If music be the food of love...

Rapateeka dôdô tah!

2012-01-15T00:32:00.007+07:00

I have been involved in a very stimulating musical experience with Les Métaboles. We have given a concert produced by the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra which involved its brass section, a cello solist from the orchestra and our choir. This orchestra is one of the best orchestras in France so there was enormous pressure on us to deliver a satisfactory vocal performance. We could sense the high stakes as our musical director Léo Warinsky was very tense during all the rehearsals with the orchestra. We did our best to act professional.

Indeed, judging by the grey or white hair of most of the instrumentists involved, these ten gentlemen and one lady were not only among the best musicians in France, but they had been so for quite some time already.

I was extremely impressed by the clockwork precision of the brass section in playing a rythmical section that looked incredibly difficult on the musical score.

One of the composers of the piece we were giving was present and playing the piano. More pressure...

However, Ron Geesin turned out to be a charming Scotsman. He was always encouraging us, providing advice to the conductor on how the piece should sound. He was seemingly thrilled that his composition should be played and sung by such outstanding performers.

The concert was held at the Théâtre du Châtelet in central Paris. It was very impressive to be on stage in this huge italian-style musical theatre currently specializing in large-scale classical concerts and musicals productions. The concert was sold-out: over 2 000 people in the audience. Pressure, pressure, pressure...

The contemporary piece started with a synthetic and eery background. The brass instruments came in one after the other, adding tension to the musical atmosphere. Enigmatic cymbal and percussion interventions here and there. The texture of the brass became increasingly complex and dense, a climax was close...

And then the rock band crashed in! Banging drums, thumping electric bass guitar, mesmerizing keyboards, overwhelming electric guitar! We were giving "Atom heart mother" by the Pink Floyd, which Ron Geesin had first orchestrated in 1970 and extended in 2008. It is one of two examination pieces for the musical option of the 2012 French end-of-secondary-school baccalaureat exam. Our audience was composed of final-year secondary school students. The piece finishes with all instruments, rock band and choir giving their biggest sound for the final chord. The crowd went wild and we got a fullhouse standing ovation!

Despite the rock-and-roll nature of the piece, working with the Radio France Philharmonic gave this production an extremely professional turn. We had rehearsed our choir part separately before joining the orchestra. In all, we only had around three hours of rehearsal with the instrumentists in very brief sessions. We had very little opportunity to meet and socialize with the instrumentists, the conductor or composer. In a sense, I did miss the many opportunities for friendly interactions with professionals of the long rehearsal sessions I had known singing for Bangkok Opera. But it fealt great working again with professional musicians, and such outstanding ones too.

The production is due to be broadcast on national radio and national television so I hope this production will lead to other similar projects for Les Métaboles.
Atom heart mother
Pink Floyd, Atom heart mother, EMI

I'm not hungry no more

2012-01-08T21:25:00.014+07:00

I think I have developed a certain reputation for enjoying food, preferably of good quality and in wholesome quantities.

However, this week I experienced the unpleasant feeling of not wanting to eat. My parents and I went up to the northern tip of Chile in the Andean village of Putre, altitude: 3 500 m. The weather was typical of what is called the "Bolivian winter": cold temperatures, rain and drizzle all day, all night.
Weather conditions were inhospitable and the feeling of uncomfort was made much worse by the thin air and low level of oxygen. Result: altitude sickness for my mother and me. Head throbbing, heart running wild, sleepless nights, falling asleep all day, feeling sick once in a while. Luckily we had no physical effort to make as we toured the region in a vehicle.

The only way to escape the rain was to move further up to the altiplano above 4 500 m where the sun would shine in the mornings, but of course, it made the altitude sickness worse.

We even went very high up to see the Andean volcanic peaks.

It felt strange and unpleasant to arrive at meal times and not want to eat at all, sometimes having to force myself to eat just a bit.

Luckily, by the third day my body had started to get used to the lack of oxygen and my appetite came back as the altitude sickness subsided. And then the weather cleared and the views were stunning!
Losing my appetite
Floetry

5 250 m photo: Pheck Yin Cadilhon

Over the mountain, across the sea

2011-12-27T02:12:00.006+07:00

Here I am back in Chile for the holidays with my parents, my brother and his wife. Chile is a very narrow country: sea and mountain are not far from one another.

On one day, my brother and I hiked up the Cerro Pochoco just behind Santiago. Warning: it is not as easy as advertised. The rock is very brittle and we ended up having to use all fours to move both up and down. After two hours of climbing we were rewarded with an early lunch of sandwiches at 1 805 m altitude with a beautiful view of the Central Andes.

On the next day, my father took us to the seaside at the miniature village of Quintay. Frigid waters made it impossible to swim without a wetsuit but we enjoyed a lunch of fresh seafood at a small seaside restaurant overlooking this breathtaking view of the Pacific.

Over the mountain, across the sea
Johnnie and Joe, I'll be spinning, the J&S recordings, Ace records UK

The final straw

2011-12-05T04:44:00.004+07:00

I have blogged on FAO's e-agriculture about a case study mingling the latest ICT with an every-day tool to ensure traceability of fresh organic asparagus all along the food chain from the most demanding rich-country supermarkets right back to the smallholder producers in Thailand.

Read more here.

As a result, I have had the honour to become a guest blogger for e-agriculture.

Final straw
REM, Around the sun, WEA

Photo: Jeff Golden

I will crumble I will crumble I will crumble

2011-11-26T23:52:00.011+07:00

Last Sunday I hosted Brittany whom I had met and sung with in Bangkok. She stayed with me for a few days to visit Paris. Before coming she had browsed through my blog and asked whether I would cook for her the cauliflower soups I was blogging about. She also mentioned that she remembered my apple crumble from the time I baked one in Bangkok for a musical rehearsal.

I guess I went a bit silly because I decided she would get both her wishes, and more: the whole dinner was made of crumbles.

First, I served a cauliflower soup with bread and Parmigiano Reggiano crumbs on it. I must admit it did not look as good as the coloured cauliflower soups of the past few months but the biocoop only had the white variety last week.

Then came the entrée: cucumber yoghurt seasoned with the secret spices of Isabelle Pelissolo and crushed cereals on top. Refreshing.

The main dish was a beshamel sauce fennel crumble.

Usual salad and cheese to pass time and help finish the wine.

And finally, the long-awaited apple crumble, which I thaught Brittany how to bake.

We had a great time reminiscing our musical and food experiences from Bangkok while enjoying the food. The silliness was contagious: we both took photos of each course as they appeared on the table.

To know what Brittany thought of the crumble experience, read here.

I will crumble
Mike Vogel, Wuthering heights original soundtrack, MTV

Find your castle

2011-11-25T04:40:00.002+07:00

Find out how I went to this beautiful castle in the middle of the French countryside where lots of interesting people had a lot of knowledge to share on food and agriculture, but I sadly had to leave very quickly because of another commitment - musical, of course.

Read more here.

Castle in the sky
DJ Satomi, Greatest hits, Sunflower

Rutabagas, potatoes and greens

2011-09-26T01:24:00.004+07:00

Remember the orange cauliflower soup at the beginning of the month?

The latest cauliflower at the organic coop shop is green!

This is starting to become ridiculous... I'm running out of assorted table cloths and table sets.

Bets are open for the next cauliflower colour I come accross...

Green
Blake Shelton, Startin fires, Warner Bros/Wea

We're just country boys and girls

2011-09-10T23:26:00.010+07:00

Last week I was invited by FAO to help conduct a subregional policy workshop for Southeast Asia and China on supporting farmers' organizations in their market linkage activities.

This was the first time I really got to experience the life of a short-term consultant in international agricultural development. After ten days' reviewing case studies of how farmers' organizations were involved in market linkages I flew to Bangkok on a Friday night and arrived there Saturday noon. Sunday I went to work with Betty del Rosario, the project coordinator and organizer of the workshop. I had to finish my presentations and we discussed how we would conduct the workshop on the next day. Monday and Tuesday saw two days' of intense workshoping with representatives from farmers' organizations from the subregion and a few resources persons from NGOs, the private sector and government. (A delicious welcome dinner of Thai food where we witnessed how the height of a farmers' representative is not correlated with his appetite.) In the evenings I was writing up my report.

On Tuesday noon the workshop programme gave me one hour to prepare a presentation synthesizing the results of our work from the various materials discussed during the two days: frantic copying-and-pasting. The output of the workshop was finalized at the end of the workshop and cleared by the participants. On Wednesday I continued writing my report and flew back to Paris. I sent my report for clearance yesterday Friday evening. 15 days of work more or less non-stop with 24 hours of flight and jet lag at both ends...

The first lesson I have learned from this experience: the life of an international development consultant is not for me. I can do it from time to time but I think I would not be able to lead this kind of life on a regular basis: it is exhausting!

The second lesson I have learned from this mission: it looks like the workshop method of knowledge sharing is becoming so commonly used that even farmers' representatives get into the activity without asking what they should be doing. Facilitators of the working groups emerged naturally from among the participants; rapporteurs likewise. These workshops were a great way to get the participants to discuss and forge a common understanding of issues without resorting to tedious plenary declarations on the microphone. Participants even seemed to enjoy it judging from the way some of the groups were eager to start the second group exercise.

The third lesson I have learned from this workshop: the counting method to assign group membership becomes complicated when some participants cannot speak the common working language and need a colleague-interpreter with them. For the first groupwork I assigned groups by counting pairs of participants so that all delegates had a colleague who could translate for them. However, when I tried to count different group compositions for the second group session by counting one pair out of each two, participants and I all got mixed up. I will have to think of another way of assigning groups for next time.

Photos: Betty del Rosario

Down on the farm
Tim Mcgraw, Greatest hits, Curb records

Just a spoonful

2011-09-09T02:53:00.008+07:00

Question: What do you get when a boy who lives to cook meets a girl who only cooks because she has to eat...
but is also passionately interested in ethical businesses and developing sustainable livelihoods of local communities in developing countries?
Answer:

I have been travelling to Bangkok for work last week but I also took the opportunity to see friends and former colleagues. Nanae Yabuki, Pearl Daophises and I went to try the food at the restaurant just opened by our common friend and former colleague Regan Suzuki. It is called Seven spoons.

Regan's Thai partner was alone in the kitchen probably enjoying doing all the cooking while Regan sat with us in the wood-decorated dining room where we sipped cocktails and enjoyed the Mediterranean-inspired food. All the ingredients are organic whenever possible and Regan insists on this being a sustainable business venture for her, her partner, their suppliers and the environment.

The signature cocktail Silver spoon was light and refreshingly spicy. Regan said this was the place to come to if you could not stand Bangkok's version of the mojito: full of brown sugar and lime. Seven spoons serves the transparent original recipe.

The starters were light and made us expect more. The dishes were generous. We all shared the food so as to try as many different things as possible. The risotto ball in squid tomato gravy was enjoyed by all of us. The spinach and pumpkin ravioli were so natural all the flavours came out one after the other linked by the melted butter that topped them. The skin of the white snapper was perfectly fried to a delicious crisp on top of the filet.

The dessert selection still has to grow (there were only two items when we went) but the lemon-flavoured crème brulée served its purpose very well. None of us left any although we had all eaten a lot.

By the way, Seven spoons delivers lunch and dinner boxes in the Ratanakosin area. I have heard the meals are nutritious and exquisitely presented in biodegradable material. How greener could one get?

A spoonful of sugar
From the original soundtrack of Mary Poppins, Walt Disney

Out of an orange-coloured sky

2011-09-09T02:26:00.005+07:00

Remember last year's purple cauliflower soup?

This month the organic cooperative supermarket has an orange cauliflower variety. This shop guarantees its food does not contain genetically modified organisms so I guess this orange cauliflower is a resurrected old variety. It is quite incredible how we could enliven our food with natural colour rather than always going for the usual green, red and white.

Orange-coloured sky
Nat King Cole, The Nat King Cole story, Capital catalog

Did you say that I've got a lot to learn?

2011-08-04T00:31:00.002+07:00

The lessons I have learned from collaborating with my older colleagues in "knowledge organizations".

Read more here.

Teach me tonight
Dinah Washington, The ultimate collection, Master series Inc.

We were young and restless 2

2011-07-28T19:09:00.003+07:00

We still need to unwind.

I am now also contributing to the blogs on the Young professionals' platform for agricultural research for development (YPARD).

This post reflects on the various definitions of a "young farmer" around the world. Read more here.

The first part was written last year here.

Summer of '69
Brian Adams, So far so good, A&M

Farmers of the world unite...

2011-07-19T14:38:00.002+07:00

Strength in numbers we can get it right

Read more here.

Rythm nation
Janet Jackson, Rythm Nation 1814, A&M

Working again...

2011-07-06T14:36:00.003+07:00

I have been allowed to blog about work once again, although not on this space.

I will be contributing this Summer to the blog series on youth, agriculture and ICTs hosted by YPARD and e-agriculture.

Check out my first blog on the lessons I have learned from facilitating an online discussion group.

Working again
Michael Stanley Band, Heartland, EMI Records

Istanbul

2011-06-18T16:58:00.007+07:00

I went to Istanbul last week end for a few days of Middle-eastern atmosphere. Mosques at every corner; busy bazaar selling cheap T-shirts, carpets, spices and turkish delights; muezzin call five times a day; city busy with tourists; Bosporus busy with ships; grilled kebabs; turkish bath. Usual clichés, but I found them comforting for my first trip there and reminiscent of Iran, which I had visited ten years ago.

I must admit I have never been keen on kebabs. After all, it is just skewered grilled meat. So I was particularly interested to try out the Ottoman court cuisine at the Asitane Restaurant. Just like musicians playing early music on period instruments in a historically informed way, this restaurant has gone through the process of uncovering from the historical records the recipes and flavours used in the sultan's palaces. The humus was definitely not regular: a crumbly paste with whole pine nuts and cinnamon. My main dish was extraordinary. A stuffed baked melon. Imagine a British Christmas-time mince pie, add minced beef and pepper, all baked inside a ripe rock melon, served with melon flesh poached in butter. Each mouthful was a surprising combination of sugar, salt and spice. The sharp local red wine was perfect to wash the mouth before another go at the sugar, salt and spice.

If you have time and some money to spend during your next trip to Istanbul, try out this incredible cuisine. They even have historically informed kebab on the menu.

Istanbul (not Constantinople)
They might be giants, Dial-a-song, Rhino record

Catch your train!

2011-05-27T03:47:00.005+07:00

I often hear foreign friends saying the French spend so much time eating. In some sense, I guess they are right.

Last Sunday I was hosting the soon-to-be-married Hannah and Tim who had come over from England. Their train home was leaving from Gare du Nord at 15.15. I thought if we started early, there would be enough time to enjoy a real traditional home-cooked gastronomic French lunch.

Everything was ready in the kitchen for lunch when Hannah and Tim finally awoke at noon.

They had their apéritif straight out of bed and shower! We only started on the food around 12.30: radish leaf clear soup, green salad with pan-fried duck breast slices, roast pork and assorted vegetables, asparaguses, cheese platter, Bordeaux red and Burgundy white wines. It was already 14.15 when I brought the îles flottantes dessert onto the table and Hannah just noticed that her train ticket needed to be changed if she wanted to leave on the 15.15 service to London. So Tim and Hannah left in a hurry without finishing their dessert; no coffee, tea or digestif...

The lesson I have learned: don't start a gastronomic French meal if you have a train to catch, even with three hours to spare.

Catch your train
Scorpions, Original album classics, Sony BMG

Photo: Ben Kreunen

Lisboa cidade

2011-05-07T16:29:00.011+07:00

The past week end I travelled to Lisbon in Portugal with the Choeur Varenne. We call it our "tour": every year we choose a city somewhere in France or in Europe; we find a church or concert hall in which to sing one of our programmes for a local audience; but it is a really good excuse to spend a week end among friends while visiting interesting places and tasting the local food.

What I enjoy most in Portugal is the pastries. There is one, if not two or three local specialty recipes in each village. When one moves around the country, one gets to taste a great variety of delicious pastries, for breakfast, mid-morning break, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner. Sweet tooth heaven!

In this country even the carved stones in churches can be eaten.

Minha Lisboa de mim
Katia Guerreiro, Fado maior, Ocarina

Swimmin' in the creek, way down South

2011-04-23T03:53:00.006+07:00

Before heading for Bangkok, I spent three days doing nothing in the Southern Thai Province of Krabi. Just to rest.

I stayed at the Islanda Eco Village Resort on Koh Klang Island, just across from Krabi town. There's only a fishers' village and the resort on the island. The resort has around 30 bungalows but only around four were occupied when I was there: peace and quiet.

I chartered a boat to get to the resort. Twice in the middle of the sea, the boat stopped moving after a thud and to my surprise the boatman just stepped out of the boat! He was turning the boat around and the water only reached his thighs: it was still low tide... For the same reason, the boat couldn't reach the beach in front of the resort. I would have had to wait a long time for high tide so I reached the hotel wading through the sea, the boatman carrying my suitcase on his shoulders. Not the grandest of arrivals, but quite exotic.

The staff in the kitchen and restaurant were particularly friendly. I tried all the local Southern Thai specialties, which reminded me of the rich Malay curries. I was even allowed to buy my own chili-and-dried-fish dip from the nearby village and enjoy it with fresh vegetables and rice at the hotel. I was even given a complimentary dish from the chef at three out of the five meals I took in the hotel restaurant. First a coconut syrup dessert; another time a fruit platter; at my last lunch I was given a plate of five king prawns, grilled with sweet and sour topping, compliments from the chef! After all this, the least I can do is make some free advertisement for this great resort.

Way down South
Josh Turner, Your man, MCA Nashville

The sounds of the city sifting through trees

2011-04-23T01:26:00.021+07:00

I just came back from a holiday in Asia, passing through Thailand and Hong Kong. I spent three days in Bangkok during the Thai new year holiday. Timing was not ideal to see friends as everybody would have been on holiday. FAO was closed so I did not try to meet former colleagues. I did manage to meet a few friends, around drinks and food, of course.

I stayed with Lien Heikens and her two delightful daughters. One night we sat silently overviewing the city from the Hilton Millenium rooftop bar, just above where I used to live.

Just as pleasant as seeing friends again, I particularly enjoyed wandering around town through familiar places. It was like meeting a very old friend again, some subtle changes here and there but still the same overall.

Old friends
Simon and Garfunkel, Best of Simon and Garfunkel: Old friends
Sony Music Catalogue

Lift up your heads!

2011-03-27T22:16:00.005+07:00

I have been having a kind of singing marathon last week.
Wednesday: recording session with the choral ensemble Les Métaboles
Thursday: dress rehearsal for Messiah with Choeur Varenne
Friday: première of Messiah
Saturday: voice tuition.

Luckily, I now get to rest until next Thursday and Friday when Choeur Varenne will give Messiah at Saint Germain des Prés Church in the centre of Paris.

The lesson I have learned is in the title of this post.

Lift up your heads to look at the conductor during the recording: it looks better on video.

Lift up your heads to look at the conductor during the dress rehearsal and concert: the church accoustics at Maisons Laffite where we first gave Messiah were very good for the choir as we could hear all the voices. However, the conductor said she could not hear us tenors because we were all at the back. We had to look at her and anticipate all her moves rather than just follow her: tricky.

Lift up the head of the palate inside the mouth to get a clear "o" sound; mine always tends to go off compared with other vowels and I have to pay particular attention to my Os.

I look forward to the concerts this coming week.

Lift up your heads, O ye gates
Messiah, G.F. Haendel.
The English Concert and Choir, Trevor Pinnock, Archiv Produktion

I'm on the top of the world

2011-03-02T05:02:00.005+07:00

I was most fortunate to be invited by my friend and fellow singer Eric Cogniat in his chalet in the French Alps for a few days of skiing. In the village of Puy Saint Vincent, to be exact.

Big hearty breakfasts in the morning. Skiing all day with a midday break at the altitude restaurant to try out the local specialties (rabbit in mustard sauce or cabbage sausage). Home-cooked dinner by Eric's partner Emmanuel, me or whoever else felt like using the kitchen: cheese fondue, nouvelle cuisine, traditional French five-course meal, leftover smorgasbord, chocolate mousse, banana cake, carrot cake...

It was grand, including the view from the summit.

Top of the world
The Carpenters, Carpenters Gold, Universal

Now we've had our fruit salad today

2011-02-19T04:00:00.005+07:00

Producers of red wines are always advertising the wonderful fruity flavours one can discover by drinking their wares. I have had a complete fruit salad experience over the course of two meals with just one wine.

First, I was delighted to host my old friend from agronomics school Bastien and his girlfriend Oz last Sunday night. I had prepared pears poached in wine for pudding. Because I knew I was going to use the wine for cooking, I did not purchase the most expensive wine I could find in the supermarket. I selected a bottle of red Cheverny from the Loire region; a blend of Gamay, Cabernet and Pinot noir grapes. "Very fruity", said the label. The wine had been poached with the pears, sugar, half a vanilla pod and cinnamon powder. Left over in our bowls was a deliciously sweet and light wine syrup, which in the mouth gave out pear and vanilla aromas slowly replaced by lingering cinnamon. However, these flavours were obviously those of the other ingredients cooked in the wine.

On the following Wednesday, I finished the leftover wine with my simple dinner of soup, salad, cheese platter and lemon tart but I was quite astonished to discover completely new and diverse flavours from this rather inexpensive wine.

Drunk alone, it was not particularly memorable, suitably fruity as advertized.
Along with fresh goat's cheese, the berry side came out while accentuating the "goaty" flavour of the cheese. Together with a more mature creamy goat's cheese, the mix reminded me of ripe apples. The real surprise came with the very creamy Camembert. I was expecting the wine to highlight the pungent cheese but instead it mellowed the taste of the Camembert into a cherry-flavoured cream! Finally, with the lemon tart, the wine gave hints of almond paste.

What a fruit salad! All that from just one bottle. Or perhaps I had just been rather too generous with the rhum for my piña colada before the meal...

Fruit salad
The Wiggles, Wiggles tribute - The greatest hits, BSA Media

Drinking is good for you

2011-01-30T04:34:00.005+07:00

This evening, I have sung for the first time in concert with the small vocal ensemble Les Métaboles, which I joined last September. It had been somewhat frustrating up to now as I had missed two previous concerts because of my travelling, although just rehearsing with the group had been very fulfilling.

We just gave a world premiere of Dimitri Tchesnokov's Concerto for Piano and Choir. The composer was at the piano and we were the choir. It is a very beautiful piece, reminiscent of the greatest Russian tradition: Mussorgsky and his musical frescoes with chorus, Shostakovitch and his piano fugues. In addition, a touch of Liszt for the virtuoso piano.

The words of the chorus part are rather desperate: a man so disillusioned by life the only thing he wants is salvation from God and vodka, lots of vodka to forget it all. It all ends in drunken abuse. Luckily, it is all in Russian, so hopefully not many people in the audience understood what we were saying...

No drinking before the concert! The piece was so difficult to master we had to be very concentrated to sing it well. However, after the concert, while I was enjoying a glass of red wine with a friend who had come to listen to us, I saw a group from the choir toast our achievement with the composer in the same bar. I joined them later.

I hope we get to sing this beautiful piece again.

Vodka
Korpiklaani, Karkelo, Nuclear blast

Warm my mind near my gentle stove

2011-01-16T23:27:00.003+07:00

Back in Paris, I jave just moved into a new apartment, which was custom-designed and renovated for me by a designer friend of my mother's, Afshin. His partner Kevin did all the woodwork.

Although the living space is limited in small Parisian apartments, I have chosen to keep the original separate kitchen so as to have a real kitchen in which to enjoy cooking. Thanks to Afshin & Kevin's intelligent design, I have managed to fit all my cooking utensils and larder items into a kitchen only a third the size the one I had in Bangkok. Furthermore, I still have next to three square meters of flat working space, a big sink and a real stove.

The stove is very modern, with electronic beeping and all. I am still discovering how to operate all the fancy cooking programmes. The German brand is obviously extremely reliable. However, it does not feature cooking tips for one of my favourite week end meat cuts: grilled duck wing confit from my native Southwest of France.

I have prepared one last night using the cooking tips for roasted chicken wing but the result was not perfectly grilled and crunchy as it should have been. I will try again next week by tweaking the preset programmes.

Soul kitchen
The Doors, The very best of The Doors, Rhino/Elektra

Alone on the hill

2010-12-25T22:51:00.004+07:00

I am visiting my parents in Chile and taking the opportunity to visit some of the tourist sights in the country.

What has struck me most were the stunning views from the various mountains throughout the country: a real feast for the eyes.

Here are some examples taken from dawn to dusk in the Atacama Desert region in the North of the country.

In a rather strange fashion, all the food I have ordered in the restaurants of the touristy village of San Pedro de Atacama were also beautifully ornate. Sadly, I find the taste of most Chilean food to be a bit bland.

The fool on the hill
The Beatles, 1967-1970 (Blue), Apple Records

Requiem aeternam: International Federation of Agricultural Producers

2010-12-10T03:26:00.004+07:00

I was shocked to learn yesterday from a former staff member that, after 60 years of existence, the International Federation of Agricultural Producers had been liquidated last November by a French court. The Federation had gone through severe financial problems.

IFAP was a forum of discussion between farmers' organisations. Cooperation between farmers in industrial and developing countries, working comitees on regional and emerging global issues, compiling technical guidebooks for producers, voicing the viewpoint of agricultural producers in international policy-making fora: these were the very useful functions of IFAP.

IFAP's website contains useful material for those interested in the viewpoint of farmers on international agricultural policies. The website is still live for now. How long does it take for a provider to erase all content when its bills are no longer paid?

The lesson I ponder today: the current efforts of some public libraries to save and archive Internet content for future generations is very useful in cases like IFAP's where a knowledge institution disappears.

Requiem aeternam
Chant corse - Manuscrits franciscains, Ensemble Organum - Marcel Pérès, Harmonia mundi

Photo: IFAP

Let it snow!

2010-12-05T04:56:00.007+07:00

It snowed hard this morning
Quite unusual for Paris
Perfect for holiday spirits

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!
Franck Sinatra, Christmas songs by Sinatra, Strategic marketing

We'll drink and be merry

2010-11-28T22:48:00.005+07:00

At its last meeting in Nairobi, UNESCO has just added the gastronomic meal of the French on the Representative list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity. The gastronomic meal of the French is a customary social practice bringing people together to enjoy the art of good eating and drinking. There is a certain ritual to follow: drinks as an apéritif, a starter dish, fish or meat with vegetables, cheese and dessert, more drinks as digestive to finish. All this enjoyed in good company on a set table.

Here's an illustration. The Choeur Varenne holds periodic week end rehearsals where we spend time working on our vocal pieces but we also take some time to enjoy a good meal. The latest such week end rehearsal was held last week. After the rehearsal, tables were set: two for the diners, one for the drinks, and one for the food. Each one of us had brought an item: apéritif niblets and biscuits, bread, cheese, a savoury pie or tart, a salad, a sweet cake, or a chocolaty item. We all contributed one euro to buy the drinks for the apéritif and the table wine.

First the apéritif.

Then the dinner.

We all had a great time and delicious food.

Here's a health to the company
The Revels, Homeward bound, Revels records

And we'll have fun fun fun

2010-11-05T04:32:00.006+07:00

I believe in the power of fun as a good catalyzer of efficient work. It actually stimulates some of us to work harder, in moderate dose of course. There is more and more management literature on how young professionals in particular, need to be stimulated by a fun working environment.

I have found a perfect illustration of this concept in the French agrifood industry. The whole website of the company Michel et Augustin looks like a big online game for children and the big children that some adults still are: animations, charades, puns, smileys, even opportunities to win a cow at each step! The whole company team looks young and friendly and the whole world is invited to visit them in their headquarters at the Banana plantation to milk a cow. (The French website is more developed than the English language one, unfortunately for non-French speakers.)

Of course, every thing has to be taken with a pinch of salt:
cow = pot or bottle of yoghurt produced by the company;
Banana plantation = office where there happens to be one banana tree;
to milk a cow = consume a pot or bottle of yoghurt.

Still, it all looks like the whole company is having a wonderful time and this can appeal to potential customers and business partners. But how true is this? I am tempted to investigate further as part of my work: has the fun concept become a mainstream food market segment in France? Perhaps an answer in a few months...

In the meantime, I have already milked a banana-and-guava flavoured cow and loved it ;-)
I expect to purchase a box of the little-squares-not-very-square very soon.

Fun, fun, fun
The Beach Boys, Sounds of summer: the very best of, Capitol Music

Photo: Matt Northam

We're the organic anti-beat box band

2010-10-23T21:27:00.007+07:00

An organic cooperative supermarket has just opened next door to my appartment on Place de Catalogne.

All the food, detergents, beauty products and essential oils are certified organic.

The lessons I have learned:
1) Some of the products on sale are at a similar price or even cheaper than similar environment-friendly or organic products on sale in normal supermarkets.

2) The organic fresh milk is incomparably tastier than the organic fresh milk from the supermarket: lots of cream.
Must remember to exercise more...

3) Some of the vegetables are very interesting. It was the first time I ever saw a purple cauliflower; likewise, it was the first time I ever drank purple soup...

How do you feel about unusual foods?
A. I want to try it out.
B. I think it is scary.

Organic anti-beat box band
Red Hot Chili Peppers, The uplift mofo party plan, EMI Manhattan

Moon river, wider than a mile

2010-10-20T03:05:00.014+07:00

I have been travelling again: I was last week in Kunming, Yunnan Province of China, to facilitate the concluding workshop of the FAO project on food consumer market research, about which I have already blogged. This time, the main purpose of the workshop was to share the conclusions of the research implemented by the four national teams on the consumers of rice, tomato and pork meat.

I noticed that the participants were not that comfortable in speaking in the relatively large multinational group of 24 participants. So I decided to use a knowledge sharing method called the River of Life to depict the main lessons learned by the participants in the project. The River of Life allows people to reflect on the chronology of their own life or of their experiences during a particular project or event. It is a method that involves small group discussion and drawing.

For this particular exercise, I asked all the participants to reflect on the project they had all been involved in together during the previous year. The River of Life that was depicted by the group thus symbolized the lifetime of the project and participants added to the general drawing the different events that had happened during the project. I first asked them to form groups of five or six people and discuss what they were expecting from the project before it had started. After their discussion, the participants started writing down their expectations on the big drawing board but, very quickly, drawings also started appearing.

In the second phase, I asked the workshop participants to reflect on the problems they had faced during the project, how they had solved them, and the lessons they had learned from the project. Here again, lots of drawings were added to the board with many participants trying to add their own element to the River of Life.

Finally, I asked everybody to think about the follow-up activities they would like to implement when the project is over. Here, we had more serious lists of future activities.

Overall, I thought the exercise was very successful as it allowed the participants who were not that talkative in the plenary group to discuss in smaller groups the issues that were important for the project as well as the lessons they had learned. Those elements were then shared with all through the large drawing of the River of Life.

I think participants were quite comfortable in drawing on the board as I had stuck the drawing of the River of Life on the wall so it was quite convenient for many to be drawing or writing at the same time on the board. Furthermore, some of the people involved had been interacting during a whole year and had participated in two previous workshops. They had become accustomed to working closely together.

The lessons I have learned: the creative part of people comes out quite easily when they have grown familiar with each other and they see the fun part of an activity. The River of Life method helps to share lessons learned from a common event when participants feel they are free to express themselves when contributing to the big picture.

Moon River
Frank Sinatra, My way: the best of Frank Sinatra, Reprise

Photos: Yuan Wei and FAO TCP/RAS/3209

This little piggy had roast beef

2010-10-08T04:29:00.004+07:00

Vegetarians can skip this post.

My local butcher shop just changed its owner, so with the new owner came new suppliers, and with new suppliers came new meats. I am positively delighted: this new butcher supplies most of his meat from the Southwest of France where my family comes from. So I can now find the same kind of meat I was used to eating when I visited my grandparents or my grand-aunts.

The grain-fed chicken have such a strong yellow skin you know they have been eating lots of maize. The pork is butchered not far from my home town of Mont-de-Marsan. The veal and beef come from the green hills around Brive in the Périgord region.

The beef is particularly tasty. It is called "Boeuf de Coutancie". The butcher said the cows are raised during five years in the Périgord area of France. For the last three years of their lives, they live outside in the fields most of the time, eating grass complemented by grain. They also get a daily massage! How much more can one do for animal welfare? The meat was very tender: the pan-fried steak, simply seasoned with coarse-grain salt and pepper sprinkled on top, melted in my mouth.

Staying in a serviced appartment in Paris? Try it out: the butcher shop is at the corner of Rue du Château and Rue Raymond Losserand in the 14th District of Paris.

This little piggy
Rasputina, Lost & Found, Instinct Records

You know you make me wanna...

2010-09-10T03:06:00.004+07:00

Kick my heels up and...
Throw my hands up and...
Throw my head back and...

Last July I reported that I was taking singing lessons to get into a really good choir. Well now I'm in!

The conductor Léo Warynski accepted me into Les Métaboles and I had my first rehearsal with the group last night: more than two hours of singing, non stop, everybody sight-reading difficult music, jokes, all young singers, beautiful voices, delicious harmonies.

I was so excited I hardly slept that night.

Shout
Isley Brothers, The Essential Isley Brothers, Sony

PS: I love this song, it is pure jubilation.

Photo: James Yu

Sing on cricket

2010-08-10T04:03:00.006+07:00

I was surfing the web in my Paris flat tonight while listening to a piano recital France Musique was broadcasting live from La Roque d'Anthéron, one of the many Summer musical festivals being held in the South of France. Romantic piano music played by the American pianist Jonathan Biss... but I suddenly realized I could hear a very irritating buzz. Wondering what it was, I went into the kitchen to check the refrigerator and see why it was vibrating so much but the fridge was not to blame.

I came back into the living room, I could still hear the irritating buzz around the beautiful piano music from the radio. Then I suddenly understood. I turned the radio off and the buzz stopped with the music. The buzz was coming from around the piano. In the South of France the crickets and cicadas were singing around the open-air piano recital. I thought about Ella and her mythical improvisation in the cricket song.

After the piano recital: jazz music and Ella. How was that for a coincidence?
You can podcast the shows during a month from now to listen to the crickets, the piano and Ella.

Ella Fitzgerald
The cricket song, Ella at Juan-les-pins, Verve

Photo: litlnemo

I'm gonna chow down my vegetables

2010-07-10T17:48:00.005+07:00

Summer has finally arrived in Paris and of course we are all complaining that it is too hot. Remember my fresh produce basket from early spring? Here's the summer version. Much more colourful, isn't it?

France has just enacted a new law requiring all fresh produce to be labelled with the origin of the produce along with the name and price/kg or piece. So that makes it easier to buy local. The only problem I have is that when I arrive bright and early around 9am to buy my produce from my friendly organic retailer Yannick Hamon on the Saturday market on Place Brancusi, he is still drinking his coffee after having set out the produce. None of the labels are out yet so I have to trust him on origin and price.

Vega- Tables
Smile, Brian Wilson, Nonesuch Variete

Je chante sur mon chemin

2010-07-10T17:12:00.003+07:00

I have started singing in choirs as an adult in 1994 and have not stopped since. Having moved from Bordeaux to Paris to Wye (UK), to Ho Chi Minh City back to Paris and on to Bangkok, I have been lucky always to find a choir to sing in.

As soon as I had come back to Paris last February, I joined my former choir again: the Choeur Varenne. It is a relatively large group of 60 to 80 people, depending on the production. The bass section has a particularly beautiful round sound and with some work, the sopranos can sound really fine. The main reason why I went back to this group was that the group of singers is made of exceptionally friendly people. Every season, we have one or two week end-long rehearsals where we work hard on the pieces for the concert. But we all also bring food and drink to share pot luck. With 70 people bringing food and drink, we end up with an aperitif, salads as starters, a whole selection of quiches, a complete cheese platter and a choice of scrumptious cakes to sample. We have had two of these pot-luck meals already, each time I planned to take a photo for this blog, but each time I completely forgot because once all the food was set, we all went into aperitif mode, started drinking, nibbling and talking. So you get a blurred photo of the latest concert instead.

With all this, the conductor Caroline de Beaudrap is also great. I particularly appreciate the fact that she will stop us immediately when she is not satisfied by something. This allows us to try to improve the sound immediately after having done the mistake, and hear and feel the difference: greater learning efficiency, I believe. Caroline is skilled at getting the best out of this group of mainly amateur singers.

The last concert sounded great: Mendelssohn motets with organ accompaniment at the church of La Trinité in Paris with very good resounding acoustics. One disappointment though: I could not sing with the choir at this concert because I had just come back from duty travel. Having missed the dress rehearsal and the first concert in the church, I fully understood that Caroline asked me not to sing this production. So I checked tickets at the gate instead…

I do look forward to our next season: the complete Haendel Messiah with orchestra, to be sung end of March 2011. By the way, we are recruiting. To learn more on how you could join us, contact our conductor Caroline at cdebeaudrap@free.fr.

Je chante
Charles Trenet, 20 chansons d'or, EMI France

Give us once a drink!

2010-07-09T03:35:00.002+07:00

I was in Boston, Massachussets, the other week to attend the 20th Symposium and Forum of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association. It was a very interesting conference with some thought-provoking ideas to ponder the future of agro-industries.

I tasted the famous local lobster and clam chowder but I really want to share my musical experience of the Boston Pops. I was looking for a concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, one of the great American orchestras. Unfortunately, they were not playing during my stay in town. On the other hand, the very popular Boston Pops Orchestra was giving a concert at Symphony Hall so I turned up at the concert hall and bought a ticket.

The objective of the Boston Pops is to allow the audience to enjoy popular classics, famous film musical excerpts and other popular music artists. That evening, I enjoyed two pieces from ballets by the American composer Aaron Copland; there was also the Boston première of a piece specially written for an electrifying string trio. In the second half, the Boston Pops accompanied folk legend Arlo Guthrie who looked very much alive and well despite rumours of his demise. I had never heard of Arlo Guthrie but my older American friends told me I was extremely lucky to hear him. I must admit that I found it a bit odd to listen to folk music with a symphonic accompaniment.

The Boston Pops uses the same Symphony Hall as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but the hall was custom-built at the end of the 18th century to allow the room to be modified for the more popular works. All the orchestra seats are removed and replaced by tables and chairs, which creates a very fitting setting for a café-concert. The more expensive seats allow one to enjoy the concert at a table while enjoying drinks and snacks to order from the menu. Ushers are quickly replaced by waiters and the drinks flows.

It must be most pleasant to enjoy a moment of popular music while sipping one’s favourite drink. I did not know about this before so I had purchased the cheapest seat at $20 (right at the top and back of the hall, which was still very good with an unencumbered view of the orchestra). The one downside: from the upper balcony, I could hear the shuffling of the waiters on the wooden floor of the hall, the clinks of the wine glasses and the rustling of cracker packages being opened, which made the musical experience slightly less enjoyable. But I guess I’m snotty classical purist.

Give us once a drink, Thomas Ravenscroft
Pro Cantione Antiqua, Purcell in the ale house, Apex

You can get it if you really want

2010-07-08T03:29:00.007+07:00

I’ve started taking singing lessons in earnest. I had always been rather complacent about my singing ability as I had been lucky to be in places where good singers were few. In Paris, the concentration of professional and semi-professional singers is probably greater than in any other place I’ve lived in. Because of this – and the fact that French conservatoires are geared to train soloists – French choir conductors can be very demanding of their singers.

I’ve been looking for a small and good vocal ensemble in order to keep expanding my choral repertoire of early and contemporary music. I have found such a group, which is still in need of a tenor. However, the conductor was not entirely satisfied by my audition. He asked me to work on my vocal technique during the Summer and audition again after the holidays.

So I’ve taken my first professional singing lesson on Wednesday with Mary Saint Palais, a former student of William Christie at the Paris Conservatoire. She’s already given me two tips that have opened up my voice, and on which I have to work for next time. It is hard physical work to sustain all that air pressure in the abdomen and produce a proper sound.

So I will try, try and try, try and try.

You can get it if you really want
Jimmy Cliff, The essential Jimmy Cliff, Union Square Musique

Photo credits

They shall be as happy as they're fair -- Nancy and Arnaud, part II

2010-06-09T03:17:00.010+07:00

After our short trip in Sichuan my Aunties Lilian, Lilin and I went to Hong Kong to join my mom for my brother's second wedding ceremony.

After the private wedding registration last January, this was the big banquet where my brother and his wife had invited all their Asian family and friends.

They had chosen one of the few remnants of colonial architecture as the venue: the Repulse Bay, on the South side of Hong Kong island. We had set luncheon of western food in a beautiful gallery.

It all looked great. The food was good too. I particularly enjoyed the fresh mushroom cream soup and the seared foie gras on a bed of lentils. The finishing touch of the individual hot chocolate fudge cake was to die for.

The Fairy Queen
Henry Purcell, English Baroque Soloists and John Eliot Gardiner, Archiv Produktion

Le bruit et l'odeur

2010-06-09T02:43:00.003+07:00

Three weeks ago I caught a really bad cold just before going off on holiday for 12 days in China. So I ended in a country reknowned for its cuisine with very little sense of smell.

I joined my two Aunties Lilian and Lilin from Singapore for a few days in Sichuan Province. Sichuan food is famous for its liberal use of the numbing Sichuan pepper along with just as much red hot chilies. One night my aunts and I went for a hot pot in a very very busy and noisy local restaurant, usually a good indicator of good food in China.

Instead of the boiling broth we were expecting to dip our meat and fresh mushrooms in, we were given a big vat of simmering vegetable oil, the colour of which was bright red from the chilies! And with Sichuan pepper pods soaking everywhere in it! Imagine "fondue bourguignonne" in chili oil... We were told by the restaurant staff that the only way to douse the chili flavour was to dip everything we had cooked into a bowl of sesame oil; so no good either for health-conscious eaters.

My aunts quickly gave up. With my stuffed nose, I could hardly feel the chili heat. I did feel the stinging numb of the Sichuan pepper after a while and my lips got burnt by the sizzling-hot food straight out of the vat. We finished the dinner by eating raw cucumbers and Chinese cabbage to cool our mouths down.

I also spent a few hours in a tea shop in Chengdu sampling and buying tea, blowing my nose every 15 minutes to the great amusement of the tea sellers. I was trying to smell the aromas of the dry tea leaves and of the tea infusion to get an idea of their quality. It is rather difficult to taste tea properly with a blocked nose.

On this trip I thus clearly grasped the importance of smell when enjoying food. Some of our food is completely void of any interest if smell is not involved in our tasting of it: vanilla, strawberries, or premium teas and wines, among others.

One good thing of travelling with a blocked nose in China: one is not as much bothered by the cigarette smoke, which is everywhere, nor by the stench of the infamous public toilets.

Le bruit et l'odeur
Zebda, Le bruit et l'odeur, Barclay

The lion did not sleep that night

2010-05-14T04:27:00.003+07:00

Three lessons I've learned from my quick trip to South Africa:

1. It's a sheep country.
South Africa is a big producer of wool. The result: there is a lot of mutton meat. I found mutton on the buffet table every day of my trip there. Luckily, I like mutton.

2. Private wildlife reserves are great for time-constrained tourists.
I wanted to be sure to see the big animals during my very short time available for a safari (24 hours). So I headed for a private wildlife reserve: Schotia Safaris, near Port Elizabeth in Eastern Cape Province. The gated area of a private reserve is smaller than that of the national parks so there is a higher chance of encountering the large animals I had come to see. In the end I was also rather lucky and saw warthogs, zebras, ostriches, several kinds of antelope, gnus, crocodiles, giraffes, lions, hippos, and white rhinos there. All these beasts are the property of the Schotia Safaris' owners.
In comparison, on the next day the ranger and I spent 45 minutes roaming in Addo Elephant National Park (164 000 ha) before we managed to spot elephants hidden in the prickly bush.

3. Lions make a lot of noise at night.
I was staying in the Warthog lodge in the middle of the Schotia Safaris reserve and the lions were probably close by outside the fence: I was woken up every hour of the night by their roaring. As I could have been potential food for the animal, I found the experience rather unsettling.

The lion sleeps tonight (Wimoweh)
The tokens, The lion sleeps tonight, RCA Record Label

Photo: Arno & Louise

Help me make up me mind

2010-05-02T21:30:00.008+07:00

FAO's Agricultural Marketing Group invited me to help facilitate a workshop on commodity chain associations in South Africa last week. It was a great opportunity for me to get out of my books, journal articles, and from my computer screen so as to meet the people who work in the agricultural and food industries, and to try to understand the real, rather than theoretical, issues they face.

Last Friday morning I was given one hour and fifteen minutes to get a small group of eight southern Africans to discuss how to promote value chain associations in their countries. Given the relatively small group of generally talkative Africans and the limited time I had, I decided to use the Concensus Workshop Method to come to a common agreement in the group. As for most facilitation exercises, the phrasing of the question to be answered was a crucial element.

We first started by getting a common understanding of the question, which led to the addition of two items so as to make it clearer. Then I invited the participants to jot down their answers to the question on separate cards.

The next step involved the participants discussing their ideas in pairs. Given that I had four pairs, I asked each pair to select two responses they wanted to share with the group. This process allowed all members of the group to voice their opinions, even if they would have been naturally too shy to speak in front of all the other participants.

The cards chosen by the pairs were then presented to the whole group and discussed. My delicate job as facilitator was to help the group classify their inputs without doing the classification for the participants!

In this particular workshop, I suggested that the different activities being proposed by the participants be classified according to their place in time. I made this decision because it is very important in a development process to identify which activities should come before others in order to avoid raising unecessary hurdles in one's way. The result depicted below may be a bit obscure to understand at first, but all the group members had agreed on its logic and one of the group members restituted the result to the satisfaction of his group peers during the plenary session.

In a quick debriefing session afterwards, the group participants shared that they "liked the method", "it allowed all participants to contribute", "it was very innovative". The rapporteur from the other working group mentioned before she presented her group's outputs that they unfortunately did not have "this technology".

The Concensus Workshop Method is primarily useful to come to a group concensus in a relatively short time. The method suggests a concensus can be reached in just 45 minutes. However, the group size should not go over 12 and efficient facilitation is essential. I undertook a whole week of training followed by three days of facilitation before I considered myself confortable with it.

I particularly like this method because it allows all participants to speak at some point in the process. This helps in groups where some individuals are naturally reserved while others have a tendency to speak just for the sake of speaking, and occupying precious time. As they have already spoken to their immediate neighbour in the pair work, I have found out that such "talkative" individuals do not show so much the urge to be heard by the larger group.

I must admit I still struggle keeping a completely neutral attitude to the topic being discussed. I often tend to suggest classifications for individual items a bit too forcefully on groups and rewriting some cards myself for the sake of gaining time. In the ideal situation, all ideas and all cards should emerge from the group's participants without the "help" of the facilitator.

David Guetta
Choose, One love, Virgin Music

Play it again - that song that I can't get off my mind

2010-04-26T02:49:00.006+07:00

Last year, I was part of a special production celebrating the musical career of Catherine Harsono, produced by the Bangkok Music Society: Catherine - An enchanted musical journey. I sang in a surprise number prepared just for Catherine based on Gershwin Bros' melody Lady be good.

Every Sunday evening the radio channel France Musiques broadcasts a show called Le jazz dans la peau (Jazz under my skin). Every show is built around a jazz standard. As the show started tonight, I was thinking how Lady be good would be a good theme for this show; it's been popular with lots of jazz artists. And lo behold! the theme tonight was Lady be good.

If you're feeling blue, listen to this great show built around this and other famous Gershwin standards: swing, blues, ragtime, ballad, scat, fiddle, guitar, saxophone, double bass, ukelele, piano, Ella... I'm sure you'll feel cheerier afterwards.
Next week, there'll be another jazzy theme and variations on this show.

Play it again
The Eyeliners, Sealed with a kiss, Lookout

Photo: © Michael Carter and Bangkok Music Society

Behold the sea!

2010-04-21T03:07:00.005+07:00

This week end I went to visit my grand-aunts Odette and Yvette in their family beach bungalow in Mimizan-Plage in the Landes region of Southwest France. Their house is located below the great sand dune, a gentle five-minute stroll up to the view above.

I had a very restful week end of sunbathing, jogging along the beach and a few extremely quick dips in the water; it was still very cold.

Aunties Yvette and Odette are the only family members I have left of my grandparents' generation. They are the ones who got my generation used to the long hearty family meals of traditional French food, which I still cook for myself when I have guests today. They are the origin of most of the recipes I keep in my cooking repertoire. When in France I will call them if I need an urgent cooking tip.

Most striking for me was how the local meat cuts they got from their butcher this week end made the lamb shank and the pork roast tasted very different from what I usually prepare in Paris, although I use the same recipe that came from them through my mother. It was further evidence for me that quality of food is clearly linked to its origin. For more information on food quality linked to origin, click here.

Symphony no. 1 "A sea symphony"
Ralph Vaughan Williams
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult, EMI classics

Let us drink and be merry

2010-04-20T04:36:00.004+07:00

Having come back to Paris, I am slowly forming my network of friends again. Last Thursday evening I had the great pleasure to get back together with two university class mates after four or perhaps even six years since I last saw them.

It was wonderful to be with Thibault and Benjamin again. Thib took us to a meat restaurant next to Les Halles where all the staff are dressed as butchers and there is meat being roasted on vertical skewers where you would usually expect a display of alcohol bottles to be: behind the bar. This place is not for vegetarians! The place is called Le louchebem. The name is French butcher's slang for "The butcher".

Great meat cuts, fine desserts, lots lots lots of wine. Thib finished the meal with a "baba au rhum", a pear-shaped sponge cake cut in half and doused in rhum. The house gave him a bottle of rhum to pour over the cake, but most of the bottle was poured into our glasses and drunk.

I was very happy riding home on my bicycle that night.

Photo: © Thibault Viremouneix and the anonymous butcher-waiter who took it.

Let us drink and be merry
George Berg
See p.4 of http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/images/8/8f/Drinking.pdf

I'm gonna chow down my vegetables

2010-04-04T16:52:00.004+07:00

I'm experimenting this year by only buying produce that is in season and locally produced.

During the week, I eat a big lunch at the canteen so I only have soup, salad, cheese and a fruit for dinner. I eat a more diverse menu during the week end, but as I still live alone, the shopping basket stays small. See this week's shopping in the photo.

I go to a nearby organic market every Saturday morning and try to buy fruits and vegetable that are in season. I'm not a fundamentalist though: I do not limit myself to the 100-mile circumference that some localists advocate. Instead, I buy anything that's produced in France.

Still, the range is rather limited in early spring. The hardest is doing without tomatoes and bell peppers which are usually staple vegetable for me. I'll have to wait a bit. They're still imported from Spain or Italy now.

Vega- Tables
Smile, Brian Wilson, Nonesuch Variete

Hallelujah!

2010-04-03T22:36:00.006+07:00

After one whole month, France Telecom has finally managed to get my Internet connection to work at home! I was also relieved to see that the 1st April connection was not a joke.

I sometimes take a break from Internet by going on an unconnected holiday for a week. However, in this day and age when moving into a large modern city entails so much administrative hassle, not having easy Internet access is really frustrating. One good thing though: I got to catch up on my novel reading last month.

Happy Easter!

Hallelujah chorus
Georg Friedrich Haendel. Messiah.
Les musiciens du Louvre, Marc Minkowski, Archiv.

Oh happy happy!

2010-03-22T15:16:00.003+07:00

Last Friday I went to listen to my second Parisian concert after coming back.

It was an evening of Haendel opera arias by a quartet of already famous young singers at the Theâtre des Champs Elysées: Sandrine Piau, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Philippe Jaroussky, Topi Lehtipuu and the Concert d'Astrée, all conducted by Emmanuelle Haïm.

I decided to go at the last minute. There were no more seats available in the room. So I bought a €5 seat at the box office. The Theâtre des Champs Elysées is nearly circular. The cheapest seats are literally above the stage in two small dark rooms on the left and right sides of the hall. The audience there can only listen. If one wants to see, one has to bend over the side of the open window and look down on the 10m drop over the stage: not for those who are afraid of heights. This would probably be banned in health-and-safety conscious UK.

My seat was at the back of the room so I was not even tempted to bend over to look at the artists. I had all seen them in the past already anyway. The sound in this small dark listening chamber was a bit muffled but pure. I closed my eyes and listened to the beautiful arias. I did find out I was missing out on something visual as the rest of the room was laughing at some points so although the concert was not staged, something must have been happening on stage.

One good thing with this position overlooking the rest of the audience rather than the stage, is that one can spot the seats left empty. At the intervall, I changed seat for one I had spotted right in the centre of the second balcony. Not only could I now see the stage and the singers, but all the harmonies in the voices suddenly came out much better. The ladies' voices in particular sounded much richer now. The comedy on stage came from singers playing with the height of the music stands between numbers.

A great baroque concert of runs, affects and fun. I went home completely elated on my bicycle, driving through nearly empty streets past the Eiffel Tower, the Champs de Mars and behind Montparnasse back home. I was in such an intellectual high that I hardly noticed it was raining and that I was all wet.

Happy we
Haendel, Acis and Galatea
William Christie and Les Arts Florissant, Erato

Help me make up me mind

2010-03-10T10:06:00.007+07:00

I've come back to Thailand for a week of work with FAO, facilitating the second workshop of a regional project on food consumer market research. The project involves researchers from four countries: Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Yunnan Province of China. From the various interests of the national researchers, the objective was to come up together with a few common research problems that we might all resolve in the four different countries using the same research methodology.

To achieve this convergence, I proposed to use the world café method, which we implemented yesterday. World café involves breaking up into small groups seated at separate tables with a large sheet of paper on which to take notes. All groups discuss a common question separately. Participants then shift tables so as to share the findings between groups while one person - the table host - permanently stays at a table to report previous discussions to newcomers at the table. For more information, visit the KS-toolkit.

We are a small group of 14; I chose to set up three tables of four or five people. The common question to be discussed was: "What are the COMMON research problems that could be investigated in ALL four countries?" I had anticipated that the world café method would allow all participants to become aware of all the wishes of their colleagues, and we would use another facilitation method to do the convergence of views to select a few common research problems for all countries to implement.
In fact, the convergence process happened naturally through the world café. The sheets of paper on the tables were scribbled with all the various ideas coming up from participants but the discussions being held at the three tables also allowed everybody to spot the common research problems that would be relevant for all four countries and the three food products we were working on.
When the three table hosts presented the synthesis of their table discussion, we naturally ended up with just one common research problem to be investigated using one conceptual framework, which was illustrated in a graph form on one table and in a matrix form on another table. The convergence process happened naturally during the world café, which made the plenary discussion afterwards much easier. Perhaps the very precise question for the café helped; it already asked participants to set their minds in a converging mode.

The lesson I have learned: the knowledge café method is not just a useful way to share experiences and results, it can also be used to converge different views in order to take a common decision.

David Guetta
Choose, One love, Virgin Music

I'm waiting for your call

2010-03-01T23:41:00.003+07:00

My parents live in Santiago de Chile; my father works there as Trade Commissioner at the French Embassy.

On Saturday afternoon, I got a call from my very distressed brother who had tried all day to call them from Hong Kong after he had heard about the massive earthquake in that country. I had been running errands and had been busy all morning and had not heard the news at all.

I called the "crisis cell" of the French Foreign Affairs Ministry. They had somebody very reassuring tell me it was normal that the telephone be down and the best thing to do was to send out an email. And indeed, we did so and my father replied he and my mother were both fine.

My brother had suffered anguish for a whole day. Thanks to my not following the latest news, I was only distressed for two hours. After hearing of my father's email from my brother, I phoned the rest of the family members in France to transfer the good news. Some knew exactly why I was calling and were anxious to get news. My brother's sister and aunt on the other hand were blissfully unaware of what had happened in Chile and so were happy to get the news without suffering the torments of anguish.

We only got phone calls from my parents on Sunday afternoon when the telephone lines were patchily being restored.

The lesson I have learned, once again: I should not follow the daily news too closely. Immediate information about world problems probably contribute to provoque a lot of unecessary stress. I say, "once again", because I missed 09/11 completely. I was working so hard on finishing my Master's thesis that I only noticed the next day that the army had taken over the streets and underground stations of Paris.

B.B. King
Waiting for your call, One kind favor, Geffen Distribution

You know I'm fat, I'm fat, you know it

2010-02-26T16:39:00.003+07:00

I've been to see the première of the opera Falstaff by Verdi at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on Wednesday.

It was a great production: lively, precise in the details of the singing ensembles and some beautiful voices. Lots of character too from the actors. Now Falstaff is clearly somebody who is fat, proud of it, and still orders more food and drink to keep in shape.

The most surprising came at the very end. As soon as the curtain came down and the audience started clapping, the orchestra left without waiting. I thought that was rather inappropriate not to wait at least for the conductor to get a curtain call.

After the curtain call of the on-stage cast, the curtain came down and when it went back up, the whole Orchestre National de France was on stage for a bow! Applause and acclaim from the crowd. It was the first time I saw this done and thought it was well deserved to recognise the contribution of the musicians to the show.

Kudos to the stage manager for allowing the orchestra to get a surprising curtain call.

Fat
"Weird Al" Yankovic, The food album, Zomba

A Paris quand le jour se lève

2010-02-24T17:31:00.004+07:00

I’ve moved to Paris!

After four years in Bangkok, I'll be posted in Paris for a few years.

I've joined the Centre for Studies and Strategy of the French Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries as an Economic Analyst. The French civil service has a tradition of duty of confidentiality about its work. My supervisors have requested me to abide to this duty of confidentiality on my blog. Thus, work-related topics will disappear from this blog during my tenure here.

To read some of my work that is available to the public, search through the publications of the Statistics, Evaluation and Strategy Division of the Ministry.

A Paris dans chaque faubourg
Yves Montand, Ses plus grands succès, Strategic Marketing

Cream Sh-boogie bop

2010-02-18T23:40:00.005+07:00

Just a short note:

Jak Cholvijarn, one of my Thai singing friends, emailed this to me before I left Bangkok. I just thought it would fit well on this blog linking food and music.

""""""""
We'll miss your creamy tenor voice!
Jak
""""""""

I'm flattered. Here's a Youtube video of the second act of La Bohême by Puccini, courtesy of Bangkok Opera. It's total chaos on stage but at some point, my "creamy tenor voice" will shout out in Italian: "Plums from Tours!"

Cream
Prince, The very best of Prince, VIR

I cried a river over you

2010-02-09T11:57:00.005+07:00

Last night I was invited by some of my colleagues for a farewell dinner. The event was hosted by the Filipino group and the Microbankers.

In true Filipino style, we went to an open stage karaoke place. Tess R.-A. had rented out the whole karaoke bar for the 16 of us at de-river-re (Karaoke), Royal River Hotel.

After dinner, we started the main singing game cooked up by Dick Bayaua: each one of the guests sang a song for me, and I had to reply to each one of them with another song.

So I started a long evening of singing. While all the others sang one or two songs, I had to sing at least 20. However, I must say I had a really good time choosing the songs for those who had just sung for me, and also singing requests from my friends and colleagues.

Lots of tears were shed during the emotional singing, dancing, community prayer and blessing. All overwhelmingly friendly and good-hearted. The Filipinos sure know how to throw a good party.

One side lesson I have learned: do not eat spicy hot food if you are expected to sing immediately afterwards. I ate a lot of the fried rice in chili fish paste and thought that the fresh vegetables that went with it would soothe the spice. It didn't. My throat was all constricted and so the first hour of my singing was rather subdued because my throat would just refuse to open up.

I had already had that experience at Bangkok Opera productions where the cast is fed a delicious meal prepared by Somtow's cook; it's usually fiery hot and delicious. However, we get another one or two hours to dress, make up, and rest our throats before we go on stage to sing.

From now on, if I know I have to sing immediately after eating, I will avoid the chili. Hot chili also makes you cry. To get over all these emotions, I had a cup of hot honey lemon when I got back to my hotel.

Cry me a river
Julie London, Cry me a river, Musical Digital

All I want to do is see you

2010-02-05T16:53:00.016+07:00

In a previous post, I've shared my analysis of the feedback from participants at the Regional Agro-industries Forum for Asia and the Pacific (RAIF-AP), which I helped organize in November of last year.

I wish to follow up with another analysis of the feedback from the organizers of the meeting this time.

In total, at least 127 people have been involved at some stage or another in the organization of this regional meeting, with colleagues based in Europe, the Pacific and all countries in Asia. Among the collaborators, the majority were general service clerks who were involved in organizing the travel of the 115 participants. My immediate colleagues in the organization committee were fellow officers in the four host organizations: FAO, IFAD, the People's Government of Shaanxi Province (China) and UNIDO. We all reported to our respective Directors. The preparation of the technical programme started at least seven months before the meeting and there was a boost of activity in the two months leading to the forum in order to organize the travel of all funded participants.

As coordinator of the organization committee, given the geographical spread of colleagues involved, and the relatively short timeline for preparations, I had chosen email as the main mode of communication for the preparations, with widespread cc of most officers involved to get their inputs; a few meetings and one teleconference was held. I wrote monthly reports to the Directors.

After the event, I asked all colleagues involved to respond to a surveymonkey of organizers. I got 30 responses. Below is my analysis of the results, focusing on the main mode of communication chosen.

1) Amount of information circulated by email
Overall, it seems like the majority of colleagues involved in the organization were satisfied with the amount of information circulated to allow them to take their decision or action.

2) Use of cc: function
A majority of respondents felt the use of cc: on emails was just right. However, there was a strong minority thinking there was too much cc:

When cross-tabulating this response with the type of colleague, it appears that general service clerks and directors were satisfied by the amount of cc:. On the other hand, many officers who had received my lengthy reports thought there was too much cc:.
One officer colleague even told me he had created a RAIF-AP folder in his mailbox where he automatically sent all emails that contained that acronym in their title. I was putting "RAIF-AP" at the beginning of all email titles so that interested colleagues could spot them more easily among all the other messages they got. It seems like not-so-interested colleagues prefered to file all the emails automatically rather than asking me to take them out of the mailing list.

3) Preparatory meetings or teleconferences
There was an equal share of contented and discontented colleagues on the choice of using email as opposed to meetings to handle the organization of the meeting. Nine respondents thought it was just right, but eight found that the number of meetings, videoconferences or teleconferences were really not enough or not enough.

By cross-tabulating this response with the position of my colleagues, I found out that it was officers and directors who mainly felt that there could be more meetings, thus challenging the use of email as the main mode of communication and decision making.

In a response to a separate question, I also found out that six colleagues who responded to the survey had felt sidelined at some point or another of the preparations.

Lessons I have learned:
Overall, email seems to work fine to organize the logistics of travel for international meetings.

On the other hand, when organizing a large event with peers, it seems that email is not always the best tool for communication and especially decision making among colleagues. From a previous experience with googledocs, which allow several people to edit a document simultaneously (for example, a draft technical programme), this tool requires strong active commitment from all colleagues involved or lots of very pushy reminders by the coordinator to request colleagues to visit the googledoc and make changes.

By doing most of the work with my close colleagues and reporting to others for comments, I may have "passified" my colleagues who felt they could have played a more active role in the organization of the meeting, rather than reading reports of decisions that seemed to be already taken.

So in future I will try out a regular fortnightly one-hour video- or teleconference with all involved who can show up, targeted to officer- and director-level colleagues. I hope this will give them as good a chance as email copies to be informed about the preparations for a meeting while giving them the impression of making a more active contribution to the organization through their oral feedback.

All graphs produced by the analysis tool of Surveymonkey.

See you
Depeche Mode, The singles 81-85, Mute Records

Silence is golden

2010-02-03T13:54:00.005+07:00

I'm on holiday, staying with my Uncle Tom Teo and Aunty Betty Teo in Perth, Western Australia. It's summer down here and I've been told I'm very lucky because the day temperature is very comfortable now at around 30°C; it was 10° hotter last week and scorching.
Uncle Tom's house has a view over the Canning River; it is very soothing. I spend most of my time here reading and cooking. Australia has delicious fresh produce and ingredients to be used in home cooking. Restaurants also offer sumptious food, but servings are so huge that I usually struggle to enjoy and finish the food I'm being served. So I prefer to buy my own ingredients and cook at home. Uncle Tom, Aunty Betty and the friends they invite home for meals always feel somewhat sorry for me that I'm being enslaved during my vacation time cooking for them. But it's actually something I enjoy doing while on holiday. (When I go home to my parents' place for holiday, my mother usually gets a break from the kitchen as I claim that room for my culinary experiments.)

The point I wish to make in this post is how blissful it is to listen to silence. For all of us living in a busy and noisy urban environment (and Bangkok is very bad in that sense), Perth suburbs are so peaceful one can hear the wind blow in the trees, the birds singing; no honking, no aircon fans, no constant TV or radio. Unlike in other parts of Australia documented by Grant Vinning, 7.00am noisy leaf blowers do not rule the streets here. It's nearly as good as being in a country house. I slept ten hours on my first two nights here; I guess I needed them. My body now feels great and ready to enjoy the beach, riverside walks and jogs, and also lazing in the house with a book.

Lesson I have learned: give my body a break from noise from time to time and listen to the sound of silence. But keep feeding myself with healthy food - no ascetic retreat for me, thank you!

Silence is golden
The Tremoloes, Silence is golden: the best of the Tremoloes, Platinum

The sound of silence
Simon and Garfunkel, Sounds of silence, Strategic Marketing

They shall be as happy as they're fair -- Nancy Chan and Arnaud Cadilhon

2010-01-30T16:23:00.004+07:00

Today, I had the honour of being a witness to my younger brother Arnaud's wedding with Nancy Chan.

Unusually clear and pleasant weather in Hong Kong for the winter season. A simple registration ceremony at the government office followed by Champagne in the small park outside. Arnaud and Nancy's close friends had been invited and Nancy's mother was the other witness to the wedding.

Nancy and her mother being strict vegans, we were all treated to a deliciously healthly lunch of vegetarian dim sum at Lok Cha tea room inside the Hong Kong botanical garden.
Great Chinese tea selection and elaborate selection of vegan food.

It was a great afternoon. Funny seeing my brother Arnaud with a ring at his finger; he's never worn jewelry before.

The Fairy Queen
Henry Purcell, English Baroque Soloists and John Eliot Gardiner, Archiv Produktion

Don't worry that it's not good enough

2010-01-29T10:23:00.006+07:00

Friday of last week I was invited to a karaoke session by my forestry colleague Sverre Tvinnereim. The event was specially organized for his younger brother Erlend visiting Thailand from Europe. Erlend happens to be a professional classical tenor so we were all expecting a great evening of good raucous singing.

We went to my favourite karaoke joint in town: R&B karaoke. It has a selection of private rooms decorated in the most outrageous styles, a great sound system in all rooms, a relatively easy-to-use programme for selecting songs, a good selection of songs featuring original clips and recordings with the lead dubbed out so one gets to sing with the original band in the background, respectable cocktails and very good food.

The only room left for us on that Friday evening was called "The bed". It's a small room for two to five people but it has no seats; just a very large bed taking most of the space in the room. Nonetheless, Tina, Juejan, Sverre, Erlend and I had a great time romping and singing on the bed until past midnight.

-------------

The karaoke is usually reviled in the West. I must admit that having been trained as a classical musician, I also could not understand why people would want to plagiarize artists by singing their popular songs in public while making a fool of oneself in front of other people. But then I tried it myself.

Karaoke is big in Asia. It is a social entertainment that brings people together, whether friends, family or even work colleagues. It comes from Japan but has since spread around most of East Asia, taking different forms. In the Philippines, it's a community thing: the karaoke machine is in a big room and everybody gets to see and listen to the singer; the crowd joins in singing and dancing. In most other countries, one rents out a private room of a size that's appropriate to the group of singers. One drinks a lot while at karaoke. However, in most private-room karaoke places, one usually only gets snacks or fruits to eat. Only in Thailand have I encountered karaoke outlets where proper food is also on the menu.

At work, I am also a committee member of the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific Staff Association, or RAPSA. RAPSA organizes fun events for all the staff in the office who have paid their subscription fee. Last autumn, the committee decided we would go for a karaoke evening. So a group of us went first to try out several karaoke outlets in order to judge the venue, selection of songs, food, drink, and price. We unanimously decided R&B karaoke was the best we knew of in Bangkok. On the night of the event, 25 staff members turned up: Thai, Indian, Sri Lankan, Spanish, Norwegian, Samoan, French, Filipino, etc. We had a great time sharing the food, selecting songs for each other to sing, socializing with new staff we had not yet met, and discovering the hidden talents of some of our colleagues.

Thus in a work environment, karaoke can be a very fun tool to wind down with colleagues while also enjoying some food, drink and music. Whether one sings right is not the issue, it is primarily meant as an opportunity to get together and share good times.

Photo: © Thanomkwan R.

Sing
The Carpenters, Gold greatest hits, A&M

The show is over, say goodbye

2010-01-29T09:35:00.011+07:00

My furniture's been packed two days ago. I actually felt sick all that day, probably from the stress of moving. When I found myself all alone in the empty appartment, my gut knot itself up, just like when one has stage fright; I'd been very happy for the past four years in that Bangkok riverside appartment.

Last Sunday the private concert I was preparing with Brittany, Ema and Jonathan went very well. Despite Brittany being very sick that evening, she performed wonderfully. We had a good audience of around 60 people and a baby, most of them my friends and colleagues who had come to say goodbye. We enjoyed the delicious food of the British Club, cocktails and wine, and the four of us entertained our guests with a programme of French Renaissance chansons all featuring some kind of food or agricultural item.

I had also organized a competition for the audience: people had to spot the items in the songs that could be eaten or drunk. At the end of the show, I compared their list with my master list so as to attribute the three prizes I had prepared. There was heated argument whether blood, ants or bees could be eaten or not. In the end, Pascal Butel got the third prize: a bottle of Bombay Saphire gin. Marie-France and Jean-Philippe Thouard won the second prize: a large chunk of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. And France and Hugo Hörndli mustered the longest list of edible items to win the first prize: half a Spanich chorizo. We all had great fun.

Take a bow
Madonna, Bedtime stories, Warner Bros

We were young and restless, we needed to unwind

2010-01-21T09:25:00.007+07:00

One week to go before the movers come to pack all my things.

I'm in the process of getting rid of all the food and wine I had stored and cannot ship out. But as I'm really selfish, I don't want to be giving it or selling it away without enjoying it. So I've invited my friends and colleagues for pot-luck dinners. Depending on the number of people who have confirmed they would come and their dietary requirements, everybody gets to share some item from my fridge, freezer or store room, accompanied by some fine wine from my "cellar".

Last night, Regan Suzuki accepted the pot-luck invitation - and it looked like she didn't like the entrée of canned maquerel in tomato sauce...
But she brought two of her friends with her: Bryan Hugill and Tui, two young entrepreneurs who are developing an organic farm in the East of Thailand in Sisaket Province. They wanted to discuss issues linked to marketing and ways to promote and add value to their products.

What struck me was that these two young educated professionals had decided to take over the management of the farm on the land owned by Tui's parents. They were in the process of nurturing a small agro-enterprise: Raitong organics farm.
1. They had a business plan for the year to come with forecasts of costs and sales - Tui even acknowledged she would not be able to pay herself a salary yet this year;
2. They had identified their customer base of organic restaurants in Bangkok, with a strategy to continue delivering the best produce to them while possibly expanding to supply export markets;
3. They were engaged in capacity building of their neighbours with a vision to encourage organic practices so that a whole village community could be certified as organic and benefit from higher prices;
4. They had identified and contacted the support agencies that could help them in tackling the hurdles of certification, in this case Green Net/Earthnet Foundation;
5. They were engaged in a process of further human resources development as Tui was applying for scholarships for higher education.

The lesson I learned: the young are still interested in the agricultural sector. It gives them the opportunity to put into practice their entrepreneurial drive, to fulfil a broader vision of contributing to long-term environmental and social sustainability and to take pride in the quality of their products.

It was very rewarding to see my own motivations embodied in others.

If you also believe youth still has a role in agriculture and that young people can make a valid contribution to the policy debate on food and agriculture, visit the Young Professionals' Platform for Agricultural Research for Development.

Summer of '69
Brian Adams, So far so good, A&M

Take me out tonight -- Bangkok

2010-01-15T12:45:00.002+07:00

One evening I was having dinner with colleagues from all over the world in a small Thai restaurant in Bangkok when Angela Lentisco asked me what was my favourite restaurant in town. I replied that I had no one favourite restaurant in town. It depended on the type of food and atmosphere I wanted.

So here I'd like to compile my favourite eating places in Bangkok where there is both good food and good live music. This actually follows up on a request from Lalitha Houtman for new places in town where one can enjoy both food and live music.

Vino di Zanotti
Sala Daeng Road
Into a small lane across from Zanotti restaurant, which is on Sala Daeng Road. Italian wine bar with a live jazz band most evenings. I go there for the thin-crusted Roman style pizzas. Huge antipasti platters are also very good for large groups. I usually sit outside under the rotating fans and look at the open kitchen where the cooks flip the pizza dough in the air and tend to the oven. Introduced there on my first week in town by my colleague Tetsuji Nakata. Been my pizza joint ever since.

Sheraton Grande Living Room
Another Italian, another jazz place. I usually go there if I have a Sunday brunch appointment. Loads of antipasti; fresh pasta; drink-all-you-can detox fresh fruit juices; 10 metres of display of cakes, mousses, chocolate, pancakes, gelati if you have a sweet tooth like me. International artists playing jazz. Interesting to note that the local crowd usually goes there for the food and not so much for the music, so the seats closest to the artists are usually free. But best to book in advance. Other food styles available too.

Mango Tree
OP Garden, Soi 36, Charoen Krung Road
Thai food haute cuisine, served Western style. The menu changes every month according to products in season. Quiet trio playing bossa nova. Beautiful setting in an old house next to the French Embassy; choice of air-con seats inside or outside in the courtyard. Great for fine dining. Introduced there by my colleague Pawadee C.

Senor Pico
Rembrandt Hotel, Sukhumvit Soi 18
Thirst-quenching cocktails, big portions of Mexican food, live band playing latin music (Cuban salsa and chacha last night) every night except Mondays, even a dance floor to make justice to the music. Senor Pico had been recommended to me by Lalitha Houtman (for the music and dancing opportunity) and Michael Riggs (for the food). I went there with a Spanish colleague who wanted to dance salsa; Angela and I had a great time dancing.

Vientiane Kitchen
Sukhumvit Soi 36.
Fiery Northeastern Thai and Lao food. Enormous nipa hut setting; choice of table or straw mat sitting. There's a live show most evenings of Isaan folk music. With some numbers of traditional music and dancing.

The Brewery
Corner of Narathiwat and Rama III roads.
A completely different experience from the others. Cabaret show in the early evening followed by raucous Thai pop until late. Locally brewed German-style draught beer: lager, white or dark. A place to go to with lots of friends to let loose. International food, the Thai food is good and the deep fried pig trotters are delicious.

The one black spot in all this food and music scene in Bangkok is the vicinity of the Thailand Cultural Centre (TCC). It is the national centre for cultural activities with the biggest concert hall in town putting up operas, concerts, musicals, traditional music and theatre. But there is absolutely no decent restaurant inside or around it; don't even think of finding Champagne at the interval. There are Thai street food joints nearby. Respectable and convenient for a quick eat before the show. But definitely not your idea of fine dining before or after a great concert, as is usually possible in more enlightened cities.

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
Steven Morrissey, Live at Earls Court, Sanctuary

Wiki wiki, stop picking on me - Wikipedia

2010-01-13T11:24:00.009+07:00

My colleagues Andrew Shepherd and Carlos Dasilva in Rome believe in the power of the Wikipedia.
They have identified that page hits to FAO's Agro-industries and Infrastructure Division website coming from Wikipedia articles were relatively high and thus encouraged colleagues to create new wikipedia articles or modifiy existing ones by adding references and links to FAO's websites and online publications.

Visits to AGS website in January 2009 as the result of inserting pages or links into Wikipedia.
Agricultural marketing 64
Contract farming 43
Food 39
Food industry 39
Wholesale marketing 12
Corporate farming 11
Food marketing 11
Post-harvest handling 9

So I've now made my first contribution to Wikipedia by creating the French version of the article on Profesionnal association: "Interprofession", which very conveniently links to the French version of FAO's agricultural marketing group website and to our latest publication on commodity associations in developing countries, in French. Let's see if the magic will work as well from the French Wikipédia.

Lesson learned: if you want people to visit your website, write an article of encyclopedic nature on Wikipedia and reference your work and websites there.
Does it really work? I'll follow up with Andrew and Carlos in a few months to see if hits to our French website have increased.

Of course, I've been told another way of getting visitors to a website is to get other websites to create links to the targeted site. Supposedly, Google algorithms pick that up to rank their search results. Noticed the number of URLs to my Division's work on this post? ;-)

Wikipedia logo: © Wikipedia

Stupid cupid, stop picking on me
Connie Francis, The best of/ Millenium collection, Sba

One way ticket, one way ticket

2010-01-12T21:46:00.007+07:00

I've got a one-way ticket to fly out of Bangkok on 12 February so I've now got only one more month in Bangkok.
Still need to pack, say goodbye to friends and colleagues, practice for and sing in two small performances of a vocal quartet, use up 6 days of leave, finish four publications, and write up my hand-over report for work.

That's what you get when you buy lots of beautiful stuff to decorate your home, lead a busy social life, and take all the interesting work opportunities that arise. I could have stuck strictly to my terms of reference at work and spent my time sleeping, reading or watching TV at home after work.

But instead I chose to gain as much valuable work experience as I could, travelling extensively in the Asian region. I also kept expanding my musical choral repertoire and got the extraordinary opportunity to participate in professional opera productions, while making new friends and enjoying myself along the way.

So no regrets. I'll probably be taking some unfinished work with me during the 6 days of leave I still have to take and back with me to my next destination to finish off later.
One of the things I'll miss most here: the soothing and luminous view of the Chao Phraya River from my office desk.

One way ticket
Boney M. Greatest Hits, Sony

We had a band and we tried real hard

2010-01-11T09:20:00.003+07:00

During my four years in Bangkok, after leaving work, I was usually spending evenings singing with various groups and choirs active in town. In particular, I was a member of the choir of the Bangkok Music Society (BMS), the Bangkok Opera Foundation, Nuni Productions and a small group called In Nomine Musicae (INM).

I had lots of fun. This being Thailand, there was always food involved in the process, either on stage or backstage.

Backstage first: the chorus' changing rooms on Bangkok Opera nights is known to be full with things to eat, which members have always contributed voluntarily. There are always sandwiches and cake for the choir at BMS rehearsals and concert nights. After INM rehearsals, Sarah always invites all singers up into her appartment to sample cheese, crackers, wine and cocktails prepared by her husband Paul. There's more than just music involved when singing with these groups.

Onstage, I seem to have been connected to food in several of the opera productions I participated in. I was the drunken uncle in Madama Butterfly (BKK Opera); the whole cast was having a raucous tea party in Il Campanello (Nuni); we had Champagne and oysters for Mac's wedding in the Three-Penny Opera (also Nuni). The last two opera productions I was involved with were an orgy of food and drink. In Bangkok Opera's Thaïs, I brought the bread on stage in the monk's monastery and we had our frugal dinner on stage during the first act. Then we all turned into party revellers in the second act and had a literal orgy on stage with wine, wine and more wine. In Puccini's La Bohême (Bangkok Opera) the director Darren Royston asked me to be the Maître D' in the Café Momus scene. Have you ever tried to keep a respectable catering establishment running with chorus, principles, children's chorus, a baby, a fairy, a clown, two cancan dancers, and four dogs all romping on stage and all calling for their table to be served?
I really enjoyed that.

Now the tempo has calmed down. With three other friends from the various singing groups, we're preparing a programme of French Renaissance songs for a small private concert for friends and colleagues on 26 January. Once again, there's food not too far behind. Indeed, there's cake and tea at all afternoon rehearsals for Ema, Brittany and Jonathan. I've also constructed the programme around food an agriculture so there's mention of something you can eat or drink in all the songs. I wish bon appétit to all who will join this concert at the end of the month.

Summer of '69
Brian Adams, So far so good, A&M

I'll hide these tears I hope you'll never see

2010-01-07T13:27:00.008+07:00

Working in an international organization, one gets to meet lots of people from around the world. My boss Andrew Shepherd in Rome usually says participants of regional workshops held in Africa are very quick to report the problems they are facing. On the other hand, he views Asians as much more reserved about pronouncing a judgment on their situation. They are masters at poker face.

This tendency makes it particularly tricky for marketing experts to understand customers and consumers in Asia because they will be reluctant to voice too much criticism or even to give any opinion at all. Peter Batt from Curtin University of Technology says he never uses a ranking scale with an odd number of ranks when working in Asia because a great majority of respondents then tick the middle rank. It is very difficult to get any trend from a data base where "average" is the most common entry.

The same poker face problem arises when trying to analyse participants' feedback surveys about a training session, workshop or conference (organizing meetings is one significant part of my work here). If the components of the event are ranked from 1 to 4 on an inverted scale with 1 being "excellent", 2 "very good", 3 "good" and 4 "fair", you seldom get responses below 3.

Rian Beise-Zee from the Asian Institute of Technology goes as far as saying that any respondent ticking 2 or "very good" is already showing dissatisfaction! Rian contends that we have to interpret in detail the variation of responses in the very narrow range of 1 and 2. I'd like to illustrate this with the participants' feedback from a large regional meeting I organized in Asia recently.

The Regional agro-industries forum for Asia and the Pacific was held in Yangling, China in November 2009. At the closing plenary, we asked participants to give oral feedback on how they had liked the meeting. The comments we received on the technical programme were excellent; there was relatively more negative oral feedback on the networking and consultation side of the event.

Now let's take a look at the results from the anonymous feedback questionnaires that participants completed before leaving the event. Without going into complicated statistical methods, the average ranking for the elements of the technical programme on the inverted scale 1 to 4 where 1 is "excellent" and 2 is "very good" are:
A - 1.677
B - 1.921
C - 1.875
D - 1.711
E - 1.938
F - 2.015
G - 1.935
H - 1.656
I - 1.825
J - 1.762
K - 1.65

By the looks of it, participants are very happy with the technical programme with all averages except one being between "excellent" and "very good". The last element K is actually the overall quality of the programme, which gets the best average. Success! Hiphip! Hurray! :-))

But if we follow Rian's advice to look more into the relative variation of responses in the narrow range of the more positive rankings, one does get a more nuanced picture. I've plotted the average of each element as a star on a horizontal scale ranging from 2 to 1.
I think it is quite clear here that the forum participants did not have such a good impression of elements E, F and G of the technical programme. So perhaps we organizers need to ponder how we could improve these components of the forum. I'm still struggling to come with a good visual representation of these results, which will allow me to report back to the participants. I'd be grateful for any feedback on this matter.

Advice telling me to cool down and to stop being paranoid also welcome.

Crying in the rain
Originally by The Everly Brothers, but I like better the version by:
A-ha, East of the sun West of the moon, Warner Bros

I'm hungry like the wolf

2010-01-05T22:04:00.008+07:00

Have you ever felt the feeling while hard at work that you're suddenly craving for something to eat? When you're working from home, it's easy to pop into the kitchen and dig something out of the fridge. But many of us working in large organizations will probably stay hungry and stuck on their chair till the next break or we will have to go off towards the cafetaria, snack machine or onto the street to the nearest grocery store or café.

Not so at FAO's Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific!

It's incredible how Thais seem to be snacking or eating mini portions of cooked dishes at any time of the day or night. Most of my Thai colleagues have something on their desk to snack on and share with others. Many bring a lunch box to eat breakfast or lunch in the office. Many also buy their dinner during the day and carry it home as take-away to heat up; if you're hungry, you can always eat the content of the doggy bag and buy another meal on the street before you leave for home in the evening. A standard greeting in Thai (as in most of Asia) translates as "have you eaten yet?" Great distress is shown if your reply is negative...

So very fittingly for an office of the Food and Agriculture Organization, there is food to share somewhere on each one of the five floors of the building.

On my storey (4th floor), I'm extremely lucky to have as one of my office neighbours Mrs Tig A. who bakes a cake if not two every week. If there's no home-baked cake, there's fruit or some other pastry she bought from a trusted supplier on her desk and I'm invited to help myself virtually each time I pass in front of her. It's great! I share my own recipes with her. We're currently discussing the pros and cons of chocolate mousse as a topping for cupcakes as she was inspired by my Christmas log cake last month, which I covered up with dark chocolate mousse.

On the second floor, there is a pantry with biscuits, tea, coffee and hot water. However, these are to be served for official gatherings in the meeting room 207. Anyway, there's much more appetizing food just below so I doubt anybody ever thought of picking any food there.

The real treasure trove is to be found on the 1st or ground floor. The store unit has a platter of fruits on display all the time; Registry likewise; the big finance unit office also has fruits to share; Personnel has a platter of something to eat at the front of the office, just in front of Mrs Toh V. but they also have a kettle, microwave oven and things to put into both hidden behind the corner and the desk of Mrs Arunee P.

The best for last: Cashier's office. One gets one's cheques and cash there but that is not why I'm blogging about it. Cashier is the place people congregate into to have a chat among themselves (indeed, not necessarily with the two charming cashiers Mrs Kasarin S. or Ms Orathai V.). The first thing one finds when entering Cashier is a desk and a chair. The desk is full of food for anyone to pick. There's also a Nespresso coffee machine!

Some days Orathai will bring her bread machine and one finds freshly baked bread at Cashier.

I think it's much friendlier than any dull room with a coin coffee-and-tea machine like those we usually find in European office buildings.

I sincerely believe the sharing of food among us creates bonds and friendships that go beyond the work relationship and help strengthen the work community. There's always a place to find food and company in our Office.

By the way, we also have a canteen serving food from 7.00 to 16.00. I eat breakfast there every morning; but I always stop by Cashier right afterwards.

Hungry like the wolf

Duran Duran, EMI UK

... Sing on sing on

2010-01-03T20:51:00.006+07:00

I've started a blog!
In October 2008 I followed a course organized by FAO on knowledge sharing organized by Gauri Salokhe at FAO and with Nancy White as lead facilitator. That is where I found out that there were people out there who were genuinely interested in what I had to share about the food I prepare and eat, the music I do and listen to, and the stories I tell about my work and life. Throughout the course, at the end, and later on, Gauri kept encouraging me to start a blog. Done.

I've never been a fan of photos or phone calls. I prefer observing people, chatting with them in person or reading what they have to say. Then writing and crafting a story that interprets what I have observed and read. Perhaps the blog is the medium for me.

In this blog, I wish to tell stories about:
1) people who enjoy their working life with some connection to food, agriculture, fisheries, rural development, etc.;
2) people who take the time lovingly to prepare and share their food and drink with others;
3) people who share their love of music making and listening - this is another part of my life from which I get lots of satisfaction and new friends;
4) generally speaking, people who live to eat and enjoy life as it comes.

If music be the food of love... The title of my blog captures the main subject matters I will be musing about.

The title of all my posts will refer to lyrics of a song I like. My readers will get an idea of my musical tastes. At the bottom of each post, the reader will find some references to trace the song.

This blog is dedicated to my father Yves Cadilhon. He loves to eat. He's always held a particular affection for rural folk and those connected to them. He's always trying to tell us a story or sing us a song - we encourage the former but discourage the latter.

If music be the food of love.
Henry Purcell. Alfred Deller. Vanguard Classics