After my presentation in Aarhus as part of ITForum.DK’s get-together, I chatted with Babak Djahari, a lobbyist for the tech sector. I asked what his issues were, half afraid he was going tell me how Net neutrality is a communist plot, but then I remember that, oh yeah, I’m not in America. He said the industry’s main issue is a shortage of programmers. The pay is excellent but, he said, programmers are considered nerds. Also taxes are very high (65-70% at the high end) and the weather is less than ideal; he says there’s only fall and winter, and during the winter there are only six hours of light. (Since when do geeks see the sun anyway?) On the other hand, you get to live in Denmark, the beer is great, there are lots of Danes here, English is the second language, the Danes rescued my people during WW II, and you’ll be just in time for when nerds become the new cool people, just like in the US.

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After the meeting, I bicycled from the hotel to Aarhus, about 5k along the bay. I used one of Aarhus’ free public bicycles and had an exceptionally pleasant ride. After returning the bike to one of the stands, I wandered aimlessly, i.e., I got totally head-facing-backwards, wasn’t-I-just-here lost. The part of the city I saw — which included the pedestrian section — was quiet, old, unpretentious, possibly student-y. I went to an Asian restaurant, thinking I might find something vegetarian there. There was nothing on the menu, but they wokked up some vegetables. Then I wandered, trying to find the bay because my only way back to the hotel would be by biking along the water, although first I would have to bike a few miles to figure out I’m going in the wrong direction, since my experience has consistently taught me that the right direction is always the second direction, and no amount of figgering or trying to cheat the system (“Which is the way I wouldn’t go? That must be the way!”) circumvents this law of personal physics. Amazingly, I fell into a worm hole that brought me directly to the hotel, where “worm hole” = “taxi.”

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Now I’m on my tiny balcony overlooking the bay, from which I can see the loading docks, carbon paper clouds, and lights drifting toward my family. [Tags: denmark travel programming ]

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I’m going to Toronto in a couple of days and for a moment thought about going to Sai Woo’s for the sweet and sour vegetable balls. When I was a grad student, that was my favorite — and affordable! — out-of-the-house meal. I’ve had sweet and sour sauces like it, but not quite as good. As for the vegetable balls, well, I never could figure out either what vegetables were in it or what Sai Woo put them through to render them into that particular crunchy paste. Mmm.

But Sai Woo’s is no more. It went from the place the city took visiting dignitaries to an empty cavern with worn carpets to an ex-restaurant.

So, the dish is no more. Not just the instances of the dish, but — assuming the box of recipes is mouldering in a dump somewhere — the dish itself. It seems simultaneously platonic and, in its evanescence, non-platonic.

Aw, screw Plato. I sure could go for a dish of Sai Woo’s sweet and sour vegetable balls.

Footnote: The “No Name” at Grasshopper in Allston is pretty close.

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Here’s a new footnote in the anals of petty totalitarianism.

A few minutes ago, the guy ahead of me in the airport security line got literally “Tut-tut”-ed by a jovial TSA worker because he had put a 2.5 oz bottle of Purell into a scanner bin, along with his jacket and change. “You have to have all fluids in a clear quart bag,” said the TSA guy. “You can go back through and get one at Hudson News or you can surrender the Purell.”

Facing the prospect of going to the rear of the line, the traveler told the TSA guy to keep the Purell.

“I thought the purpose of the quart bag was to make sure you’re not bringing too many three-ounce bottles,” I said. The TSA guy nodded with a minimum of commitment. “It’s pretty clear that this three ounce bottle is going to fit into a bag,” I continued, syllogistically.

“I don’t write the rules,” the TSA guy said, throwing the little bottle into a bin full of little bottles, presumably the most dangerous bin in the world.

I know the TSA guy doesn’t write the rules, and he was friendly when he could have instead become a martinet. Nevertheless, he confiscated a bottle that he would have let through if it had been in a clear bag, as if the quart bag defuses explosives.

“They ought to trust your judgment more,” I said, feeling lucky that our little interchange hadn’t resulted in me being taken into a small room and being asked to bend over.

On the other hand, I am feeling more secure, knowing that an evil-doer couldn’t get on board and sanitize us to death… [Tags: security airports tsa kafka politics]

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Q: What is the opposite of Venice?
A: The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

This is a hotel so large that I got agoraphobia when I walked in to it.

I arrived late last night to keynote the New Communications Forum this morning, and headed straight for the gambling area. Cocktail waitresses stroll the casino hangar in outfits that seem to have been designed forty years ago by horny thirteen year old boys.
Lose I did. I started on the quarter video poker, but the betting algorithm is too mechanical — hold onto the Jacks and higher, discard the rest — so I switched to a slot machine to eliminate any pretense of skill and get the whole thing over with. Six minutes later, I’d lost my entire bankroll. There’s ten dollars I’ll never see again.

I haven’t yet seen the Venetian’s mock canal (mockanal? nah, that doesn’t come out right), which I’m looking forward to because of how smug it will make me feel.

The truth is that I sort of like Vegas because it is what it is and nothing more, although I’m not crazy about what it is. And, yes, I do know how lucky I am that I get to go places. Truly.

Now, on to the conference, which promises to be interesting, although I can only stay for the morning. [Tags: travel vegas gambling venice new_communications_forum]

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We finished up our trip to DC with a visit to the west (new) wing of the National Gallery of Art, which was really enjoyable, although I was untouched by the special exhibit of Jasper Johns 1950s work; I just don’t care about art that can be replaced by its description. I know I’m just being ignorant, but, well, I’m ignorant.

We also dipped into the east wing which has just a splendid collection. Totally enjoyable.

Then, because we didn’t want to spend the entire trip going to nothing but art museums, on a whim we went to The Spy Museum. It’s well done and I would have enoyed it if it turned out that I actually cared about spies outside of John Le Carre novels.

We also popped in to the hundred year old synagogue at Sixth and I, which is beautiful on the inside and well marketed on the outside.

Then we got to Dulles way too early for a flight that was only slightly late, came home, cleaned the turtle tank, dropped the full turtle tank (sans turtles) onto the toilet, shattering the tank and depositing a load of gravel in the toilet (and who hasn’t felt that way sometime?), and was thus welcomed back to the workaday world. [Tags: washington_dc dc travel jasper_johns]

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My wife and I are in DC as tourists for a few days. Some notes…

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We took a two-hour docent-led tour of The National Portrait Gallery. Tom Thompson, the docent, knows everything and can put it in perspective. I’m a sucker for portraits.

The three-paragraph write-ups pasted next to each presidential portrait are surprisingly frank and overall quite negative about our fearless leaders. Surprising and refreshing.

Almost forty years later, it still find it difficult to watch the videotape of Nixon appealing to the “silent majority” to support his secret plan to end the war in Vietnam.

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The National Gallery of Art has a special exhibit of its Rembrandt sketches and etchings. The craft almost overwhelms the art. (Simon Schama’s Rembrandt’s Eyes is an amazing, eye-opening work.)

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The Library of Congress is closed on Sundays. It makes for a brisk walk up Capitol hill, though. We’ll go today, if it’s open on Presidents’ Day.

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The History Boys movie was quite enjoyable, although less substantial than I’d thought, less surprising, and less about the teacher it thinks it’s about than it is. (The “academic” lesson it teaches is the same as in David R. Williams’ little book of advice to students, Sin Boldly , [Tags: washington_dc dc travel rembrandt national_portrait_gallery]

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