Green Change #2

Hmmm... I kind of skipped over May, didn't I? Well, this'll have to be a double header then. After noticing the strange recycling practices at Whole Foods, I sent them an email asking them what the deal was and actually got a response back. They do recycle, but apparently shoppers just do not understand the difference between compostable trash, recyclable trash and everything else. Since things just got mixed up in the different bins anyway, they've resorted to sorting the trash themselves in the back and will be getting rid of most of the different trash cans in favor of a generic one. So they still get points for recycling, but I think it's a shame that they're not taking the opportunity to educate their shoppers.

Which leads to this month's change: recycling. I've always tried to recycle as much as possible, but it turns out that recycling is a tricky business. Exactly what's recyclable and how things should be sorted varies from town to town, but it looks like Los Altos has some fairly simple rules. Things I didn't know until I started doing some research:

• Polystyrene (e.g. styrofoam packing blocks (but not styrofoam packing peanuts) and take-out containers) can be recycled!
• Clean aluminium foil and pie pans can be recycled!
• Oil filters can be recycled! This matters since I change my motorcycle's oil and oil filters myself.
• It's important not to contaminate what you want to recycle. For example, no oily pizza boxes and rinsing food and beverage containers. I sort of knew this before, but am usually too lazy to clean containers before throwing them out.

The flip side of recycling is to just generate less trash. The one thing I find myself throwing out on an almost daily basis is junk mail, and I've been trying to eliminate that as much as possible. One of the best services I've found to do this is Catalog Choice, which seems to be doing a pretty good job of slowing the flow of junk into my mailbox.

We've also switched to getting milk from the Strauss Family Creamery. Not only does it taste great, but they use glass bottles that can be returned to them for re-use.

Finally, C's doing her bit as well, as she's started composting a few weeks ago, and seems to be having quite a bit of fun doing it too.

So the goal here is to reduce the amount of garbage I produce, and recycle as much as possible.

Jeff On Tour

Got an IM from Jeff today letting me know that his band Thief Thief is going on tour and will be in Oakland on July 29. Woot!

Coffee in Juneau

If you ever happen to be in Juneau, Alaska and are looking for a good cup of coffee, check out the Heritage Coffee Company. They've a couple locations in town and they roast their own beans. Bonus points for offering free wifi!

Pandering

*sigh* I'm going to have to withdraw my support for Hillary. Maybe too much experience can be a bad thing, because right now she's being too much of a politician. The bad kind. With the race dragging on she's now resorting to pandering of the worst kind with her advocacy of a gas tax break for the summer. It's not going to make any difference, and the only reason she's doing it is to gain a few more precious votes.

And it's not just this one thing. It's been disappointing to see that she's always the first to resort to negative attacks and mud slinging.

I still have issues with the details of Obama's health care plan, but based on his conduct during the race so far, at least the character and tone of his administration (assuming he wins the presidency) will be more elevated. And hopefully, his policies will be driven by logic rather than emotion.

Recycling

Recycling is a great idea, but lately I've been noticing a lot of problems when trying to put the theory into practice.

Things that make you go hmmm #1: I was at the Whole Foods in Cupertino a couple weekends ago and was throwing out some trash after lunch and was happy to see that they had trash separation for both regular garbage, compost, and glass/plastics. Shortly after I threw out our refuse from lunch however, an employee came by and collected the garbage from these separate cans and just threw them all into one large cart. The separated trash wasn't bagged, it was just mixed together in the big cart. Seriously, what's the point of even having separate containers if you're just going to mix them up anyway other than to fool customers into thinking that you care?

Things that make you go hmmm #2: I'm at a conference at the Moscone Center in SF right now and they have water coolers scattered around instead of bottled water, which seems like a good idea. But then right next to some of these water coolers, they also have garbage cans marked "compost". Of course, no one else seems to care and just throw out their plastic cups into these garbage cans. While you can accuse these people for not paying attention, I think more blame goes to the organizers for not having the right trash cans in the right locations, because they do have plastic recycling receptacles as well.

Maker Faire

Went to the Maker Faire with C. on Saturday. Traffic around the San Mateo fairgrounds was reduced to a slow crawl and it took us over 30 minutes from the point we got off 101 to the time we finally found a parking spot. I later heard that this was quite good compared to earlier in the day. Even after we got to the gates it was another 30 minutes in line before we could actually get into the event.

Once in though, the Faire itself was pretty interesting. Add odd convergence of DIY, crafts, electronics, environmental and slow food interests. C. was captivated by the booths on composting and Scharffen Berger chocolates while I was drawn to the guys showing off their high speed photography flash kit. We were both intrigued by the possibilities of the Maker Controller Kit, and have been trying to come up with ideas on what we could do with one. Yeah, we're both fairly geeky.

Since we got there fairly late in the afternoon, we didn't spend too much time there since it turned cold as the sun went down and the wind picked up.

Iron Man

Let's do this quick: Iron Man is un-freaking-believably good from beginning to end. Jon Favreau did an amazing job and Robert Downey Jr. is great as Tony Stark. And let's not forget the guys in charge of making the armor come to life...

Definitely go see this on the big screen. Now. 5/5.

Laid Low

Not sure what caused it, but I was laid low on Tuesday with some kind of stomach virus. I ended up sleeping for some 26 odd hours, broken up only by trips to the bathroom. Fortunately, by Wednesday my fever broke so I was feeling much better, and today I'm almost back to normal except for the ominous growlings from my stomach every now and then.

Construction Day 78

Most of the painting is done. We were looking for a low or no VOC paint that we could color match, and ended up with Kelly-Moore's Enviro-Cote line. We're pretty happy with it so far, and there's no new-paint smell.

The maple flooring is also down now and it looks gorgeous! I'd been thinking about staining it to something a little darker, but now I think I'm going to try to keep it as close to its natural color as possible.

Our contractor estimates that it will take another two weeks of work to finish things up (the cabinets, the lighting, the trims, the tiles...). Unfortunately, it'll probably take a bit longer than that to actually finish everything since one of the tiles that we want for the master bathroom won't be available for another month! We're contemplating our alternatives, but since we are not in any rush to move back in, we'll probably just wait.

For now though, I think I'll hold off posting any new pictures until everything is complete so that the final results will be a surprise.

For the record...

People have wondered why I refer to my wife as "the wife" in this blog. I'd much prefer to just use her name, but she insists that I not use her name because she'd prefer to remain anonymous. I don't really understand it as she maintains her own blog, but there you go.

Earth Day

Today is Earth Day. What have you done for your planet lately?

Personally, I've been trying to use less whenever possible, recycle as much as is feasible and curbing my more materialistic tendencies. I've also tried educating my friends and family, but there's a fine line between educating and nagging or preaching and I'm always struggling to figure out where that line is.

For example, how can you persuade a new mom that buying a second hand stroller is just as safe as buying a new one? You're basically arguing against an emotional response, and there's no winning that one.

Lately I've been thinking more and more about what concrete changes I can make in my day to day life, and I've been inspired by Vanessa's experiment to do one thing a day that betters the environment. Since I know I won't be able to come up with something new every day, I've decided to try something a lot simpler: something new every month. And hopefully, if this sticks, I'll switch to something new every week. We'll see how it goes, but once a month is something anyone should able to do. And whatever that "something new" is, it will continue to get done from then on. If I decide to stop using something, that change is permanent.

For this month, I'm going to stop using paper towels in the kitchen and reverting to good old fashion cloth towels. We never used them before we moved to the US and survived just fine, so I'm pretty sure that habit won't be too hard to break.

If you're thinking of making a change, here are 50 simple things you can do.

Elevators

More than you ever wanted to know about elevators. Worth a read if you've the time. Here's a little tease:

In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button.

Yuri Night Bash

Went to the Yuri's Night Festival at the NASA Ames Research Center yesterday. It's part science fair, part art fair, part concert, and all to celebrate Yuri Gargarin, the first man into space on April 12, 1961.

All in all a pretty interesting event. There was even an air show and a fashion show/competition! The fire art installation was interactive and a pretty big hit. Apropos to the theme, the performers all either had a techno or electronic bent.

Environmental issues had a pretty high profile. Almost all food vendors seemed to be organic and there were lots of solar, alternative fuels and electric vehicle exhibits. It was nice to see that trash cans were well marked for recycling and composting. What struck me as odd was that they were giving out glow sticks. Chemicals in plastic tubes destined for the land fill before the night is out just didn't seem to jive. Some cognitive dissonance on the part of the planners.

Rounding Error

Bought something on sale at Whole Foods last night: buy one get one free! The price of a single item? $4.99. When I checked my receipt, I noticed that I was charged $5.00 instead.

Huh?

Well, it looks like their system doesn't quite understand the concept of "buy one get one free". Instead, it sees two for $4.99. And when it tries to do the math, each item costs $2.50 ($4.99 / 2), so 2 items ends up costing $5.00.

Go programmers! Or not.

Construction Day 67

The walls are up! The walls are up! Well, the gypboard is up anyway. It only has one coat of mud on at the moment, with two more on the way. On the outside, the scratch coat is up. Both the stucco and drywall guys should be finishing things up next week if the weather holds (everything needs to dry properly). At that point, the painters will be coming in and doing their thing. Imagine that... Color!!! And then the cabinets, tiling and flooring. I can't wait.

In other news, Grohe's announcing that they'll be releasing low-flow versions of many of their faucets. This is great news, except for the fact that I've just bought their standard-flow faucets. *grrrr*

On the brighter side, it looks like the UltraTouch insulation is working wonders for sound insulation.

Home

I'm home! Despite the allergy attack, it was a good trip. I'll be better prepared next time.

Going through my pictures, I'm surprised what a big difference five days made for the sakura trees:

The other thing that I was pleasantly surprised by on the trip was the Northwest Airlines flight I'd taken there and back - it was good! The food was decent, and better yet, they had a good selection of movies on demand. I managed to catch Atonement (better than I expected), There Will Be Blood (worse than I expected), P.S. I Love You (an excellent cry), The Great Debaters (nothing special), Bella (interesting), Saawariya (reminded me of Moulin Rouge), and Om Shanti Om (campy).

Kotetsu

On my way to the airport, I decided to give Kotetsu another try. Knowing it's exact location made it so much simpler this time, which was fortunate because it was raining and I did not have an umbrella with me.

Unfortunately for me, the menu was in Japanese only, and the waiter wasn't very good with English. The two basic choices were soba or udon, and I opted for soba and just went with the waiter's recommendation, which I understood to be soba with daikon.

What I got were two courses. The first one was a small bowl with soba in a hot broth, and the second was a big bowl with soba in a cool broth and daikon on top. I can't say I was terribly impressed. Especially from a place that had been given a Michelin star. The hot soba was a little soft, and both were ... very subtly flavored? Perhaps I'd just ordered the wrong thing for my tastes.

In any case, after lunch it was off to the airport to catch the plane back home.

Third Time's A Charm

Woke up at 5:00am today again to go the Tsukiji Fish Market for sushi. And finally! got there around 6:00am and still had a 40 minute wait. This place is truly tiny, with a long bar that only fits about twelve tightly packed people at a time.

And was it worth it? Having to wake up at such an ungodly hour (and if you know me, you also know how unlike me this would be) and still having standing in line? In a word: yes. This place showed me how amazingly good sushi can be. The biggest surprise I've had here is how tasty ama-ebi can be in, something I was never particularly fond of until I tried it here. Don't worry, I won't bore you with pictures of sushi.

Since we were there so early, we were able to watch the tuna auctions:

After this, it was back to the hotel. The wife had to get back to work, and I had to finish packing.

Back To Work

The wife had to go in to work today, but she did sneak out for lunch with me. We attempted to go to Kotetsu, which is supposedly well-known for their soba. It also recently got a Michelin star for its soba kaiseki, which is only served at dinner, but if it's good for dinner it must also be good for lunch, right?

Unfortunately, it took us forever to find the place, and by the time we'd located it with the help of some locals, they'd already closed for lunch. What a waste.

On our way back to the subway station, we ran across another tonkatsu restaurant, and thought we'd give it a try. It was good, but perhaps not quite as good as Maisen.

After lunch, the wife headed back in to work, and I went to Shinjuku to check out a couple used camera stores in the hopes of finding some gear for cheap. In theory, with everyone in Japan always on to the latest and greatest, the slightly old and used can be had at a steal. No such luck (at least for DSLR-related stuff). Everything in Japan costs more, including their used gear.

So it was back to the hotel and work for me as well. Not for long though, as we had a 7:00pm reservation at Rokusantei, the original Iron Chef Japanese Rokusaburo Michiba's flagship restaurant in Ginza. On our wait out, we ran into Mathieu, one of the wife's co-workers who'd just flown in and invited him to join us.

What can I say about Rokusantei... It was a novel, tasty, delightful surprise. Delicious in a distinctly Japanese way. There were nine courses in a wonderful progression of flavors. The highlights for me were the chawanmushi, the ultra-fresh uni (which was still moving!), the salad, and the beef. The uni in particular was a real surprise because I'm not usually a big fan, but this time I found the flavor to be very light and sweet. Oishii!

On our way home, we walked by Dalloyau, a pâtisserie well known for their macarons. Even as stuffed as we were, just the sight of those little morsels of scrumptiousness had me salivating. I would definitely have bought some, were it not for the fact that they were already closed. C'est la vie.

Kafunsho

After talking to some of her co-workers, the wife discovers the cause of my allergies: sugi trees! A bit of Google research later and I learn that it's hay fever season here in Japan and that I'm not the only one suffering from kafunsho (pollen sickness). Sugi trees hit their peak pollination period in late February, and just as it dies down in late April, hinoki trees hit their stride, so it's basically pollen hell from late January to May.

Which explains why we've been seeing so many people walk around with face masks (more than normal, anyway). We'd assumed it was because they were sick, but apparently it's a very effective way of limiting how much pollen you're exposed to. When it gets really bad, kafunsho sufferers also wear goggles to keep it out of their eyes. Live and learn, but since I'm leaving tomorrow, it's a bit too late for this trip.

The irony is that the high pollen count is man-made. Right after WWII, some seven million hectares of sugi and hinoki trees were planted nationwide to resupply Japan with lumber. By 1997, Japan had replanted 43% of it's woodland with them. According to the Forest Agency in 2008, almost 20% of Japan's land mass is planted with sugi and hinoki.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, the logging industry has declined due to cheaper imports, allowing the trees have survive long enough to mature and produce pollen. And because sugi trees are long-lived, they will continue to do so for another 300+ years.

As a result, kafunsho, which was virtually unheard of a few decades ago, now affects some 16% of the Japanese population and almost 30% of Tokyo's population, and these numbers are increasing annually.

The solution? The Forestry Agency plans to fell the trees in future and reforest them with new strains that were developed to release less pollen.

Look here for my source for the stats above.