Notes On A Cold Day

Note #1
Went to Basi tonight and reviewed it. It was amazing. We were the only people in the place and it was like being in First Class. I'd feel bad that the business was slow but the owners (Maurizio and Lynn) assured us that during the summer, everything explodes. So it's like owning a ski shop . . . you just have to learn how to twiddle your thumbs for six months of the year . . . the other six, put on the battle gear.

Review to follow, with pictures, on montrealfood.com.

Note #2

I sold an electronic device on eBay today to a fellow in Italy (I'm a huge eBayer with now 690 transactions and 100% good feedback to my credit) and I found he didn't quite understand my emails, though his English seemed pretty good. So I went to the machine translators, because although my French is pretty good, it's sometimes hard to extend that to Italian. But he was amazed at what I came up with. I had to parse out all the machine-translation crap by translating into Italian, then translating that back into English, then figuring out what the machine had fucked up (like "the my PayPal account") and, using my knowledge of French grammatical structure, correcting it. So, here's an example email, translated entirely from English into Italian, which I don't speak, by machine, then corrected by me:

"Il prezzo di conquista era dollari US (US $365.00) ed il prezzo di trasporto è Canadese $85, quale uguaglia l'americano $67, così, viene nei complessivamente Stati Uniti $433.00.

"Sono spiacente che il costo di affrancatura in Italia è così costoso ma è oltre mio controllo.

"Mio PayPal indirizzo di posta elettronica è tonbo@montrealfood.com.

"Mi auguro che tutti ha senso!

"Ciao bella

"Nick"

I don't know, I had no idea how to end the email since "best regards" or "cheers" rendered nonsense, so I said "ciao bella", which I thought I heard Jamie Oliver say a few times. However, the machine translates it back as "Hi, beautiful . . ." Hope Guido (his real name!) doesn't get any ideas.

Well, he seemed to understand . . . do you? (Copy and paste into your favorite machine translator and find out!)

Note #3

I've become the owner of an Architectural Digest spread. Since Brigitte moved in with her furniture and impeccable taste this weekend, this is what my living room looks like now. Sorry, don't have a before picture, but you wouldn't have wanted to see it anyway . . . (click on picture for bigger version)