Apple crumble and jumping the shark

One thing I need after riding around in the pouring rain is good, hearty comfort food. And yes, it has been pouring with rain, and I haven't been wimping out and catching the bus or driving to work.

Riding in the rain isn't that bad at all. Rain doesn't generally fall in monsoonal sheets all the time - it comes and goes, meaning that on some "wet" days, I haven't gotten wet at all. I've arsed it and picked the gaps in between showers. And even if it does bucket down, it usually only pours for a short part of the ride. If you're dressed for it, it's water of a duck's back.

Here's how silly it gets - it rained all the way home, yet when I walked in the front door, I went straight to the shower to wash off all the sweat. I had been under a flooding sky for 45 minutes, and the first thing I did was to go and pour more water over myself because I had sweating pissing out of every pore. Except I got to adjust the temperature of the water. I'd hate to be poor, and unable to pour water over my leaking pores.

On to food.

I've rediscovered the crumble. For me, the secret is using a good bircher muesli in the crumble rather than plain oats. All the fruit and nuts in the muesli tarts it up nicely. I discovered this by happy accident - I had run out of plain oats, so I used up the last of a packet of bircher. I've never looked back.

I fear though that I might have jumped the shark tonight by adding just too much stuff to what is traditionally a fairly simple dish. I also threw ground almonds and dried coconut into the crumble, sprinkled slivered almonds on top and threw in a handful of dried apricots and sultanas into the apple. I'll see how it goes - I might have reached that event horizon in apple crumble cookery where just too much fruit and other whizzy bits destroys the dish.

Whatever. As they used to tell me in the Army - "If you don't eat, you don't shit. And if you don't shit, you die". With all that muesli and fruit waiting to be eaten, I don't think I am going to have any problems tomorrow.

Forgive me, for I have cooked lentils

I'm not saying any more than that.

I screw up pork belly

Geez, how hard can this be?

Pork belly
50 g garlic, chopped
15 g anchovy fillets, drained and chopped
3 thyme sprigs, leaves picked 
2 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
1 rosemary sprig, leaves picked 
pinch of salt 
25 ml pomegranate molasses 
1 kg piece pork belly, bones removed
200 ml olive oil
400 ml water

To make the pork belly, preheat the oven to 100˚C. Add the garlic, anchovy, thyme, star anise, cinnamon, rosemary, salt and pomegranate molasses to the bowl of a food processor and process until smooth. Rub the flesh side of the pork belly generously with the paste. Line a baking dish with baking paper and place the pork inside, skin side up. Drizzle the skin with olive oil and season with salt. Pour the water around the pork, transfer the dish to the oven and cook for 10–12 hours until completely soft. (You can refrigerate the pork at this point if preparing ahead.) 

Increase the oven to 220˚C and cook the pork for a further 10–14 minutes or until the skin is crisp.

Well, if you're me, it's hard beyond belief. I read the list of ingredients, then read the bit about mixing stuff in the food processor, so I threw all the ingredients for the rub into the processor and then tipped in the oil.

Oops.

The pork belly is now cooking confit style in the oven. If you can slow bake duck in a thick layer of fat, why not slow bake pork belly in a sea of olive oil?

This is either going to be an epic disaster, or it will be fantastic. I don't think it will get 10-12 hours in the oven - more like 7, and then we're having it for dinner.

Assuming it's edible.

PS - it turns out that 50gm of garlic is an entire head.

I ride; therefore, I must eat

Riding home can be a bit lonely some days, so the brain starts thinking about all sorts of things. Today, it was fixated on food. Possibly because I was bloody starving.

Over the course of half an hour or so, I decided this is what I want to cook this weekend. I had to promise my body that I would make these things - otherwise, it would have rebelled and where would I be then?

• Bread - will make the dough tonight and let it rest overnight
• Mussels - because they go so well with freshly baked bread
• Tarte tatin - already done. It should be ready to turn out by the time this blog entry is finished. More on the recipe in a minute
• Pasta - as in make my own pasta from scratch
• Slow cooked pork belly - it was fascinating to watch this bloke cook it up after he had just been on a cooking tour through........Iran. I didn't think pork belly would be that popular in Iran.

That should be enough energy to keep me going through a few more days of riding. 

As for the tarte tatin - I was going to make it days ago. I read a great tip in the linked article whereby you peel and core the apples the day before and leave them uncovered in the fridge to dry out a bit. If the apples have dried slightly, the tarte is firmer.

So of course I peeled them on Monday, smothered them in a bit of lemon juice and promptly lost them up the back of the fridge. I found them again tonight and remembered to cook the tarte.

Speaking of tarte - time to tip it over and pig out.

Pig over, pig out.

The loons the Greens reject

Whilst the Greens do their best to put a reasonable face on their party, you know that just beneath the surface, a boiling maelstrom of fadism, stupidity and ginger groups exist. This much was obvious this week when the NSW Greens health spokesman floated the idea of an inquiry into putting fluoride into water (with the aim presumably of giving an anti-fluoride loony group a soap box to spread their ravings from).

That lead balloon floated for a few millions of a second before being shot down by the Liberal health minister, the Labor shadow minister and even the Greens federal leader.

It was very refreshing to hear the idea being trounced as a "waste of money", which it surely was.

Green thieves

Two teenagers are due in court charged after a police pursuit through Sydney’s inner west this morning.
Police were in a fully-marked car behind a white Toyota Prius on Averill Street at Rhodes about 1.30am today (Sunday 9 June 2013), when the Prius allegedly made an illegal turn. A registration check revealed the vehicle had been reported stolen from Woy Woy last Wednesday (5 June).
Police activated warning lights, however, the vehicle accelerated and a pursuit was initiated. It continued along Concord Road where seconds later it struck the back of a Hyundai Getz; it then crossed the median strip and hit a BMW travelling in the opposite direction.

For crying out loud - what sort of person steals a Prius and then tries to make a run for it?

Thieves aren't getting any smarter.

Then again, they might have had a choice between stealing a Prius and a Ford, and decided to steal something that would at least get them from Woy Woy to the city without breaking down.

What kills more birds - duck hunting or wind turbines?

Just a thought - if Greens hate the killing of birds so much (ala duck hunting), why aren't they marching on wind turbines with pitchforks and firebrands?

Choice: it's getting cold, or I'm getting soft

Funny thing about the fog - it's actually nice and warm (for something that is supposed to be cold and damp).  I've been quite comfortable riding into work before dawn when the fog has been around as it's taken the edge off the morning cold.

Just when you get used to something nice, it ups and disappears on you. This morning was crystal clear - and crystal cold. Within a few minutes of hitting the road, I thought my arms were going to freeze off. I was cursing myself for not adding a thermal shirt under my jersey.

That quickly passed - by the time I got to work, I had sweat pouring down my face and dripping down my arms. If I'd added the third layer, I would have died from heat exhaustion.

I need to remember that sort of thing next time I find myself going soft at 0600.

And they call cyclists reckless

Had to drive somewhere this morning. It was foggy as hell - sensible people were taking it easy.

It was also a bit dark.

Some drivers though are invincible. One decided I was dawdling a bit, so she overtook me up the parking lane. Luckily for her, no parked cars emerged out of the fog for her to smash into the back of.

As dirty as a hippie's armpit

Hippies. Not the cleanest people who ever existed. I had a look at the bike over the weekend and decided it could do with a bit of a scrub. It really had started to look like it was owned by someone with a beard and an aversion to washing.

I got as far as scraping the built up road gunk off the chain - that took several applications of grease remover. After that, I was stuffed. The rest of the bike looks like Glastonbury in winter.

Morons

As we all know, morons come in many shapes and sizes. I had an absolute moron spree on Friday morning.

The first 3 were cyclists - two had their helmets dangling from their handle bars. I hate that - if you don't want to wear your helmet, leave it at home. It won't protect your skull from impact unless it is on your head and tightly strapped on. The 3rd had a hoodie over his head and I could hear the music blaring as he blasted past me - straight through a red light (which is what the first 2 morons did too). He didn't even seem to glance left or right before proceeding.

I was shaking my head at their stupidity when the lights went green. I started moving forward, and then slammed on the brakes.

A bus went straight through a red light in front of me. If I'd been rolling up to the lights when they changed instead of stopped, I would have smacked straight into the side of it.

Sometimes the only thing that saves you from the morons is sheer, dumb luck.

I can even stuff up making apricot balls

I had a go at making apricot balls today - muesli, dried apricots, honey and butter into the blender etc etc.

The recipe included a cup of coconut, so I chucked that into the blender too.

Whilst the ingredients were blending, I read the recipe.

It said to throw all but the coconut into the blender, then roll the balls in the desiccated coconut.

Ah well, I saved one step and it made no difference. And they don't shed little bits of coconut everywhere.

I'm socked, Bob. Absolutely shocked

One of the linkys on my sidebar goes to Bob Carr's blog.

It was revealed this week that, not only does Bob not write his blog these days - he doesn't even read it.

Makes two of us, mate.

It became pretty obvious after the election that Bob's blog was no longer an interesting download from his fertile mind. Instead, it had become a stinking swamp of press releases with all the interest of the back of a packet of cockroach baits.

I find that interesting. The intertubes were once hailed as a better means of keeping the elected in touch with the voters. Instead, it has become a medium for pouring out sanctimonious, dumbed down pap that nobody bothers to read.

Did Vivid

Had a look at the Vivid light festival this week. The photos I took are pretty useless in comparison to what the pros have been putting on line - it's definitely worth a look.

Thoughts:

1. It's a grand celebration of electricity and electric lighting. I hope we can afford to continue having these festivals in future.
2. There's plenty of things to keep young kids interested
3. It would be bloody awful to be pushing a pram around - the crowds were pretty intense
4. There are 60-odd displays to see - we saw about 1/4 of them and it was still good
5. The burgers and hot dogs on sale in the street market in the Rocks looked excellent - pity I'd had a feed before I got there
6. Photos don't do it justice - you have to turn up and experience it
7. Don't bother showing up during the day!

Labor party giving away free kicks

We had a pamphlet shoved into the letter box today - I've scanned the front of it. It must comprise the biggest series of free kicks given away to any candidate in yonks. Craig gets his name mentioned 6 times - priceless publicity paid for by the Labor party and distributed via the valuable time of the decreasing number of local Labor activists.

The inside is a whinge about how his family made their millions from gambling - and includes a statement which clearly mixes up turnover and profits.

But look at the above picture - what's not to like about it? Beer, smokes and pokies. Only the most sour faced nanny staters could find those images objectionable. If anything, they'd appeal greatly to traditional blue collar Labor voters. I don't smoke anymore, and I don't gamble - but I don't have a problem with those that choose to do so. And that beer looks awful tasty and refreshing. So much so, I had to go and put some beer in the freezer so I could have one with dinner. I now have a lovely positive association between nice cold beer and Craig Laundy.

And notice the use of the colour red and the naming of the Liberal party? That's amazing, given that Labor candidates have taken to using Liberal blue as their colour and avoiding any mention of Labor in their literature.

First rule of politics - never mention the name of your opponent. Just refer to "my opponent".

This has to get a mention in the next volume of "The history of stupid".

A day by the bay

Morning.

Mourning.

Death on the Bay?

I was zipping around the Bay Run a few weeks back when I came across a gaggle of coppers directing foot and cycle traffic on the path - something had happened, but I wasn't slowing down or stopping to find out. The last thing plod needs at times like that is a bunch of rubberneckers.

On the way home, when I passed the same spot I noticed a lot of plastic bags on the ground (not shopping bags - the sort of bags that electronic parts are sealed in) - that was odd.

I thought little of it until a few more days passed and bunches of flowers suddenly appeared on a tree at that spot.

ah.

I still have no idea what happened. Heart attack perhaps? The plastic bags might have contained something used by the paramedics perhaps?

I only remembered the flowers just then - I happened to be riding home early, and saw them before the sun set. You'd never spot them in the dark.

I'm thinking of all the old people that I see on the Run every day, strolling along and chatting with their friends. If you were going to pick a way to leave this world, that's not a bad way to go.

That's a lot of raw fruit and vegetables

I've been watching a very interesting BBC documentary called "The truth about food".



I'm not sure how much truth there is in this show, given that it's one of those modern documentaries that has been jazzed up with all sorts of devices to make it interesting enough to put on TV. Instead of a Professor Julius Sumner Miller lecture on a topic, the modern show requires a celebrity spending time in a helicopter flying over Austria to explain how long it takes poo to move through your guts.

That aside, it's worth watching if you're getting on a bit and wondering about constipation and bowel cancer. One of the things they do in episode one is lock up a bunch of subjects in a zoo for 12 days and feed them nothing but raw fruit and vegetables. They have to eat 5 kilos of raw fruit and veg a day to get enough calories. Plus one olive soaked in brine for their salt intake.

5 kilos is an awful lot of cauliflower and strawberries to be getting through. They can't cook any of it, so things like potatoes and pumpkin are off the menu. I was amazed at the sheer mass of food you need to consume if all you have is the raw stuff. And all they seem to do is lie around all day on lounge chairs gossiping and carrying on.

Personally, I'll stick to steak.

Was definitely time to clean the desk

I cleared up my desk at home today.

Found the Kindle that's been missing for weeks - it was under a stack of papers right in front of my keyboard.

Found a camera too. And a $100 Bunnings voucher.

Off to see what else I can find by cleaning up under the desk.

Lost my Kindle

Damn and blast. I was really enjoying Nick Cater's book. Now I have to clean the house in order to find it.

A good day for some

After days of mist and fog and rain, it was nice to see the sun for once. And fluffy pink clouds.

It was a lovely morning for a ride - not such a good morning to be driving (or crashing or breaking down) on the Anzac Bridge. The white care above was stuck in the middle lane with the bonnet up - the police turned up just as I got there. About 100 metres further up the bridge, there was a ute parked in the left hand lane with the hazards on - the driver was yaking on the phone and I couldn't work out if he too had broken down, or if the bloke above had smacked into the back of him and he was reporting the prang.

Not that I really cared much. I simply pitied the drivers that would be stuck in a rather large traffic snarl if those two cars weren't moved quickly.

The fog

There's a bridge in there somewhere.

There's a bay out there somewhere too. Not too much rowing going on in that murk.

Teenage kitchen mayhem

The teens got it into their heads last night to bake some biscuits. I suggested they print out the recipe, pulled out the ingredients they needed, told them to put away the washing up first and left them to it.

I saw the first batch come out of the oven - they were actually pretty good for a first attempt. In fact they were pretty good full stop. I then hit the sack, expecting that they'd clean up after themselves.

Hahahaha - I am such an idiot. I got up to find the kitchen awash with dirty utensils, and the bench tops caked in hardened biscuit dough. The teens of course were out, so I was stuck with the washing up. What astounded me is that they used every single mixing bowl that we own - all 9 of them - to make a batch of biscuits.

For crying out loud - it's not like they were making Heston's black forest gateau, which takes more utensils, gadgets, bowls and trays than I can count to produce. In fact it needs about three kitchens to come up with the different layers.



I need to have some words with them about efficiency and effectiveness in the kitchen. And washing up after themselves. Plus they didn't leave me a single bloody biscuit!

The feeding zone

No, I am not talking about a section of road in a race where team staff hand out bags of food to the likes of me. The idea of me being able to grab a bag at 40km/h, sling it over a shoulder, rifle around inside for goodies and not crash into dozens of riders around me doing the same thing is laughable. If I want a feed during a ride, I stop at a cafe and lunch like the French.

What I'm referring to is the optimum time to have lunch, assuming you've ridden to work and are planning on riding home. If you eat too early, you'll be starving by the time you're hopping on the bike. Too late, and you're riding home feeling like your guts are full of half a buffalo. Which is what I did today - after being trapped in a long running meeting, I was famished by the time I emerged from the office.

The solution?

An enormous burger with a side serving of onion rings.

Geez, it was good. But boy, did I pay for it a few hours later when it was time to dash. My guts were still grinding through the better part of the back end of a cow - it felt like I'd swallowed half a breeze block.

So the feed zone for me is around noon, and I have to stick to foods that won't wipe me out on the ride home. Creamy pasta is a disaster. The only pasta I can eat for lunch is home made stuff that isn't heavy as lead. Salads can be too light - if I have salad, I definitely need a pre-ride afternoon snack. Same goes for laksa - I love the stuff, but it doesn't fill me up. Laksa + no snack = bonking on the way home.

Most Indian and Chinese dishes are also a disaster - if I'm going Chinese, I stick to steamed fish and stir fried vegies. Fish and chips are a no-no. Any form of Subway, McDonalds, KFC or pizza is definitely to be avoided at all costs. Thai food is generally pretty good, and I love a good green papaya salad. The only downside there is the chilli tends to lead to an unpleasant afterburner effect.

This does tend to limit the options a bit - except that I've found I can eat just about anything the Japanese care to throw at me. The only downside there is the cost. If I could afford it, I'd have a bloody enormous bento box lunch every day - preferably with lashing of eel.

Melbourne weather in Sydney

Flipping Mexicans - they come north and bring their blasted weather with them. Cold and dry one morning, warm in the afternoon, raining the next morning, sunny all day and then rain on the way home. Thick fog this morning followed by sunshine and then more rain.

The fog this morning was that thick, surreal stuff that we don't get that often in Sydney. Visibility was about 100 metres at best and it did a good job of keeping people in bed. Gone are the days of fighting through packs of pedestrians walking around the Bay Run - I saw no cyclists this morning and only a handful of joggers. You've got to be tenacious to get out of bed in this weather and exercise - it's no wonder most people get fat over winter.

Although it's been wet and cool, the weather has been anything but miserable. It drizzled on the way home last night, but I reckon the dampness when I got home was 50% sweat and 50% drizzle. It was the sort of drizzle that you'd barely bother putting up an umbrella for.

What gobsmacked me though was the reaction of the teens when I got home. Their sport today was cancelled because of the rain - because the teachers are afraid of the OH&S paperwork they have to fill out if someone slips over on the wet grass.

Yep. In case someone slips WHILST PLAYING SPORT on the wet grass.

Oh dead God...........

That sucks

Riding in the snow really doesn't appeal to me.

Cadel Evans is fuming after a mechanical problem with his bike in snowy conditions cost him his second placing at the Giro d'Italia on the penultimate stage.

In a three-week race contested in the most brutal of weather conditions, it was a desperately cruel blow for the 36-year-old Australian who has sent a strong message to those who doubted he could rediscover good form ahead of the Tour de France.

With his bike malfunctioning for the last 2km up the last climb to the Tre Cime di Lavaredo summit, Evans lost a further 1m30 seconds to be 5:52 behind stage winner and race leader Vincenzo Nibali (Astana), who was all but assured of a glorious victory in his home country.

Much more painfully, he was powerless to stop Colombia's Rigoberto Uran (Sky) taking 1:11 from him to overtake him in second place with Evans 1:09 behind in third.

Evans brushed aside his BMC Racing team staff as he dismounted at the finish, examining his gears and bike and seeing the sprockets covered in slushy snow which may have prevented him using his chosen gear.

I have enough trouble with my gears when it rains - the front derailleur gums up with grit and stuff and sticks on the big cog, so I tend to find myself unable to change down when I really need to. I'm now quite adept at unclipping my right shoe and then belting the derailleur with a sideways blow with my toes in order to get it onto the small cog. Trouble is, that trick only works on the front cog. Snow would be a nightmare on the rear cluster. I have heard stories from Canberra riders about cables freezing and refusing to move in winter.

Cadel will just have to take a lesson from me - when the conditions are awful, carry a very small can of WD40.

Arts, crap and all that

Tim Blair draws our attention to a crappy new exhibition:

Difficult territory is a cornerstone of the visual arts – so artist Mikala Dwyer knew it would be confronting last night when she invited Balletlab dancers to empty their bowels as part of a performance at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
The two-hour act saw the six dancers, masked but naked beneath sheer garments, move around a room in the gallery before sitting on transparent stools and performing – only if they were moved to do so – what is usually one of our most private and rarely discussed daily acts. 

I spent half an  hour this morning searching for the annual reports of the organisations involved - Balletlab and the ACCA. I gave up trying to untangle the spaghetti-like tangle of funding sources - the way that our money is funneled to these organisations via state and federal bodies is unbelievable.

Let's just ignore the funding for a while. We know that tax dollars get poured into all sorts of weird art every year that seems to be viewed largely only by a small elite. I could rant all day about that.

Instead, let's talk about the fixation of this artist on crap - and what that says about the world today.

I have dealt with a lot of crap in my life, so I'm not squeamish about it. I've shoveled large amounts just about every sort of domesticated animal crap you can think of - horse, cow, sheep, chicken and pig. I've spent time around large flocks of chooks, ducks and geese, and believe me, they can  produce a lot of crap. Remember when cars didn't have air con and you left the windows down in summer? I learned quickly not do to that if chooks etc were around - it was a quick way to end up with eggs and crap all through your car.

I've crapped in the bush more times than I want to think about. You don't wander off into the bush alone when on a patrol or in a fighting position - you crap where someone can see you and watch over you. If you don't like crapping in front of other people, stay away from the army. The video below is not a bad depiction of how things can be. The army made me an expert at digging, constructing and filling in 4 hole crappers. I always managed to do something stupid that resulted in me getting the crap jobs.




Crap is something that has to be dealt with - if you don't deal with it properly, you end up with Cholera outbreaks in Haiti that kill thousands of people.

We forget how awful most cities were until proper sewers were installed. The annual death rates from crap related diseases were incredible. If you've got some time to kill, I strongly recommend having a look through Sewer History. It's fascinating.

We don't have to deal with crap anymore. When we need to crap, we don't need to go outside, dig a hole, crap, and then have a look at the crap as we shovel some dirt onto it. The largest domesticated dogs don't produce anything like the amount of crap that you get from the horses that a farm of 70 years ago would have had. We no longer see horses in our cities - cars having seen to that. Disposable nappies have largely removed the need to deal with the crap our kids produce. Thanks to the flush toilet and a host of other advances, crap is largely removed from our lives. The only time crap gets reintroduced is when we travel to the third world and find out how the poor deal with crap. Or more likely, fail to deal with it.

Which is probably why artists are fascinated by it - they no longer have to deal with it. Our modern life has removed us from farms, farm animals and long drop toilets. Shoveling crap, or stepping in it, is no longer a daily problem. Hey - that's an invention I forgot - those little plastic bags you use to pick up dog crap. Even dog crap has largely (but not entirely) disappeared from the urban landscape.

I have only one thing to say to everyone involved in this arts project - go spend some time on a proper working farm - preferably a dairy perhaps. You'll be over this crap before you know it.

I'm so tough, I'm amazed I haven't rusted

The office isn't equipped with enough bike parking for everyone that wants to ride when the weather is good - if you aren't in the garage by 0730, good luck with finding an easy place to park the bike. It reached the point this year where we were going to have to start double stacking to fit them all in. Cycling to work, and on weekends, has become so popular that the company is now handing out branded kit to cyclists for participation in events, and the last such event saw a pack of 30 of my work mates tooling down the highway together.

That was summer. When the weather was nice.

It's now getting pretty ugly. It's not that cold yet - I haven't switched over to the full length gloves and dug out the undershirts - but it's nippy enough to need booties and limb warmers. And we're now getting rain reasonably frequently.

I don't mind the rain, as the cloud cover makes for a warmer morning. Yes, there is a big difference between 7 degrees and 11 degrees, even if one is dry and one is wet. For me, a wet 11 degrees is comfier than a dry 7 degrees.

The rain though has washed away all the soft cocks. There were a few days last week where mine was the only bike looking for a parking spot. Everyone thinks I am nuts, but the only things you need for riding in the rain are a good spray jacket and a tough mental attitude. The body might be soft, but the attitude is not. Whenever I start riding on a miserable, dark, wet morning, I think of this:

• I slept in a warm, dry bed last night
• I had a full night's sleep
• In 45 minutes, I will be in a hot shower
• After the shower, I will dress in dry clothes
• After that, I will have a good breakfast with a nice coffee

I then think back to my time in the reserves many years ago, and the miserable conditions during every winter exercise. Broken sleep. Hard ground. No shower for a fortnight. Rat packs. Rat pack coffee. Being wet and cold for days at a time. Filthy clothes. Shaving with cold water. Thawing frozen fingers in a container of coffee.

Compared to then, riding to work is pretty comfortable. So I suck it up and turn the pedals, and before long, I'm relaxing in that hot shower.

Goat over, goat out

When I want to wind up my green-leaning friends, I tell them about how I want to get a mountain bike and start riding in national parks.

With a rifle on my back.

I call it environmentally friendly feral animal reduction.

Here's a nice story (with video) on how a national park in the Galapagos has been clearing feral goats which have denuded the vegetation.

I worked on a sheep station up north for a short period and saw the damage that large numbers of feral goats did to the vegetation - essentially, they stripped everything bare and left a dust bowl behind. Since they could climb trees to a reasonable height, they took out the trees as well as the grass and shrubs. Unless you've been there and seen the goats in action, it's pretty hard to explain it to a Balmain dweller who hasn't set foot in anything rougher than their local council-provided landscaped park (with doggie cafe and nice lattes).

I've also been to Kakadu and seen the damage done by wild pigs around the water holes - it's really impressive. Greenies would go nuts if I drove my 4WD around and around a water hole and messed it up beyond belief, but they seem to have no issues with pigs doing the same damage (and more).

I'd steer clear of eating any pigs I shot due to worries about disease, but I am fond of goat curry. If I do splash out and get the mountain bike, the hunting licence won't be far behind.

Just what we need - artists defined as "key workers"

The story - there were 15 or so "artists" living in a run down house in a very posh suburb in the eastern suburbs, until the owners finally got around to doing the place up and kicked them out. The house was so decrepit, they were paying $500 per week.

That warmed the cockles of my heart. In my younger days, I too spent years crammed into low rent flea pits with all manner of neer-do-wells. It took me back to a time when I was carefree and had enough cash in my pocket for at least two raucous nights out per week. At one point in the late 1990s, I spotted an ad in the paper for a very large, relatively cheap house at Bondi. It was obviously a dump, and it would have required 7 or 8 people to live in it to afford the rent of about $100 a week each. I was sorely tempted to take the lease and then fish around and collect a gaggle of bums to share the place.

It's a problem faced by aspiring young creative people across the city: how to afford to pursue an artistic career in Sydney, rated this year by The Economist as the world's third-most expensive city after Tokyo and Osaka?
The City of Sydney is proposing one answer. The council is pushing to have artists included in the definition of ''key workers'' - a category traditionally limited to low-income public sector workers who provide essential city services such as police, nurses, teachers and paramedics. The change would make artists eligible to apply for the limited supply of affordable housing set aside for key workers.
''There's all kinds of workers that a city needs, and not all of them will earn $100,000 a year but they are still crucial to city infrastructure and city liveability,'' Rachel Healy, who runs the council's cultural policy, says. Even established artists often earn well below the average wage, and ''there's a strong view that artists should be recognised as key workers''.
While all young people are hit by the high cost of housing in Sydney, there are strong economic and cultural arguments to help early-career creative artists to stay in the city, Healy says.
The creative industries contribute $8.2 billion to the city economy, and the sector is growing faster than all other industries, according to a recent state government draft report.
Creative people contribute much to the liveability of a city, and that cultural overlay helps attract mobile, educated graduates from all industries, Healy says. If creatives are priced out of the city, ''the overall experience of Sydney is profoundly compromised,'' she says. ''It's a very different kind of problem than, 'Oh well, it's just a bit sad that it's only the lawyers and accountants live here'.''

Ah, those were the days.

Anyway, how is a struggling artist supposed to make do in an expensive place like Sydney?

Simple - do what we did. Grow up and get a fucking job.

When did young drivers become so pathetic?

When I was young, I drove like my nuts were on fire and I needed to get somewhere very fast in order to put them out. A slew of accidents testified to the fact that I thought I was a much better driver than I really was, coupled with excess speed and a fairly reckless attitude around getting from A to B.

Whilst there are still plenty of young drivers wrapping themselves around power poles at 0300hrs, I've noticed an increase in totally pathetic P-platers. My weekend road trip took me through a number of fixed speed cameras. They were advertised well in advance, so there was no hope of anyone actually getting booked for speeding. However, instead of slowing down to say 89km/h to go through a 90km/h camera, I was stuck behind a series of young numpties who insisted on slowing down to 60km/h in a 90 zone.

60!! If the kids weren't in the car, I would have been turning the air blue with expletives. What's gotten into the little buggers?

More adventures in Gongolia

Spent the weekend at a friend's place down the coast, just past Gongolia. I've come back without the major symptoms of Gongoloidioness, which generally involve writing long rants about random stuff.

I took the bike. I'm trying to decide whether that was a mistake or not. The land around our place is relatively flat. The land where we stayed was anything but, and I failed to consult a topographic map before going on my ride. Hills. More hills. Huge freaking hills - one after the other. Good for your fitness, but insanely hard work. I thought I was going to die.

But dying of heart failure on the outer Gongolian hills was the least of my worries. Getting mangled on the drive back was a greater risk - because some of the morons driving home on Sunday night were either driving with two blown headlights, or they couldn't work out why they had a hard time seeing where they were going on a pitch black freeway at 9pm. Don't ask me what it is about Gongolia that does this to people, but it's pretty frightening.

Death to flappy straps

I hadn't thought about this in years, but it was forced into my consciousness recently.

I have a thing about flappy straps on back packs. Those of you who have lugged the green variety around should understand my lunatic obsession. When I get a new back pack, the first thing I do is set the straps to the correct length, then either cut off the excess strap or roll it up and bind it with insulation tape (black only). Or I cut a fair bit of strap off, leave a bit in case I need to loosen it later and then bind up the excess straps with tape.

There can be no flappy straps. All loose straps must be neatly tidied away.

I hadn't even realised I was doing this until Junior borrowed a back pack recently. When it was returned, all the straps were flapping loose - he'd pulled off the tape to adjust the straps, but then hadn't tidied them up again before returning it. (Actually, I found it on the floor in his bedroom under a pile of rubbish, socks and noodle packets when I had to go looking for it).

I was about to launch into a loud rant when I caught myself and stopped. How on earth was I going to explain the whys and wherefores of this non-flappy strap requirement? It was better to just shut up, find the insulation tape and tidy them up again.

How crap was your car?

Fascinating look at how the cars of the past have faded away. Here and here.

I love these videos

I love these videos that show how quickly new inventions have been adopted over the last century.

Overdrive

Overdrive - a word I suddenly thought about when I was considering taking the teenagers for a practice drive around the block. It's presumably meaningless to most of the teenagers of today - I'll have to ask them if they really understand what it means. Having grown up in the days of the three on the tree, and considering a 4 speed floor shifter to be the height of automotive sophistication, it's amazing to consider the advances that have now given us 7 and 9 speed automatic transmissions, flappy paddles and all that sort of stuff.

Back in the 1980s, I was lent for about a year a small sporty car that had overdrive. I think that was the only car I've ever driven for an extended period that was fitted with it. It was operated electrically by a button on the gear knob. Being an English car, it amazed us by working - most of the time. Whether it produced better fuel economy on the long country drives was another matter - I didn't notice any improvement. However, I'm sure it allowed car salesmen to shift a few more units of product.

I'll have to think of some more words that no longer really have a contemporary meaning. Whilst people still talk about shifting into overdrive, the overdrive itself is long gone as a useful product.

Why can't the public sector develop good services?

Catching a bus isn't that painful these days thanks to a great app called TripView. After trying the free version, I was more than happy to spend a huge $2.99 on the full version. Anyone paying a visit to Sydney with the intention of catching a train, ferry or bus should buy it before they get here. It's brilliant.

It doesn't eliminate the smelly, fat people that you have to deal with on the bus occasionally, but it takes the hassle out of catching public transport at the right time.

The software was developed by a private company. When they started, they didn't have real time information on the location of the bus or train that you wanted to catch - that was introduced this year. In fact, the public monopolies were so manic about keeping their timetabling information to themselves, that the company had to develop a way to scrape the timetables from their websites. It just goes to show how individual persistence and ingenuity can overcome bureaucratic stupidity and inertia.

Many years ago, I used to drink with a bloke who was a software developer for the railways. This was back in the days of the Nokia banana phone - the one used by Nemo in The Matrix. That's how long ago this was. He managed to convince his boss to buy something more advanced than the Nokia 3210, which was the most popular phone at the time. He got one that came with a very basic data service, and in his spare time on weekends, he developed an app that could push timetable information to the phone.

It was pretty hopeless, but it demonstrated what could be done with a very clunky phone and a data service that ran at no more than 9kb/s. It was also expensive to run as data services were in their infancy.

So it ended up being a total failure, but it was an interesting experiment. He tried to get some internal support to take it further - to turn it into a customer facing app - but management couldn't be less interested. Making life easier for the customer was not in their remit. They didn't think anyone would want to use it. In the end, he moved on, and I haven't had a beer with him in quite a while.

When the conservatives got into power, one of the things that they did was to force the public transport operators to open up their timetables and real time information feeds to private software developers. I imagine the Transport Minister had to beat the bureaucrats over the head with a baseball bat for months to make that happen. Resistance would have been intense, and I bet one of the reasons for resisting would be the idea that they suddenly wanted to develop an app like this, and allowing private competition would put that project at risk.

I saw things like that happen a few times when I was in the public sector. The bureaucrats would have less than zero interest in doing something until someone from outside popped up and said that they could do it. With great rapidity, the bureaucrats would circle the wagons and mount a spirited defense to ensure that the interloper didn't trespass on their turf. Once the interloper was beaten back, they went back to doing nothing about that particular issue. Protection of their turf was key. Delivering a service to the public was barely even considered.

So if you ever get to use TripView, you can thank the current Minister and her staff for belting the bloody bureaucrats until they relented and made the timetabling and real time information public. Or at least partly public. Whenever I have to catch a bus or train, I say a silent thanks to Gladys.

And people wonder why I always get my iced coffee from the same place

I have often been accused of being a man of rigid habits - for not trying new things on a whim - and instead sticking to the tried and tested. I won't argue with that too much - I have my moments where I throw caution to the wind and give something new a go, but generally, I go with what I know.

I had an early morning meeting at the other end of town this week, so I breakfasted at Vivo Cafe. After scanning the menu, I discovered that they sold an iced latte that looked awfully like what I always want - just coffee, milk and ice. However, there was a wrinkle, as the menu explained:

Cold Brew Coffee 
All our cold coffee drinks start with this base. This method of cold extraction gives a sweet, full bodied flavour without any bitterness. It takes over 8 hours to extract 3 litres of coffee!

This I was not so sure of. I always ask the barrista to pull me a fresh shot of coffee straight from the machine, and to add extra ice if necessary to cool down the drink. If the coffee and barrista are any good, this pretty much guarantees a good iced coffee. However, I decided I'd give this "cold brew" method a crack.

And the results?

For $5.80, it was almost the most expensive, disgusting iced coffee I've ever sampled. It wasn't the most expensive, or the most disgusting - but it was up there (or down there) with the worst. The coffee was insipid and sickly sweet - almost undrinkable. It's what you get when your palate has been fouled by the commercial "iced coffees" that pollute the supermarkets across the eastern seaboard - products that have 10 times too much sugar in them and nowhere near enough coffee. It's what you get when you believe the market is crying out for yet another sweet, sugary concoction. As if we don't have enough of those already!

The breakfast itself wasn't bad. Can't complain about the service. Price was what you'd expect in the middle of the CBD (ie, expensive). But the iced latte was the pits.

There goes another suit

Every now and then, I have to don black tie for an event. It's been quite a while since I've had to do this - having kids precluded us from attending these sorts of things for some years, but the kids are now at an age where such things are possible again. It was just too expensive to hire a nanny etc on a regular basis - cheaper to stay at home and be unsociable. With an event coming up, I decided tonight I should pull the suit and shirt out of the wardrobe and check that they still fit.

Just one small problem - all the cycling since our last social outing has caused my thighs to swell somewhat. Actually, more than somewhat. "Enormously" would be more accurate. I can't fit into my bloody trousers anymore! With a lot of tugging and squeezing, I managed to get them on and found to my amazement that I could do them up - the waist was fine - but sitting down or moving was out of the question. Bending over would surely result in a great deal of seam splitting in the worst possible place.

So there's an unexpected cost of cycling. New suits.

The wretchedness of trying to build a cheap PVR

My old PVR is dead. To give you an idea of how old it is, it contains a 40GB hard drive. It's ancient - not even worth trying to salvage any bits out of it.

Since Le Tour is approaching, I need to get something up and running to record SBS. I've been looking at a variety of PVRs that range from very cheap to around 500 bucks, and I'm yet to find one that really stands out and says "buy me". I want something that will record TV and allow me to copy existing movies onto it over the network - I've ripped most of our DVDs, and I don't like the idea of using attached external storage.

I was having a hard time deciding what to do, when I had a brain wave. I bought a new PC recently, so why not rebuild the old one as a PVR? How hard could it be?

Well, for something that seemed so straightforward at first, it's turned into a nightmare thanks to Bill Gates and his crew of useless programmers. I thought about building it with Linux for about 5 seconds, and then gave that idea away. I rebuilt an old laptop last year with Linux, and whilst it worked and ran well, I never gelled with the software. I'm starting to have second thoughts about using Linux.

The only OS I had for the old PC was Vista, so I plonked it on - dead easy. Then I tried to apply service pack 1. I must have tried it 20 times over the last 4 days, and spent hours looking at workarounds on various forums. I've even rebuilt the PC 5 times - no dice. It just refuses to accept SP1.

Which is bonkers, since I rebuilt it and installed SP1 and SP2 just last year. Maybe it hates me for relegating it to the lounge room. I don't know.

Anyway, my advice after dicking around with it for the better part of an entire weekend is just go out and buy a proper PVR that someone else has built.

This is good

I picked this ad up over at Samizdata, where they are arguing about whether this ad will annoy the living daylights out of you, or make you want to drink gin.



Right now, I feel like a G&T. I guess it comes down to your personality.

How do you feel about it?

The bloody weather, amongst other things

One thing you develop as a cyclists is a reasonably keen interest in the weather. There's no climate control button on the handlebars that will keep you at a constant 21 degrees, and of course there's no protection from any of the elements. Or insects. Birds. And dogs.

A few short months ago, I was complaining about the heat. Now, I'm worrying about how cold it will be tomorrow morning, and looking forward to when it starts warming up again. We're never satisfied. It's almost always too hot, too cold, too windy, too wet or too dry.

We've managed to get out of town for a few weekends so far this year, travelling down beyond where the Gongoloids live. Or the Gongolians. Either term fits (that's how I describe the denizens of Wollongong and its  environs). On our first visit, I packed the bike and went for an early morning ride around the local area of the beachside town that we were staying in. Bloody hell - I almost died of heart failure on the umpteenth hill. I have never been so knackered and ready to quit on a ride. Ever.

I can do big hills, and I can do a fair few hills, but I can't do lots of big hills with very little spacing between them where you can recover. It was like riding a rollercoaster. I met a few middle aged blokes cycling the other way - they looked as drained and haggard as I. I wonder if they were also asking themselves why on earth they were suffering so on a beautiful Saturday morning.

I missed that Saturday afternoon as I got home, showered and promptly slept for 5 hours.

We have since been back again. For various reasons (cowardice not included), the bike stayed at home. However, we did a family outing and I had the opportunity to drive the same route that I had previously cycled.

Our car, and lots of other cars, struggled to make it up the hills that almost killed me - they were deceptively steep and horribly long. It was no wonder I'd suffered so much.

Next time, I'll have a look at a map before heading out, and take note of the topography.

Phew

I think posting has been so light of late because the new template was annoying me no end. It made Blogger as slow as a wet week, and it always screwed up the layout of most posts. So it's back to the future for me.

We eat a lot of icecream

I bought this book on ice cream manufacturing many years ago - don't ask why. Back then, it cost me over a hundred bucks.

The current edition has a table showing per capita consumption for different countries. Australia leads the pack at 17.9 somethings - the table is not clear what it is measuring. Volume? Value? Waffle cones?

That's my factoid for the day. And now, I feel like some gellato.

And now for the best ribs that I have had in decades

You wonder why I blog about food and cycling a lot? Simples - I like to eat (I am  not some svelte skinny super model as a result), so I need a means to burn off the intake. I'm not big on vomiting after a meal to keep the calorie intake down.

After trashing a joint in my last post, let me introduce you to some good tucker - a place calls Ribs & Burger. They were so good, I'm thinking about going there for lunch. Right now. Even though it isn't even 11am yet.

Yes, they're in a food court, and the ribs can be a bit expensive - but bloody hell - they're good. I don't mind forking out the cash if the food is worth it, and these are worth every cent.

If you can get over the bit about it being in a food court, then it's heaven on a stick. I just wish my local pub served ribs this good - can't think of anything better than spending an evening with a fine platter of ribs and a few cold beers in a place with a bit of ambiance. (Did I mention they're in a food court, which has the ambiance of, well, a food court?)

The worst ribs ever - in the entire universe even

My food intake spans the entire spectrum from bad to good. After spending years surviving on boarding school food, uni college food and army ration packs, I'm really not that fussy about what I'm eating when I need to eat. If I'm hungry, I'll shovel down whatever is on offer. Except maybe the sheep's eyeball. Unless it comes with a tasty sauce on the side.

On the other hand, when I have a bit of time and money to spare, I like to eat as well as I possibly can. That's when the food snob side takes over. I don't see the point in eating a bad meal if you have the means to eat a good meal.

Which brings me to Pancake Parlor. We've eaten there twice in the last 6 months - mainly because the kids needed feeding when we were on an outing and it was there. And OK, I needed feeding too. It serves up the sort of bland, sweet, filling food that will tempt kids in the 4-18 age bracket to actually eat when you want them to eat.

I'm not going to fault the pancakes - they are "pan cakes". If you like that sort of thing (and clearly the Japanese students living within walking distance of Darling Harbour really like that sort of thing), then they do it quite well. Big, fat bland cakes that have been cooked in a pan and then smothered with cheap cream, icecream or syrup. Or all three. They are definitely not my thing - I prefer a thin crepe that can be rolled up and shoveled down like a cheap, fat cigar.

That's not a very good analogy, but it's early on Sunday morning, so it will have to do.

As an aside, Mum bought a crepe pan back in the late 1970s. It was electric, and it had a convex non stick surface that was perfect for making crepes. You made a bowl of crepe mix (which is thinner than pancake mix) and then dipped  the upside down crepe maker into the mix. It was the height of sophistication back then. It's pretty clear where my food snobbery comes from. It was fun as a young kid to make the crepes, and then flame them in a good glug of brandy. My parents have always enjoyed sloshing alcohol onto things and then letting the kids set it on fire. So long as the kids didn't get splashed with brandy and also get set on fire, everything was fine. My parents still do it whenever kids and dessert are in the same room. Dad would set fire to apple pie if you let him.

So I'm a crepe guy, not a big fat pancake guy. But the kids don't mind the pancakes, so we've eaten there twice.

On both occasions, I've had the ribs. The ribs are expensive at $26, and for that price, I expect pretty good ribs. I also can't take pancakes for lunch. It's just wrong.

Pretty good ribs are exactly what I didn't get. I tried the beef ribs the first time round - they were adequately cooked, but not falling off the bone, and the sauce appeared to have been painted on at the last minute. They were edible, but overpriced and underspiced. I can understand the lack of kick - the demographic they are serving are probably not interested in a really spicy set of ribs.

Second time around, I went for pig. I had much the same experience, expect the ribs were served cold. Not frozen. Not fridge temperature. Just "I've been sitting on the bench for 3 hours" cold. There was not a hint of warmth in a single rib of that pig.

Under normal circumstances, I would have sent them back for a bit of nuking. However, I gave the staff one look (The fish that John West rejected was the first thing that came to mind) and decided I'd just grin and bear it. After all, they weren't that good to start with, so eating them cold wasn't going to make them much worse.

And you know what? That was pretty much correct. The youngest has just walked over with a toy bucket and told me that it's his chum bucket. Thanks to that happening, the Pancake Parlor and the Chum Bucket are now firmly fixed in my mind as twins. By the way, read down at the link to see what chum is made of.

The sad thing is that we will inevitably eat there again, and I'll eat the ribs - again. I'm a sucker for punishment.

My guts know if I'm going to ride or not

Do you ever promise yourself you'll get up early and do something the following morning, and then you wake up at 0-dark-hundred and start shilly-shallying about doing it? You lie there and your brain starts processing the pros and cons of doing whatever it is you were going to do, and half the time, you don't end up getting out of bed.

Now that the weather is getting wetter and colder, I'm experiencing more of those moments. It's OK during the week - I  have to get to work, and the later I leave, the worse the traffic will be. Is there really much difference between leaving at 0600 when it's 12 degrees and raining or at 0700 when it's 13 degrees and raining and the roads are full of half asleep drivers who are more dangerous than a Nigerian with your bank account details.

The weekends are something altogether different. I don't have to do anything, but I like to get up early and get some exercise and preferably a bit of social interaction with some other cyclists.

The clearest indicator of whether I will ride or not is my guts. I have some sort of subconscious connection between the lizard component of my brain and my bowels. If the primeval part of my brain knows I am going to ride, then the bowels start moving and it's game over - I have to get up, crap and then go do a few miles. 

I think this is because I went for an early morning swim many years ago, and found that as I was walking towards the beach just before sunrise, I had an absolutely overwhelming need to do an enormous crap. It's a good thing the public toilets at North Bondi were open at that hour - otherwise, I would have crapped on the grass out of sheer necessity. There was no holding it back.

Since then, my guts have never let me leave the house for any form of exercise without voiding themselves first. It doesn't matter what I'm doing - swimming, skiing, running, cycling or just going for a long stroll - the guts are taking no chances. They're never getting caught short again.

So for me, I don't have to stuff around trying to decide whether to ride or not. If the guts say "go", I go. And frankly, they usually make better decisions than my brain.

More great cullinary disasters

Made chocolate mousse tonight. You know how it is supposed to be soft and fluffy and light?

Mine is like aerated concrete.

However, it's pretty potent. More than a few spoonfuls supplies a rush like 6 cups of coffee and a tab of speed.

Something from a seat of learning

I give you - the Bristol stool scale. Developed at the University of Bristol. This has nothing to do with home furnishings.

See? Not everything that comes out of modern unis is complete crap.

Stupid decisions = bad outcomes

Friday was one of those days when I must have taken some stupid pills after lunch. I couldn't believe how idiotic I was when I rode home. For starters, I misjudged how fast a car was coming towards me at an intersection, and I rode right out in front of it. Thankfully, the driver was smarter and faster reacting than me, and they braked and avoided running me down.

Not 2 minutes later, I made a silly overtaking decision and narrowly avoided a head on prang with another cyclist.

After that, I took it really, really easy. I'm convinced things like this happen in threes, and I didn't want number 3 to end up with me getting carted off in the back of an ambulance.

Here's my gripe for the day - people make stupid decisions all the time, but there are some that are adamant that the bad outcome they just suffered was a result of a stupid decision they made earlier. Blame always has to be sheeted home somewhere else. I know that if I'd ended up under that car yesterday, it would have been my own damned fault for being a bonehead - and I'd learn my lesson and not do it again. What is it with some people that refuse to admit they were stupid, and continue to make the same stupid  mistakes again and again?

Cream snobs

I've done something right.

I've raised my kids to be cream snobs.

I whipped up a self saucing chocolate pud tonight. In anticipation, I put "double cream" on the shopping list - that's the best stuff to have with a rich chocolate pudding.

The missus obliged and duly brought home a tub of double cream. However, I forgot to mention that some of the local supermarkets are no longer stocking proper double cream - they only carry cream that has been thickened with gelatin. I've found that out from reading the ingredients of every tub of cream in the supermarket fridge.

So we ended up with gelatin infused cream in the fridge - an abomination in my books - but I was none the wiser.

The kids got a bowl of pudding each. The cream was put on the dining table for them to serve themselves.

Both tried the cream and said, "I'm not eating that". I was told in no uncertain terms to return to the kitchen, find some proper cream and whip it up. Which I did. Bless their little cotton socks. They might be unable to read the ingredients on a tub of cream, but they can tell crap when they see it.

You want sauce with that?

I've discovered an excellent burger place in the city - the wagyu steakburger is a killer. The steak is literally melt in the mouth - I can't ever remember biting into a "minute steak" and not finding myself chomping and gnashing at it in an effort to bite off a chunk, and ending up with a slice of tomato sliding out and landing on my shirt.

The burgers are good.

The chips are pretty good too - big, fat chunky things. The perfect antidote to skinny little french fries.

The sauces that you can have with your chips are bloody good - especially the aioli.

Just one issue.

The burgers cost around 10 bucks. That much is made clear from the big board behind the counter.

I figured out the chips cost $3.50 a serve by ordering some with a burger and then subtracting $9.90 from the total price. I've been there 4 times, and am yet to find a menu that lists the chips and their cost.

The killer is the cost of the sauce - 2 bucks for a little tub of sauce. Yes, the sauce is fantastic, and I love dipping my chips into it, but I hate the fact that I only worked out the cost by ordering a burger, chips and sauce and then subtracting the cost of the first two items from the total cost. Two bucks is a lot to pay, which is probably why they do their best to shield you from the cost. By the time you've handed over more than 15 bucks, it's too late to retract the sauce. You're hooked. You're suckered.

And you're very well fed. I like the food. It's the transparency that sucks.

That said, if I had known the first time how expensive the sauce was, I never would have ordered it, and I never would have found out how good it was. Colour me torn......

Since when did breakfast cost 25 bucks?

I took advantage of the Easter break to put some extra miles on the bike. Saturday's foray took me to a stamping ground that is becoming familiar - Danks St in Waterloo. There are a number of fine looking cafes along a strip about 100 metres long, and I've decided to work my way through them as time permits.

As most of the cafes were closed that morning when I got there, the choice came to the Sonoma Bakery or Societe wine bar.

I chose Societe. I wish I'd read the reviews on Urbanspoon first - most were pretty unhappy with the place.

Let me add my unhappiness to the list.

Coffee - not too bad. No complaints.

Service - fine, but there were only 2 of us in the whole place.

Decor/atmosphere/seats - no complaints

Food - when I pay $21.50 for an omelet, I expect a world class experience. Instead, I got something that was so dry, I was sure the chef had simply dropped a few yellow kitchen sponges into the frying pan and then tossed a few other ingredients on top. It took me a while to chew through it, and it wasn't that tasty. I like my omelets to ooze, and to be bursting with squishy flavour. I got anything but that.

I forgot to mention what toast I wanted, so I didn't get any at all. 1 out of 10 if you're lucky for both quality and value.

The pricing might have been Easter pricing with lots of loadings, but it was still a freakingly expensive meal for one. And given how poor it was, I might as well have given 25 bucks to a wino and watched him spend it on cheap port.

I didn't even consider ordering an iced coffee - they wanted 7 bucks (yes, seven bucks!!!!) for an iced coffee, and I couldn't be bothered trying to haggle them down given that I don't want any cream, ice cream of chocolate sprinkles or syrup polluting my coffee. When I saw what they wanted to charge for something so simple, I knew I was in trouble. So actually the completely rooted omelet was not that much of a surprise when it arrived.

The upside is that there are at least half a dozen more places to try along Danks St, and even more along Bourke St, so one failure isn't anything to worry about.

Hard work (for someone else)

When the kids were younger, I thought about getting one of these kid-bike things that you bolt onto the back of your bike in order to tow the youngster around.

Glad I didn't - watching this bloke struggle up this ramp put me right off it. His kid was just lying back, feet off the pedals, not doing a thing to help. Then again, the excess baggage around my guts probably weighs about as much as his kid plus the bike, so who am I to talk?

I just realised my headmaster must have read Xenophon

I stumbled upon "Spartan Society" by Xenophon today, and his description below bears some eerie similarities to my boarding school experiences...... The whole thing is worth a read.


4. Now that I have explained about procreation I want to give a precise account of education. Elsewhere in Greece those who claim to give their sons the finest education put their children under the care of servants as tutors and dispatch them to schools to learn reading and writing and music and the art of wrestling. They make their children’s feet soft with shoes and their bodies delicate with many clothes. As for food, they let them eat as much as their stomachs can hold. But Lycurgus, in place of the private assignment of slave tutors to each boy, stipulated that a man should take charge of them as Train-in-Chief. Lycurgus gave this man authority both to assemble the boys and to punish them severely. He also gave him a squad of young adults equipped with whips to administer punishment when necessary. The result has been that respect and obedience in combination are found to a high degree at Sparta.

5. Rather than letting boys’ feet grow soft in shoes, he told them emphatically to make them strong by not wearing shoes, in the belief that this practice should enable them to walk uphill with greater ease, jump better, and run faster than the one with shoes. And instead of their clothes serving to make them delicate, he required them to become used to a single garment all year round, the idea being that thereby they would be better prepared for cold and heat. As for food, he instructed the eiren to furnish for the common meal just the right amount for them never to become sluggish through being too full, while also giving them a taste of what it is not to have enough. His view was that boys under this kind of regimen would be better able, when required, to work hard without eating, as well as to make the same rations last longer; they would be satisfied with a plain diet, would adapt better to accepting any type of food, and would be in a healthier condition. He also considered that a diet which produced slim bodies would also make them grow tall.

6. On the other hand, while he did not allow them to take what they required effortlessly, to prevent them suffering from hunger he did permit them to steal in order to ward off starvation. Clearly a prospective thief must keep awake at night, and by day must practice deception and lie in wait, as well as have spies ready if he is going to seize anything. So clearly it was Lycurgus’ wish that by training the boys in all these ways he would make them more resourceful at feeding themselves and better fighters. Someone might ask then, if he considered theft a good thing, why on earth did he inflict many lashes on a boy who was caught stealing? My answer is, because people chastise anyone who does not perform satisfactorily. After making it an honor for them to snatch as many cheeses as possible from the Temple of Artemis Orthia, he commanded others to whip them, thereby demonstrating that a short period of pain may be compensated by the enjoyment of long-lasting prestige. With the intention that even in the absence of the Trainer-in-Chief the boys should always have someone ein charge of them, he authorized any citizen who happened to be present at the time to give the boys whatever instruction he thought proper, and to punish any slip they might make. By this measure he gave the boys a greater sense of respect. To ensure that someone should be in control of the boys even when no adult happened to be on the spot, he deputed the smartest of the eirens to take command of each squadron. As a result the boys of Sparta are never without someone in charge of them.

7. The time when boys reach their teens is the very moment when others remove them from tutors, remove them from schools and have nobody in charge of them any longer, but rather leave them independent. Here, too, Lycurgus took the opposite view. Because he appreciated that at this age boys become self-willed and are particularly liable to cockiness — both of which produce powerful cravings for pleasure — this was the age at which he loaded them with the greatest amount of work and contrived that they should be kept occupied most of the time. In his wish to see a sense of respect strongly implanted in them, he have orders that even in the streets they should keep both hands inside their cloaks, should proceed in silence, and should not let their gaze wander in any direction, but fix their eyes on the ground in front of them. Certainly, you would sooner hear a cry from a stone statue or succeed in catching the eye of a bronze one than a Spartan boy. And whenever they attended the mess, they were only allowed to respond to questions the men put to them. Such, then, was the attention he devoted to youths.

8. However, he displayed the greatest concern by far for the young adults, in the conviction that they had the most influence for the good of the state if they were of the right character. From his observation that when people have the strong innate spirit of competition their choruses are the ones most worth watching, he came to think that if he could also urge the young adults to compete in excellence, then they would attain the height of manly gallantry. Let me explain how he used to urge them.

9. From among them the ephors select three of those in their prime. Each of these picks 100 men with a clear explanation of why he approves some and rejects others. As a result those who do not achieve the honor are at war with both those who have dismissed them and those chosen instead of them, and the two groups are on the lookout for any negligent act which may go against the accepted standards of honor. This is also the type of competition most highly favored by the gods and best suited to a citizen community — in which the conduct demanded of brave men is spelled out and each of the two groups independently strives to ensure that it will always prove superior. But should any need arise they would as one protect the city with all their might. They must keep themselves physically fit too, since their rivalry brings on fights whenever they meet. However, all passers-by have the right to separate the combatants. Anyone who defies the man attempting to separate them is brought before the ephors; they levy a stiff fine in their desire to establish the principle that anger must never prevail over respect for the law.

10. As for those who have passed beyond the youngest grade of adulthood, other Greeks, after removing their obligation to keep up their physical strength, nonetheless require them to go on serving in the army when necessary. Lycurgus by contrast made hunting the noblest of pastime for men of this age, so that they could stand up to the exertions of campaigning just as well as the youngest men. This then completes my account of the training Lycurgus prescribed by law.

11. When Lycurgus too the Spartans in hand they were living in separate households like Greeks elsewhere. He concluded that this was the cause of a great amount of misbehavior and so devised his scheme for common messes, thinking gthat these would reduce disobedience. The rations he fixed in such a way that they should have neither too much nor too little food. There is never a shortage of food on the table, yet neither is there a lavish spread. When it came to wine he stopped excessive drinking — which causes both physical and mental degeneration — and just let each man drink whenever he felt thirsty. In his view this is the least harmful and most enjoyable way of drinking. With common messes of this type how would anyone ruin either himself or his household by greediness or alcoholism?

12. In other cities men of the same age generally congregate together and respect only their own social group. But at Sparta Lycurgus mixed ages together in the belief that it is beneficial for the younger men to learn from the older ones. Indeed, it was the custom that any noble act on the part of any citizen was discussed in the messes, so that there was limited opportunity for drunken behavior. Eating out certainly brings out more benefits. To get home the Spartans have to walk, taking care not to trip and fall under the influence of wine. They also have to do in the dark what they do by daylight; men still liable for military service are not even allowed a torch. Lycurgus further noted that the same rations improve the complexion, physique, and strength of hard workers, whereas they give lazy people a bloated, ugly, and feeble appearance. It would certainly not be easy for anyone to find men healthier or more physically adept than Spartiates.

13. Lycurgus definitely held the opposite view to the majority of Greeks in the following ways too. In other cities each man is master of his own children, slaves, and property.. But Lycurgus, in his wish to arrange that citizens might enjoy a mutual benefit without injury to anyone, caused each man to be master of other people’s children just as much as his own. Should any boy ever tell his father that he was beaten by another, then it is a disgrace if the father does not give his son another beating. To such a degree do Spartans trust each other not to discipline children carelessly or dishonor good order. He even authorized them to use other people’s household servants too if anybody needed them. He also authorized the sharing of hunting dogs. They have the same arrangement with horses, so that if someone needs to go somewhere fast and happens to spot a horse anywhere, he just takes it, and then duly returns it after use. He also arranged to have food caches stocked throughout Sparta so that those in need could break the seals and take what they needed. By sharing with each other in this way, even those who possess little can benefit from everything in the polis whenever they are in need.

14.  There are also the following practices instituted by Lycurgus which are quite the opposite from those elsewhere in Greece. In the other poleis everyone naturally makes as much money as possible; some are farmers, others ship owners or traders, while crafts support others. But at Sparta Lycurgus banned all free men from the pursuit of wealth and prescribed that their sole concern should be with things that make cities free. Lycurgus demanded that provisions should be contributed on an equal basis and the way of life be uniform, thus doing away with self-indulgent passion for wealth. There is no point in making money even for the sake of clothes, since it is physical vitality which gives men a distinctive appearance not lavish dress. There is no point in amassing money to spend on fellow members of the mess either, since Lycurgus instilled the idea that the person who helps his companions by undertaking physical labor is more reputable than the one who spends money — the former service comes from the heart, whereas the latter is a function of being rich.

Great cake disasters

Cakes - I really know how to make a mess of making them. My baking experiences are a litany of blunders and mishaps.

I made one last weekend, and didn't cook it for long enough. The middle bit was just a tiny bit squishy - but the rest was edible. Problem is, we had a hot week, the cake didn't go in the fridge and it started rotting from the squishy middle bits after 2 days. Blunder one.

I whipped up a chocolate cake this morning - not very Eastery of me, but I don't have a recipe for chocolate hot cross buns. I was a bit cavalier when I took it out of the oven - instead of sliding it carefully onto the bench, I dropped it.

The cake collapsed faster than a Cypriot bank. It now resembles a swimming pool or a deep fish pond. The icing in the middle must be at least an inch thick.

Too many ambulances

It's been a long time since I've seen a crashed rider requiring an ambulance - and then along come two such crashes this week.

Both happened in Pyrmont before I got there. I was riding into work and a pack went past going in the other direction. The last rider called out "Watch out - there's a rider clown up ahead". "Rider clown?", I thought. WTF?

When I got to the next intersection, there was a rider down. He already had his helmet off and was just lying there with a few other people around him, obviously waiting for an ambulance. No point in me stopping, so I pushed on. No idea what caused him to crash. He wasn't bleeding, but he was obviously in a lot of pain.

Coming home that night, and just a bit further up the road, I spied an ambulance and police car on the side of the road. When I got up to them, the ambos were treating a rider. Again, no idea what brought him down.

I reckon these things come in threes, so I spent the rest of the ride home trying not to become casualty number three.

---------------

Postscript.

On the way into town that morning, a taxi pulled up next to me at the lights and the passenger would down his window and asked me about my ride to work. It turned out he had just started riding to work, and I told him that it was great and safe and he should do it more often.

10 minutes later, I passed the downed rider.......

Freedom conference

Unfortunately, as per the last post, I'll be too busy to make this conference on 6-7 April. But you should get along.

Too busy to scratch myself

Blogging has indeed been slow - got lots to do. Work has been insane lately, and the home life didn't get any better when the kids went back to school. Just too much to do and not enough time to blog. It comes down to a choice between blogging and sleeping - and I choose sleep.

How to eat Vegemite

This guy gets through it almost as fast as the kids.

It's March, and I still haven't watched live TV this year

I was flopped on the couch, reading a book, when I looked at the TV and realised I have not watched anything live on it so far this year that grown up in nature. I think I've watched one recorded movie, and that's it. The kids get to watch ABC2 (the kids channel), but if I happen to be in the room when they're watching it, I'm either reading or snoozing on the couch.

No news. No current affairs. No cooking shows or reality stuff. No historical series or movies or comedies. No sport. Not even NCIS, which had me hooked for 6 seasons. I just haven't found a reason to turn it on and channel surf.

In fact I probably haven't really watched anything on it since November.

Of course come June 21, this will all come to an end. For three weeks. I'll definitely have to invest in a new DVR before then so I can stop falling asleep on the couch an hour into each stage of Le Tour.

Riding bikes is so much comfier....

From here - http://www.explosm.net/comics/3098/

Thanks for the tip, Agro.

The incredible weirdness of the internet

http://www.breadedcats.com/

Breaded cats. Need I say more?

Cav - this is something to look at, not something for you to do with your damned cat.

Who the hell smokes dope at quarter to seven in the morning?

One of the oddest things about my commute up and down Lilyfield Rd is the frequency with which I smell someone smoking dope. In the afternoons, it tends to waft from the windows of utes driving by - hopefully, only the passenger is partaking, and not the driver. But what stuns me is when I smell it first thing in the morning. The earliest time so far was last week at 0645hrs. It didn't seem to be coming from a parked or moving car, so I presume it was emanating from the Housing Commission apartments that line that section of road. What sort of dope smoker has the inner fortitude to wake up at that hour of the day and light the first cone?

And yes, I know what the stuff smells like. I haven't inhaled in a long time - at least a decade or more. I even partook in trying to grow it when I was at uni - each attempt was a fiasco. Although our group included numerous farm boys who have since gone on to grow enough grain to feed large sections of the third world, we were woefully inadequate at coaxing a weed to flourish. Perhaps it was because they were much better at killing weeds than growing and smoking them.

Only two crops showed any signs of producing a reasonable crop. The first disappeared when some thieving bastards came over the back fence and made off with the whole lot. The second disappeared when the mother of one of the farmers turned up one weekend to tidy the garden in the share house. Whilst we were all recovering somewhere else from a party and a hangover, she removed a trailer load of weeds (good and bad) to the tip. None of us felt like driving out to the tip to fossick through a mountain of garden and vegetable scraps to find them.

After that, we tended to stick to brewing our own beer. That was generally more successful - except when we added too much sugar to one batch and the bottles exploded one by one in our holding area under the stairs. We weren't game to go near them in case one exploded in our faces, so we waited until all 30 bottles had exploded before cleaning up the mess. That took about a week. By the time we moved in with shovels and a rubbish bin, the under stairs area had turned into an interesting mix of broken glass, the remains of dried beer and mold.

I don't think we brewed any beer after that experience either.

Kid friendly cafes - are they worth it?

If you'd suggested to me 10 years ago that I even set foot in the door of a "kid friendly" cafe, I would have run screaming for the horizon. Nowadays, I'm more likely to be standing at the door at 0759hrs with my kids waiting for the place to open.

Some time last year, a very kid-oriented cafe opened up in Wareemba called Hopscotch. I noticed it one day as I was riding down to the end of the Abbotsford peninsular, and then filed it away and forgot about it. You're probably wondering, "Where the hell is Wareemba"? The only reason I know how to find it is because I was riding through one day and saw these big blue signs that said, "Welcome to Wareemba". I think the whole suburb is about 4 streets by 4 streets - a 'pocket' suburb so to speak.

http://www.hopscotchcafe.com.au/

Today was the day when I got to give it a go. I've tried every cafe in Five Dock and the two other cafes in Wareemba. Frankly, none of them do anything for me. There's something about each and every one of them that gives me the shits. Mostly, it is the requirement that you have to be an Italian or Greek insider in order to get decent service in any of them. If you're not part of the local wog mafia, forget it. The food that a lot of them serve is pretty rubbish too. You might think that an area stuffed full of Italians would produce good food - and you'd be wrong.

Thankfully, Hopscotch is the odd one out. From what I can gather, the owners are from Chile, so they are definitely not part of the wog establishment. The place is very kid friendly - there are two primary schools within walking distance, so they definitely have the local mums lined up as their target market. As far as being kid friendly goes, I reckon they've hit the spot. However, it's not an overwhelmingly kid cafe - the food is very grown up, and you can safely eat there without sprogs.

First thing - I would definitely go back again. It has two big common tables - I like these, because when the place is half empty, they give me plenty of room to spread the newspapers out and eat in style. The food is also tasty and the omelette I had today would have stopped an elephant. It certainly stuffed a wet and hungry cyclist who needed stuffing.

Amazingly, the coffee is also first grade. When I got home, I googled some reviews and found that all the coffee snobs gave it very good marks. They use Paul Bassett beans - whatever they are.

http://www.beanhunter.com/cafes/review/hopscotch-cafe/34828

If you're the sort of person that makes a fuss about organic this and home made that, then it ticks all the right boxes. I don't really care for any of that - I just care whether the end product is any good. Doesn't matter if you start with organic eggs from home raised chickens fed on organic corn - if you can't cook an egg for nuts, the ingredients are immaterial.

There were a few kids eating with mum and/or dad when I was there. Every now and then, something would go crashing to the floor - but the place was not overwhelmed with the noise of screaming, uncontrolled children. It struck me that the clientele of this place actually know how to discipline and manage their kids, which is something of a first.

The only downer was the price - it was nearly $20 for an omelette and a coffee. Sure, it was first grade stuff, and the service was good, but that's still a big hit for breakfast. Then again, it seems to be pretty hard to avoid having the wallet pounded anywhere these days.

Insert rant here:

Kid friendly cafes - a sure sign that society is on the decline. One of the primary functions of parents is to socialise their offspring - to teach the little buggers how to behave in private and in public. Kid friendly cafes are a cop out - they allow useless, degenerate, hopeless parents to inflict their undisciplined little brats on an unsuspecting public. Kids should be taught to sit down, shut up and quietly amuse themselves without interfering with any grown ups in the vicinity who are trying to concentrate on a newspaper and a good coffee. There is a place for hyperactive little monsters who need to be fed - it's called McDonalds.

End rant:

3am kebab guts

Had a bad case of 3am kebab guts today, and unfortunately, it had nothing to do with having a kebab at 3am.

What are 3am kebab guts?

The only reason why anyone has a kebab at 3am is if they have been drinking solidly since about 5pm. The impact on the guts the following morning of too many beers topped off with an early morning kebab is usually catastrophic. The kebab of course is not the cause of the problem - it is the maraschino cherry of stupidity plopped atop a massive banana split of overindulgence.

3am kebab guts are a bloody awful thing to have on a bike. Apart from the embarrassment of possibly letting rip in the face of the person riding closely behind you, there is always the chance you might draw a bit of mud. I don't fret about the embarrassment when commuting, as I don't know any of the other cyclists around me. However, it's a different story when I do a weekend ride.

Enough of that. Possibly too much information. The result was the slowest ride home in a long time - I just couldn't risk pushing it overly hard and thereby putting any excess pressure on the guts. Got no idea what I ate to induce this intestinal horror, but it was nasty.