Ying Chow

Ying Chow, we need to talk.
Put down that lazy Susan and listen.

We've been drifting apart for years. We coasted on the good times, and we had some good times, didn't we? 
Remember when I could just turn up on your doorstep at midnight and you would let me in without question? 
I won't deny it, even when I was with others, thousands of kilometres away, I was thinking of you. They fed me, but I tasted you. 
You used to be The One. 
But ... well ... this is where it gets difficult. I'm just going to come out and say it:
You've changed. And not in a good way.
 
It took that bullshit you pulled last Friday night to make me realise how bad you really are.
 
I know you didn't notice when we stopped being together as regularly as we used to. I know because every time I came crawling back, you treated me like nothing. 
"Just twenty more minutes" my arse. 
I used to listen to that lie all night, and I'd just be so happy when you let me in, that I forgave you. 
Well, no more.  
A man can only put up with so much. 


I thought booking a table would change all that, help us move past this rough patch together. But what did I get on Friday night? The same old cock'n'bull: "Just twenty more minutes"
And when you finally did seat us, you couldn't even give a shit whether we ordered or not!

No I will NOT keep my voice down!
AND, when we finally did order, do you know what we got?
THIS:

Don't bother me, puny customer. I work at Ying Chow. I don't need your business.

You used to be so attentive. You used to remember what everyone ordered without having to write it down. You used to care. 
Now, well, now, it's like you're showing off what a cad you can be and still get customers. 
Well let me tell you something Ying So Called Excellent Restaurant Award So Called Chow: your food used to be the talk of the town. You had "It", The X Factor, The Mystical Taste, Flavorama, but now, now you are the culinary equivalent of the fading rockstar. I like your old stuff better than your new stuff.
Trouble is, you don't have any new stuff, and here's what your old stuff has turned into.


(Bear in mind, I know people who have come back from overseas and demanded to be fed at least two of the following dishes. That's how good they used to be.)

Shallot Panckes

These used to be the rousing overture to a sensational evening.

Everyone agreed that they were like toasted pockets of onion.

BBC and Greens

 The Broad Beans and Bean Curd and Chilli used to solve every problem. They were grey, undercooked and depressing.

The greens had to be asked for. They were not offered.

Red Vinegar Ribs 

This used to come out as a sizzling mountain of ribs.

Now they're just dry. Dry and sad.

 Aniseed Tea Duck

This actually wasn't too bad. But if you could get this right, then what was the story with the rest of the food?

E-Shand Eggplant

Too little, too late.

The eggplant came at the end of the meal, right before you asked us to move tables. The least popular table in Ying Chow is the one by the door where people waiting for their table stand over you and glower. That's where  we were asked to move to. 

Mid-meal.

Then, the second that most of the eggplant was eaten you offered us a table outside! In the cold!

Perhaps we wouldn't have taken so long over our meal if you hadn't 

brought

out

each

dish

one

at

a

time.

We declined your polite offer to freeze our arses off while we worked out whether to do a runner or not ...

 ... and ordered another drink!

I'm gonna sip and sip and sip and sip and sip and sip!

And then I'm gonna play with the ice cubes!

Goodbye, forever, Ying Chow.

So long, and thanks for teaching us all the meaning of really bad service.

On the upside, the technician said it was the cleanest motherboard he'd ever seen.

No, we're not starving to death.

We are, however, on a slight hiatus because the millions, one could even stretch so far as to say billions, or even trillions of dollars spent on developing the microprocessor and all its attendant uses and attachments were still not nearly enough to solve the problem of water-proofing.

A lovely little water-bottle with Charlie's name joyously stamped on the side obviously was not the beneficiary of the millennia-old global research cloud which has developed and made available the knowledge which allows us to contain water over a period of time. Instead, this poor third-cousin, this unlicensed knock-off, this pretender vessel only revealed the depth of its true deficiency when it was provided with the opportunity to snuggle up with my computer in the seclusion of my backpack.

I can't recall another occasion when a single drip of moisture has caused me such anguish, falling as it did from the cooling vent in the side of my laptop.

The PhD is safe. The photos have been salvaged and recovered. The music is safe, the playcounts are not.

The Epic shall continue, but you may have to be a little patient.

Swans, maybe. But where was the water?

Thanks for your opinion, Dan.

Next time you're putting on a performance of Swan Lake, we'll send our best movie critic along to complain about the tedious love-triangle cliches and lack of meaningful dialogue. Or, better yet, we will dispatch an ornithologist to make sure you get all the bird bits just right.

Even blurry Ray Romano earned $33,000,000

Dear Channel 11,

No one is fooled. Just because 'Zoom and Enhance' works on the TV shows from the 1990s you keep airing, doesn't mean that your grainy widescreen is fooling anyone in real life.

Chortlingly yours,

franzy

I heard someone lost an arm once ... oh wait ... that was ... that never happened.

Memo to everyone at the Central Markets: can you all please just calm the fuck down? You're not going to miss the damn lift if you don't form a tight wall around the people trying to get out. Just take deep breath, step back and let everyone get out. Then you may resume your panicked shoving. When I'm well clear.

Happy I-Though-We-Lived-In-A-Secular-Society-But-I-Guess-Not Day!

Seriously, why the fuck have we not stormed parliament regarding the fact that because this is a Christian holiday the rest of us (and there are a lot) aren't allowed to buy alcohol?
Yes, it's true, last year I pretty much ruined day one of a family holiday because I bitched and moaned and whined about the same situation.
'It's okay,' I reassured the Yorke Peninsula general store/bottle-shop owner 'I'm not a Christian.'
'Sorry, mate. It's the law.'
'But ... but ...'
I wish I had said more. Or broken something. But it wasn't his fault. He should have just turned the other way while I left twenty bucks on the counter until the next day though.

No, I don't actually want to go out and buy beer on Good Friday especially. I just don't want to have to live in such a back-wood, no-string-banjo kind of country where religious freedom is a right, as long as you observe just one group's one kookie rule. Which you don't have a choice about anyway, because it's the law, just like not molesting children.

Topical Humour Man, awaaaaaay!!

Seriously though: Rove did free tomato sauce day. Why can't we have Ring It Through On Easter Saturday Day?

No one reads this either

Major scandal: At last week's state election, a Labor politician got in trouble because some volunteers were handing out How To Vote cards at polling booths upon which were written something like:

Put Your
FAMILY FIRST

• Blah
• Blah
• Blah

Authorised by Labor party candidate, Michael Blogs.

And everyone is up in arms and legs. Can I get this straight, please?
Yes, they didn't have red t-shirts on, like Labor party commies, but light blue ones like Straighty One-Eighty Family First bible-bashers.
Yes, the card did say 'Family First' on it, quite prominently. But who are we protecting here?
People who can't read?
In that case, how could our disenfranchised and duped illiterate brothers and sisters read anything on the card? Let alone the crucial words "Family First"?
So the people who are getting duped by these dodgy How To Votes, can read? Is that right? What's the problem then?
Oh. They don't want to read. Not too much anyway. Just enough to get that time-wasting, three-yearly chore out of the way without feeling like someone's going to force them to hold hands with a homosexual person.
Democracy: in, out, back to three more years of reading the sports section first and recycling everything else (you know, the sections where the people in ties don't have backdrops stippled in sponsors' logos). Let me put it another way: did you know that literally millions of people get killed fighting for dreaming about the possibility of having the opportunity to get handed a How To Vote card?

One that doesn't look like this.

And you're moaning because some prankster handed you a fakey and you didn't read it properly and wasted your vote? If you care enough to complain about voting for the wrong guy and looking stupid, then it follows that you would probably care enough about the whole process to take more of an interest and actually read what's put under your nose to, you know, avoid looking stupid.
But I'm obviously wrong there.

Parenting is what you blog about when your life ain't that interesting Pt 2

Monday morning - Mele's turn - 7:45 am
Tuesday morning - Franzy's turn - 7:15 am
Wednesday morning Mele's turn - 8:00 am
Thursday morning - Franzy's turn - 6:50 am

Notice a pattern?

Tomorrow morning - Franzy will get shooshed on his way to work for waking the baby.

And what is the deal with this 5-star room service? More like ... FOUR star!

Did you hear about the Haitian earthquake? Hilarious, eh? Oh wait - I'm not telling it right. I'll let my old pal Roger Federer do it. He is a crack up. Let's all look at this transcript of the press conference he spoke at last night:

The world's top tennis players, here for the Australian Open, will stage a charity exhibition match tomorrow in Melbourne.
Kind Old Roger: I spoke to some of the other top players, you know, I got some connections (pause for laughter).

That is the actual quote from the news report. (Clip starts at about 9:40, self-deprecating snigger begins at 9:47).
What a dingbat. Death toll looking at 200,000? Time for a light-hearted brag about how fucking famous he is. Oh, and rich. We're all so glad you could take time out from sook practise to grace us with your disaster-based quips.

It can't all be gold

Dear Commonwealth Bank,

I really appreciated the fact that when you visited that big American ad agency with those two or three dickheads with the pencil moustaches, you kept true to the Australian spirit and poo-pooed their zany ideas about customer service. You seemed like just the kind of bank that would be smart enough to implement a few simple customer service ideas.
However, I am a little troubled that you continue to use the same ad agency dickheads who continue to give the same type of clown-shit crazy suggestions which you never use. It's been at least two or three years now and you don't seem to be getting the picture. I don't believe you're that smart after all. In your latest commercial, you show one of your rep's seven-year-old son coming up with the ideas.
Here's an idea: going to that same ad agency all these year makes you look foolish.

Yours,
A credit union customer

Who's with me?

*tsk* "Men."

As soon as I hear it, my hackles rise. She's used to saying it. They all are. That off-hand, exasperated little complaint of an explanation. Something's gone wrong. Gone missing. Gone awry. And that's not the way she would have done it. She would have injected a bit of common sense into the matter from the beginning and got it sorted without all this need for eye-rolling and the picking up of dirty socks.

"Men. I mean, honestly. Am I right, girls?"

Yeah, well I've had a gut-full. This goes beyond that utterly hurtful Mere Male page in the back of The Women's Weekly. I've grown up being bombarded by images of dick-head dudes and dopey dads and I can differentiate myself from what I see in the media (offensive and pervasive as it is), but as I work in a female-dominated environment, more and more I get subjected to these blasé little quips with the punchlines revolving around men and their predictable meeting of low expectations.

"Were you having a man-look for it?"

My honest reply to this one is now "Well, I didn't have a woman-look - you know, standing around squawking about it until someone else finds it in plain sight."
Think I'm kidding? No one makes the "man-look" joke around me any more.
I hereby put my foot down. No more making snide little gags about men. Not around me. Not around the men in my life. All the men I know are, every one, excellent human beings. I'm proud of all them. So don't shuffle around here with your smirky little bon mots about listening and understanding and housework. I won't have it.
I'm perfectly well aware that there are too many tedious blokes out there. That's fine. Go and tell your could-burn-water cooking gags around them.
But keep that tiresome dreck away from me.

*tsk* "Oh! Men! I don't know!"
"I do! We're like women, but less whingey."

Join me, my brothers. Put this tediousness in its place and you, like me, will have to put up with it substantially less often.

Dissatisfaction

trying to pick up a heavy bag which sitting on its own strap
sinking into the couch only to realise that the controller is over ..................................there
boring
ad
ad
ad
subtitles are too fuzzy
this coffee is burnt
so's the milk
three precious hours in which to study, half an hour reading internet comics, half an hour installing some bloody update
sunnies aren't dirty, that's a scratch
headphone cord gets caught and pulls at my ears
all this poetry is pretty much unreadably tedious
shin + bedpost
either no one's listening to me or I'm talking across the top of everyone
the more comfortable the pillow, the more likely it is to be bin night
the unblogworthy drollery of the suburban 9 to 5
blowfly + oriface
i'm just trying to eat my lunch and read my book I'm not really interested in donating five minutes of that to chit-chat
why won't Australian Top Gear read my blogs and hire me as a writer

Franzy fights on

And here's what I wrote in the (surprisingly ample) feedback section of the Greater Union customer survey after buying some online tickets:

"You cinemas need to start being up front about why allocated seating has been introduced. No contacts know. The staff shrug and smile and take your wad of cash. It inconveniences patrons and restricts the enjoyment of my movie-going experience to be sat next to a stranger and not be able to choose the location of my seat upon entering the cinema.
Sharing elbow room with someone I've never met was never on my list of Things To Do At The Movies.
Why the gritted-teeth is it on there now?
To phase out ticketing staff and ease us into online bookings and buy-your-ticket-here pillars? You're competing with 50" plasmas and surround-sound in people's homes! The only thing you've GOT over that is customer service. I've had friends who now avoid going to the cinemas now because of allocated seating. My mother gave up her 10-year membership to Palace Nova on the back of this short-sightedness. She wrote them a long letter to explain why. Customer service? She didn't even receive a reply. You try telling me that you're a different company who listens to the concerns of its patrons? Rubbish. To theatre-goers, you are now all one and the one same. Brand loyalty is dead dead dead.
Don't give me that bluster about Gold seating, either. $35 for the chance at a hot nachos in the second reel is NOT a fun family outing. OR a low-pressure date. The cinema used to be the place where teenagers could meet up and not have to make awkward conversation. Now you've priced them right out of the market. Wake up.
If you don't want customers, just shut down now with dignity and stop taking everyone's money and enjoyment with you."

You may thank me in the comments when allocated seating is abolished and a quiet young man with a side-part and a small torch is guiding you to your $5 seat.

I don't care if it IS an OH&S issue

if I come into the lunchroom and there are bowls, cups, spoons, food containers or coffee plungers sitting in the sink, soaking in cold water, grease and cabbage, I will assume that, because they are in the sink (o ye crucible of cleansing!), they are all clean and washed up and only in need of neat stacking on the drying rack, which I am more than happy to do for you.

Just fucking wait until I'm out of the lift before you try to squeeze in, you bonehead.

Spot the difference

I recently submitted a review of Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Just yesterday I received the glorious hard copy of the latest edition of Viewpoint in the post. Below is the sentence as I submitted it for publication:

"... it is the story of Changez’s time studying and working in the United States and being absorbed into the culture which grew from the September 11 attacks."

And here is the sentence as published:

"... it is the story of Changez’s time studying and working in the United States and being absorbed into the culture, which grew from the September 11 attacks."

AAAARRGH!!

On the one hand, I'm annoyed that my review (or at least that sentence) has been turned from a factual recounting of the basic plot of the novel into a broad statement about the United States' culture after the September 11 attacks.
On the other, I stand in quiet awe that a simple comma can transform so much.
I love language.

Right. That's IT.

I am sick to fucking death of the prevailing attitudes about fatherhood. If mothers are still seen as the ones firmly ensconced at home, writhing in throes of whitegood-enabled ecstacy while they slowly, blissfully euthanise their thankless, smart-arsed children with ever more powerful anti-bacterial cleaning agents, then we fathers are still firmly on the outer. Clueless, spineless morons from Mars, we are, one and all. Footballs in one hand, nutsack in the other.
Before Charlie was born, as The Expectant Father, I received much advice and commentary . (Mele did too, but that deserves its own tetchy blog). Most of that advice was in the form of a warning about The First Poo.
"You know," my newly-self-declared mentor would intone, "the first poo a baby ever does is this black, sticky GLUEY Satanical substance, which affixes itself to everything like Intergalactic Superglue. It doesn't come off, it can't be washed out." This was usually followed by the requisite evil cackle and knowing stare, just to ensure that I was quivering on the ground in disgust and mourning for the imminent loss of my immature, boyish, care-free ways to the grim spectre of responsibility.
I, of course, did no such thing.
I'm a large fan of self-deprecation, but in this instance, I will buck my own trend and proudly claim that when that first nappy needed changing, I changed it. And moved on with my life.
One thing about my life that did not move on, however, was this larger issue of treating fathers like naughty schoolboys who need to pick up rubbish after school in order to learn some responsibility. Most of the mainstream literature I encounter (read: theage.com.au) uses the same patronising tone that pre-feminism literature did in referring to women in the workplace.
Many difficult and strange rituals will happen to you, Mr New Dad, the tone of the piece goes. We bet you didn't think you'd be expected to pick up the housework while your wife sleeps! Did you know, she'll seem exhausted all the time and probably won't even want to have sex? Didn't think of that? Did you? You stupid boy. Daring to have children, which is clearly the sacred mother's role. Tsk tsk tsk.

Think I'm joking? Think I'm overreacting?
Please, visit the Phil&Ted's website (they make fancy prams) and take a look at the way fathers are welcomed.
"Freaked Out Dads!"
If you venture further, you'll find that the website is actually directed towards fathers who actually don't seem to be looking forward to the arrival of a new child.
Don't panic, Mr Mannering! they reassure you. No need to be a prisoner of the nursery (like Mum), with our funky kit you'll still get to: See the lads; watch the footy; build the deck ...
How about get phucked Phil! You too, Ted!

I'm sick of good fathers being marvelled at and the shit ones being let off the hook.

***
GTH - Andy Pants, you cherry-picker, you. Nice work. I was thinking red roses and passionate storm clouds, but I liked yours better.

Dear Manufacturers of Baby Paraphernalia,

If it can't be used or operated with one hand while someone yells at you, it's as useful as a peddle-powered wheelchair.

Ditto any disposable item that comes out in a big, clingy string, rather than one wipe/nappy sack at a time. Kleenex tissues can manage it. Jatz Crackers can manage it. Why can't you?

Dear Top Gear Australia,

Well done on a first season. You were better than we all thought you'd be.
But, lads, you missed the mark.
The filming was brilliant. The look of the thing was bright, exciting and Australian. But you still missed the mark. In trying not to be UK Top Gear, you missed out the things that make UK Top Gear worth watching.
I've written about this before, but I wasn't clear enough. I understand now where I went wrong, and I apologise. It's not just that we all want to drive the cars with you, we want to understand them. Pretend they're ours. We want to be able to quote the stats at our mates and also potificate about how the air-conditioning comes from a Mondeo.
When you take out our Lambourghinis for a spin, we don't just want you to read out the sales brochure. We want you to interpret it. Don't tell us about the torque, tell us it would actually twist tarmac to ribbons if the tyres were any stickier. Don't tell us the thing is fast, tell us it's already next Tuesday. Exaggeration, hyperbole, superfluities, lies. How much power does the W427 have? Four Million kilowatts! That's how much! Yeah! Broom Broom!
The problem is that you have writers, but not motoring journalists. The staged-gags and wordplays are good, but not the car-related ones. The car talk is all written down verbatim from the nervous nellies handing over the Emotional Control Units to the hosts. There's no opinion, no criticism. I understand that car manufacturers are loathe to put their product images in the hands of so powerful a medium as Top Gear, but when you "do" a car, don't just tell us that you love it. Tell us it handles like a caffeinated chiuhaha. Tell us the interior reminds you of your accountant's tearoom (practical, sparse, boring and with little teabag expense accounts ticking away in the ether).

I never saw you dislike a car. Not even slightly. Praise is boring. The only reason you're still reading this is because I'm not blowing spun sugar into your dacks. Our eyes tell us that black GT is brilliant. Only you can keep us watching with the audacity to suggest that it's an ugly, over-powered brute with switches from a 1980s cassette recorder. Do some hotlaps in the R8 and then have a good old bitch about how it looks like the guy at your formal who didn't understand that cummerbunds were meant to go inside the suit.

The final show's Holden vs Ford showdown. You came out and tested the entry-level variations. The family cars. I was thrilled. I was excited.
'Aha!' I said aloud to the empty loungeroom. 'Here comes the tomfoolery, the japes, the mucking about and the falling over.'
You did doughnuts. Again. We've seen the doughnuts. We've seen the breaking test and the drag race.
Did the words 'family car' not ring any bells? No? I'll try another question: at the risk of borrowing too much from UK Top Gear, have you noticed that when your English cousins do comparative road tests on less-than-thrilling cars the tests themselves are always mockeries of normal usability tests, the testing is a slapstick routine minus the pies and the results are ridiculously skewed and unimportant? Have you noticed how entertaining that is?
I'll give you a clue: how about a family car test that involves, oh I don't know, a family? Why weren't the hosts dressed up in floral dresses and skateboarding shorts and told to fetch as many groceries as possible for their respective vehicles? Why weren't a gaggle of school kids raced around the track in the back seat on their way to footy practices with points for whoever's surrogate children kicked the most goals? I just thought of those then, and I'm doing it for free.

The major clue to the mark-missing that's gone on all season was during the final montage.
'What a great season,' one of the presenters grinned. 'Check out what fun we had!'
Play montage. About thirty seconds in came a long series of clips of the presenters behind the wheels of very different cars all exclaiming 'How good is this?'
Yes, I know it's a classic example of Aussie rhetoric. What am I, an idiot? But taken out of that context, I can't help but notice that they never answered the question. We see the Porsche. We hear it. We watch our mates up there on-screen driving it and grinning like Luna Park winning a lottery ticket. Then they all turn to camera and ask "How good is this?"
'I don't know!' we all shout. 'Why don't you tell us?'

Come back next year boys. Review some cars. Don't be afraid to fall over and complain. And watch a bit of UK Top Gear. Take notes.

***
GTH - Points to the long-absent Moify for his usual brand of stalktacular guessing, and a point to Kath for offering to buy me a beer. Kath, you will receive TWO points upon receipt of said beer. THREE if you bring it to me before I have to go onstage and brave my famously acidic nervous farts.

Boo Fucking Hoo Part TWO!!!

I am well-aware of what schadenfreude is, and, as of today, how warm it can feel.

Premium suburbs bear brunt as real estate market reels.

"At auctions across tree-lined streets in Toorak, Brighton and Kew, bidders are keeping hands in pockets, with auctioneers forced to pass in homes and hope. "I would say there has been a 10% to 15% fall."
Local agent Richard Mackinnon, from Bennison Mackinnon, referring to those suburbs.

Be strong, children. Think of the plight and thank your lucky stars and moons that you're not so unfortunate as to be selling a five-bedroom bungalow in Toorak!

I know, I know: shame on me, these people worked their whole lives, mortgage stress, etc, but hearing about 4-bedroom house going for "only" a million bucks after years of baby-boomer bubbling, completely fails to make me reach for the hanky. Being told almost weekly that my generation is one that will never be able to afford a house has hardened my impecunious heart somewhat.

Except for you, Kath. You go, girl. Gouge those finnicketty buggers.

***
GTH - Last post's picture was of Mele's Nonno's greenhouse and his homemade tools. Nonno died last year, but he left behind an amazing culture of love and respect among his family and through the stories they tell, the pictures they show and the things he left around the farm. I wanted specifically to say with this picture that not all death is pointless, leaving nothing. It can be delicate and beautiful and personal. Points to everybody who had a go.