More excitingness

OK, I lied big time. We have done something else exciting.

There's an outdoor cinema running over the end of summer in Centennial Park and we booked tickets a little while ago to go and see Metal: A headbanger's journey last night.

I bought some sashmimi and pre-cooked crustaceans from the fish market as a ready-made picnic and a new picnic blanket from Woolworths. We hired some bean bags when we got there, which were really comfy.



Sean looking comfy

As the light went down, a whole host of bats started flying around, some really low, which was pretty cool. There was also a thunderstorm going on in the distance and we could see the lightening lighting up the inside of the clouds, which was even more cool.



Giant screen

The film was really good. It was a nostalgia trip yet also informative. I was most impressed by the lead singer of Archenemy, who can do a proper growly metal voice despite being a girl. Cool! Sean thought it tailed off in the second half, when it moved from Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath to Norwegian Black Metal (those guys are crazy) but I thought it was excellent all the way though. In fact I reckon I could have watched days of the stuff.

If you are happy just listening to people talking about heavy rock music, or you like laughing at crazy people I recommend you go and watch this film (the same goes for Metallica:Some Kind of Monster, which has the same "laugh at the freak" factor). It's ace!

I lied

I lied when I said we weren't doing anything exciting until Cat arrives next Saturday. I had in fact forgotten a) that I was attending an Economics course brought to my attention by a strange advert in the paper and b) that it was Sean's birthday.

A few weeks ago in the Sydney Morning Herald there was an advert stating "Economics for those seeking social justice - a four week course" run by the "Association for Good Government". Sean pointed it out to me as I am interested in that kind of thing and said I should go along. There was another advert for a one-day course with the same people about why housing is unaffordable, which seemed a bit odd.

I went straight to Google and looked up this "Association for Good Government". It seems that they basically pass on the teachings of a mid-19th century American economist called Henry George. In went "Henry George" to Google.

It turns out that his main theory was that all wealth derives from land and so we should abolish all taxes in favour of a single tax on land. (The wikipedia entry is here.) He also seems to have travelled extensively round Australia leaving endowments to teach his theories. Everything becomes clear.

This is a theory that has been clearly discredited by modern economic theory but I went along to see if I could find out anything interesting or useful. I got a booklet for the first week, which went through Ricardo's theory of rent and an explanation of why land central to a community is more valuable than land at the periphery or outside it (e.g. you pay more rent for a coffee shop inside Liverpool St Station that you do in the country). So far, not too controversial, although the guy running the course didn't explain things very well and I think he may have completely confused people who hadn't come across Ricardo's theory of rent before.

I can't go next week so I got the next booklet in advance - it definitely looks like he is heading towards a tax on the "surplus value" of land. I am suspicious of whether he is even going to try to explain how this could relieve poverty but it is a question I shall be asking if I go the week after next. It will be interesting to see how many people are still there....

Lack of blogging

Hi all. Sorry for complete lack of blogging recently. This is mainly owing to the fact that we have done nothing exciting.

Last Sunday we went to the first Sunday backgammon tournament of 2007 and met with considerable success. Sean won the main competition and I won the consolation.

This weekend Sean has been recovering from a bad cold so we have been sitting at home watching Commander-in-Chief as a West Wing substitute.

We don't have anything particularly exciting lined up over the next two weeks until Cat comes to see us, shortly followed by Sean's family. So I'd better apologise in advance for the amount of time before I post next....

Busy weekend

Sean's now on the Sydney Seafood School mailing list, and got sent a last minute special offer for a crab cooking class on Friday. I decided to take more photos than last time but ended up forgetting my camera completely.

The class was slightly longer (3 hours rather than 2) and I was less impressed by the chef than I had been by Jade Chen from Blue Eyed Dragon. However because the class was longer we got to make 3 dishes, which were:

• Crab Cakes (with Coleslaw)


• Crab & Preserved Lemon Risotto


• Crab and Asparagus Soup

The risotto was quite nice, apart from the preserved lemon and the crab cakes were pretty unexciting. The soup was a real winner though and even worth all the time you have to spend getting the crab meat out of the shells.

When Sean left the UK, his work kindly bought him some vouchers for an Australian bookshop. As it's coming up to a year after the vouchers were issued, we thought we'd better go and spend them! So on Saturday we went binge book-buying in Dymocks.



New books!

On Sunday we went for High Tea at the Opera House. I was suitably armed with the camera for snapping shots of tiered cakes but I only managed to get a couple of shots of Sean and then the battery ran out.



Sean inside the restaurant at the Opera House

Still the sandwiches and cakes were served as separate courses so there was no fancy display to photograph. The sandwiches were a bit avant-guard and consisted of things that should have been in a sandwich but were just presented on a plate. We got a very nice crab and coriander sandwich, but then a vast mound of smoked salmon on a tiny piece of bread (it was impossible to pick up and eat), some chicken mayonnaise on a lettuce leaf, some slices of beef and a piece of toast. It would have better with the beef inside a sandwich, the chicken inside a sandwich and to have done away with the toast.

This was made up for by the cake selection of:

• Strawberry tart


• Lemon tart


• Chocolate tart


• Pistachio macaroon


• Vanilla macaroons


• Hazelnut madeleine


• Raspberry souffle

And non-stop refilling of champagne (we were only expecting a glass!).

You'll just have to imagine what it looked like, unless I can talk Sean into going again.