Kettle Me This

Green tea is steeped at a lower heat than black tea, and since I drink a lot of green, my next kettle will have a variable temperature feature. There’s one at work , and if you want an endurance test for small appliances, a staff of eighty-plus will surely provide it. The office kettle is boiling—or close to it—from seven-thirty a.m. to five p.m. every weekday, and I don’t remember when it arrived. It’s also worth noting that no “off the rack” kettle is designed for that sort of heavy duty use. We’ve burned through a few in my time (one day I’ll tell you about the nifty “disco” model that last three days before it went back to the store), and this one has been operating for years.

So when our home kettle threatened to blow up some weeks ago, I told Ter I’d prefer one with a variable temperature feature. Naturally, I couldn’t remember the brand of the office version, but of the few options available on the Canadian Tire website, the Oster model looked almost exactly the same. And it was on sale—at 50% off the regular price! Score!

Oh, but then I noticed the online reviews. Only one post recommended the kettle as worth the effort; a handful of others complained bitterly about leaks and shorts and generally poor performance. Curses.

I researched a few other options, but no real luck. Either the price was ridiculous compared to “212 degrees only” kettles, or the reviews warned against investing in any of them. I conceded to the thriftier option: if we had to buy a replacement, I’d settle for a remake of our Black and Decker, which has been stellar from the first go. In fact, I think it might be as old as the office kettle, if not similarly overworked.

No matter. Our kettle wasn’t crapping out; we only thought it was. Having dodged the leaky base/crappy performance Oster bullet, I returned to work the following Monday and started my morning routine: fill up the kettle, set it to 170 degrees and switch it on to heat while I empty the drainer and zoom to my office for my mug and a scoop of Japanese sencha.

Guess what? The superstar much abused overused and years old office kettle is an Oster with an variable temperature feature.

*sigh*

Two Prodigies

I wrote a story about a concert pianist named Julian, whose best friend was a concert violinist named David. They met when Julian, who was touring the Continent in the late 1880s, stopped in London to perform with the Symphony, where David was carving out a career as a virtuoso soloist. They met, they hit it off, and they became the darlings of drawing rooms throughout Victorian society.

The story was written in 1998.

Imagine the hilarity on discovering, in 2009, a violin virtuoso also named David (Garrett, to be precise) who had become a rock star in the music world, blending classical pieces with rock/pop tunes to create, as I once remarked to Ter, a modern day style that Julian’s David would have embraced wholeheartedly.

Funnier still, David Garrett has a pianist buddy with whom he performs those lovely classical works composed for piano and violin—and his name is Julien (Quentin)! But for a single vowel, my David/Julian were a prequel to the “real” David/Julien!

An irony? A coincidence? An annoyance? (After all, mine came first.) Or was I subconsciously tapped into the auras of two prodigies destined to become the Dynamic Duo of chamber music?

Whatever it is, it never fails to amuse when Ter announces that David and Julien are on tour in Europe because, goshdarnit, that’s exactly what my David and Julian were doing long before these two got started.

*sigh*

Garrett and Quentin:
the "other" David-and-Julian