2011 in booze

Since many of us may be getting ready to pop up our champagne bottles to celebrate the new year, I thought it would be appropriate to post about the second most popular article of The Economist of 2011: Drinking habits.

A map of world alcohol consumptionTHE world drank the equivalent of 6.1 litres of pure alcohol per person in 2005, according to a report from the World Health Organisation published on February 11th. The biggest boozers are mostly found in Europe and in the former Soviet states. Moldovans are the most bibulous, getting through 18.2 litres each, nearly 2 litres more than the Czechs in second place. Over 10 litres of a Moldovan's annual intake is reckoned to be 'unrecorded' home-brewed liquor, making it particularly harmful to health. Such moonshine accounts for almost 30% of the world's drinking. The WHO estimates that alcohol results in 2.5m deaths a year, more than AIDS or tuberculosis. In Russia and its former satellite states one in five male deaths is caused by drink.

I am curious to read the recipe for that "home-made" brewed Moldovan alcohol... :-)

Recipes: Miso-ginger marinated salmon

Serious Eats has a section for popular recipes of 2011. They are all meant to be quick, easy and tasteful recipes. Like!

The miso-ginger marinated salmon caught my eye. It looks delicious and super easy. My choice may have been influenced by the fact that today I read an article about the benefits of omega 3 (it may be linked to greater brain volume in senior people) and I thought of how little fish I eat on a regular basis. I will try to pull off a similar recipe and share if it tastes any good. If you do try this one, please share your comments!

Ingredients

yield: 4 servings, active time 20 minutes, total time 50 minutes

• 1/4 cup white miso
• 1/4 cup mirin
• 2 tablespoons unseasoned rice vinegar
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons minced green onions
• 1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
• 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
• 4 salmon fillets, 6 to 8 ounces each
• Salt and freshly ground pepper

Procedures

1. 1
   In a small bowl, whisk together the first 7 ingredients until smooth. In a small baking dish, cover the salmon fillets with the marinade and turn a few times to coat. Cover and marinate for 30 minutes, turning occasionally.
2. 2
   Remove the fillets from the marinade and season with salt and pepper. Preheat a grill (or broiler). If using a grill, grill the salmon skin-side down until the skin is golden and crisp, about 3-4 minutes, then turn over and grill an additional 3-4 minutes. If using a broiler, broil skin-side down without flipping, until the salmon is cooked through and well-caramelized on the top, 4-5 minutes. Serve with rice.

A couple of videos

Always nice to remember the wonderful world we live in:

... and talking about videos, I could watch this a thousand times. Call me corny. It's just unbearably cute!!



(first video via swissmiss)

Christmas Holidays in NYC

Hello! I know I haven't been active for a while. I got caught up in the holidays' activities and I haven't sit down much at the computer except for checking e-mail and news (ok, ok... and facebook as well).

What have I been up to? Instead of my usual winter migration, this year F and I decided to stay in NYC for the Christmas holidays. While we have taken the chance to sleep like grisly bears (especially me) and eat like we were about to hibernate, we have gone around the city a bit trying to do the typical Christmas stuff. First observation to make: it's exhausting. The weather hasn't been too cold (it has been well above 0°C, except for today - the wind factor has made it feel like -3°C or so), but it is the crowds. It's no secret that tourism has been increasing significantly in the big apple for the past few years. NYMag recently published an article about it and just few days ago Bloomberg said that about 50.2 million tourists will have visited NYC in 2011.

You can imagine what it is to walk around midtown. I wanted a picture with the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. I balked. Twice. I think we would have to go there at 3am to have a decent shot. I took this picture from across 5th Ave. Can you see the heads of all the people passing by? There are policemen on the corners controlling the flow of pedestrians to prevent them from blocking the streets. Traffic is terrible.



And walking along 5th Ave is still worth it. From what I had read from other blogs and doing a bit of browsing, I made a list of the "not-to-miss" spots and we went one by one. Some were cooler than others, but in general it was a nice experience. You bounce onto tourists that suddenly decide to stop in the middle of the street for no reason, the local smiles at you when you want to take a picture of something that is too much of daily life for them, you get pushed, you learn how to push, and then you miss the crowd when it gets colder.

I made a map that illustrates our main stops. Sorry for not mapping the places to some sort of enumeration system, but I hope it suffices to say that we went from North to South and places are listed in the order we stopped by.

1. Barney's - home to Lady Gaga's workshop. It is fun to see, but the windows are the best (and the craziest). Do not miss all-hair-made Gaga's boudoir (!!!).

2. Bergdorf Goodman - windows full of animals + mannequins with fancy dresses. Our favourite: the moose in the "all white" window.

3.  Tiffany & Co. - A bit lame I would say, but a classic nevertheless and pretty jewels.

4. Henri Bendel - mah. Funny mannequin dressed as lady liberty. Going in may be fun. We didn't.

5. Fendi - shiny belts! (there is also Tommy Hilfiger next to it with a huge ribbon)

6. Rockefeller Center - Christmas tree

7. Saks 5th Ave - Just across the street, has a nice set up of a girl that supposedly went into a magical part of the store where she discovers all these wonderfully designed dresses. Alexander McQueen and Ralph Lauren caught my eye. Oh, and also the doll moving around in a mono-cycle.

8. The NYPL doesn't have any particular Christmas decoration, but it had been a very long time since I didn't see it at night.

9. Lord and Taylor - They have a model of Santa with kids, a house with a cooking mom, more kids, a dog. It is prettier than what I can describe here. The moving models are surrounded by drawings of kids that were asked to paint something representative of Christmas. There are some that are very funny (like a zombie-looking gingerbread cookie by a 6 -year old :-) ).

We started our tour around 5pm and it must have taken us about 2 hours. Going when it is dark seemed to us the best time to appreciate the ornaments. A classic NYC thing to do that I am happy to check off my list :-). Here are some pictures of the whole tour. Not super pro, but it gives you an idea.

This may be my last post of the year (yikes!), so Happy 2012 everyone!! I hope it brings us good things for us all. See you next week!


----
Saciamorbos/More curious stats:

According to NYC Go, the top 10 sources of international visitors in 2010 came from the following countries:

1. United Kingdom 1,055,000
2. Canada 977,000
3. France 596,000
4. Brazil 589,000
5. Germany 528,000
6. Australia 479,000
7. Italy 469,000
8. All Middle East 406,000
9. Spain 388,0000
10. Mexico 384,000

I haven't read an updated list, but I know that UK is still in first place. 

In Love and Football Everything is Valid

Football as in soccer, for any American reader :-).

I just read that Nike designed special shoes for Cristiano Ronaldo to confuse his oponents.

From FutureSport:

Ronaldo's new Nike CR Mercurial Vapor Superfly III creates the illusion that Ronaldo is about to turn in one direction, when actually his feet are about to move a different way.

Pretty crazy, no?

Chicken or egg question: was Ronaldo losing his touch that much that they had to create this special shoes for him? or, did they design this cool shoes and just picked a popular handsome (i.e. marketable) guy to use them? The answer might be found in this paragraph from the same article:

Ronaldo was heavily involved in the process and Caine flew to Madrid on three separate occasions with different prototypes for his examination. Despite the player’s reputation as a fashion icon, his primary concern was not about pure looks, but about how the shoe could positively impact his game.

Anything to try to reach Messi as the best player of the year (again).

(via kottke.org)

(Awesome) Ideas to make your life easier

To save today's post, I come to you with a link that I stumbled upon few minutes ago, before going to sleep (I am trying to do before 1am today!):

25 ideas to make life easier.

These are really easy, eco-friendly, practical things to do. Just what we need these days! It was a bit hard to choose, but these are my favorite ideas:

1. Store your bedlinen sets inside one of the pillowcases.

Not sure how to fold the mattress cover so neatly= There is a nice illustration for that in the same post.

(Can't wait to go to California and so some serious folding!)

2. Re-use a wet-wipes container to store plastic bags.

I had first thought it would be good for the plastic bags that we keep from the supermarket, but to have the nice "tissue" effect of pulling one and having the next one ready, you would need the bags to be linked somehow... Don't know how to solve that, BUT I will definitely use it for the big trashcan bags. The ones that come in a roll are usually cheaper.

3.Use bread tags to label cables.

I am in love with this idea. And to think that I wanted to buy cable organizers! I am glad I didn't.

4. Use a shower cap to pack your shoes.

I usually use plastic bags (that's what my mom taught us), but this is definitely useful for when you forget to bring a spare plastic bag for dirty clothes ;-).
It also looks cuter, and if you are using those bendable flats, you might even use this to carry them in your tote once or twice!

5. Adorable!

I usually keep the rubber bands that they give you in the supermarket when you buy blueberries or takeaway sushi. They always come in handy!















Which are your favorites?

(via Say YES! to Hoboken -- I love that blog. They are having a Crate n Barrel giveaway this weekend, btw. But don't click. I want to have higher chances to win ;-) )

A.A. - Waba waba

Mi prima con su hija de 3 años:

"Mi amor, Waba Waba (su mono de Archibaldo en plaza sésamo) es un monstruo lindo" le digo a mi hija. Ella me contesta muy elocuentemente: "Mamá, noooo!!! Waba Waba es un Waba Waba de los Waba wabas del mundo que son taaaan Waba wabas y hacen cosas de Waba wabas y como todos los Waba wabas."

Y seguro ella juró que su argumento no pudo ser más claro... :-)



Translation


My cousin with her 3-year old daughter:

"Love, Waba Waba is a cute momster." I tell my girl..She replies elocuently: "Mom, noooo!!! Waba Waba is a Waba Waba of the Waba wabas of the world that are soooo Waba wabas and do Waba wabas' things, just like all the other Waba wabas."

I'm sure she thought she was being crystal clear... :-)

2011 in Lego

As the year comes to an end, we get to see "the most this-and-that" of 2011. I here present you with 2011 in Lego!

Here's a sample of what you see if you follow the link:

Maybe a model with the royal kiss would've been cuter (will I ever stop being a girl?) :-P

I love their angry faces... 

In the real picture, though, they looked more worried to me.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty original... Now I want to go to London just to check out that Christmas tree!

Have a good one!

Christmas spending and wealth

A fun daily chart from The Economist: correlation between expected gift spending during the Christmas season and a countries' wealth (in purchasing-power parity terms) .

I want a Luxembourgish friend! :-P

Graffiti

Last week we had our oral presentations at my Italian class. They were only 5 minutes, but when you have to do it in a foreign language you are not used to speak, 5 min can be pretty long. Anyway, there was one presentation that I really liked. A girl from my class did voluntary work with a group (within the university, if I remember correctly) that went to a school and helped painting the girls' restroom with some kind of positive message (two thumbs up!). The whole point was to do some kind of positive graffiti in the bathroom.

As part of the project, they also visited a couple of places with graffiti in NYC. This is where I raised my ears, as we would say in Spanish. They visited a place called 5 Pointz in Long Island City (illustrated above) and they also saw a painting by Os Gemeos downtown Manhattan (illustrated below, left).

As if I my list of to-do-things in NYC was not long enough, I am excited to make this addition. 5 Pointz may be a bit too far away, but I am very attracted to the Twins' work. Did you see how small the cars look next to the building? This thing must be HUGE! And even so, I am sure it's easy to miss out if you are walking only looking ahead, to the floor or to your cellphone... As it turns out, there are graffiti tours of the city, but that's a bit over the top for me. Just do a quick google search and you will get more options than you can even consider.

Do you like graffiti? I am not particularly attracted to it, but there is something about this kind of street art that brings a city to life, don't you think? It also reminds me to the stickman robots that you can find painted in the middle of the city's crosswalks, or the tile-made packman ghosts that are here and there (that one above on the right, I saw in Williamsburg).

Any other pieces of street art in New York City that I should not miss? I might as well organize my own tour :-P

(wall "decoration" you see when you wait to get in to Colbert Nation's show)

Do you believe in Santa?

Do you know what SantaCon is? Apparently, every year there is a mass gathering of people dressed as Santa Claus in the cities of San Francisco, New York, and London. I just learned that this year it was today. It looks like fun! I have to say that New York inspires me to do these kind of "crazy public" things. I wonder what the psychological/social factors are. I am sure that if I still lived in Mexico City, I wouldn't even consider it. If I move to Frisco next  year, I will do my best to go... at least with the Santa hat! (provided I remember, of course).

Would you do it? If you have done it already, what do you like/dislike the most from these events?

Photos are from  here.

Yogi chances

Assuming the multiplier is greater than 1, let's go grab'em! :)

More on Google Search: Graph Calculator!

You can now graph functions within Google Search! You just have to write "Graph for " and your favorite function. The interactive graph will appear at the top of the search results. You can zoom in and out, look at specific values of the plot in the plane, and move the graphic around, pretty much like you do with google maps. As you can see in the figure below, you can also plot several functions at a time. You just need to separate them with commas.

It's really cool, except that it doesn't work on the cellphone... They should release a graph calculator app! That would be like a slap in the face to Texas Instruments : P.

Here is the official Google link that announced it.

NYT: Reach of Mexico's drug cartels

Mexican drug trafficking cartels “represent the greatest organized crime threat to the United States,” according to a recent Justice Department report. The cartels have waged increasingly violent battles with one another, as well as with the Mexican government, which began an aggressive crackdown in 2006. 

The NYT presents, once again, a very instructive interactive map of the main drug cartels, their main areas of control in Mexico (see figure below), and where they are present in the United States. The latter is very impressive. They have at least 3 identified trading points in Hawaii and even 1 in Alaska!! An example of multinational supply chain management...

There is also a related article that goes about analyzing the role of undercover agents that work in Mexico to try to find leads to the cartels' kingpins. 

A perfect cartoon

Here is why Robert Mankoff considers this to be the perfect New Yorker's cartoon. Totally rad.

(via my friend Majo on facebook :-) )

- f + b

Librerías Gandhi is a famous chain of bookstores in Mexico... sort of like our Barns'n'Noble. They are also well known for their witty marketing campaigns. They are easy to replicate, so there are a few going around that are fake, but always very funny. Me triple like :-). Here are a couple that I found on facebook today (ironic! ja!). English translations will be provided at the bottom if possible/appropriate. 

(less face and more book)

(if your kids don't ask you for books, give them away)

(Reading index)

You can see a full photo album of their most recent adds on their facebook page.

Proper Google Searching

We've all been there before: you want to do a more specific search in Google and sometimes you wish you could just do it from the search box without having to click the dreary "Advanced Search" button.

Behold! I stumbled upon this infographic about how to do more specific Google searches. I knew some of the tricks, but definitely not all of them. Looking forward to trying them out. Have a great weekend!

(via lifehack.org)