Sunday, November 22, 2009

Instant coffee - how do you do that?

This how-to is brought to all Americans, who are kind enough to have me in their country, but don't know how to make coffee (at all, and in particular out of instant coffee). Lately, D and I have encountered several people that looked at instant coffee and were at a loss with regards to how to make coffee of it. The time required to prepare instant coffee is almost equal to the time required to heat water to boiling conditions, which is 2-3 minutes for cup or two of water in a kettle.

Ingredients:
  • Instant coffee - that's coffee made to be in a powder or granulated, and kept in a jar, e.g. Jacobs. Other brands are sold in American markets, but they are not as good as this one, which is sold only in international food shops. If you have to, buy Taster's Choice. Don't touch any other brand of instant coffee in US supermarkets. Although Starbucks' Via is instant coffee, it is absolutely disgusting and do not drink it.
  • Water - heated to boiling conditions. Water heated in microwave is not hot enough, so is not good enough. You can use hot water from your office water dispenser.
  • A spoon
  • A cup
  • Optional: sugar or sweetener, and cream or milk.
Instructions:
  • Take an empty cup. Put a spoonful of instant coffee in the empty cup.
  • If you like your coffee sweet, add the sugar or sweetener now.
  • Add boiling water to the cup and stir well until the coffee is fully dissolved in the water.
  • If you like your coffee with milk or cream, add them only after the previous step.
  • Sip and enjoy. Caution: contents may be hot.
After you get used to the taste of what the rest of the world considers as coffee, you will never drink that disgusting brownish liquid you used to call coffee until now.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Academic success

D. and two of her fellow students in the MS-IS program in the College of Business won yesterday a regional competition in IT strategy consulting organized by CA and hosted by Carnegie Mellon University. I will not be surprised if this was the first time that students of the University of Cincinnati win a competition versus rivals from Carnegie Mellon, other than football that is. Kudos to D and her team members.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

What is wrong with this site

Hello kids,

Today we will play a little game called: "what's wrong with this new site?". Don't worry it's not something your parents would not allow you to see, it is not porn (and that's okay), and it's fun.
This is a very simple game. Following is a link to the University of Cincinnati website that deals with the conversion from quarters to semesters. In particular, this site targets questions that students may have regarding the famous co-op, or educational work experience.
http://www.uc.edu/conversion/faqs/coop_students.html

The question is: what's wrong with this site?

The readers are encouraged to leave their answers here.