Silver Case

Still struggling to beat Lee at WII Bowling. We’ve played probably sixty games in the last few days. I have won perhaps five. We have both had sore backs and triceps for two days. Last night neither of us could continue to play because our arms hurt too much. Fortunately we’d been drinking a lot of wine, so we switched to playing with our left hands. Lee’s score plummeted. Oddly, mine stayed almost the same, in fact I bowled over 216 once.

We’re on an overnight trip to Katoomba, Australia. It’s a small tourist town in the the Blue Mountains, two hours west of Sydney.

We’re staying at the Lilianfels hotel. A very nice hotel overlooking the valley. The decor is very posh. The theme seems is Agatha Christie. Hercule Poirot could be taking tea in the lobby this minute.

The only thing I’ve encountered that I don’t like is the interet. There is no wireless in the room. But the room is “wired.” IF you consider an 24″ cat5 cable that seems to have come from a patchboard in a server closet to be “wiring”.

Now it’s just a simple matter of which internet service option to select:

First…

start with a 9 dirt-encrusted potatoes.

Lovingly hand-washed, by me.

Then excrutiatingly hand-sliced into toothpick-sized pieces. Rosti!

Then…. a handful of fresh rosemary, diced into dust and infused in olive oil.

Oil-and-rosemary tossed w/ potatoes. Aforementioend potato tossed w/ flour and put on a medium-hot griddle. Cook for thirty minutes.

In the meantime…………………………………………………………..

Monkfish fillets.

dusted in corn flour

left to relax for thirty minutes.

In the meantime, a lot of thyme minced and tossed into three free-range eggs.

Said monkfish, washed in egg/thyme mixture, and rolled in a thyme/sourdough bread crumb mixture I made before this narrative even began.

Pan fried. Tested with simple knife. Plunge into fillet, Touch to lip. Cold? Keep cooking. Hot? It’s done!

While all this is cooking…………. softened two fists of onions in a palm of butter. Then subsequently tossed into blanched peas. Sans mint. No one likes drum rolls or mints if they’re honest.

Eat eat eat drink wine. Done.

Good night.

It’s 9am here. Everyone is dressed and after a morning coffee, we’ll take the train to Wildlife World. We’ll probably spend most of the day downtown before we come back. Here at Lee’s apartment we pass the time at the playground, swimming in the building’s pool, and playing WII. Infuriatingly, I cannot beat Lee at bowling.

Wednesday we’re going to the Blue Mountains for an overnight trip. I haven’t been there since I first visited Australia in 1998.

Yesterday we went shopping. I bought a pair of RM Williams boots.

RM Williams Arnhem Yard Boot in “Distressed Biscuit color

There are a number of bike stores I want to visit while I’m here. Hopefully I can find some 20″ rims as well as some panniers and other equipment for the Le Chacal.

We’re off to Sydney in two hours. I’ll come back the following Sunday. Ling and Luke, a bit later.

Luke is going off the walls with excitement right now. Time to pack.

Yesterday:

1. Several pounds of cheap tomatoes
2. 1 small onion (whole)
3. 2 stalks celery
4. 1 beet cut into 1cm slices

Threw in a pot with a cup of water and simmered for 45+ minutes

Seasoned with salt (1tsp + pinch) and sugar (1tsp + pinch) and a long grind of black pepper

Pulled out the onion, celery, and beet chunks. Poured the tomato slurry into a food mill and squeezed out all the juice.

Made close to two quarts.

Chilled overnight in a refrigerator and had after my morning latte this morning.

Really good. Way way better than disgusting salt-bring tomato puree you get from stores or restaurants.

I was supposed to have met Luke and Ling in Sydney yesterday. They were planning to fly to Sydney last Tuesday. But Luke fell sick with a heavy head cold/fever and we didn’t want to mess with prickly Australian H1N1 customs, so we delayed the trip. They’ll go next week for ten days or so. I’ll try to join them but I have a rather odious but potentially very interesting business trip I have to attend sometime in the next couple weeks, and I don’t know when this will occur.

I call Ling from work. Luke answers the phone.

“Hi, Daddy”

“Hi Luke, where are you?”

“Sydney” (total lie)

“Sydney?!”

“yeah!”

“How’d you get there?”

“Flew”

“Flew on what?!”

“Fighter jet.”

“Wow. Is mom with you or in Singapore?”

“Sydney”

“How’d she get there?”

“Fighter jet also.”

“Can I come to Sydney?”

“Yes.”

“How am I supposed to get there?”

“Drive.”

“Drive?! If I try to drive, I will sink in the ocean.”

“Ha Ha Ha. Yes. Bye.” <click>

Luke broke a house rule. Ling meted a (to Luke) severe punishment: no superhero t-shirts for the day.

Luke’s answer? “oh, I’ll wear a Decepticon T-shirt instead”

Ling said, “no, that’s included in the ban too.”

Luke argued that is shouldn’t be, as Decepticons (Evil-side Transformers) are bad, thus not super or heroic.

…so I bought two cabbages (not two trunkloads, like Dad) and started fermenting sauerkraut.

should be ready in four weeks.

Since this is the year of the Intertubes, you can twitter my sauerkraut.

I’ve been using Matt as my Amazon Depot lately. I ordered a bunch of heirloom vegetable seeds, some bicycle rims, and a pile of dvd’s used from Amazon.

I bought the full series of Picket Fences and Northern Exposure, two shows I enjoyed watching during college. The other thing I ordered was a DVD collection, “The Best of Sesame Street 1974-1979.” I just plugged it in and the first thing the showed was that typewriter man — total flashback!

Personally, the thing I loved most from Sesame Street was the “lowercase n (he’s not lonely anymore)” song. Hopefully I’m lucky enough to see it on my DVDs.

It’s also interesting to see this show again because I recently read “Street Gang,” a birthday present from Megan. Now I know all the dirt on the muppets and man-animals.

["we all live in a capital 'I'" song is now playing. How many times did I hear that as a kid?"]

This Blog Article was brought to you by the letter “I” and the number “9″

A month ago I ordered a copy of Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape by Brian Hayes. Somehow I managed to accidentally order two copies. I’m happy I did. I’m in absolute love with this book. In fact, some of my few loyal readers have received a copy from me already.

Hayes’ premise is to describe all the bits of infrastructure we see in our daily life but don’t really understand. This ranges from chapters on farms to shipping to oil to electricity to air travel and more. It’s “trade” format book, with plenty of good photos. The writing is good, hard, journalistically clear.

I have been carrying it around with me.

Early last week I was in Indonesia. I had been reading all about electricity generation. I was surprised how much fun it was to look at the high-tension power lines and being able to identify all their parts. I spotted some things that Hayes mentioned, but didn’t illustrate. One example was the terminal tower on a high tension line that is especially overbuilt for a right-angle turn.

I had a similar experience when I flew back from Hanoi on Saturday morning. I had been reading the section on airports, and suddenly looking out the window as we were hustling down the runway, I was recognizing everything from the book. “Oh, look, there is the fog visibility meter system, there is the shoulder warning that heavy aircrafts shouldn’t taxi on, there are the stemmed blue lights that are being phased out, oh, Hanoi doesn’t have an underground fuel system, they use bowsers, etc. etc. etc.”

I really am addicted to this book and want to start snapping my own photos of the things he’s described. Perhaps I should start a new group on Flickr where people can upload their own pictures of other things mentioned, but not illustrated, in the book.

Sadly, I doubt there will be a sequel. It looks like this was a labour of love that took a long time to produce.

Onion Soup with Thai Seasonings (From Nigel Slater’s “Real Cooking”)

Four medium onions, split in half, gently roasted in an oven for forty minutes. Accompanied by a full bulb of garlic roasted until soft.

I put the entire roasting pan on the stove in order to save the caramelization that stuck to the pan. Pour in a liter of chicken stock, a handful of hot thai “birdseye” style chilis (picked from a bush in my garden) and chiffonaded lime tree leaves (picked from a lime tree in my garden) along with the squeezed-out innards of the garlic. Heat up briskly and then simmer for 20 minutes or so.

Pour in 400ml of coconut milk (sinful but beautiful) and simmer a bit more. Season with some nam pla (thai fish sauce) to taste.

I roughly pureed mine with a hand blender.

mmmm…. spicy, sour, sweet, creamy all at once. Beautiful. I enjoyed it more than tom yam, as it has a thicker consistency, and I like the sweet onion base.

Bean Tortillas

Nothing real special. Tomatoes, onions, beans. Seasoned and softened. Used some old red chile base from my mexican chilli collection. Wrapped up on some organic tortillas. mmm

Dill Pickles

Made another round of refrigerator pickles from some japanese cucumbers today. I really laid on the spices and tried to be temperate with the salt. Last time I oversalted. Hopefully they are tart and flavorful. The ikea jar holding them looks brilliant with the dill stalks floating around with lots of seeds and spices.

I have a Barolo (Italian Wine) tasting dinner tomorrow, so I’ll not be tasting the pickles till tuesday. Ling (who doesn’t drink ) is coming too. There will be many orphaned glasses of wine I guess we’ll have to take care of on her behalf. I’m really looking forward to a Tuesday-morning hangover. Bit early in the week. Maybe I’ll drink pickle brine for Tuesday breakfast. Ling and Luke fly to Sydney Tuesday evening. I follow on Friday evening. I’ll be there for a week.

Thank God I have a lathe — I’ll be able to machine some customized replacement parts for this weak motherfucker.

The star-fangled nut of my Dahon headset lost its grip. I’ll have to replace it with a beefier carbon-tube style clamp I guess. Therefore, I had to take my road bike to work today, which was fine. It has quite a bit of toe-overlap, which makes low speed traffic navigation more tricky, but it didn’t turn out to be a problem. And it’s certainly faster than the dahon.

Today’s telemetry said I rode 16.51km averaging 26.1km/h max speed 46.2km/h in 37:55. I have a lot of traffic lights along the way, so I am not sure how that accounts in the averages and times.

Replaced an old Cateye speedometer (which wasn’t hearing the magnet) from my tri bike with a new wireless cadence/speed sensor this evening. I’ll try to resuscitate the first one and stick it on my Dahon. I have a second, wired, Cateye for Le Chacal.

A few years ago I bought a Silca floor pump for my bicycle tires. They’re the snob-friendly Italian tire pump everyone rants about lasting for decades. In my experience, it’s pretty much an overpriced piece of retro-shit.

This afternoon I bought a replacement rubber gasket for the presta valve connector. It was disintegrating, making it hard to attach the pump to the tires, as well as hard to get a good seal.

Later this evening, I was topping off my road tires with the pump when the handle collapsed underneath me. The pump was no longer creating any pressure.

I tore apart the pump easily. The cheapness of the build was appalling.

There is a plastic guide at the top of the steel chamber. It’s “attached” with two stubby wood-screw style screws. That will be good for two, perhaps three, re-tightens. They hadn’t even drilled pilot holes, so the whole plastic assembly is a ripped mess. If I have to fuss with this pump many more times, I can imagine needing to drill new holes for the screws to find a bite.

Why did the pump lose pressure? Because there is an apparently cheap piece of leather formed into a cup, and bolted to the end of the pumping shaft. It had simply torn where the leather is pinches by the bolt. Dumb. If they want to use leather for something like this, at least use good leather, or lubricate it with something more appropriate than cheap grease. Or something.

The tube itself is just some cheap steel tubing with a crummy paint job. I can see rust blisters forming under it.

I’m sure I can replace the leather gasket and get back to work with the pump, but having taken this thing apart I see there is nothing special about this at all. If I repainted the logo from “SILCA” to “XINRONG IRON MACHINERY WORKS FACTORY NO. 2″ you wouldn’t be surprised by this product.

I kept saying that Wolfram Alpha was this year’s Segway. All this buildup and then …pffft.

But I was wrong.

Wolfram Alpha is worse than a Segway. At least if you ride a Segway it’s fun for 20 minutes. Wolfram Alpha just sucks.

Even BING gave a tolerable result!

I left the house on a bike ride with my friend Michel. Us and his other friend went on a fun 65km (40miles?) ride north and west in Singapore. It was slow for them, but quite nice for me. We averaged around 25km/hr. For a while we rode along with a larger pack and I got to feel what it’s like to draft in a high-speed pack. It’s really amazing how much faster a fast pack can go than a lone rider.

By the time we were wrapping up, my horsepower was waning, which I suppose is ideal. I managed to stay hydrated way better than Taiwan, so although I sweat like a pig, I wasn’t overheating. I need to get my muscles stronger for hill climbs. Michel (an expert racer) showed me some drills to use to strengthen my legs.

Now I am sitting under aircon trying to cool off. In about an hour or two, the whole household is a boarding a one hour ferry to Bintan, Indonesia where we’re taking a two-day holiday at a rented chalet. Ling arranged this as a surprise trip. So I’m looking forward to reading and chilling.

We get back tuesday. I’ll be in the office wednesday, and then off to Hanoi thursday and friday. So should be a quick week, which i definitely don’t mind.

Quality of life took a big jump up today — I cycle my Dahon to the office this morning. Only 16km but took something like 40minutes because of the number of traffic lights. I know a longer route that should be higher average speed, around 35km, that I’ll try later this week.

One direct way to measure quality of my life is to count how much I am able to ride my bicycle.   

Luke Trampolining from michael slater on Vimeo.

I mentioned that my headset or steering extension seemed loose. Sulaiman and I inspected it this afternoon. Disappointing.

Before I even got to the root cause of the headset, I discovered a serious problem. I don’t know whether its Dahon manufacturing or Speedmatrix Singapore that’s at fault. Regardless, the person who put together the fork and headset cross-threaded the soft aluminum internal headset. Really bad. When I unscrewed the fitting that secures the steerer tube and headset, the aluminum just stuck to the bolt threads like a bad chalky powder. There’s no gripping power left, and there’s no part to replace — the frame itself is damaged internally.

Anyway, we did a GI Joe fix. Sulaiman found a star-fangled nut, bolt, and a plug and we were able to clamp down the headset in a different way.

The new headset didn’t fix much — the fork still had play in it. Sulaiman’s man fussed with the bike while Sulaiman and I were discussing other stuff. He got rid of the headset play, although the steering feels a bit tight and gravelly. I may try to loosen it a bit to see if I can gain some freedom without getting headset wiggle.

Sulaiman and discussed the possibility the cones themeslves may not be properly aligned. Really what I need to do is tear down the whole headset/fork assembly and figure out what’s happening with these bearings and cones. Only then can I get a comprehensive fix.

Untitled from michael slater on Vimeo.

A few years ago I tried to grow tomatoes and peppers at my old house here in Singapore. It worked terribly. Principal mistake was my fertilizer selection — the nitrogen rich stuff made them grow like bushes, but they barely blossomed, and definitely didn’t set. A few died of what I later discovered was a chronic problem in tropical soils — Bacterial Wilt Disease.

Last week I sent a note to an old friend of Ling and me, Adrian. He’s received a doctorate in Botany from National University of Singapore. About ten years ago I helped him do fieldwork in a jungle in peninsular Malaysia. My biggest accomplishment was to get a bunch of tick/digging insects into my ass from sitting on a log. (Don’t sit on logs in the jungle)

Adrian told me that people are looking at Biochar as a marvelous new medium to grow in. Apparently some professors have had some success growing temperate species (things I like to eat) in tropical environments (it’s been beastly hot here). Digging around asking who knows who eventually I had two successes.

First, Adrian’s professor pointed us to Kiat Lee Landscaping, where they make biocharcoal. Shyan Woei went over yesterday and got a few bags. He’s already planted a couple small boxes of seeds to experiment.

Secondly, theough the International Biochar Initiative I got in contact with another guy interested in Biochar applications in Southeast Asia, Trevor Richards.

I have about two hundred packs of heirloom vegetable, fruit, herb, and plant seeds coming to me from the UK and USA. I’m eager to turn out yard into a big biochar vegetable lab. Luckily Shyan-Woei has a green thumb and a taste for dirt, so he is helping out on quite a lot.