Spiting fancy wine in Lille like it's my business

Say what??? Oh yeaaaa, I was spitting 20 euro bottles of wine and cognac from 1990....it felt so wrong, yet so righhh........no, it was probably just dead wrong. When a friend asked me last week if I wanted in on a weekend road trip to Lille, I didn't hesitate for a second. 

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I had the pleasure of being at one of France's largest wine expos called the "Salons des vins des vignerons indépendants" (Independent winery exposition). Eight times a year held in a different cities throughout France, this event gathers several hundreds of wine producers to give them a chance to showcase their unique fermented grapes of oh la la la la! It's freaking huge! There must have been something like 500 different wine brands, each carrying their own assortment of wines and other specialties (red, white, rose and champagne and cognac....and excuse me, need to spit...aperitif, chocolate made with wine, .etc) Where the heck do you begin?

Bottles up! As any amateur drinking tourist, clearly shown by my drinking etiquette and accented French, I was thinking about how the heck am I going to try all these wines without getting a lil tipsy? And so I had the chance to do something that I never attempted before. I spit wine like I was spitting sunflower seeds at a baseball game, over and over again. Show me the bucket! That's right, I was spitting wines and liqueurs that were 50 euros a pop without any hesitation. This was my "goldie popping collar moment", but man did it feel so wrong! I still can't believe I was spitting out some of these out especially in the face of the producer. It felt like I was spitting someone's present right in front of their face.

  • The wines that were too spicy...spit.
  • Not smooth, spit again.
  • Tingle in the mouth....just walk away and don't look back.
  • Cognac please...need to cleanse my wine breath

I also learned two things! I can spit out 50 types of some and not get too dizzy, although I was breaking out in little sweats.  Not sure if that's b/c of my Asian gene or just because I was nervou

s spitting in front of the producer.  I also learned that the wetness (rain) of seasons truly impacts the taste contained within the grapes.  Drier temperatures help the wines taste extra delicious because the grapes are able to extract more flavor.  And so that same wines can taste so different when the only difference is production year.  I'm no wine connoisseur, but the difference was pretty shocking among some 2008s and 2009s of the same brand.  Another hint, 2008 wasn't a great year for french red wines.  I'll go for the 2009, a very hot year in France, and give my "pshhhh non merci" to the 2008s unless it's a medal wine, which by the way, I am happily taking home. A great event filled with laughs and very friendly people. I guess having people come tougher around to toast some wine makes a great social.

Vive le bon vin! and bottles up!

Off to find some mussels!!

And some random artsy from the city.

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Reality Hits and You are a Globetrotter

Who's a globetrotter?

If you're sports fan from the States, you might refer the incredibly talents basketball stars "Harlem Globetrotters"  (btw...The city in New York, Harlem, actually originates from The Netherlands). If you look on Google, then a globetrotter is someone traveling a lot to several locations. If you ask students, some may refer to a cool person absorbing the various surrounding cultures to gain a better understanding of the world's people and events. Ask businessmen (or women), and you'll probably hear something like being a front-line member of a company targeting global share or market domination.

Now the Funny Coincidence

I met a fellow American over the weekend while playing basketball.  We talked about how cool it is living in Europe because it's so easy to travel to several countries.  Both of us are businessmen, but business aside, we were playing with people coming from Greece, China, Sweden, Spain and telling stories about each of our homelands....typically we would have at least 8 different countries representing our weekly games. Just playing one single game of basketball, I was able to ask people from respective countries about:
  • How are the people of Greece handling the debt issue?
  • How is creativity and "breaking conventional wisdom" taught in China versus the Western World?
  • The public education system in Sweden, which has one of the best financial aid programs worldwide.  Did you know Sweden is one of the tops countries at exporting culture?  Music is a top 5 export of the entire country!
Smiling at each other, I looked at the fellow American and said, "You can't get this at home." The chance of playing a simple game with people from all over. Btw...I had to throw this in after mentioning the Harlem Globetrotters

Pointing the finger at Assange is easy

It's easy to point the finger at someone for doing "wrong", but are the fingers pointing in the correct direction? The name Julian Assange has gone viral!  As CEO of Wikileaks, Julian's name is all over the mainstream medias for releasing a massive amounts of supposedly confidential government documents.  (Article on how Wikileaks will change diplomacy for us all, written by Former British diplomat, Carne Ross) Was he wrong? Was he right?...I'll save my opinion because I'm defending neither. But when I hear that Assange should be classified as a "terrorist" and even executed.....I wonder. Is Assange the real one at fault?  Should the finger be pointed at him? The majority of politicians I see on mainstream medias are talking about how Assange's actions are putting people's lives at risk?  But what about politicians and the governments themselves?  They created the documents in the first place.  Is it not irresponsible that governments can create such documents and not have them protected enough so that a journalist can't obtain?  Shouldn't have politicians lobbied for more protected security systems within the governmental infrastructure before infiltration actually occurred? Now, can you still point the finger? In some sense, Assange did what a normal journalist strives to do....seek the facts, reveal the facts.  Did he endanger people lives....again, I'll save my opinion because I'm defending neither side, but I will say confidential information shouldn't be leaked so relatively easy. The finger can be pointed on anyone...within your company, your club, your organization, anywhere. But before pointing the finger at him or her for doing something wrong, maybe you should ask yourself, "What did I do to prevent such harm?"  Maybe forecasting incidences isn't such a bad idea.
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P.S. http://wikileaks.org/ is currently down. Story here: http://mashable.com/2010/12/03/everydns-dns-wikileaks/