Dandy Christmas Days

Hope everybody started well into 2010. This  holiday season was a special one for me, as I "skipped" christmas twice the last two years due to my studies in China and it felt good being back with the family.
I managed to put work aside for four days in a row and enjoy the "slow life" consisting of culinary pleasures combined with fine spririts and a couple of good cigars.

I never supported the materialistic side of Christmas and never feel bad for not giving a present to someone. But still, sometimes a well-chosen-gift can show a great amount of thoughtfulness.

In brief: I don't believe in the purchase of materialistic goods as a manner to obtain true happyness but this holiday season came along with a couple of unexpected delights.

Before heading home to our for Christmas' Eve Dec. 24th, we, "La Corona"'s Aficionados, got together for a Holiday-Smoke in Rapperswil. It was supposed to herald a relaxing week full of Sundays.
With a  "Romeo y Julieta Churchill" and a Single Malt Whisky I got an insight on how Winston Churchill enjoyed his quiet minute.

Almost had I forgot about the shoes a friend offered to get from Portugal when went there in November. But he and my shoes arrived back to Rapperswil right in time before the long break and so I was able to welcome a beautiful pair of brown brogue, welt-sewn calf-leather-shoes. It's that kind of shoes that are ridiculously expensive if you buy them on Zürich's Bahnhofstrasse but are more than worth their money if you get them directly from the manufacture. They are supposed to last longer than your average car and are definately an investment, but a beautiful one in terms of smell and touch.

The perfect addition to these shoes came later that evening, when my thoughtful parents handed me over an unexpected Christmas gift: They had decided my watches needed a place to be stored safely and thus found a watch-box for me. It has a big resemblance to a Humidor, and that's also where I'll place it: In my cupboard next to my Habanos. Now I could start working on a watches collection to fill the box accordingly. I'd love to possess more Swiss Watches, as they really are something the whole world knows our country for. Stay tuned to find out what the future and especially 2010 brings.

 The suiting Chinese Character

Xianggang - Hong Kong

As expected, the two weeks since my return from Hong Kong have been very busy. I can't complain though, as we had many orders from people wanting our products as a christmas gift. The new Corporate Design and Homepage are also going to be presented soon.

But first:
I had a great time in Hong Kong. Having these five days off and being able to spend them in a city like "The Harbour of Smells" while meeting old friends and my girlfriend was truly a pleasure. I was also able to make some new friends, many of them somehow connected to Hong Kong's "Swiss Chamber of Commerce". They were off to a monthly after-work drink in Soho District, so the Chamber's President invited me to join in and meet some fellow Swiss people. The beer was chilled and everybody in good mood, but after a while I was feeling hungry and tired. The fifteen-hour flight I had absolved earlier that day began to take its toll. I grabbed Guk's hand, we said goodbye to everybody and off we were to a late dinner in a japanese Sushi-Restaurant. We were looking forward to the four days we were able to spend together.

One of the most memorable moments that weekend was when on Saturday hotel staff advised us that the opening ceremony of the "East-Asian Games" would be held off in the harbour that evening. Luckily enough, we were staying at the "Harbour View" Hotel that night, which really lives up to its name. Without knowing in prior, we had gotten ourselves the best spot to watch this evening-filling spectacle! There was just enough time beforehand to stock up on food and drinks. We decided to have dinner and watch the opening programme at the same time. "Oliver's" is a great delicacy shop located in Prince's Building in Central Hong Kong. As it was planned to be an early Christmas-Dinner, we got a roasted chicken, some ham, potato chips, fruit and german beer. We were officialy prepared: Let the show begin!

Of course, I can't go to Hong Kong without stopping over at Simon Lam's "Cohiba Cigar Divan" at least once a day. It's located inside the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and has become my "living room"I in Hong Kong, it's the perfect place to unwind. I brought Simon a box of cigar-shaped Chocolate-filled waffles from Switzerland.

I smoked the current "Edicion Regional" from "Asia Pacific", this year, it's a "Ramon Allones Celestiales Finos". I instantly liked it so much that I decided I'd have to buy a box of them plus a couple of single sticks as gifts for friends. In addition to its unusual but beautiful "figurado"-shape, the Celestiales Finos also has a very distinct flavour and an unusual presence for relatively young cigars.

Pleasant Weekend - Tianmei

What a pleasant weekend.

Saturday brought me estimated 1.5kg of mail from Swiss International Airlines. It appears our national airline was satisfied with my qualifications and decided to let me take part in their training programme for cabin crew members. HR Management sent me a contract to sign along with a medical survey and half a dozen of regulation booklets. I am set to begin training on February 1, 2010.

Until then, I will be fully engaged in our family business "Daochu" which produces solar energy products for remote use. (www.daochu.ch)
We will work on a new corporate design and other updates (especially logos and homepage) for the next couple of months. From what I can tell so far, the new appearance is going to look a lot more structured and is scheduled to launch December 1st, 2009.

After sucessfully introducing the new design, I will be lucky to have a few days off and will treat myself with a long weekend in my declared favourite city Hong Kong.

The trip is booked for Dec. 2-8 and I am really looking forward to breathe some pacific breeze and meet old friends. My girlfriend asked for leave at Guangxi University in Nanning and will join me there for pre-christmas shopping and sightseeing around the harbour. No question I am really excited and can't wait to celebrate my birthday a second time in the "Harbour of smells". It will be my sixth visit to the city in 30 months time.

This weekend's culinary discovery was embedded in an extensive late lunch / early dinner. My little sister celebrated her 11th birthday earlier this week so we invited some relatives over for a little catching up with friends and family.
After we had feasted upon delicious treats from "Sprüngli", a bottle of "Loupiac", a sweet dessert wine, was opened and served with a selection of blue mold cheese. This combination is new territory to my tastebuds but is delicious nonetheless. The bitter, acrid taste of the cheese and the sweet, heavy wine wedded to some flavourful experience that could also emerge from a cigar in its "sick period" but has a much more creamy finish - A revelation I'll have to futher investigate in the future.

I checked that wonderful weekend out with a "Ramon Allones Specially Selected". It's one of the cigars that are considered "les indetrônables" by many publications worldwide. And I must say: This one lived up to the hype.

So far, life seems great and I'm really looking forward to get some early sleep tonight and get ready for another exciting week in approximately eight hours.

Cheers to that great weekend and also cheers to embracing the good life in all its facets!

So this post's character shall simply be "Tian Mei", "pleasant". The character "Tian" itself stands for "sweet" which is also a link to tonight's sweet wine. "Mei" on the right side stands for "beautiful".
Beautiful and sweet. That's how life treats you if you let it. ;)

Job interview - Mianshi

Tomorrow will be a big day. I am invited to a job interview in Zürich.
Yes, I figured out a little income on the side wouldn't be bad, either. Dandy times aren't the same now they used to be before.
Jokes aside: I am really excited about my assessment at Swiss International Air Lines. I applied for a job as a Cabin Crew Member in August and tomorrow, they will be picking their attendees for the training. I offered them to bring in my knowledge of a few languages I learnt throughout the times I went to school or travelled countries. So they kindly invited me to tomorrow's check-up-day.

As for the wardrobe: "Correct clothing and a well-groomed appearance are welcome" is what they write in the invitation.
So I decided I'd go for a dark blue suit underlined by a checked, clear-blue shirt with single cuffs and a two-tone red striped tie. To set an accent, I chose an off-pattern, slightly lighter red handkerchief for my breast pocket.

Let's keep fingers crossed everything goes well tomorrow and they find whom they are looking for as Cabin Crew Members. It would be very pleasant if I was included in their final choice.

The character suiting is "Mianshi" for "interview, audition".
"Mian" on the left is the common term for a human's face, also included in "lose face", "diulian" (god beware that happening tomorrow). "Shi" is generally used for "test" "try" as in "kaoshi" for exam.
That means they will be examine my face tomorrow. That makes it sound like back in the days at Swiss Armed Forces where the corporal used to stand two inches away from me and searched for remaining facial hair on my cheek. I'll make sure I will be well shaved and my hair nicely combed tomorrow.

And for those missing today's cigar: I'll enjoy it after the interview. I promise.

Update Friday, Oct. 23:

As promised, I got my cigar later that day. The interview went well and I met some very friendly co-workers-to-be (hopefully). We were six invited, of which I was the only gentleman.
The whole interview and test-process was more demanding than I had imagined, which explains that the after-work-cigar had to be a little bigger than usual.
I was suggested a "Ramon Allones Gigantes" by Maggy, the best-looking representative of La Corona's Staff.
"Gigantes" is "Double Corona"-sized. That means you get a 49-diameter (19mm) smoke with a length of 194 mm, or two hours, or: quite a few puffs.
Beautiful and impressing cigar with lots of taste right from the beginning. The dark-brown, oily wrapper was a pleasure to hold and its rich aromatics came in just right for unwinding.
The cigar was accompanied by a scottish single-malt whisky also chosen for me by Maggy.
Oh, and: I'll get the interview's result by wednesday next week. I'll let you know.

Yusan - The umbrella

Today's saturday. After finishing some work I was lucky enough to have a free afternoon. That means I was off to my second "Living room", the "La Corona" Cigar store and lounge in the ancient town of Rapperswil City. Fortunately, friends of the cultivated smoke are still welcome for a good cigar in this location. It was definitely not outdoor-smoking weather: I even thought I saw some first ice-rain dropping. Grabbed my umbrella and off I was.

No need to walk by sight: The pleasant tobacco flavours emerging from the "salon" already caught me when I was still three blocks away. Some familiar faces were puffing the rainy weather away. You have to love the guys. They're always in for either a nice chat or, if you prefer, no talking at all. But without anyone having that arkward "silent moment" feeling. People appreciating good cuisine, fine wines or premium smokes are masters of non-verbal communication. I claim that places designed for aficionados are the best spot to make some interesting encounters, as everybody feels like a part of a family of similar-minded individuals. There was an air of relaxation filling the room beside the obvious smoke of various cigars.

Following the weather, I decided I'd go for a tea bought five minutes earlier a few shops down the alley. As for the cigar, an aficionado friend suggested I'd try the "Partagas Salomones". It's a special edition reserved for sale by "Casas del Habano", the chain working closest with Cuba's distribution monopoly Habanos S.A.
As Andi Stachl is well connected in the world of cigars and especially those of cuban origin, he had a box to pick from nonetheless as he and his shop are officially marked "Habanos Specialist".

The brand "Partagas" always stands for great quality and a very distinctive taste that suits many "connaisseurs". This stick was no exception: It started smoothly and could be clearly divided into three  parts of flavour during the smoke. The second third was rich and aromatic, but without the usual "Partagas-kick". Co-smokers who were "working" on the same model found it to be better balanced than the standard cigars of this brand. I for my part really missed that oily sweetness you find in the "Lusitanias" for example. The last third came along with a dry harshness filling the whole palate. I was happy to have enough tea for breaks in between.

The cigar's format is indisputably great. "Salomones" sizes are always a pleasure to see and smoke with their ring gauge of 57 and this one also had a nice dark coloured wrapper and that additional "Casa del Habano"-anillo that tag it as a special edition.

After two very pleasant hours of smoking and discussions about wine and tobacco I was ready to go home for 5'o'clock tea. But Andi wouldn't let me go until he had showed me the latest arrival to his stock: The Cohiba Gran Reserva. This series is so special and rare (and thus expensive) that I'll give them an own post to duly present them.


With regards to the weather, today's item is definately the umbrella, "yusan" in chinese. "Yu" on the left side stands for rain. You can clearly see the "rain drops" embedded in something that could be an abstract cloud. Whereas the character on the right "san" doesn't need any explanation: If you drew an umbrella with a couple of lines, that's what it probably would look like. Notice the resemblance?

Fuzhuang - Dressing up

Today's weather can best be described as English autumn cliché. Not too cold, eight degrees, but heavily clouded and with occasional rainfall.
I was therefore very pleased when I discovered Charles Tyrwhitt's new catalogue in the mail.
Tyrwhitt is a London based clothing house with their style being rather conservative english gentleman's attire. And what's best: Their pricing is astonishingly reasonable.
After finishing working out around 4pm, I went home immediately and set up an "Afternoon Tea". Time to get cosy, light the candles and have a nice cup of tea and good lecture in the living room. 

As for a suiting cigar for that afternoon, I was thinking of a "Bolivar Belicosos Finos" in a special "Gérard Père et Fils" edition.
Gérard is a family business selling premium cigars from Cuba. It's also one of the most noble cigar houses in Switzerland with a very high reputation. Their "boutique" is situated in Geneva's famous Kempinsky Grand Hotel. When I visited the shop in summer last year I was received very friendly and shown around the big walk-in-humidor. They preferred no photos to being taken so instead I suggest you go and let yourself impress. It is indeed imposing to see that many boxes of different years stacked up. I could just sit there for half an hour and let the "great wall of cedar" impress me.
The friendliness of the staff, combined with the beautiful french language that is spoken on site gives the situation a good edge of "savoir-vivre". Make sure you are dressed appropriately when you appear there. That's where we close the circle to my today's afternoon lecture.

The suiting chinese character shall be "Fuzhuang" for "dress" or "clothing".
"fu" stands for "serve" and "obey", "submit oneself to...", "zhuang" means "dress" but also "pretend".
Thus, the word for "dressing up" also has a taste of "submitting" oneself to a dress code or "pretending" to be something or somebody by the choice of your clothes.
That means chinese defined the saying "clothes make the man" quite early.

Naive: Tianzhen

Do you remember the time when you just discovered the mystics of the brown gold for yourself?
The feeling, that there was something big kicked off but you still had no idea of where it would lead you? How you were amazed by the fact that there's so many variations dried tobacco can appear in? All these sizes and shapes of the cigar, the beauty and diversity of the brands and their "anillos"?

The beautiful thing about growing into a passion, is that at the beginning, we still have the time to just observe and be amazed. Because are still very naive, we're not thinking in schemes and dogmas yet.
If someone asked me now: "What does a "Punch"-Anillo looks like?", I'll answer something like "It's reddish/golden and has a crown somewhere and "PUNCH" written on it".
True. That's what it looks like from far away. If I had never seen one before, I'd have answered: "No idea. Gimme one, I'll take a closer look at it."

It was in the bunch of the first maybe 5-6 cigars I ever bought back in 2002 at the age of 18. I had heard that cubans were considered the best of cigars, but at that time still had no idea whether they would suit me. I was lying on my bed with a "Punch Punch" in my hands, thinking "And I just spent 12 Francs for that brown stick, right?".

Then I discovered a "monk" on one side of the cigar ring, embedded in a medal. And the other side showed something like two people working. I was enthralled. I had not just bought some dried leaves with a pleasant smell but also a mini-sized comic-history-book!

I wish I could re-find my foolish naivity from these times a little more often. I thought I had it replaced by knowledge from "Cigar Enthusiasts" and the kilos of Books I've been reading about my favourite subject. But now I know: I'll never learn more about something than by just taking my time to watch it closely and listen to what IT tells me about itself.

And I'm happy enjoying cigars goes far beyond just watching them.

So this post's character is "naive", "tianzhen". It consists of the characters "heaven" and "true, really, pure".

What does chinese culture want to tell us with that constellation? Is naivity the way to go if we want to see "heaven"? Or is the door to heaven human's ability to "naively"(=unbiased) use the senses nature gave us?