I have the best job in the world.

I wasn't that great a chef, and I don't think I'm that great a writer.

I'm a decent cook; I'm a decent chef. None of my friends would ever have hired me at any point in my career. Period.

It's as if Japanese men, all to aware that deep inside they'd like to stomp Tokyo flat, breathe fire, and do truly terrible and disgusting things to women, have built themselves the most beautiful of prisons for their rampaging ids. Instead of indulging their fantasies, they focus on food, or landscaping, or the perfect cup of tea -- or a single slab of o-toro tuna -- letting themselves go only at baseball games and office parties.

It's that show Friends. Ruined coffee forever.

Turning your nose up at a genuine and sincere gesture of hospitality is no way to travel or to make friends around the world.

Naturally, I'm misanthropic. But the Negronis are helping considerably.