How to have a constructive meeting

I just got out of a constructive meeting and I was inspired to share some tips on how to hold a good meeting (I wish this post was as funny as the picture, but unfortunately, I am dead serious):

(1) Discuss topics with stakeholders individually in advance.  Forwarding the agenda is not enough, a 1:1 verbal conversation is best, especially regarding controversial subjects.

(2) Have an attitude of openness and curiosity.  It makes the meeting so much more pleasant.

(3) Don't be afraid to bring the meeting back to the agenda when the conversation goes on a tangent, and it will go on a tangent when you have curious, creative people in attendance.

(4) It is all right to joke and laugh and make small talk to relax everyone.

(5) Be up-front about the decision outcomes you would like to see coming out of the meeting.

(6) Standing up to go to the white board wakes people up, and raises your energy level.

(7) Write meeting minutes, and keep track of action item completion.  The act of writing meeting minutes will uncover action items that weren't immediately obvious.

(8) Have a good handout/power point presentation.  This helps with sticking to the agenda and reminds the mediator of points that would otherwise be forgotten.

(9) Bone up. Knowing the subject matter inside and out before a meeting will forward the conversation more speedily and will make the meeting more constructive.

(10) Appreciate your meeting attendees out-loud. Thank them for their time, and appreciate their feedback.

For more tips on holding a successful meeting, please visit the following blog post. 

And now for something completely frivolous... Nude pumps

There is something about looming deadlines that makes me a more prolific blogger.  When I have no impending deadlines, I have nothing to write about. However, when under a time crunch, I procrastinate by blogging away. Anyways, the subject of this blog post is nude pumps: how to wear them, and where to get them.

I've been shopping for the perfect pair of nude pumps for a long time now, but: (1) I have not been able to find reasonably priced, comfortable shoes that don't look too tranny, and (2) despite the generally accepted wisdom that nude pumps are a "must-have" fashion staple, I have no clue how to pair these shoes with actual clothes.

Nude pumps with white

With brightly hued dresses

Nude pumps can be paired with anything I would normally pair with my high heel beige wedges (now unfortunately worn to death).  However, I did notice that the nude pumps are more polished and more lady-like than a casual pair of high-heeled sandals. Also, nude pumps can be paired with brightly colored dresses (see above) and result in a more subtle effect than had that same dress been paired with black shoes.

Casually, with jeans and a boxy top

I found surprisingly few options for pairing nude pumps with pants.  The L.A. fashionistas are pairing them with cargo pants, or jeans (see above). But this look smacks of L.A. This looks good if you are one of those women who do nothing but shop on Rodeo Drive, carrying a tea cup Chihuahua.

Despite the limited clothing options, I think nude pumps would make a worthwhile fashion addition, if just to replace my aforementioned beige wedges.

Banana Republic: $79.50

The Banana Republic version above has a low enough heel for work. And I also favor the suede texture.  However, I don't trust Banana Republic for long term comfort. My comfort standard is that I need to be able to walk a mile or two in the heels without discomfort. 

Coach: $198

The Coach shoes above are really gorgeous.  And they do exhibit more of a stacked toe, which is trendy right now. But the price point is not ideal. And I would prefer no patent leather.

Steve Madden: $89.95

The Steve Madden shoes above are moderately priced, and look more expensive than they are.  However, the stacked toe, when there is no peephole, looks too tranny to me. (For the non-fashionista, "tranny" is an adjective describing transvestites.)

Cole Haan: $335.00

Cole Haan: $298.00

The Cole Haan shoes above, will probably last forever, and are probably incredibly comfortable. Unfortunately, these are not at my price point.

Pelle Moda: $104.67

My favorite find for the price are the Pelle Moda nude pumps above.  They have the suede texture, and stacked toe, and peephole that I prefer. Unfortunately they do not come in the sizes that I'm interested in, at least on Zappos.com.  So, I guess I'll keep looking...

Fish Tacos and Salsa Fresca

Fish tacos are much easier to prepare than one would think.  I tried making them for the first time, and they tasted surprisingly authentic:

Fish Tacos 
Corn tortillas
White fish (I used rockfish)
1/2 cup canola oil
salt to taste (generous)
cayenne pepper to taste

Instructions:
1. Lower the rack in the oven to 4" from the heating element. Set oven to broil. While the oven is heating up, prepare the Salsa Fresca, or prepare the fish:
2. Coat a broiler pan with the canola oil.
3. Place the white fish in the pan. Coat the fish on both sides with the oil using a brush.  (You can also try marinating the fish in lime juice and cilantro for 15 minutes beforehand. I didn't do it, and it is probably unnecessary.)
4. Season fish generously on both sides with salt
5. Season fish with cayenne pepper on both sides
6. When the oven is hot, place the fish in the broiler pan on the rack and cook for 10 minutes, or until fish is flaky. (Don't worry if the canola oil gives off a strange smell while cooking.)
7. Let fish cool, and flake the fish.  There will be a lot of liquid in the pan after cooking, so it is important to salt the fish generously.
8. Place fish in warm corn tortillas with pinto beans and Salsa Fresca below. Garnish plates with lime slices.

Salsa Fresca
1-2 Jalapeno peppers (if using seeds, just 1 pepper is enough)
5 Vine-ripened Tomatoes
4-5 Radishes
1/2 cup cilantro
1/2 red onion
Juice from half a lime
Salt to taste

1. Chop all ingredients in a blender separately.
2. Combine ingredients in a bowl.

I didn't make the cabbage garnish this time, but I looked up a simple Bobby Flay recipe, which I will be sure to attempt next time:

Cabbage Garnish
Shredded white cabbage
Crema or sour cream
Hot sauce
Thinly sliced red onion, and green onion
chopped cilantro leaves
Crema or sour cream

1. Combine all incredients and garnish fish tacos.

Chez TJ

For my birthday, Mark and I ate at famed French restaurant, Chez TJ. This single story house has been around the corner from our house for many years, but it wasn't until my birthday that we decided to give the restaurant a try.


Course 1: Pumpkin Panna Cotta
with Garlic Chips and
Port and Shallots Marmalade
with a Foie Gras Macaron

Chez TJ has a Michelin 1-star rating. In the foodie world, this is a BIG deal.  To give you an idea of how rare a Michelin star is, there are only 39 other restaurants in the San Francisco Bay area with a single Michelin star. Losing a Michelin star, or gaining a Michelin star, is quite literally a matter of life and death. In 2003, a well-known French chef committed suicide when he learned that his restaurant was to be downgraded from 3 Michelin stars to a mere 2 stars.

Course 2: Pacific Amberjack sashimi
with celery salad, yogurt
and smoked beets

In 2007, Chez TJ itself was the center of gossip when chef, Bruno Chemel was fired for losing a Michelin star, dropping the restaurant from the vaunted 2 star realm, to merely one.  It was in the wake of this scandal that we experienced the food at Chez TJ. In retrospect, I doubt we could have been able to tell the difference between 1 or 2 Michelin stars anyway.  I felt that the food was way above my head.

Course 3: Foie Gras Soup with
Almond Foam with
Brioche Foie Gras topped with
Pomegranate Gelee

Course 4: Chestnut raviolini
topped with sweetbreads
and shaved truffles with
a green pea broth

Course 5: Octopus and Oxtail
with Brussel Sprouts Tempura

Mark and I chose the 8 course tasting menu, but with the "amuse bouches" that were offered, we actually ate 10 courses. Dinner took almost 4 hours to complete, and we were served by at least 4 different people.

Course 6: Pork belly with pickled root vegetables, seaweed gastrique and almond sauce

My favorite dishes were the Pork belly dish (see above), and the Octopus and Oxtail dish (see Course #5).  Mark's favorite dish was the Beef rib-eye (see below).  It was also our first time sampling sweetbreads (see Course #4), i.e. thymus glands, and the verdict is in: we really liked it.

Course 7: Beef rib-eye with Bluefoot mushrooms and black garlic gnocchi

Course 8: Cowgirl Creamery Mt. Tam cheese with Roasted Red Grapes and a Honeycomb and Thyme gastrique

Course 9: Happy Birthday Platter of goodies, including passion fruit chewies\

Course 10: Lemon Crostata with a Date Mousse and Coconut Sorbet with a Deconstructed Lemon Reconstructed with Lemon gelee.

In summary, it was memorable experience, however, I really don't think I have an educated enough palate to appreciate the food properly. The flavor combinations were pretty challenging.  Many of the dishes made my head hurt, they were so intellectual.  To the chef's credit, however, I must say that each dish was an explosion of flavor.  I sometimes find European food kind of bland.

If there were any drawbacks to our experience, it would be the decor and the service.  The decor did not match the level of food we were eating. Also, I did not feel that the service was great. I felt like the two hosts were too ingratiating. And one of the servers, could not speak English well, if at all. I had a hard time understanding the dishes he was describing, which is really a shame, because we were spending so much money on our meal, it would have been nice to understand what we were eating.

After all this, my conclusion is that the Michelin star review system is based on real judgement. However, I simply don't have the palate to appreciate it. I think I would rather spend that same money on a 3 day weekend excursion. Our Sequoia National Park vacation, which we recently took, cost about the same as our meal, and I think I enjoyed it more.

What I'm Playing, Reading, Watching, Surfing, II

The Hyperion books by Dan Simmons have landed on many a top 10 Science Fiction lists.  So as any self-respecting science fiction reader would do, I decided to give the books a read. I began Hyperion last month, and just finished its sequel, The Fall of Hyperion on my iPhone. In a nutshell, the books are about a massive war between man, Artificial Intelligence, and the Ousters - an evolved offshoot of man. The Hyperion series is a space opera.  At its worst, I felt like I was muddling through a high schooler's melodramatic first novel.  However, at his best, Dan Simmons showcases his imagination with image after remarkable image.  Take for instance his evocation of the Shrike, a 9 foot tall monster bristling with thorns and spikes, perhaps one of the scariest monsters ever written in the modern age. Also, I love the description of the Consul's space ship.  I wish I had my own personal space craft equipped with a grand piano, full bar, and cushy round sofa pad.

The Hyperion Books

What I'm Surfing
I'm obsessed with reading the Style Section on the New York Times website.  I've been following the runway shows in New York, Milan and Paris religiously and I'm learning to love designers I would have loathed just a couple of years ago. Take for instance this Fall's Prada show.  I realize now that Miuccia Prada is a genius, rather than a hawker of ugly nylon bags, for which she was originally famous.  Her proportions and color choices could be interpreted as dowdy and retro.  But I think she is an innovator-extraordinaire.  She has a genius for reinventing forms and combining textures.

Prada, Fall 2011

Another fashion designer that I've grown to admire is Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton.  I used to make fun of people who owned Louis Vuitton purses.  The prototypical LV bag owner, for me, was someone who aspired to be high-class, but who really wasn't, or at most, was someone who didn't have enough good taste to be original.  But I have since changed my mind. Marc Jacobs has a very evolved and cultivated aesthetic sense.  His latest Fall 2011 fashion show was fetishistic, and decadent, yet tightly prudish all at the same time if such a thing were possible. The fashion reviewers say that his runway show was based on the 1970s cult film, The Night Porter, which was about a masochistic affair between a concentration camp survivor, and her Nazi captor. The theme seems rather obscure to me, but there was no denying the drama as each model arose on stage from a metal cage elevator wearing a juxtaposition of vinyl, with tweed pea coats, buttoned up dresses with hand cuffs.

Louis Vuitton Fall 2011

What I'm Playing, Reading, Watching, Surfing

This month, I have been a real couch-potato. When I am not hard at work, I have been busy (if busy is the right word) watching movies, playing games, reading books, and surfing obsessively:

What I'm Playing:
Fallout: New Vegas is my latest video game obsession. I'm not gonna bore you with an in-depth review, but in summary, this is a mind-bogglingly complex, and strange game.  The game is a role-playing shooter, with some very bizarre story-lines: I have cooked imitation human meat for a fancy New Vegas restaurant, I have given a brain transplant to a dog (see picture, left).  I have even sampled the sexual services of a "sexbot", to name some of my stranger experiences.  Believe it or not, I've been relatively ethical.  In this game, I have been meticulous about not killing innocent people.  But sometimes, you can't help it. Just recently, I cleared out an entire casino with a stolen assault carbine. Now, everyone cowers around me on the New Vegas strip.  But what was I supposed to do?  They attacked first.

Rex, my robot/canine companion

What I'm Watching
I am slightly fascinated by a documentary we recently saw: Azorian-The Raising of the K-129.  This documentary discloses the biggest and most ambitious CIA project of all time: raising the K-129 submarine. Apparently, this Russian sub sank from unknown reasons back in 1969. The Russians did not have the technology to find their own submarine, and so searched aimlessly for several weeks. In contrast, the Americans triangulated the exact position of the submarine within minutes of the submarine sinking (let's just say that we Americans have lots of underwater sensors all over the world). Because this was during the Cold War, the Americans decided to secretly raise the nuclear submarine. Just, how does one raise a nuclear submarine, secretly exactly?  Well, you design and build a custom ship that looks like any normal ship.  But it isn't a normal ship, because inside the ship is a huge mechanical claw.  The claw can  be lowered half a mile deep. The claw is custom-designed to grab the submarine, lift it, and ensconse it safely, deep inside the belly of the ship. I kid you not.

The documentary is chock-a-block full of nerdy engineering details. For example, perhaps the largest bearings ever designed or built were made for this project (made to isolate the cyclic motions of the mechanical claw deep underwater, from the rolling of the ship above water). Also, some poor engineering chump had to design gigantic custom pipe-threads on long pipe sections purely for extending the mechanical claw.
  
I'm not a boxing fan by any means, but watching Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson was a huge inspiration to me. Jack Johnson, (not the musician) was the first Black boxer to win the heavy-weight boxing title. This was hugely controversial back in the day (this took place during the 1910s) because people were horrified to learn that Blacks could be physically superior to a White. What I find so fascinating, nay, inspirational about Jack Johnson, was that, in a time when many Black people were still impoverished and segregated from White society, Jack Johnson actively crossed those lines.  He scandalized society by consorting with White women, sometimes travelling with a harem of them everywhere he went.  He also dressed splendidly in the highest of fashions (he reminds me of some NBA players today), and sped around town in a series of expensive racing cars. He was arrogant, and merely smiled his famous gold-capped smile when racial epithets were hurled at him during boxing matches. I find Jack Johnson an inspiration of the human spirit.  There is something so indomitable about him. And he was stubbornly himself, despite all of the pressures from society for him to be another way.


To be continued...

Snowshoeing in Sequoia National Park, Part 3

Mark and his two bowls
at breakfast at
Wuksachi Lodge

In all my previous stays in National Parks, I have always stayed in tents, or primitive tent cabins.  However, lodging doesn't always have to be so rugged. Many National Parks have famous and historical lodges in which to stay (the luxurious Ahwahnee at Yosemite National Park comes to mind). Up until this trip, however, we had never stayed in the National Park Lodge before.      

Luckily enough, the Wuksachi lodge within Sequoia National Park was offering a very attractive winter deal through TravelZoo.  For once, I decided to spoil ourselves with the comforts of a warm bed, private shower and cable television to go with our wilderness experience.  Having these creature comforts gave us the reserves to go confidently out into the snow everyday.  

Little did I know, but food options within the park are limited to the Wuksachi dining hall. Food at Wuksachi, particularly dinner, was fantastic, and I was even impressed with the wine pairing at one meal. However, the prices can be a little steep. But I loved the family atmosphere in the dining room.  There was no formality, despite the incredible food and setting. At meal times, it was not uncommon for children to run around, and for babies to be crawling around on the carpeted floor. 

All in all, I think our Sequoia Kings Canyon trip exceeded my expectations.  I knew I would be awed by the Giant Sequoias, but I did not expect to feel love towards these huge trees as I did.  It is a special place that uplifted me. And I  highly recommend others to see this place for themselves.

When to Go

Winter is a great time to visit Sequoia National Park. The snow accentuates the Giant Sequoia's outstanding orange bark, the park is less crowded, and lodging is inexpensive.

Where to Go/What to Do

1. Visit General Sherman Tree (.5 miles).  

2. Snowshoe Congress Loop Trail (1.0 miles)

3. Visit Lodgepole Visitor Center - there's a great exhibit on the history of the park

4. Visit Grant Grove and General Grant Tree

5. Snowshoe to Topokah Falls (3.4 miles)

6. Attend a ranger led snowshoe hike

Where to Stay

Wuksachi Lodge

What to Wear

A ski jacket with a removable liner, snow pants or gaiters, waterproof boots (hiking boots don't count), and snowshoes are recommended.  My hiking boots weren't waterproof, and as a result I got some minor frost bite on the first day.  On the second day, however, I rectified the situation by wearing plastic bags over my socks underneath my hiking boots.