my wife found an interesting article from the "guardian" newspaper website...
[since the link to the "guardian" is apparently a blacklisted word for this server, please do a search on "guardian" and "the books we only say we've read" to find the article]

people tend to lie about ever reading a book because it'll make them seem smarter... right?

i love how the bible made it to the top 4 for the UK...

an interesting question came to mind... what would the US list look like?

we came up with the following list (in no particular order):
- walden
- catch-22
- hamlet

what do you think?

Let's see if I can manage to not insult anyone with this rant...

So I've been in Singapore for the past 7 months working by day, and eating by night. While the work (for a client whose political leanings and associations I'd rather not discuss at this juncture) has been banal at times and interesting during others, I have found that the daily task of figuring out what to eat for dinner while always to be a curious challenge.

• What do I want to eat tonight?
• Where do I want to eat tonight?
• What's still open at 10pm on a weeknight?
• What's fast so that I don't have to sit alone at a table in a restaurant for too long?
• What's cheap?

With all these questions answered, I've found myself on an Italian kick as of late, and in particular, a new restaurant that opened up across from my hotel.

In the last 14 days, I've been to Pizzeria da Mario 5 times for dinner. My Peroni beer is automatically delivered when I walk in the door. Mario gives me a familiar nod as I sit down at "my" table. It's become my hideout after work.

It's a nice little shop with 6 tables inside and 4 tables outside. Mario owns the kitchen and no one else is allowed to step foot inside. He has 2 other people helping out, but they are either serving, running the cashier, or washing dishes. Mario has 3 hotplates (of which one is constantly boiling water for pasta) and 2 ovens (which have either pizzas or lasagne rhythmically moving in and out) to run the joint. Everything's made on the spot (except for the dough and desserts, which were made earlier in the day). The flavors are absolutely amazing, but the food's a bit slow in coming.

Well, in the past 48 hours, Mario's managed to have lose (permanently or temporarily, I'm not sure) both of his helpers , and tonight, he found himself running his kitchen and restaurant alone at 7:30pm. It took 55 minutes for my food to arrive tonight, which meant plenty of timing staring blankly at my now empty glass of water and waiting for my meal.

So what do you do? I love the food and the shop, and I don't want this place to disappear (for personal reasons and also for the sake of the Singaporean food scene in general). I really felt sorry for the guy, and wanted to help out with serving and washing dishes and ringing up checks.

What would *you* do? Pour water for the other tables? Bus dishes back and forth? Help him figure out how to feed a roll of paper into the cashier's receipt feeder? Feel sorry for the guy and continue sitting on your ass?

Link: http://www.schwarestaurant.com

During this past weekend, my girlfriend and I headed to a new restaurant that opened in Chicago called Schwa. Metromix.com said that the name was chosen since the owner wanted "an unstressed style of cooking."

I'm not entirely sure what is meant by that. Are they aiming for "simple" cooking that tastes great, or an unstressful dining room where guests can chat and enjoy a meal? The space is small. Approximately 13 tables or 26 guests dot the room, but you're never elbowing a neighbour. The colours are quite nice and it gives off that cozy feeling you get as food coma settles in. The music isn't so loud that you can't hear your dinner mate.

Regardless, the food was AMAZING. We started with an amuse, which just showed up and was quite yummy. If I could remember what it was, I'd share. We started with the proscuitto consomme which worked so well with little cantaloupe balls in the consomme. For the entree, my girlfriend had the braised pork belly, which tasted exactly like an old Chinese recipe my grandmother used to make. It was served with burdock root in a soy-based demi-glaze. I hadthe diver scallops, which was served with fennel and apple (pureed apple spread, apple cider, and small cubes of cooked apple). The scallops were pan-seared and the insides were just a shade raw. Perfect.

The hostess was incredibly helpful with suggestions and even told us that the kitchen had white truffle and white truffle oil in house, should there be anything with which we would want to substitute the truffle.

We finished off with the banana dessert which was curious, and the presentation looked a little off. (It looked like something that really shouldn't be eaten. But it tasted fantastic! It was served with a homemade caramel and roasted pineapples. And we received a second little dessert that was a sunchoke mousse with raspberry. It tasted mostly like yoghurt, and the flavours were surprising, but still came together nicely.

The kicker is that the establishment is BYOB and Dan & Liz will attest to my fondness of such places. The person who picked up the phone (my guess is that it was the chef) kindly told me that the menu was currently more white wine friendly and suggested a varietal for me to bring.

I think I've found a new restaurant that I will frequent as often as I am in town. It'll be difficult splitting time with La Fette, my other favourite restaurant in Chicago.

So I've been struggling to understand a particular thing about women: they complain about being given food. Now, before I get pounced on for making a chauvinistic comment, hear me out.

My girlfriend typically complains that I'm going to make her fat. The comment is premised on the fact that whenever I'm visiting her in New York, we're going out to all the restaurants that I miss from my day at university. Now, I realise she's joshing around and isn't completely serious... or is she? If one jokes around about a topic enough, is there some truth to the joke?

I didn't give this much thought until another female friend of mine made this comment: "Why must you constantly force good food and wine on us? It's such an imposition, seriously." (Once again, a comment made in jest, but still a cause for contemplation.) All of the sudden, I had *TWO* women complaining that I was feeding them.

So what's the big deal? Food is good. It satisfies one of those basic, almost primal, needs that we have as human beings. And food serves a separate function: it's a tool to bring people together, and in many cultures, it's the centrepiece of society. But sociologic rants aside, riddle me this: why is feeding you such a bad thing? Surely the "fat" aspect of it can't wield that much fear.

Can you really say no to homemade ravioli?? You're going to have to eat anyway.