last night i had a minor revelation
of sorts
after going to the exhibition of a friend and her fellow students
at the queensland college of art
project gallery
and taking in not only the prints
and dips and olives
but additionally
a numer of glasses - well, plastic 'glasses' - of
vino rosso
but nor atichokes, but i digress ......
well we came home via the illustrious, the ubiquitous
king ahiram middle eastern take-away
on vulture street, west end
[this is the ned ...]
i purchased a cheese & spinach pie, a cheese puff, a kinda lamby sausage roll thing
and 4 dolmades (the last four on the palte)
i.e. stuffed vine leaves
most of these were consumed on the way home,
as was most of a can of lemon squash stuff
by my son,
just after we arrived home
i bit off half of the last of the culinary booty
the last dolmade[s]
(is dolmades plural?)
as i stared at the leaf-enwrapped rice of the reamining half domade
i realised
the curious parallel, the similarities,
between dolmades
and nori rolls
!
THEY BOTH involvE , incorporate
rice, often with some vegetable contents,
wrapped in green
salty/briny
foliage
...
consider the overlap there
for a moment ...
each consumed, and perhaps originating?
at opposite ends of the asian continent
.
of course domades are rarely eaten with wasabe
to the best of my knowledge
well, why not give that a try?

where am i going with this?
well
suffice to say
the vino
did the job
i'd say
~

i think it would be a good idea to eat a kiwi fruit at breakfast every morning
they are loaded with vitamin c apparently
and taste good too
i should do it
i'll give it a go
but not every day i'd say
i was in a fruit & veg section of a supermarket this afternoon
i checked out the fresh galangal and parawns
and bought neither
and didn't think of kiwi fruit at all
the mind is an interesting phenomenon
i think
therefore
. ..
~

i am currently reading a novel called 'morality for beautiful girls' which is the 3rd in the series of books by alexander mccall smith which are set in botswana and centred around the middle-aged female proprietor of the 'number 1 ladies' detective agency'.
in some ways it kind of doesn't seem to be 'the kind of novel that i'd usually read' if that makes any sense (not that i'm a voracious reader of novels relative to some); but somehow this series has got me hooked, and this is the fourth in the series that i have read. that's right, i got my hands on & read the 4th before the 3rd - i know, it's kind of like reading 'voyage of the dawntreader' before 'the lion, the witch & the wardrobe' (which i did at age 10 or 11, and i've turned out ok i think).
somehow these novels - all of which i have borrowed from my sister-in-law - and the curious tales told therein just seem to flow, and reading them seems relatively effortless & rewarding. but they're not pure pulp stuff either, in my opinion. i know i find the seemingly incidental (yet neither infrequent nor insignificant) insights into life in botswana interesting in part because i have some botswanan (batswana) friends who studied at university here in australia & have since returned home. but over & above that, they just strike a chord with me in some way that i can't adequately explain at present.
perhaps it's something to do with the rather timeless descriptions of, for example, appreciating the colour of the sky, or the sounds, smells & life rhythms, of central southern africa around dusk; or of resolving an issue or sussing out a person's character over a cup of bush tea (which i believe is rooibos tea - hich is good stuff incidentally).
anyhow i think i'll have to leave it at that for now; except to add that i generally agree with the sunday telegraph quote on the back of the book which claims that 'this is art that conceals art'. i perhaps cannot fully grasp right now the full ramifications of that statement, but i gotta agree with the gist of it, at least. the fact that these books have sold well (and i believe they have) doesn't detract from their appeal in my eyes.
and there ends another book-club with fergal.
~

i was staying in mt wellington, south-east auckland.
i walked about 2km around panmure basin, a kind of tidal lake formed in an old volcanic crater and connected to the tamaki river.
on the other side of the basin, i crossed the road and walked up basin view lane, past a tab betting centre, a laundromat, bike shop, and shoe shop. the main street here contained a lot of groceries owned by people from the indian subcontinent, plenty of cheap clothing shops, numerous takeaway shops, many of them chinese.
one fish-&-chip - type shop had a blackboard out the front advertising "2x hamburgers $3".
there was a kebab shop, another with a closed front door (enter via lane at rear) named 'east city girls massage'; there were banks and an electrical store, and a rather seedy pub with many screens showing horse racing & the like.
the local population seemed predominantly polynesian & asian.
there was a muscial instrument store too. in the front window were assorted brass instruments and violins. in the corner opf the front window, farthest from the door, the was a faded, near-life-sized cardboard cut-out of paul stanley. the only electric guitar in the front window was black; it looked a little like an imitation of a gibson sg10 (a-la angus young) except that the lower side (lower when played right-handed) was slightly more cut away, or cut in same shape but a little further down the fret board (to enable fancy hammer-ons & pull-offs on the 23rd fret perhaps). there was a silver triangular scratchboard and a silver 5-pointed star in a circle.
there was a small yellow cardboard square woven between various strings around the 2nd & 3rd frets. on it was written in black nikko pen:
"PAUL STANLEY
$399.oo"

i didn't buy it ..... i bought a bbq pork & salad roll at the asian butcher's shop around the corner.
~

i don't like snakes.
on sunday morning we noticed a 2-3 metre python, with a belly full of possum or something else, lazily sunning itself on top of a trellis/fence adjoining our house (our bedroom in fact). it stayed there all day and didn't really move until about 10am the next morning.
when it did move it went & found a spot a few metres higher up in a nearby tree, about 5-6 metres about the ground, and it was still there this morning, nearly 48 hours later.
this is not the first time we have seen this or similar pythons around our house over the past 3 years; other citings have occured, twice with the python in the process of devouring a poor possum.
this has been somewhat disconcerting, particualy on sunday night when - whilst lying in bed - i knew this thing was sitting with its belly full of mammal only about 3-4 metres from my head ...
but strangely, over the past 4 days i have kind of developed some form of new appreciation for pythons, at least based upon this one - e.g. their evident satisfaction in lying for days in the sun (or night), barely moving, just mellowly sitting there watching the world go by around them. well, at least this is the case for this one when it has a nice big meal to slowly digest and is probably easing into hibernation mode and perhaps trying to catch enough sunlight before hibernating. and in a way i prefer it to stay in a spot where it is visible (albeit at a comfortable distance) rather than have it slithering off to hide in some unknown hole in our yard or nearby.
nonetheless i am religiously keeping all fly-screens closed on all windows & doors around our house ...
~

sorry about the hiatus readers, but i've been away in new zealand again.
more words of wisdom, or - failing that - more tripe, to follow soon ...
~