The English Can't Make Chips

It's nearly impossible to get decent chips (fries, frites) in London. The best I've had are at the Hawksmoor, and no one should have to pony up that much for a decent heap of potatoes. Most chips here fall into "mediocre: purchase only when drunk" category. Lack of chip competency should be a national embarrassment. There's no reason for it. The Scots, French, and Belge all manage. So much for London's ostensible culinary revival.

Pitching

Poster for Jumper was advertising, "Bourne meets Matrix". It would be fantastically helpful if this became a trend and movies advertised solely by publishing pitch lines. (e.g. Chicken Run: "The Great Escape.... with chickens!"). Think of the productivity gains in advertising and marketing. Not just movies, either. Here's a noble attempt at efficiency and directness from insinkerator:

If "adding a filtration system" [the above reads: Cross-branding copy here that encourages users to consider adding a filtration system] is simply replaced with "buying product", there's all web ad content sorted.

Death of Coffee

It's hard to get good coffee.  The world's gone to pushbutton espresso machines.

Starbucks has a lot to answer for.  When Starbucks started appearing in Chicago in the early 90s, I remember espresso being a minor specialty.  The focus was on coffee -- filter coffee.  There were always multiple varieties on tap, each in a carafe, each carafe on a timer, purged at a certain age and rebrewed afresh.  Hot coffee, unoxidized, from specific beans -- a hitherto inaccessible pleasure at the Board of Trade -- became readily available and raised the bar for every caf pouring burnt sludge from brown & orange Bunn pots.

Sadly, Starbucks gave up on coffee and adopted an espresso-based, pushbutton model, becoming a factory for warm, sweet, milky drinks, each starting life at the espresso machine.  I do love espresso.  I have a rancilio machine and a grinder at home.  It took me months before I was consistently satisfied with my shots.  But I also love coffee.

Good filter coffee is not hard to make.  Drip brewers, percolators, and the beloved cafetieres are all capable of providing life-affirming brew. Tragically, I could not even get good coffee this past weekend in Paris. Good espresso? Yes, sometimes. Good coffee? No. Not even a true cafe au lait for breakfast! I hope I merely went to all the wrong cafes, but I fear even the Parisians are letting it drip away.

Eurostar Squandered

It's a missed opportunity of epic proportion.  It should have been a transcendent success, a triumph of romanticism and modernity, a steampunk fantasy, a smug grin to the weary & wistful.  Instead it aims to evoke nothing more romantic than modern air travel at its worst, and succeeds with an appropriately inefficient mix of misery and tedium.

Rail travel should be simple and unchanging.  Arrive at station.  Find platform. Step onto train. Eurostar prefers to first require "check in", involving either or both of unhelpful machines and unfriendly staff.  From there, it's passport control.  (Civilized countries perform this while a train is crossing a border.) From there, an airport-style drill of metal detectors and x-rayed bags & coats. Why? Why is this necessary?  I can take a train from London to Edinburgh without this, or from Paris to Berlin without this, why is this necessary for London to Paris?  It can't be the tunnel:  if you would like to drive to Paris, you can drive onto the train, no x-ray, no metal detector.  So if I travel on foot, my boxers get scanned, but if I travel on wheels, a couple tons of metal and 40 litres of petrol are waved on without question.

On board, seating is cramped, lighting is a harsh and dingy fluorescent, and cabins are fitted in dreary grey from floor to ceiling -- industrial grey fabrics, scuffed dull-grey metals, and grey plastics that low-budget automakers would be embarrassed to use.  In two weeks I will be aboard regional trains from Munich into Austria.  They may be old or even run down, but they will be more pleasant and evocative of the romance of rail than eurostar's appalling excuse for a train.  One of the great joys of rail travel at night is gazing out at passing towns & homes.  The darkness and humble lights add a charm and sympathy most homes would lack in daylight.  But the view from a eurostar cabin is of reflected grey striped and off-white lighting panels.

It could have been so much more.  It could have been an end itself rather than a means.  It's clear the architects of the eurostar did not, and do not, ever travel by rail.  Dull-eyed businessmen blessed with neither heart nor brass have squandered one the turn-of-the-century's greatest opportunities to leave a legacy romantics of the future.