I am now at love, Chloe which I’d like to be my blog for the next ten years but if I’m still blogging by the time I’m thirty-two I’d be a bit depressed.
All entries will be auto-posted here but like, I’m not coming back so why should you.
Bye WordPress. Mwah, mwah.
Today was perfect. We got up early to go to Balmain for breakfast and macarons. Breakfast was unremarkable, except for this smallest serving of hot chocolate that was so thick it was more eaten than drunk.
Left to right macarons: mint and chestnut; strawberries and cream; salted butter caramel; white chocolate and something I can’t rememeber; and vanilla which is out of view. There was also satay, lime and kaffir leaf, and blackberry with liquorice, but they didn’t really sound appealing. We bought fifteen in total. If I see these flavours again, the next fifteen will be split between salted butter caramel, vanilla and white chocolate and something.
We left Balmain pretty early to head to the airport. After checking in we learnt that there was another passenger in addition to us. His wife bought him the tour for his 40th birthday. Unlike me, she didn’t also buy herself one, but she and their kids came to watch daddy take off in a helicopter, cute.
I’ve never seen a helicopter up close before. It’s tiny! The body is smaller than my car, and fits four people extremely snugly. During the brief about safety and emergency procedures, they emphasised that nobody should ever approach the helicopter from its rear, or go anywhere near its rear, because the propellers are all sharp and stuff. I thought, but nobody is that tall! But in fact, they were probably level with my head.
The seats were arranged in two rows of two, with the pilot on the right side of the front row. There were doors for each passenger, which had locks that were undone surprisingly easily. More surprisingly, we were told that the doors are to stay unlocked at all times during the flight, as they are our emergency exits. As a result, I was careful to avoid touching them the entire time, in case I might somehow throw it open by accident.
We were given massive headphones that blocked out sound more effectively than gel ear plugs. They reminded me of the ear muffs the Hogwarts kids used in herbology when they had the screaming Mandrakes. Our pilot, Peter, gave us instructions and commentaries over sound-activated mikes, but it was otherwise a bit awkward for us to converse this way, because you have to speak quite loudly to activate the mike, and everybody will hear you. So I had to refrain from yelling out things like “BABE LOOK THERE’S THE USYD DUCK POND, I WONDER WHERE THE PHARMACY BUILDING IS”.
We first flew to the CBD, over the Harbour Bridge, Opera House and Darling Harbour. Then we went over to Manly, where Peter decided to throw in a free beach route which we rejected at a cost of an extra $60 per person. It’s too beautiful today to not see the beaches, he said. Yay Peter! So we flew along the coast over Bondi, Clovelly, Coogee and Maroubra beaches.
The views were lovely. Twenty minutes went by like five. My parents, being the usual drama queens, were all worried that I was going to die in a plunging helicopter, but I felt very safe. If I had an extra couple hundred dollars lying around some time, I’d totally go again.
Now, looking up Mandrakes because I had forgotten what those screaming baby plant things were called lead me to a Harry Potter Wikipedia. Excuse me while I go browse :)
This almost makes me take back my previous post … but not quite. Like Yoza says, she’s still lacking a little Mraz.
This is the most freaking awesome cover of anything I have ever seen :D
I also made some bulgogi but that was cheating. All I contributed to it was an onion.
Ed. Note: Our friend Alex, formally the food editor of DC’s Brightest Young Things, recently moved to Boston. While she’s mourning the loss of leaving the District (and her favorite margarita spots), she’s also learned how to identify her grief during unpleasant meals.
This year my fiancé planned a birthday weekend getaway based entirely around getting me a good meal at a well-known and well-regarded restaurant in Portland, Maine. The meal started well enough with a gracious entrée to our table-for-two and a handwritten birthday note awaiting me. The menu was narrative, seasonal and with the help of our waitress, I settled on a roasted Peking duck.
Unfortunately the dinner was a shit-show: appetizers were small, uninspired and under-seasoned; the lighting was so dim we couldn’t really see our food; and my duck—which was promised to be crispy—came out with pale, wet, greasy skin. When questioned about the lack of crispy-skin, the response was “the chef says it is not ideal to change it at this time…” What? We bagged the rest of the meal, skipped the traditional birthday dessert and were glad to see part of our dinner was comped.
While we were initially angry, this experience got me thinking about other bad meals I’ve had and how I’ve dealt with them. You can apply the Kubler-Ross 5 stages of grief to a dining experience. While I know some may think this is a tacky exercise, the 5 stages have been used on everything from America’s debt problem to failed efforts of picking up women, so yeah, this is happening.
This tends to happen during the meal itself. You start second guessing yourself: maybe you ordered wrong, or maybe you don’t understand what you’re eating, or maybe your food is the only food that is bad and everyone else loves their food so you had better pretend to like it. You just can’t believe you’re not eating something delicious.
Much of the anger you feel during a bad meal is about blame. You blame the person who recommended the place. You blame the reviewer who gave it 4 stars. You blame the waitress who told you the duck would have crispy skin. You blame the person who chose it. Or if you chose it, you feel the hot pointed anger of your dining companions and it becomes a deep, deep shame.
Sometimes anger can be about revenge. Maybe you’re so angry you post a crappy review on Yelp, you blast out a few angry tweets and then spend years telling people to avoid the place you went to.
Bargaining ends up always being around money. You have to make a decision at a meal to either save money or just fuck it and spend more. Maybe you complain and try to get something kicked off the check or you cut out early and skip dessert.
In other cases, you decide the only way you’re going to enjoy the rest of the meal is by drinking, because everything tastes better when you’re schnockered. And maybe if you drink enough, you won’t remember the flaccid duck skin the next morning.
Paying too much for a bad meal would bum anyone out. Being disappointed when you’re excited about something, sucks. That’s all.
You know at some point you’ll get over your bad dining experience, and in many cases you just forget about it (see drinking reference above). At the end of the day it’s just a meal, you have three a day, you’ll get over it. Promise. I also believe bad meals remind you just how great a good meal can be.
It’s been said that not everyone goes through all 5 stages of grief, so keep that in mind and tell us which stages are you most familiar with when it comes to a bad meal.
