The Times Suggests Lisboa

With a 36h trip.

Hamburgers, de Portuguese

The concept of hamburgers is a bit different on the continent. I just tried a new gourmet burger place called H3 in El Court Ingles. The gourmet options would have been familiar to an american, mushrooms, 'benedict' with egg and spinach and 'french' with foi grais. And then the next item on the menu would have thrown them, like it did me. That would be the option—the only one—that included putting the burger on a bun. Well focaccia actually. And that option wasn't combined with any of the interesting ones. A burger on a nun was exotic enough already! What isn't clear to me is how grilled ground beef, which is common in many cuisines, gets converted into something very consciously labeled an marketed as a hamburger while missing the basic elements necessary to achieve hamburgerness.

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Tobacco as a failure to culturally connect

I was sitting in kaffehaus eating brunch when an older gentleman, eating lunch with his wife and daughter, asked for piri-piri. They didn't have generic Portuguese hot sauce (piri-piri) but brought tobacco instead. Which would Have been a fine stand-in had the gentleman the. Proceeded to spray his food, his table and me with Tabasco. And then said nothing to me. No "Desculpa-me" or "Pardon". Nothing. Not a word. I then spent 10 minutes cleaning my iPad, jacket and pants of tobacco while my brunch got cold. A failure to culturally connect.

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Location:R. Anchieta,Lisbon,Portugal

Art @ Miro Foundation

Leon Kossoff: Head of Seedo
This pei e in grey and white and red paint is of a face, perhaps an old man. The technique is wonderful—paint layered and applied so thick that it looks like putty or clay. Viewed face on it loses it's dimensionality, but as you move obliquely the contours begin to dominate and you loose the face, as you do if you move to close.

Frank Auerbach executes something similar in EOW's Head on her Pillow III but I think it is less successful.

Raymond Moore produced some interesting composite photographs that play with reality and abstract ideas.

Kenneth Martin: Blue Tangle
This is a simple abstract Piece composed of some spiral forms that invoke the rose embedded in a larger circular 'tangle'. It evokes a response that i assume relates to it's effects on higher visual cortices.

If that begins to be about abstract effects producing visual 'experiences,' then Bridget Riley is all about it. She produces illusory contours onto of other repeated contours and plays with color and line spacing.

In Cataract 3 the effect produces an illusion of motion as you visual system attempts to integrate the information making the image shift and shimmer.

Anthony Caro: Lock
A giant pair of I-beam prices loosely tied together with a few bridging elements. very effective and modern.

Eduardo Palozzi: Mechanik Zero
A bronze man in abstract 'mechanical' form from '58. Feels very much a response to industrial mechanization.

Tony Ray-Jones produced interesting Pop-Art photography.

Calder's Mercury Fountain is amazing...

I really like Miro's textile and bronze works. Especially the found object sculptures and The Ladder of the Escaping Eye.


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Location:Avinguda del Marquès de Comillas,Barcelona,Spain

Science and Philosophy in Madeira

After a short and only slightly delayed flight, we arrived in Madeira. It's just as green and lush as people (may) have told you it is. People certainly told me that it was. I was immediately aware of the stepped agriculture. It reminds me of the rice patties you see throughout asia and so I'm curious if there is a connection. The farming here appears to be bananas, passion fruit, some hybrid fruits and, of course, wine.

After a relatively uneventful flight here, we did get lost on the way to lunch. Three times. With a native driving the lead car. Now, in his defense, there was massive flooding with land slides that had created detours on some of the roads we were trying to take. Yet, somehow we didn't quit manage to ask any natives how to overcome this obstacle until after we'd been up the correct side of the gorge twice and the incorrect side ones.

In the end, we had very good grilled meet at a nice restaurant, then made our way to the hotel (only got lost once this time) and finally settled in. We managed some fun social games (theatre exercises) and then dived into a long discussion of the use of models in neuroscience. We ended the evening with a lovely dinner and a continuation of the conversation that focused on theories of the brain how you could use models to test them.

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Location:Madeira, Portugal

Dinner at Suishin on Pontocho

Had a lovely dinner at a place called Suishin after my first recommendation Kashintei Minoko turned out to be 'closed irregularly.' Well that's Lonely Planet listed restaurants where the chef/owner decided the days to be closed seemingly at random. The place had a long bar and a few open tables. I think there were private rooms elsewhere. The kitchen was open in the back and because I was one of the last guests the chef brought most of my dishes over himself. I wish I had the Japanese to have asked him questions...

The meal:
Seasonal Dish
This was a soft tofu over a layer of lightly pickled green-bean like vegetables. They might have been very small (like Haricots Verts) beans or something in a similar family.
Seasonal Disk (three kinds)
These were three different vegetables with three different treatments. There was a set of cuts from a mini-eggplant (or similar) in a mild sauce that might have had miso and soya in it. There were long grain rice or some kind of grass (you often see them in Japanese cooking--thin black, maybe 10cm long) in a light vinegar and a tofu based thing (soft, not sure what was in it).
Otukuri
This was a plate of sashimi and vegetables. The sashimi included cuttle fish, red snapper (I think) and tuna. The vegetable were ponza(?) leaves, these very small sprout like things (very interesting flavor) and some pickled green beans.
Steamed hothpotch
A bowl of very light broth that had steamed a cube of minced fish with seasoning. Not sure what the binding agent was.
Yaki-mono
This was quite wonderful. They brought a brazier filled with hot, burning coals with a medium-fine mesh grate on it. There were two pieces of marbled beef and two pieces of a light fish for meat. The vegetables included some pumkin-like squash, cucumber, half of a split mild pepper (could it have been okra? It definitely had a pepper bite but looked a bit more like okra than the peppers I'm familiar with--but long and thin in any case), and something that was similar to daikon but wasn't. I lightly seared the meats and grilled the vegetables one or two at a time. There were four flavorings a chutney, some thin-sliced green onion and daikon with vinegar (like in Kobe) for the meat and a thin, slightly sweetened soya based flavoring for the vegetables. Very nice.
Fried Dish
Really perfect tempura. Carrot, Cucumber, the pepper thing and a prawn.
Seasonal Steamed Dishes
This was a piece of fish over some tofu in a light broth.
Assorted finger sushi selection
This was fantastic. But it wasn't finger sushi. It was more like small pieces of very nice (slightly unusually flavored) tuna on pieces of nori over rice. There was a three way flavoring as well: wasabi, a spicy mayonnaise-like sauce and the best ginger I've ever tasted (I think). It had some kind of flavoring that I can only describe as slightly minty but more. I don't know (though I tried to find out) if this is just the kind of ginger or if it was the pickling. Very, very nice.
Miso Soup
Well, a basic but well executed miso.
Gion-tsujiri's green tea ice cream and a cup of Oolong tea.
How can you ever go wrong with a good green tea ice cream...

Oh, and I had to pour my own sake. Sadly, a meal that would have been better enjoyed with company--especially someone who appreciated good food.

Nara: Day Two, Breakfast

Up at 7:30, organized, left to find post office for some cash at 8:30, found post office at 5 of 9 and the opened the door a few minutes early for me. Unfortunately, having to pay cash for my Ryokon (not a big deal, but I had asked for one that accepted CCs...) is leaving me temporarily in a cash crunch until the next business day in the US. For breakfast, Onigiri and OJ as I was in a rush.

My wanderings: Japan Summer 2006

This is a blog of my travels. I hope to keep it like a journal but it will hopefully also contain useful information for others, like what I thought of places I stayed or ate. I'll keep my commentaries and thoughts on my other blog and from time to time there may be duplications, but for the most part I'll try to keep things separate.