It doesn’t feel like the end of 2008.  Out of the media loop, somewhat, but there have been very few indicators in my daily life that the end of the year is on its way, except from a few cashiers saying “Happy New Year” instead of “Merry Christmas”.    It’s a difficult year to reflect on, but one of the more interesting ones nonetheless.

Yeah.  Things.   So.  I, uhh. got to go around the world, and that was fun.  The whole traveling to secret destinations thing adds a pretty interesting twist to the whole thing, as it not only is more dangerous (no one knows where you are, and therefore, it would be harder to be tracked down), and it means you cannot get advice on your locales beforehand.  Sure, you can read books, but the places you decide to visit are yours and yours alone.

Despite my inability to go through daily life sometimes, I stumbled around and made it happen.  A week or so in Japan, couple days in France, couple in Berlin, and nearly another week in Switzerland.   Took some great photos, horizons were expanded, and went places where I probably never would have guessed I would in my life.    If I had to do it all again, I’d probably nuke the France part (pretty as it is, France wasn’t super-fun) and opt for Barcelona or Madrid the next time around.     Also got to visit Seattle, too, which was kind of fun, in a very cold sort of way.

People side.  I don’t know if I’m any better with people than I hoped I would be at this point in time.   Some friendships collapsed, some new friendships emerged and solidified.  Dating and the interconnectivity of the web again prove to be a pretty volatile mix. Finding a balance in this ultra-connected world is difficult, although I suppose there is hope that it will happen eventually.  Everybody has personality flaws, although I feel a bit too much of that showed through this year.  Hopefully I’ll be able to cap it back a little this year.

Things!  Traded in Molly the Mini for something a little faster and grown up.  Had proved itself to be a very nice buy, and am really happy that I made the move when I did.  Even though it caused the collapse of the global credit markets just a day later.    Sorry dudes.  My bad.  Got to meet Chris Onstad (!), creator of Achewood in San Francisco.   Met David Kinch and team (chef, Manresa) after dinner in his kitchen.  Saw Steve Jobs in person (pretty rare, even in Silicon Valley). Walked across the Golden Gate Bridge.   Saw Jeff Veen playing Guitar Hero at UX Week.  Discovered the best winery in Napa is in a cave.  Fell in love with photography, big time.   Learning to appreciate the culinary arts.  Went boogie-boarding in the ocean.  Went to some amazing shows (Sigur Ros, My Morning Jacket, and Stars really stood out as fun, memorable shows)  Conquered the Altamont Pass with cameras.  Met M.C Hammer (!) and Chamillionaire at a Tech Crunch party.  (Hammer honked at us)    Held our first (reasonably successful) sake tasting.  Smiled brilliantly when Obama was elected.  Sat next to Michael J. Fox at a fancy gastro place in SF.  Figured out why Farmer’s Markets can be worth the hassle.  Spat in a tube to map out my genetic secrets.  Wrote a lot more articles. Got happy and got depressed.  All in all, a very eventful year.

2008, as a whole, was a year of transition and terribleness, although a few really good things happened.  I’m calling this year a net neutral - as we’ve gone horribly backwards in terms of our economy, however, we’ve made pretty solid political strides and the public opinion on the war seems to have shifted enough to try to bring it to a logical conclusion.   I think the world, and life in general, is on the right track to be better over the next year.   Anything can (and will) happen, but the end of this year looking forward to the upcoming months of 2009, I think there are some great things to look forward to.

I hope (and think) I’ve become a better guy all around this year, although there’s a damn lot to improve about myself and my life.  Hey, though, that’s life and there is plenty of time to tackle this stuff. Here’s to what was in 2008 and what may be in 2009. Cheers.

(photo by Pei-Pei Ketron)

I enjoy a good meal.  2008 allowed me to eat quite a few of them. Here are some of the meals which stood out over the course of this bizarre year.

Coi / San Francisco, CA - The dining experience of the year.  Fresh, unique, courses and wine pairings.  Flavor and texture combinations which were somewhat bizarre, but nearly everything worked together beautifully.  Nice space, cozy and intimate.

Craft / Los Angeles, CA - A definite runner-up to the best dining experience of the year.  Mom’s 60′th birthday, so everyone is in a celebratory mood.  Amazing lighting, very impressive food, and just a very positive dining experience.  Everyone left completely full, happy, and a little boozed, which is exactly what you want in a meal.

Gary Danko / San Francisco, CA - Excellent food quality. A smaller and busier locale than I was expecting, but a very, very good overall dining experience.  Lots of courses, fun service, and genuinely good food.

Restaurant 44 / Berlin, Germany - Clean, highly unique food which we don’t really get here in the states, 44 was (happily) surprisingly excellent.  The sommelier kept things interesting by testing my palette w/ non-standard wine pairings with each course to see if us Americans could keep up in the wine tasting game.   Held up just fine.

Manresa / Los Gatos, CA - Manresa has a history for being spot on or totally off, and even with their oddball history, their Tomato Modernista dinner was even more left of center.  Tons of unique stuff (dill ice cream, I’m looking at you), but once again, the entire experience was way too off-kilter to be worth the money.

Michael Mina / San Francisco, CA - A disappointing tasting menu from the restaurant, but despite that, the company of the evening made it an overall positive experience.   Their main courses appeared much better than the overall tasting menu, and from past experience, this is likely the way to go.   Still have not had the lobster pot pie, which looks amazing every time I’ve been here.

Luce / San Francisco, CA - Oh, Esquire Magazine.  Chef of the Year? This place. Hmm, I’m not putting the two together.  It’s a nice place, for sure, for highly over-priced for what you get.  Extremely unbalanced portion sizes, strange presentation, but overall, good quality food.    Needs more work before anyone should really get worked up over this place.

Chez Panisse / Berkeley, CA - Ever wonder if you get the last table of the night at a restaurant if it affects your food quality?  Starting to think it does.   While it was great to get a seat here without prior reservations, the food was once again, un-incredible.  Still think this place is nice, but over-rated for what it is.  For my money, Rivoli still delivers better food at a lower price with better ambience and service.

Bouchon / Yountville, CA - Oh my god, it was a thousand degrees outside.  I can’t even remember anything beyond the cold soup being refreshing on the hot Napa afternoon.

Coucagno / Tokyo, Japan - The food here was actually not that amazing.  For an attempt to be a French restaurant in Tokyo, it mostly succeeds, but it felt like it was missing some soul.  Nevertheless, good food overall and an amazing view of Ebiso on one side and Yokohama as night fell was worth the effort and mega-Yen required in order to eat here.    First time I’ve ever been loaned a jacket in order to dine at a restaurant, and well, let’s just say my arm length is a bit longer compared to the standard Japanese man.  I felt like a giant in a tiny, tiny jacket.

Union / Seattle, WA - An unexpected find on a cold, snowy Seattle evening. Inexpensive, but great tasting food and an attentive staff, overlooking the famous Seattle Pike Place fish market.

Ubuntu / Napa, CA - First (and quite possibly only) Vegan tasting menu in my history.  Even though they are limited in what they can do with ingredients, they still can push out some very high quality cuisine here.  The fact that this is a restaurant / yoga studio still makes my brain hurt a little bit, but it’s worthy of the hype it gets.  A unique little place.

Spago / Los Angeles, CA - If you go here, get the tasting menu.  If you opt for anything else, it will probably only be moderately good.  Every dish here was over-salted and over-priced.   However, their tasting menu has been so good in prior visits that it’s definitely worth a visit still.  Kind of disappointed in them this time around.

Alexander’s / Cupertino, CA - The go-to place in the South Bay when something great happens in life.  Always an enjoyable experience, especially if you opt for one of their waygu based dishes.  Melt in your mouth amazing steak quality, great wine lists, top notch service.  Hamachi shots rule.

Also, here are a few places where I would love to eat at (and I think could be possible) in 2009 are as follows.  Blue Hill at Stone Barns (New York), Alinea (Chicago), Per Se (New York), Meadowwood (Napa), The Fat Duck (Great Britain).

Fellow Chipotle-enthusiast Vishnu requested that I make a logo for his soccer “football” team/club thing.  As logo design projects don’t come along that often, and it’s something which is highly enjoyable in small doses, I signed on.  He wanted a logo using the same concept, colors, and name of the San Diego chargers logo, seen below.

Obviously though, I am not the type of person to carbon copy a logo and re-purpose it elsewhere.  With that in mind, I thought that there still is a middle ground for something similar, but completely unique.   Here’s what I ended up at after about an hour.   Logo design is pretty time consuming, but I’m pleased with the results.

Dear Internet Santa :

For Christmas this year, I would like a browser which doesn’t suck in at least one major way.   It would be nice to browse the web with the knowledge that your web experience is not tainted in any major way by the shortcomings of one’s interface to it.   This browser should have the following features :

a) Lightweight disk and memory footprint, like Google Chrome.

b) Carry each tab in a unique process, like Google Chrome.

c) Support Firefox extensions, either natively or through some sort of emulated mode.

d) Smooth JPG rendering and font anti-aliasing, like Safari.

e) Browser level abilities to connect to social networks, like Flock.

Oh yeah, and of course, it would have to be fast and standards compliant and cross-platform an all that fun stuff.   Please?  I’ve been good this year.

My new desktop background.   Tired of writing, needed to play in Photoshop a bit.    Turned out nice.   Designed for 2560×1600 but should scale nicely on new widescreen displays.

Dear Fedex : What the hell.

I live in Santa Clara, five minutes away from Sunnyvale.   I ordered a package from Sunnyvale to be delivered to my house in Santa Clara.  Here is the wild and wonderful journey it went on.

Dec 1, 2008

7:21 PM
Left FedEx origin facility
SUNNYVALE, CA

5:44 PM
Package data transmitted to FedEx

4:31 PM
Picked up
SUNNYVALE, CA

Dec 2, 2008

5:10 PM
Arrived at FedEx location
OAKLAND, CA

3:29 PM
Departed FedEx location
MEMPHIS, TN

11:17 AM
Arrived at FedEx location
MEMPHIS, TN

6:39 AM
Departed FedEx location
OAKLAND, CA

2:35 AM
Arrived at FedEx location
OAKLAND, CA

Dec 3, 2008

7:52 AM
At local FedEx facility
SANTA CLARA, CA

6:15 AM
Departed FedEx location
OAKLAND, CA     

This means that Fedex took my package, which shipped from a location 4.3 miles away, a 4,233 miles in the course of three days.    Not only that, I still don’t have the package yet.  Where it will go next, only the insane package guidance system which controls Fedex knows.

I have a confession.  I think I would make an excellent menu designer.    It’s a fine art of sorts.  You have to sell your product but not oversell it, just to get people interested.   You can use all sorts of exotic foods and cooking terms to make it sound much more amazing than it actually is.   To showcase the point, I’ve whipped up a proof of concept, using three dishes which I’ve recently made.

I guarantee they were nowhere near as good as this menu makes them sound (except for the ribeye - which was pretty awesome).    I would love to design a menu for a high-end restaurant.   So many good restaurants have terrible menus - and well - it’s a damn shame.   I also realize that making this graphic likely proves that I am some sort of mental patient.

In a lot of ways, how quickly a country responds to an urgent event showcases a lot about that country.  The Mumbai shootings in India give us a pretty intense glimpse at how they respond to such a crisis.   Hospitals, military, local police, civic organization, city infrastructure, and well, the will of the people themselves.   Mumbai has scored fairly well on all marks, as far as we can see from what’s reported on over here.  The press was able to get good access and we seem to have a pretty solid grasp on what seems to be happening, but of course, there’s no way we can really feel like we’re there.

The photos are incredible, as they should be.  It’s a pretty serious event when nearly 200 people get taken off the earth randomly in the middle of a major city.   Difficult photos to see at times, but even so, some amazing stories emerging from the whole situation.

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