Singapore Impressions

 Travel  5 Responses »
Dec 042005
 

I was recently in Singa­pore for a Liberty Alli­ance meet­ing. I had­n’t been in Singa­pore for 10 years, so it was inter­est­ing to see what was the same and what was different. 

Orch­ard Road was the same, but more so — more West­ern shops, more malls, more hotels. The air con­di­tion­ing in hotels and res­taur­ants, which I had remembered as being some­what over the top, was even more so, to the extent that we moved meet­ing rooms with­in the meet­ing hotel to find a room that was some­what warm­er and went out­side as much as pos­sible to thaw out! Out­side was the warm trop­ic­al air and thun­der­storms I remembered, the mix of people on the streets, and the trop­ic­al plant exuber­ance on the streets that helps make Singa­pore so memorable. 

Street in Singapore

Things have changed since 1995. People seem more relaxed, the streets aren’t by any means dirty but they’re not quite as “is this really a city”-spotless as they used to be. The tax­is no longer have the annoy­ing bell that says when they’re going too fast (just the stand­ard annoy­ing bell when someone isn’t using their seat­belt). The Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel is new, built to look much like the old one, but some­how without the same feel. It feels like a movie set, com­plete with over-eager air­con­di­tion­ing. The old Long Bar, the authen­t­ic one, had much more of that trop­ic­al sun­down­er feel. It’s prob­ably still worth see­ing as a tour­ist, but I would­n’t both­er going back, where­as the old Long Bar was some­where you could spend hours in, lazily watch­ing the fans and listen­ing to the crunch of pea­nut shells on the floor.

The old and the new — one block from Orch­ard Road construction in Singapore

On the way back to the air­port, I asked the taxi driver about the high­way with the large plants in pots, planned as an emer­gency run­way. It was quite a sight and I could­n’t fig­ure out how I had missed them. It turned out that Singa­pore had added a new dir­ect high­way into the city; the pots are still there on the older high­way. The taxi-driver was sure that emer­gency run­way would nev­er have to be used and I found his explan­a­tion touch­ing. Singa­pore is in the Com­mon­wealth and the Queen is very proud of what Singa­pore has accom­plished, and there­fore all the nations of the Com­mon­wealth would help if Singa­pore were ever to be attacked, he said. I hope he’s right, and I hope his belief is nev­er tested.

Okanagan Wineries

 Food and Wine, Travel  5 Responses »
Sep 232005
 

We went up to the Okanagan wine dis­trict for the Canada Day week­end this year, and I think it’s about time I wrote down some of my impres­sions of the vine­yards and the wine. We took my friend Sally (she of G&T fame who knows a lot about wine), and had a great time. Tim mostly enter­tained the off­spring while Sally and I tasted the wine, which seemed like a good divi­sion of labour to all of us. I typ­ic­ally like wines with body and heft, such as shiraz, much of the caber­net fam­ily, and rieslings; my impres­sions of oth­er wines depend on what they evoke (sit­ting on the deck in sum­mer, or some food pair­ing). So here are some notes about the winer­ies and the wines, none of them are any­thing sci­entif­ic or indeed any­thing oth­er than my impres­sion of that day!

Hawthorne Moun­tain Vineyards
Great view, but a very com­mer­cial vine­yard with lots of schnick-schnack to buy. I’d bought some caber­net franc here in 1995–6 which was great after a few years cel­lar­ing, but the 2003 Caber­net Franc they had on offer this year was too light and did­n’t give me any con­fid­ence it would devel­op the way I like. The pinot gris was good so I got some of that. The gewürztram­iner was ok though we’d had bet­ter at oth­er winer­ies, so that did­n’t go home with us, and although I thought the See-ya-later pinot noir could devel­op, I did­n’t feel like tak­ing the risk.
Wild Goose Vine­yards & Winery
Very friendly people, good whites (some have won prizes) though not what I’d call earth-shat­ter­ingly great. I bought a mixed case of whites, includ­ing the 2004 Riesling, 2003 Stony Slope Riesling, and the 2004 Gewürztraminer.
Stag’s Hol­low Winery
Unfriendly serv­er but a good vid­al (2004 Tra­gic­ally Vid­al), which is an unusu­al grape, and the 2002 Renais­sance Mer­lot struck me as worth tak­ing home, so I bought a couple of bottles for the cel­lar. It should be really good in a couple of years.
Hainle Vine­yards Estate Winery
Nice people, organ­ic wines; they’ve learned a lot about mak­ing organ­ic wines pal­at­able since I last vis­ited in 1996 or so. Good bis­tro for lunch out­side on the deck as well. The 2002 Hainle Chardon­nay, 2002 Hainle Pinot Blanc, 2002 Deep Creek Pinot Meuni­er (nice rich taste, like the Hawthorne Moun­tain one from 1995 or so), and 2003 Deep Creek Z2 were all good, the 2003 Hainle Syrah ok. Bought a mixed bunch to cel­lar, mostly the Pinot Meuni­er and Chardon­nay as they’re in short sup­ply and I figured I prob­ably could­n’t find them in Vancouver. 
Arrowleaf
New winery and quite far north. Friendly people. Bought a couple of bottles of 2002 Zei­gelt for the cel­lar, and some 2004 Bac­chus (nice light grape) and 2004 Gewürztram­iner for drinking. 
St Hubertus Estate Winery
Much of the winery was des­troyed in the big fire of 2003, but they’ve rebuilt with a big­ger tast­ing room. The rub­ber stamps are now in the tast­ing room rather than in a sep­ar­ate build­ing; they add a touch of eclecticism to the place. Decent selec­tion of wines. We picked the 2004 Dry Riesling to take home (with Tim warn­ing by this stage that we did­n’t have much room left in the car!)
Raven Ridge Cidery
Not quite a winery, this one, but a cidery con­nec­ted to an orch­ard with a good res­taur­ant. I picked up their last two bottles of Spark­ling Cider as well as a bottle of Brae­burn iced cider (like ice wine, but tastes of apples), just for a change. 

Tour­ing Okanagan winer­ies is an excel­lent exper­i­ence, and hav­ing the kid around meant we also tried out some of the oth­er tour­ist things rather than just sit­ting in the car. So although we did­n’t see as many winer­ies as the 1996 trip, we still filled the car and have wine enough to last us for quite a while!

Dublin Liberty

 General, Standards, Travel  Comments Off on Dublin Liberty
May 102005
 

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Liberty spon­sor meet­ing in Dub­lin, a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been to Dub­lin before, in October/November 2003, to assist in the Reach PSB Phase 1 pro­cure­ment, and I like the city, so I was glad to get back again, even if it was only three days. Three days is enough time to get to a couple of decent res­taur­ants and a Dub­lin pub (these being upstairs at the Chamele­on Indone­sian res­taur­ant, upstairs again at the Mer­cant­ile pub, and down in the cel­lar at the Thai Papaya res­taur­ant). There was anoth­er res­taur­ant but that was on the first, jet­lagged, night, so I’ve for­got­ten the name. Of course, no vis­it to Dub­lin would be com­plete without the end­less trek through Heath­row Air­port (see Tim’s exeges­is on Heath­row); for­tu­nately this time the escal­at­ors worked and the air­port was mostly empty so the lines for secur­ity and buses were much short­er. My weak knee also decided to be kind to me and not play up so I guess the new Pil­ates exer­cises I have are doing some good!

Back on top­ic… Dub­lin seems to have a lot of old bank build­ings that have been nicely revamped to be pubs (the Mer­cant­ile above) and hotels (the West­in, where the meet­ing was held) but maybe that’s just the way it appears when you first notice the phe­nomen­on. Unlike in many cit­ies where banks were taken over for oth­er uses, the Dub­liners don’t try to hide the her­it­age of the build­ings. I still remem­ber the first McDon­ald’s in Auck­land, New Zea­l­and, which was also in an old bank build­ing. They did a good job there as well (undoubtedly assisted by some loc­al by-laws for­cing the issue), so it is pos­sible to reuse old build­ings and keep the her­it­age aspects con­gru­ent with the new uses.

I’m new to the Liberty meet­ings, so I’m still learn­ing who’s who and how the sys­tem works. Com­pared to W3C and OASIS there appeared to be more Europeans and Japan­ese, and more women. The former makes tim­ing phone calls tricky (Europe, North Amer­ica, Japan pretty much span the globe); the lat­ter enables a cer­tain amount of knit­ting and needle­craft to go on dur­ing the dis­cus­sions (as well, of course, as the typ­ic­al email­ing that always goes on dur­ing meet­ings). The work is done in a slightly dif­fer­ent way to OASIS and W3C. There are a num­ber of dif­fer­ent groups in the Liberty Alli­ance (see Liberty Alli­ance Activ­it­ies) which share the work. So, for example, instead of one tech­nic­al com­mit­tee doing everything from dis­cuss­ing use cases to design­ing the tech­nic­al solu­tion as hap­pens in W3C and OASIS, the Busi­ness & Mar­ket­ing Expert Group comes up with the use cases (the mar­ket require­ments) and the Tech­no­logy Expert Group cre­ates the spe­cific­a­tions to meet those require­ments and sat­is­fy those use cases. This is an inter­est­ing way to split up the work; it seems to work well (syn­chron­iz­a­tion between the two Expert Groups is a neces­sary part of the pro­cess, of course). Over­all, a good crowd of people with lots of tech­nic­al and mar­ket know­ledge about import­ant prob­lems; this is going to be a fun part of my job at Sun.

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