some cookies

a.k.a. Things That Are Not Douchey.

Today, a nice older customer (NOC) drew me to one side and whispered "someone has left money on a table upstairs as a tip.  It's not a lot, but it's something, a nice something to get.  Go get it before another customer does!"*  I went to let my manager know so he could send someone else to get it, there was service and I'm not about to leave them waiting just so I can financially profit.  NOC floated about for a little while on the stairs, I assume to wait for someone to go running off after the tip (which I strongly suspect he left).  He disappeared for a while, came back downstairs, and pressed his money into my hands with a "Shh!"

I had to smile.  Tips aren't customary in Australia, and I couldn't have accepted his money anyway even if they were (his money went to the instore charity box).  But it was nice to hear that a customer appreciated what I do.  So very often, the only genuine gratitude I hear is "thanks!" as some tosser leaves his rubbish, sometimes right next to the bin(!), for me to clean up.

Thanks, mystery customer.  You made my day.

* not verbatim, but it's midnight, so fuck off.

I don't know what to do, or how to feel.  Used to be that a culmination of events, the totality of life's bullshit, was the tipping point.  Now, now even the slightest trigger has me thinking of when I can get home, when I can go hack at myself, drink myself into oblivion, hurt physically so my mind can rest.  Is it an addiction if you cannot do what you feel compelled to?  Is an alcoholic an alcoholic if he craves but cannot drink?  Is a gambler a gambler if she cannot throw the dice?  Am I an addict to self-destruction if I cannot bring myself to use, use those knives, that drink, these pills, to take the edge off of things?

I probably couldn't, even if I wanted to.  The problem with being nearly functional is that someone is always fucking there.  He's not as persistent as others have been, but his mere presence means that if I fuck up and really hurt deep, or drink way too much, or visibly show signs of distress, that someone will know.  And really, at this point, I want to wallow alone.  I want to dive into my dreams and not wake, lose myself in the labyrinth of memories and wishes that only exists when I close my eyes and my mind can force itself to shut down, stop existing, stop working, stop hurting.  It is only there that I am sure that these... episodes, for a lack of better wordage, will cease to exist.  It is only when I am half-of, that I can be all of the parts of me that fit into socially-constructed ideals of acceptability.  Only when I am asleep can I stop myself from snowballing into anger, uncontrollable, unstoppable anger, that has me clutching at any method possible to make it stop.

To this end, it may be necessary to simply... stop.  This yoyoing of moods, the cycling between the good and the bad and good and bad and goodandbadandgoodandbad can only last so long before someone tires of it and bails or holds on suffocatingly tight or just plain descends into the same ambivalence that consumes the rest of my waking life, and I'm tired of being bailed on, or clung to, or having to wait for it to just fucking past and wait for the sun to rise and make it all go away, and then in between having to worry about being attached to things and people and committing to things I will not be able to stick to.

And I don't even.  I don't even know how to do that.  Short of drugging myself into oblivion again, it just does.not.work.

Make it stop.  Leave me at a high and make it stop, I'm tired of fighting.

From my Family Law textbook:

[T]he link between women's inequality and violence was fundamental.  The legal system's tolerance of violence against women underwrites women's inequality before the law.  Women cannot be equal until the legal system responds effectively to violence and until women are treated as equals, violence against them will not be reduced.  The experience of violence is in itself disempowering for women and impedes their access to legal services.

I only wish that more countries in the world (::ahem::America!::ahem::) realised this and took actions to change it.

I've been wanting to go to this place pretty much since it opened.  Lots of hype.  I love tofu, and the decor was pretty and ooh so shiny.  So very high expectations here, and I was pretty stoked when we went.  I had claypot noodles, Mark had "onion fried chicken with fried rice" (near verbatim), and we both had ginger and spring onion dumplings, and curry puffs.

Thorough disappointment ensued.  Reasons:

• The dumplings contained prawns.  I'm allergic to prawns.  The menu made zero mention of this, and IIRC ginger and spring onion dumplings are typically pork.  Not atypical for an Asian restaurant to not list allergens, but seeing as how this place has only been open for a few months, I would have thought they'd have a footnote or something.
• Aforementioned dumplings tasted... less than fresh.
• The food came out at very different times.  Between the time my plate went out and Mark's plate got to our table, I'd probably had enough time to finish a couple of levels on Farm Frenzy.  This was apparently the norm; by the time we left, three different tables had been and gone, and their stuff went out at very different times too.  Mark points out that the wait was not unusual, and I suppose it wasn't for our stuff (because it came from the kitchen, not the noodle bar out front), but I thought it was weird for the tables who ordered stuff from the tofu noodle bar thingy to get their stuff at such different times.  Even accounting for them making the plates one at a time.  Which, fyi is also inefficient, but whatever.
• There was more salt than broth in my broth.  I wish I was joking.  Now, I'm a fan of really salty stuff, but if it's so salty that I'm chugging water with every mouthful, maybe someone in the kitchen should put down the salt shaker.
• There was no "please order here" sign.  Minor niggle, but given as nearly every other restaurant I've ever been to with that "system" (read: Menya) has had a giant unmissable sign, it's still a noticeable issue.  But maybe I'm just annoyed because it took me ages to cotton on to the fact that there wasn't going to be someone coming to the table to take our orders.
• Communal sauce.  I'm all for sharing, but when your only chili/soy/whatever sauces are available on a single bench tucked away in a corner, there are probably going to be issues.

Pros?

• Communal water, too.  The thing that annoys me about places like Claypot King is that it always takes forever for the waitresses to get that you want more water, and you don't get a jug for the table.  Not an issue here.  AND they had pandan-flavoured water!

Tl;dr?  I'm easily annoyed about the little things.  As such, this place gets a 2.5/10 for today's experience.

Scoring system: start at 5, +.5 for every "good" point, -.5 for every not-so-good point.

The case is Hartridge, not Hartwick.  I'm fucking stupid.  Sorry.

Browsing CaseBase for a case I have the name of but no year or citation, and I find this:

Criminal law — Offences — Fortune telling — Definition of word 'pretend'

Section 40 provides that 'every person who for personal gain (a) pretends to tell fortunes; to deceive any person, shall be guilty of an offence

Held: The word 'pretend' in the section is used in the sense of 'to profess or claim', and not in the sense of 'to feign or to offer as true' something which is not. Accordingly the offence may be committed by a fortune teller who has a genuine belief in his ability to tell fortunes.

The case in question is Hartwick v Samuels (1976) 14 SASR 209, if anyone wants to try to find it.  I couldn't get access to the full document, but now I'm intrigued.  Also, saddened that a REAL FORTUNE TELLER can't practise in South Australia.

I finally, FINALLY got my shit together to write a playlist for this year.  No corollary for you V-day haters; get your cynicism elsewhere.

Also, I want to get this over and done with so mister and I can watch The Emperor's New Groove.  Priorities, people.

List:

1. Everything About You Is New, Massive Attack
   Not technically a love song, but don't begrudge me my instrumentals, and I won't begrudge you your criticisms.  Deal?
2. Tell Me Everything, Ben Jelen

   Tell me that you're gonna save me,
   Tell me you'll be true,
   Tell me that you love me baby,
   I'll fall in love with you.

   This song just belonged on this list.  At least, I think it did, and since this blog is not a democracy, if you disagree, you can just go away.  Actually, don't do that, my Feedburner will be sad or something.
3. Please Don't Go, Barcelona
   Again, probably not technically a love song, but I love the "feel" of this song; it reeks of insecure sentimentality, and what do you get more in a new relationship than nervous, insecure attachment?
4. Never My Love, Pete Yorn
   New version of an old song.  I think I was just looking for an excuse to put Pete Yorn on this list.
5. Til Kingdom Come, Coldplay
   Also a recent version of an older song; I think this was supposed to be a Johnny Cash song and then, I dunno, shit went sour or something.
6. Calling You, Blue October

   If you're sleeping, are you dreaming?
   If you're dreaming, are you dreaming of me?
   I can't believe you actually picked... me

   'Nuff said.
7. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, Neutral Milk Hotel
   Something a bit different to round off the list.

Anyway, I'm off to spend the rest of my Valentine's Day with my Valentine (all together now: "awww!") on the last day of our vacation.  Ciao, all.

So, mildly inebriated and starving, mister and I decide on a whim to visit the Great Cholesterol Houses of Swanston St right near Flinders St Station.  Because, ya know, that's what you do at 8:30 PM on a Thursday or whatever time we decided to go.

We then decided it would be rawrsome (or at least, somewhat delicious) to test out both McD's and HJ's (Burger King for you Americans) nuggets with all their respective sauces.  These are our super-scientific, absolutely flawless and impartial findings.

DUN DUN DUUUUUN

Mark fetched all the McD's sauces and I got the HJ's ones, so I could abuse the fuck out of my staff discount.  Turns out the girl who served me accidentally gave me a bigger discount than I was entitled to, but then couldn't work out how to fix it and, I dunno, didn't want to involve the manager or something.  Whatevs.

Anyway:

These are all the sauces available.  Top row is McD's, bottom row is HJ's.  Like is aligned with like; the McD's sweet and sour is above the HJ's, ditto BBQ and honey mustard.  The others from McD's are sweet mustard and ranch, as well as mayo and generic Heinz ketchup.  The first two on the HJ's row are sweet chili and spicy sauces.  I didn't get either of the HJs mayo or ranch, because they don't come in pre-packaged containers and I just plain forgot.  We didn't end up using ketchup or mayo (ran out of nuggety goodness to test them with), but maybe we'll do a mayo-off another day.

Here are all 24 nuggets in their artery-clogging glory.  In the picture, you can't really tell the difference between them.  McD's nuggets, however, are a lighter caramel-brown with a sort of thin battered coating, whereas HJ's has sort of breading as well, and is a little darker.  I'm not sure if that's because HJ's cooks their nuggets for longer, or whether they just have different coatings, but there you are.

This is what the sauces look like unwrapped.  Note how the McD's sweet and sour (s&s) is darker and a different colour than the HJ's, the reverse is true for the honey mustard.

Our super-sciencey way of keeping track of which thingy is which.

Verdict:

Not surprisingly, Mark and I disagreed on a number of points.  I think the McD's honey mustard is bollocks, he disagrees; I loved the sweet chili sauce from HJ's, he hated it; he kinda likes the ranch sauce, I can't really bring myself to enjoy it in all its cheesy, mildly barfy glory.  But we do agree that:

• McD's makes superior s&s
• HJ's BBQ Plum sauce kicks butt, even though McD's also has nice BBQ sauce — tough call on this one;
• HJ's has better nuggets, they're just a little bit more flavoursome than McD's; and
• McD's sweet mustard sucks.

Mister points out that I waffle on a lot more about the set-up than the actual noms.  I say all you need to know is it was delicious, and the images prove that I was totes legit with all the sauces and SCIENCE and stuff, and not just talking shit on McD's even though I'm kinda sorta still employed there.  (M: Whatevs)

Feel free to post rebuttals on our experience.  Maybe McD's was just having a (really) off day.  Maybe HJ's was having an unusually good day — though I've been eating the nuggets there practically every day before work and they've always been this good.  Gogo gadget food critic!

The mister and I finally got to fire up his little torch to make a nice crunchy topping for the crème brûlée we made the other day.  The custard itself is a little lumpy and slightly liquid, still — not sure whether this is because they're just a touch overcooked, or whether we ought to have strained the mix before pouring into our ramekins, or even if we added the cream to the eggs too quickly and didn't temper them properly.  The top also wasn't ideal levels of crunchy, but this is because we're nearly out of butane and the torch was dying a slow slow death.

Verdict: nice for a first attempt, but I've had better.

Next time, I think we'll be slower with the cream, use a HOT water bath (oops, thanks Jess for pointing this out), strain the mix, and for fuck's sake, make sure we have enough butane.

Any other hints?

Check this out:

Vanilla-coconut panna cotta, with pomegranate jelly.  Recipe here.  There isn't a very large layer of jelly; I spilt a lot of it, you can see some at the bottom of the martini glass.  There's also a lot of vanilla bean seeds in the panna cotta.  It's dreamy.  :)