Tenfu Tea Museum is “an amusement park dedicated entirely to tea.” Located in the region of China where Oolong is grown, the museum has an enormous teapot fountain next to its main building where the many steps in creating top-grade tea are exhibited. Employees in period costumes demonstrate ceremonial rituals for preparing and serving tea. Tea consumption is up in China, with new tea houses catering to young and old with tapioca bubble drinks and the traditional brews.

For educational purposes I did some MLS searches for any houses in my local area under $200,000. One of the two that turned up looked suspiciously like a houseboat. Slip #30 with a “bay view”, “deck”, and “cabin.” I did a little digging and found the page on the Docktown Residents website which lists the houseboats currently for sale in Redwood City. A little more digging turned up a nice little virtual tour of the houseboats up north in Sausalito (these aren’t for sale, but I wasn’t looking to buy one anyway). Some of them have around 2000 square feet of living area, which make them less “cozy” than our house. One of them has been converted into a floating software development office.

There’s panda turnaround happening at the San Diego Zoo. Male panda, Shi Shi, has gone back to China and been replaced by Gao Gao who arrived yesterday. Hua Mei, who was born there in 1999, is also leaving soon for China. Her mother, Bai Yun, is staying to hopefully produce a replacement baby panda with Gao Gao’s help.

$2 billion worth of bagged salad was sold last year and a lot of it wasn’t hardy iceberg. With slim margins and highly perishable product, the baggers of baby lettuce hold onto their washing, spinning, and packaging trade secrets, knowing competitors are innovating as fast as they are themselves. The NY Times’ Amanda Hesser reports on the state of the art in bagged baby lettuce technology. How do they hold keep slimy leaves and browned edges at bay? It’s a precise cleaning and bagging system, computer controlled at many places. But their secrets may pale in comparison to the next trend: freshly cut fruit. I can imagine patents coming out of developments to keep those edges fresh, because it’s going to take more than a lemon juice bath. Maybe a low temperature and acid?

Itzhak Perlman
“This concert has been sold out — with a lengthy waiting list — for more than six months, and even a last-minute date change for the performance did not deter classical fans.”
The first time I tried to get tickets to an Itzhak Perlman recital it was 6 months beforehand. Sold out. This time I pointedly made a big deal out of it 12 months ahead of time and Valentine’s Day arrived with main floor tickets. And then I had to wait eleven months, but the night finally came near — and was postponed for a week. But it arrived again. On the program, 3 sonatas: J.S. Bach #6, Beethoven #7, Poulenc. Perlman’s left hand is still solid; nothing out of tune. I found fault with his slow bowing in the Largo movement of the Bach. It seemed shaky at either end, or lazy perhaps. It was probably the easiest movement out of the twelve on the main program and I feel he could’ve taken better care of it. But that was a tiny portion of the evening. Everything else was well executed with his usual flair for making it look easy when you know it just isn’t. He does so much with his fingers that if you tied his upper arms to his sides he could probably still play better than many violinists. I had not heard the Poulenc Sonata before; it’s not a happy work, lyrical but tragic. Perlman and accompanist Rohan de Silva capped off the recital with six showpieces, three of them Fritz Kreisler arrangements. The final blast was Franz Ries’ “Perpetual Motion” which left the crowd suitably impressed. Now I can set my sights on seeing Yo-Yo Ma.

Taking a day off. Back tomorrow with a review of Itzhak Perlman at the Fox Theatre.

For a jump back into Disney’s past, take a look at a photo album of a trip to Disneyland in 1968. There’s a photo of The Tomorrowland Skyway that I rode on in 1981 which has since closed. In fact, most of the rides pictured have been closed as Disney tries to keep up with our changing and always faulty impression of the future. (via Pop Culture Junkmail)

FreeHand Systems exhibited their MusicPad at MacWorld last week. Computer display technology is reaching a size and price point where an electronic music stand can become reality. FreeHand has received a patent on its music annotation technology and also a “half-page turn” lookahead feature. The San Diego Symphony tested the MusicPad and its footpedal page-turner at performances of the “Nutcracker” in 2001. One day the glow from the orchestra pit isn’t going to be from stand lights but back-lit LCDs. When networking gets integrated in as well, I can imagine conductors turning off any feature that shows where the current beat is. They’ll want us to look up as the beat is only a smidge of what they’re communicating. Either that or they’ll use a networked annotation to draw eyeglasses on everyone’s music at all the tempo changes. (Additional note, it appears that legal action was taken against FreeHand by another holder of electronic stand patents.)

Our local paper now has online browsing of their print ads. It seems useless at first; why would I browse the ads when I am annoyed enough by pop-ups and flashy ads getting in the way of my online reading? But when I do browse through these online ads, I am in the shopping and bargain hunting mindset and open to their solicitations. The ads are organized into categories so if I want to see what Fry’s is advertising this week, I just click a couple times instead of rummaging through stacks of newsprint looking for their ads. I can look for airfare specials and even find out where movies are playing. Not so useless after all.

Costco, warehouse-bulk-no-frills-shopping-off-the-pallet king, plans to test out a gourmet store and a home furnishings store, both in Washington state. According to The Seattle Times, Costco Fresh will “focus almost exclusively on grocery and associated services, with special attention to fresh produce, meats, seafood, and baked goods.” The home furnishings store, which opened in December displays merchandise in room settings, just like a regular furniture store. But unlike most furniture stores, you don’t have to wait weeks to months for your purchase to arrive as they stock 3,000 items ready for you to load into your oversized SUV. There are some custom orders though, and I’m betting they don’t have too many of the $40,000 Bosendorfer pianos sitting in the warehouse.