australian rozie

I was made redundant at work today
Now what am I going to do with my life?

You may have noticed my recent entries have been quite negative and critical, so I thought I’d write about some other stuff going on.
I am making my first ever zine called “Australian Rozie” (funny that)! I’ll be selling them at the MCA Zine Fair on Sunday 25 May 2008. I’ll be sharing a table with Aliza from work and Becky Jo & co. I’ve always wanted to make a zine, I used to pick them up when I was in high school and recently there has been a resurgence of zine making amongst people I know. So it’s a bit of a “perzine” - a personal zine where I’ll write about stuff I’m into and give worldly advice. Just like this blog I guess. The fun part is I get to design it myself, which is a change from work where I never get to chose my own layout, fonts or colours, there’s either a corporate style guide to follow or some art director tells me what to do. My zine will be all ME ME ME!
Who knows if anyone will buy one, I don’t even know how much to sell it for. Hope to see some of you guys at the Zine Fair - it’s part of Sydney’s Writer’s Festival too.

I am quoting my brother Jme with the above statement.
This is a story about what should be a simple and painless Mother’s Day lunch.
Firstly, I googled “high tea at swissotel sydney” because I wanted to make a booking for this Sunday. The first thing that comes up is the review of high tea at the Swissotel on the awesome foodie blog Grab your fork. Nowhere on the first Google page is any link to the Swissotel itself. So I look up their site another way and there is NOTHING about the High Tea that is supposed to be offered at their hotel bar/restaurant. Also, there is no phone number easily found on their homepage. Like duh! So I go back to Grab your Fork and there are all the contact details neatly at the end of the review. I call up the hotel:
Rozie: “Hello, I’d like to make a booking for Sunday for High Tea.”
Hotel Girl: “High Tea??? Oh, umm…” Not a good start. She puts me through to the “bar”.
Male with strong Asian accent: Err, Umm, booking? It will be $35…Err, umm, can I have your credit card number… (something about securing the booking).
I kind of didn’t want to give this unprofessional sounding guy my credit card details, but I did because I didn’t want to miss out on the Mother’s Day booking. So I give him all the booking details a “normal” place would need. I got off the phone with a slightly bad feeling…
Sunday (Mother’s Day) comes along and I need to add one person to the booking. So I get my brother to call up.
Jme: “Hi, I’d like to confirm a booking for today and add one more person, here is the name, time etc”
Hotel person: “Err umm, ummmmmm… we don’t have your booking”.
WTF???
Anyway, Jme made sure that there would be a table for us when we arrived at Swissotel an hour later.
So, the service when we arrived was a bit random, most of the staff are young and obviously inexperienced. On a positive note, there was plenty of food and a lot of variety from savoury to sweet which was nicely presented. The chocolate fountain didn’t seem to be working properly and the chocolate tasted a bit yuck which was a disappointment. It was quite busy but the place wasn’t packed out. When it came to paying the bill, I noticed that it said $45 per person. I think it was the manager who was taking our money. I told him that the guy on the phone told me it was $35. The “manager” said it was actually $45 because it was Mother’s Day. At this point, I decided to tell him all about my previous experience with this lunch. He was somewhat apologetic and exasperated. I know that there is a shortage of decent wait staff in this city… but that ain’t my problem. The manager of this hotel needs to get the staff’s $hit together. He did give me a small box of chocolates (as some kind of compensation) but that’s not going to stop me blogging with an iron fist. So, I gave him my business card, and now I wait to see if the Swissotel will follow up on my complaints. Of course, this is not the only place I’ve been to in Sydney with questionable service, but I just haven’t the time to blog about every experience. Wish I was a professional blogger!
Phew - glad I got that of my chest.

While I was doing my Sydney Town Hall Steps thing on Tuesday, JTV were getting people to listen to and view some new tracks on an iPod. I went up to say hello to Rosie and introduced myself (Rozie meets Rosie!), then I ended up being interviewed. Rosie Beaton asked questions such as: Do you like it? Would you dance to it? What kind of fruit would this be? See some pics here. The first track was by Grafton Primary. I quite liked it (Relativity) and it has a cool video with trippy graphics in the background and I like the strap on keyboard/synth action. I mentioned it was a bit like The Presets (I’ve really been getting into them recently). Though I feel like everyone is channelling Dave Gahan through voice or image at the moment.
So I watched JTV today because I was hoping to see myself (I love myself on tv ) and there I was for a few seconds! Later on during the show, The Presets were on. I’ve read a few articles about them saying they used to go to clubs (like Club 77) and raves. I said to Dave that I don’t think I ever saw them around (back in the day), but they probably didn’t look so “outstanding” back then. Anyway, later on we went shopping in the city, while having a Max Brenner chocolate break in David Jones, one of them walked past us.

I like handbags. Sometimes I want to buy them online. I like mid-priced handbags ($100-$200). When buying online, I want to see the product (with detail) before I dish out the money. Otherwise I just have to go to the shops and touch them. I don’t want a crappy little out of focus image. I want to see the back and front of the bag, the pockets, zips, straps, handles and what’s inside (mobile phone holder?, more pockets?). Handbag Queen isn’t the only web store that does this obviously, but I just happened to be looking at their site and it bites. If you want to see a great bag buying site (obviously they don’t have the same type of bags, but anyhoo) check out Rushfaster. They have great choice, simple navigation and great pictures of the products.

Where the !@#$ is my password to redeem my FlexiPass tickets for the Sydney Film Festival.
2 (TWO) days ago I called Ticketmaster to book my FlexiGold* pass ($375). I was told they will email a confirmation (they did not), I called the next day to get a reference number (that the guy forgot to give me on the phone). He said it would take up to 2 days for them to send me a password so I can redeem the tickets for films. Like hello - get with the program!

I forget to mention this incident from a few weeks ago. I had lunch with some workmates at The Shelbourne Hotel. I ordered the Traditional Beer Battered Fish ‘n’ Chips w/ salad + homemade tartare for $15.50 (I always order the fish and chips when I have lunch with workmates). We had to wait quite a while for our food to come out (about 30 mins), it was Friday at lunchtime in the city. Unfortunately, the batter looked shrivelled and it was rock hard. I ate one of the pieces of fish, then decided to just ditch the batter and just eat the fish inside. The salad was average but the chips were OK, nothing special. After watching so many episodes of Kitchen Nightmares, I had to say something about this disappointing meal. I asked for the restaurant manager at the end of the meal and told him that the fish and chips were pretty bad here. I also asked him if he had tried it himself and told him to get the chef to make one for him so he could see what it was like. The manager apologised, and asked me if I wanted anything else (well, it was bit late, we’d all eaten and had to go back to work) and took the plate away. A few minutes later he came back and said that he had taken it off the bill (thanks). I appreciated that - because it was pretty crap. Hopefully, they will improve the batter recipe in future.

Because I am a-n-a-l, I have already done some research into this year’s Sydney Film Festival. The program isn’t launched until 8 May. Firstly, if you are so fortunate to be able to take 2 weeks off work and watch films all day and night, you can buy the daytime and evening subscriptions. You can even have a reserved seat at the State Theatre for the whole festival. How I would love if I could do that! AND How I would love if every cinema had reserved seating. I’ll probably get the FlexiPass 20 for $250 ($12.50 per film), although the FlexiGold (40 + 10 bonus weekday daytime) for $375 ($7.50 per film) represents even better value! Finally, you are able to redeem your Flexi passes online this year. Did the SFF organisers not realise how much it sucked to have to go into a ticket office, in person, to redeem the flexi passes??? The SFF sent out a survey at the end of last year (and you all know how much I love a survey) but it was crap because it was in PDF format. You were supposed to fill it out and send it back. I tried to type into the editable pdf but it got all screwed up.
Anyway - there is a sneak preview of a few things in this year’s program and one has already caught my attention:
Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story
Packed with interviews, archive clips (watch out for a pink-suited Otis Redding blowing the socks off a London audience) and reams of fabulous music (Booker T and the MGs, Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Isaac Hayes and more), Respect Yourself tells the unbelievably rollercoaster story of Stax Records.

This could be interesting:
Friday 2nd May
The Pioneers of Electronic Music
Archival performance footage by Morton Subotnick, Laurie Spiegel, Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, Mother Mallard, and Holger Czukay makes for an interesting investigation into the pioneers of Electronic music. Likewise, Paul Lansky’s private lesson with Theremin inventor Leon Theremin is an example of how non-user friendly electronic musical instruments could be, even to people who should have the best sense of how to approach them. Mu-Meson Archives Doors 7.30 for 8pm start $10 with supper.
Mu-Meson Archives at Crn Parramatta Rd & Trafalgar St Annandale at the end of King Furniture building up the steel staircase. Phone 9517-2010

Alright, better get those coats ready.
Now: 10°C Min: 9°C