Living directly under the roof has its perks. Like knowing when it’s time get up, which would be the time the pigeons start sliding down your windows and are making a whole lot of that fucking early-bird-catches-the-worm noise.
Or in winter, when it gets really cold, forcing you to turn up that heater. Or in summer, when it gets so hot, you can either decide to stay in and perish or decide to go out and return after dark.
But living directly under the roof also has its downsides. Like when there’s some nice and healthy hail and your windows, slanted of course, are not made of bullet-proof glass and you’ve got a certain history with leaking windows and roofs anyway.
Which was the case today. So please, enjoy being in our shoes for the next 25 seconds (plural is no sign for delusions of grandeur, I’m actually referring to my girlfriend and me):
With the advent of the Bombay Sapphire Gin, I also introduced a new way of chilling the Martini glasses to perfection:
I looked up that technique from a pro barkeeper demonstrating the preparation of a Martini Dry on the Bombay Sapphire website itself. Unfortunately I can’t link to the exact page, mainly because some weird law forces commercial websites featuring alcohol or tobacco to verify the visitors’ age. Which is done by entering your birth-date. It’s a fool-proof system really.
Now, here’s the important bit: did the Martini actually taste better that way? Well, technically, it didn’t. But drinking a Martini is a lot, A LOT about the manner of preparation. The drink itself? Not that important. Which means, the more elaborate the method of preparation, the better the drink. And in that light, yes, the taste was fantastic!
Went and saw a discussion at the Thalia-bookshop here in Vienna about a new book by an Austrian journalist titled “Die Google Falle” (The Google Trap).
Unfortunately, it was the worst panel discussion I’ve ever witnessed.
Here are a few points they should consider next time they hold something like that:
Apart from the author, don’t just invite marketing hacks. Telling people about the wonders of Adwords will not counter the arguments of someone who fears world dominance through data-mining. Find someone who knows about the Internets well enough to counter certain arguments by the author.
When selecting a moderator, make sure he knows what the term “moderate” means. If he’s more fervent in detailing horror scenarios about the abuse of data collected by Google, he should not have been the moderator.
If you bring up all the evil things Google does, let audience members who clearly know more about the subject matter than anyone on stage talk about it. That’s what makes events like that interesting.
Make sure the author knows how to behave. Having him accuse a member of the audience (!) of being a Google fanboy, only because he didn’t share the author’s sentiment about the evils of collecting information about a visitor’s screen-resolution, is not just ridiculous, it’s simply not professional.
Generally, I can’t say a whole lot about the quality of the book, as I haven’t read it. But gathered from the quality of the arguments brought forth during the discussion, I’m pretty sure I’d be better off spending those 20€ on something more worthwhile.
And here we are, part ten of my, I dare say, infamous Martini Chronicles.
As with all anniversaries, something special and exciting was in order, and well, here it is:
Yes, it’s the famous Bombay Sapphire Gin, recommended to me by Max in a comment to the very first installment. Now, since it was my first taste of Bombay Gin, I decided to prepare a classic 2:1 mix, for no other ingredient than Vermouth should diminish the sensation of this Gin of Gins. And while I can’t say I tasted each and every ingredient written out in detail on the Gin’s bottle, I did taste the difference to the rather cheap Gin I had used for all the previous Martinis.
And as proof that all that alcohol is not dulling our senses the slightest bit, my girlfriend noticed that the good people at the Bombay Sapphire Gin factory fucked up the spelling of their most important ingredient, right there on the bottle:
How’s that for fantastic?
Come back tomorrow when I’ll post the results of a revolutionary new chilling technique for our Martini glasses!
As you may have gathered from above image, I’ve now finally come around to producing a Gibson. According to Wikipedia, the origin of the Gibson is still disputed. It is most likely that it was named after Charles Dana Gibson, the American graphic artist we all of course know and love. Rumour has it that Gibson challenged a barkeeper to improve on the Martini recipe. Which he did by substituting the olive with the pickled onion.
Whatever the real origin of the drink is, I’ve noted that the taste of the pickled onion really changes the tone of the drink. At first it tasted like any ordinary Martini, but after a while, the sweet pickled onion turned it into a bitter-sweet symphony (ha, I still can’t get over the fact how awesome I am).
I won’t go as far as to say that this is the best of the Martini variants I’ve had so far, but it’s definitely a contender.
By the way, I’ve read up on a few of the rather obscure Martini variants, and you may actually see something exotic like a Saketini for my next installment (being the tenth one and all that).
Be sure to also visit my blog on all things tech. Well, some things tech. Insightful analysis and unpredictable wit are just one click away:
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