I Kill Spies

I’ve been following Frank Sekiya in the press for a while now- he’s a nursery owner in Hawaii (Oahu) who specializes in exotic fruit trees.

I need to get my greenhouse/conservatory together so I can have a mangosteen. I want fruits no one has heard of before. I want to make sauces that are impossible to buy!

Frank Sekiya
Tel: +1 808 259-8737

Frankie’s Nursery
41-999 Mahiku Place
Waimanalo, Hawaii 96795

Articles online with Frank Sekiya in them:

• “HAWAIIAN JOHNNY APPLESEED SOWS EXOTIC FRUITS” (2000), by Paul Spencer Sochaczewski
  • A prettier version of this same article in Spirit of Aloha
• “LANDSCAPE IT … then eat it ” (1999, Honolulu Star Bulletin), by Betty Shimabukuro
• “Exotic Fruit Trees ” (video, 1995) – by the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources
• “Mala La’au“, a garden created in 1994 by the Hawaii Medical Library, has plants donated by Frank Sekiya
• Fruit Gardener, the primary publication of the California Rare Fruit Growers, has had two articles about Mr Sekiya:
  • “Frank Sekiya, Hawaiian Pomologist” by William F. Whitman (Volume 24, No. 2 – March/April 1992)
  
  
  • “Frankie’s Slice of Paradise” by Bob Holzinger (Volume 33, No. 5 – September/October 2001)
  
  
• The Summer 2000 issue of “Island Life” [what is this?] has an article with Frank Sakiya in it
• “Ever Green” (December 19, 1997, Honolulu Star Bulletin) by Lois Taylor

The Yes Men, a movie, follows a couple of anti-corporate activist-pranksters as they impersonate World Trade Organization spokesmen on TV and at business conferences around the world. (Click here for official movie site, here for the trailer, and here for some articles about it.)

The story follows Andy and Mike from their beginnings with GWBush.com, and on to their tasteless parody of the WTO’s website. Some visitors don’t notice the site is a fake, and send speaking invitations meant for the real WTO. Mike and Andy play along with the ruse and soon find themselves attending important functions as WTO representatives.

Delighted to speak for the organization they oppose, Andy and Mike don thrift-store suits and set out to shock their unwitting audiences with darkly comic satires on global free trade. Weirdly, the experts don’t notice the joke and seem to agree with every terrible idea the two can come up with.

Web link of note: The Yes Men
(At http://www.theyesmen.org/)

I was at Fry’s again (shut up I don’t have a problem) to buy a big-ass hard drive, for holding footage for editing.

I couldn’t find the one I was looking for- the LaCie 1 TB (not a typo- ONE TERABYTE!) external drive. I looked for a while too.

Ignoring my own advice of “never ask for help at Fry’s” I asked someone finally- they told me they don’t carry anything by Lacey. Or Laci. As in Peterson.

That was a little weird, I don’t know why… anyway I have to order it online now.

How random is this? It’s an entire site devoted to eliminating “Goatheads,” a plant which drops spiky thorns on the ground.
Web link of note: Goatheads
(At http://www.goatheads.com/)

Last night (Jan 6th) was Epifania, the Italian Christmas.

Lil Dy got her socks filled with clementines and nuts by Befana, a witch who flies around the world giving goodies to good children and coal to the bad ones.

There are a couple of different versions of the Befana story, but here is my favorite version:

Legend has it that the wise men on their way to see the Nativity stopped by Befana’s house to ask for directions. She didn’t know and the men went on their way, but not before inviting her along for the trip. Befana had some cleaning to do and so opted to not go along- but after they left she had second thoughts and rushed out to find the wise men and the Christ child.

She never found him. It was far away and she was completely lost, so she started giving small treats to every child she met, in the hopes she’d hit the right one.

So now, once a year, for ALL OF ETERNITY, she gives candy to all the good children.

I’m not sure what her motivation is, whether she thinks she’s going to find the Second Coming that way or something, or maybe she’s still on her original search, or maybe she knows and now she is on a different mission to reward the good and punish the bad.

But the desperation of Befana and her refusal to give up appeals to my Japanese nature. Plus I have a soft spot for the undead.

FlexCar:

Why buy when you can borrow? Flexcar is the nation’s largest and oldest provider of car-sharing programs. We give our members the key to new cars, trucks, and minivans located across a metropolitan region. You pay an hourly rate, and Flexcar pays for the car, insurance, gas and a reserved parking spot! Get where you need to go, with Flexcar.

Available in over a dozen metropolitan areas, including the SF Bay Area.
Web link of note: FlexCar
(At http://www.flexcar.com/)

A car-sharing service- I think it’s only in the Seattle area thus far.
Web link of note: ZipCar
(At http://www.zipcar.com/)

Walker and Ray were both visiting their respective families last weekend, so on Sunday we went to SF for a meandering adventure.

We went to New Asia for a quick Dim Sum fix (we apparently missed Kung Pao Kosher Comedy by a single day- Jewish stand-up in a Chinese restaurant on Xmas!), and then walked to Imperial Tea Court for a tea tasting… However, they were closed for some reason (December the 26th).

The other location is at the Ferry Building, halfway across town, so we walked back along Grant. On the way, we got some gelato at a place staffed entirely by little teenaged girls watching Mariah Carey videos on a giant flatscreen TV, right across the intersection from Big Al’s (the sex toy shop). Also on the way, we picked up some Chinese pastries from the bakery on Grant (Notice a trend here?). I ordered my pi2dan1 sao which I seem to be addicted to recently…

At Imperial Tea Court, we ordered the gongfu presentation of a very nice puerh tea, which means it was served in yixing cups and pots and rinsing bowls.

The cups are made of a special porous ceramic which is for the most part unglazed… the cups take on the character of all the tea that has ever been brewed in them, so you have to be careful to never have a weaker tea in a stronger cup, etc.

The puerh tea is a super-fermented tea with a strong earthy flavor. It’s really good, and its flavor actually changes character with each successive infusion.

The presentation was very elaborate and beautiful, with a number of rinsing steps with each serving. Just as in a wine tasting, we were invited to sniff the freshly-rinsed tea. We were geeking out, trying to memorize the exact sequence of moves our server was executing so as to brew the successive infusions properly. It was very cool.

After we drank about 5 infusions, we ate our pastries we had brought in, and then ordered MORE tea, this time a simple gaiwan of a white tea.

Mmmmm drugs.

• My earlier mention of Imperial Tea Court

Vocabulary:

• pi2dan1sao? = 皮蛋 [??] – a flaky pastry filled with a sweet lotus seed paste, candied fruit, and preserved duck egg. Mmmm! Still no idea what the third character is!
• gongfu = 功夫 – “practice,” in this case a specific tea preparation. Either I have the characters totally wrong, or this is the same character as “kung fu,” like the martial art.
• puerh = 普洱 – a type of specially-aged tea
• yixing = 宜兴 – a region in China known for its earthenware
• gaiwan = 蓋碗 – a type of lidded porcelain teacup, where the lid is used to filter the loose tea