dangermouse.net – Page 38 – David Morgan-Mar

Faux Hun Friday; pastie and pizza Saturday

Friday was gaming night at a friend’s place. My lunch was just a falafel wrap that I made with supermarket ingredients. But for dinner I picked up something on the way to my friend’s place. This involves a bit of a story.

When we used to work together at Canon Research, there was a Thai restaurant just around the corner from the office, where we often used to get lunch. It was called Go Hun. And it had some of the best Thai food you could find in Sydney.

When we stopped working there, Go Hun of course remained, but I didn’t have occasion to go out that way very much, except to visit this particular friend who lived nearby for board games night. So sometimes I’d drop in on the way and grab some take-away for my dinner, which was good. But then about a year ago Go Hun closed down! But a new Thai place opened in the same premises. It’s actually named “Charmed Thai“, but we all refer to it as “Faux Hun”.

Anyway, I hadn’t tried anything from Faux Hun yet, so I stopped in on the way and picked up an order of chicken pad kee mao. It was really good!

At the games night there were just four of us. Two of our other regulars both happen to be in Europe at the moment: one on a six-week grand tour with wife and teenaged kid, and the other who popped over to Italy for a week to meet up with his partner who was taking a slightly longer trip there.

We started with Ingenious, which I won. And then played a quick hand of Uno Flip!, which I also won! My friend had found this at a discount store for just $3 and decided to buy it because it was so cheap. It normally retails in regular shops for about $10. Only when he got it home and opened the box, it became clear that it was a Chinese counterfeit version! The box said it contained printed instructions, but it didn’t, and the quality of the cards was awful. They were thin and flimsy, with a weird finish that looked like it’d start peeling off any second, and were already starting to curl. We played a game merely so that he could say he got his money’s worth out of the $3 he’d spent, before he throws it away.

We moved on to the big game for the evening: Architects of the West Kingdom. This is a worker placement game where you choose to place a piece each turn to collect money, collect various building resources, hire workers, build buildings, or round up rival workers in an attempt to (a) restrict them from gaining bonuses and (b) sell them into incarceration for profit. You can also use actions to free your own workers from other players or the prison. The goal is to amass points by building buildings, constructing parts of the cathedral, earning a virtuous reputation, or simply collecting valuables including silver, gold, and marble. The obvious routes to victory involve building a lot of buildings and working on the cathedral. But I got some workers who synergised into a way to collect lots and lots of marble cheaply, and reward me with bonus virtue for marble at the end of the game. So rather than build buildings, I decided to see if I could just collect enough marble to win.

I came last. I think the strategy could have worked if I’d just built another building or two, or found another worker who synergised with the engine and gave me more benefit from the marble that I’d amassed. I didn’t lose by a lot, so I believe the strategy could be viable.

Anyway. We ended the night with a quick game of For Sale. Which I also came dead last in. But I’d won two of the four games for the night, and the other two wins had been split between other players, so I declared myself the grand winner!

Today I cleaned the house up, vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom and shower, and emptying all the damp absorbers and refilling them with absorbing crystals. Our weather is still far too damp and humid and I dread getting mould growing in things. For lunch I took Scully for a walk and popped in at the pie place, which had a special beef and vegetable pasty

And for dinner tonight my wife and I went out to Organica, which we tried for the first time a few weeks ago. This time we tried the pizzas there, and they were very good. Thin crust blistered by a wood fire, with buffalo mozzarella and toppings.

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Savoury danish Thursday

Continuing our food theme this week, I went to Moon Phase for a pastry lunch, trying their savoury danishes for the first time. I selected a mushroom and asparagus one, and one with onion, truffle, and cheese.

They warmed them up for me and I sat outside at the small table with Scully as I ate. They were both really good! Also a lot more filling than I expected, probably because of all the butter in the pastry.

For dinner I made a quick meal of vegetarian “chicken” sausages with microwave “baked” potatoes, and what was left of the broccolini. I only had an hour in between groups of ethics classes, so I had to make something that didn’t take too long to cook.

Speaking of ethics, this evening I asked in one class, “What are some annoying noises?” One student immediately said, “Someone playing the recorder.” I also had two kids today in different classes who said they find the sound of rain annoying. Everyone else said rain is a sound they find relaxing, which was more what I expected. I haven’t heard of anyone thinking the sound of rain is annoying before.

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Fancy lunch Wednesday

This morning I had a food disaster. I poured out my bowl of muesli, added fresh blueberries and chopped apple and orange chunks. I was about to spoon yoghurt on top when I bumped the bowl and it fell off the kitchen bench, landing on the floor, face down. The entire lot was scattered all over the floor. I had to clean it up and then make a whole new bowl of breakfast.

For lunch I walked with Scully down to my wife’s work. She was having a half day and was free from midday. We walked from there to Rafi, a restaurant in North Sydney. We sat at an outdoor table with comfortable sofa seating and ordered a very nice lunch.

Hummus with crispy chick peas and green chilli (which we had with the home made sourdough pita bread, not pictured):

Crispy eggplant with spices, honey, and herbs:

Jerusalem artichokes with hazelnuts and Grana Padano:

King prawns with chilli miso butter (non-vegetarian, for me):

And after this fantastic meal I wanted to try one of the desserts. Roasted apples with burnt honey and Pedro Ximénez sauce (and crumble and vanilla crême anglaise):

The whole meal was amazingly good, and very filling. It’s now after 8pm and I still haven’t eaten anything else yet. Although I will make something quick and light for dinner in a minute. I just finished my three ethics classes for the evening, on the new Noise topic.

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Fajitas Tuesday

Today I worked on my lesson plan for this week’s new ethics topic: Noise. With questions like:

What should you do if neighbours are being noisy when you need to study or sleep?
Is it okay to have an occasional loud party, as long as you don’t do it too often?
Can even soft sounds be annoying sometimes?
How important do you think it is to get away from noise and have some peace and quiet?
Should there be more quiet places in busy areas?
Should concerts be softer to protect people’s hearing?
Should electric cars make sound so people can hear them coming? Or is it better that we use the new technology to reduce traffic noise?

That done, I took Scully yup to the shops and got some sushi rolls for lunch. It had rained—again—overnight, but was clearing up as we went out and the sun came out in the afternoon. I noticed a lot of the footpaths are green with moss again, like they were a year ago when we were having ridiculous amounts of rain. There are also an awful lot of mushrooms sprouting from the bases of trees and garden mulch areas around the street trees.

This afternoon I spent some time sorting through Magic: the Gathering cards, trying to collect loose cards and the remains of decks into piles of specific sets so that I can offer them for sale on eBay as coherent lots. I discovered a couple of preconstructed Commander 2013 decks, which I barely ever played with. My friends and I preferred booster drafts and didn’t really get into playing Commander. So I confirmed that these decks still had all of the cards present and stuck them on eBay (Power Hungry deck, Eternal Bargain deck). These items join three lots of old sealed booster packs that I listed yesterday (Throne of Eldraine, Core Set 2020, and 6 mixed boosters going back to Ravnica block). In the next week I’ll start listing lots of loose cards from specific expansion sets, starting with the more modern ones.

In other gaming news, I got an email saying that backer surveys are ready for Goodman Games’s Original Adventures Reincarnated #8: Grimtooth’s Old School Traps. When I backed this, I chose the D&D 5E version of the book, but I’ve since re-evaluated and would prefer the Dungeon Crawl Classics version now. So I sent Goodman an email and asked if my pledge could be changed. Hopefully I’ll hear back in the positive.

For dinner tonight I made vegetable fajitas. Fried up some onions, garlic, julienned carrots, sliced broccolini, cauliflower, and mushroom, seasoned with paprika, oregano, cumin, cloves, cinnamon, chilli, salt, and lemon juice. Served with warm tortillas.

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Calzone Monday

Not much to say today – it was a busy day with 6 online classes. In between I went to the post office twice, to get some packaging, and then send it off, another Magic card sale. I also sorted out a whole bunch of cards that I still had partly assembled into decks, putting them into piles based on expansion set, so that I can reintegrate them into my collection before preparing to sell them off.

For dinner I made calzones, stuffed with pumpkin and ricotta, with a tomato sauce to spoon over the top. It’s a nice variation to make with pizza dough.

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A make-up class, a make-up sale

This morning at 10am I had a make-up ethics class, replacing one that is normally scheduled on Fridays, but which I had to postpone this week due to the clash with the Standards Australia meeting I had then. The class normally had three kids in it, but two of them couldn’t make the shifted time today, so it was just me and one student. Thankfully it’s a good student who gives in-depth answers, so we didn’t run out of material to talk about.

And also this morning I sold an eBay item. This was a sealed booster box of Magic: the Gathering cards that I put up for auction a few weeks ago. It originally went for a final bid of $150, but the winning bidder never paid for it. I offered it to the second highest bidder, but they never replied to my offer. So last weekend I reposted it as a new auction. And this morning it sold for $180! So I ended up making an extra $30 due to the non-payment shenanigans.

The good thing this time was the buyer contacted me straight away and asked to do a local pickup as he also lives in Sydney. When I confirmed that we could meet tonight to hand over the cards, he paid via eBay immediately. And after my last class tonight I walked over to the meeting spot I’d designated, at the nearest train station, and he was waiting there. So the transaction is finalised and overall I’m happy how it turned out.

Before lunch I did another 5k run. I was convinced during the run that I was going faster than yesterday, and I pushed hard to sprint the last 100 metres or so in an attempt to beat yesterday’s time by as much as I could. When I checked my time… it was 1 second slower than yesterday!! I have no idea how that happened. Do people really have no accurate idea how fast they’re running while doing it?

Finally, Stage 23 of the Lego D&D set. This adds walls, windows, and roofy bits around part of the wizard’s workshop.

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Pub meal, schnitzel and banoffee

This morning my wife went out early for an appointment, and then I took Scully up to meet her at the dog grooming place to drop Scully off there. She got a wash and tidy, but not a cut, as her hair wasn’t really too long. But when we picked her up she was super fluffy from the blow dry and looked really big compared to normal. But the hair will flatten out agian and she should be fine until the next groom. It’s midwinter anyway, so she can use the extra insulation!

On the way home from the groomer we stopped at Moon Phase for croissants. I actually had a black sesame bun, another new item. I keep trying new things and haven’t had the same thing there twice yet. The sesame bun was really nice.

Back home I changed to go for a 5k run. I thought I was still taking it fairly easy, since I’m a little out of practice, but I clocked a time nearly a minute faster than last weekend, at 27:15, which is on the lower end of my usual times, so that was good.

In the afternoon I worked on some comics stuff.

And then for dinner we all walked up early to Naremburn and the Flat Rock Brew Cafe. We grabbed a table outside. Everyone else except other dog owners were sitting inside out of the cold! I got a chicken schnitzel and they had a chocolate milk stout on the beer specials, so I tried that with it. After the meal I pondered idly if they had any desserts, because I hadn’t seen any on the menu. My wife asked a staff member who was walking past, and he said they had a banoffee pie. Well… that’s one of my favourite desserts, and I wasn’t too full already from the meal, so I ordered a piece. It turned out to be obviously hand made, with a really thick biscuit base, slathered with sticky toffee and banana slices. It came with a scoop of ice cream on the side. The base was so thick that it was difficult to cut it with the spoon! It was really delicious and I’m very glad I decided to get it.

After that it was a walk home to walk off some of the food. And we sat down to watch the final episode of Disenchantment, which we have finally got to after a drawn-out process of working our way through the episodes after not realising for a few years that seasons 4 and 5 had been released!

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Standards, Lego, games

This morning I had to move an ethics class to make room for a Standards Australia Photography committee meeting. I’ve been serving as the chair of this committee for 9 years come December, and the tenure limit is 9 years, so we had to have a discussion about finding someone else to chair the committee. This shouldn’t be a lot of work, as I confirmed with our committee manager that I can continue to attend the ISO international meetings and compile reports, while someone else chairs the committee. That’s 90% or more of the work involved. So hopefully someone will nominate to serve as the new chair while I continue to do the work that I want to do. if nobody does, then I don’t know if the committee will be forced to fold, leaving me unable to do the work any more.

Here’s stage 22 of the Lego Dungeons & Dragons set build. It fills out the upper floor with a cool looking wizard’s chamber or something, with books and candles and a cool skull.

Tonight is online games night with my friends. My wife is out having dinner with her friends, so I just walked with Scully up to the fish and chips shop to get some dinner there. We’re currently playing the quantum trick-taking game Cat in the Box.

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A weird weather record

Australia set a new weather record today. The highest barometric pressure ever recorded in the country, at 1044.6 hectopascals. Here’s a news story about it. Clearly this is an unusual weather event. The high pressure system is enormous and basically stalled over the country, meaning the cold and rainy weather we’re having isn’t going anywhere for several more days.

Besides the usual ethics classes, I did online grocery shopping for pickup tomorrow morning, and I submitted that standards proposal I mentioned yesterday. I ran out of time to do it yesterday because it needed to be done via an online portal, and I had to ask my contact there where to find that. I got the information this morning, so sent it in.

I also sold another Magic: the Gathering card online, and had to dash up to the post office to send it off. And took Scully for a longish walk, down to the wharf and back. Thankfully the rain seems to be concentrated in the evening and overnight, and the day was actually pleasant around lunchtime.

And I did stage 21 of the Lego Dungeons & Dragons set. This completes the exterior rustic staircase and adds a roof over the first floor, with a cool little balcony at the top.

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Tradition, innovation, and standards

This morning I wrote up my lesson plan for the new week’s ethics class on the topic of “Tradition vs Innovation”. I decided to include the story about how Kodak in the 1970s and 80s suppressed digital camera technology by buying up patents and not developing the tech themselves, in order to keep their photographic film business profitable. Of course eventually other companies developed alternative digital technology and the genie got let out of the bottle, resulting in a rapid uptake of digital cameras and the collapse of the film market, and ultimately the bankruptcy of Kodak. I use this to frame several questions about the conflict between old methods and new innovations.

In one of my classes tonight on this topic, I had a new student, from Saudi Arabia, my first from that country. That brings my total list of students’ countries to 54. Unfortunately he was a bit too young for the class, and I think overwhelmed by the discussion. I had to advise his parent to remove him from the class afterwards, and maybe try again in a year or so.

I also worked today on writing up a form to propose a new revision of an ISO photography standard to be adopted as an Australian standard. I was supposed to do this asap after the last meeting we had, but hadn’t got around to it. Since our next Australian committee meeting is on Friday, I thought I better do it!

Today was again very cold, but the rain held off for the most part during daylight. Scully and I did cop a light sprinkle while out for a long lunchtime walk. But the clouds opened up around sunset and now as I type this it’s pouring down out there. Not looking forward to taking Scully out for her pre-bedtime toilet.

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