Maverick

A Rise in Kidney Stones Is Seen in U.S. Children

Trailblazer. Nonconformist. Maverick. It would be silly to call myself any of these names -- no true Maverick would ever describe themselves as one -- but it's not difficult to see me as a sort of pioneer here in view of my accomplishments. Truly ahead of my time.

Back from Buda, back from Pest

This morning I woke up in a smokey mobile home near the beach in Pula on the south coast of Croatia.

Thirty minutes later I was hitching a ride to the airport with some Welshmen in a dilapidated caravan.

Flash forward a few hours and I was back in London, walking to the office. All I could think about were the delicious rice cakes sitting on my desk awaiting my return.

Going Hungary

I have an embarrassing carbon footprint. This weekend it hardly gets better although for once I'll be driving between a few cities instead of flying -- have a quick road trip planned with my friend Conor and his brother. Some of the destinations are TBD depending on how the wind blows, but likely stops are:

Budapest - because I fly there

Ljubljana - because I'd like to go to a city that I can't pronounce

Pula - because I fly back from there

Zagreb - because it's sort of on the way

Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia are three countries I've never been to. Croatia, especially, has been on my To Do list for a long time. I'm a big fan of their exchange rate.

Have a great weekend everyone and Happy Birthday Grandpa!

Bad sweater party

We're throwing one in a few weeks.

I'm going to attend wearing a blue t-shirt with giant sweat stains under the armpits and around the neck.

Top 10 cities that I happen to have been to

I'm going to come up with a ranking of the cities I've been to -- top 10 at least. I want to know which one is my favorite.

That sounds dumb but I honestly don't know which will win -- I'm going to rank them all by the following categories and the city with the highest rating will win.

1. Cost of a pint (as a measure of affordability -- like the Big Mac index).
2. The weather.
3. Design/architecture + cleanliness.
4. Ease of getting in and out + ease of getting around within the city.
5. How much the women like me + average hotness + average stylishness.
6. How much the men want to hurt me + anti-Americanism + racialism.
7. Nightlife.
8. Food.
*Bonus for being exotic (how cool the name sounds, famous landmarks, etc.)

Anything else I should be factoring in?

Me, the King of Pop, and some pyramids

My camel's name was Michael Jackson.

Cairo live: walking and smoking like an Egyptian

I'm walking like an Egyptian because I rode a camel for an hour and a half too long (total riding time: one hour, 48 minutes).

I'm smoking like an Egyptian because even on vacation I continue to inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide as part of a process called eupnea. Apparently just breathing in Cairo is equivalent to smoking two packs a day. The haze/smog/fog really is unbelievable. After a while you only start to notice when it's not there and you can actually see the facade of buildings just across the Nile.

Good times though -- Brad and I survived a taxi ride to Giza yesterday. Saw the pyramids. Looked at some mummified cats and monkeys.

Seriously though camel riding is not advised. I could've stuck with it and been in Libya by Tuesday, but even THAT prize wasn't enough to keep me at it (I hear Libya is wonderful this time of year).

Pharoah pharoah

Off to Cairo. So far I've been offered these words of wisdom:

1. Watch out for thieves, mummies and tap water.
2. Smoke a hookah on an outdoor patio.
3. Hotels have the night life.
4. The people are crazy.
5. Definitely take a boat ride on the Nile.
6. If you want a more chill time find out where the rich Egyptians go.
7. Go to the pyramids in the morning with the sunrise.
8. Go to the pyramids at the end of the day after the crowds.
9. There is an awesome laser light show each evening at the pyramids.
10. The light show is completely underwhelming.
11 Pyramids are a hefty taxi ride away but they are worth it. They have a pretty corny laser light show every night.
12. No shorts, no sandals.
13. Shorts are completely fine.
14. Chance of getting lost and wandering for 40 years -- small.
15. Try and visit the Citadel and the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Sq all in one go, and go to the Giza Pyramids another day.
16. When in Giza, make sure you go down to the catacombs, the entrance is on one side of Khafra Pyramid, claustrophobic’s worst nightmare but worth the scare.
17. One of the best bars in Cairo is Sultana - should not miss this. It's on the northern tip of Zamalek which is an island in the middle of the Nile and its where a lot of the embassies are.
18. The Hilton Nile has a very cool bar... good place to kickoff the evening.
The Thai restaurant Birdcage at the Intercontinental is excellent.
19. Go shopping on Talaat Harb street on the weekend and don't miss Khan el-Khalili market. But make sure you bargain, those guys can cheat you with a straight face.
20. Indulge in street food.
21. Don't bother going to CityStars Mall.. its crappy, no matter how much they try to convince you otherwise. In fact, I can't think of a single good reason for visiting the Heliopolis neighborhood which is to the East of the city.
22. Must try foul for breakfast -- the Egyptian version of refried beans, everybody starts their morning with this. If you're lucky you may catch the tail end of the mango season as well.
23. Don't enter a cab unless you negotiate a price first, if riding solo you’ll have to ride shotgun. Short cab rides should cost no more than a tenner.
24. Make sure you agree on a price before getting into the cab, hell, make them put it in writing.
25. Being kidnapped is less fun than it sounds.
26. Say hi to Tut for me.
27. You better be back at work Monday afternoon.

Ok...

Ride hard

I like walking, I'm constantly annoyed by bikers (when they aren't Swedish girls) interpreting traffic laws in any way that benefits them, and I don't need the hassle of locking/unlocking a bike repeatedly but maybe still getting my front wheel or seat* stolen because some people out there are jerks.

Or at least that's what I thought until I rode my friend Sebastian's bike around Frankfurt a few weeks ago. Since that day I've been in the market for a bike -- not a fast one or a shiny one or a geary one -- and yesterday I bought one**.

I'm not riding to get in shape or to get somewhere in particular. I probably won't ride to work because I don't want to ride in traffic and come to a tragic end (my complete lack of understanding of UK traffic law makes this highly likely).

I'll be biking only because city riding makes me a more efficient people watcher and lets me stumble on things that I would never have walked past. I'll also only be riding when it's sunny and nice like it was yesterday (bike shopping yesterday was like grocery shopping on an empty stomach), which is to say, 5-10x per year.


*They call seats "saddles" here.

**Even the WORST SALES PITCH IN THE HISTORY OF SALES couldn't put me off. Said pitch consisted of the following soundbites:

"80% of the people who I sell bikes to have their bikes stolen."
"I don't even want to sell that bike. If I sell all my bikes I have to go and get more bikes."
"This is the second time that bike has been in my shop. The first person who bought it brought it back and got another one."

Brits v Yanks

When Harry Potter (some people call him by his stage name, Daniel Radcliffe) was in London's West End play Equus, he had a nude scene. During the play's run of 4 months, no one ever took a picture or video of his bits and posted it on the interweb.

Equus opened in NYC on September 25. It took until September 25 for someone to post a picture of his bits on the interweb (see it here).

America!

What I did with a hard boiled egg tonight

1. Bought it for 40 pence.

2. Ate it.

I keep doing this and I don't know why. I do like hard boiled eggs but the impulse is a strange one. Maybe I'm pregnant. 

Service nation

I recently heard that a study had been done which found that Europeans and Americans work, on average, the same amount per day, week and year. The difference was that Americans spend more time at work and do less work at home; Europeans spend less time at work but do more work at home.

The reason: America is a great service economy. The example given was dry cleaning. In London it costs $7-8 to get a shirt dry cleaned. In the US you can get a shirt dry cleaned for a few dollars, with free pickup and delivery in some cities. There are countless other examples where Americans outsource their home economics to the service economy. In the UK and across Europe, it's too costly to do so.

Just thought of that when I paid $48 for my dry cleaning (6 shirts and a suit).

Reinventing the virtual wheel

Sorry for the inconsistent posting these days. It's for your own good.

I've decided to change the regularity of my posts from "once a day except when I'm traveling" to "whenever I want, regardless of my location and potentially even more than once daily". I'm guessing that quantity may drop ever so slightly, but if today's brilliant Pizza/Pasta Hut post is any indication, the quality will remain indisputably top shelf.

I've got trips to Cairo, Ljubljana/Zagreb and Stockholm coming up this month. I've never posted while traveling before but that doesn't mean I didn't have interesting things to say and sarcastic observations to make. I had rules for when/where to post that prevented me from posting at times (and forced me to write when I was at my most uninspired).

Glad we had this talk.

Eating at the hut

So Pizza Hut UK has the brilliant idea of changing their name to Pasta Hut, because they do more than pizza.

Well done lads. But you also do more than pasta, don't you? You do pizza too. So maybe you should change your name to Pizza H... er.

The real elephant in the room, if you want a descriptive and literal name, is that you're not serving any pizza OR pasta in a hut these days, are you?

Don't be a racialist.

Hate to keep being political, but this transcends politics:

A candidate for president should not be judged by the color of his skin. And to anyone who thinks differently, I say, please do not reject John McCain just because he's white. I think the recent news from Wall Street has made us all less tolerant, and only reinforced the stereotype that white people are shiftless, thieving welfare queens.

Now, take a look at these pictures. Here are the CEO's of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and the Lehman Brothers. I know the first thing that jumps out about these faces is they all happen to be white, and they all happen to be responsible for stealing. But, what you have to understand is that these whites are a product of a society that made them that way. It was the neighborhoods and the schools they went to: Harvard, Yale, the Wharton School of Business. They never learned the value of doing real, actual work. And the first step to fixing that is better role models so kids growing up white today don't think the only way out of Westchester is corporate crime. Or a government handout. Or sailing.

So, I get it. The temptation is to look at McCain and vote against him because you don't see an individual; you just see another typical welfare "whitey." And it's true. He spent his entire life shuffling from one low-paying government job to another. Well, except those years he spent in prison. Typical. And, between you and me, he's not very articulate. Oh, he may have some street smarts, but he's not what you'd call an "educated" man. He freely admits he's ignorant about the economy. And apparently the only thing his white running mate knows how to do is crank out one baby after another.

And now, of course, her teenage daughter is pregnant out of wedlock, because she learns it at home! But, that doesn't mean we should assume all white people are like that just because so many of them are. I believe there is hope. I believe even the stupidest, greediest, laziest whites can break the cycle of dependence, like this November when we finally move George Bush out of public housing.

- Bill Maher

My top five-oh

I understand that I'm seen by some of you as a father figure. Here is what er/uk (call me dad) has in his tape deck at the moment. I can dub some of these for you if you want. My current top 50, in no particular order:

move your feet junior senior
spoken for we are scientists
out there on thin ice cut copy
so much love to give dj falcon & thomas bangalter
bizarre love triangle new order
i go i go i go wave machines
learnalilgivinanlovin' (stryafoam kid "sunshine" mix) gotye
churches under the stairs brendan canning
tiger mountain peasant song fleet foxes
i told her on alderaan neon neon
sleepy head passion pit
all i need radiohead
over and over hot chip
headphone song junior senior
swagga like us jay-z (featuring kanye west, ti & lil wayne)
we own the sky m83
archangel burial
what a wonderful world (dub mix) axwell & bob sinclair (featuring ron carroll)
electric feel mgmt
mostly a friend less gonzalez alvarez
paper planes m.i.a.
with every heartbeat robyn (with kleerup)
lay me down cyndi lauper (with kleerup)
lights & music (moulinex remix) cut copy
kids mgmt
black & gold (phones as hard as diamonds edit) sam sparro
cape cod kwassa kwassa (the teenagers remix) vampire weekend
gun emiliana torrini
to cure a weakling child/boy girl song adem
superstar lupe fiasco (featuring matthew santos)
death will never conquer coldplay
i believe simian mobile disco
love lockdown (studio version 2) kanye west
the penalty beirut
when water comes to life cloud cult
charlotte booka shade
one pure thought hot chip
untitled #8 (popplagio) sigur rós
lost! coldplay
to build a home the cinematic orchestra
he doesn't know why fleet foxes
while you wait for the others grizzly bear
mirando ratatat
far away cut copy
the weight of lies the avett brothers
this boy's in love the presets
together dj falcon & thomas bangalter
time to pretend mgmt
touch too much hot chip
until we bleed lykke li (with kleerup)