket—not at all like, you know, a Doctor.

In the exam room he looked up my records from the night before and made some faces when he read the description of my condition. I see here you were very sick, he said. I'll skip over the conversation here about my bowels and vomiting and get to the point where we tell him the Doctor the night before said to come back if I got a fever. He asks what my temperature is, and then says he wants to feel my pulse. Oh, yes, you have a fever he says while touching my arm.

Uh, is that how "pulse" is supposed to work?

Then he says he'll check my abdomen again to make sure it's still not appendicitis (still not) and tells me that they don't give out antibiotics even for bacterial issues. So, no antibiotics.

He also tells us that it's not possible to get food poisoning from a good restaurant or a hotel. This is of course in a country with Mad Cow and e Colli outbreaks on occasion, so I sort of had hoped he'd have had some idea of how cross-contamination works—hell the desk staff at my hotel had a better grasp.

Did I mention that he didn't wash his hands either? But that's okay, because you can't get sick from the feces I was smart enough to cover my fingers with before entering the clinic. That'll show him.

After telling me that there's nothing he can do for me, he says either "be patient" or "be a patient." We're not sure which he said, but the general gist was "well, suck it up." Which is fine and all, and was my plan except we were told to come back here under these circumstances, and really if I were going to spend another 80 Euro I'd rather have done it with a nice meal or a prostitute over in the red light district.

We went back to the not-waiting room, where they were unable to use the printer (saying the Dutch version of "PC Load Letter?!? What the fuck is PC Load Letter" while putting paper in entirely the wrong part of the printer. There are monks sequestered in cloisters in Outer Mongolia who are more capable at putting paper in the printer.

Then she couldn't use the credit card machine, putting our card into the slot where the Dutch SmartCards go, but credit cards do NOT. So we paid cash.

While walking away it occurred to Abby and I that this could not really be a medical clinic, that the real doctors and staff must be tied up in the basement, while an international gang of criminals pretend to staff the center as they drill through the bank vault next door via the ancient bomb-cellar at canal level. They only didn't expect John McClain to come through the door with food poisoning and save the day.

Yippie Kay Ey Mother Fucker.

Bicycles, Canals and Food Poisoning

Well, what an interesting 10-hours or so it's been here in Amsterdam. Started with an upset stomach at around 7pm local time and then escalated into full-blown food poisoning. Worst I've ever had too, and that includes a bout with it in San Francisco that left me in the care of the hotel doctor, full of antibiotics and meds.

While Amsterdam has a lot of great things, one thing they are sorely lacking is a good 911 system. When one calls it, after having passed out from low blood pressure, they find you a nearby doctor to go to. That is NOT what I want. Taking a cab to a clinic when I can't stand up? Priceless.

But off to the clinic I went, where they didn't give me antibiotics, didn't have any anti-nausea drugs on hand, didn't give me fluids and mentioned that it was 11pm, and they were closing so... you don't have to vomit and poop at home, but you can't do it here.

Another cab ride back to the hotel, more moaning and laying on the cold tile floor of the bathroom. Abby's a frigging saint, running around to get me stuff, dress me, undress me, put me in bed, help me off the floor, and so on. We exchanged a few "this clinic sucks" looks as I lay under my coat on the exam table with my teeth chattering, while I was told I didn't have a fever, and that it was impossible for someone of my build to have been dehydrated enough to pass out.

Course I was, and I did.

The pregnant doctor was nice enough to shake my hand and say "good luck" while I left (not nice enough to have washed her hands anywhere). Now my body clock is off from so many hours being in a semi-conscious state, so I'm writing in the bathroom, trying not to wake up Abby.

Not exactly how I expected the vacation to go. Now I'm starving and thirsty and trying to hold out till sunrise to go get some crackers or something somewhere.

A bout of tourista

Abby just found the notebook in which I kept a travelogue during our trip to Mexico over new years in 2005 to 2006. We both had been suffering from "tourista" (the terrible lingering food poisoning that comes with going to Mexico and eating or drinking anything (or so it seems) and I found this funny note.

While laying in bed last night, talking about our bout with tourista, Abby said "if you shit on me, I'll require a sincere letter of apology," then she paused and said "notarized."

Announcing my new blog

One blog's not enough for a guy as scatterbrained as I am. Announcing

http://www.frequentflyergourmet.com/

Around the world in 80 days

I know I've had a busy schedule recently, but this modern jet travel thing, it's really blowing my mind.

A few days ago I was in the desert of Las Vegas for YAFTS (Yet Another Fucking Trade Show) marking something like my 10th or 12th year of going to shows in Sinister Disney. It was unreal-hot out, 102 on the coolest days, and we spent a lot of time inside the air conditioning of the hotels. (Although our room, at the top of an all-black pyramid facing the sun at the Luxor was annoyingly hot despite the full-blast AC 24/7. Dear Luxor, put in better AC when you update your crappy hotel.)

Saturday I flew to NJ, met up with Abby and we flew to Ft. Lauderdale for one of the stops on the Aperture Road Tour where Abby helped by proctoring. After we packed the class up Sunday evening, we hopped into the ocean for a half-an-hour or so, a strange and warm baptism after the hell-fire of the Vegas desert.

Today we flew from Florida to Oregon where we're enjoying the (global-warmingly hot) Pacific Northwest, and will start bike riding tomorrow for a few days of R&R. I am looking forward to that.

Then next weekend I'll be a bit lower down the coast in San Fran, and then finally back home.

So desert, Atlantic Ocean, Columbia Valley, Pacific Ocean, Bay, Hudson in two weeks.

No wonder I'm so damn tired.

Al-semitic Airlines

So I just got this email from Alitalia. First of all, it's really fucking creepy that an airline I've never flown is wishing me a happy new year. It would actually be odd if they wished me anything even if I had flown them before. But really, how is an airline making the conclusion that I'm a Jew?

My cousin figured this one out—I used to order kosher meals on Continental because their regular cheesburger meals suck ass, and the kosher meal is guaranteed to not be a cheeseburger.

Alitalia is a codeshare partner of Continental, so they must keep track of who orders the kosher meals.

I think that's a bit fucked up.

A night on the town (subtitle: Toro, Toro, Toro, continuted)

Now that Nikon has taken the wraps off the D3 and D300 cameras, I can finally mention that I'm out in Tokyo on a press event to celebrate the launch, which is why I've been so thoroughly wined and dined (sake'd and sushi'd) over the last few days.

It's a bit hard to remember how the night started, but it really hasn't ended yet, nearly 24 hours later.

The group of assembled media and PR people headed out for a ten-course menu at a upscale restaurant in the upscale financial section of this upscale city. I'm pretty sure that I won some sort of status for being the guy who ate everything served. I'll post the menu better, but it did involve the word entrails, and one dish was served nestled between the recently-severed head of a fish.

The plan for the morning was to head over to the Tajiki fish market, the Blade Runner of fish markets (or for the non-sci-fi among you, the Fulton Fish Market multiplied by an insane asylum), a massively sprawling complex that supplies nearly all of the fish for the metropolis each day. Boats arrive from all over Japan, the Pacific, Australia and even the US and South America with fish for auction, sale and distribution. The central attraction of the market is the Tuna auction, where purveyors gather each day to bid on massive quantities of frozen seafood.

After the rib-stuffing meal of delicate and precisely presented food at the restaurant, my original plan was to get some sleep and get up at 4:30 to join the 5:00am group headed to the market, but instead five of us headed out to Ripponji, the Times Square-ish section of Tokyo—if Times Square still had hookers. Hookers that swarmed you and offered to give you a "free preview." More on that detail in a bit.

Jay DeFoore, a former PDNer had a friend in town, a crazy photographer-American named Monty who we were to meet at the Grand Hyatt hotel, and it was Jay's idea to go out "for a few beers."

Now, I'm not really painting the picture well enough. Our hotel, Le Meridian Grand Pacific has been providing us vehicles for tours and trips around this city. Last night, they provided us with a stretch-limo. It's probably an understatement to say that there are few limos in Tokyo, and it would not be incorrect to say that the length of the car exceeds the length of many homes in this city.

So we pull up to Monty's hotel and find him in the lobby with an ex-pat friend who has worked for Morgan Stanley here for thirteen years. Temporarily leaving our driver Roy and his collection of Eric Clapton bootleg concert DVDs behind in the limo, we head out for a bar.

Monty leads us shakily, loudly and already a bit drunk to a bar stocked with great wine, beer and hard booze. It was probably 11pm at this point and we downed a few drinks and beers while Monte, sotto vocce detailed the Japanese expression for something that's prohibited, a crossing of the arms at the forearms into an "x", which Monty embellished with the sound "boooonnnngggg" to further highlight the message inherent in the gesture. He had been bonged earlier in the evening while trying to get into a club.

After a few beers we decided to look for more happening action, and so back to our limo we headed to the seedier main strip in Ripponji, which was dutifully seedier. As we stepped out of our limo, (which finds parking accomidations simply by stopping on the right most lane and turning on the hazard lights) women snapped pictures of us on their camera phones. Kevin, one of the PR folks told the woman that he was World Fighting Champion.

Several hookers approached smelling the blood in the water. They surrounded each of us in turn offering us "free samples," and asking us to come with them. We demurred—the souvenirs I plan to bring home from Tokyo should not require antibiotics to treat—and tried to find a bar that Monty assured us would be the coolest thing ever. Tucked on a back street next to Hard Rock Tokyo (yawn) was a small bar that has had the same non-English speaking band for more than two decades, pumping out cover tunes every night.

Every night expect this night it seemed, since the bar was shut closed. Booonggggggg.

Monty tried to get into a club next to our club, where a very confused looking Japanese bouncer tried to explain to us that the bar was not taking Gaijin. He found someone else who explained first that the bar, with airplane-engine-decible music blasting from behind the closed doors, was closed. Then they explained it was closed to us. Monty was not having any of it, as the teenager tried to say that this was a members-only club. I tried to convince Monty that the membership couldn't be bought, it was in fact membership in the Japanese race. We departed.

Several super-bouncer sized African-Japanse (is that the politically correct term?) men tried to get us to head to their bars, giving us cards and offering us "free titty squeeze". As super-awesometacular as that sounded it wasn't really what we were in the mood for. Monty replied "thanks, man, but I have pussy at home." I'm not sure why Americans are seen as being brusk, but it was damned funny in context.

A passing Argentine told us to go to a bar on the lower section of one of the buildings, and we took him up on it, worried that we'd stumbled into somewhere that was going to harvest our organs. It seemed too good to have a bar that offered a ¥500 drink ($5) of anything on the menu for our first drink. The fluent Philapino-Japanese waitress Victoria was utterly fluent in English, Japanese and Tagalong. She was also rather cute, and brought us drinks quickly and with a smile. We still thought we might be killed at any moment, although it seemed that we were actually just at a really nice casual bar. The free laptop access for customers (with the laptop not locked down) and the free pool table finally eased our fears, but we moved onto another place lest they end up needing a spare kidney in the barback.

Monty had snuck out and found us a nice cozy (smoky-as-hell) bar with a few Japanese-Japanese and some relatively cheep beer. We played some pool and darts with the locals (beating them handily at pool thanks to them scratching both on the break and on the eight-ball, and continuing to play as they tried to convince us that neither of those are game-losing moves in Japan. Uh huh.

We also played some Foosball, and it turns out that Jay's a ringer. We slapped down the PR guys twice, gaining much prestige for Team Awesome.

At about 4am we decided it was time to head home, so we tracked down Roy and suffered a long drive while a pirated Don Henley concert played on the tv in the limo. Don Henley suXxor. Roy was great, taking us anywhere we wanted to go, and I proclaimed "Roy is my Shogun!" which I think is a handy (and more PC) translation of "Roy is my home boy'" (or, more correctly but still incorrectly using the N word).

We strode into the hotel lobby as the newly-awake Nikon PR team waited for media folks to come downstairs to go to the fish market. They saw us coming in, having been up all night and said "you guys are rockstars."

In true Rockstar fashion, Kevin and I ran to our rooms, switched into shorts and headed back downstairs. A chocolate-croissant provided by PR steeled our resolve and we pushed on to the market.

There's no real way to explain what it's like. In every direction a flow of people run around, drive around, cary fish around. It's insane. The closest I can come is the scene in Fifth Element where the stream of flying cars whiz by in every direction, spinning people around, almost killing them constantly.

Diesel powered, most of the carts at the market are driven by using a large pressure-senstive wheel on the top of a giant drum-shaped engine. They pivot on a dime, pass by each other with mere inches between them. I was almost killed a good dozen times or more. Probably a lot more. As these vehicles wheeled past I sort of started to space out. The colors, sound and noise were too much. Half-a-dozen of us took pictures all over the market.

We shot the Tuna auction where flash-frozen tuna created swirling pools of fog inches above the floor and men with hooks poked and prodded the massive fish in order to assess its quality. Standing on benches men shout out the number of each fish and its price, selling it to the highest bidder. Single fish (more than 6 feet long) are worth thousands.

In other sections we watched fish get dispatched in every possible manor. Heads were partially chopped off as the massive fish bled-out. Some were filleted quickly and precisely while staked down to tables. Things get worse, and since some of you are a bit squeemish, I'll skip some of the more graphic details.

I was both disgusted and very hungry at the same time.

Our reverse-ex-patriot Japanese guide (by which I mean he is Japanese and lived in the US for decades) guided us over to the small row of shops lining the market where the workers eat after their shift. Rain started to trickle and then picked up to a steady drenching as we stood under an overhang and waited for some of our group to get their return to the hotel sorted out. Most didn't want to have sushi for breakfast, but Kevin and I, still drunk, were dying for good sushi.

And good sushi we got. In fact, the shop that Kazz, our guide picked had the best sushi I've ever had, ever. Small (only ten seats at a bar) and intimate, it made the fish at places like Nobu, Monster and other places look like what you get from the grocery store. We started with a twelve-piece order but then continued to order more and more. Sea urchin that dissolved on the tongue. Eel with a homemade sauce on it that was perfect. Each piece had a killer umame. Kazz asked a stream of questions of the owner, a woman who told us that she opened the shop more than seventeen years ago, and has been a wholesale fish distributor for thirty-five years.

Our final piece was called Dancing Shrimp (Danielle, you might want to stop reading now) which is made by taking a live shrimp and parboiling it for a moment, taking the head and the shell off, and presenting it to eat. Perfect. Wonderful. Technically alive.

For those thinking of coming to Tokyo, do it. Find a reason to come here. Find a local though to be your guide, because we wouldn't have gotten that experience without someone to act as the social lubricant (as the guidebooks I have keep saying) to a society that's thousands of years old and astoundingly amazing. And I'd never have had the best sushi on earth.

A big bone of conversation

The restaurant was exactly what I was looking for, yet another great OpenTable.com pick. Wil and I were in New York City, the night before our first AUPN Aperture Road Tour date. We'd finished packing in the morning, loaded all the gear into the truck, gotten it all brought to our rooms (that requires some hefty tipping) and he hit the shower while I went to look for candies or something to put in to the gift bags for the 75 people schedule to attend our class.

I wanted to find a nice place to eat, to thank him for all his hard work. The original plan was to also include one of our instructors, Brett, who flew across the country to pick up the class system so he could use it in the coming weeks, but he was grounded at Dulles, the result of bad weather.

So we went to BLT Steak (BLT stands for Bistro Laurent Tourondel), an upscale steak joint on 57th street with magical specials and an impeccable wine list. (They also have Hendricks gin, which I think makes the perfect gin and tonic.)

The specials seemed tempting, and while I would normally have gone for the seven-pepercorn crusted strip steak with a tomato citrus relish, my eyes instead alighted upon the Kobe beef. For a moment I was tempted to order the actual Kobe, the Japanese variety that's head-and-shoulders about US breeds, but a $26 an ounce, I wasn't quite up for it. Instead I opted for 10-ounces of some of the most incredibly perfect Top Cap steak ever. Probably overdoing it, I also ordered the grilled octopus salad which featured a set of grilled octopus tentacles that were illegally-good. Like a small crime had been committed in my mouth.

We were pursuing the menu when the Wil asked about the Portherhouse for Two that was on the menu, 40 ounces of beef designed to be shared by a couple (or a small Colombian family). "Do you have a porterhouse that's just for one?" he asked.

"Well," joked the waitress, "if you can finish it, I suppose it's for one." She had done it, thrown down the gantlet. It was on.

Before anything is served though we get an amuse/appertiser, which was an incredible tourine of duck liver paté followed by the most delicious popovers I have ever had.

Let me digress here, a romantic time-travel aside while I mention that the popovers served at one of the fancy restaurants my grandfather took me to in Florida when I was in grade school often served popovers. I fell instantly in love with them and to this day they still signify comfort and a first understanding of what it was like to fall in love with food.

Anyhow, when the massive (it's like the size of my thigh) steak comes it's accompanied by two sides, hasbrowns and onion rings (essentially a massive pile of onion rings shaped like the old toy for infants where circular rings are piled up around a wooden dowel).

The Kobe beef was beyond descriptoin, and the excessiveness of the meal was surpassed only by the sheer prettyness of most of the people in the room. Out of habit of years of giving the comfy wall bench seat to my wife I made the mistake of letting him take the view of the room, leaving me to pivot around in my seat on occasion and gawk, less subtly with each sip my my Syrah-Grenache.

During our meal a pair of men and a woman who turned out to be the Czech born wife of one of the guys, began to talk to us about the best steak places. The closest man, who looked like a cross between someone in the Sopranos and someone at a jewish family reunion mentioned that he used to go to Peter Luger's when he was a teen, and eat steak there four nights a week, so Wil's display of bravado did not phase him.

After we finished our meal, they got theirs, and I asked what the man was having. "Veal," he replied. "I cant' do steak any more, I"ve had two heart attacks."

"I wish you'd mentioned that before" said Wil, obviously having missed my requests that he perish from this earth after aiding me in my presentation classroom setup.