These pictures are from November when I first got the Jawbone UP, back then there was so much keenness to try this little bracelet.
I didn’t mind that I had to go all the way to Mount Vernon to get mine because the at&t store in Bellingham was sold out of the UP that morning.
The UP is basically a cool little wristband step-counter and sleep tracker that syncs with the Jawbone iPhone app and displays data in a user-friendly graph .

According to Jawbone,

UP™ by Jawbone® is the combination of a wristband and iPhone® app that tracks your activity and sleep and inspires you to move more, sleep better and eat smarter.

As a self-proclaimed lover of ‘shiny new things,’ I took to the UP quickly and loved how unobtrusive and easy it was to use.
I’ve never been focused on tracking my fitness activity before; sure, I turn on my running app when I go running, but I’ve never tried to figure out overall how much I move in a day.
The band has three activity settings, regular, active and sleep. Active is for when you’re exercising.
I keep mine in regular mode most of the time except for when I’m sleeping. I thought I walked a lot, but wearing the UP put it in perspective.
I could do better, in fact I’ve made a few changes since I started wearing the band; I take the stairs, I try to take little walks during the day, I generally try to move more, and that’s what the UP aims to do.
I love the little buzzes (reminders) that remind me if I haven’t moved in two hours.
The sleep tracker is fairly helpful, it tracks sleep cycle, and shows light and deep sleep.
It has a built-in alarm clock that gently rouses you from sleep…
I find using the meal tracker a little cumbersome, same for finding friends who have the UP so I don’t use these features.

The UP isn’t without issues, I’m on my second device – the first had battery issues, couldn’t sustain a charge past a day, and then one day it died.
The replacement works perfectly so far, but I’m not sure how long that would last.
In fact the UP has been bogged down with so much hardware issues that Jawbone has a ‘No questions asked guarantee’ refund
Still, I love my UP, it’s helped me make some little lifestyle changes, I try to walk more, I’m horrified at how poorly I sleep and trying to work on it.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

Today I’m going to tell you about these adorable cookies I found at the Italian store, and my favourite way to snack on them.
My friend D. told me about these cookies years ago, along with charming stories of the summers he spent in Italy with his grandmother
I think I fell in love with his childhood a little, which made the cookies seem a bit more magical when I first saw them.

Bucaneve or snowdrop is a flower shaped popular Italian cookie with frosting on top.
At teatime when he was a kid, D’s grandmother would toss of few of bucaneve cookies in a bowl of sweetened milk and leave a few out for dunking or tossing in later.
It’s simple cookie; dry, sweet and crumbly with a delicate vanilla flavor; and doesn’t fall apart when dipped in milk.

This is exactly how I eat them too… milk and Bucaneve cookes, like cereal in sweetened almond milk; it tastes indulgent, like I’m having dessert.
With the holidays upon us, I see a lot of snacking in my future, and how fitting it will be… snacking on snowdrops.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

I first heard of La Vallée Village whilst shopping at Bicester Village; both are part of the Chic Outlet Shopping, a ‘collection’ of nine luxury outlet centres in Europe.
I wrote about Bicester two years ago, and last month I had a chance to go to La Vallée Village, east of Paris about 35 minutes via shuttle.
The centre is much like Bicester, quaint outdoor settings, featuring a large variety of designer brands at steep discounts. The centre also has an art gallery.
Next to the outlet is the huge Centre Commercial Val d’Europe which has Sea Life, and Disneyland Paris is just five minutes away.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

After my friend E. had her baby, she came up with an idea for a ‘milk bar’ – where lactating mothers would go and hang out and feed their babies in comfort.
And then she worried that people could mistake it for a ‘Korova Milk Bar’ type of establishment and then there’ll be all sorts of confusion – doesn’t that sound more like the beginnings of a Judd Apatow comedy?

Of course there are regular milk bars that just serve dairy based desserts, and in recent times milk bars have become hip, and perhaps the hippest of them all is Momofuku Milk Bar.
Visiting Momofuku’s milk bar was one of the things I was looking forward to on my trip to New York.
The concept of this innovative dessert bar fascinates me; they serve classic desserts like cookies, pies, ice cream and milkshakes but made with wacky ingredients like cereal, pretzels, kimchi, potato chips, etc.
The desserts have daring names like Crack Pie, Compost Cookie and Cereal Milk – how can you not want to try them?

I tried the Crack Pie which is gooey, sweet and chewy and very buttery, it’s awesomely good, so good you probably shouldn’t eat the whole thing. I have this thing where I get a little light headed and jittery when I’ve had too much sugar, and that’s always my cue to stop.

The Corn Cookie is so good, it’s addictive, you keep on wanting more and more – again there’s no skimping on sugar and butter here.

@adjoa tried the Cereal Milk which she proclaimed the ‘best thing ever!’ so I had to take a sip – it’s like really creamy Horlicks and leftover milk after you’ve had three bowls of Frosted Flakes.

And the Compost Cookie…? I couldn’t even begin to describe it – it’s sugary and salty and crunchy and buttery.
Someone described it as being like eating candy and potato chips all at once, and they’re right!
We got a few cookies for our plane ride home and to share with friends and family at home – except it never made it to those friends and family.

The prudent thing to do after indulging like we did at Momofuku Milk Bar would be to run a marathon; that is if you haven’t fallen into a sugar coma already.
We did the next best thing though, walking all over Manhattan, from Battery Park to Central Park.
Then we did a bad thing; we had pizza at the Plaza!
We were on vacation and it was all worth it.

The milk bar (East Village) had just moved to its new location when we went, it’s next door in a small unpretentious shopfront with high tables for standing about.

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I love these chocolate bars just for their retro automobile artwork – how cool are they?
It’s pretty good chocolate too, Belgian chocolate made with real cocoa butter.
It’s made by Starbrook Airlines (it’s an imaginary airline), with art illustrations by Jaak De Koninck.
Some of his oil and watercolour paintings can be see at the Brussels Airport.
According to the company’s website their chocolates are produced in a semi-artisan way.
And they’re adherents of the ‘Belgian Chocolate Code’ this could also be an imaginary code, but like I said, it’s good chocolate.

Don’t they seem like the perfect bar for a road trip?
With its nostalgic renderings of cars, planes and airline travel.
I got a few this afternoon for my mini road trip this weekend

Urban Fare on Alberni (next to the Shangri-La) carries these, the Dan-D Pak store on Broadway has them too.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

I had an Apple laptop at the turn of the (21st) century, a cute blueberry clamshell iBook – I spent a lot of time on it corresponding with a Tuareg man, I was certain he was my destiny.
I also started my first blog (a weird word back then), and discovered an amazing community of diarists.
I loved that little iBook even when it got buggy and crashed sometimes, and my biggest frustrations were software incompatibility issues and browser/website glitches.
In time I got a Dell laptop and somehow, and I’m not sure exactly when this happened – I became an Apple Hater!

Yes, I was an Apple hater.
It wasn’t the deep seething hate that consumes you; this was mild contempt with a dash of general indifference.
Like most ‘haters’ I thought Apple products were overpriced hypes with closed architecture.
It may have begun with the launch of the iPod, and the mass fixation that followed; everyone wanted one and proclaimed it an innovation.
My iriver MP3 player had all the features of the iPod plus a built-in FM tuner, yet no one raved about it.
Then the iPhone happened… I’ve ranted about the iPhone before so I won’t get into that.
I got the HTC Prophet (Windows mobile 5.0) a year before the iPhone debuted.
I loved my prophet! Probably because of all the time I spent on it – I joined XDA Developers and tweaked the heck out of that phone; it was as if I’d built my perfect phone.
The iPhone did not tempt me, as far as I was concerned my phone was superior to the iPhone.

Over the next several years I felt smug for not falling for the Apple hype, my laptops were Windows, (there was the Linux running Eee PC I used briefly), and my phone and mp3 players weren’t Apple.
With two pivotal incidents last year, I went from Apple-hater to owning several Apple products.
The first, was the announcement of the iPad, it was the first of Apple product that I felt was worth a little hype (not a whole lot though!), then I took one look at it and I had to have it – I envisioned many scenarios where it’ll come in handy.

The second incident came from dissatisfaction with my phone; I got the Google G1 phone (HTC Dream) in the summer of 2009.
It was exciting, new OS, open-source and all.
My issue with that phone was that there were no updates available for my hardware beyond version 1.5 (Cupcake), which basically rendered my phone obsolete three months after I’d gotten it.
Of course, I could have found cooked ROM and customized the phone to my specifications, but that wasn’t why I got the phone; I wanted a phone that I’d loved as is.
It no longer makes sense to me to pay money for a phone and spend ridiculous amounts of time tinkering with it (doing potentially illegal stuff), I’m not a developer, I just want a phone that works.

I could no longer deny the appeal of the iPhone, maybe I’m just getting old but I liked that it’s easy to use and works relatively well.
So I got the iPhone 4 in May of last year.

This Christmas I got a new MacBook Air to replace my aging Windows laptop, it’s going to be my primary computer – and this officially makes me a Mac user, I’m no longer a PC (except for work).

In the end there wasn’t a long drawn out decision to switch, and so far I love the simplicity and ease of use of my MacBook Air.
Maybe we’re still in the honeymoon phase…
I still don’t like iTunes, and I miss Live Writer – I haven’t found a worthy Mac version yet.

So I’m not quite the MacHead, it took me a decade to come around and i’m quite enjoying this switch.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve never read (or bought) a self-help or relationship book in my life.
It’s not that they aren’t helpful, they probably are; I’m just too cynical to be helped.

I’ve been meaning to write about ‘What Do We Do Now?’ for months, but I guess life got in the way.
I bought two copies of this book mainly because of the authors; Keith and the Girl.
I gave the extra copy to my sister.
Keith and Chemda are hosts of the comedy podcast, Keith and the Girl; I’ve been listening to the show for close to four years now.

KATG is a very funny show, you should go download a couple and listen to them right now.
I was going to do a witty insightful review of the book, but I unfortunately have a cough and I don’t feel so hot right now.

So go read the reviews on Amazon instead and trust me when I say the book is good, it’s funny, practical common-sense, modern day relationship problems and advice.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

I went for a run this weekend.
A long and familiar eight-mile dash along the seawall
I’m trying to ease back slowly into a regular running schedule.
I ran for the first time in months two weekends ago, and I could barely walk the next day.
There’s a term for this affliction; Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness – DOMS for short.
This was a good run and I wasn’t sore the next day, my goal is to do one short run this week.

Weather permitting, I’d like to keep up the regular weekend runs; I’d forgotten how much I enjoy running in the mornings on weekends.
I’m using the Nike+ GPS app on the iPhone to track my runs; it’s also a coach and motivator of sorts.
I prefer it to my Garmin Forerunner and the mapping seems as accurate as the forerunner.
It’s easy to use and has a nice interface; it’s a very well made app with some very nice features.

Along with calculating distance, pace and the route, it has a voice feedback feature with updates as you run.
It syncs automatically and seamlessly with my Nikeplus.com account.
You can also create a list of songs you like to run to, and you get motivational messages from other athletes when you set personal records.
But there’s more… you can share your run on Facebook and Twitter.
The Cheer Me On feature, I haven’t yet used this yet, it let’s your friends on Facebook send you live cheers, comments and Likes.

You probably already know that the seawall is my favourite running route.
Well, it’s also due to a little laziness on my part since it’s practically my backyard; but there’s no denying that it’s lovely and inspiring.
I’m actually looking forward to trying out other exciting routes, I just have to wake up a little early for those.

We had the perfect fall weekend; it was sunny, cool and beautiful – perfect for a run.

And here are some old posts on my weird relationship with running…

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve become addicted to these little drops. As far as addictions go, it’s pretty harmless.
I guess I probably won’t admit it if I had serious addition problems.

So anyway, Les Anis de Flavigny are the most delectable little candies ever.

There were first produced in the 8th century by monks.
The candy is still made in the same ancient abbey of Flavigny.

It’s anise seed coated in sugar, and it’s simply delicious.
It takes an amazing fifteen days to complete the coating process and only the best natural ingredients are used.
It has just the right hint of mint with a touch of rose flavour.

I get them by the stacks from the Italian store.
They come in these very cute old-fashioned tin, I use the tins for all sorts of handy things afterwards.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know that I’m slightly obsessed with Parisian macarons.
Seriously, my life changed after I tasted Pierre Hermé’s magnificent macarons last September.
I’ve had plenty a macarons since then looking to capture that glorious taste, and so far, non have come close.
I spent a small fortune at the tea shop, their macarons are shipped straight from Paris but they obviously aren’t shipping from Pierre Hermé or Ladurée

A wise man once told me in frustration that if you wanted good fufu, you went to a good chop-bar in Kumasi.
After various failed attempts to find that perfect macaron here in my fair city, I said; touché.

Looks like I’m going to have to go back to Paris!

Yet, when I saw these macarons at Trader Joe’s for $4.99 a dozen, I just couldn’t pass up on them.
Of course I wasn’t expecting mind blowing macarons, I don’t even know what ‘mind blowing macarons’ are anymore.

The Trader Joe’s macarons come frozen in a box, there are two flavours, vanilla and chocolate – six of each.
For store-bought frozen macarons, they are ok.
The vanilla ones are lighter and crumbly, maybe crispy; the filling is soft and very sweet.
The chocolate is a firmer with a ganache filling which gives it a fuller flavour.

You obviously can’t compare them to the real deal, but they’ll do in a pinch.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.