Tag Archives: Lesson learned

Kayak.com does more than you might think

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You may have noticed that in the last couple of weeks we added a Kayak.com flight search box to our sidebar (over on the right).  You may have wondered why.  “Why would they do this?” you might have said to yourself.  You may be saying it to yourself even now.  Fear not, I am here to answer that question for you.

We decided to become affiliate advertisers for Kayak.com for 3 reasons:

1)  Travel is awesome. Everyone should do it more often.

2)  Kayak.com is one of the very best tools out there for finding ways to travel cheaply (if anyone out there doesn’t already know about Kayak.com, it compares fares against virtually every airline and aggregator (e.g., Expedia, Travelocity, etc.) and helps you find the very cheapest/fastest/best way to travel.

3) We don’t want to have to get real jobs anytime soon.  Someday we’re hoping to make some money off of this blog, and if you access Kayak.com through us, we will!  Wouldn’t that be great?  To be sure, we won’t make much money, but empanadas are cheap (another reason why everyone should travel).

But wait, there’s more!!

I only recently learned about this feature and it blew my mind.  It may blow your mind too.  You should sit down.

Have you ever been sitting around thinking to yourself:

“I really need a vacation…  I wonder where I should go?”

or

“I finally have a free weekend, maybe I can plan a trip!”

or

“I only have $300 to spend, I wonder if there is anywhere I could go for that much…”

Kayak.com can answer these questions very quickly for you.  Check out this link:  Kayak: Where can I go from San Francisco in Fall of 2010 for under $1200?

This feature allows you to tell it your origin city, your price range and your time of the year and it will tell you on average what it would cost you to go anywhere in the world within that price range at that time of year.  If you want to, you can even include activities (e.g.,where can I go skiing from Chicago in Jan for <$500).  Instead of skiing, you could also tell it beach or a temperature range or a few other things.  Seriously, this is cool.

In my opinion, this feature is under-marketed… I had never heard of it before I randomly stumbled upon it.  It’s extremely useful for preliminary trip planning to spur ideas when you know you have some time off at some point, but aren’t sure where to go AND also very useful for last minute travel when you suddenly have a few days and just want to get away.

Let’s review what we’ve learned

1)  Kayak.com is awesome

2)  Kayak.com is even awesomer than you may have thought

3)  You don’t want Ryan and Jen to have to get jobs; you want them to eat more empanadas.  To enable this goal, when planning or booking travel you should consider starting with the Kayak.com flight search box here on Consulting Rehab.

Word?

Definitely NOT one of the 5 major food groups

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Ever had tripe stew? No? Oh, how I wish I could say the same. Suffering from a cold last week, a hot bowl of stew sounded good for lunch, so after class we headed to Cumana, a legendary Buenos Aires restaurant known for its empanadas and stews.

Cumana restaurant image

Cumana (in Recoleta) sometimes has a line down the street of locals and tourists alike waiting to get in

Their menu lists ~10 different homemade stews. We had tried 2 before and asked our server which others she recommended, and her top suggestion was the mondongo. Now, my Spanish is not great, but I’m pretty sure she said it contained tomatoes, onion, and a part of the cow (while gesturing toward her back). We had been to Cumana before and told our waitress that we didn’t like “organs” (seemed like the easiest word to use to get our point across), and she assured us that none of their dishes contained organs, quickly putting us at ease. So this time I didn’t think twice and went for the mondongo suggested by our server.  Bad idea.

My stew showed up after our fabulous empanada appetizers, and I quickly noticed a substance floating on top with texture not often found in food. It was smooth on one side, and wrinkled and lumpy on the other – think cauliflower. I dodged this and instead tested the waters with a bite of broth and vegetables. It wasn’t terrible, but it seemed to have a funny taste that I didn’t particularly like, so after a few more cautious bites, I left it relatively untouched.

Guiso de mondongo image

Looked like a relatively innocent stew . . . with certain unidentifiable ingredients

When we got home, I decided to google “mondongo” to see what it was – turns out it’s a traditional Argentine tripe stew. Mm, mm, cow stomach – just what I was hoping for to help get rid of my cold.  Apparently that’s not considered an organ here?  Thought we’d been relatively clear when we said we didn’t like organs in our food – guess next time we’ll have to say “mondongo” as well, along with all the other non-meat parts that us Americans shy away from. Lesson learned.  Now if only I could find Campbell’s chicken noodle soup here . . .

Campbell's chicken noodle soup image

Sometimes you really need some "mm, mm, good"... But if you're in Argentina, there is NO SOUP FOR YOU! Only tripe!

How can you add your signature to a PDF for free (without printing and scanning)?

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Another question that needed answering…

I was planning to finish up a post on our wonderful experience with Aerolineas Argentina this evening, but instead got to spend some quality time figuring out the answer to the above question (thanks IRS for taking 4 months to get back to me on my 2006 taxes!).  Anyway, those of you that hang out in offices all the time won’t have much need for this tip, but in the event that you ever do need to sign a PDF and email it back to someone while on the road, here is an excellent tutorial I came across via google (which references some great and easy to get free software):

How To Add Your Signature to PDFs For Free

My thanks to the original author!