RIYL: Deadmau5, Danger, Andy Caldwell, Axwell, Phoenix

House music, true house music, seems to be one of those love it or hate it kind of genres adored by some clubgoers and ignored by the general populous. Yet you don’t always have to be at a serious electro show or Electric Daisy Carnival to get into the mood. There are a few artists out there spinning old-school house with finesse generally unrivaled in America at least.

While Europe boasts great legends like Tiesto and Sasha, there are a few contenders lurking stateside, and San Francisco’s own Kaskade is one of them. Just as brilliant live as he is on an album, his latest release The Grand is one of the smoothest house albums I’ve heard in a long time. It has a great progression of rhythms, changes every few measures to keep you from ever thinking it’s trance, and has its share of interesting instrumental samples.

Unfortunately The Grand isn’t the sort of album a 30 second sample will do justice. Kaskade’s mastery is not found in his hooks but rather in the build up he can create and sustain for minutes at a time in a totally un-frustrating way. It’s an album that requires a few tracks to get totally immersed in, despite opening with an unbelievably catchy lead. His style is still vocal-heavy and orchestral, but Kaskade seems to have picked up a few tricks from his work with Deadmau5 and drops in quite a bit of choppy bleeps that are still new territory for him. The Grand is chock full of collaborations and featured vocalists, but don’t worry, he keeps it well within the boundaries of the kind of panache and artistry you’d expect from the well-respected Kaskade sound. It doesn’t matter whether you’re heavily immersed in the scene or if this is your introduction to house, The Grand deserves your consideration.

Recommended Tracks:

“Angel On My Shoulder,” “Another Place,” “Saturday Night,” and “In My Arms”

I cleaned up this Christmas, taking home a ridiculously fancy rice maker, you know the kind that has all the bells and whistles: two timers, a computer chip that touts “fuzzy logic”, and, no joke, the ability to bake a cake. It even sings to you when your rice is ready, and I wish I was kidding. Short of mowing the lawn this thing can do everything and anything, including turn the girl that was addicted to pasta into the girl that eats rice with every meal.

I was always fairly hesitant to own a rice maker since I didn’t eat an overwhelming amount of rice, and even when I do it’s usually the boxed flavoured variety. Yet, I eat a lot of vegetables and often scramble to find something else to fill up my plate, something neutral, like a bread or a pasta or a potatoe. Then it dawned on me that perhaps I wasn’t eating much rice because making rice was such a hassle. My pans never heated evenly, so my rice never cooked perfectly, plus it took a hefty 55 minutes to get white rice sufficiently done, an hour and half for brown rice. Maybe, just maybe, if I didn’t have to maintain constant vigilance over a bubbling batch of rice, then perhaps I might eat more of it.

Dead on. I absolutely love rice in a way I never thought was possible, all because of a fancy machine. I have the timer set so my rice is ready when I walk through the door (and still kept toasty if I’m even hours late), and it takes me about ten minutes to saute up some veggies or heat up some leftovers (Korean-style soup is my current favourite). Some nights I’ll throw in some lentils, vegetable stock, and onions, set the menu to “mixed rice” and go to the gym. When I’m stretched and showered, I’ve a hot meal at the ready, no prep involved. It really is a modern wonder.

Let’s talk about congee (okayu or juk) for a second. The porridge setting. Experimenting with this setting has led me to a world of breakfast foods I didn’t even know I was missing. A bowl of rice porridge is like a blank canvas just waiting for whatever you want to add — miso and green onion for a savoury start to your day, dried cranberries and apricots with cashews and a drizzle of honey for a sweeter tooth, a few bits of cheese and fresh tomatoe make for good lunch, while coconut milk and pistachios or mango is a belly-warming dessert. Not into the rice part? You can also make steel-cut oatmeal with maple, oats in cream of asparagus soup with cracked black pepper, or even non-instant grits for my comrades in the south. It’s been an easy, cost-effective, super filling and very versatile option for me this winter. I’d highly recommend giving this setting a try.

I liken the rice maker to a fancy coffee maker. You can always drip coffee the old-fashioned way, and sure a $20 contraption will do the trick for your morning brew, but if you’re making coffee every day, why not invest in a nicer model, one that say, grinds the beans for you, or has a timer so your coffee is ready ten minutes after your alarm goes off? Why not have something that can brew espresso too if you’re in the mood for a double dose of caffeine? It’s the same with rice. Sure you can make it on a stovetop just fine, but you can also just press a button instead and have it be not only ready, but perfectly cooked every time. Curry taking a bit longer than expected to reduce? Your rice maker probably has a “keep warm” function that makes sure the rice is still nice and hot without overcooking it into a hard mass of starch. It’s brilliant, really. If you’ve been in debate over whether the micom/micro computer makers were worth the money, take it from me, they’re worth every penny.

Nong-Shim is a Korean food manufacturer known for their spicy instant noodles as well as a few varieties of shrimp crackers. When my local convenience store started carrying the brand along with the classic Japanese brands and the ever ubiquitous nissin cup-o-noodles, I thought I’d give their products a go to see if there was any validity to the “hot and spicy” promised on the packaging.

I picked up a few of the different offerings and started with the beef-flavoured cup (containing no actual beef, surprisingly) and I have to say, it’s much better than the atrocity I picked up last week: Maruchan’s Yakisoba. To begin with, the tiny cup holds a surprising amount of noodles, complete with lots of dried veggies, mostly green onions and mushrooms that rehydrated fully compared to the usual corn/carrot fare. You can see the sizable chunks in the pre-cooking shot below.

Generous flavour packet as well full of what was honestly a decently hot and spicy soup base. Sure it’s not tongue searing, but it certainly isn’t for the faint of heart and I personally find it pretty refreshing to have a bit of the good stuff in the instant noodle aisle. It was bright red, so from the get go I thought it promising.

Packaging is sturdier than your average instant noodle cup, more plastic than styrofoam, and the paper is coat to keep the water and steam in. I noticed the difference when the noodles were completely plump and ready before my 3 minute timer was up. I quite enjoyed the taste, and especially liked that you could add less of the flavour if you were sensitive to spice or worried about the nutritional intake. It’s pretty easy to spot in the bright red and black graphics, though not often easy to find. Much more popular are the company’s shrimp and “vegetal” flavoured Kimchi bowls.

Price wise, all the Nong-Shim products seem to rank about the same as the upscale and fancier instant noodle bowls, on par with something like Kraft easy mac or Chef Boyardee, though to my taste buds, far tastier (about 1.50 at my local 7eleven). Health-wise the Shin Cup also on par with other instant noodles, complete with 65% of your daily sodium intake, though the Shin Cup also has 2g protein and 12g of fiber, and 0 trans fat if you’re counting. Surprising for a convenience food, actually.

Overall I rate the shin cup pretty highly. I look forward to giving their packets of Yeul Ramyon and the larger Kimchi-flavoured noodle bowl a try soon. I’ll be sure to share my findings. But first, I have some noodles to finish!

Today Apple announced the release of their newest mobile device, a tablet with the unfortunate name of iPad. Is it a neat device? Can it do cool things? Was huge step forward for netbooks and e-readers? Yes. Was it a bit of a letdown? Absolutely.

It’s slick, with that fancy interface familiar to iPhone and iPod Touch users, but with the added juice of a netbook. The tablet itself boasts a new chip I’m sure we’ll start seeing elsewhere, a ridiculous battery life of 10 hours, and finally answers that question of who wants to watch a movie on an eight centimeter screen. But for the company that made me reconsider digital convergence, the people that made me inseparable from my mobile phone, the design team that made me require more of my technology, the iPad was terribly disappointing.

While it’d be easy to say the iPad was overhyped (it was) or that it doesn’t tout any groundbreaking UI changes from the iPod Touch (it doesn’t), these aren’t the disappointments. To be honest, I applaud those choices. Apple doesn’t have to re-invent the wheel when they have an interface they know works, an impressive library of apps and games that already exist, and a landscape of other tablet products that, well, suck. In many ways, the iPad is a good move, and hopefully will get us moving in the right direction. Why the long face then? The truth is, the iPad is most disappointing because it isn’t for me. I’m not the market, and here’s why: sure it has a big touch screen, but the iPad doesn’t do anything my other devices don’t. It doesn’t even do something better than my other devices.

It’s supposed to fill that gap between the smartphone and the computer, right? Well (and this is why I used to hate digital convergence) it doesn’t fill that gap particularly well for people like me. It isn’t a suitable computer for me because 1) I can’t edit on it, 2) it has no input ports, 3) you can’t multitask, 4) the price point and AT&T contract don’t match my wallet or my fancy. But it isn’t a suitable mobile device for me either because A) I can’t put it in my pocket, B) the charge isn’t long enough for serious travel, C) it still requires a computer to add content, and D) I already have a device that can run the same apps, has the same 3G coverage, and fits in any purse. It doesn’t turn-by-turn navigate as well as an in-car GPS, it’s much harder to read and offers fewer books than the Kindle or the Nook, and is much too large to make a convenient phone call. So when I, an extended traveller who would love nothing more than an in-between device that let me stop worrying about laptop theft and international roaming charges, can’t see the point of owning one, you have to wonder with whom the appeal lies.

It isn’t supposed to be a computer, or a phone, or even an e-reader. That’s all well and good, and perhaps I’ve judged the iPad too quickly, but if that’s the case, then what exactly is it supposed to do? If you’re the business commuter who occasionally looks at a photo, might like to read a book or watch a movie, and really needs to edit spreadsheets, then the iPad is for you. Since Apple hasn’t given me a reason to need the iPad like I need my iPod, then it’s going to be up to the developers to provide the impetus. Perhaps this was Apple’s plan all along, since the app store has singlehandedly carried the iPhone through competition. In that regard, it isn’t a bad plan at all, but as it stands out-of-box, the iPad is for people like my father, like that girl that always takes the Red Line to the last station, and for the the grandparent that, when it isn’t masquerading as a digital picture frame, uses the iPad to play FIFA with their grandchildren. Maybe it does fill the gap between computer and phone for these people, maybe your answer to “do I really need another device?” is a resounding yes, and maybe mac developers will come out with a trillion different uses for this thing that deem it indispensable. All of this is possible, I don’t deny. Only, right now at least, the iPad doesn’t do much for me.

Let me tell you about my views on the smartphone five years ago. Five years ago I was carrying around a rucksack everywhere I went that held my mobile, my palm pilot, my digital camera, my mp3 player, my TI-89 calculator, plus a paper agenda with my to-do lists, important documents, and maps, a 3.5″ hard drive and enclosure, a spindle of CDs for my car and a bundle of charging cables. Five years ago I toted around eight different objects on a daily basis with a combined weight of 8.5kg and still eschewed the idea of an all-in-one device.

Why? There were devices of that variety on the market, including the Blackberry and Palm Treo which dropped two years prior, many of which could have lightened my load, yet I was convinced none of them could do a series of combined tasks successfully. I required that the quality of my pictures, the features of my PDA, the speed of my data transfer, were maintained to the point that I ran the risk of back problems from a heavy bag in order to accommodate my digital needs.

It’s fairly insane to consider carrying around so many devices today, especially given my travel-heavy lifestyle, but at the time it was considered normal for tech-heads like me. It’s not because I was so gadget-lusty that I needed to try everything, and it’s not because I was so tight-fisted I wouldn’t go out and give the Treo a go, but it was that five years ago you couldn’t find a mobile device that did everything I needed it to. There was no device on the market that could give me cellular service, keep my calendar and contacts, take decent pictures, play most of my music, calculate differential equations, hold copies of my presentation, or store my data, let alone play videos, back itself up, or sync to my email account. Heck, there were hardly any internet-ready devices in the market at all five years ago.

Now there are numerous devices that perform multiple functions, and not only do them, but do them well. The camera on the Droid is better than my point and shoot camera was five years ago. 16GB of storage has never been so light or so sturdy as it is today. Cellular data coverage has become so popular you can use it as your primary source of the internet. These are equally insane times, but in a different way. People have finally jumped on the smartphone bandwagon, everyone keeps talking about digital convergence, and the projections that everything will move up to the cloud are in unanimous agreement.

Today, while rumours about the Apple tablet closing the gap into a single, everything device, I think people are too optimistic. It could be done, but the reality is that what I want in a device and what you want are going to be different, and both of us aren’t going to want a whole bunch of extras taking up system resources, adding bulk to the thing, and cluttering the interface. I still agree with my opinion five years ago: the all-in-one quality device will never exist. Just as you’ll never be able to grill steaks in a soup pot, the iPhone will never take pictures or videos as well a DSLR or an EX1 without ceasing to be an iPhone. The Nexus’s 3G coverage will not be as high-performing as a cable modem anytime soon. You still can’t watch TV on your phone on the bus. The Kindle can’t adequately display vivid National Geographic images. So yeah, devices are still specialised, but it’s okay. As much as I’d like it to be, my smartphone is not my computer, but it can do almost everything I need my computer for yet fits in my pocket and has a longer battery life. I can take pictures, edit them, and upload them to flickr. I can ad-hoc a live video broadcast that is automatically geotagged. I can ask this piece of metal for directions to “Roy’s Donut World” and it’ll get me there. I can play football with my mates or answer my work email from Amsterdam or write my own app for something that can fit in my pocket. That’s really incredible, and what’s more incredible is that none of it existed in a pretty, little, usable package five years ago.

The technology might have existed, but what’s really changed is the overlap between devices. Phones used to have atrocious calendar functions that didn’t sync to your desktop, but have you tried to get a PDA that doesn’t come with a network carrier contract? The old-school palm pilot of yesteryear has long since been swallowed up by more advanced smartphones. It’s not just smartphones that have evolved either. Canon’s new line of cameras can shoot full-size 1080p HD video and still function like the kind of quality still SLR camera you’d expect from the company. You can control your Sonos music system from your iPod touch and stream Netflix to your and your friend in a different city’s XBoxes.

It’s not just the devices that have evolved, but the way we use them. The ability to link up your social networks, to have the websites you read pushed to one location, to automate everything from file storage to television viewing is widely accessible. You can take a device that has great capability and customise it to meet your exact needs, without having to pull a linux and hand-code everything yourself. The idea isn’t to make one device to rule them all, because a gamer will never want the same things in a device that a business executive will. The idea is to increase the overlap and make everything play nice, so that instead of carrying around eight devices, you only need to carry one or two light, energy efficient, globally connected objects. If I’ve gone from a back-breaking rucksack to a single pocket’s worth of space and weight in five years, just think of where we’ll be in 2015.

Oh David Chang. How hyped up you’ve been. How polarising your food is. Inevitably, you either love your hate the brazen and sometimes winning concoctions that Momofuku restaurants serve up. The noodle bar is especially well known for a fresh approach to pan-Asian cooking, for amazing pork buns, and for a bowl of ramen you just have to try. Well, if it involves noodles, clearly I’m there. So, I marched down to 1st Ave the first time I was in New York City as an adult, patiently waited for the hot seat, and dove in. Now here’s where the yelpers declare war. Some claim the joint is well worth the big city prices, the big apple wait times, and the big names behind it, while others think it’s an over-priced, over-spiced, over-hyped trend.

And on which side of the line do I fall? Momofuku may be hit or miss, but for me it’s mostly miss. I’ve been a few times now, and as a Momfuku vet, I have to say the allure has rubbed off and in its stead lie over-salty noodles, over-sauced rice cakes, and not enough skill to back up the build up. Of course I still greatly enjoyed the experience, I was after all facing the prospect of a bowl of ramen, or ginger noodles, or spicy chow mein, or whatever was on the large chalkboard over the bar. Still, there are better noodles to be had faster and cheaper.

Perhaps my woes are the context. The ramen, so beloved by the write-ups, is crashing haute cuisine by the new “it” kid against the age-old fast food. The whole appeal of hot ramen is the efficiency, the standard-ness of it all, the mere fact that because you are only using two ingredients really, noodles and broth, they both better be damn good. There’s something about putting too-chewy noodles in searingly spice broth with a mucky egg and something more akin to cuban pulled pork that just rubs me the wrong way. Sure it’s got that cramped counter feel, that eat-it-and-run vibe, but the loving intensity of the chefs is not imbibed in every marble of fat that floats on the surface. So no, Momofuku, you ramen failed. But, if you stop thinking of the ramen as the crowning glory, in fact of the noodles being center stage at all, the place becomes infinitely more appealing. I was taken aback by how truly delectable all of the starters were, and again by how perfectly the seafood was paired with the accouterments. So perhaps, Momofuku, I failed you.

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Don’t let me for one moment convince you any of the Momofuku establishments aren’t worth your patronage. The food is innovative certainly, and it’s rare someone takes on pan-Asian fusion wildly and aimlessly and comes out of it with accolades, but if you were ever to find an exception, New York would be the place, and David Chang would be your man. He ignores all the rules, and while a purist like myself can sometimes balk as Chang steamrolls the cultural nuances the average diner misses, he does add a good dose of open-mindedness to the American melting pot that can hardly be considered uncalled for. For all the food falls short, I’m still a fan.

The die-hard Daikokuya fan in me can’t concede the title of best ramen (tonkotsu is the real McCoy) to a contender as hodgepodge and poorly seasoned as Momofuku, I can say there are a few hits in the menu. For $35, the four-course pre-fixe is a steal, and every time I’ve gotten it at least one of the dishes has been stellar (last time was fennel and apple soup with rockpool oysters, the time before was seared skate medallion with pineapple salsa). The pork/shitake buns truly are some of the most unbelievable buns I’ve ever eaten: soft, moist, dripping with god knows what is in that sauce (probably baby tears, again, because something so delicious can only come from something so sacrilege). And of course, Texan as I am, any place you can get a Lone Star is okay with me.

My advice is to go, if nothing else to see what the fuss is about. Have yourself a soju slushie, sit at the open kitchen if you can, and at least consider the pre-fixe menu. Brave the line, definitely order the buns, and enjoy the ambiance, the experience, the wow factor that you can find only in New York, the kind of place that lets wacky experiments in multicultural inbred cuisine not just occur, but thrive. If all else fails, there’s always the soft serve for dessert. Don’t call it Milk Bar, just call it Plan B.

More pictures and videos of Momofuku and the rest of my trip to New York at Unlikely Squiggle’s Flickr.

There’s air travel and then there’s budget air travel, and if you live in the US, flying any distance is pretty easy to dread. Some of our domestic airline carriers leave you grounded on the tarmac for hours at a time, while others consistently delay flights, and still more are constantly overbooked. There’s nothing enjoyable about spending four hours in a cramped airliner seat, especially after you’ve had to pay your checked baggage fee, buy your own lunch, and purchase headset if you don’t want to accidentally cause bodily harm to the small child squirming in the seat directly behind you. Suffice to say, it’s not a pretty picture.

But in a world where nearly every carrier I can think of is committing more customer service sins then I ever knew even existed, there is a glimmer of hope, and that small ray of light isn’t gold, it’s purple. That’s right, it’s the in-cabin lighting of Virgin America’s ultra-posh Airbuses. Now, before I spend an entire article gushing about how Virgin America is doing things right, you need to know I am not taking handouts from Virgin. No one is paying me to write such wonderful things about the airline, and while at first it may seem like I must work for Virgin on commission, by the time you read through all the reasons why Virgin America is worth your pennies, you just might find yourself becoming a disciple. Your path to seeing the purple light begins with just that, Virgin America’s mood lighting.

Mood lighting in the main cabin, licensed by http://www.flickr.com/photos/crucially under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Like a well-engineered ride at Disneyworld, or a particularly trendy lounge, Virgin America has some pretty funky atmospheric elements. From the moment you check in at those ultra-fast kiosks to the moment you board past those blaringly white gates, greeted by Euro-coat toting stewards with spiky hair, it’s pretty easy to pick Richard Branson’s newest airline endeavour from the crowd. The plane’s ambiance is the best example of the company’s attention to detail, as the cabin lights go from discoteque pink to a cool purple, a change which is intended to be less harsh lighting that mimics the time of day, creating a more restful flight experience. And you just thought they were cool.

It’s the little touches such as daylight-timed lighting and the half-size boarding passes that provide an entirely different user experience than the average airline carrier does. In fact, the entire flight is filled with brilliant design left and right. For example, the headphone jacks usually found on airlines are of the two-prong variety, while on Virgin America they’re the standard, single 1/8″ jacks that allow you to use your own headphones. Imagine that, making headphone jacks compatible with headphones! Every seat on Virgin America, even in coach has standard-outlet electrical plugs, so you don’t have to ration your ipod battery anymore. Even better, every Virgin American flight now offers free in-flight wi-fi, so you can actually get something done next time you pull out and power up your portable computer. How much extra do all these little bits and bobs cost? Nothing. It’s included in every Virgin America flight. It’s like they actually care about their customers needs, and instead of cutting corners or trying to capitalise on uncomfortable two-prong headsets, have decided to accommodate the needs of the frequent flyer. What a concept.

Seat on Virgin America, licensed by http://www.flickr.com/photos/binderdonedat under CC BY-ND 2.0

I’m just getting started, too. Let’s talk about in-flight service. All the liquids you’d normally get for free on any other domestic carrier are the same — beer, wine and spirits for sale, and all the juices, pops, and hot teas and coffees you can drink are still gratis — but it’s not really the selection that’s so great. You order your drinks from your seat, saving you the frustration of A) having to wait for the drink cart to reach you in seat 26, B) not being able to return to your seat because of the damn drink cart, C) drinking when you are not thirsty because you only get one shot at hydration, D) only getting one drink. It’s a great system, and I imagine it saves the flight attendants because it spreads the drink requests out to a more manageable stream. The other great part about your in-flight services is that they don’t necessitate an endless stream of loudspeaker announcements. Virgin America flights go through the basic and required announcements, but they don’t pester you with duty-free shopping options, a list of things you can buy, or news about how to earn double points with the Elevate flyer programme. They’re quiet. They let you get on with your book, or your movie, or your nap, or your internet browsing, or your whatever. I swear they actually want to make your flight experience better or something.

That brings me to the food. I knew I loved Virgin America when I looked at the food menu and saw the words “extra crackers” in the description for the cheese and fruit plate, as if to indicate that instead of getting a one gram cube of cheese with a single cracker, you were going to be given multiple cheeses and more than enough crackers with which to gobble up the goodies. Virgin America was true to its word, for I received a serious wedge of Camembert, four slices of soft Swiss, two thick cut pieces of yellow Cheddar, and a hunk of Gouda, plus half a dozen Mozzarella balls with cherry tomatoes, red grapes, and a marinated artichoke. A serious cheese plate for $8. Moreover, I was excited that there even was a cheese plate. As a vegetarian, I often find that if I want to eat on a cross country flight, I have to bring my own lunch, which can get pretty tricky if you’re going through security somewhere like DC, where even dried apricots can appear suspect. Every Virgin America flight I have taken had a vegetarian option, and a pretty good one at that. I’ve eaten awesome caprese sandwiches and even seen the cold soba noodle salad with panna cotta and marinated shitake. There are thai beef wraps and arugula and goat’s cheese salads, and no shortage of fancy nutmixes if that’s your thing. Of course all of these are for sale, but aside from Continental, I haven’t been fed for free on a flight (in coach) since I wasn’t old enough to make my own plane reservations. Being able to pay via credit card, email your receipt, or even buy food you actually want to eat is one gigantic perk.

Vegetarian in-flight lunch, licensed by http://www.flickr.com/photos/santos under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The only bit we haven’t covered is the Red, Virgin America’s personal entertainment system, which beats the pants off of Jet Blue’s because not only can you order food, drinks, and snacks, watch live satellite television, and listen to music, but you can rent from a large variety of movies, instant message your mate eight rows up, and challenge another passenger to a multiplayer video game, like Doom. Most of it’s free, and all of it’s pretty comprehensive, making your flight much more enjoyable than staring at the seat head of you for six hours. And that’s another reason Virgin America earns some sizable brownie points: all their flights are nonstop, so when you fly to SFO from JFK it takes you 6 hours instead of 12, and with a 3-hour time change and a business meeting hours later, timed saved is everything.

Now, to any pioneering American, it would seem that so many amenities would come with a fairly hefty price tag, but it’s all included. Yes, you get the extra legroom, the electrical sockets, the normal headphone jack, the tetris and TLC, the peace and quiet, the gourmet meals, the funny safety video, and the mood lighting all for the price of a normal ticket. In fact, Virgin America is consistently and significantly cheaper than most airlines for the flights it does offer. For example, the average flight from IAD to LAX costs about $275 on a good day, usually has one stop, and is, well, not nearly as fun to fly. The Virgin America flight between IAD and LAX (which I have flown many times) is $205 on a good day, while many of their other legs, especially those out of San Francisco, can get ridiculously cheap. Their last holiday sale had flights between SFO and JFK as low as $39 each way. That’s all kinds of crazy competitive. The only downside is that Virgin America doesn’t fly everywhere. It’s picked some major cities and flies between them more or less exclusively: Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco, Seattle, Las Vegas, Boston, New York, Washington DC, and hopefully more to come (Philadelphia, Houston, and Chicago would be nice). If you’re like me and would rather be stuck on a United flight to Honolulu than take a propeller plane to Wyoming, then Virgin America is the carrier for you, but even if you don’t dig their ports of call, Virgin America is still doing quite a few things right.

Every interesting email forward you’ve ever received — the Monty Hall problem and the origin of “savant” to the first ever gambling theory and its associated follies to how humans process words based on context or letter order — is covered in this book. At times a bit geeky, Mlodinow tries his hardest to keep the math to a minimum and the phenomenon at the forefront. The Drunkard’s Walk takes the mystery out of simple occurrences, but also reveals when our intuition is wrong with statistics in the same vein as Malcolm Galdwell’s many books.

If you grew up despising double lab science period and rid yourself of math courses as soon as you fulfilled the requirements, The Drunkard’s Walk might get tedious at times. I assure you, the information you’ll glean along the way is well worth the literary bushwhacking you may have to endure, for it’s filled with all sorts of fodder for every cocktail party in your future.

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I grew up a Texan girl in a world filled with tex-mex. Our regional fast food chain which, some think, can’t hold a candle to In-N-Out or Five Guys, serves honey butter biscuits, thick slices of texas toast with every meal combo, and awesome, slightly misnamed taquitos every night after 10pm. Nearly everyone frequents another regional chain, Taco Cabana, which kicks Taco Bell’s sorry behind into exile in Oklahoma, for quickie fajitas and to stave off al carbon cravings. We’re the kind of folks that won’t think twice about downing a late night carnitas taco, the real kind without that beans and rice filler and with plenty of punchy sauce, and then throw back two breakfast tacos hours later, when we finally sober up. The rest of the world has the anytime kebab, and we have the taco.

But in a world of tacos, sometimes you don’t want to wake up reminded that your amazing authentic tacos were made with lard, and while I can scarf anything Mama Ninfa or Yolanda can serve up by the light of day, sometimes I want a late night alternative that doesn’t leave me squirming by sunrise. Have you ever tried to sleep on a belly full of beans? It isn’t so easy, and that’s why, deep in the heart of Texas, hidden amid the myriad taco joints, is Mai’s.

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Seated in the 4th ward of Houston, Mai’s is a noodle standard and a midtown favourite that’s been around for well over twenty years. It was the first Vietnamese restaurant in Houston, so you know it has to be quality, and its 4am close time on weekends (3am regularly) means you can expect the college crowd just as readily as you can expect family outings from the city’s now sizable Vietnamese population. The joint’s variety isn’t just limited to its patronage; Mai’s menu is as diverse as it gets and caters to everyone from serious meat lovers to the seriously meat-free. It doesn’t mater if you’re riding the tail end of a night downtown, if you’re heading north from your usual stomping grounds, or if you’ve made a special trip from Sugarland, Mai’s is the place for your vermicelli and pho and even stir fry needs.

Pho Chay from Mai’s in Houston Texas

If you’ve never had the Vietnamese version of noodles, vermicelli, you’re in for a treat. Vermicelli is a bowl of often cold and translucent rice noodles, spun thin like glass, piled high in a bowl, and topped with a carmelised pile of pungent meats, vegetables, and tofu. You can be a master of the chopstick, but once you pour on the slightly spicy sauce that comes with vermicelli, reminiscent of the sweet chili sauce Australians are so obsessed with, chances are you’ll be chasing around the slippery noodles for ever unless you just give up and do the “lift and shovel” maneouver everyone else in the shop is doing. Forget your Southern etiquette, Mai’s is a place for slupring and shoveling and smiling and verily enjoying your vermicelli, or any other kind of noodle encounter the powerhouse seems to provide. You can call it radical, you can call it regular, you can call it dinner, but any way you twirl it it’s another step in the great noodle march forward.

I doubt I’ll ever grow tired of picking Atul Gawande’s brain. His writing style is smooth, his openness refreshing, and his point of view so beautifully human. It’s hard to write medical books for the lay and still come across as engaging, but Gawande’s second discussion of the Hippocratic world and how to improve it does just that. Providing more hard suggestions and more research to back up his claims, Better doesn’t just raise questions, as did his first book Complications, but aims to solve them by example.

You’ll learn not only what’s working and why in fields as varied as the Indian subcontinent’s fight against polio, American childbirth death rates, and soldier care on the front lines, but you also won’t be spared the somewhat inexplicable or undiscussed: why the best doctors aren’t always desirable and how the insurance system affects patient care. Gawande doesn’t claim to be an expert, but he does a fantastic job of translating complicated and long-standing medical problems into plain English for the rest of us. Once again, I’ll never look at medicine in the same way again.

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