A little Monday night meal at Le Café du Commerce, Paris

Posted on 7 October 2014 by andyq

The thing is, in Paris, on a Monday night, most restaurants are closed. My friends were staying near Commerce and I did a pretty comprehensive search, I thought, on TripAdvisor, and I was having troubles coming up with options. Out of the 13,000 restaurant listings in Paris, Cafe Cosmos at #5708 was looking like it might be the best we could do… But showing up, on a rainy night, the menu looked rather uninspiring. Burgers. Salads. We had a drink at a regular bistro on Rue de Commerce instead, and then we spotted Le Cafe Du Commerce out of the corner of our eyes. It looked pretty nice from the outside…

And was even nicer on the inside (I should have taken photos). A beautiful open art deco space from 1921: very charming indeed. And somehow I’d missed it in my internet research. It’s ranked #2463! The service was very French, the menu was very French and extensive (and the French version offered much more than the English version). I think A. was happy with his little ramekin was aubergine and goat’s cheese. W. said that beetroot carpaccio was just as excuse for the delicious chevre cheese on top. I myself couldn’t resist trying the breaded bone marrow and toast, a fantastically odd dish, as you can see here…

IMG_2199

I don’t think it needed the breading, which was a bit crude, but the bone marrow was tasty and strange and gelatinous and I’m glad I tried it. For our mains, W. had a mini pot roast, in its own pot, A. a classic steak with roquefort dressing and I couldn’t resist trying scorpion fish, because really, who wouldn’t want to order something that looks like this:

Though I suspect the common eating species looks more like this:

Scorpaena_papillosa_(Schneider_&_Forster,_1801)_Red_Rockcod,_or_red_scorpionfish,_"Grandaddy"And cooked it looked rather nice too (as below). If I’m back sometime, I’ll try the 12-hour pig’s trotter…

Meanwhile, all washed down with a bottle of dry white wine, we were far too full for dessert…

Frankly, with Paris rainy and slick with rain, shiny and cozy, and in some of the finest company I could imagine, the food didn’t really matter much at all, so the fact that we found an authentic French bistro with a menu slightly out of the ordinary on a Monday night was all we needed. That the food was tasty and the service amusing was a plus!

IMG_2200

Posted in Food n' Grog, Paris, Travel | Leave a comment

Reading Hemingway in Paris

Posted on 4 October 2014 by andyq

IMG_2184 Today, I have been reading Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. He writes about his younger self in Paris, as a writer, living, without much money, on the Left Bank in Paris. I am a writer, just moved here to work for four months, not penniless but living on the Left Bank, for three weeks at an apartment I’ve rented through AirBNB, close to my work.

I think that reading Hemingway in Paris could sound terribly pretentious and immaturely romantic. But the thing is, I really didn’t know much about Hemingway at all. There are a few movies in the last few years that portray him, but neither particularly appealed to me. This book happened to be on the shelf of the apartment, and is slim and appealing.

I’m captivated by the book. He lived just to the east of here, not very far from where I’m staying. The city he describes, apartments across the way with squat toilets, buying bundles of firewood for the apartment he is working in, the horses in the streets and the Bohemian community of ex-pat writers, is very far from Paris of today but the places he lived and ate and wandered are all still here. He writes simply with wry observation of an interesting life. It’s a romantic vision: of working hard at one’s chosen craft of writing, creative success, sexual and romantic passion for his wife, horseracing and boxing, and the colourful figures of his literary and artistic world.

IMG_2197I can see how it has appealed to romantics and writers for many decades, though I wonder about the new generation of writers. How do they match his world up to this current world of writing, of twitter and facebook and blogs, of worldwide bestsellers, and surprise smash success that takes less hard work than marketing smarts and quite a bit of luck? But the thrill of living outside of one’s country wouldn’t have subsided, nor the romance of creative success, or surviving on little money. He writes a number of times of long strolls through les Jardins de Luxembourg, and that’s where I read a chapter or two today, surely the last day of a long summer, early October but so warm it was hot and I’d wished I’d worn a t-shirt instead of a long-sleeve shirt. I don’t imagine Hemingway could have pictured it as it was today, filled with tourists, tennis-players, children on organised pony rides. It was packed.

Tonight is La Nuit Blanche, an all-night event with art installations and exhibits throughout the city. I feel far too old to stay up all night, though I hope I’ll manage to keep awake until 11pm when I’m to meet a friend who knows one of the visiting artists. We’ll hopefully see his work together.

IMG_2389I decided to treat myself to a meal out tonight, and returned to a neighbourhood gem, Au Pied de Fouet, which has apparently been around for 150 years. The food is no frills: simple, honest and very tasty. The waitresses ask you for your order right away, and are brisk and efficient. The tables are cheek to jowl. There is a bank of three tables on one side, that fit four people each, but for people to sit down, the tables have to be moved out or to the side or jostled about. If you are two, or one, as I was tonight, you sit next to other people.

My meal was the simplest fare: a potato salad with apple and chicken, chicken livers with mashed potatoes, and a chestnut cream, that I didn’t know of until I’d ordered it, a thick, rich, sweet chestnut paste served with fresh cream on top of it. I washed this down with one glass of white and two glasses of red. I have a list of over 300 French wines with the designation Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC), a sort of territorial quality control, and while I was thinking it might be hard to check them all off, if I manage three a night, as I did this evening, I will do just fine.

IMG_2375I loved the experience of the restaurant for being so humble and honest. There were a few children in the restaurant, probably regulars, funny, unguarded and loud as children sometimes are. A dog that was in the kitchen at the start of the evening disappeared after the first visitors arrived. It was quiet for the first 20 minutes; I had arrived when it opened. And then, suddenly, it was packed, people upstairs and down. If they arrived without all members of their party, they drank a glass of wine or an aperitif in front of the cash register, not that there really was room there.

Two lovely older women next to me started a conversation after I offered to pour them tap water from a bottle on the table. They had wandered by the restaurant on their way to see La Nuit Blanche exhibits. One recommended a restaurant where they candy vegetables right in front of you for dinner at a reasonable price. I’ll try it when I can.

IMG_2376The host started doing a joke voice before I left, a low and gutteral sound, I’m not sure what the routine implied, but with the dog and the children I thought it all hilarious and told him so, and he gave me a splash of cognac to drink and insisted I take not one but a handful of business cards to give to my Canadian friends. Somehow, when I said I was from Canada, he guessed Vancouver immediately. While I’d planned to explore the art immediately, the weather suddenly became chilly, so I’ve dropped by the apartment to grab something warmer. And now off to La Nuit Blanche I go.

IMG_2390Before I’d visited Paris for the first time, I received the one and only postcard ever from Sandra, a literary Irishwoman from my college, dramatic and brainy, who none of us ever heard from again. She wrote, ‘Paris is a moveable feast’, and while I looked it up to see it was from Hemingway’s book, I don’t think I ever properly looked up the quotation in full:

‘If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.’

It’s funny to read it now. I certainly love the ring of the phrase, ‘moveable feast’, as it implies that Paris is a feast, and its liveliness is in motion. But seeing the quote properly, Hemingway uses moveable not in this way: Paris is a feast, and that feast can be transported in your mind to other places… though with another disclaimer: if you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man.

Perhaps the quote became popular because it was inaccurate, and that Paris remains in the minds of even those who have not lived here, or are not young. I’m only one week into my sojourn here and think this city will be staying with me for a long time.

By chance, the New York Times has published an article about Hemingway this week that reminds me of his sad end, the enjoyable drinking of his Paris days turned to alcoholism, the happy times written about in A Moveable Feast something that was finite and later in life, longed for and romanticised, perhaps in a desperate way.

Perhaps the sentiment of the phrase and quote can be completely separate from Paris itself, and instead refer to anything that is lost and longed for, a happiness unsustainable and the loss of innocence when you know it is so.

Posted in Blogging, Creative Non-Fiction, Paris, Travel | Leave a comment

A little trip to southwest France

Posted on 4 October 2014 by andyq

As much for my own records as to provide advice, I thought I’d do a little summary of our August 2014 trip:

We’d decided probably a year before that France would be our destination, but where?

So many places to see in the country. S. proposed Alsace, or the northwest or Bordeaux, and in the end I chose Bordeaux as a starting point as it seemed the most exotic of places to me: it would be touched by the warmth of summer in August and offered great wine and food.

Planning was a combination of whim and design. We built our itinerary around a few restaurants, a few meetings with friends, and my desire to cross the border into Spain and see the Guggenheim in Bilbao and San Sebastian. Guidebooks didn’t help us. The ones I found seemed to only focus one particular area, and our destinations really seemed to cross over various departaments and regions. Everything was chosen to be within a few hours of driving from each other.

Here’s what it looked like:

  • 2-4 August, Paris, to settle in and eat at a few good restaurants and ride around arrondissements we were unfamiliar with on vélibs, the free bikes. Train to Bordeaux.
  • 4-6 August, Bordeaux, which surprised me how beautiful and easy it was, an amazing old town, filled with great restaurants, and a free bike scheme!
  • 6 August, day trip out of Bordeaux to try to see some famous vineyards like Château Lafite Rothschild or Château Margaux and see the Arcachon Dune. This was our only real day of failure during the trip. We thought we could brave it without the satellite navigation (satnav) and basically couldn’t find anything. We arrived at one of the Rothschild estates during their long mid-day break. We got stuck in wall-to-wall summer traffic and couldn’t even get out to the dune. We made up for the frustrating day with a wonderful dinner though.
  • With a few days in both Paris and Bordeaux, we stayed in AirBNB apartments, both modest, with great views, and charmingly decorated by their owners, both young stylish French women. The only challenge was lugging our luggage up 4 or 5 flights of stairs… and the beds weren’t great quality.
  • 7 August, S. had heard that the area around Perigueux was beautiful and how right he was. We drove and wandered through beautiful old towns, such as St-émilion Castillon and Perigueux, visited an abandoned fortress, the Chateau du Gurson, and ended up at the absolutely stunning Chateau de Lalande near Saint-Emilion, our second favourite accommodation of the trip.
  • 8 August, more lovely towns in Perigord, and ending up in Les Eyzies, mostly because it was a convenient place to meet Emma, a college friend, the next day for kayaking on the Dordogne. We saw some amazing castles in this area, and the ones on the banks of the Dordogne were particularly stunning. One had fantastic topiary! Les Eyzies was a strange place. It’s where everyone hangs out to go to caves with primitive drawings and as neither of us had any desire to see these or the caves (which I hear are quite impressive), the place felt a bit false and commercial.
  • 9-10 August, kayaking on the Dordogne couldn’t have been a better way to catch up with a friend. It was lovely, beautiful and inexpensive to do a 4 hour kayak. We chose a part of the river less populated, which was gorgeous, though I think another time I’d like to do the part of the river with more castles on it.
  • We headed that evening into Albi, which had a completely different feel, one of the red towns, with red and pink brick, and a lovely river running through it. On our way there, we did a quick stop at a museum in Les Arques dedicated to the artist Ossip Zadkine, who’d moved there because Paris was too expensive. Then Cahors, which looked pretty fun and lively, and we did a wine tasting (of Cahors’ famous black wines, so named for how dark red they are, made up mainly of Malbec grapes). It was perfect.The department of Lot was very different, rolling hills and eventually dramatic steep cliffs which reminded us of driving through Switzerland and Northern Italy.
  • Staying two nights in a place was really our preference so we didn’t have to check out and then check in again, though doing that did allow us to see more places, none of which we regret. A whole day in Albi was great, going to their covered market (with amazing cheese!), visiting the Toulouse-Latrec museum, and a lovely dinner with S.’s friend, daughter and son-in-law. On our way out to the next destination, we stopped in Cordes-en-Ciel, this crazy medieval city high on a hillside, had a wander through Toulouse, and checked out Pau.
  • 11-12 August. Oloron St Marie probably wouldn’t be my choice for a place to stay, it seemed without particular charm, and we missed going to the Lindt Chocolate Factory which seemed a prime attraction… but staying here allowed us to go on the most magnificent hike in the Pyrenees, just south of here, up some harrowing roads by car, to the base of a park. Ah, the lakes, the horses, the cows and their cowbells! Lac de Bious-Artìgues in the Vallée d’Ossau. It was a surprisingly hard hike, but well worth it.
  • 13 August was visiting my friends in Le Gers (stopping at a tower on the way in Bassoues). In Gers, we saw their new summer house, and then had a nice lunch in Jegun. In the afternoon we went to Lectoure and wandered on the main street and into a store with local delicacies which was the best of the trip with its selections of armagnac and foie gras (“La Boutique Fleurons de Lomage”. For dinner, we’d chosen Le Florida as a destination both to eat and stay. It was a wonderful and faultless meal, but the bigger surprise was this amazing luxurious accommodation in a very stylish room with a spa! And more (see my review…). A great stay and our favourite accommodation of the trip.
  • I would’ve stayed here another night if we’d had a chance and used it as a base to visit more small towns in the vicinity. The inspiration for visiting this area was a New York Times article that talked about the area being relatively underdeveloped for tourism, but offering some particular culinary delights in a pastoral setting.
  • 14 August was another New York Times day. This article talked about how unusual the wines are from Irouléguy and I thought it would be fun to see Basque country in France. Accommodation was a bit hard to come by in the bigger city of St Etienne de Baigorry, so we found a charming family-run hotel in Banca, and checked in after doing a fantastic wine tasting in St Etienne. The colours of the window shutters changed from their pale blues of the Gers and around the Dordogne to brick red here, Basque language signage appeared, and it felt like another completely different part of the country.
  • 15-16 August, The drive the next day over the Pyrenees into Spain was absolutely stunning. My god. Scenery! We arrived in San Sebastian on its busiest day of the year, which was a bit overwhelming but settled into the crazy, buzzy energy of Spain, watched fireworks that were part of a festival two nights in a row, ate stunning pintxos (tapas) and on our second day did a day trip to Bilbao to see the Guggenheim which was wonderful.
  • 17 August. We drove through San Jean de Pied and Biarritz, two packed seaside holiday locations, just to have a look on our way up to the amazing Prés d’Eugénie in Eugénie les Bains, a three-star Michelin restaurant and a perfect way to crown our trip. Lunch was three hours, at least, and we were in somewhat of a food coma afterwards matched with the delirium of such a wonderful experience.
  • 18 August, our final night was based on an expressed like for Sauternes, the sweet wine, by S. We found an amazing little chateau, were upgraded to a huge room, and got a tasting and a lengthy and interesting explanation on how the tiny area produces the only yearly natural sweet wine (rather than deliberately infected by botrytis as with Australian dessert wines), a “gift from god”, the fellow explained. We watched the sunset over rows and rows of grapevines that night, our last before we took the back from Bordeaux the next morning and a quick overnight in Paris…

It really was a magical trip, in an amazing region. If you want any advice, or have any questions about the trip, please ask!

Posted in Travel | Leave a comment

The Amazing Abtronic

Posted on 6 September 2014 by andyq

Note: This is one of my most popular blog posts. People keep searching for it, and finding it. If you want to save some time, here’s the take-home message. This thing doesn’t work. Eat less or do some sit-ups. Whether for your stomach or your life, the message is: don’t look for a magic solution. Also: I threw it out AND the instruction manual around the time I wrote this post. Please don’t ask me to send you the instruction manual. 

Tucked away in an inconspicuous shelf, I found a shiny grey plastic case with blue lettering on it: ‘Abtronic: The Future of Fitness’.

The Amazing AbtronicHow did I come to own this miracle device? Or even bring it with me from various places that I’ve lived over the years. It might be fifteen years old!

A little history then. My father was not an active man. He tried, over the years, to exercise, but I have a photo of him as a baby where he has the chubbiest cheeks and is really a little heavy already. It seemed written into this genes.

He played badminton at one time, and after that, what I remember most is that he would buy a different exercise machine every few years, depending on what was popular. There was the exercise bike, then the mini-trampoline (which I loved) and then a rowing machine. In the last decade of his life, there was even Wii Fit. He would step on and off the Balance Board. Its its perky cartoon voice would even say how heavy he was.

What he liked to do most, really, was lie back in his Lazy-Boy chair (a series of one or two of them over the years; these lasted a long time), read the newspaper and watch TV. With particular ingenuity, late in life he managed to combine watching TV with occasional exercise. The exercise bike was the one machine that did not come and go. After many years when Mom got sick of the shouting dramatics of professional wrestling which Dad had watched since childhood (and had changed much over time), he would be banished to the basement to the second TV where he would watch it at the same time as he rode on the exercise bike.

I can’t quite figure out the exact date but what I remember was a fairly long Christmas holiday in Hawaii. Hawaii is where my mom was born and where my brother Tom and his family live, having moved into Grandma’s old beachside house after she’d died.

It was a long enough holiday that I kept seeing ads on TV for the Abtronic: a belt that would send electrical pulses to your stomach, making it contract as if you were doing an exercise. The pitch was that it was easy, compact and you could do it anytime, for example, while watching TV. It was not expensive, perhaps $50.

This, I thought, was perfect for Dad.

I asked him if he’d seen the ads and then tried to gauge his opinion, if he thought it would be a good idea, if he might use it.

On Christmas morning, I opened up a gift addressed to me from Dad. Inside was the Abtronic.

I had talked about it so much that he had thought I was hinting for him to buy one for me.

He opened up a gift from me: another Abtronic.

Did it work? No.

Did we try it? Yes.

It required that you’d smear a water-based gel on the back of it so that the electrical pulses would go from the little mechanism to your stomach. It felt uncomfortable and strange, these tiny shocks and contractions. I justified it to myself saying that it could supplement my doing other abdominal exercises, and exercising in general.

The Kit

But really, it was ridiculous. Why would I as a young, fit person try some silly unproven technology rather than do a few sit-ups?  I’d have to chalk it up to family loyalty: our love of gadgets, our search for a quick fix, and the hope that we could get exercise without actually doing it! Also, a bit of folkloric belief in magic, not so different from grandma’s prayer beads that were in a wooden bowl, not far from us at any time that Christmas.

So, goodbye Abtronic. In the garbage you go. If I’d tried to use it in the last decade it would most likely have given me a hernia, an electric shock or both. I salute your preposterous sales pitch, bow down to how you convinced us to buy not one, but two of you at the same time, and I allow us our trespasses, nonsensical and embarrassing family particularities that make us who we are.

Posted in Creative Non-Fiction, Family | 13 Comments

Hotel Review: Auberge Florida, Castera-Verduzan, France

Posted on 20 August 2014 by andyq

IMG_2151Auberge Florida

2 Rue du Lac, 32410 Castera-Verduzan, France
 

You would not guess from the humble exterior of this restaurant that inside are two rooms for guests, and that the experience offered would be one of a luxury get-away. I would recommend it without reservation for a romantic getaway, which you can combine with an amazing meal at the restaurant and some lovely sightseeing in the area, whether the lovely small towns of St Puy, Jegun and Monluc (where you should load up on liqueur, armagnac and wine from the chateaux) or the bustling capital of Gers, Auch.

IMG_2019 (1)

We found our way to this restaurant from a random travel article I found in the New York Times extolling the delights of Gers, a quieter and humbler version of more visited areas like the Dordogne or Aquitaine, awash in Armagnac (one of my favourite drinks ever) and Foie-Gras (with apologies to those who are uncomfortable with Foie-Gras but I really love it…).

Part of its charm is its story, Baptiste, the son who lived in Paris for 12 years, working in luxury fashion, returning to his hometown and family to help his parents modernise a long-running traditional restaurant. With the peak tourist season really only lasting during August, Baptiste felt the restaurant too large, and convinced his parents to let him turn the top floor into two rooms of accommodation.

IMG_2147Our room was the “spa” room because of a large jacuzzi in one of its rooms. The fun starts right from the entrance, with astroturf, an explosion of decorative butterflies on the wall, and a cage rather than a wardrobe for hanging clothes and a security locker.

The bedroom, with high ceilings, had a super-comfortable bed and pillows with linen sheets which felt lovely and cool and made us wonder who has to iron them.

IMG_2149There was some extremely stylish furniture and a basket of fresh fruit. The toilet room, with a small selection of books and toy figures, with obvious personal meaning for the owners, is equipped with a Japanese toilet, one of those ones that washes, dries and warms…

IMG_2150The bathroom had an amazing shower, stylish and contemporary fittings, two big white bathrobes in the drawer, samples of local toothpaste (the area is apparently famous not only for its thermal baths to take care of your skin and health, but for taking care of your dental hygiene) and Aesop products, a luxury Australian brand. Oh, and there was a nice selection of magazines and our own little patio area. IMG_2152

For one night, the cost was 160 Euros (230 Australian dollars), which, if you’re splitting the cost with your partner, comes to a cool 80 Euros each. An intimate luxury experience like this in Australia would cost at least double this, if not more.

Plus, it felt like a very personal experience, that the room was a labour of love for Baptiste who has tried to make every detail perfect, and every product and furnishing of the highest quality. Breakfast was delivered to our room in a basket and on the patio, we ate croissants and pain chocolat, fresh local yoghurt with a lovely fresh fruit compote, fresh orange juice, coffee (each in our own individual thermos) and today’s international edition of the New York Times. IMG_2156

I thought with our magnificent experience at Chateau de Lalande near Perigueux, that that would be my best review of this trip. But with my specialised taste for a truly individual experience combined with very affordable luxury, I really loved our night at Le Florida. Tell me if you ever have the chance to go.

IMG_2154

Posted in Review, Travel | Tagged | Leave a comment

Restaurant Review: Cafe Paci

Posted on 27 July 2014 by andyq

I’ve found a new favourite restaurant in Sydney and it’s name is Paci. Café Paci opened in August 2013 in the site of the old Cafe Pacifico. It’s witty that the Finnish chef Pasi simply shortened the name of the previous restaurant into a homophone for his own name. It’s meant to be a ‘pop-up’ restaurant but when have restaurants stopped popping up and are permanent?

So, why I’m thrilled by this restaurant by this restaurant: Each course was inventive, surprising and delicious and didn’t really taste like anything else I’d had before. It reminded me of some of the culinary highlights of last year’s Scandinavian trip. The food was very rich but not heavy. Dairy products were used. There was a focus on just a few ideas done well in each dish: Corn. Goat. Carrot. It made me think about the individual ingredients used.

And: it was ridiculously good value. $85pp (without grog) for a nine-course menu. It felt at a much higher-price point than that.

I didn’t take photos of everything… but almost. The ‘snacks’ were wafer-thin crisp pieces of pear, a sashimi fish with a layer of lard, and grilled thin radicchio leaves with raspberry powder. Really!

snacks... I didn’t take a photo of the ‘Pomelo, blue swimmer crab, dill and vadouvan (I had to look this up, it’s a French-influenced Indian spice mix)’ but I loved the delicate teardrops of pomelo and their textural contrast to the crab.

I also didn’t get a photo of the goat tartar, with a great tartare sauce (again the homonym, it must be his thing…) and kale. Who would have thought that raw goat would taste so good?

The cauliflower, squid rice and anchovy butter was rich and flavourful without being too much. Beautiful colours as you can imagine.

Photato

Above was my favourite dish of the night though not universally liked by everyone at our table. I thought it was super-creative to interpret the ingredients of a Vietnamese classic dish, a bowl of Pho, in a different, dry version. The layer of wagyu beef here covers thin noodles made out of potato, slightly crunchy. A bit of enoki mushrooms, lemon. Mmm. Very more-ish.

Desserts were just as engaging. A beautiful liquorice cake with carrot mousse covered in yoghurt. Comes as a little white cloud and then reveals it’s pretty colours once you dig in.

carrot.

I couldn’t get over how pretty this one was: wafers of apple, white better, cocoa and malt, architecturally arranged over rye ice cream.

Cafe Paci5Cafe Paci4

Gorgeous from all angles.

Finally, fairy floss (or cotton candy) with the flavours of corn and butter… matched with a tiny piece of pork crackle and pork and fennel. Completely unexpected. Teased with the idea that it would be savoury but it was mostly sweet.

dessert

And there’s another reason why this place won my fancy. If you’ll remember from my review of Momofuku restaurant, anywhere that serves pork as a dessert gets my badge of honour.

A final word: the restaurant is all painted in the same shade of grey. Behind the bar looms a large portrait of a man with a moustache, his eyes, the outline of his hair appearing barely. But the rest: tables, chairs, walls and floor are grey. It’s a bit disconcerting and reminded me of the minimalist white kitchen that Eddy ordered in Absolutely Fabulous and then even she didn’t like it…

That white kitchen

So my recommendation. Don’t wear grey. The waiters (all of whom were charming and personable) may not be able to find you after you sit down.

But do go and eat at this wonderful restaurant.
Cafe Paci on Urbanspoon

Posted in Food n' Grog, Review, Sydney | Leave a comment

My Dad’s Lawyer

Posted on 2 July 2014 by andyq

At my mom’s 80th birthday, I ended up sitting next to my Dad’s old lawyer, let’s call him Uncle Kasra, an Indian-Canadian man of Farsi background with a beautiful wife and two dynamic daughters, who we saw from time to time when we were growing up. Kasra has a rich voice, slightly foreign. It’s not that there’s an accent, it’s that there’s a melody to it, charming and engaging that was unlike other Canadian voices that I knew.

He told a funny story. A woman had owned a dress shop in my father’s building, below his offices. It had flooded. Dad and his business partner, who we treated as family, and know as Uncle George, sat face to face with Kasra. ‘How much damage was there?’. But they wouldn’t say. Or rather danced around the truth. Finally, he forced it out of them. It had caused considerable damage. She sued them.

There seems to have been no discussion of an assessment of damage and offering to fairly pay for it. Business for Dad was a game. It was a game to figure out how to pay less taxes, a game to find out if there were ways to beat the system. His favourite phrase, written at the base of a small statue of a bespectacled man with lawyerly hair curls, was “Sue the Bastards”.

Sue The Bastards Attorney Figurine Berrie 1970

In the court proceedings, the woman apparently decided to cosy up to Kasra. She thought she could ‘wiggle-waggle’ her way into a better position. But why would Kasra ever betray his clients for a bit of that? He played along, and gave her information. She fired her lawyer! Why would she do that? She obviously thought that she had an inside track with Kasra and would come out on top. The case continued. Kasra delayed the proceedings as much as possible.

After two years, he was pleased to inform her: the time limit for her claim was no longer valid.

Could she call her old lawyer?

Of course.

She called the lawyer that she had fired nearly two years before. He informed her: after two years, her claim was no longer valid.

If she had kept her lawyer and not tried to get more and more funds, she would have received five, maybe seven thousand dollars. Instead, she got nothing.

Completely true, Kasra told me.

It’s a lovely fable. Portraying my father and his business partner as slightly mischievous children. A wanton woman failing in her attempts to use feminine guiles in the service of greed. The authority of law. The collusion of men. The friendship of men.

Kasra told me two other anecdotes. One, that Dad used to pack bottles of alcohol into his briefcase and bring it out at business lunches, is a terrifc image but doesn’t have enough detail to spin out further.

But the anecdote was about how they met.

He was introduced to my father in 1967 while working at a law firm. The other lawyers warned him: this one doesn’t pay his bills. Get a deposit up front.

That’s what Kasra then requested of my father, who then raised hell with Kasra’s boss, who managed to placate both sides and say, let’s do this as an act of faith among all of us.

But what Kasra discovered was something else: it was not that my father did not pay his bills, it was that he would only pay his bills if happy.

And with Kasra, happy he was. After Kasra sent an invoice to Dad, he received a phone call, father’s infamous low gruff voice barking at him. ‘It’s about your invoice,’ he said.

What had he done? Kasra was frightened, this intimidating man who had a bad reputation with the other lawyers.

‘You’re charging too little,’ my father told him. ‘I won’t pay until you charge more.’

‘He made me,’ Kasra told me.

Since Dad was always suing someone or being sued, he brought lots of business to Kasra. But more, whenever a client would come into my father’s notary business, or to do a real estate deal, Dad would say, ‘You have McGillicuddy as a lawyer? Why would you do that? I have the best lawyer in town. Kasra is who you need to see.’

The only coda that I’ll add to this tale is that in my teenage years and into my young adulthood, I suddenly discovered the many prejudices the world had against South Asians. In Vancouver, racism against the Sikh community was strong. In other locations, there were broad brushstrokes drawn about various Indian immigrants as poor or untrustworthy.

It was always a strange shock to me through most of my life, this racism. I realise in retrospect that I was surprised not just by the plain stupidity of pit, it was that through Uncle Kasra and his family, I’d actually gotten an opposite stereotype. I grew up believing thought that all Indians would be as sophisticated, charming and intelligent as Uncle Kasra, recounter of stories, friend of my father.

Posted in Blogging, Creative Non-Fiction, Family | Leave a comment

Australian culture: the Hills Hoist

Posted on 1 June 2014 by andyq

While rotating clothes lines attached to a heavy metal pole stuck in your backyard have been around in Australia since the turn of the 20th century, it was a bloke named Lance Hill who made his model in Adelaide in 1945 and then expanded production so successfully that like ‘xerox’ and ‘kleenex’, his brand name became synonymous with the rather more wordy description ‘height-adjustable rotary clothes line’.

I first heard the phrase after arriving in Australia, and it seems that the legendary Hills Hoist is much more than a way to dry clothes, but a representation of a vision of Australia itself, the backyards of the 50s and 60s, backyard BBQs, family and childhood.

Check out this lovely photo essay that I found here while looking for a free photo to post. And hopefully Hills won’t mind me copying the photo above since it helps advertise their product…

Anyways, this is just to copy what Wikipedia has to say about the Hills Hoist, since it feels to me that while possibly perfectly authentic, it also feels irreverent enough that it might not stay up forever. Or with some sort of disclaimer:

The Hills Hoist is also commonly used in Australian drinking culture with the smashing game “Goon of Fortune”. Goon of Fortune combines two of Australia’s most revered creations, the Hills Hoist and cask wine. Four sacks of cask wine, more commonly referred to as “goon,” are attached to the end of each cross beam. The contestants then rotate the clothes line while chanting their favourite goon song. When the clothes line stops the closest contestant takes a long drink of the wine, 10 seconds is the norm. For the “Goon of Fortune” to be authentic there must be a combination of 3 types of cask wine: Fruity Lexia, White and Red. The fourth sack can be either of the three; however, contestants prefer the saying, “Fruity Lexia makes you sexier!” and thus Fruity Lexia is the goon of choice. The winner of the game is the last one standing or the last not to vomit. A beer bong may be used in place of the usual 10 second drink if the other contestants feel that participant is failing to drink enough and therefore cheating (usually foreigners unaccustomed to Australian amounts of alcohol).

[Note: this description was removed soon after by Wikipedia moderators as ‘unsourced’ material. I’m glad I’ve recorded it for posterity here, since I think it really is very funny. I posted it up on Facebook and asked Australian friends if they knew of the game. Most were horrified at the thought that this was Australian culture. One said he’d heard of it. Another said that to his shame he had played this…]

Posted in Australia, Creative Non-Fiction | Leave a comment

2014 in lists (art, books, entertainment, shows)

Posted on 31 May 2014 by andyq

Aha. New organisational system for 2014… Rather than continue to add to the same big posts of shows and concerts I’ve EVER seen, I’ve organised the old lists into separate archival posts either by the year, or before that…

And this year, I’ll just keep updating this post until it’s time to start a new post for 2015.

Concerts and Shows

  • Sarah Blasko and Appleonia, Heavenly Sounds series, January. Those women, they can sing. Hot and stuffy church venue though, a little unbearable.
  • The National, Sydney Opera House Forecourt, January. I saw them at the Enmore three years ago, a great show, and perhaps with more energy being in a smaller venue with louder volume (I understand they weren’t able to play very loudly at the Opera House what with sound restrictions). But with the crescent moon, a perfect Sydney night, the Opera House, lit in a glorious blue and then mysterious yellow behind us, a fantastic set of video projects behind them and a new album to add to their oeuvre, and I liked it even better. We were standing in a great position and there was room around to move. I was rapt.
  • Falsettos, Darlinghurst/Eternity Theatre, February. Review up on this website.
  • Sweet Charity, Hayes Theatre, February. Amazing lead actress, imaginative staging, some hit songs and some dated material.
  • Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Theatre Royal. I think it was around February or March. Fun enough. It reminded me I’d seen this in Vancouver a few years before.
  • The Drowsy Chaperone, Hayes Theatre, March. What a fun, silly show. And how do these small shows manage to get so much talent? The young actors graduating from WAAPA, NIDA and the likes. Is this the Glee effect or something? Ten years ago, I went to amateur productions that usually had a few better actors and some terrible ones and ho hum direction. Now, there are semi-professional shows bursting at the seams with talent, it seems every month! The two young leads here, Hilary Cole and Brett O’Neill, have such sweet voices and great acting chops. 
  • Baths, Oxford Art Factory, March.
  • Bernadette Peters, Theatre Royal, April. See review here on my website.
  • Iron & Wine, Sydney Opera House, April.
  • Strictly Ballroom, Star City, May. Wow, was this a train wreck. Not unenjoyable but has so much work to do to be a good show. 
  • Midlake, Sydney Opera House, May.
  • Nils Frahm, Sydney Opera House, May. I stumbled upon this guy through Spotify and predicted it would be a good concert. But what a concert it was. A mad piano genius, using techniques I’d never seen before, the music was engaging, beautiful, dynamic and sad, and he himself was a fun performer, in one sock (for his electronic pedals) and one shoe (for the piano pedal). Check him out if you haven’t heard of him.
  • James Vincent McMorrow, Sydney Opera House, May. I really like McMorrow’s amazing falsetto and he put on a great show. His opening act, Gossling, an Australian woman was a great discovery too.
  • Pet Shop Boys, Carriageworks, June. Superb show, great music and an intimate venue. Woohoo.
  • Lloyd Cole, the Basement, June. There were moments in the show that brought me back to the teenager that, for whatever reason, thought that ‘Lost Weekend’ and ‘Perfect Skin’ were the coolest songs ever. This juxtaposed now with the thought that poor Lloyd has been performing the same songs for 25 years and is now making jokes about his aging jowls and how audience members no longer have to check on their babysitters, because their older kids are old enough to babysit the younger ones…
  • Wicked, Vancouver. We took our niece to see Wicked. She thought it was just OK…
  • The Mugler Follies, Paris, November. French follies by the fashion designer Thierry Mugler. It was pretty fun. Nonsensical narrative and some snippets much stronger than others, but fun. 
  • Hasse, Siroe, Opera, Versailles. S. suggested seeing an opera in Versailles and what a setting for opera it was. Some amazing singing, and the sets were fabulous. 18th century opera doesn’t necessarily capture my heart, but I appreciated it.
  • Here Lies Love, London, December. Loved it. An all or nearly all east Asian cast, super talented, wonderful happy pop music by David Byrne, inventive staging, and some politics. They purposely decided not to do any songs about Imelda’s shoe collection… and I applaud their avoiding of the obvious. 
  • Matilda, London, December. Pretty good. Very talented kid actors, but feisty rather than cute and precocious. Great set. 
  • Urinetown, London, December. Silly, and now a little old. The theme of environmental destruction and running out of water has become more relevant in the years since this musical was first produced on Broadway (in 2001) but some of the comedy and songs (breaking out into gospel) felt a little dated. Still, I loved the harmonies of the group numbers, the general silliness of it, and the making-fun-of-musicals parts. 
  • Le Bal de Vampires, December, Paris.
  • Le Sacre du Printemps by Romeo Castellucci, December, La Vilette, Paris
  • Political Mother, Hofesh Schecter, December, La Vilette, Paris
  • Decadance, the Batsheva Dance Company, Paris.
  • An American in Paris, December, Paris

Exhibitions

Just a few memorable museums to mention from my time this year in Paris:

  • Jeff Koons and Marcel Duchamp retrospects at the Pompidou
  • The redesigned Picasso Museum
  • A little wander around the Louvre
  • Hedi Slimane at the YSL Foundation (but would have liked to have a full tour of the house instead)
  • The impressionist floor of the Musée d’Orsay
  • Olafur Eliasson at the Fondation Louis Vuitton

Books

  • Luke Fischer’s Paths of Flight (poetry): Quiet and painterly, I’m not sure I’ve come across this voice in my forays into Australian poetry, the first-person philosopher with references to artists, philosophers and writers of old, poems mostly set in nature, travel or deep in reverie.
  • Margaret Atwood’s Postitron (episodic e-book fiction): Ah Peg. Canada’s gift to world literature doesn’t show any sign of slowing down, either in output or chutzpah. While the themes of these three short novellas cover similar territory as her other dystopic futures, they are still fun and imaginative to read, and not repetitive. It felt to me like she was having fun writing to this genre, doing mini-recaps in each one in case someone has not read all three, and then leaving us waiting… for more.
  • Camilla Gibb’s Mouthing the Words (Fiction)
  • Tabish Khair’s How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position. See review here on my website.
  • Alice Munro’s Dear Life (Short Fiction)
  • Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners (Short Fiction)
  • Spencer and Schenker’s The Fast Diet Recipe Book (recipes/food/health)
  • Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast (Memoir)
  • Sarah Turnbull’s Almost French: A New Life in Paris (Memoir): Written in a breezy journalist’s style and with the brief to write about culture shock in Paris, this was interesting and insightful, providing me with some good background on living in Paris and about Parisians, who in four months I may or may not really meet! Having been through an experience of a New Worlder trying to fit into the Old World when I first lived in Europe, it made me feel a bit melancholy, remembering some of that shock and loneliness and that expectation that somehow life should be easier than it was.

Movies

Hmm, have never kept a list of movies but… why not see how it goes?

  • The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
  • Philomena
  • American Hustle
  • Frozen
  • Dallas Buyer’s Club
  • Two days, one night. What a depressing Belgian film. 
  • Paris (2008 film)
  • Interstellar
  • Midnight in Paris (again)
  • Saint-Laurent
  • The last Hobbit (terrible)
  • Obviously, I’m not much of a movie watcher. Even on planes this year when I travelled, I’d end up reading instead, or watching TV shows instead of movies. And I forget what I’ve watched… so probably not worth keeping the list for next year. 

Posted in Book, Book Review, Books, Concert, Review, Theatre/Show | Leave a comment

New tasty treat: Tsukemen

Posted on 25 May 2014 by andyq

I love trying new food, and was intrigued by the menu item ‘Tsukemen’ at Ramen Zundo, a small Japanese restaurant tucked into the row of quick eateries on the ground floor of World Square.

I’ve tried cold soba noodles, light and delicate, that you dip into a salty broth (as introduced to me by my sister-in-law and brother) but I’ve not encountered cold ramen noodles to be dipped into a heavier, hot sauce.

Tsukemen

 

Being a sucker for Japanese curry, that’s the sauce I ordered, and the dish really was very good: chewy, fresh noodles and the thick soul-food comfort of the curry sauce.

Some dude named Jeong has given a fun recount of eating tsukemen in Japan and I loved reading that Ramen Zundo’s owners Hiroki and Masako make these delicious ramen noodles themselves:

Sally Webb in the Good Food Guide describes that ‘Hiroki, who learnt to make noodles in Japan, uses a blend of premium Australian flours to create a texture that’s silky but firm to the bite and ”catches” the soup.’

It sounds like the regular ramen here is pretty spectacular so I shall try to get back here sometime soon.

Who’s ready for ramen?

Ramen Zundo on Urbanspoon

Posted in Food n' Grog, Sydney | 1 Comment