When hunger meets reality.

You’re at an international food festival ...

You’re standing in a queue for what seems to be a very popular noodle dish. After twenty minutes you finally reach the front, pay your money and take your steaming plate off to a quiet spot.

As you move away from the bench and venture back past the line of envious faces, you stumble on a paving stone, which causes your prized plate of noodles to begin it’s descent.

Using skills reminiscent of a Cirq de Soliare headline act, you somehow manage to steady the plate without loosing a single noodle. In doing so however your eyes happened to glance to the side ....

© The Ponder Room

It’s then you notice the large pot next to where you purchased your noodles. Clearly it has something to do with the noodle production. You stand looking. The contents resemble a Masterchef challenge - one where contestants are given a dish in need of major work before it can be deemed edible.

You ponder … much prized stock or cesspool of salmonella ... to eat or not to eat, that is the question?

The Essential Cooking Ingredient (Coconut Chilli Potatoes)

The countdown to Christmas has begun with the usual battle between deadlines and social engagements. My biggest problem is when the invitations come with the obligatory ‘plate’ request. Any other time of the year I’d love to spend hours concocting something Masterchef-ish to dazzle the guests (I wish). But at this time of year anything beyond opening a few cans is just unthinkable. Case in point….

Calling an abrupt halt to my weeklong keyboard dalliance, I raced to the local fresh market with a twenty minute 'window of opportunity' to purchase and make said masterpiece. Grabbing fail safe items I left the store with baby potatoes, a brown onion, a tin of lite coconut milk and a can of green curry paste.

© The Ponder Room

Back home I hurled the crockpot onto the bench, franticly chopped the onion, cut the potatoes in half, and threw them all into the pot along with the coconut milk, a vegetable stock cube, some celery liberated from the bottom of the fridge, and a large dollop of green curry paste. Turning the switch to high I returned to report writing.

Two hours later the smells wafting from the kitchen reminded me about the crockpot. The plan had worked, the potatoes hadn’t turned to mush, and it looked passable. Then I tried it.

As the spoon touched my mouth my lips instantly signalled their retreat, without a single word of goodbye or cursory glance backward, they were gone, clearly reluctant to hang around incase seconds were on offer. Looking to my right I saw the can of green curry paste and read it, properly, for the first time. ‘Green chillies’. Fantastic what I thought was curry paste was actually a huge wack of pure green chillies. I’d created the equivalent of potato molten lava.

With an hour until the party, and still having to decide on a party dress, I threw myself head first into the fridge and found a cucumber, a red capsicum, some spring onions and Ceaser Salad dressing. The volcanic hot coconut sauce was replaced with salad dressing, and behold! As long as the guests limited themselves to three potatoes I might just get away with it.

Footnote: The salad plate was returned empty at the end of the night, which made me ponder......perhaps I’d gotten away with it? Or maybe the hostess just threw it out when I wasn’t watching to save my ego any further embarrassment, my hastily put together clothing choice being enough on its own. Either way I now know that as you get older the most essential cooking ingredient is....glasses.

Apologies if you received the earlier incorrectly post, a paragraph went missing for a while.

 

Morning tea extra (Premier Colin Barnett)

When Premier Colin Barnett decides to have a few people around for morning tea the shopping list includes the usual…..

© The Ponder Room

food

drinks

chairs



but there’s an additional element ….security, two of them to be precise, standing on either side of the room.



How many of you wouldn’t mind having a pair of book end security guards at your Xmas bash just incase the discussion gets heated and the mince tarts start to fly?

Super handy to put the angel on the top of the tree too.

However I did ponder what additional extras he carries in the elongated black bag on the ground.....pool cues.....violin.....extra cream for the scones?



A very Rumpole of the Bailey Morning Tea (Colin Barnett in Scarborough)

Friday began with the Premier Colin Barnett’s morning tea, followed by a Community Forum, all put on by the Member for Scarborough Liza Harvey. At the Community Forum Mr Barnett spoke for around an hour, emphasizing that we’re living through ‘a moment in history…a 1 in 100 year cycle’ of rebuilding Perth. 


Barnett & Harvey

© The Ponder Room



The Premier touched on local issues including: the Scarborough Beach beachfront; local traffic; Observation City redevelopment; and the Stirling City Centre development.

Questions from the community extended this discussion to: the Stirling Master Plan; shopping hours; public transport; underground power; and cycle paths or walkways.  

Other areas covered were: the Perth waterfront; the Kings Park/Perth link; the east side precinct; the economy (e.g. links to China); Social issues; Health (e.g. Fiona Stanley hospital and the new children’s hospital); Education; Iron Ore ports; Uranium exports; the Mining Tax and red tape.

© The Ponder Room

The discussion was intermittently interrupted with a round of baritone ‘here, here’s’, which instantly transported me into the backrow of a musty Rumpole of the Bailey or Yes Minister setting.

As The Ponder Room is apolitical, we’ll bypass the political questions and go to the pressing issues that you really wanted to know….

 

More 4 Me and The Hunter both get an airing at BOFA Tasmanian Festival 2011

Two films recently featured on The Ponder Room will both be shown at the MyState Breath of Fresh Air (BOFA) Film Festival in Tasmania.  This has me pondering ... what would young directors like Lincoln Fenner (More 4 Me) and Daniel Nettheim (The Hunter) chat about if they managed to catch up during the festival....let's hope they do, in the meantime.... 

More 4 Me director, Lincoln Fenner, is delighted his film will be screened alongside films with high profile international stars such as The Hunter (Willem Dafoe), Whistleblower (Rachel Weisz), 33 Postcards (Guy Pearce) and Eye of the Storm (Geoffrey Rush).

Lincoln Fenner



His film was shot with a two-man crew over a four-week period. This resulted  in nearly 200 interviews recorded in 13 locations across seven countries and five continents.

‘This year the festival is featuring films which have recently picked up some major awards in prominent film festivals all around the world, including Sundance, so we’re very honoured to be selected’, said Fenner.

‘What is also exciting for us, is the opportunity to partner with charity Samaritan’s Purse who are featured in the film and will be attending the festival with us,’ said Fenner.

From the outset, Fenner set a mandate to donate 75% of the film’s profits to the aid organisations in the film. As a result Creation Box Films recently donated AUD$11,000 across the five major charities featured in the film, including Samaritan’s Purse.

Tasmanian State Manager for Samaritan’s Purse Renee Garvin will attend the screening.

'What I love about this film is that it doesn’t just bring to our attention the contrast between how much we have compared to developing nations, but it also shows a few ways that we can do something practical about it,' said Garvin. 

For those of you in Tasmania, More 4 Me will screen at 12.30pm on Saturday 26 November at the Faculty of Performing Arts, Annexe Theatre in Launceston’s Inveresk Precinct.  To find out more go to http://bofa.com.au/2011/festival/film-program/features/more-4-me  or   visit http://www.more4memovie.com/

Any burning questions for the Premier Colin Barnett?

For some reason I have been invited to a morning tea, being put on by Liza Harvey (Member for Scarborough). The Premier Colin Barnett will be there and we are allowed to ask a question.

Thanks Commonwealth Foundation

So if you have a burning issue that you would like raised please let me know. 

I'll add it to the list and either go for the most common one, or randomly draw one from the hat. Then it'll just be a case of seeing how brave I feel on the day eekk!

If however you have a burning sensation....I really don't need to know.

[If you've already emailed me a question you don't need to do it again.]

PERTH, a sign for the people

The debate continues about whether the PERTH sign should be used in Fremantle’s upcoming ISAF Sailing World Championship next month. Event director Mr John Longley commented “people mustn’t forget that the event is funded by all taxpayers in WA and the benefits need to accrue to the common good, and not just a small part (of the state).” This got me pondering..…

© The Ponder Room

If CHOGM was funded by WA taxpayers, does that mean we all have a part ownership in the Perth sign?

If so then the real question is who wants a go after Fremantle finishes with it?

I can see it going down a treat at Peter’s 40^th birthday party where beer in hand, his wife Joanne ceremoniously pulls down a long drape of black silk to reveal his gift; A newly installed stainless steel outdoor BBQ area, complete with sink, glass door mini fridge, and the giant 'P' hovering above declaring the space, ‘Pete’s Kitchen’.

Or teenage Elizabeth, finally overcoming the embarrassment of her somewhat old fashioned name, by showing up in Dunsborough with the largest ‘e’ ever seen at Schoolies Week. Sadly though, thinking she was using it as an advertising device, it was soon confiscated by the police and Elizabeth relegated to the local lock up. Unperturbed she beamed in her cell, knowing she’d finally been accepted into the cool crowd, an invitation she instantly declined, knowing she'd now surpassed that and gone on to ‘legend status.’

On the same weekend Raul, drives his highly polished black Toyota Ute into the Hyde Park Community Day picnic. With the chrome glistening and the ‘R’ taking up most of the trailer space, his mates declare him a “true Aussie, mate’’.

Meanwhile in an equally leafy suburb, new mum Serena takes one final look at the group of women gathered for her baby shower and explains with great pride that the ‘T’ is for Tequila, Taco Thomas, her first born daughter, who was conceived during a particularly wild night on their tenth trip to Mexico.

Finally as night descends, 6 foot 6 Henrietta tottering on 6 inch heels, puts his/her ‘H’ through it’s paces as she gyrates around it on the front float in the Perth Pride Mardi Gras Parade.

Perhaps Mr Longley is on to something.

What to do to mark this singularly important date 11/11/11?

This morning I woke with a blinding flashback to an earlier time, a time when the world’s pollution was joined as one, silently waiting in a collective crouch.

Thanks Leo Reynolds

Huddled, we waited for the Millennium Bug to strike and destroy civilization as we knew it. For planes to plummet, digital clocks to explode and computers to freeze on the last window opened….enough to make any teenage boy hanker for a copy of National Geographic.

Consequently, depending on your risk profile, you either spent that New Years Eve, celebrating one last big bang in the mile high club, or walking around the house in fluffy Millennium Bug slippers, trying to decide where to hang your latest framed novelty Millennium Bug decoration.

In hindsight we appear to have wasted a large amount of time, money, and anxiety that could have been better spent watching our mortgages double by the years end. The following day we simply moved on, and continued doing what we always had.

And so as my electronic diary clicked over to 11/11/11 this morning, I pondered how to acknowledge such a singularly important date. There being no great public fanfare to give me any guidance, I was left to my own devices......

Numerology told me that 11 is a ‘master number’, and as such suggests ‘the potential for a high degree of learning, or achievement and very often in a more stressful environment’. Great, so I have to learn or achieve something in a stressful environment.

Evidently master numbers also represent ‘an intensified version of the single digit’. Okay, but which single digit? Is it one or six, because if you add up all the digits in the date you end up with six? Hedging my bets I looked at both of them and found that ….

1 means initiating action, pioneering, leading, attaining, independent, or individual.

6 means responsibility, protection, nurturing, sympathy, community, balance.

So I am left with a couple of ideas to ponder today…

1. What can I do today to take responsibility to sympathetically nurture the community, while maintaining my balance and independence? For some reason I see a penny-farthing involved which might be tricky, though it certainly would be individual .... and environmental nurturing.
2. Alternatively I’ll be looking out for ways to learn or achieve something in a stressful environment? I may have already achieved this by trying to silently extract the only black jellybean from the bottom of a very crunchy packet, while sitting in the front row at a very important seminar. Adding more pressure, a couple of reporters keep glaring at me because they put their mini-recorders down right next to me.
3. If that’s not enough, last night I tried to book a table for 11 people at the newest hip bar/restaurant, and learnt that the term ‘new hip bar/restaurant’ actually translates to ‘three month waiting list’.
4. Where are the tacky pieces of commemorative merchandise when you need them?
5. Or maybe it’s enough to simply stand quietly for twice as long at 11am and ponder the significance of the time?
6. How will you get on today? Would love to know how you plan to mark the occasion.

Stephen Fry's Aussie technology horribolous tour

Master intellect, brilliant wordsmith and prolific tweeter Stephen Fry, finally made it back to Australia after several decades of absence. Here for his show Qi, where contestants get points for answers that are ‘quite interesting’, and lose points for stating the bleeding obvious, I was left pondering how he'll remember this recent Aussie sojourn.

© The Ponder Room

While clearly ''deeelight-ed' with the progress we’ve made in his absence, he was far less impressed when the AV equipment in his second Perth Burswood show refused to play ball. Nonetheless Fry carried on with professional aplomb, and as a result the audience was left satiated, and with a far greater understanding of what it takes to put the hit show to air.

This was thanks in part to the cheeky, childlike nature of Alan Davies. It was obvious that these two have a great relationship. Plagued with pneumonia, Alan delighted in incessantly pushing Fry’s buttons. It was like watching a schoolboy constantly poking a wise old bulldog with a stick, until the dog simply sighed and begrudgingly wandered off to sit elsewhere. Fry’s strategy oscillated between humouring and ignoring Alan.

© The Ponder Room  [Peter Rowsthorn  Alan Davies, Stephen Fry, Myf Warhurst , Jono Coleman]

It would appear that Fry adopted a similar strategy when his long Qantas flight home was diverted to Dubai... he simply tweeted that ‘an engine had decided not to play.’

On hearing this I pondered….

1. With Fry joking about there being ‘another queen in town’, and the impact the Royal Family has on 'normally sane' people, I pondered whether the AV problem was actually due to the show’s content intermittently triggering a CHOGM security alert. For some reason I had visions of an over zealous CHOGM security expert crouched in a small windowless room in the bowels of the West Australian Police Department. A bank of twenty tiny TV screens before him, every time Fry made disparaging comments about the Royal Family, or the word ‘queen’ was uttered on stage, he'd push the red button to his left, thereby sending an electric shock directly into the seat and consequently the left buttocks of the AV technician working on Qi.
2. If so, was the same technology employed to further track Fry down and eventually pinpoint him in the pointy end of the Qantas plane. Knowing about the recent Qantas problems, the Royal Family seized an opportunity for anonymous revenge.... 'one thinks Mr Fry may benefit from a stop over in Dubai Phil.' Perhaps this also explains why the Queen was smiling so much as she left Perth.
3. Will this go down as Fry’s technology horribolous tour? At least he will have a ‘quite interesting' tale to add to future stand up routines.
4. Oh to have his patience.

Signs your city has stopped being CHOGM-ed #8 (Spanish Inquisitions cease)



© The Ponder Room

The blue measles have cleared up, and the likelihood of random Spanish Inquisitions have been removed, (thankfully, while an interesting experience I never want to go through that again). It’s safe to return to the city centre, normality prevails.

Although the powers that be are seriously considering putting the Upsized Perth sign permanently on Kings Park…..a clear reminder of the hazy line between reality and pondering Upsized scrabble



© The Ponder Room