14 September 2017

Signing off in my favorite way…

This week was Quantum Spatial’s Annual Partner Event at the beautiful resort of Osthoff on Elkhart Lake in Wisconsin. As the outgoing CEO, this was one of my last formal duties as the transition to our new leader and my personal friend of three and a half years – Bob Hickey – begins. It was great meeting our partners and thanking them for all the business they enable.

Like I had said during my last year’s event, while I have always enjoyed the formal duties of being a CEO and certainly very proud of what the team has done (some would even suggest – in spite of me 🙂 ) in the last three and a half years, the real thrill was always in the informal perks of the job. Getting to know the backgrounds of my team members, their kids, their personal aspirations, the personal history of my peers in the industry, picking up some sharp one-liners from Bob and so on. But the best perk of all was being the official mixologist at our Partner Event. I truly get to know each and every one of them as individuals, their struggles and dreams as they build their own businesses and has almost always inspired me to try out some new ideas.

This year, keeping in mind that it was going to be a cooler day than last year, the theme was Old Fashioned. And we tipped our hats to our team mates in Lexington, Atlanta and Sheboygan by having three varieties of Old Fashioned with – Bourbon (Kentucky), Southern Comfort (South) and Brandy (if you did not know, this is the prevailing Wisconsin style of making an Old Fashioned).

How many times does one get to put one’s personal passion and professional passion together? Thank you Quantum Spatial and all the team mates from QSI for letting me sign off in a passionate way!!

Category: Cocktails, Work | 56 Comments on Signing off in my favorite way…
9 September 2017

Funny one

I was researching for something on the net and stumbled upon this image. Got a chuckle out of it! If you have not seen this before, this should give you a laughing start to this Saturday. Unless you are a friend of mine from Europe or Asia. In which case, it is too late in the day for you and I got nothing on you 🙂

Category: Humor | 4 Comments on Funny one
9 September 2017

From the bartender’s corner – Moon River

Continuing with the theme of experimenting with gin and apricot brandy. This one is so far the best of the lot. Gin, Apricot Brandy, Galliano, Cointreau and Lemon juice. So many ingredients make it very complex. The nose is still that of the gin but the palette is taken over by the citrus (both lemon and orange). Garnished with a maraschino cherry.

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6 September 2017

From the bartender’s corner: Gin #19 – GW Goodwynn Gin

The literature on this gin is as bland as the gin itself is. First off, I could not find where the distillery is exactly. All that materials that I could find – and that was not a lot, mind you – said that is is made in France and then imported by a company in California. There is more material on the internet about the company in California that designed the bottle label than there is about the pedigree or the uniqueness of the gin.

It is certainly of the London Dry variety. And the juniper is noticeable. It also has citrus and coriander that you can get in the finish. The official website of this gin claims “hints of cucumber”. I have to admit, I missed all those hints. This is nothing like a Scottish Hendricks gin or even an American Uncle Val Botanical.

On the whole it is a very middle of the path gin. Rather tame at that. I would suggest using it in cocktails where there is something else that will render a stronger nose and palette. e.g. mix it with Campari and Sweet Vermouth and have a Negroni perhaps.

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31 August 2017

Some random facts that I have learnt over the years…

Here are five of them:

1. Do you know how the Romans whitened their teeth? Believe it or not, they used urine. Now, the chemically oriented ones among you obviously have figured out that it should work. And it does. But, please, please, DO NOT try this at home.

2. Since we dealt with the Romans, let’s talk about the Greeks. And their drinking. Drinking wine. I bet you that brings up images of Greeks drinking themselves silly thru the night in drinking orgies. Well, here is the deal, The Greeks drank wine. A lot of that. But they despised anybody who got overly drunk. You know what they did? They mixed what you and I call wine with water – one part of wine to five parts of water!! I can see all my wine enthusiast friends grimacing 🙂

3. Can you imagine being struck by lightning? How about twice and living thru it? How about thrice and still living. Park Ranger Sullivan was struck seven times – SEVEN times – by lightning while on duty in park. You know how he eventually died? Self inflicted gun wound. Apparently while cleaning his guns!!

4. How long for light to emanate from the core of the sun to reach the earth. I know many of you are going eight and a half minutes. But that is the time taken for light to travel from the surface of the sun to the surface of earth. Actually a photon takes thousands of years to get from the center of the sun to the surface of the sun and then another eight and a half minutes to get to earth!

P.S. Does that we are really living in the past? 🙂

5. Ratio of humans to ants. Want to take a guess?
There are 1.6 million ants to every human being!!
And all those ants put together – will weight about all the humans put together!!

Hope you enjoyed these. My friend from i2 – Dev Ghoshal – had once accurately remarked: I focus on inconsequential data 🙂

Category: Puzzles | 6 Comments on Some random facts that I have learnt over the years…