Thursday 29 August 2013

Travel Talk.

People often ask me "What is the most beautiful place you've ever been to?"

Well this is it.

Santuario de Las Lajas, Ipiales, Colombia.

Seriously people, DO IT!

(Please excuse the bogan flanny respresent - it was a long journey.)




Boob Grab.

That moment when you've stashed cash inside your bra and go to pay for something and it gets lost in the rolling sea of fatty tissue and padded cotton polyester.

It's like: "I swear I am trying to pay you I'm not just showcasing a public nipple-fondling session."

Blah.

GirlsWillUnderstand.

Sloth Day.

Unfortunately we didn't get a photo until I was nearly finished but I can officially balance a full stein of pilsner on my stomach.

Not unlike the exhilarating occasion I got a PB time for shucking two dozen Coffin Bay oysters.

This may be a little bit pathetic... But it was a proud moment.



Wednesday 28 August 2013

Same Same But Different.

GOOOOOOOOOD MORNING VIETNAM!!


^ Saigon. Not even during peak hour.

I will never complain about Melbourne traffic again. Not even for the fuckknuckles that can't comprehend hook turns.

The chaotic and unsystematic mental institution on two motorised wheels that is Vietnam city streets, trumps all.

And of course pedestrian crossings are on the list of "Impossible Things That Could Never Happen". I'm not quite sure how I've managed so far but I'm pretty sure I will be returning home a fearless bastard.

I'm definitely loving the 50c pints, the countless amounts of noodles and the fact that they use the fatty cuts of meat in the street food. A woman named Alyn is to blame for my current podginess. She could be the love child of Pol Pot and Beverly Allitt and I could not give a flying fuck, when she puts a bowl of her seafood stew in front of me on my plastic stool in the less than reputable gutter, I am like a dog having his belly scratched.

"1000 Star Hotel" is the nickname for living and eating on the streets.

I got her giggling when I learnt from a staff member at my hostel - the line:

"Tôi có thể xem danh sách rượu vang?" (Which, A+ for effort, took me over half an hour to learn how to say.)

Which essentially translates to: "May I see the wine list?"

I've eaten a lot of cool things too. The egg with the faetus in it was delicious in taste but vomit inducing in texture.

I've drunk way too much Tiger beer, seductively tampered with gin of course. This involved a few English and Spanish boys at a local bar screeching the Homer Simpson song:

"You put the gin in the Tiger beer and shake it allllll up!
You put the gin in the Tiger beer and throw the can away!
I said HOOOOMMMMMEEERRRR!
You throw the can away!"

Getting locals involved in this was the cherry on top too.

Ha Long Bay is also every bit as beautiful as all the stories. Pictures do it no words either. But there was something eerily cool about blasting some Aoki on a boat in the middle of the bay at sunset, teaching a bunch of six foot Spaniards how to wiggle.

Melbourne Sound represent!!

My mate and I departed each other's company in Hue, he wanted a resort and I wanted the surf. So even though it involved spending two days on a bus with a drunk local who had a nasty case of the voms, I've been chasing the surf down the coast to Nha Trang.


Seriously - THIS for two days was definitely a form of torture. Not even for the seating... Or the bright flashing neon lights... Or the faint smell of dead horse meat that's been through two intestinal tracts coming from the bathroom.

But torturous because they played old Madonna film clips on repeat for the first 8 hour leg of the trip.

DEATH TO LIKE A VIRGIN!!!

Nha Trang however, has not disappointed.

For ten days I'm having waves shred my shoulders and (-insert stereotypically corny line-) the sun has been kissing my skin... Then cooking it Tepanyaki style... Then after a bit of After Sun and a cold shower, we're back to kissing.

Also, I may have a slight quivering soft spot for people that cook seafood for you right on the beach.



Chilli, salt, lime, butter, crayfish. As you can see from my highly motivated position there on the sun lounge... Life's tough.

I did however think I was going to die when riding to Jungle Beach, keen for the five foot shore break but getting stuck in an instantaneous storm of Herculean proportions.

Not to mention, monsoon aside, there's nothing like feeling uneasy when you've got a surfboard shoddily attached with some very questionable jockey straps, to a motorbike which for some God unknown reason, they've let me hire for the week even though I don't have a licence. No fucks given by the locals if you've got 10 bucks and fill the 125cc bad boy back up again at the end of the day.


The sunrise however, over the rice paddies, was beyond spectacular.



You see this?
This is essentially a giant vietnamese rice cracker.
A big ass Sa Ka Ta.
Coconut and black sesame flavoured.
Toooo gooood!!





The defining tranquil moment though was finishing the day off with some rice wine, a beautiful sunset and a city view of Hanoi.

I just never want to leave.

Monday 26 August 2013

Love Is To Blame.

Love is the cause of majority of life's problems.

And alcohol...

But alcohol at least then FIXES the problems.

I used to be delightfully slender.

Then I fell in love with Lescure...

DAMN YOU TO HELL YOU DELICIOUSLY SALTY MARBLED BUTTER!!!

<3 <3 <3

You hurt me... But I will love you forever and always.

ChefsWillUnderstand.

TheFrenchDidSomethingRight.

Whoa.

Took my Gameboy away to Vietnam for the bus rides and whatnot.

It's been years since I've played Pokemon but I used to be obsessed when I was younger.

Getting a bit rusty with my Level Of Nerd and I was feeling frustrated that I kept repeatedly trying to punch or karate kick the shit out of a nasty Gengar with my Hypno. Obviously, to no avail. But clearly I was forgetting each time. I dunno... Must be tired or some shit. Was up half the night anyway with the young German couple in the room next to me having mind-blowing sex.

...

That or they just decided to vacuum over a cat at about 3am... And again at 5.

But aaannnyyyywwaaayyy.

Then I remembered that Gengar is Clefairy's shadow... and you can't punch a shadow.

Mind. Fucking. Blown.

On The Topic Of Cuddling.

I've missed my boy since I've been away.

And to be honest I think it's the cuddles I miss the most. Which is a really strange thing to miss.

Because there's no logic behind missing having one arm securely around another person...

While other gets contorted into a pretzel-shaped piece of origami and you wake up with carpel tunnel.


Although I suppose I shouldn't really talk about logic.

My Maccas order is a large Double Quarter-Pounder meal with an extra Cheeseburger, Oreo McFlurry with extra bits of shit in it and a Diet Coke.

Go figure.

Saturday 17 August 2013

Mmm Bacon.

I had bacon for breakfast.

I don't care that it was (... texturally diverse?) Vietnamese bacon.

Bacon is bacon.

Today is going to be a good day.

...

...

...

Can I say bacon one more time?

Bacon.

Friday 16 August 2013

Ola!!

Ok. Sorry for the no posting.

I've been battling 94% humidity and a bloated Vietnamese food baby for the past week or so.

Good Internet is not the simplest of things to come by in the sunny destination of Saigon - or Hanoi. Or on the 38 hour train ride that separated the two.

But the official verdict?

50c pints and $2 bowls of vermicelli goodness?

Happy, happy Little One (almost inevitably soon to be Not So Little One).

Of course on the first day my travelling partner in crime crashed from jet lag and I wandered the streets alone.

Do not let me wander the streets of Saigon alone.

I'll wind up on a plastic chair in a chilli eating competition with some Germans and some locals.

...

And I will lose.

Badly.

I made the big scary 6 foot something blonde descendents of Brad Pitt crossed with Hercules look like Mary Poppins, but geeeeez the locals demolished me.

So aside from spending my first 24 hours feeling like my face had melted off and seeing a talking coyote dressed as Boy George at the end of my bed, (91% sure not real...) things are pretty fucking fabulous.

In a few days I will be learning the greatest thing I think as a chef, I could possibly learn.

My kitchen hand from Melbourne (a delightful little Vietnames/Coburg boy by the English name of Martin -real name still unknown) has given me the address of his grandmother, an email ahead and told her to teach my how to make pho.

Please excuse me whilst I squeal in pure culinary delight!

I know by the end of this trip I will never be able to eat Vietnamese in Melbourne again, because 1. I will believe the price to be nothing short of extortion.

And 2. Because I will have evolved into a noodle snob who now believes that this so-called 'bun' is really just code for 'dental floss'.

But for now.

Happy times :)

Dating A Chef.

I've often had people exclaim to me or my boyfriend that dating a chef would be awesome.

Well walking through a beautiful country field is also spectacular but it doesn't mean you won't step in a heaping pile of fermenting cow dung.

I think the first thing that everyone perceives to be the 'norm' is that you'll have amazing food cooked for you every night...

Shush. I'd live off green apples and mi goreng if I didn't care about having regular bowel movements every morning.

Think of the reality that at dinner time for you Ninetofivers I'm probably up to my neck in fat, meat juice, salad prep or head first, ass up in a chest freezer, lifeguard-hauling the back up pork belly because the good people of Melbourne decided to order it for once.

Oh yeah. We smell...
Just...
Awful.

I'll be coming home well after you've eaten, maybe even gone to bed and if I have an appetite at all, it's for a bottle of red or six magnificent specimens of the Heineken variety that I salute with the same form of adoration you see for soldiers, like they're tall, sleek, green glass representations of the ANZACs.

I might even pull out the big guns and have toast. Or if I've got the energy and my hands aren't too blistered and cut up, I'll fire up some mi goreng in the magical, oversized box-clock that occasionally cooks shit.

'Microwave' for anybody that didn't get that.

But stemming back to my inner feminist - expect me to cook and you're probably going to have her come out to play, or more accurately, erupt out of the depths of some far away abyss... and bite your fucking head off before cowering over a tin of ALDI tuna with lime and cracked pepper (because I'm a fancy fucker at home in the right mood... Or when the nuker is put in the too hard basket) and the Conen O'Brian show.

I do cook for people, but no differently than you would. Simple is delicious. Pork belly, rough spuds, some form of green leafy thing because it balances the bland colours of cholesterol and carb on the plate.

Chef Tip Number Two: Cheap and cooked right overrides sous vide fois gras any day.

Smother that little piggy in salt and don't cook your broccoli until it resembles a wet sock. The next time you're stressing about cooking for a chef just stop. We like our potato mash chunky, our lasagne a bit burnt and I put parmesan on my fucking seafood pasta. Italian connoisseurs can fuck right off on that one. I'm going to go all Danielle Steel on you here, but we feel loved when we're cooked for, nobody does it. In 6 months, two people have braved the stove top for me - my housemate and my Mum and she maintains she does it all better than me anyway (and for the most part, for a home meal, she does.)

Because with me you get served 2 parts protein, 1 part starch with a side of I Don't Give A Fuck I've Done This Shit For 80 Hours This Week.

Oh and Date Night?

More like "Sorry love can't do this weekend I have a 305 vegan wedding but does Tuesday seven weeks from now between 1:15 and 4 suit you?"

There's nothing sexy about checking out the latest bar or restaurant on a dead Tuesday night surrounded by dickwads who were too cheap for a babysitter and senior citizens who missed the 4:30 early birds bingo wings special of meat and three veg at the local RSL.

Women dating male chefs? You hear all the stories about how they're raw, passionate sex addicts, (quite inevitably true if you're a petite waitress, the back linen bags are clear and it's been a while) but I can quite clearly inform you that you will be turning to your little battery operated rabbit more often than not because the mental stress of his day is going to topple his ability to get hard to the cute little lacy number you purchased that day... If he notices at all.

We have been trained to be emotionless.

Lucky with my boy's scenario and in my general experience for the case of women chefs, we still have that undeniable global need to be loved, to be satisfied. I dunno it must be printed in our genetic makeup. Deny a female chef sex when she wants it and you may as well give a leopard a wet willy - your chances of survival without severe mauling are certainly less.

Now, it isn't alllll bad.

My boy gets treated reasonably well considering. He puts up with a lot and for the life of me I have no idea why. But he doesn't have a princess girlfriend that will whinge to him when he wants to see his mates, who demands his undivided attention because 90% of the time, I just want to be left alone. The TV is always going to be on the cricket - no playing couch commando because the Ashes are on but The Mrs. wants to see the newly renovated patio on The Block.

No. The Ashes are on so THE ASHES ARE ON.

I have a good minute when I walk in the door, that I hold my boy. I hold him and I ask him how his day was even though I probably won't comprehend his response and not a single feeling in the world would make me feel more adored than I do at that moment.

So no, I don't understand people who come home, dump the keys and bag on the bench and shout a husky hello before saying "I'm having a bath, can you turn the oven on?"

What is wrong with you people?

We're miserable, passive aggressive bastards but if you're loved by a chef, you will never be loved harder by anybody else.

... Mainly because we're just grateful to have somebody.

If you can put up with us, we will put up with everything about you.

And yes, between me and the loved one, we have our moments, we're both quick witted with a short fuse and we can go from being cuddled on the couch to throwing metaphorical rocks at each other in a beeline for the face in nothing short of a blink.

So I guess mine is a little too understanding... I have an ego, so fighting with me is like teaching a 4 year old poker, have a Royal Flush all you want, I'm going to parade around my 3, 6, Jack, Ace and 7 like I've cured cancer.

The hardest part?

I reckon it has to be the fact that my job does not end when I leave the kitchen. I go home still buzzing on my adrenaline rush and freak out about how I forgot to order mushrooms, did I turn the oven off? Fuckity fuck fuck. Who was I supposed to call about roster changes..? Then later dreaming about docket machines going off and waking up to the shrill of the service bell whilst sleepily turning to this ever adoring man who for some God unkown reason, loves me and saying: "hunny no, that's not how you peel a zucchini."

Or worse when you stop yourself mid freak out, realising that you've transformed into a completely unreasonable psychopath from stressing about a mushroom, before curling into a ball for a teary-eyed version of Rambo in First Blood drawling some incomprehensible babble about what is essentially a fungus that can easily be purchased from Safeway.

What can I say - we're fucking weird.

But with all things good and bad, you have to have the annoying which sits somewhere in the middle.

Eventually: you will have to eat offal.

I don't think I need to make any more comments about this. And I use the word offal lightly, because you can be a 'foodie' all you want (don't even get me started on that fucking word) you will eventually have your significant loved one holding a pronged piece of silverware to your face saying "TRY THIS!"

And you'll do it.

Why will you do it?

Because you love them.

I'm not asking you to like it, or to ever eat it agian. But you will open up and chew and taste and swallow that shit in the most unglamorous way possible.

All of this aside - Even after all this rambling (if you've managed to stay in tune long enough to get this far... Many apologies) I do have a point.

Dating A Chef is not about all the negatives: it's just that the general public have a very misconstrued sense of what the positives are.

On countless occasions my boy will sneak to my house and climb into bed long before I've come home, sometimes before I've even finished soaping down the disintegrating and rather useless seal of my service fridge. Every now and then he'll wake up to someone who is telling her room to stay still due to too many staff drinks and whose natural response to "Good morning gorgeous girl" is "COOOOFFFFFFFFFEEEEEEE".

Howevveeerrrr....

You might go to sleep alone. But you'll wake up wrapped up by someone that adores you. Who loves you unconditionally.

And if that's not enough for you?

Then for fuck's sake, don't Date A Chef.


Wednesday 7 August 2013

You Know What I Fucking Hate: Part 6 and 7.

I absolutely cannot stand people who chew with their mouths open.

I do not wish to see the remnants of your meal get sloshed and squashed inside your unobstructed muzzle. I've seen giraffes on some late night nature programs eat more elegantly.


                                                           Yeah. Like THAT ^

I place people like this in the same category of Annoying Son Of A Bitch as people that carbonise their steak.

I mean my God, this is a beautiful, succulent piece of flesh, not a fucking marshmallow.



The Hangover.

Chirping birds are Satan's pets.

Anybody Got Work?

Unemployment Life Day 8:

I had leftover dinner for breakfast and a big breakfast for dinner.

Eep...

I found out today my bikini waxer is a lesbian...

Every compliment she has ever given me just escalated in both value and awkwardness.

Thursday 1 August 2013

Autocorrect.

My borrowed iPhone annoys me.

Mainly for autocorrect. Duck becomes fuck and fuck becomes duck.

But it did make me think that Peking Fuck would be the greatest Asian porno film title EVER!!

Fuck off if it already exists - I like to think I'm original.

The Ultimate Win.

I got fired because I called my boss a cunt.

Was worth it.

Definition Of Lol.

If you watch Cinderella backwards, it's about a woman learning her place.

Award Please.

"Hey babe, I got that new cookbook that I wanted. When GTA comes out are you ok with sitting down and bashing hookers with golf clubs for three consecutive days while I devour it?"

HowToGirlfriend.