Last.FM

Broadcast your musical listening choices! Stalk others'! Edit: Gees having another look at it it has this mysterious feature where it will play songs from my 'neighbours' (a figurative term referring to similarities in music taste). I wonder how this thing works - I really don't recall giving my permission to share my music, and the program and the website are all above board. Maybe its the music fairy, I don't know. In related news how the hell is Kelly Clarkson similar to my musical tastes.

Party Poppin' Power Rangers

Suze recently got older, and part of the celebrations was dinner out with the UWS food type folks, over at Eurolounge at the towers.

The food was alright I suppose. The place had a lovely ambience though, with a live jazz band and lovely warm colour changing non-flammable table lamps which I came oh so close to bringing home. Seeing as there was a crispy skin duck option I immediately sprang for it (I love duck, no not in that way). I can't say that it was very crispy skinned (the Chinese have that down pat, I don't know what went wrong here), but duck is still duck, even soggy-skinned, and the tenderness and flavour saved the day for me.

Surprisingly enough for a 'Modern Australian' menu they served Wagyu beef, and two pairs took this option. Personally I'm not really able to stomach Wagyu well. Wagyu needs to be sliced quite finely and served closer to raw (to preserve the flavour, and so that the fat deposits don't reach that stage of gammy chewy grossness), and my ability to eat raw beef decreases with the thickness of the beef. Tataki? A-OK go for gold. Inch thick barely cooked beef tongue (even at one of the best Japanese BBQ restaurants in Sydney, Rengaya)? Gag reflexes setting in. Unfortunately the chef at Eurolounge chose the (relatively) thickly sliced and somewhat cooked (I'd hazard a guess at medium) option, resulting in those inedible solidified fat deposits rather than the almost liquid fat that usually makes wagyu so good. This didn't stop the birthday girl from taking on (and losing) a challenge to eat a smacking huge gob of solidified and cooked fat within 45? seconds. I think I gagged just watching her try it.

At the end of dinner everyone was quite surprised however by a 'cakage' fee of $27 (considering that there was 9 of us that would equate to about $3 a head). It was a lovely cake done up in the shape of a rose, however I think the cakage fee was equal to a substantial proportion of the cost of the cake, and noone was really expecting it (there was a bit of a 'did someone short us' moment on the bill before we found this out). In retrospect I'm guessing it was to cover the cost of the (alcoholic) shots provided to us - not exactly the best idea in light of the large number of P platers we had with us, but only one gave it a miss. I mean I've heard of corkage fees, but this was the first time I'd been cakaged (if its even a word).

Unfortunately there was a bit of an incident at the end of the night, with the birthday girl getting accidentally 'popped' in the face. This is as close as an approximation to the event as I could find during my one minute youtube search(there's a wealth of party poppin' shenanigans), just without the warning or the protective camera. Fortunately medical staff (slash family members, having both in the one place is quite handy) were at hand to save her from a life of canine-co-dependence.

Gastro outbreak, or something along those lines

Yes, somehow Sydney managed to cop a nice outbreak of Gatsro last week. Myself included! It was a mightily painful experience, and I must say I spent a lot more time in the bathroom in those 3-4 days than I had in (approximately) the 3-4 weeks prior to that. AND THE PAIN. It sprung on Monday and lasted a glorious 4 days, disrupting my experiments at uni. Just above there is a graphical representation of my stomach: the yellow bit is where there was holy shit fiery stabbing pain every 10-15 minutes for several days.

The culprit? Well I either didn't wash my hands effectively before eating or after going to the bathroom (admittedly I don't do full 10 second washes, but come on!). Personally I'd like to thank Goulburn Street SuperBowl, which is the last place of import at which I ate. Sure the food is in huge servings, comes at the speed of light and is reasonably tasty, but its not the cleanest place out there (a quote from the aforementioned website: "The restaurant is a bit dirty especially the cutlery"). Neither of the other guys I had dinner with got the horrible sick, but regardless its still top of my suspect list.

Well, that's the price I pay I suppose. Also worth noting is that its not worth the time, effort or hassle to attempt to have a walk-in visit with a doctor in the city. $60 for just a consult; I suppose city doctors need more money - I chose the 'I'll drive home to my local thanks' option. This entailed a further hour and a half wait (on top of the writhing in pain drive home), just to see the bloke prescribe me an over the counter stomach pill that did shit all, a list of food not to eat and advice to nick off from work/uni for a few days and ride the wave of pain 'til its over. And what a fun ride that was! As an aside I'd like to thank my good friend Buscopan. They're puny little things and they taste like tic tacs. I have to say they did exactly nothing for me, other than to maybe slightly improve my breath. As I'm sure that anyone who has had the (mis)fortune to chew pills knows, if it doesn't taste like shit its not doing shit.

Well the bright side? I managed to get some potty reading happening. The Da Vinci Code no less! A suitable place for such a book I think. I'm not a big fan of Dan Brown (being a Catholic doesn't really help that much); having read the book its just a really poorly written and characterised book that floats along on the safety of its controversial revelations or what not. I don't think I'll continue on to pay for the movie: its getting absolutely crapped on by reviewers, and even managed to get banned in the Philippines. I don't really agree with the sentiment though: people should be free to see how poor the movie is themselves. Hopefully I'll manage to somehow aquire a copy from the magical fairy internet to discover that myself.

I'm apparently 67% Benicio Del Toro and 62% Paul Walker

No, I'm not talking about one of those retarded 'How IMRE KERTESZ are you?' TheSpark.com quizzes or anything lame like that. This is a decently entertaining but unfortauntely inaccurate website called MyHeritage.com. Take the 'test' today!

Sadly it relies on matching the pose, facial expression and hair style represented in the photo, which makes it a lot less accurate than if it solely relied on profile photos (ala police matching style). Of course this results in much comedy, such as getting four blondes from four asians (above), and other miscelleneous gender bending fun (below).

The only duplicates I got were Benicio Del Toro and Paul Walker (yes I'm excluding the numerous female matches). I'm fine with that!

Monkey Poo Coffee

Nominally I'm a Filipino. Both my parents were born there and so was I, but having lived in Australia for so long I'm just not very Pinoy, in language or mannerisms. Still, I like to keep a casual eye on happenings in the Philippines, such as failed coups, firing computer-illiterate judges and freak occurances of nature.

Regardless, the most interesting piece of news I've seen recently actually has to do with food. Not so much cooking and cuisine as new product development so to speak. Some resourceful Filipino entepreneurs somehow came up with the bright idea of taking the poo of civets, and putting it into coffee. Granted there's a culinary reason behind it all: the civets like eating, digesting and then excreting coffee beans, which apparently somewhere along the line gives them a unique smooth chocolatey taste (fermentation and what not). Interesting indeed, but not something I'd be creative enough to think of myself, nor really try, at least not while sober.

This Coffee Alamid, as its known, is actually a relatively rare commodity, with an annual production of only 500Kg. And it sells for about $150 a kilo. Yes that's right, $150 per kilo of poo! Rest assured though, if you do buy this connoisseur's coffee choice you're not only paying for a feast for your tastebuds, but you're also helping the environment, preserving a rare species, and supporting the livelihood of farmers!

I haven't seen it anywhere locally (and we currently have no plans to import it) but I'm sure its just a matter of time.