australian rozie

Dave and I had a quick weekend trip down to Melbourne on the last weekend of June. The main reason was to help Thommy celebrate his 30th birthday but of course I managed to add a couple of exhibitions in too.
Highlights:
Breakfast at Birdman Eating
Thommy’s party at Cavallero
Great accommodation - a really nice house in North Fitzroy.
Shopping/eating on Brunswick Street and Collingwood (haven’t spent much time around this area before)
Visiting Meet Me at Mike’s store. Pip who runs the store was so nice. I’m so happy to see someone “living their dream”! It’s such a cute store and really supports the local crafty community. If only there was something like it in Sydney.
Game On exhibition at ACMI
Art Deco exhibition at NGV. This exhibition was not cheap - $22 but it was very comprehensive, so much furniture, art, photographs, fashion, jewellery etc from the Art Deco era - the top notch stuff from V&A in UK. I thought it was freakin’ awesome.
Seeing Gabby and Ruby, while they are staying with Shio and Rohan (and little Miro)

Lowlights:
Wasn’t as freezing cold as I expected.
The taxi we called to go to the airport in Melbourne never turned up, so we had to drag our luggage out to the main road and flag one down in the dark.
Flight delayed from Melbourne to Sydney by about an hour.

Turns out that gastro was actually Salmonella! WOW lucky me, that’s one I haven’t had before, well maybe I have but I didn’t have a test to find out for sure. I feel OK now, but I have to have another test in a month. Thanks for your concern and maybe I need to stop eating public food again.
Here are some potential culprits:
The food hall at Northpoint, North Sydney (Japanese Beef Bento or Roast Beef Roll), Asagao on Pitt Street (various sushi).
Now everybody sing….
Apu: You see, whether igloo, hut, or lean-to, or a geodesic dome,
There’s no structure I have been to, which I’d rather call my home.
[music starts]
When I first arrived, you were all such jerks,
But now I’ve come to looooooove your quirks.
Maggie with her eyes so bright,
Marge with hair by Frank Lloyd Wright,
Lisa can philosophise,
Bart’s adept at spinning lies,
Homer’s a delightful fella,
Sorry ’bout the salmonella.
Homer: Heh heh, that’s OK.

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.

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.

The older I get, the more I really think about Anzac Day and why we get a day off. Imagine if every guy you knew between the age of 18 to 50 was sent overseas to fight in a war against a far away enemy and some of them never came back. Kids today… they don’t know what it would be like. Anyway, I thank the people that gave their lives, so my family could come to Australia over 50 years ago (that’s a long story, I’ll tell you another day) and live happily ever after (sort of).
So I didn’t do much this weekend:
Baked some Anzac biscuits
Watched the Anzac Day parade on TV
Catch up with old uni mates
Yum Cha for Nadia’s B’day
Driving Lesson
Made a roast
Bill Viola: the Tristan project @ St. Saviour’s Church, Redfern
Watched Fargo
Laundry x 3 loads
Lunch with Thommy
Practiced parallel parking
Update my flickr pics

Gucci

Originally uploaded by Australian Rozie

I was lucky enough to get an invite to the Gucci SS08 Fashion Event (my cousin’s friend is the PR director). Let’s call it: a luxury brand fashion parade with drinks & nibblies. I don’t normally get to move in these circles so I was really looking forward to seeing what it would be like. The set up was really impressive, they had fitted out a warehouse in Alexandria with a shiny catwalk, seating (long white cushy seats with simple black piping) and a bar. The hors d’oeuvres were really fancy (and there was plenty). Piper Heidsieck champagne was on offer. I was told to drink up and enjoy, but I had to pass due to my alcohol intolerance, such a shame! I did enjoy an apple & elderflower drink instead. There was a smattering of celebrities such as Natalie Bassingthwaighte & Sonia Kruger but I was hoping for a super A-lister such as Cate or Nicole. Other guests included “rich people” like Justin Hemmes, Gucci ladies, magazine editors, as well as models I’ve seen in Vogue. The parade itself was quite surreal, I felt like I was in TV, especially when they played the mini-doco of David Lynch directing the latest Gucci ad on all the walls surrounding the catwalk. The clothes were really nice, the palette of black, white & pink was my favourite. There was an Asian model who looked so, so miserable, I thought, if I had a body like that I’d be smiling! I met a guy who is a colour forecaster - what an interesting job!
Not sure who the DJ was, he played some non-offensive background dance music earlier but later on dropped some stuff I really liked: Chromeo, LCD Sound System, Annie, The Cure & INXS.
It was great to see Ms CM after so many years. When my cousin was at uni (and I was in high school), I used to hang out with them and be a “fake HK uni student” - we used to go to discos/student dance parties, the movies, French Riviera (when it was still in Double Bay)…oh those were the days. Now, I just daydream that I can afford Gucci.


Article from SMH here
More details on Vogue Aust site.
What’s sexy now?

This was part of the MATTHEW NGUI: POINTS OF VIEW exhibition: Installation and video works which transform images, objects and experiences from everyday life.

Matthew Ngui’s performance works often use food to create conversations about cultural identity. As an extension of these ideas, Sydney chef Kylie Kwong through the preparation, cooking and sharing of a contemporary Chinese meal explores this culinary tradition and its relation to her family history.

We had an enjoyable afternoon with Ms KK at the MCA last Sunday. The cost was $20 for MCA members (which we both are), so I thought we should take the opportunity to see the “mistress/master” of Chinese Australian cooking at work. I know a fair bit about her family (my aunt knows her mum) & cooking background from her tv show & books. What I didn’t realise was that she studied graphic art & worked in an advertising agency until she was 26 when she realised advertising was not for her.

Kylie was very personable & friendly, but slightly “produce” arrogant! She grew up in North Epping, near where Dave grew up! She is a champion of organic and bio-organic products but they cost so much more than the same non-organic versions. The audience was made up of a variety of young gay & straight couples as well as more mature citizens. She did a classic steamed fish dish, her sang choy bow & a very colourful non-chinese salad. Of course this inspired us to go home and cooked a whole steamed fish.
Here are few recommended products I gleaned from her presentation:
Nolan’s Road Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Organic Ground Cane Sugar
Biodynamic Eggs
She buys fish from Christies at The Sydney Fish Market
Unfortunately we weren’t able to sample the dishes she created over the hour or so of her talk. That was a shame because we hadn’t had lunch and were starving.
This presentation also made me really want to eat at Billy Kwong’s again (been there a few times but not for a couple of years)- I hate how you can’t book a table!

I went to the ACMP Trampoline screening & awards night at The Chauvel in Paddington. I’d never heard of ACMP, but my brother (who works for one of the sponsors) said there’d be free food & drinks, so I went along. Australian Commercial and Media Photographers (ACMP), was established in 1991, and acts as a united voice for Australian professional working photographers. Anyway, they had a competition for “emerging” photographers (students, assistants, photographers with less than 3 years experience). They presented the work of 15 finalists on the big screen. The work was quite diverse, from fashion shoots with mega retouching to photo-documentary to nature. It made me want to take more photos (unprofessionally). The 7 winners were given a nice Crumpler bag and a Sony digital camera, as well as a chance to participate in a Master Class at Saatchi & Saatchi. The host seemed to be a bit of a last minute ring-in, perhaps the order and pace of the event could have been better. But overall it was a pleasant evening with some inspiring work to think about.

Until this morning, the last time I had a “champagne” breakfast was on my last day of school November 1990. The difference between 1990 and 2007 was that I didn’t drink the champagne this time, and there was actually food at the breakfast. There were 2 people at work who were having their birthday today, instead of a cake (which is what everyone gets normally at about 3pm), they wanted smoked salmon with cream cheese bagels and sparkling wine at 8:45am. Thank you.