Friday, 11 May 2007

eating locally

Despite not being overseas, I emulated an overseas trip this week by eating at not one, not two, but three Spanish restaurants. It turned out I was staying in the "Spanish Quarter" of Sydney. All three of these restaurants were within 50 metres of my hotel! If I was staying longer, I believe there were more just around the corner too.

Monday night: Don Quixote. A huge meal! Roast suckling pig - awesome stuff. A clear path to my heart via my stomach. This was a traditional meal from the Madrid region in the middle of Spain. It was followed up with a "Spanish Coffee", which was a strong espresso with some kind of liquor and cream.

Tuesday night: My non-Spanish night. Counter meal at a pub with Mark. Tandoori Pizza - a dish of confused origins!!

Wednesday night: Miro Tapas Bar. I thought I might have a few dishes, but after two I was full! Firstly, fried white bait, followed by chilli mushrooms. They served some beer from Barcelona called Estrella Damm; it was really nice. I had to consume two : )

Thursday night: Captain Torres. Named after Torres who was the first European to sail thought the straits between PNG & Australia - hence Torres Straits. Anyway, this was a restaurant upstairs and tapas bar downstairs. I was going to have tapas again, and sat at the bar. The barman however convinced me to have a meal at the bar, he told me the fried flounder was way better than the baby octopus that was on my mind. I suspect he was right too, the flounder was excellent! This place also served Spanish beers. I didn't recognise (and can't remember now anyway) the towns in which they were brewed. First I had an Ambar, which could be the brand, or the type of brew - it did taste like an amber ale. The second one was Estrella Cerveza Especial, which wasn't as good as Esrtella Damm from the previous night.

Hence this caps off my week of Spanish culinary delights. Work went well too! We were able to finish 2 days ahead of schedule, even after fixing a few problems along the way. My phone died during some testing which is annoying. I took some photos of beers for the beer challenge, but now they are stuck on my broken phone. *grumbles*

I've started mapping my travels on travellerspoint.com/member_map.cfm. It's not too interesting yet, but it'll grow!

Tuesday, 8 May 2007

sydney... a short trip?

This week (and maybe a couple more days after that) I'm in Sydney. Not quite as exotic as Hanoi, but a trip non-the-less : ) And I think the "localness" of the trip lulled me into a false sense of security. Instead of carefully making sure I'd packed everything, I whacked everything together Sunday night. Here's a list of things I forgot as a consequence:

  • USB 'stick'
  • VPN password card
  • Laptop charger
  • Small wireless access point
  • Camera
  • iPod <-> USB cable

Not an insignificant list of items! Luckily I can work around most of them - for instance I drove to work before the flight and picked up my laptop charger. Even so, it's a good trip to be reminded of the ease of such oversights - good because it's only going to be a week long, and it's not too far from home.

The lack of a camera - dodgy camera phone excluded - is annoying me. I decided against taking the bulky SLR as I wasn't going to be touring, but I did forget to grab a little point 'n shoot. Once in Sydney I've been wanting to take photos ever since! My hotel room is on the 2nd storey, and looks directly out onto the Sydney monorail - not so exiting for a local, but pretty cool for me. Last night I went for dinner at a Spanish restaurant and got served a magnificent (although slightly too big) roast pork meal. It was definitely worth a photo!! The fish markets in Pyrmont were also worth a few photos: if I had a camera!

Okay enough ranting about that - lesson has been learnt. More observations about Sydney: it's damned haphazard! None of the streets are straight, some are one way, and all of them cause me to get lost. Luckily this new fangled phone can be used to look up maps of the city : ) The skyline looks imposing too, as the buildings "overlap", whereas in Melbourne, due to the city grid if you are walking along the street the buildings "line up" and have gaps between them where the roads are.

Tonight I met up with Mark who I worked with a few years back at Dynamic Hearing. He's recently become the father of two twin girls, and so it was great to catch up with him. We had fun comparing notes on transition stages of life. Me getting more involved in my work and career, and him winding back work a bit to help his wife Liz look after two demanding little people.

Another thing I forgot - I didn't find out if they were identical twins or not. Not so important : P