Paris

Been in Paris for 3 days now and had an amazingly challenging time.  First off definitely getting used to the difference in hospitality than in Italy.  Last year’s trip to Italy was way more pleasurable and the people were so much easier to talk to and work with.  Parisians are a bit different and we are figuring out how to work with them… it is a bit of a challenge.  However there have been some wonderful experience like the waiter that brought out the French menu and went through it line by line and then proceeded to bring out some pretty daw-gone good cafe food…

Went up to the top of the Eiffel Tower with Alex, that was an experience of a lifetime.  Alex was so alive and loving it.  We had a great lunch at the 1st floor restaurant called 58 Tour Restaurant.  Pretty good food…  The views were splendid and it was amazing to learn that Gustov Eiffel (the guy who made the Eiffel Tower) was also the same architect that built the Statue of Liberty.  He also build many other structures, look him up in Wikipedia… well worth it.

Is Specialty Coffee “Right Coffee”?

[This is another article that will be appearing in AzerNEWS in Baku]

Recently I’ve been getting into conversations with people about what is “right coffee” and what is “wrong coffee”. Now I must admit I am very opinionated about this subject and there are very good reasons for my opinion, of which I will share with you now.

Let’s start with the terms “right” and “wrong”. Doing the right thing is usually shown by the action one takes. Having good intentions without the proper follow-up is not enough. It is having the right intentions and right action that usually makes an action right. Now a wrong action is usually the opposite. This worse action is the one that usually brings short-term results or no results and in the long term yields more harm than benefit.

So, what does this philosophical discussion have to do with coffee?

Everything!

In the coffee industry there are large manufacturers that are interested in only one thing, money. This coffee is known as “C” coffee or commercial coffee, now isn’t that appropriate… They pay the cheapest price for coffee, leaving the farmers and their families with a sub-poverty existence. They use unhealthy growing practices, then roast and in many cases make soluble (instant) coffees that are in turn quite unhealthy and are very far from the natural original coffee bean. If that isn’t enough these same companies buy over half of the green coffee in the world and control most of the world’s coffee sales. And the worst of all of this is that the quality, the actual taste of this coffee, they produce is much worse than that of natural coffee.

So, if a coffee is bought at grossly exploitatively cheap prices, is unhealthy and tastes weak, artificial or just plain awful in the cup I would call that… “wrong coffee”.

Diametrically opposed to commercial coffee is the small part of the coffee industry called specialty coffee. Specialty coffee has certifications; organic coffee, fair trade coffee, shade grown, Utz, Rainforest Alliance, 4C, even bird-friendly coffee certifications. These certifications address everything from unfair wages of the farmers, to the ecological impact of coffee farming, to organic and health issues, to the actual taste of the coffee. Specialty green coffee beans cost upwards of two to three times or even more than the price of commercial coffee ensuring a much better living for the farmers. And the most important thing is that specialty coffee taste natural and far, far better than commercial coffees.

So, if a coffee is bought at fair prices, is grown with the ecology in mind, is healthy and tastes great, then I would have to go out on a limb here and say that that is “RIGHT COFFEE!” So, it is therefore the opinion of this humble servant of the coffee industry that specialty coffee is right coffee…

And where can you get this right coffee, at Traveler’s Coffee of course! Traveler’s Coffee is proud to be a member of both the Specialty Coffee Associations of America and Europe. You can find information on these wonderful associations at http://www.scaa.org and http://www.scae.org.

If you want to know about their certification systems please check the following website: http://www.scaa.org/PDF/SustainableCoffeeCertificationsComparisonMatrix.pdf

And as usual for more information check out our website at www.travelerscoffee.ru and I have a funky blog called “Coffee In Siberia?” you can check out too at http://coffeeinsiberia.wordpress.com

Where Can You Find Real Coffee?

[Here's a cheesy article that I recently wrote last month for AzerNEWS, hope you like it]

It is a little known fact but coffee is a pretty delicate and demanding product.  From the tree to the cherry, from the cherry to the green bean, from the green bean to the roasted bean and finally from the roasted bean to the cup, there’s a lot going on there.

It could be said that coffee becomes very fragile after it is roasted and the most fragile after it has been ground.  This is like any prepared food product the gases, aromas and tastes are released after the roast; and time becomes the greatest enemy.  Once coffee has been roasted it begins to lose it’s quality day by day.  If packed correctly in a sealed container or package that does not allow light in and allows the gases created by the roasting process to be released through a one way valve then you’ve got about one, two maybe three months maximum to enjoy the full flavor of the roasted coffee, from there it’s down hill.  That’s why you should always check the date of the coffee on the bag or can.  If it’s older than three months from the date that it was produced move on.  If there’s no date or if there’s an expiration date and not the date it was produced, again move on.  This means that the roaster does not want you to know when the coffee was produced

Once the coffee is ground, you’ve got very little time, in fact once ground you should use the coffee ASAP.  As About.com so adequately puts on their coffee preparation basics web page (http://coffeetea.about.com/od/storage/a/storage.htm), “The bottom line is that good coffee is fresh coffee. Only buy what you can use up quickly.”

So, where can you find real coffee?  That’s simple, find people that sell coffee and are very knowledgeable about product.  They should know everything about their coffee, where their coffee is from, when it was roasted, and of course how to grind and prepare the coffee properly.

Such people can be found at Traveler’s Coffee coffeehouse at ulitsa Nizami, 68 (on Torgovaya).

For more information check out our website at www.travelerscoffee.ru and I have a funky blog called “Coffee In Siberia?” you can check out too at http://coffeeinsiberia.wordpress.com/

Traveler’s Coffee On Russia Today… check it out!

Just got this link from the producers of Russia Today. It’s a program about Novosibirsk and Traveler’s Coffee is in it. Hope it’s interesting…

http://rt.com/About_Us/Programmes/XL_Reports/2010-03-03/549274.html

PS Check out the TC website at: www.travelerscoffee.ru
PPS Thanks to Sergei Livshitz for connecting us with these guys

Check out Traveler’s Coffee locations on Google Maps

http://maps.google.com/maps/user?uid=108740776071159769394&hl=en&ptab=2

And so it begins… (Part III)

Where was I… oh yeah!  I left my therapist numb and my entire being knew that this was the final straw.  I began to plan my inevitable departure from America.  This was a very intense period, almost a total blur to me.  Going to pioneering institutes, meeting Baha’i friends that have pioneered or wished to do so each giving me advise, material support and even traveling gear and of course lots of prayers and blessings for my future trip.  Finally  I gave my 2 weeks notice at work, sold my CD collection (over 500 CDs, which was a big deal for me) and finally my car.

Music was my life.  From my job at Tower Records to my music production major and of course managing various acts ranging from techno pop, to alternative rock, to pop/R&B  to just plain bad pop. But over time fame being that illusive thing she is wore me down, I was already getting impatient after 8 years of being involved in music 24/7.  With one of my bands “American Dream” leaving me and signing an Interscope Record deal as the band “Cola” and my other band Yuska’s closest brush at success was sharing the same practice studios as the Himalayans (the Adam Duritz group before he went off and started Counting Crows) I was realizing that something wasn’t right.  There was more to my life than the ephemeral life of entertainment.  I had another destiny calling for me (About my exploits in the Baha’i teaching project in 1993, I’ll save that for another post, suffice it to say that this 8 month experience was the catalyst for leaving America for good…).

I remember that one moment as I drove down from Sebastopol to San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge in April with “Mayonaise” by the Smashing Pumpkins blaring and taking in the city in all its splendor for what seemed to be the last time.  This was one of the most memorable drives of my eintire life, a peak experience as they call it.  It was then that I realized I was leaving my youth – that San Francisco State University music production graduate that wanted to become a music talent manager so badly as he tried to fit into the local music scene.  That boy-man who lived on the outer most edge of the Western world inhabiting a space in between a worldly fetish/fantasy of being immersed in the center of the SF music scene, with the diploma to prove it, and at the same time soaring in the spiritual realm following the idealist visionary of the Founder of the Baha’i Faith yearning so bad to place the Revelation of that great Personage into the hearts and minds of the people opened to the prospect of unity of all the peoples and religions of the world…  It was this boy-man who yielded himself on that April spring day to his Creator and said, “Do with me as you wish I am yours…”

With the car and the CDs sold, all my debts paid off, tickets from SF to Macau purchased I began to prepare myself.  Prayer, meditation, and an intense yearning to serve mankind…  Then a week before my flight at the San Francisco Baha’i Center during a 2 day youth teaching project I met Chris Willows.  She gave a presentation about the Marion Jack Teaching Project IV that was going on that summer (a little under 2 months away) and that they were taking volunteers.  I asked if she could get a visa to China and she said yes.  I wrote a check for $80 and that was it, the process for my first Russian visa was in motion.  I was ready for my trip to Asia and the Divine orchestration had given me a Chinese AND Russian visa, now I was set…

(this submission was made under the influence of a -25 Celsius Siberian friday night in December to the tune of Joseph Arthur “In the Sun” performed by Peter Gabriel and Joseph Arthur… that’s right both versions I’m in love with…)

This is where coffee starts… beautiful isn’t it?

The Beginning of a Discourse on Social Action in Novosibirsk

So, a couple months ago I was going to give a talk to a group of youth from several organizations when a close friend and associate of mine, Delafruz Nasimova, suggested that we invite them to a LazosLearning course “A Discourse on Social Action.”  Now I’ve been a follower of the FUNDAEC and LazosLearning courses for some time and had wanted to participate myself in such a course, so I was all thumbs up.

Now before I go on I should tell a bit about FUNDAEC and LazosLearning.  FUNDAEC (which is an acronym in Spanish for “The Foundation for the Application and Teaching of the Sciences”) is a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization that has dedicated over 30 years to fostering processes of learning, training, and development in the rural areas of Colombia and an increasing number of countries in Latin America.  LazosLearning offers online courses based on materials from FUNDAEC, these learning materials are focused on developing the capacity in individuals to work together to contribute effectively to social change.  These materials are quite paradigm changing and very intense, to say the least.

At the talk, after the usual discussion about Traveler’s Coffee and the role in the business community here in Novosibirsk that I hoped to play we got on to the subject of social action. I did a brief introduction about what DSA (Discourse on Social Action) was and went into an what turned out to be a very well received discussion about “discourse” and “understanding” of the problems of general society and the internal conflicts that exist in us and our approaches to social issues.

I wrote on the flip chart the word “addiction to narcotics” and asked, “What can you say about drug addiction?”  They proceeded to say things such as, “a killing disease”, “death”, “a social problem”, “destroyer of families”, “mafia business”, etc.  A whole list of negative realities.  Then on the other side of the flip chart I wrote the word “narcotics” and again asked, “What can you say about narcotics?”  The answers were very interesting, “stress relieving”, “illegal business”, “helps creative thinking”, “entertainment”, “bad for your health”, etc.

After all that was done I asked if they saw any difference between the two lists.  They began to say that one list was filled with negative concepts whereas the other list was more positive and almost acceptable concepts.  We discussed how these two perceptions were in conflict with each other and that addiction to narcotics was unacceptable where as narcotics were almost acceptable.  Then I asked, “If we were going to make a social program, wouldn’t it be good to have our ideas about narcotics and addiction to narcotics in harmony, this is why we need a Discourse on Social Action.”  Then I said let me make this even harder and wrote on the flip chart the word “alcohol”.  Then said, “Now we are in a mess of trouble…”  Our opinions about all these words are in such sharp contrast and conflict that real social action and change is very hard to achieve.  To find the true causes of such deep-rooted social ills is not easy and to cure them even harder…

So, after all that I invited them to the “Discourse on Social Action” course and we started almost two weeks later…

15 Years In Russia… What Have I Become?

An old acquaintance asked me on my facebook just the other day, “What are some of the things you’ve learned about yourself, and about culture (American and Russian) in your new home? What do you appreciate about Russian culture? What do you appreciate about your mother culture?”

So, I responded:  Great questions. The most important thing that I’ve learned from my multi-cultural life is that the Baha’i model is the only thing that’s kept me really afloat here. First off I’ve avoided the trap of extreme chauvinism that ails many ex-pats here and makes it so they can’t stick around for more than a few years. When one lives long term in another cultural setting and has to learn the language, learn the ropes and navigate for short & long term there is a fatigue that sets in (about 5 years max.). Then people just drop out. The 1-3 years group is large the 5 year group is half. The more than five year group is 1 in God knows how many (very, very small) This is fatigue. Not willing to really learn the language, not willing to accept or tolerate certain ways of doing things or thinking. Insisting your way is right. Just plain not able to metamorphosis into another creature. Early on I was following instructions from the Beloved Guardian that the Baha’i pioneers should be ready to bury their bones in the pioneering field. So, that was long term. So, after the first year and after my marriage to Sveta, when people asked me what nationality I was I would say, “Sibirikanits” (A word I made up that combines the word Sibirak, person from Siberia with the word Amerikanits, American). This is a funny attention grabber but at the same time the underlying underlying reality is that’s what I’ve become. No longer that and not quite this. I think this is the first step to world citizenship… With that being said on to your questions: What I’ve learned about myself? I’ve learned that I am both patient and impatient and decisive and indecisive all at once. Being in the two culture family and being the head of a business with over 500 people I have to be patient and consultative. But sometimes I have to make the decision that’s not right and the perspective is under a false premise. The Ruhi institute materials and the parent organization FUNDAEC has really helped me. There is a thorough investigation of truth by separating un-useful concepts in our paradigms from birth and what the new paradigm should look like and what should that paradigm be based on. So, what I’ve learned is that I should always be learning and not insisting until I’ve distilled what is TRUTH based on what is right from that which is an indoctrinated idea that may very well be a myth (on either the American or Russia side of my cultural fence). A great example of this TRUTH is a recent conversation I had with a business partner of mine. He told me of a conversation he had just had with a very well educated Russian professor of economics. The conversation went something like this… the professor asked, “Why do we need transparency?” My partner began to give a bunch of arguments, like in the long run it will pay off, but from the Russian point of view it seems the opposite, transparency is the formula for closing your business because it will not be profitable. One argument after another the professor batted down with examples of why one should not be transparent. Finally my business partner remembered the argument that Baha’u'llah used about why one should be honest and truthful, “Because it’s right!” As he relayed the story to me he said that the professor’s face totally changed and said something like, “Now that’s the real reason why…” This example shows that there are things that are universal and we should build on them, this is what will be the foundation of our new endeavors, our truly joint-ventures, our new civilization… What do I appreciate about Russian culture? Russians. A Russian friend is a friend that will do anything for you, I mean really. I always use the example that if my tire goes flat somewhere here my Russian friend will do a back flip to come and help me literally come and help me. My American friend will complain why don’t you have triple A… I appreciate Russian’s hospitality in their homes, their overly concerned attitude toward my well-being. I appreciate their honesty – blunt, hard, no holds barred and sometime way too psychoanalytical, honesty. I appreciate Russians for who they are in their heart. I love the “Russian soul” as they call it. That’s what attracted me and that’s why I stayed. What do you appreciate about my mother culture? Getting “shtuff” done, damn it! Results! The bottom line… This ornery, cantankerous, burning desire to do things. That’s what I love about my mother culture…

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

This old management adage from the great management consultant Peter Drucker is one of those recent quotes that came at the right place and at the right time.  I’ve been trying to get a handle of the stuff I do at work and in my Baha’i activities and it seems that this just about sums it up.  When we don’t have a way to measure our changes and growth then we can not manage the process we are involved in.

This quote comes after a very interesting bout of various conferences and meetings on this central principle that can be used from human resource development to planning and expansion and consolidation processes, from production processes to of course financial reporting and planning…  It is a universal principle for getting anything done!

Just thought I’d share this new and yet very old idea and principle…