Spent most of yesterday interacting with my Thunderbird Address Book in an attempt to create significant `subgroups' for ease of communication whilst DH (Dearest Husband) and I are away in the UK...if we ever get organised enough to leave. The instructions via trusty Google were not particularly helpful and it seemed impossible to make the BCC option actually wake up and start operating. Several tests that would have been happier snug and dormant in the darkest recesses of the laptop went flying off into the ether. Seventy unrelated recipients from a range of my new and efficient subgroups received them.
`Oh Bugga!' I thought and then again hopefully everyone would be far too busy to notice, or maybe not care, or maybe just hit the delete button.
Hours later, when I was boring a disinterested neighbour with the tale of technological ineptitude and adding that it didn't matter because nobody seemed to notice, there came a far too furious email from from one whose privacy had been well and truly violated. My unsuspecting laptop positively bristled with her lightning bolts of anger. She had always assumed I knew what I was doing with computers. Had I not been using one for long enough? She was surprised at me. I was never to put her name in an email in full view of fifty other people again. She was not at all impressed.
No - she wasn't my old Geography teacher from the fourth form. Just a girl I vaguely knew when I was twelve years old and haven't seen since.
Funny how differently people perceive things and how vast the range of their resulting actions can be.
Thursday, 21 August 2014
Wednesday, 20 August 2014
Lunch at The Parnell
You have to try this place because it really is excellent - especially if you're like me and decide that lunch out means you don't have to cook dinner. The Parnell is easy to find, right on Parnell Road, beside Oh Calcutta and opposite the wine shop. Easy parking - last Wednesday lunchtime Olga found parking directly outside and so it's definitely on her list of favourites too.
They used to run Black Sugar in Mission Bay and we were quite delighted to rediscover them a week or two ago quite by chance. They are currently doing a lunch `special' which includes a glass of wine and if you don't like imbibing at lunchtime you can opt for fruit juice. The choice of dishes is impressive - Pork Belly, Lamb Shanks, Chicken Skewers with Risotto, Fish and all beautifully cooked and presented. Try it!
They used to run Black Sugar in Mission Bay and we were quite delighted to rediscover them a week or two ago quite by chance. They are currently doing a lunch `special' which includes a glass of wine and if you don't like imbibing at lunchtime you can opt for fruit juice. The choice of dishes is impressive - Pork Belly, Lamb Shanks, Chicken Skewers with Risotto, Fish and all beautifully cooked and presented. Try it!
What's to hate?
I cannot understand why so many of us seem to despise John Key so much. I've never met him (though I'm reliably informed that he does live quite close by) but he comes across as a thoroughly nice chap. He's got a lovely smile and he wears his suits very well (though not quite as well as Winston).
He's had a lot to contend with when you consider the combined consequences of Pike River and the Christchurch Earthquakes. How many of his rivals would have done as well as he has with so much to worry about at three in the morning I wonder? All in all he hasn't done a bad job at steering the country through some difficult days and he scrubs up very well when dallying in New York and London. He creates a very good impression in my opinion.
But more important than any of the above - to me at least - is the fact that most of the time he refrains from hurling insults and sneering at others. And to top it all, most of the time he appears to front up and tell the truth.
He's had a lot to contend with when you consider the combined consequences of Pike River and the Christchurch Earthquakes. How many of his rivals would have done as well as he has with so much to worry about at three in the morning I wonder? All in all he hasn't done a bad job at steering the country through some difficult days and he scrubs up very well when dallying in New York and London. He creates a very good impression in my opinion.
But more important than any of the above - to me at least - is the fact that most of the time he refrains from hurling insults and sneering at others. And to top it all, most of the time he appears to front up and tell the truth.
Tuesday, 19 August 2014
Not all bad....
Well the people at The Grill of yesterday's post are not one hundred per cent bad. I fired off an email to them later in the day and this morning I found a very prompt response from Anna and had she been in the restaurant at the time we were there, I would have had no reason to be complaining so bitterly. Anna and I have already spoken on the phone and we are to get a refund regarding the uneaten braised beef cheek. I feel better about them already and although to my mind the beef cheek was inedible, and although it is still lying heavily in the stomach of He Who Would Eat Most Things, I have to concede that there are a great many people who would thoroughly enjoy such a dish.
Monday, 18 August 2014
Auckland Restaurant Month....
Our hobby seems to be dining out. Well it has been so for some time to be honest. Today we decided to try one of the Auckland Restaurant Month `deals' via the good offices of Heart of the City.
The Grill by Sean Connolly at Skycity Grand Hotel, 90 Federal Street was offering two courses for forty dollars available for lunch or dinner. We would partake for lunch we decided and set off through Auckland streets where a blustery wind seemed to be coming directly from the Antarctic.
A lovely room it has to be said, rather empty so luckily we were offered a temptingly intimate half circular booth. Perfect.
I knew almost immediately we should have read the offered menu more carefully - no choice. If you wanted the deal then you had to have the grilled tongue with horseradish sauce followed by braised beef cheek with parsley mash. Take it or leave it. I didn't think I would like it terribly much but rather unwisely I took it anyway.
We were served by a very pleasant young woman who did not look down her nose (some of them do of course) when we insisted upon tap water rather than the more upmarket variety, and furthermore poured our wine with a degree of panache. Shortly, a huge piece of grilled tongue arrived before me - not what I would have called an entree portion and when cut into proved to be pulsating with beef fat. The horseradish sauce was very nice though. I delivered half of it to my companion and waited with some trepidation for the beef cheek to be issued forth. Three lavish pieces of meat on a large plate - adorned with a dramatic looking sauce and resting on a pale green mash. I put a very small piece into my mouth and concluded I had been right to be suspicious because it was rather like biting into a fat filled beef flavoured marshmallow. I apologised to the pleasant young woman as she almost immediately took it away. She urged me to choose something else from the menu and so I ordered a starter of raw fish - not because I was hungry because by then I felt as though I was back at St. Joseph's School battling with Sister Camilla about my uneaten school dinner. I suppose I ordered it so that it would be easy for them when the time came to pay the bill, to simply substitute it for the mountainous portion of beef cheek. It did not occur to me that we would be charged for the meal that had been so rapidly returned to the kitchen.
Imagine our surprise when in fact we were charged for everything, exactly as ordered, not a single hint of an offer to take the price of the offending main course from the bill.
And because it was now two thirty and we were the only people left in the restaurant, and because of our astonishment we simply paid up. I cannot help thinking, however, that it was a slip on the part of the restaurant - not good PR. Or am I simply just old fashioned?
The Grill by Sean Connolly at Skycity Grand Hotel, 90 Federal Street was offering two courses for forty dollars available for lunch or dinner. We would partake for lunch we decided and set off through Auckland streets where a blustery wind seemed to be coming directly from the Antarctic.
A lovely room it has to be said, rather empty so luckily we were offered a temptingly intimate half circular booth. Perfect.
I knew almost immediately we should have read the offered menu more carefully - no choice. If you wanted the deal then you had to have the grilled tongue with horseradish sauce followed by braised beef cheek with parsley mash. Take it or leave it. I didn't think I would like it terribly much but rather unwisely I took it anyway.
We were served by a very pleasant young woman who did not look down her nose (some of them do of course) when we insisted upon tap water rather than the more upmarket variety, and furthermore poured our wine with a degree of panache. Shortly, a huge piece of grilled tongue arrived before me - not what I would have called an entree portion and when cut into proved to be pulsating with beef fat. The horseradish sauce was very nice though. I delivered half of it to my companion and waited with some trepidation for the beef cheek to be issued forth. Three lavish pieces of meat on a large plate - adorned with a dramatic looking sauce and resting on a pale green mash. I put a very small piece into my mouth and concluded I had been right to be suspicious because it was rather like biting into a fat filled beef flavoured marshmallow. I apologised to the pleasant young woman as she almost immediately took it away. She urged me to choose something else from the menu and so I ordered a starter of raw fish - not because I was hungry because by then I felt as though I was back at St. Joseph's School battling with Sister Camilla about my uneaten school dinner. I suppose I ordered it so that it would be easy for them when the time came to pay the bill, to simply substitute it for the mountainous portion of beef cheek. It did not occur to me that we would be charged for the meal that had been so rapidly returned to the kitchen.
Imagine our surprise when in fact we were charged for everything, exactly as ordered, not a single hint of an offer to take the price of the offending main course from the bill.
And because it was now two thirty and we were the only people left in the restaurant, and because of our astonishment we simply paid up. I cannot help thinking, however, that it was a slip on the part of the restaurant - not good PR. Or am I simply just old fashioned?
Sunday, 17 August 2014
Rear View Obscured
More often than not it's not easy to examine the bits and pieces of your own past and sort the wheat from the chaff in order to see what and which event might bear writing about.
`There's a book in that,' announced my Thursday Friend when we met in the city for our monthly coffee catch-up which due to a series of unrelated events had turned into lunch.
We had been bewailing the fact that it was invariably difficult to launch into the next writing project and Thursday Friend had said that finishing a book usually left her depressed.
`Like having a baby,' I agreed because in fact a new book and a new baby are remarkably similar.
So we determinedly discussed what our next project/s might possibly be.
Then we talked about the intricacies of print on demand sites and the technical problems with book covers there encountered.
And then somehow or other we spoke of things past and I found myself telling her the gory details of a neighbour problem from years ago which featured escaping goats, poisoned cats and accusations of stress induced by apples that needed to be fingerprinted, not to mention evil children who kept their neighbours under surveillance at all times.
That's when my Thursday Friend ventured to suggest that the story, fantastic and hard to believe though it clearly was, might harbour the nucleus of a new novel!
Nonsense I thought. But then I thought again - and of course began to wonder.
`There's a book in that,' announced my Thursday Friend when we met in the city for our monthly coffee catch-up which due to a series of unrelated events had turned into lunch.
We had been bewailing the fact that it was invariably difficult to launch into the next writing project and Thursday Friend had said that finishing a book usually left her depressed.
`Like having a baby,' I agreed because in fact a new book and a new baby are remarkably similar.
So we determinedly discussed what our next project/s might possibly be.
Then we talked about the intricacies of print on demand sites and the technical problems with book covers there encountered.
And then somehow or other we spoke of things past and I found myself telling her the gory details of a neighbour problem from years ago which featured escaping goats, poisoned cats and accusations of stress induced by apples that needed to be fingerprinted, not to mention evil children who kept their neighbours under surveillance at all times.
That's when my Thursday Friend ventured to suggest that the story, fantastic and hard to believe though it clearly was, might harbour the nucleus of a new novel!
Nonsense I thought. But then I thought again - and of course began to wonder.
Friday, 15 August 2014
Recalcitrant 93 year old
Yesterday we had lunch (yes, eating again!) with a 93 year old and his glamorous lady friend. His hobbies include cooking and listening to music, Mahler in particular. We tried to persuade him to write about his colourful life but he declined to do so.
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