Nine steps below the street lies this quaint Harvard Sq Indian restaurant called Tamarind Bay. It’s adventurous Indian food served up in an unadventurous setting. It’s got spice, it’s exotic (I’ve definitely never had banana dumplings before), and it’s definitely in a class of its own.

All told, however, it is not in my opinion the best Indian meal in Beantown. Namaskar and Bhindi Bazaar still reign supreme.

But Tamarind Bay’s rich home-cooked flavor makes it very promising, and I think it’s a place to keep a close eye on. They change their menu seasonally, after all. With some refinement, it could be an excellent restaurant. But tonight the entrees were way too oily, the naan was cold, and the rice was lukewarm (I like my food steaming hot when it hits the table, like at Punjabi Dhaba in Inman Sq). And while the food was exotic compared to your typical Indian fare, sometimes the spiciness killed all potential subtleties.

I have to admit a bias of mine about Indian food, though. These days when I go to new Indian places, I do a little prayer before my meal—inspired by Namaskar’s food—asking that they please involve saffron in some way in my entreé. And at Tamarind Bay my prayers were unanswered. I can’t really blame them for this—why should they use saffron, anyway? Do Indians really use saffron in home cooking?

Apparently not.

Name: Tamarind Bay
Menu: slick black plastic/faux-leather
Bathrooms: ‘tiny’ and ‘tinier’
Tablecloth: White, covered with plexiglas
Seats: Cloth-and-vinyl-backed benches and wood chairs.

it’s me on page 18.

This is a note I sent to a fellow Case alumni who runs a “Young Adult Group” at the Unitarian church in Harvard Sq. We’ve been talking about our Case experiences, and it feels good for me to reflect on this now that it’s a few years behind me. I think I have a clearer picture of what I got out of my college experience. Karl and I will be leading a “spiritual discussion” for this UU group in November, and we’re thinking of focusing on some of these cultural/institutional issues in people’s lives. That is, if we can find a way to fit it under the “spiritual” heading. (hey, it’s a Unitarian church.. anything goes, right?)

Ethan,

Yes, my gripes are more cultural than educational. I can’t forget that I had some great professors at Case, and I believe I knew up from what kind of education I was in for. I don’t feel slighted in terms of academic opportunities; maybe Case had more dud profs than a “teaching institution,” but there are always horrible teachers.

The thing I didn’t expect was such an abysmal campus culture. People used their school books as shields (or crutches, depending on how you look at it) when asked to get involved in the community, but I never believed it was really about “too much studying.” I think there were deeply ingrained issues with the administration’s priorities and in the mix of personalities at the school. I’d always imagined that if students had more free time, they’d either be drinking more or playing more video games. And the crazy art students were a group too small who always left too soon. I remember meeting some people from CIA once and thinking, “Wow, where have -you- been all this time?”

Ethan, this was such a huge frustration for me. In a rather backwards way, instead of leaving the school I was so upset with, I set out to solve the Case Problem. And in an equally backwards way, a friend and I started a community web site called home.cwru.edu whose aim was to get people to step away from their desks and build a “real life” community. Some study had shown that a dorm-wide e-mail list encouraged people who were otherwise shy to get out for planned events, so we started from that. It was an interesting technical achievement and people still use it, but I think we failed at our original vision. At least it kept me occupied until I left, but my feeling now is that it would take a very special piece of software, one I’m not capable of writing, to really fix the Case Problem.

I did make lemonade from those four years: the community site got me a job, and the emptiness of the experience awoke me to so many things I had taken for granted when I was in high school and only missed once they were so far from the college culture: music, art, community, social activism, dating, eating well, dancing, living. Leaving Case, I’d come to realize the value of those things and I vowed to incorporate them more into my post-college life.

I’m still working on that, on the “recovery process”, as you put it, but I think I’ve come a long way.

best,
Carl

hi Diego,

I bet you’re excited about the upcoming snowboarding season. Me, I have found a different way to increase my chances of a debilitating injury: I’ve begun commuting to work by bicycle. After 6 months of it and 1000 or so miles, I’ve endured just a scrape here and there and maybe a couple broken bones that I didn’t need anyway—good odds compared to what seems to happen when I strap a plank to my feet and tumble head over heels down a steep icy hill, sail through the trees, unwittingly shoot myself off a cliff and plunge into the fiery pit of Hades, across the River Styx, and by chance finally come to rest in the Burlington Hospital Emergency Room—but please do cross your fingers for me.

In hindsight I’ve come to blame Josh Cherry for that snowboarding incident. Yes, I know he wasn’t with me at the time, but he was nearby. Let me explain. I believe his mere presence in any scenario tends to land me in the soup every time. Perhaps we’re both accident prone, and in each other’s presence the odds tip over into the red. Each time he’s been to Boston, I recall having a near death experience.

For example, soon after the Burlington Incident, Josh and I were crossing Tremont St in the South End and I was almost run over by a stampeding pack of local youths. I found myself in their path while Josh watched from a safe distance. They swerved toward me and sped to a gallop, nearly grazing my rump as I leaped onto the sidewalk, leaving me no time to turn around and yank the crooked middle finger out of my cast to meet their receding hind quarters.

This should be enough to convince you of the deleterious effects of Josh Cherry on my health and well being. But if not, I shall tell you of the time we were speeding down the alley alongside Storrow Drive in the summertime, going perhaps a little fast but feeling very much like Londoners in our borrowed red Mini Cooper. We bounded over potholes and swerved around dumpsters and past protruding parked cars, and out of nowhere our headlights illuminated the side of a 1987 Chevy Nova about 4 feet ahead. The odds were against us, but I stomped on the breaks and through some miracle we came out unscathed.

So it should be clear to you at this point that Josh is nothing but trouble for me. I do enjoy his company, but next time he’s in town I’ll wisely insist on avoiding the bicycle, car, snowboard, or any trains for that matter, and will choose instead to hop to my destination encased in a thick layer of bubble wrap.

best,
Carl

I have been making these crazy meals lately. Too much spare time? Today for lunch I had a seared piece of salmon sashimi with this roasted vegetable salad/relish I made, homemade hummus and pita, whipped potatoes, a few slices of pickled diakon radish from the farm share, tea, and In the Loupe. I feel so lucky to have the time to occasionally live.

Listening to Leonard Cohen and making blue cheese mashed potatoes. I can’t believe I haven’t heard much of his music before. He speaks in a way that demands you listen, though not forcefully and not because he feels he has something supremely important to say. It’s more of a care he has about enunciating everything so that you just have to stop what you’re doing.

Started GRE practice last night with a little trepidation. In 8th grade Algebra when I asked “When will we ever use this?”, the answer should have been “so you can get into grad school.” It’s silly but I’m actually enjoying looking back at all this stuff. It’s definitely something I can reasonably expect to be well prepared for.

I’m going to take the test with Karl sometime in November. My score will be valid for 5 years so I’ve got time to work out the little details like where, how, and why I would ever want to go to grad school. If I do go end up at grad school, I will not want to ask “when will we ever use this?”

My note of last week to Ryan, written in the style of a worrying parent, asking why he went to New York and got beaten up and arrested at the RNC, was met with no reply (yet), but I heard through a third party that he was indeed an innocent bystander and I felt silly (like I might have been too harsh). Hopefully I’ll see him later this month in Nashville, if he hasn’t moved to Illinois, and I can hear it all directly from him. Ryan’s existence stirs up lots of irrelevant side-chatter. He might be famous.

Found out today that there is such a thing as Fair Trade Tea, and that Harney & Sons is getting a bunch of their teas certified. Time to place an order for the fall.

This ban is expiring in 3 days and no one is lifting a finger to renew it. It’s going to legalize the sale of Uzis, TEC-9s, AK-47s, etc. Military-grade assault weapons with no sporting use.

Fuck that.

From: Freddie O’Connell
Subject: Assaulting the Assault Weapons Ban
Date: September 9, 2004 7:49:14 PM EDT
To: allayall@conscientiouspeopleiknow.net

Many of you will already be aware of this issue, but I just wanted to provide an easy way to make your voice heard on the subject. In just over 4 days, a ban on the sale of many varieties of assault weapons will expire despite the fact that more than two-thirds of Americans desire its renewal. Much of this is the result of a silent President and Congress whose voices have been replaced by that of the NRA.

Please visit http://www.stopthenra.com/ and sign a petition recording your objection to the impending expiry of the ban. I have already called my senators and congressman.

The petition was organized by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence , a worthwhile organization with a worthwhile website.

As a general supporter of the 2nd Amendment, I still think there are some common sense approaches that can be used to prevent violence and death, and this level of gun control does not strike me as unconstitutional. If any of you think otherwise, then I apologize for the distraction.

-tfo

Half of the art is in the frame, right? That’s what a frame store will tell you, anyway. So will Brian Eno and most ad agencies. But I’m unwilling to spend $50 for a nice wooden frame with glass and a custom-cut, museum quality archival matt board to house an 8x10” photograph I paid two bucks for. It doesn’t seem to fit the medium and it’s way too expensive. But I’m equally unwiling to buy one of these and add doubt to my already dubious credibility as a photographer. So I went out looking for alternatives—something cheap that looks good. If I could sell a framed 8x10” print for less than the outrageous $150+ that local photographers demand and probably never collect, I’d have some “art for the masses,” right?

So here’s my approach. For an 8x10 photo, I went down to the frame store and bought a 12x14” piece of Plexiglas, a can of white spraypaint that bonds to plastic, and a can of spray adhesive. Plexiglas comes with a backing stuck to both sides. I peeled the backing from one side, masking taped around the edges and spraypainted the showing side. Then I removed the tape and backing from the flip side, revealing a plate that has the sheen and color of the outside of an iBook. Then I centered and mounted the photograph there with the spray adhesive.

That’s the short story. It took a bit of work to get the tape on and off, to line the photo up, to adhere it straight onto the plastic without a dry mount press and without glue getting everywhere. I also had to sand down the sides of the Plexiglas to even out the rough edges left by the glass cutter. But I did manage, and I think with a little work (and a real dry mount press, a bigger cutting board, and some studio space to house it all) I could start making these frames pretty quickly.

They’re cheap and they look great. My total cost for the 8x10” is a little over $15 for everything. I think people would be happy to pay $40+ for these prints (not Steve Keene cheap, but still cheap), and I get to cover at least the printing and framing expenses right away (the cam0era would take years to pay off at this rate, though).

Here’s a photo of the photos I’ve framed so far: a 16x20” on the left and an 8x10” on the right. I have placed a pen in the upper right so you can get a sense of the scale.

I’m still experimenting with different aspect ratios. I kind of like the “HDTV look” on the left, but maybe with a bit more margin on top and bottom. Meanwhile, the biggest challenge is the hanger on the back: I still haven’t figured out how to hang these things. Hot glue doesn’t stick, epoxy doesn’t stick, and I can’t see how I could drill a hole in the Plexiglas without screwing up the photo. I’ll let you know how it goes…

What’s your working style? Last night, talking to Karl about our myriad personal projects, I had a revelation about how I work.

Here’s the gist of it: When you’re feeling inspired, it’s so easy and immediately gratifying to start a new project. Maybe you’re a great starter, but the important distinction is between starting something and getting it off the ground.

This is the biggest problem in my work at home recently: My projects seem as hard to get off the ground as they are easy to start. To be nakedly honest: I’ve spent eight months with 4 free days per week and I’ve gotten nothing off the ground.

I think it has to do with the modes of thinking involved: starting mode and incubation mode. When I’m in starting mode, I start work after a cup of coffee and I think, “Holy shit, look at all these great resources I have. Today I’m going to do these 62,893 things.” So I experiment frenetically. I see a whole forest of possibilities and I jump from one to the next like a flying squirrel and it’s satisfying. It feels productive, and distraction is encouraged! What fun.

Once the caffeine wears off, I settle down and am staring at a deeply depressing question: “What the hell am I doing?” I have 62,893 cool projects that are going nowhere fast. The once-tasty bubblegum has lost its flavor, and now it’s preventing me from eating anything.

At this point, I need incubation mode. Incubation mode is more focused and contempative. It develops depth rather than breadth. When I’m in this mode, I cannot be distracted or my project will never come to fruition, let alone “finished.” I have to put the blinders on and push forward.

Sometimes I get into this mode for a day or two on one project and I make a little progress. But I can’t sustain incubation mode for some reason. My projects from the past eight months are still on the ground. Why? Here’s the revelation from last night: My projects are on the ground because for each project, I get too ambitious and want to construct an elegant, complete package before anyone would see it. I want to show myself in the best light to the world, but to do so would require much more self-dicipline than I can muster, especially when starting mode is waiting for me to get bored with what I’m doing and switch back.

To make progress at this point, I need a feedback loop: between myself and my audience, between myself and my collaborator, or between myself and myself. I need to be accountable to someone or something, even for the most exciting project.

So: I can get an audience (“I have an art opening on Sept 15th”), I can get a collaborator (“I promised Karl I’d have this part done by tomorrow”), or I can beat myself up, but I have to do these things toward the beginning of a project or it will fizz out.

Quickly getting a project done but not totally polished gives it a real chance to get off the ground. In computer science, this is called “the 80% solution.” The 80% solution to a problem is that which ideally meets the following conditions:

• It does just what it’s needs to do
• It offers no bells and whistles
• But it doesn’t break
• And it takes a lot less time, at least half the time in many cases, than the 100% solution

The nice thing about an 80% solution is that it allows for incremental improvements that move toward 100% now that the feedback loop is in place. This is especially true in my current job, where we have the luxury of making many smaller improvements to our service in real-time. It is so satisfying to read customer complaints and then complete the loop by making an incremental change that (I hope) addresses the complaint and curbs future complaints.

From today forward, my focus on personal projects will be about identifying that feedback loop earlier in the process and using it to get me off the ground. That’s the only way I can keep myself from getting distracted. Why did it take so long for me to put my finger on this?