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Food Mover

Saturday, December 29th, 2012

Very soon we’re hopping on the train for Canberra, but I thought I’d squeeze in a quick post while Adam’s getting ready.

The topic is food and drink 🙂

Look at the above. Ignoring for the moment the fact that no one should drink Mr Dew in a country with Lift available, see how they need to label that it contains caffeine. This is unusual, since soda in Australia is typically caffeine free.

Some more food labeling. Note the caloric content listed right on the poster, and then the ‘average’ caloric intake listed at the bottom. I’ll leave you to debate whether this is deceptive advertising…

Just a sample of the amazing variety of flavours available in this country that has a population of 1/15th the USA. Others include mint, ‘big chockie biscuit’ and strawberry white crumble.

My dinner last night. The food of kings!

A random shot of the display at Chicken George (a ‘chicken butcher’) at 7 am yesterday. Just-chicken shops are common here.

Australia loves their Weet-Bix!

My beverage of choice for breakfast yesterday. It had a melancholic taste like forgotten youth.

Let’s move on a bit… one quaint aspect of Australia is that Newspapers still print those single sheet advertisements. And I find it funny that even respectable papers seem to embrace scandal to sell copies.

Amongst other things yesterday we found ourselves at the UFO catchers near Chinatown. They are every bit as good as ever, but one of the fellows in this machine refused to allow me to win it:

Last but not least, I found Bernard that t-shirt he’s always wanted:

Good to know next Christmas is already taken care of 🙂

Posted in Food, Trip | 1 Comment »

I Got That Chicken Sandwich

Friday, December 28th, 2012

Yesterday afternoon we went to Bondi Junction and did some shopping and eating. The most significant purchase was Adam (finally!) buying an iPad. Here he is enjoying Angry Birds Star Wars:

What’s that thing I’m holding? Well it’s part of my new secret skill: balloon shaping! Here’s my first masterpiece:

I was ruinously tired. Mid afternoon, around the time I realized it had been over 40 hours since I’d slept, I was struggling to keep my eyes open. After a dinner of pies and sausage rolls, I eventually retired at 5 pm…,

…and 12 hours later I awoke to a new day! Here I am around 5:45 am this morning:

That is Lift, the blood of Australia. I’m proud to say I drunk 2.174 L yesterday alone 🙂

I went out for my traditional morning walk around Centennial Park. Since I had got out so early, the birds were all awake and singing. It was quite special.

Those guys would put there heads back and sing over and over right there in front of me. When I got too close the right one puffed himself up to scare me, but they never flew.

So many birds, and so few people. I felt I had the park to myself.

Today we’re off to the city for some shopping and perhaps flower viewing… Tomorrow we’re off to Canberra, traveling like emperors in first class on the XPT. Stay tuned 🙂

Posted in Food, Trip | 2 Comments »

Open Market

Monday, August 13th, 2012

San Jose is home to a massive Flea Market, which claims 1500 stalls on Sundays. We went yesterday, to check it out. I had high hopes for this place; I dreamt of walking out with such esoterica as an FM Towns gaming system or maybe unopened boxes of trading cards. Instead, I walked out with only this:

But I skip ahead! More on the above later…

The Flea Market is a mostly-permanent-stalls place where you can go to buy just about anything for relatively cheap. Yes they probably have 1500 stalls, but many of these sell the same old stuff you’d see at flea markets world round, such as clothing, toiletries, kitchen supplies and cheap toys. The ‘garage sellers’ are in their own section, and basically drive up and sell anything they like from tarps on the ground. In theory, this is where true gems may be found. In practice, it’s a lot of tools and, well basically garbage 🙂

As with most places like this, occasionally items unlike anything you’d see in a ‘real’ shop can be found. Cockfighting enthusiast items for instance:

Or pinatas of questionable license:

It was brutally, mercilessly hot at the flea market, and this photo shows the genesis of an illness that gripped me later in the day:

The corndog (and fries) were fine, but glimpse that orange soda there? Well even as the guy who sold it to me apologized for not having mountain dew in stock for a guy wearing a mountain dew t-shirt, a thought had begun in the back of my mind that drinking orange soda in such heat may be a bad idea since it makes me sick even at the best of times. When, a couple of hours later, Bernard got me a second, gigantic, second cup of orange fanta AND I DRUNK IT ALL INSIDE 5 MINUTES, well then at that point the damage was done.

As we left the flea market I felt no small amount of nausea, and upon arriving home I was forced to lie down for a while to combat the rising gorge 🙂

So the flea market – poor drink choices notwithstanding – was a fun trip. But given I was the most enthused, what was funny was how little I spent compared to B & L. I purchased only the one item shown earlier: a solar bobbing head unofficially licensed ultraman knockoff sitting on a crapper. And it only cost me $3.

Bernard came in second, buying two LED watches:

And Lakshmi beat the both of us into the ground with a decent bag of stuff and a beautiful piece of furniture:

There’s a lot of furniture stores at the flea market, and the prices are good and the delivery was quick and free.

Speaking of Bernard & Lakshmi, watch this:

Posted in Family, Food, Miscellaneous, Trip | 1 Comment »

Foodie

Monday, August 6th, 2012

The day I got here we didn’t do anything touristy; just went to some shops and grabbed some food and saw Total Recall in the evening. It’s always fun to be in a new place and catch up with old friends so it was a good time.

Here’s the lunch that day, at a burger joint named Lumpy’s:

That’s of course not our entire lunch. That’s just the potato. Lumpy’s has a gimmick where you pick your own potato they then turn into your fries. Anyway the food was good at the time, but I seem to recall the double-patty burger gave me meat sweats!

Shortly after, in a mall, we played Miss Pac Man…

Now Florence had never played this, and was initially impressed by my (actually not great) skills. Only when I suggested we make it a competition did her game drastically improve even as mine diminished. The final score? See for yourself:

A couple more random shots:

That was last nights dinner, which was barbecue. It was quite delicious!

There’s a patriot just driving his pickup. Not long after this was taken we were cut off by what looked like an Aryan driving out of Chik-Fil-A in a massive pickup with ‘THe world is better because of Jesus Christ’ written on one side and some anti-Obama insult to liberal voters on the back…

There’s me enjoying a Costco hotdog. Florence seemed amused I bought one, since I was only supposed to get a drink and had claimed meat sweats only minutes before 🙂

Posted in Food, Games, Miscellaneous, Trip | Comments Closed

The Triumph!

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

Although a man of many accomplishments, I still have some goals in life.

One of these is to purchase a ‘free onion’.

What does this mean? Well it was born back in Australia when 1c coins were eliminated. I wondered if you purchased an onion that would weigh at 4c or less would it be free due to the rounding laws?

That question remains unanswered.

However we have no such laws in the US, so mustn’t it be possible to purchase an onion so tiny as to weigh in at less than $0.005? And would this be free? (Lets assume no rounding up…)

The goal has become elusive because we’ve moved into a supernatural world where all onions are the size of tennis balls.

But I got one step closer today! The proof:

Yes my friends, a $0.09 onion. Quite possibly a new record.

Let’s just say I left the store with a big smile on my face!

Posted in Food | 2 Comments »

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