Sbraga Restaurant

Last night in Philadelphia, so after another abseil through a "best restaurants in Philly" list (why can't all best-ofs be this useful with links to the reservations) we went to Sbraga on the Avenue of the Arts/Broad Street. Lucky booking again - it's a popular venue but we snagged a 9.15pm table.

Excellent artistic presentation on a four-course semi-fixed price series of small courses. One chose from a half-dozen options for courses One Two and Three and Dessert. There was a matched beverage option, but as we'd started a bottle of Chianti at the bar we pressed on. My One Belly Pork was a paper-thin sheet across the plate with spicy sauce and cucumber, my Two Calamari was a tasty grilled delight with onions and my first taste of black yucca, my Three Belly Pork was rich and full with a baked egg pudding slice. Lynda had the Curry Tapioca Pudding for dessert, while I ran with the Pistachio Bread Pudding with Olive Oil icecream (yes, Chef is playful).

Such was the waiter's distress that he could not provide me with a digestive grappa that he brought out a complementary bourbon which he assured would have the same effect. A really splendid food experience, and more enjoyable for sitting by a window watching the streetscape.

Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

An excellent art museum - too big to do in one day, so the tickets are for two days. Very monumental, and as the scene in the Rocky movie put the museum on the map there is a statue of the character - not Sylvester Stallone - that people line up to see. I wondered whether 90% of the visitors leave after having their photo taken with Rocky :-)



The museum is very richly endowed with Van Goghs, Picassos, Renoirs and Monets. Some I recognised, some I didn't, but there was a genuine attempt on the part of the museum to be comprehensive.

 


There was a nice Gustav Klimt 

matched, appropriately, with an Egon Scheile. 

 

 I quite liked a series of early American art, especially a good collection of paintings and antiques from the life of Charles Willson Peale. Apart from paintings, there was some spectacular, lavish furniture and silverware.

 

The modern painters were very well represented, some nice Man Ray and a token Warhol:

 

and a Roy Lichtenstein

 

 

 

 

 

 However the surprising thing was bumping into Rolling Stones' stalwart Ronnie Wood and entourage looking around the Renoirs. The Stones had this week played two dates in Philly at exhorbitant ticket prices so perhaps he was shopping :-)

 

Final day NACUA

The final NACUA sessions on Saturday morning were somewhat repetitive, and the crowd seemed to have thinned out accordingly. There was a good session called Hey!You!Get Off of My Cloud! about cloud computing risks. It was explained that the title was apt (and not sad) because the Rolling Stones were actually in town, and the song was written about the loss of privacy the band was enduring after they'd become celebrities. More on that later, surprisingly.

The best speaker was a guy from Brown University who gave a bit of a masterclass about Information Security - his title at Brown.edu is Chief Information Security Officer, and he is the evangelist for info security. Best practice isn't hard in theory - encrypt storage and transmission - but obviously adherence to policy isn't a given in an academic environment.

I'd lined up for a session on "Wearing Multiple Hats" - all the risks when lawyers dabble in management - but it turned out to be role play theatre and embarrassing. I jumped to another session about "How to Survive a High Profile Case" - a nuanced and experienced panel talking about how to cope when there is a scandal or litigation and the press is all excited. A couple of good quotes:
* To the media, the past is prologue.
* The E in email stands for Evidence.

After a fond farewell to the other Australians, I headed back to the hotel feeling a bit more on holiday.

So, one last trip to the Reading Market for a deli-style corned beef sandwich (Lynda went for the Cajun cooking) and a walk along the "Gonna Fly Now" route from the movie Rocky all the way to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Dandelion "Pub"

We decided to skip friend Ken's plan to hit the clubs and had instead a pleasant Old Englishe Pubbe meal at a historic multi-level restaurant The Dandelion Pub. Quite reasonable, nice antique decor and a nice view through the bay windows at the supermoon tonight. I had the rabbit pie with "English Peas" (omg real shelled peas) and all was good.

The Stump Jump

We had a really good wine - an Australian Grenache blend called The Stump Jump by D'Arenberg in McLaren Vale. Less than $12 a bottle here or at Dan Murphy's (albeit with a bigger carbon footprint here) but as good a drop as we've had here to date.

NACUA Day Three

The third day of the conference started with a breakfast meeting of the Association, with the new Chair receiving the gavel. The organisation is very warm in its sentiments, and most of the speakers at the breakfast meeting were connected to their colleagues as dear friends. There were two tickets to next year's conference in Denver Colorado drawn from the registrant list, and we all got a Denver Cookie as above.

From there, some serious and on-topic sessions - another one on copyright litigation and then one on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) before lunch. My (dear friend and colleague) Ken had organised for all the foreign lawyers to have an Affinity Lunch, so we chomped through massive open sandwiches. Mostly the Australians turned up, but also some colleagues from elsewhere.

After lunch, a deadly serious session on conducting effective investigations with outside consultants, followed by a sponsored Ice Cream Break. It was mildly amusing watching my besuited colleagues struggling with icecreams and trying not to make a mess in a crowded, carpeted, room.

The final session for the day was by a fellow who is a whiz with automated documents - effectively setting up templates for frequently used legal precedents with a bit of special scripting to enable the lawyer to generate documents by filling out a checklist of names and numbers and a few options. Very slick - much could be done with just Word and Adobe Writer, but for the full Robolawyer one needed an added program like Hotdocs. Saving hours a week, minimum, looked well worth the investment of time.

Natch, there was One Guy who lamented not having all the documents for court in paper format, despite the modern fact that syncing the office e-records to a tablet or laptop is way more effective, reliable and (ahem) easy to carry. There is still a generation of tree-killing lawyers to go before we're achieving the dream: "Replace one printer per desk and one scanner for the office with one scanner per desk and one printer for the office".

The Barnes Foundation

The visit to the Barnes Foundation gallery turned out to be a lot of fun. Sponsored by law firm Ballard Spahr, we had drinkies and artistic nibblies before viewing the extraordinary collection of paintings brought to Philadelphia by the eccentric Dr Albert C. Barnes. The collection, funded by Barnes' dreadful patent medicine ( a silver nitrate concoction used to treat gonorrhea or indeed anything ) was derided in its day by the cultured burghers of Philadelphia and accordingly he barred the elite from the collection in perpetuity. Recently the trustees of his estate ~controversially~ moved the collection to a fab new gallery in town and since then a lot more people have seen it.

I was very impressed with the art on offer. Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Van Gogh, Picasso, lots of Renior, Monet and some excellent Modigliani. The collection is displayed as Barnes liked it - dozens of paintings in each room, interspersed with antique furniture and a whole lot of wrought iron objects.

Ballard Spahr were great hosts and provided sweet boxes in the company colours with matching sweets - yellow M&Ms, chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, lemon sherbets and others.