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.

Bunnies advertise Kellogg's Mini-Wheats in 30 seconds?

For those of you that actually watch TV, Kellogg's mini-wheats have started a new promotion to focus on teens. Two high schoolers (Dharma and Greg) break up in 30 seconds! Average for a TV advertisement, slightly above par if you're an impressionable teen on the market for a new and exciting breakfast cereal I suppose, but when I saw it it seemed awfully familiar. The hyperactive 30 second replay, the narration style, the girl's shriek when the library nerd tries to plant a wet one at the end.

Well it came to me soon enough. Angry Alien productions may not immediately ring any bells, but they take such classics as Star Wars, Aliens and Titanic and replay them in 30 seconds, with bunnies. I'm sure I've at least harrassed amie and suze with it over MSN at one time or another. The voice acting pretty much makes the movies and they're all pretty entertaining (be sure to repeatedly spam over the 'replay' button at the end of the flashes).

The style of the ad is exactly the same, hell the girl's yell at the end sounds exactly like one of the bunnies from several of the 30 seconders. Doesn't seem to be any recognition of the ad on the AA website, so I'm wondering did they actually get permission from the authors to lift it? I suppose that its sufficiently different from the original but where does inspiration end and plagiarism begin? Looks like advertisers today just cruise the internet or library to get ideas, sounds pretty dodgy to me but seems they can get away with it scot-free.

Pizza Apple Pie?

What's in the box, in the box? What's in the box today?

Blimey, it sure isn't a pizza. The writing on the box lied! That's an apple pullapart! It looks like something that our girl scout baker would be more familiar with than the usual greasy commercialised Italian fare that comes in these sorts of boxes.

Well it looked nice enough - unfortunately beauty here was only skin deep. From the taste of it, it seemed that after baking a few pizzas they just plonked the apple pullapart in that very same pizza oven. It had that distinctive inside of the pizza oven taste, or maybe the greasy flavour had immigrated into my mouth from the pizza and just refused to leave. Either way it was pretty nasty, I guess apples and pizzas just don't mix. Or do they? I'm not really game to try, could be interesting I guess but I so love causing animal deaths at some point in time during the preparation of my food.

I'm down with posting the inane and irrelevant

Since I'm such a lazy bum my posts can serve double duty.

1. The tail end of summer weather. Mercury was hitting the mid thirties for the latter half of the week in one final hurrah. Everything's just peachy from inside the lab but at home I have to leave the window open or else the mini server farm in my room makes it somewhat uncomfortably hot. Cool weather's better anyway: a new season's worth of stuff in the shops, plus layers - a skinny guy's best friend.

2. Service station counter-top promotional offers. You know, the buy two of a certain candy or confectionary for a reduced price sort of thing. I'm really a sucker for these, I'd say I buy them about a fifth of the time when I go in to buy petrol (a roundabout guess, I don't keep a log). Yes, I know the main reason they're discounting them is because they're approaching the end of their natural lifespans, but its usually not a problem. If I don't scarf them down during the drive home they sit in the car until I get around to it.

3. Where's my security pass? Its been a good two months for me at FSA and I just completed my induction (I'm guessing the pass follows sooner or later). This means I need to sign in as a visitor every morning to get the labs, and that my car is stuck being parked outdoors in the hot, hot sun. Good thing I don't leave children or pets in the car while I'm at lab, pokies style.

Putting these three things together meant that said confectionaries sat in that outdoor parking in those mid thirties temperatures for a good several hours or so. The result? A fused-solid multi-coloured brick of gooey gummi goodness. It had a warm, soft consistency, and stretched like good cheese on pizza, the sort that just keeps going and going (I'm sure our cheese connoisseur would know what I'm talking about). I managed to get a good two bites of the thing by juggling it and the steering wheel (don't try this, its worse than talking on the phone and driving) before a short stop at the lights had it ending up sitting on the floor of my car for the ride home (well past the five second rule unfortunately, so no more eating). Goodbye poor gummy lollies.

Parking Ticket Efficiency

Having overstayed my street parking in the city by about half an hour (thank you random Japanese restaurant for bringing out my meal so long after my friends that one had already finished and departed for K) I returned from dinner to be greeted with the sight of almost the entire street having little orange envelopes held between windscreen and wiper. Included was my car. Awesome.

Opening up my little gift from the gray ghosts I almost had a double take: gone are the ratty old carbon-papered hand-written near-illegible parking infringements of old. They've been replaced with sterile and precise, heat-imprinted semi-glossy parking receipts, as if I'd just purchased myself (at great cost might I add) after-the-fact parking. Its got the whole kit and kaboodle on it: besides date and time it describes my car, its location and the offence in exacting detail (no more weaseling out of these on one slightly off or illegible detail anymore). Observing them on one of my non-offending days over at Parramatta I'd say it would have taken the parking officer about a minute to type in the relevant information and print it out.

Flipping my little receipt-of-debt over to investigate my options, I noticed that they've also streamlined the payment process. The orange envelope is now pretty much just for show (and to protect the receipt within from the elements I suppose, heat imprinted paper loves the sun): you don't mail them back anymore, hell you don't even have to rock up to the infringements office to pay. Parking infringement resolution, meet the internet! I just had to go to the handy-dandy website on the back of the receipt, credit card in hand, and just a minute of form filling later (about as long as it took to print the damn thing out I guess) I'm now less one parking infringement (and $75 bucks).

Thanks Sydney City Council! Putting a positive media spin on it though I've figured out that if I avoid parking tickets (slash receipts) for the rest of the year (this being my first) I can whittle down the cost of overstayed parking in the city to 20 cents per day averaged over the year. Doesn't feel as bad if I look at it that way.