Category: Fourre-tout

Egypt has a new (interim) president. Good.
Good riddance of those two-faced Islamic Jesuits who ruled the country for more than a year!
Their legacy: disenchantment and alienation from all major segments of the population.
It is a good thing that the opposition managed to overthrow the Islamists before they had the time to completely stifle dissent and enslave the entire country.

Most politicians are demagogues… that is the only way they can get elected.
Always talking out of both sides of their mouths… telling people what they long to hear.
They will advocate different agendas when addressing different audiences.
Soothing when talking to Jews, rabidly anti-Semitic when talking to Muslims, enthusiastically Buddhist when addressing Buddha’s devotees, etc.
Politicians let’s face it, are nothing but a whoring lot!

Mohamed Morsi was no exception. Sounding conciliatory when talking to some and rabidly intolerant when talking to others.
And one more time, as it is common in Muslim countries, Morsi had religion infringe on the life of its people.
Religion’s motto is and has always been: If you are not with us, you are against us, and if you are against us you don’t deserve to live!
What kind of insanity is this?

But we might have seen the dawn of a new era in Egypt where common sense is finally starting to prevail over religion.
Young men and young women are rebelling against backward traditions and calling for secularism and fairness in government.
No more arbitrary fatwas by out-of-touch clerics!

Any kind of dictatorship (religious or otherwise) will eventually fail, and when this happens the end is often gruesome (see Mussolini, Ceausescu, Khadafi or Saddam Hussein).

But revolutions can be notoriously fickle and unpredictable and nobody knows how it will end.
In order to prevail, the Egyptian “Bolsheviks” (“majority”) need to be fair and pragmatic, but it is always difficult for the victors to be moderate.

The Muslim Brothers had their chance. They blew it.
Time to go! Period!

May Egyptians never let any “pious” bigots ever rule their country again, and may they finally enjoy the proven virtues of secularism.

Amen!

Alain

 

A few days ago I watched a video-clip featuring a woman gymnast. She was pretty good.
But what impressed me the most was the fact that Johanna Quaas was 86 years old. She did things at the parallel bars that I probably couldn’t have done when I was 30.

But Johanna is no ordinary person. In 1954 she was a member of the handball team that took the Eastern German championship and in her advanced years she collected 11 medals in senior gymnastic.

So basically she never stopped pumping iron and that’s why she is in such a great shape.
And that’s my point. If you keep exercising regularly throughout your life, you will be able to still tie your shoelaces when you are 90, and beyond.

Many people exercise when single, but it seems that they stop when they tie the knot. Maybe it is the ensuing amount of sex that leaves them exhausted and unable to pursue the Holy Grail of body conditioning.
But I doubt it. After many years at the Playboy Mansion Hugh Hefner is still pumping.

“If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”
So said Eubie Blake (1887-1983).

The old dude was right!

Body maintenance should start at an early age and never cease.
Most of us stop exercising when we become “responsible” adults with a demanding job and a wife and children to feed.
We stop doing regular body maintenance and we treat our cars more lovingly than our own human machine. We start by skipping an oil change, neglecting the air conditioning and not replacing the tires when we should.

I have always been in awe of old Asian people would can squat like babies even in their eighties.
They can do this, because they practiced all their lives and never stopped doing it. If we never stopped exercising we would all look like Sarafian and hit “carreaux” at least once a week.

Popular wisdom says it plainly “don’t use it, lose it”.

If you want your children to be in great shape in their eighties (it is too late for most of us) tell them to never stop exercising, even when the wife nags them to spend more time taking care of the children.
Because who will take care of the children when like Tony Soprano you get whacked by a heart attack at the age of fifty-one?

Be selfish, it is good for you!

Alain

 

Last night my wife and I had dinner at Bogie’s, a small San Rafael restaurant now run by Luc Pouget, a pétanque playmate.

I consider Luc a friend and I was predisposed to like his offerings, but as a reporter I am bound to put my personal feelings aside and be as impartial as can be.

When evaluating a dining establishment, my judgment is basically formed by two almost equal criteria: food and service.
The rest (noise level or atmosphere) while being important does not carry as much weight.

After having made reservations, we promptly arrived at the restaurant at 6:30 p.m.
We were met in the dining room by Luc who took a few minutes out of the kitchen to greet us.

Greetings are important to me. If we are properly greeted and promptly shown to a table, it shows that the restaurant is primed for business and ready to take care of its customers.
But last night no waiter was readily apparent and we were left to pick our own table.

Let me say right away that the biggest shortcoming of Bogie’s is service, or lack thereof. It desperately cries for a professional waiter (preferably a waitress) and we never saw one, not even the shadow of one.

After sitting at a table (in a sparsely occupied dining room) we had to wait a long time to be offered menus.

We finally picked Marinated Calamari Salad and Escargots en croute for appetizers, but again we had to wait about twenty-five minutes for them to materialize.
A rather long waiting time for items that should have been already prepped in the kitchen.

The salad alas, was not properly seasoned and had to be sent back to the kitchen for a booster shot of dressing.
The escargots were equally uninspired. They were served in little pastry shells while drowning in a rather insipid sauce.
To me, there is only one way to serve escargots: bathed with butter, parsley and garlic. That’s it.

We also had to beg for water and bread, and wine seemed to have skipped the waitperson’s mind altogether. We had to remind him to bring it over.

In the dining room incidentally, we noticed and said hello to Catherine and Jean-Claude Bunand and Eve and Antoine Lofaro.

For our main course, we chose the Rib Eye steak and the Duck breast (magret).
I am pleased to report that the steak was tender, cooked to perfection and that the duck breast was equally tasty.

This being said, I cannot decently give this place my seal of approval.

I wanted to like this restaurant and sing its praises.
I would have liked to make it a regular hangout like Cheers “where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad that you came”.

But a place where everybody knows your name should also serve good food and provide decent service.
And the latter was definitely hard to spot.

One final unfortunate detail.
After paying in cash and intending to leave a generous tip in spite of it all, I waited a long time to see my change.
When nothing materialized, I had to walk to the cash register and demand my due.
Not good! This casual attitude doesn’t reflect well on the establishment.

In order to survive, Bogie’s will definitely have to hire a competent waitperson (preferably of the female persuasion) and up its game in the kitchen.

I wish Bogie’s all the luck in the world, but I am afraid that it is going to be a long uphill battle.

Alain