February 6, 2004: Dinner at Tao
Pete invited Jen and me out for dinner with Phillip Torrone, the polymath designer and creative genius behind flashenabled.com. Phillip was hilariously funny, and we spent the evening swapping stories, playing with the twenty or thirty gadgets he brought with him, and eating giant plates of sushi. The people at the other tables had no idea what to make of us- at one point, the Russian guys at the table next to us turned towards me and said "are you some kind of spies?" [More pictures are available in the gallery section.]
the main question i have about tao isn't about the pachinko machines in the bathroom or the three story statue in the dining area. it's about the little chocolate buddhas that they bring for dessert. is it sacreligious to eat a snack in the shape of a religion's god? i mean, you buddhists out there, what's up with that?
if you meet the buddha eat the buddha, if you meet the tao eat the dow, no problem, is not god, so no problem, comprenez-vous? stock price go up ya vol?
If we were spies, we'd be the worst spies in the whole world. Or maybe that's our cover.
The Buddha isn't, strictly speaking, a deity Buddhists pray to. He was an enlightened Indian prince, who never expected to be worshipped, who was and is more of a teacher or a guide than a god. So eat your chocolate buddhas with a clean conscience, but if it makes you uncomfortable, maybe you should just place the entire confection in your mouth and let it melt, instead of munching it. Like those church wafers, you know?
Holy crap. I met Phillip and his wife at a weblogger meetup in Seattle. That is freaking surreal. It is a small small geeky world.
Jake, what kind of digicam do you use? The last picture is sweet!
this series was shot with a canon g2. the g series, in my opinion, is the best on-the-go camera money can buy.
buddhism is actually a atheist religion. so don't worry about eating a god!