Posts (page 2)

Many times I've been involved in conversations about what makes a website successful. Features, features, features. Bells and whistles. This and that. But what has never changed in the 12 years I've worked on websites as a merchandising professional, the one thing that never changes is the basics.  

Amazon.com is not perfect in many ways especially for those who know the site well. But that is only because what it offers or what it can do is so far beyond any website in the world, what it needs to work on respectively to what it does right is merely edge case in comparison.

Today I ordered a bunch of things that I will ask my mom to bring from the U.S.: running shoes, cosmetics, saran wrap and aluminum foil, powdered water flavoring, and facial wash. The site had everything I wanted and when I entered my credit card, the order pipeline recognized it as a foreing card and immediately converted the summary to euros.   It also was very easy to change my billing address and the order went through fine. The order confirmation was detailed and easy to read. If I have to change my order that will be easy to do too.

I performed the simplest of transactions and it was still a delight. It was a delight because no other website can match the basic experience of ordering something at Amazon.  No other site can touch the basics.  Most retail websites are still a complete disaster in comparison. 

I will also give praise to Orbitz as I believe it is the best travel site in terms of UX as well as price and selection.

I will also give praise to Overstock.com where I buy all my super luxurious sheets for next to nothing.

This story is intended to bear witness to my beloved and sweet friend, and the friend of so many others, Rickey Wright, who died yesterday.

I met Rickey in the late ‘90s. It was his first day on this job at Amazon. He was brought in from Virginia to join our little tribe of music editors who would launch the music store. There was quite a bit of buzz around him. How knowledgeable he was about music and what a good writer he was. He lived with Susan and Eric Benson for a while until he was set up in his own apartment, where he would live for the rest of his life. He always talked about how great Eric and Susan were for taking him in. Rickey was always talking about how great other people were and never forgot or took for granted any kindness or generosity that was bestowed upon him.

I remember the very first moment I saw Rickey. He had a different look about him. We sat on a door desk in the hallway outside the elevators that opened to our floor. We had our first talk about music and I think we sat there for an hour. Rickey would often refer back to that day saying that I made him feel welcomed when he was so nervous and unsure. I would also refer back to that day, telling him how compelled I felt to jump right into him and get to know him.

In those early days, Rickey used to swear a lot. Fuckin’ this and fuckin’ that. One time I just burst out, “For chrissakes Rickey, pull back a little will ya??” He did.

I remember noticing very early on that Rickey could really put the Guinness away and would never turn down an invitation to a visit to the FAO Schwarz bulk candy aisle.

Rickey used to literally rock and roll. He never stopped moving. Either his leg was always tapping or he’d rock back and forth in his chair like a baby trying to comfort himself. He had a repertoire of postures. Always leaning forward with his hand on his thigh, fingers pointed in and elbow pointed out. He used his hands when he talked, flipping his palms upward in a gesture of offering.

Rickey always looked cool. He was a rock critic and looked the part. He always had a good haircut. He always wore the cool black ankle boots with the pointed toes. He knew how to wear a suit. He walked on his toes a bit which sort of accentuated his little belly. He always had just the right rock ‘n’ roll button on his bag or his jacket.

Rickey loved his cats, Chet and Kettle. When Chet was sick, he went through tremendous lengths and expense to try to keep him alive. When Kettle ran away, he consulted a pet psychic to find her, and found her. He used to talk about what a good soul Chet had and how you could see it in the little cat’s big eyes.

Rickey was funny and he had a distinctive voice. His vowels were long and rounded, came from the back of his throat, and were softened by his Virginia upbringing. He consistently pronounced our friend and coworker, Marc Greilsamer’s last name wrong…”Greeelshammer”. It made me grin.

One time Rickey was going through a radio junket being interviewed for the Grammys. I borrowed the tape so that I could use it to help me prepare when I’d have to do the same thing. I still have the tape. I never wanted to give it back to be filed in some dusty archive.

If you needed to know something about popular music, you could consult a book or go online, or you could talk to Rickey. A book or a website can provide you whatever infinite data you need: the cross references; the sidebars; the trivia, the discographies, track listings, and reviews. What a website or a book couldn’t give you was all that plus the passion, the conversation, the excitement, the joy, the love. That’s what Rickey gave in addition to his exceptional knowledge.

Rickey won the Rhino Records Geekus Maximus contest pitting music geek against music geek in a showdown of music minutiae. It was a nice little PR coup for Amazon and we were proud of him.

When we worked at Amazon in the early days, sometimes Rickey would come into work around 11:00 a.m. and leave at 4:00. He’d drink three or four diet cokes and would try to eat odd things for lunch. Sometimes he’d bring in a green or red pepper and try to eat them like you would an apple. Sometimes Rickey missed deadlines and sometimes the tools we used never quite worked for him. Sometimes Rickey would come into my office and he would stay too long. He often commented on how many long hours I put in and I wondered, with some resentment, why he wasn’t doing the same. Sometimes Rickey’s vices interfered with his work.

Amazon could be a brutal and unforgivable place and some of us had our identity wrapped up in it too much. Some of us took it too seriously. I was one of those people. I had so much to prove and to learn and I could only do it through my job, or so I thought. My relationship with Rickey at work was completely separated from our friendship outside. I was concerned for him and I went to our managers to express my concerns. As a result, Rickey was put on a performance plan and when it was time to lay people off, one day, Rickey found himself one of those people. On the day Rickey was fired, I told him I would meet him after work at a bar nearby. When I did, he was already, understandably, pretty well into the sauce. I was very honest with him about why I thought this happened. He rejected my theories. I’ll never forget the conversation but that is between Rickey and me.

I never confessed to Rickey that I was the little insipid mastermind behind his performance review. He would lay out his assumptions as to why it happened, who he thought had it out for him. Throughout our friendship he always used to thank me for my honesty. I would feel bad that he never knew, and wonder if he did actually know, and was just giving me an opportunity to come clean. He never would have confronted me directly because he was too kind for that. I always told him I strongly disagreed with his assumptions but I never told him why. I truly thought that it just wasn’t the right environment for Rickey.

And indeed it wasn’t. But now that I am older, and now that I am a bigger person, my attitude is different. Rickey was extraordinary. And extraordinary people need to be protected. They need to be preserved. They need license. Why couldn’t we have seen that? Why couldn’t we have *created* the environment for someone like Rickey? Why couldn’t we have nurtured, helped, compromised? Where was the effort in finding out how to do that but not cross the line into enabling? Why can’t we do that for all people? Maybe we did to some extent just by forcing the circumstance upon him. Maybe Rickey should always have been a freelancer. There were other permanent gigs he was passed over for after Amazon. But knowing Rickey made me come to this conclusion that all gifts of all people we know need to be celebrated and accommodated, not shoved aside to fit into the lane we’ve been assigned to on the track of our little daily rat races.

Rickey and I didn’t just talk about music. We talked a lot about love and relationships. Rickey loved his women. Kate and Jill and Becca and Carol and Julie and Bobbi and the other Bobbie and his mother and his friend in Florida and so many others whom I will think of later or never knew or met. He loved his niece and I heard stories about her since she was 13. How cool she was and, of course, what music she was interested in. We all felt tremendous affection for him too. I never had a conversation with Rickey that didn’t last for hours. I never had a conversation *about* Rickey that didn’t last for hours. Everyone else will say the same. Rickey always made you feel special and loved.

“Beth, you’re so great. I really love you.”

“I really love you too Rickey.”

If you had an opinion or passion about music, Rickey wanted to hear about it and was vested in it. His brain was so huge, it was like he had this never-ending capacity for listening, absorbing, processing, recording, and delivering a response that was totally in tune with whatever it was the other person wanted to say. The last conversation we had about music, we were discussing the self-titled debut by Robyn. He thought it was a great album. I thought it was too derivative and was carried too heavily by the single.

So, back to love (it is hard to talk about conversations with Rickey without digressing into conversations about music). Rickey really wanted to be in a relationship. We talked about it a lot. For all of his achievements and his friends and the love that surrounded him, I think that this is the one thing he really wanted that remained elusive throughout his life. We would talk about it for hours and hours, always on the phone. There were things I always wanted to say to him regarding this topic. Things that would be rather direct and hard to hear. My honesty with Rickey was always pure, but couched, cushioned. He was so incredibly gentle and sweet, how could anyone ever not be that way with him in return?

You know, over the last week, since we all got the news that Rickey had the stroke, music has seemed clearer. Sad songs feel sadder and happy songs feel happier. Air seems richer and hugging my husband or a friend feels more sensual. Rickey’s intense, single-minded, pure and bottomless love for music, and love for love, is what I will keep with me always every time I play a song. He gave that out into the world and what he gave will remain with us always, but it ends today, and I feel an enormous vacuum now in that regard. I write this and I can’t believe I will never again in my life have one of my marathon conversations with Rickey. I write this now and I worry it is too soon or too much or not enough, but I don’t know what else to do with these feelings that I have and I won’t know what to do with them when I finish writing this. I always felt very deeply that Rickey would not live a long life. But I realize today no matter how long he lived, it never would have been long enough for what he put out there….it’s enormous and irreplaceable.

Rickey and I only ever talked about two things: music and love. Our last conversation was about the latter. It occurred around the beginning of January. We hadn’t talked for a while and he found me on online and we had an online chat. Sometimes Rickey would feel anxious or depressed. I think this is well known to everyone who knew him. He was anxious about being in his mid-40s and not being in a relationship. I have always expressed myself better in writing than in speaking (I know you feel sorry for me now that you know this). As gently and as lovingly as I possibly could, I said to Rickey the things I had been wanting to say to him for so very many years, pulling no punches and being as direct as possible.

I’m not sure how much of that I want to reveal here because it was so private and it was about Rickey’s most private feelings. But I will say that the last conversation I had with Rickey was the most honest, and therefore the most loving, I had ever had with him.

I checked in on him a while later. This is the last correspondence we ever had:

Rickyfb

Life here, Rickey, is heavy without you, darling. I love you and I miss you so much. I know where ever you are now, it is all up and will never be down again.

After Michael found this article, and after two years of delicate and diplomatic searching for explanations, I feel ready now to write about this subject. 

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/news/zijlijn/6153992/Friesland-pupils-get-lessons-on-manners

 It isn't just Dutch children, who practically run wild and scream through their childhood, who need a lesson on how to interact with other people. The whole country could stand to sit in on a few sessions.

I have not permitted myself to write on this subject earlier because I am a foreigner. It did not feel appropriate to come into another country, another culture, and another lifestyle that for the most part, I enjoy thoroughly, and judge the behavior of a society I did not build and did not grow up in--a society that would take no notice if I came or went and has done quite fine for hundreds of years without my opinions.  It is a privilege. I will always be a guest and an outsider and am quite comfortable with that status; I feel very at home with it. 

I never felt entitled to publicly express my ire.  Dutch society is marred with inconsideration that I experience every day.  For such a long time now I have been looking for the answers. It can't be actual rudeness, right? There is just some sort of cultural paradigm here that I'm blind to. It will be just like how I first thought all the crappy Dutch bicycles were so ridiculous and now life without my crappy Dutch bike makes very little sense.

But as I have infiltrated Dutch society, I've worked up enough intimate relationships to ask the question, "Are you guys really so rude or is there just something I'm not getting?"  The answer, my Dutch friends, colleagues, and acquaintances will provide is always the same, and comes with an unsolicited addendum which will be the theme of this entry: "No, we *are* rude, we hate it, and you need to learn to claim your turf."

My theory is that Dutch rudeness stems from a combination of physical height, entitlement, egalitarianism, individualism, a disdain for authority, and bad habits.  It's all about space. What's yours, what's mine, what must be shared, oh relax already, who the hell do you think you are, you can't tell me what to do, and the fact that one of the tallest populations in the world resides in a country smaller than Indiana, enduring a density unrivaled in Western Europe. It's like living in a box of toothpicks around here.  

"Claim your turf."  Dutch rudeness is expressed in two ways:  through appalling customer service and shoving. If I am not being ignored or condescended to or outright abandoned by a customer service person, I am being jostled, cut off, shoved aside, or nudged. And when I say "I"-- of course I don't mean to represent myself as a lone victim.  My curiosity over Dutch rudeness has blossomed practically into sociological research. "I" represents the collective "we" but I do not think it is right to consider myself part of the "we" that represents Dutch society as a whole.    

I shall now provide anecdotal examples of Dutch rudeness.

1. Queuing.  Remember in Zoolander when he finally learns how to turn left? Learning to stand in line would be an achievement of equal significance to the Dutch.   Should a train roll in that is luxuriating in empty seats, the dutch will cram themselves into the entrance like pouring two overloaded handfuls of marbles into a small jar. Why not just drop the marbles into the jar one by one? It is probably just as fast, certainly more elegant, and there will be no risk of a marble slipping in her high heels and falling under the tracks. Plenty of seats for all, Dutchies. And the train conductor will not let the train take off while you're standing halfway on the platform. I promise.

 2. Eye Contact.  The Dutch have this keen ability to avoid eye contact with a deft ocular choreography. If I don't see you, I don't have to ask permission to walk in front of you. If I don't see you, I can cut right in front of you.  I am a 70 year old Dutch lady. I am sitting next to you on a KLM flight headed back to Amsterdam. I am on the window seat and you are in the aisle. I will not look at you so to infer a request for permission to stand in front of you in the aisle, which you most happily would offer out of common courtesy. No, even though only four centimeters have separated us in our seats for the last several hours, I will actually maneuver my fat little granny dutch foot, thigh and hip OVER your seat as soon as you have vacated it, plant my foot firmly in front of you, shoving you back into the person standing behind you, and immobilize myself, however uncomfortably, in that position for several minutes until the line in the aisle starts to move toward the exit.  I was once a sweet and quiet little old matron and now I am to you a horrible old hag who you want to shove into the overhead luggage compartment, slamming the lid on my little old dutch granny milk-fed face with that most satisfying click.

3. Murder is Illegal and I Will Use That To My Advantage.  You have just come back from Dusseldorf. There is a derailment ahead of you and you must abandon your train and deposit yourself at a metro station and take the subway back to your destination.  The platform will be so crowded there will be news anchors there covering the story.  You are one of the first people off the train and you have lined up, in your rightful place, as first on the platform to enter the train. The crowd of people behind you is about four deep. It is freezing cold. Several metro trains will need to come by to get everyone off the platform. You are carrying a bag of breakable christmas ornaments and are worried that the crush of people will shatter them so you hold the bag on top of your head. I am a Dutch teenager and I am accompanied by four of my nasty little teenage friends. I notice that you are a patsy who has left six inches between the tip of your shoes and the painted yellow line on the platform pavement indicating you should not cross it for risk of having your face sheared off by the incoming trains. I will have the brazen audacity to stand in front of you, on that line so to ensure myself as the first to get on the train, even though hoards of people have been waiting for the train to arrive.  My backpack is touching your chest. I will ignore the feeling of you stepping on my heels.  I will take advantage of your illiteracy; you do not know how to swear at, reprimand, or insult me in my native language without sounding like Borat. I have outraged you and if you try to push me, as I so richly deserve, onto the train tracks, you will be held accountable for my death.

4. Holding the Door Swings Both Ways.  You are about to leave the gym. You see me behind you at that awkward distance where it would seem rude not to hold the door for me, yet, you will have to wait longer than what seems natural for me to pass through it. Yours is therefore an outwardly kind and considerate gesture. I am a full grown dutch man. Let me repeat...I am a man. While you are standing in position for several seconds holding the door behind you and therefore open for me, not only do I not take the door from you, I walk right through it, passed you, in front of you, never looking at you, thanking you, or acknowledging you in anyway. You are a door stop.  

5. Customer Service Does Not Equal Customer Servant.  I am the lady slathering sauce on chicken at the butcher counter, never looking up,  while you stand there for five minutes waiting to be assisted before eventually just walking away. I am the girl who works behind the counter. I am the waitress. I am the waiter.  Don't you feel foolish coming into my establishment, sitting there like some helpless lump, and expecting me to attend to your every need? I have calls to make on my cell phone. I have this other customer to help so I will not acknowledge your presence  or ask if you would mind waiting, which of course you wouldn't.  I will never EVER remember to bring you the artificial sugar you asked for with your coffee. 

6. You Are In My Way and My Way Is Predetermined.  You are just standing there. I walk by you so fast that I knock the bottle of water right out of your hand. I never even turn around to recognize what I have done, let alone slow down or even stop to pick up the bottle and apologize.  How dare you not telepathically anticipate the path in which I intend to walk and get well out of my way ahead of time?  

7.  My Accoutrement Is Me. I will constantly bump into you with my bag, my luggage, my elbow, my purse.

8. We Are All In This Together...Except for You.    You are on an international train departing from Amsterdam headed to Paris. You are sitting across from two French men who are traveling together for work. To your right is a 6'5" tall Dutch man who has sprawled out across two seats struggling to situate his gangly body in a comfortable position. The position he chooses invites a full view of the span of his crotch.  You can hear American and British English, French, Italian, and German spoken in your compartment.   As the train travels from one country to another, announcements are delivered in three languages, the order determined by the country the train is currently passing through.  We are in Belgium.   The announcements are therefore made in the order of Dutch, French, and lastly English.  A train conductor gets on the intercom to tell us we are going to have to make a train transfer in Brussels due to a technical difficulty.   A few minutes before we roll into Brussels, the train conductor gets on the intercom once more to tell us which platform we need to go to. He announces it, again, first in Dutch, then French, then English.   The compartment is silent while he runs through the announcement in Dutch.   As soon as I, as well as all my Dutch compatriots on the train hear what we need to hear, we all start talking and babbling very loudly and excitedly through the last two announcements. The French man sitting across from you SHHHH's us with all the power he can muster through his lungs and behind his teeth.  We ignore him.   All the rest of the passengers on the train are looking at each other communicating their collective disbelief and exasperation over our lack of consideration.  As the train rolls to a stop in Brussels,  I will toss my backpack in front of you on the aisle to ensure I get off the train before you do.

9. The Thighs of My Jeans Double As A Napkin.  And the floor doubles as a crumb repository.

10.  How Dare You Not Buy What I Have to Sell. You are looking to buy a house.  I am a Dutch real estate agent trying to sell you a house. You go to the house with your American expat real estate agent. You notice that the only shower is on the top floor of the house and you need to climb a ladder to get to it. The water pressure is also very weak. When you point out these issues to the Dutch real estate agent, he looks down his eye glasses at you with an expression of outward hostility and says, "Well you can't get everything in life you want can you?"

I will ask for your forgiveness in using the following analogy, for analogies are cheap. But living in Holland, when it comes to manners, is like wearing a very beautiful dress with an itchy tag that bothers you so much it totally detracts from the enjoyment of the dress.  For as much as Dutch rudeness stings on a daily basis, the Dutch, and their children, are consistently rated as some of the happiest people on the planet. One of my closest Dutch friends once said to me "We come from the mud."   It would be so awful to compare this statement to the most grotesque expression "As happy as a pig in shit"   --but here I am doing it anyway.

An arsenal of disapproval cannot combat a society that is rude upon itself and others, yet  fortified by a barrier of happiness. You cannot penetrate an attitude of "we don't care."  And it goes again back to the thing I've mentioned before, the downside of Dutch tolerance.  I don't think the Dutch need to tolerate this behavior in each other .And indeed, it is an issue that can't seem to lie flat. It is talked about, it is famed, it is asked about in polls. Maybe it is the one thing (aside from really bad food) that keeps this life from being too perfect, too relaxed, fun, and easy going.   Every society and culture has its "stuff".    I get annoyed when people cut in front of me here.  In the US I get annoyed by celebrity media and being nickled and dimed.

 Is a daily pinprick better or worse than a constant vice grip?

This message breaks my heart every time. I wish our newly minted president could get the RIAA and the greedy bastards who guard their licensing, publishing, copyright properties like a mama bear to loosen their mits already. 

May we all take a moment to remember fondly when Napster was free.

WeApologize

Sometimes I forget that things just run out here. And then when I am reminded of it I refuse to accept defeat.  I had been asked by friends and colleagues, and those people who overlap both categories, if I was going to go skating. No, I have always replied. I hate the cold.  I have bad knees. I haven't skated since I was a little girl. But then the call of the wild, zooming around out on the ice, a pasttime that is taken most seriously by the natives of my new homeland, could not be drowned out.

Michael and I psyched ourselves up to go buy skates, watch a "how-to" video on YouTube, and then go hit the solidified ponds in the Vondelpark.

People had been telling us that it was probably too late for us and certainly all the skates have been sold out. It is still hard for me to get used to this concept. I couldn't believe I was too early, and then too late, to buy a swimsuit out of season last spring. And with a level of anxiety a typical American would find perplexing, I have started hording baking supplies when I find them...God knows when I am going to find juniper berries or organic Herb de Provence again.

I did not heed the warning that there would be no ice skates available for purchase in and around Amsterdam. We set out at a reasonable hour last Saturday morning. We decided to outsmart the average center-dwelling consumer and bike out to a retailer called "Waterman Sport"  which boasted online the largest selection of ice skates in the extended Amsterdam metropolitan area. I pictured an enormous retail complex lined floor-to-ceiling with iceskates.  We rode our bikes in the freezing cold for quite a distance to arrive at this place. We came upon some sort of sports complex. Where was the store?  We stood in line so to walk through a turnstile, and then found the store nestled within the complex. It was the size of my living room. And there were no skates available. All sold out save for the super high end ones.  The staff were very courteous and wished us good luck in finding any skates at all in Amsterdam. They asked where we were from. I said "Seattle."  An older gentleman working in the shop replied with an oft-heard response. "Oh...Boeing."  I said "Yes. That's right."

We left feeling really lousy. We weren't going to get our skates that day and would have to buy them online. I stopped by the enormous outdoor gear shop where a friend of mine works. He also said good luck finding anything. We walked across the street to the competitor sporting store...the skating shelves were empty like the Grinch had swept through.   

I was really disappointed. I was so excited to buy skates and try them out..to do something so very quintessentially Nederlands.  On our way out to the outskirts of the city, I saw a store on a main thoroughfare that sold skates but had a line out the door. Being the savvy consumer that I am, I assumed the line was for rentals, not for purchase. Michael and I stopped to thaw out in a neighborhood cafe. As my glass of red wine brought me to my senses, it occurred to me that the place with the line out the door wasn't anywhere near water. There was no way the people waiting in that line were there to rent skates. I asked Michael if he had it in him to brace against the cold one more time.  He did.

We went back to the store. The line was smaller and we made it longer. There was a security guard wearing a bullet-proof vest gate-keeping the front door. One person in, one person out. We made it through the doors after about a 20 minute wait and found ourself in a beehive of skates, purchasers, store staff....it was chaos. I grabbed a guy and asked him to at least point me toward the shelf of reasonably priced skates for a beginner. He sort of nodded in a direction indicating the back. I found a pair of skates my size, tried them on. They fit. The price was right. Done deal. Michael found a pair of skates that were also his size, fretted for several minutes if they were girls' skates, and committed to them after I reassured him that even tall dutch women don't have size 44 feet. We had found our skates.

We waited in the snake-ish line for a very long time, swiped my card at the counter and we were free. We went across the street to a place called "Wok Cuisine"  which is a Chinese restaurant offering a buffet in a luxurious setting (art deco decor and chandeliers).  You pile a plate with raw meats or fish and vegetables, present them to a chef behind a counter, who then prepares your compilation of meats and vegetables in a wok mixed with a sauce of your choosing. I found it to be quite the anecdote to the disappointing and expensive experience we had endured at Kaiko the night before.  A day of biking in the cold, an interlude of fresh and flavorful Chinese food, and an evening of skating to look forward to. This was a good Amsterdam day.

Michael strapped his box of skates to the backof his bike. I put mine in my basket in the front. We biked home. Michael suggested we try our skates out that night. He read my mind. We laced them up and then practiced just standing in them on towels in the living room. That was easy so I figured the actual skating part would be a breeze.

We made the 5 minute walk to the Vondelpark, walked across the frozen water and sat on the banks to put our skates on. I got mine on first and was already creeping across the ice for probably 20 minutes before Michael even got his laced up (he is such a perfectionist). I was remembering my instructions from the YouTube video. Bend your knees. Lean forward. Relax. Rock in motion with the skates. It was awkward. We need to get the blades sharpened. But slowly I was making progress. Every time I really felt like I was mastering the gliding motion and really skating I fell on my ass. Michael did too. We sort of went our own ways just learning to skate per our own distinctly exclusive temperments. Michael, deliberate, methodical, and scientific, taking each stroke of the blade as a step toward compiled progress. Me, a chaotic, blind, unencumbered riot of sliding, slipping, and falling until I finally started to feel the ice underneath me, developing a relationship with it. Neither one of us were really truly skating after our hour out there on the ice. I was surprised how little time had gone by when we came home. We decided to quit after we were getting tired and therefore falling too much. We'll be back out there again tonight.  

The reviews I read of this restaurant heap praise upon praise for this little Japanese restaurant in the Oud Zuid. Two of my colleagues were eager to tell me how good it was and to reassure me that "lots of Japanese people are always there." 

Why I let myself get hopeful...such is the the rollercoaster of an optimist.

I rode my bike from Station Zuid through Beatrix Park, around the RAI, and headed into the heart of the languid Oud Zuid scored on its southern edge by boulevards called Rooseveltlaan, President Kennedylaan, and Churchillaan. I entered the  restaurant through a drawn half curtain to see Michael already seated, his face flush from his own frigid bike ride.

Greeting us on the table were the traditional heated moist washclothes, a dish of pickled ginger and another dish cradling three choice and sizeable cubes of salmon marinated in teriyaki. Famished, like I am most of my waking hours, I wolfed down the appetite-whetting salmon, finding moments between bites to spit out a few words in Michael's direction asking him about his day.  The salmon was delicious and I felt encouraged.

The thing that makes me feel bad about what I am about to write is that the staff at Kaiko were very nice. The waitresses were attentive but not eager, friendly (and so unsettlingly soft spoken it made me think they could either be uncomfortably demure or seething with rage) and each dish was offered to us in perfect timing. The presentation was basic but fine. And we felt relaxed, seated in our wooden booth perched atop simple cushions.  These are people who clearly know what they are doing. So the fact that more than half of what I ordered remained half-eaten on my plates, combined with the rave reviews this restaurant got in both publications and from personal recommendations, only leads me to believe that this restaurant has chosen to victimize the Dutch by exploiting their low expectations for quality dining, and has no problem charging exorbitant prices for the experience.

Ok, here's the play by play.

The vegetable tempura. Good lord was I looking forward to this. Coming in from the cold only deepened my disappointment.  The batter was too-pale and barely crisp. As the steam rose from the vegetables it started to make the batter doughy and soggy.  I've made tempura before in my own kitchen and it sucked--tempura batter requires an artful, delicate, and skillful technique and timing. So I know how to make sucky tempura and this restaurant came close. This vegetable tempura plate cost 12 euros and we were presented with two strips of yam, two onion slices which were cut thicker than anyone would ever care to eat, two slices of eggplant and two greenbeans.

Miso soup:.  My cup of miso soup was served with one of those spoons you would use to eat udon noodles in broth. I thought this was weird .I have always just swirled the bits in my soup with my chop sticks, eaten it, and then sipped the soup straight out of the cup. Isn't this how it is always done? The tofu in the miso soup was not firm enough and felt slimy.

The Sashimi:  Here's the real heartbreaker. I knew that the salmon was farm-raised just by looking at it lying there pale and limp on the plate. I put it in my mouth and endured the mushy character of this version of salmon that is nearly impossible to avoid in the Netherlands. The only thing that spared the salmon a final resting place in the center of my napkin was the fact that it was lying on a lemon wedge. All the sashimi I ate was lying on a lemon wedge. The acid from the lemon juice helped and I was grateful for it.  

The tuna was artfully sliced into long rectangles that displayed a gradient evolution in color from medium-ruby red on one end to gray on the other. This is typical of the quality of tuna found in Holland. To make a statement, I bit off just the red part and left the cement-colored other half on my plate. The thing that really killed me about this is that I could see the choice center cut of the deep ruby red part of the fish on display in the case between the sushi chef and the seated bar. Maybe the trick is to only sit at the bar at sushi joints in Holland so you can do a personal and intimate check on quality control.

The shirmp were tiny, flaccid, and translucent. The thing that was weird about this is that the preparation of these morsels was totally consistent between what Michael ordered and what I ordered so I know that it was done deliberately. Maybe my palette isn't refined enough to enjoy raw shrimp.  

The dorado, seabass, and some other white fish,  the breed of which I didn't catch:  These were edible, save for the last.  On my plate were four slices of sashimi buried under an avalanche of mayonnaise, then coated generously with orange roe. Was this some sort of perverse version of Japanese fish 'n' chips? Does raw fish drowning in mayonnaise sound appealing to you?   The dutch are famous for frites served with "frites sauce" which is a slightly tangy and sweet version of mayo. Was this the restaurant's idea of fusion?

The Sushi: We stuck with the basics here and ordered eel, California rolls, tamago, and squid (the Dutch word for "squid"  is "inkvis" which means "inkfish" which I think is cute).  The eel was the best thing, or should I say, the least worst thing, we were served that night.

To my immense surprise, the California rolls had real crab rather than imitation: a first in this, the fourth or fifth sushi experience I have had in the Netherlands. However, the diameter of the California roll was enormous--far larger than the standard futomaki preparation. Spare tire, anyone?  It was impossible to get all the flavors of this roll in your mouth at once. Also, this is the first California roll I have ever had where the nori wrapped the outside of the roll, rather than the rice. This in combination with its girth made it impossible to pick up with any sort of grace.

The tamago also remained bitten-into and abandoned. We received two pieces, presented in the shape of little bricks sandwiching the rice rather than in the traditional nigiri style of a single layer of egg on top of a bed of rice then wrapped and bound in a ribbon of nori. The omelet was not well blended, there were flecks of egg white throughout, and the consistency was dreadfully watery. 

Our bill was 100 euros. At the end of our dinner, our conversation turned toward food and how much we still wanted it.  

There were indeed two tables seating Japanese diners last night. One was a table of four businessmen who were loud, getting drunk, and having what looked to be in general a very good time with each other enjoying an after-work repose. The sushi seemed to be the last priority or intention of their visit to Kaiko. The other was also a table of four: three japanese women in the company of one dutch man, who had clearly escorted them there based on the restaurant's reputation. The women picked at edamame and conversed with each other in Japanese doing their utmost to ignore their host.

I have had sushi in Brussels and it was also expensive but generous and excellent. It's possible to have really great sushi in northern Europe, but I doubt it exists anywhere in the Netherlands. 

On a positive note, the Thai place around the corner from my house, Khorat, is great.    

A letter of affection and concern to my adopted homeland, the Netherlands.

I have recently noticed that some items, such as chocolates and ready-to-heat quiches sold under the Albert Heijn label, both regular and "Excellent"  contain transfats. 

Transfat  (trans vet) can contribute to heart disease and there is just no reason any human being should consume it--you might as well start lining your arteries with rotten frites oil. Frying with transfats has been legally banned in the cities of New York and Boston and the state of California. Australia, Canada, Switzerland and Denmark have taken action to reduce production and usage of transfats.

As Albert Heijn is the only game in town for a standard grocery store, they suffer no competition save for consumer demand.  Demand that Albert Heijn stop adding transfats to their products by refusing to buy anything that contains it.

For more information on transfats please visit these links:

Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat

Ban Transfat webiste

http://www.bantransfats.com/

I just finished reading aloud to Michael the Christmas entry from last year. I could snap another picture of the tree but as it is the same god-forsaken (beloved) fake Christmas tree, it would be the exact same photo, except that that tree is in front of the door to our balcony rather than in the corner. And, it would have a few more ornaments on it which we bought at the Christmas markets  in Dusseldorf and Cologne. 

There were new retail ropes to learn and we learned them--it largely comes down to timing. This year we bought an ornament with stars and stripes on it, a glass polar bear, a snowflake (the code name for my big project at work I launched this year), and a few other things that will remind us of 2008. 

We still spend a good deal of time hunting and gathering culinary items. I came to discover that powdered sugar here is pure sugar with no binding agent. So now I need to find a place that sells, or a patisserie that will sell to me, "decorating sugar" which must have corn starch in it, or something similar.  I was also able to find corn starch after a year of looking. 

Last weekend I took Michael on his first trip to Duikelman's which is a kitchen supply store in de Pijp which is so fabulous it puts Sur La Table to shame. Considering it is in Amsterdam, where there is no abundance of anything in one particular store, it is extra fabulous and sometimes I like to go there because looking at four enormous shelves of nothing but silicone cake and cookie pans of a dozen different varieties, or five different sized of meat mallots makes me happy. 

The theme for this post is "Miks is not leaving."  For the last three years as we have been living separately, every reunion and visit was dampened with the impending departures. So there is a lightness to this year. There are no more goodbyes that open the door to lengthy separations. Michael does not have to get on a plane in two weeks to go back to school.  It's kind of the same quiet joy I feel whenever I remind myself that Barack Obama actually is the new president of the United States. Michael actually is here. Our life as a couple living in Europe has officially begun.  It's not a wish or a hope or an anticipation. It is here now and I take time every day to let it make me feel happy.

When he was living in Amsterdam, my friend David Browne was once late meeting his wife, Sarah, and me for dinner because he got caught up in what he described as "bicycle bliss."   He was so zoned out just enjoying getting himself to our meeting place that he rode right by the restaurant and several blocks further before he realized what he had done.

Bicycle bliss is unique to the Netherlands and perhaps especially so in Amsterdam. I am never stuck in traffic. I get on a train that leaves from my office location every 10 minutes or less, I take a 10 minute ride to a station on the south side of town, and from there I get on my clunky ol' Dutch bike and I am free. Last night, I took a route home through the east side of the park I live next to. The east side is the fancy side. I glided through the exquisite, imposing,  ornate neighborhoods, twinkling with Christmas lights, and busy, but in a relaxed way, with people picking up last minute things in the boutiques, bakeries, butchers, and flower shops. Everyone in the city leaves their curtains drawn open. It's a dutch thing. I took a good long look in all the windows of these luxurious homes with their gingerbread ceilings, huge bouquets of flowers, walls lined floor to ceiling with books, this history, weight, quiet, unassuming pride and success of this tiny country glowing from the inside out in the warmest way. Amsterdam is always at its best at night.   

I cut through the park and biked my way to the other side (the low rent side where I live ;-) )  and waved to a scraggly klezmer band, piping out (ironically) Jingle Bells and Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer, on accordian and clarinet.  I dodged a few dogs taking their evening off-leash walk, and sailed home so slowly and perfectly that I only needed to barely touch my toe to the sidewalk to come to a stop.   I wonder why anyone would want to sit in a car, alone, on a highway, burning up the atmosphere, when they could be free on their clunky old Dutch bike headed home always and without exception, of their own free will.

I spend a lot of time decompressing and thinking about things when I am on my bike. Last night on my way home, I thought about the fact that I have now lived in Amsterdam for two years. In those two years, there are things about my former life in the U.S. that no longer make sense. And, there are things about life in Holland that also make no sense, frustrate me, or at times make me angry.  So I think about the possibility of combining the two. How could I take the worst of both and turn it around to make it the best?  Why not try to change things? I think indeed I will try, but more about that later.

In the last 24 month, I have been to Paris three times. I've been to Brussels, Antwerp, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Lisbon, Istanbul, Marakkesh, Tuscany and Rome. And while I haven't done a lot of serious capital T "Traveling" the thing I love about these visits is that it was all just in the course of work or a quick vacation.   I have visited many wonderful towns throughout the Netherlands. I've been reunited through Facebook with many friends that I have not talked to in almost 20 years. In starting this new life, I have also been placed back in touch with some of the deepest and best memories of my past. The one thing about my life that hasn't gotten better since living here is my ability to speak Dutch. I still suck.  

I also looked at the pictures I took of our house on the Overtoom from last year. We had not yet found and purchased the new couch that is in the living room. And had not yet painted the living room walls the dark moss green that they are now. I had not yet made my visit to Istanbul, where I found a lovely prayer rug and spent time with my old friend Tasha for the first time in 18 years .The painting I purchased from Arend Holm was still sitting in his studio, not mounted on the wall.  I remember thinking how much of a break I needed from living in a construction zone. I took that break and now we need to start thinking about finishing the job. The bedroom needs to be painted, lighting needs to be installed in the ceiling, closets need to be built, draperies purchased and mounted, and the dreaded attic needs to be made ito something liveable.

I also wonder if Charlotte will be with me, sitting beside me as she is right now, as she is constantly these days, when I write my Christmas entry in 2009.  I'll be 40 this time next year. I look forward to the things I know are coming in 2009, but the gift I appreciate the most this year is the moment, and living right in it. 

My dear friend Pamela scolded me for not having made an entry in sometime and of course I have been neglectful of the blog for too long.  My intention is to go back to the entry I made this time last year and reflect on the difference a year makes .But the month of December has been marred this year by the decline in health of beloved Charlotte Sometimes, my oft-mentioned cat . She has kidney failure and on my birthday we intended to put her to sleep. But a new vet decided we should give the attempt to stabilize her one more try, which we did, and she is is still with us today. Shabby and thin, but here and comfortable....most of the time.

When we notice that she stops eating, we have to give her 1/4th of an anti-nausea pill. The vet gave us instructions on how to do this and told us it was very easy. You simply tilt the cat's head back until her throat protrudes, then place the pill in the back of the mouth behind a ridge on her tongue so that her natural swallow impulse will take over and down goes the pill.  I often do a play-bite game with Charlotte to get her accustomed to having my fingers in her mouth--the intention when I started this years ago was so I could, when needed, brush her teeth. I thought it would come in handy with the pill-administering task as well. 

We did fine the first couple of doses and then Charlotte got wise. She would not let us tilt her head back any more, refused to open her mouth and when we pried it open, would keep the bitter pill in her mouth too long and end up drooling like a mastiff.  Michael did some research on the web to find alternative methods on how to give a cat a pill and he found the following most helpful instructions.  This is the drill we and Charlotte go through several times per week:

HOW TO GIVE YOUR CAT A PILL by Peggy Althoff

1.       Grasp cat firmly in your arms. Cradle its head on your elbow, just as if you were giving baby a bottle. Coo confidently, "Thats a nice kitty." Drop pill into its mouth.

2.       Retrieve cat from top of lamp and pill from under sofa.

3.       Follow same procedure as in 1, but hold cat's front paws down with left hand and back paws down with elbow of right arm. Poke pill into its mouth with right forefinger.

4.       Retrieve cat from under bed. Get new pill from bottle. (Resist impulse to get new cat.)

5.       Again proceed as in 1, except when you have cat firmly cradled in bottle-feeding position, sit down on edge of chair, fold your torso over cat, bring your right hand over your left elbow, open cat's mouth by lifting the upper jaw and pop the pill in - quickly. Since your head is down by your knees, you won't be able to see what you're doing. That's just as well.

6.       Leave cat hanging on drapes. Leave pill in your hair.

7.       If you're a woman, have a good cry. If you're a man, have a good cry.

8.       Now pull yourself together. Who's the boss here anyway? Retrieve cat and pill. Assuming position 1, say sternly, "Who's the boss here, anyway?" Open cat's mouth, take pill and...Oooops!

9.       This isn't working, is it? Collapse and think. Aha! Those flashing claws are causing the chaos.

10.    Crawl to linen closet. Drag back large beach towel. Spread towel on floor.

11.    Retrieve cat from kitchen counter and pill from potted plant.

12.    Spread cat on towel near one end with its head over long edge.

13.    Flatten cat's front and back legs over its stomach. (Resist impulse to flatten cat.)

14.    Roll cat in towel. Work fast; time and tabbies wait for no man - or woman.

15.    Resume position 1. Rotate your left hand to cat's head. Press its mouth at the jaw hinges like opening the petals of a snapdragon.

16.    Drop pill into cat's mouth and poke gently. Voila! It's done.

17.    Vacuum up loose fur (cat's). Apply bandages to wounds (yours).

18.    Take two aspirins and lie down.

APPENDIX

How to Give A Dog A Pill

1.       Wrap it in bacon.

2.       Feed dog.

Enjoy the holiday season with friends, family, and furry beloveds.