Anne was deadset on going to the Hilton for her birthday so I took her there on Saturday. I almost always find fancy places like that disappointing. The food is often "innovative", which usually means "strange". So I was not totally surprised at the strange dinner we did get. I thought that ordering a mixed grill for the both of us would be pretty safe but it wasn't. It allegedly included: "slow roasted pork belly. outside skirt. kangaroo fillet. lamb cutlet. duck breast. handmade italian sausage. lemon. salsa verde. micro greens."
That sounds OK on a quick glance but the "sausage" was just some sort of small rissole and the last two items were just some kind of sauce. I am quite keen on mixed grills but I have never before come across one consisting of meat only. No eggs, no bacon, no fried onions, no salad etc. And I didn't even get a bread roll with it! And the dessert I ordered again sounded good on paper but turned out to be tiny: Good for the waistline, I guess. And the ambiance was non-existent. We were seated facing a blank wall! A very poor return for the nearly $200 I spent. No wonder they had so many empty tables on a Saturday night. I didn't complain about it to Anne or any one else at the time but I will never set foot in that place again. I often host family dinners at the Bollywood which cost me $300+ so I don't mind spending the money. I just like to get good food and good value for money.
Next morning was better. Anne and I went along to a breakfast organized by her son Byron at "Lock & Load", a West End cafe we know well. Byron has two little boys so I sat with them and had the sort of fun I always have with little kids. They amuse me and I amuse them. The food was good as it always is there. We had it in the back garden, which makes a pleasant venue. A much better ambiance than at the Hilton. If I were a Muslim I would say: "Death to the Hilton". Fortunately, my values are Christian.
The things that did not happen: I have in past years put on a Burns night on 25th but that got a bit hectic for an old guy like me. With a birthday on 23rd and Australia day on 26th it was a lot of celebrating. So I no longer do a Burns night.
But, as it happens, our usual family BBQ on Australia day was cancelled at the last minute so I had a quiet day.
That evening, however, Joe came in to help me set up a small computer museum. So, in addition to my Windows 10 main computer and my notebook computer, I now have a DOS machine and an XP machine up and running. Joe did all the work as he knows a lot about hardware as well as being a programmer. He told me recently that he is writing some firmware for his employers, which I found impressive -- though I suppose it is just another "C" exercise.
UPDATE: Joe wrote the program using C#, which is blue, he tells me, in a rare burst of synaesthesia. C# is a Microsoft version of "C"
