All posts in Culture Curiosity

Spiting fancy wine in Lille like it’s my business

by admin on November 20, 2011 in Culture Curiosity, Out-of-office Lifestyle, Travel with No comments
masses

Say what??? Oh yeaaaa, I was spitting 20 euro bottles of wine and cognac from 1990….it felt so wrong, yet so righhh……..no, it was probably just dead wrong.

When a friend asked me last week if I wanted in on a weekend road trip to Lille, I didn’t hesitate for a second. I had the pleasure of being at one of France’s largest wine expos called the “Salons des vins des vignerons indépendants” (Independent winery exposition). Eight times a year held in a different cities throughout France, this event gathers several hundreds of wine producers to give them a chance to showcase their unique fermented grapes of oh la la la la! It’s freaking huge! There must have been something like 500 different wine brands, each carrying their own assortment of wines and other specialties (red, white, rose and champagne and cognac….and excuse me, need to spit…aperitif, chocolate made with wine, .etc) Where the heck do you begin?

Bottles up!

As any amateur drinking tourist, clearly shown by my drinking etiquette and accented French, I was thinking about how the heck am I going to try all these wines without getting a lil tipsy? And so I had the chance to do something that I never attempted before. I spit wine like I was spitting sunflower seeds at a baseball game, over and over again. Show me the bucket!

That’s right, I was spitting wines and liqueurs that were 50 euros a pop without any hesitation. This was my “goldie popping collar moment”, but man did it feel so wrong! I still can’t believe I was spitting out some of these out especially in the face of the producer. It felt like I was spitting someone’s present right in front of their face.

  • The wines that were too spicy…spit.
  • Not smooth, spit again.
  • Tingle in the mouth….just walk away and don’t look back.
  • Cognac please…need to cleanse my wine breath

I also learned two things!

I can spit out 50 types of some and not get too dizzy, although I was breaking out in little sweats.  Not sure if that’s b/c of my Asian gene or just because I was nervous spitting in front of the producer.  I also learned that the wetness (rain) of seasons truly impacts the taste contained within the grapes.  Drier temperatures help the wines taste extra delicious because the grapes are able to extract more flavor.  And so that same wines can taste so different when the only difference is production year.  I’m no wine connoisseur, but the difference was pretty shocking among some 2008s and 2009s of the same brand.  Another hint, 2008 wasn’t a great year for french red wines.  I’ll go for the 2009, a very hot year in France, and give my “pshhhh non merci” to the 2008s unless it’s a medal wine, which by the way, I am happily taking home.

A great event filled with laughs and very friendly people. I guess having people come tougher around to toast some wine makes a great social.

Vive le bon vin! and bottles up!

Off to find some mussels!!

Reality Hits and You are a Globetrotter

by admin on May 17, 2011 in Blog, Culture Curiosity, Featured, Out-of-office Lifestyle, Travel with No comments

Who’s a globetrotter?

If you’re sports fan from the States, you might refer the incredibly talents basketball stars “Harlem Globetrotters”  (btw…The city in New York, Harlem, actually originates from The Netherlands).

If you look on Google, then a globetrotter is someone traveling a lot to several locations.

If you ask students, some may refer to a cool person absorbing the various surrounding cultures to gain a better understanding of the world’s people and events.

Ask businessmen (or women), and you’ll probably hear something like being a front-line member of a company targeting global share or market domination.

Now the Funny Coincidence

I met a fellow American over the weekend while playing basketball.  We talked about how cool it is living in Europe because it’s so easy to travel to several countries.  Both of us are businessmen, but business aside, we were playing with people coming from Greece, China, Sweden, Spain and telling stories about each of our homelands….typically we would have at least 8 different countries representing our weekly games.

Just playing one single game of basketball, I was able to ask people from respective countries about:

  • How are the people of Greece handling the debt issue?
  • How is creativity and “breaking conventional wisdom” taught in China versus the Western World?
  • The public education system in Sweden, which has one of the best financial aid programs worldwide.  Did you know Sweden is one of the tops countries at exporting culture?  Music is a top 5 export of the entire country!

Smiling at each other, I looked at the fellow American and said, “You can’t get this at home.” The chance of playing a simple game with people from all over.

Btw…I had to throw this in after mentioning the Harlem Globetrotters

Flashback to my Joystick Days

by admin on February 20, 2011 in Culture Curiosity with 3 Comments
Atari joystick

If you want to see to evolution on “crack”, referring to rapid changes, then I highly recommend going to events displaying old versus new technology devices. You will smile and aww seeing what has changed in the past 20 years.

The Arcade was My Battlefield

Maybe some can relate to the childhood memory of mom dragging you to the mall as a kid. Nothing, I mean nothing, was cool about the mall.

Clothes….hella boring.
Girls (or boys for some)…..uhhh gross, and possibly infectious.
Summer sales……omg, this means an extra 2 hours of waiting time.

My negativity toward shopping was obvious and pretty clear that I would be annoying my mom’s shopping habits. The solution, send me to the arcade with $2 and leave me there while she can shop until dinner time. This was pure bliss for me. The arcade, eventually becoming my battlefild, was where I found worth and adventure at the boring mall. The mission was simple: become pro at games where winner stays on and losers pay. Fighting games, like Mortal Kombat, become my obsession. I win and take people’s money :) Ok, not really taking people’s money, but as long as I kept winning, I could keep my quarters in my pocket.

Arcade Exhibition in Amsterdam

Over the past couple weeks, one of my Amsterdam frienden (friends) has been running an awesome game console expo where you can play on various antique and classic game consoles and even the newer technologies. Remember Duck Hunt for Nintendo. Mortal Kombat!!! I favorite was there….and btw…I actually remembered Sub Zero’s fatality where he rips the opponents head off. I got immediate props for that one!….although I’m sure people are saying, “what a nerd” in there heads. Jealous!

It was really cool to see where games have gone. Xbox is now making 3D games, and I was completely amazed by how it looks. Parents beware!! I can sense some serious addiction. But even some artists have gone an extra step to take game consoles and create their own games versions and music. One artist set up a Microsoft Kinect video to capture motions of a cigarette to play the classic Pong game.

All in all, this was a great event to relive some of those childhood memories. I remember going to the grocery store and spending hours copying the latest moves/codes for Mortal Kombat and studying them prior to going to the mall. I stored them in my bluebook (the child version of the “blackbook”), like I was recording the scriptures of some king. Ahhhh…those were the days when taking someone’s quarter was like being king.

…but something went wrong. Now I play Xbox and get dizzy :p

Side note: Video to be produced!

Chocolate sprinkles tell culture differences

by admin on September 23, 2010 in Culture Curiosity with 1 Comment

Travel to the Netherlands and during your first breakfast or snack, you may notice a strange choice of food among the locals.  Chocolate sprinkles!  Like me, many Americans know sprinkles as those little sugary pieces added to the top of ice cream sundaes.  Never for breakfast.  For me, sprinkles make ice cream look more entertaining IMO, but I never added them for the taste of chocolate.

Try chocolate sprinkles made in the Netherlands, and you’ll notice that they actually taste like chocolate.  Big taste difference!  And the locals use them on top of buttered bread.  Sound strange?  Well, offer a Dutchman or woman some ice cream with these chocolates sprinkled on top.  Watch their reaction.  Do you see the same surprised face that you had?

The beauty of traveling.

What you may have been taught or be accustomed to is not always how things work.  Discover differences.  Challenge your prejudgments and see if they stand correct after you ventured to the “unknown”.  People and medias (TVs, newspapers, journals, blogs) engrave thoughts in our heads whether we want it or not.  Think about it.  I say Amsterdam, most of my American counterparts ask me about pot and hookers.  I still dislike FoxNews for doing such a piece:

Point being…

Do the unthinkable.  Explore!  You’ll be shocked, you’ll be amused, and you might find a new way how to eat chocolate sprinkles.  That’s a conversation worth sharing

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