Friday, November 17, 2006


figaro! figaro! figaro! and travelling with the macbook pro

figaro coffee manilaso i finally got up to figaro for an espresso. it's a rather nice shop done up in dark wood panelling with marble tables on the top floor of a trendy mall that rather reminded me of the cocowalk in coconut grove, fl.

naturally i avoided the (shiver) liberica they call "barako" here and politely made sure they understood i wanted an all-arabica blend. (there's a reason almost no one grows liberica anymore -- it tastes terrible, worse than robusta.)

i asked for a decaf espresso, it being after dinner and a bit late. by the time it arrived at table and i turned the macbook pro on, the crema had begun to dissipate a bit -- i must say i did get some looks angling the macbook lid to catch the cup with the built-in isight.

the espresso wasn't the greatest, but it was pleasantly drinkable without sugar, meaning it was better than a straight shot from the mermaid. i was pleasantly surprised!

figaro is good -- i suggest world travellers put this one on their list!

this is just one reason i love travelling with the macbook pro. another is the fantastic ability of it to connect to anything everywhere. for example, i arrived in manila to discover -- as i expected alas -- that they had no computer set up for me.

in fact they were short machines that week and had no laptops for me at all. so i just whipped out my mac and plugged the network cable into it.

yes, our company runs a windows network. so what?

i clicked the purple connection button and voila -- the mac popped open a window, displayed the network settings, and as soon as i clicked ok it connected.

well, that was easy. i also needed to print, so i connected the nearest usb printer i could find -- the mac popped open another window telling me what kind it was.

once again i clicked ok and the mac happily printed my docs. i wish working with the native windows computers that are setup for my office network was as easy. . .i return state-side tomorrow, back to my dh and the much-missed caesar vibiemme!

Tags: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

posted by fortune | 2:38 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 1 comments