“You know I’m going to bring my good camera and take lots of photographs?”, I said to a friend over a few drinks late this afternoon. Often described as one of the best in the world, the Copenhagen-based restaurant, Noma is doing a limited-season “pop up” in Sydney. Excitingly, four of us have obtained tickets for a lunch in February at the embarrassingly expensive, though presumably memorable experience.
“Just eat the bloody food, and stop taking terrible photographs and posting them on Facebook/Instagram”, I’m sure must be how restauranters sometimes feel about the modern phenomenon where people pull out their camera phones and take photographs of their food. Camera phone photographs can never be as good as the as the beautiful images captured by a food stylist. In darkly-lit restaurants, the photographs are often grainy, and almost never capture the subtle colours of a beautifully crafted meal. And yet, people still take them. It’s all about capturing the moment.
Vini at Surry HillsVini at Surry HillsVini at Surry Hills
And yet that’s precisely what I did when some colleagues and I enjoyed lunch today at Vini in Surry Hills. “Hang on a minute”, I said to my colleagues before they began to eat, “I just want to take some photographs”, I said, as I pulled out my phone, with the intention of sharing them here tonight.
Photographs like these never capture how good a meal can be. Seriously yummy food, and possibly the best pannacotta I’ve ever tasted. Yum.
It’s Monday night and I’m still at work. I’ve done all that I needed to do today, but I can’t go home just yet. The problem is the power supply on my computer at home: it’s not working. So I’ve decided to stay back and do an update on my life which has been incredibly busy.
As well as work, there’s also been a lot of socialising, including dinner with Damien at a restaurant in Chinatown, a beer or two with Michaela and then after work drinks on Friday night. Sunday afternoon was also an absolute delight, spending about four hours enjoying lunch, a glass or two of wine and jazz at Opera Bar with Damo, Sue M and Pat who was visiting from Canberra. It’s still incredibly warm in Sydney and the afternoon at Opera Bar was superb.
Pat had arranged to come to Sydney to attend my legendary Eurovision Party, mostly frequented by members of the international ABBA fan community, ABBAMAIL. But this year, as well as all “the usual suspects” we were also joined for the first time by Pat and Mark. Mark was the only one in our group who even came close to choosing the winning song. That Mark also chose Greece as his favourite song indicates that either he has dodgy musical tastes or is totally intune with European popular musical culture. I, however, was also out of touch with the rest of those attending my party in that I just didn’t get everyone else’s favourite, Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Feminem. I was very disappointed that my own favourite, Martin Stenmarck with “Las Vegas” failed to do well as I thought it was both a great song and a terrific performance.
As usual, we had a great night trying to outdo each other with whitticisms. Some of the more “Quoteable Quotes” of the night were…
“It’s Cheryl from Bucks Fizz!” says someone
“Oh who cares” says Ian
“This is like shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic” (the voting)
“Shapelle Corby, no points”
and…. “Bosnia hurts my vagina” = Bosnia Herzegovina
But as well as Eurovision, Pat and I also did a fair bit of non-Eurovision socialising, including a party at Yvette’s on Saturday night and a boat trip to Manly to go Pink Salt, one of the restaurants currently featured on “My Restaurant Rules”. Although we waited in line for half an hour or so, we unfortunately missed out on a lunchtime setting. In some ways, though, I think that might be okay as the food didn’t look all that great and all of the patrons seemed to have a look on their faces which indicated they were less interested in the food and more interested in being on television. Undeterred we wandered down to the beach and had fish and chips instead which was legendary.
Reflecting back on all this activity made me realise I really need some “time out” soon. The last six months – maybe eighteen months – has been really busy without much of a break. I really need a holiday. In fact, when I woke this morning I didn’t even turn the radio on – I just needed some silence – and just listened to the birds in the trees outside instead. A week or so without noise would be really great.
And then in the next two weeks I have Anthony and Sue visiting this weekend and then I have to go to Adelaide next week with work. Looking forward to both, but wouldn’t mind a break either.
“Excuse me, I have to take some more photographs”, I said to my friend Mattias, as we enjoyed conversation and a beer at Blå Dörren (a bar at Slussen). Though the sunset last night was not as spectacular as earlier in the week, the night colours (once the sun had set) were beautiful. Before and after we entered the bar, I took some photographs, looking towards Gamla Stan. Thanks to the auto-create effect in Google Photos, they were transformed into two stunning panoramas.
Earlier…
…and a little later
It was a really great way to attend what is, today, a public holiday in Sweden (Ascension Day). Although Sandra had gone into work, I received a text from her later in the morning, asking what I was up to and whether or not I’d like to go with her to Fjäderholmarna, some of the inner archipelago islands. About twenty five minutes by ferry, the island features some glorious handcraft workshops (silver smith, glass blowing) as well as terrific places to eat chocolate, ice-ream, and drink Rose. What more could you want?
It left me with just a few minutes to get back to my apartment and freshen up before catching up with Mattias. He’s a lovely bloke I’ve been chatting online with for a few years about photography, travel, politics and more. We actually met last time I was here also. We had a great chat over dinner at Nya Carnegiebryggeriet (New Carnegie Brewery), before ending the night at Blå Dörren, which is near where I took those lovely night-time photographs.
I don’t normally use this blog as a rant-space. In fact, I normally quite dislike blogs which are little more than places for people to complain about what’s wrong with the world. As well as the negativity (which is best to avoid), it’s also usually because the complaint is usually so personal that it has little to do with anyone else, and offers nothing positive for the future. This blog-post is different. It offers a solution to one of modern day life’s communication problems: the fact that many people never bother to ask a qualifying question: the important second question.
Take this as a scenario. You live in Perth and you saw something on television about horses. So you ring Channel 9 in Perth, because that’s the station you generally watch the most. As soon as the person at Channel 9 in Perth answers the phone, they put you through to the newsroom because that’s where most of the output of Channel 9 in Perth is concentrated. Someone in the newsroom answers the phone, you explain what you’re looking for, and when it doesn’t immediately ring a bell, they do a brief ask around the office, someone yells out “Sounds like The Today Show”, and so they transfer you over to Sydney to “Today”. Someone there answers the phone, you begin to ask your question, they also fail to immediately recognise the issue/story you’re calling about, and then ask “by the way, where are you calling from?” As soon as you say “Perth”, they transfer you back to the Perth switchbaord, and you start the whole process all over again. Or more likely, you hang up.
I need to say this was a completely hypothetical scenario and bears no resemblance to Channel 9, or indeed the organisation I work for, but I’m using it to illustrate a point about the second question. If the person on the switchboard had bothered to ask, “And this was Channel 9, was it?”. And then maybe, “What time of the day was it?”. And even a further question based on that answer such as, “So it was The Today Show with Karl and Tracey?”. Asking a few more questions might have put you straight through to the right area, or at least resolved pretty quickly that you were actually watching “Mel and Kochie”.
Unfortunately that’s not the way many switch-boards and call-centres operate these days, Sadly, their work is often judged on how many calls they process, not how many questions/situations they resolve.
I saw evidence of the same syndrome on Twitter the other day when a bunch of people re-tweeted inaccurate information about the Queensland floods. A few hours later the Queensland Police were themselves tweeting to try to correct the information out there. All that needed to happen in the first place to prevent this from occurring was for a few people to “ask the second question”. For example, you see someone you know tweet about a public transport shut-down. Before you re-tweet that, I reckon you should either check the link they’ve just tweeted, or ask them something like “really, how do you know?”. If they can’t answer the question, my advice is not to re-tweet that information.
But of course that’s not part of the cut-and-paste culture we live in, these days, is it? It’s faster and easier to forward an email and re-tweet something than to ever bother to check the facts, or to seek a clarification from the person who sent you the information. You see it in those chain emails you receive, which contain information you could simply verify by a quick check to Snopes, and you see it, sadly, in journalism.
Sadly, many journalists are either too busy or too lazy these days to question source information or to ask “the second question”. Sadly, too many simply cut and paste something they’ve found elsewhere.
Anyway, it’s an issue that’s been on my mind today a fair bit and so I thought I’d bring it up.
My positive advice for the future though is always ask the follow-up question, and always demand a follow-up answer, and the sum quotient of human happiness will be increased :)
PS…. It’s so much easier now with email to cut and paste, as in the days of fax machines you actually had to re-type the media release as well :)
Due to the COVID lockdown – or maybe my own laziness? – I haven’t exercised all that much over the last few days. Mosty days I’ll walk at least a few kilometres. I’ll head out, mostly in the afternoon, and take a walk around the city. But for most days, this week, my tracker tells me I’ve managed on average less than one kilometre most days. Mostly, that’s been a walk to and from the coffee shop in South Lismore, the Duck Pond Espresso.
Inspired today by the tweet of a colleague who lives in Melbourne, recording that he had been out for a run of close to ten kilometres, I headed out this afternoon to walk off some of those creamy apple turnovers I’ve been enjoying from the local bakery.
As I walked around, I noticed there were people in cars, though nowhere near as many as you might see on the road around Lismore, even on a Sunday.
A family member who was out and about tells me there was only a handful of cars in the Woolworths carpark, but that the Bunnings carpark was close to full. Yeah, like a trip to Bunnings is essentail, but the supermarket isn’t?
On foot, I passed two or three people running (and panting heavily, so I secured my mask that little bit tigher), and there were probably less than a dozen people I passed in total.
Along the way, I thought it might be fun to stop from time to time to record some short videos of places of interest, and here they are.
The disused Lismore Railway Station will soon be re-developed.
The next life for the Railway Station involves a food van, and possibly a restaurant.
Though I grew up nearby, I have never visited the Paul Jones Lane before, so I took a look. The car that goes past was coming out of the Station Hotel Drive-Through.
Houses at the bottom of Union Street, South Lismore, near the Railway Viaduct play an important part in our family history story.
The historic Winsome Hotel was once a working class pub, then a gay bar, and currently a soup kitchen.
I spent many, many hours of my youth at the Lismore Memorial Baths.
It’s quite good fun recording these little videos, so I’ll probably record some more.
It’s not exactly “Getaway”, but maybe you’ll still enjoy these videos as a very low-fi insight into my hometown?
I had a big lump of lamb for the second time in three days today. The first time was at dinner the other night. The second time was for lunch today. And my goodness, it tasted good.
I was invited to a mate’s place for lunch today. We often have a meal together on a Sunday, though it’s been a few months (obviously) since we’ve done that. We get together, we listen to some music, chat about our lives, and have some really good tucker together.
And today it was lamb. “I know you like it a bit raw”, he said, when I commented on how tasty it was. And added to the lamb was some mint jelly. And there was a side dish of cauliflower, beans and carrots.
It’s been a warm day in Sydney, one of the hottest so far this year, according to the news.
So after lunch I walked back from my mate’s place at Centennial Park via Oxford Street (Paddington), down through Darlinghurst, and then along Crown Street back towards home. It’s such a beautiful time of the year in Sydney.
Nothing much to report from tonight aside from a bit of television watching (don’t ask me what I’ve seen, because nothing was memorable), a bit of computer surfing, and some chatting on the phone. Don’t you hate it, though, when you ring your family and get voice mail? “Where are they?”, I thought to myself.
Most years when my friend Sue and I visit Vivid, it’s either cold, or wet, or overly crowded (or usually all three at the same time). But tonight was different: the weather was fine (in fact, warm enough to take our jackets off), and things weren’t overly crowded.
Cahill Expressway View of Sydney’s Vivid FestivalPhotographic Crowd at VividA festival of light for Hare Krishna devoteesVivid Festival in Sydney
Oh, and we did the “VIP Tour”. Well, not actually: we caught the lift up to the Cahill Expressway and walked around through The Rocks to the Overseas Passenger Terminal, surrounded only by keen photographers, which was really, really pleasant.
