Wine Secretary, an Android App for Wine Lovers by Wine Lovers

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Michele

Let me tell you, living in Paris isn’t easy! Aside from dealing with stressed out Parisians on the Metro, one of my big problems here is that there are so many different wines: some great, some OK, and some terrible— and it isn’t easy to remember which are which! I thought that there must already be a great Android Wine App for that, so I searched and searched… to no avail.

And thus Wine Secretary was born. It’s free, so if you like wine and have an Android phone, give it a try now! If you share this app and give it a good rating I will love you forever 🙂

I did find many Apps that promised they would do the job, but when I tried them, they were all terrible! Without exception, they were hard to use, ugly and filled with advertising that I wasn’t interested in…

This led me to realize that there was an opportunity to design an App for Wine Lovers using Android phones! A couple of months later, I am proud to announce that Wine Secretary is now available in the Play Store for free. It allows wine lovers to have a list in their pocket, of all the wines they have tasted.

Adding a new wine to my list is easy, I just type in the basic information and in seconds I’m done! Of course if I want to, I can also rate the wine, and take photos of the front and back labels. To make it easier, Wine Secretary lets me search by Wine Type (Red, White, Rose, Sparkling, or Other).

This is an early version, and we are working very hard to improve the App, so your feedback is greatly appreciated. Please download the app and let us know what you think.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=winesecretary.com

p.s. I would really like to have an iPhone version but it will have to wait a little… 🙁

Lilacs for my mother

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Michele

I wished I were with both my mother and my son today but I am alone, somewhere in Europe between Los Angeles and Tehran…

I would have offered my mother some lilacs and a fabulous view,

and walked with her under the ubiquitous wisterias and admired all the pansies.

We love our mothers for all the stories they told us when we were children,

all the books they read to us,

food (tahdig) they’ve made us:

let’s not forget the clothes,

and things they kept from the time we were babies,

I would have loved to share a meal with my mother and my son today,

or at least a cup of tea.

I would have offered her a perfume with the scent of spring flowers,

and bought her a hat,

because mothers have to wear different hats in bringing up their children!

We love them and should let them know; as I am sitting in front of my computer, I dedicate this post to my mother and yours,

because they have loved us with all their might…

Happy mother’s day.

A night with some dry drunk Persians

Posted on July 6, 2008 by Michele

I got drunk on music at Frank Gehry’s last night along with two thousand other people. Even though independence day usually is accompanied by the two Adamses – Samuel (the beer), and John (the second president) – this year was different.

It was amazing : an Iranian music ensemble called “Mastan” or the drunks, with its director/vocalist, Parvaz Homaye, performed at Walt Disney music hall. The astonishing thing is that this group lives and performs in Iran and has chosen a name and lyrics laced with wine/intoxication/breaking repentance/dissent/hope… The young vocalist actually played on two big jugs – khomreh – that begged to be full of wine like Jesus’ in the marriage of cana!

How the mullahs managed to asphyxiate 70 million people by depriving them of music and wine is beyond my comprehension… Just look at these paintings: where there is music, there is wine. The concert last night proved that if you take the wine out of a Persian’s life, he’ll continue to sing about it! Move your mouse on the images to see a description of the paintings and the year they were created.

These instruments have not changed in centuries but the music has evolved. I love this painting of Kamancheh (upright fiddle), tar and daf:

This gorgeous painting in a palace in Isfahan from around 1670:

Last but not least is this funny looking dude playing a lute:

Passionate improvisation is the basis of Persian classical music. Watch this clip to see some hard core first-rate Persian musicians – Kayhan Kalhor on kemancheh (spike fiddle), Hussein Alizadeh on tar (lute), Shajarian on vocals, and his son on tombak (hand drum) – warning to the uninitiate: there is heavy duty yodeling! I couldn’t resist adding these pictures of the great Kalhor playing and Yo-Yo Ma watching – they collaborated on the Silk Road Project: