Tag: food

You know it’s spicy when…

Until tonight I would have said that the spiciest things I’d eaten were those meals that made my eyelids sweat. Until now, these had been limited to:

  • A chili con carne meal an ex-gf made for my flatmates and I back in Sydney
  • A meal my ex-wife made in Melbourne while trying to prove she could cook something spicier than “that bitch ex-gf of yours!”
  • A laksa that Kitt cooked one night and accidentally dumped into it a lot of chilli liquid stuff

Well, guess what, tonight they all got wiped out.

At home, we often have our “Stodge” meal – it’s usually done on a Sunday night in winter and consists of baked beans cooked with chopped onion, crushed garlic, stacks of cheese, a shitload of spices and so on. Definitely not your usual Baked Beans meal. “Normal” baked beans are what Nykolai has while we’re preparing the “Stodge” :)

Tonight, Kitt cracked open another jar of her mother’s “Chilli Jam” – one of the 2 or 3 we’d picked up last time we visited them up in Tweed Heads. Usually this packs a solid wallop and about 6 teaspoons of it can be counted on to make a nice, tangy “Stodge.” Well, I’m not sure about this jar – either it came from a completely different batch or it had been sitting longer than the others. Either way it packed one hell of a kick, that’s for sure!

I can now say that the spiciest meal I’ve ever had was eaten tonight. Not only did it make my eyelids sweat, it also fogged up my glasses. I kid you not – the lenses just kept fogging up ‘cos my face was putting out so much sweaty heat.

Not bad, eh? (and yes, I did eat it all – delicious! :)

APC Asia Conference – Day 3

That’s it – the conference is over – wow – an amazing time meeting lots of new people, putting faces to those I’ve chatted with online and catching up with people I already knew from previous meetings. We managed to get through so much but there is still wwwaaayyyy more that could be done. Is there ever enough time? :)

A big thing for me has been getting a better indication of what APC and its members are doing. A potential item is getting more involved with ICANN / IGF – early days but the initial steps have been taken. Very interesting – almost fascinating!

Flint from AID/Watch came over at the end of the day to say HI and have a couple of beers. He’s a client of ours (we host their site and developed it for them) so it was great to catch up.

After that it was off to dinner with Karen and Patcha – we wound up Sussex Thai on (surprise surprise :) Sussex St. Excellent food although their “spice ratings” are a little low. They rated a Pad Gai Kaprow as 3/4 spicy (which is correct if it’s done over in Thailand) but it was only mildly spicy, even with the bits of chillies in the food. Oh well – it was still great.

Now I’m once again sitting with the others from The Foyer Club, on the floor outside the conference room using the wireless link for access. Gotta love it :)

APC Asia Conference – Day 2

It’s the end of the day and I’m in my room where it’s cool and comfortable. I may not have Internet access from here but it’s better than sitting on the floor in the lobby where it’s warmer and harsher on the bum :).

In case you’re wondering, I’m writing this in a text editor and will paste it into a blog entry tomorrow morning when I’m back in wireless range :)

Today has been busy but very productive and I’m happy with how things have turned out. I was concerned that without Andrew (my APC.au co-director) here at the conference, I would let the team down. So far, it seems that I’ve been able to do OK, which is very encouraging.

We reviewed APC’s strategic priorities and discussed the work we’re doing in our member organisations, looking to see what aligned with those priorities and whether there was work being done that they didn’t reflect. It would appear that a number of us are now working in the “Intellectual Property” world, not just pure ICTs, so perhaps APC’s strategic priorities should be expanded accordingly.

The team I was working with (Bobby from IPD and Shahzad from BytesForAll) also thought that APC should make Gender Equality, Sustainable Development and Innovation strategic prioritiesi instead of “cross category” mentionable items. It was generally agreed by all that we needed a good, working definition of “Sustainable Development” and “Innovation” (no surprises there :)

I spoke with KarenB about helping APC in the project management / analysis areas as that’s what I do these days. She introduced me to their new PM space and we’ll be discuss what’s going on in more detail in the near future. Could be fun.

After the day’s work, I headed over to the James Squire brewrey/pub in Darling Harbour to meet up with Simon Rumble then headed back after a few beers. I wound up running into some of the APC crew who were getting ready for dinner so I had a drink with them then headed back to the hotel with the take-away I’d picked up.

As usual, a few of us hung out in the foyer surfing and talking but, eventually, the hard floor got to me and I came back here. Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the last day and then I go back on Wednesday. Somehow I have to try to keep the momentum going when I’m back – I think now that I can totally appreciate Andrew’s comments to this effect after past conferences :)

APC Asia Regional Conference

It’s gone 11pm and I’m in Sydney for the APC Asia Regional Conference. This is a gathering of representatives from the Asia/Pacific APC member organisations and some of the APC staff. We’re here to give member reports, review the APC strategic plan (a 4 year plan that we’re half way through) and start preparing for the next plan.

I arrived in Sydney yesterday arvo and came to the hotel we’re staying at (above the Great Southern Hotel), meeting up with some of the team, a few of whom I’d met at previous sessions in Korea and Melbourne. I got to work setting up the wireless router I’d brought with me, getting it patched into the hotel’s network and accessing its gateway (not as easy as it should have been due to security on their end). There was much rejoicing among the team when I got it working and they could use their laptops to get onto the ‘net at last :)

Instead of heading out to dinner with the other APC crew, I headed into Newtown to a pub to meet up with friends, staying and drinking for a while before walking back to the hotel. Great fun and I’m really pleased we all managed to catch up again.

Today has been the first of the three meeting days – we went through the introductions, expectations and member reports. At the end, we had a quick session mapping out relations between the various member organisations and APC initiatives then an overview of the strategic work we’ll be doing tomorrow.

Once the day was over, we headed to the pub and then walked into Newtown for a good Italian dinner. Given the food we’d eaten, a few of us decided to walk back as well (and introduced Bobby to Ginger Beer :)