Saturday, October 29, 2011

Hiiiiiiii-YA!!!


Miss Piggy once said: "Never eat more than you can lift."
She may have been right.

Eating is one pleasure, and we've pushed the boundaries in the Gouger Street Epic(ure). Reading is another pleasure and I have recently embarked upon my own epic: I'm on the judging panel for a book prize. You get a little money and you get to keep all the books. Sounds great, right?

Pictured here is me with two piles of books. One is the pile I've read, the other is the pile I am yet to read.

Can you guess which is which?


Something like, "Never try to read more than you fly over"



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Thursday, October 27, 2011

Cafe Kowloon

Attendant: Olivia, Michael, Tallora, Cristi, Mele, Sam

Let's do a comparison, shall we?
Cafe Kowloon and Ying Chow live side by side. Always have. 
Ying Chow was traditionally jumping the pig party twenny-fo' SEVEN.
Cafe Kowloon merely looked on. It had customers. But not ones banging down the door and fighting over tables. Usually the Gareth Keenan-style sloppy seconds from Yingers.


I see fish. I will eat fish.



Now we have sampled both, and are ready to compare. Let's see how they do ...


Booking a table
Ying Chow: Table for 6:30? Just twenty more minutes, just twenty more minutes, just twenty more minutes, just twenty more minutes ....
Cafe Kowloon: Come in! Sit down! Wherever you want! Drinks? Look at fish tank? Have a bowl of prawn crackers! 

Kowloon: 1
Chow: 0

Ordering food
Ying Chow: We're not taking your order. I don't give a shit if you're ready. Put this on and do the dance. Stop crying and do the dance.
Cafe Kowloon: Are you ready? No? I'll come back! How about now? No? No problem! How about a hug while you are deciding? 

Kowloon:2
Chow:-1


Dealing with customers who sit at a table for four and have unexpected guests arrive
Ying Chow: You are dirt! You are NOTHING! GET OOOUTTTT!!!!
Cafe Kowloon: Hello! Hello! Welcome, paying customers! Crowd around! Let us get you a chair!


Hunching, scoffing and frowning? An excellent choice of eating method!
The Actual Quality of the food
Ying Chow: Legendary. Fondly and obsessively remembered. One of the Gouger Street Greats. But, oh, how the mighty have fallen and they have fallen far indeed. Seeing your favourite band do a Telstra commercial - that's how badly they've let go.
Cafe Kowloon: Workman like. Nothing to get excited about, but it all came out at pretty much the same time (the novelty!) and was edible, if not memorable.


It's edible ... and I like it!
Kowloon: 3
Chow: -10 (Definitely the worst service ever)

So, if our report on our final trip to Yingers left you bereft of suitable Chinese restaurants on Gouger Street, then you could do worse than Kowloon. 
You could do better, but what the hey, it's a crowded market.


It's suitable ... and we like it!
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An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32