B&E roll from Bacino cafe in Balmain.. premade in the display fridge, nice roll, tasty egg, bacon was a little soft and it has provelone cheese in it. Delivered toasted and warm. Tasty, and the coffee’s good too. 8.5/10.
Apr 20 2010
quick bun
Just a quick B&E update.. had the B&E roll from XL (where I had that wrap). It was a little bland, a somewhat average turkish bread roll with otherwise identical ingredients. 6.5/10, if only because I didn’t really like it as a wrap.
Comments Off
Apr 09 2010
moar buns
Time for another Bacon and Egg in bread product review! They’re not the only thing I eat for breakfast.. but I ran out of toast this week. Both of these are from places in Chatswood.
Firstly is a bacon and egg bagel from.. downstairs. Bezini? Something like that. Given it’s in a bagel, it’s immediately compared to the B&E bagel from the Bagel House in Rozelle, which is excellent. Nice free range egg (I’m assusming by taste) but tends to be a little over cooked (solid but not dry yolk) and lots of tasty bacon on your choice of bagel. The bagel downstairs was a poppy seed one (I ususally get a cheese one at Bagel House) and was ok, but nowhere near as good as the BH ones. The egg tasted like a cage egg (demand free range eggs people!) but it was cooked nice with the yolk still a little runny and the bacon was fine. The accompanying coffee was also on the good side of acceptable. 6/10, would do again.
Secondly was this morning’s bacon and egg wrap (werd) from XL cafe. The egg was nicer, the bacon was good and it was wrapped in a tortilla and toasted on a cafe press. It was nice, but I think I prefer my B&E on more meaty bread products. Also acceptable coffee. 6/10, fine alternative to the bagel.
This may end up as an irregular series at this rate. It should be noted that I’m a harsh scorer, so don’t take 6/10 as discouraging. I’m not sure how someone could get 10/10.. duck eggs fresh from the arse and some sort of amazing bacon to end all bacon I guess. One day…
Apr 06 2010
tunsic
I shall attempt at this point to write something that’s been a ponderance of mine for a while now. The music I’m currently listening to is the soundtrack to a game some of you may have heard of called Chrono Cross. Chrono Cross is the erstwhile sequal to a game I’m rather fond of called Chrono Trigger, which was released for the SNES back in the day and recently (ish) re-released and optimised for the DS. You can read about Trigger here, the (excellent) article from the current book about the pair of them isn’t available online yet but will be at some point. Read the rest of that site anyway, it’s tops.
So anyway, why am I listening to a game soundtrack from a PS1 game that I never played. The best answer is of course ‘it’s nice’ but that wouldn’t make for very interesting reading, so I’m going to have a go at some sort of reasoning. It was done by a chap named Yasunori Mitsuda, who also did the soundtrack to the Chrono Trigger (as well as a host of other games) so there’s some definate familiarity to the style. It’s also from a PS1 game, which means it’s much more instrumenty than the SNES allowed for due to the CD format of the system. Most of all though it’s really just a nice series of music to sit down and listen to while, say, blathering about crap on the internet. It flows through lovely guitary pieces describing a town or its surrounding countryside to upbeat songs for battle scenes and creepy songs about a mansion or a fortress, and because it’s a game soundtrack it climaxes with epic battle scores and wraps up with peaceful melancholy befitting the game’s apparently rather sad at time story. Apparently the game wasn’t well received by fans (something along the lines of all the Trigger characters being killed off and whatnot.. there are treatises around, as mentioned earlier) so for some the soundtrack might even be the highlight of the game. If, that is, they ever got the chance to listen to it in entirety.
The other thing about a lot of game music from the PS1 era is that it’s an era from before game music when all hollywood blockbuster. Back in the early days you’d have a catchy tune for a town, a shop, an overworld, a battle.. the soundtracks had real character to them. Nowadays many soundtracks are unremarkable, uninteresting and not memorable at all. Or it’s just licensed music chucked in because you need music in a game. There are exceptions to this of course, and I’m sure if I delved into it sufficiently I’d disprove my own point so I’m not going to. Suffice to say, the game music I listen to is pretty much limited to SNES and PS1 stuff (even though I never had a PS1). Or the Diablo II soundtrack. Or Need For Speed 3. Or.. shit, there goes that point I was making..
Suffice to say, there’s a remarkable amount of care and attention in many game soundtracks. They’re still out there, ready to be aquired and sampled, so if I’ve piqued your interest get your googlin’ on have a listen. You may be pleasently surprised… or find I’ve wasted your time. Either way, my work here is done.
Apr 06 2010
more east than usual
Given that it was more east than usual over the weekend and they made it twice as long to celebrate the fact, I decided to go visit my Dad’s dogs down in Nearly Melbourne. I also took the opportunity to visit my Dad and his wife at the same time, given that where the dogs are, they generally are. Unless Dad’s at work, but that doesn’t happen when it’s commemoratively more east weekend. This retelling starts before then though, as the stage must be set for such things. So relax dear reader, and be taken on a journey through the power of my words. Or something.
Firstly, let me point out for the uninformed, my new job tends to lead to a few drinks or so on the last day of the week. In fact, the first two fridays lead to being pleasently surprised to find myself at home the next morning, but I digress. Last thursday was no exception, only without excess. This is mainly because after lunch (in a pub) an afternoon drink at the RSL, some drinks and nibblies put on by new work to celebrate an Occasion and a couple more back at the pub to farewell a team member, I popped off to Newtown (or N00btown if you prefer) for a few cocktails and some dinner/wine with a friend who was temporarily back from London. This was followed by heading into the city for a few beers with her other half, then getting home shortly before 2am, checking into my flight and packing my bag. I managed to forget nothing, which suggested to me that getting drunk the night before a trip isn’t such a bad thing after all.
5 hours later however, with the alarm cacophanising me from lovely slumber, that was revised back to ‘not ideal’. Tired and slightly queasy I staggered downstairs, called for a cab, leapt into the first one that came along instead and was whizzed off to the airport by a complete nutter. Nice guy, but part of the 95% of cabbies that give the rest a bad name when it comes to driving. A bit of lining up and a ham and cheese croissant later I was waiting to board, alternating between keeping my eyes open enough to read my book and closing them for a recharge. Which is also pretty much what I did after I boarded.
As an aside, I hate flying. If I had time/means I’d rather drive to places, but as flying is much faster and cheaper, that means I don’t get to do it as often as I’d like. Still, at least I’ve done it a few times.
So anyhoo, that started a sleepy day in Nearly Melbourne. That afternoon we visited a Buddhist temple that’s nearby (well, it took over an hour to get there.. we went the scenic route). It was in a great spot, but it was kind of a non-descript building with the gold horns chucked on the top. Nice though. On the way back we spotted a pub that had all day meals on, so with it being 3pm at that point we decided to stop and have a feed. Very tasty fish and chips, and Asahi on tap. Yum. Not pictured: everything.
The nice thing about visiting Dad is that I can drink his wine. He has very nice wine. He also has some Raki, which is a Turkish spirit that tastes like aniseed and burning until you put a bunch of ice in. Then it’s aniseed and nice. The other side of it is helping around the shop/restaurant they run, which is fine most of the time.. cleaning out the rangehood over the kitchen was a mucky job though. Ergh. Still, I earns me keep. Also I got to play with the pressure washer, so it wasn’t all bad. Squwoooosh! Only got a bit soaked…
Anyhoo, I got back last night. I decided to take the train and bus home from the airport, which is actually the first time I’ve done it from a flight home. Usually I’m too tired/cranky to be bothered with anything other than queuing for a cab, but I decided that the line would be huge and I might as well spend half the cashola to get home. (Though seriously, $15 is a ridiculous fare for about half a dozen stops.) Sitting on an empty train makes me want to think of something to write about, but it never happens.. probably because I’m not much of a writer.. I get writer’s block before I start. I think I shall call it aspirant’s block. Kinda makes you wonder why I’d have a blog with an imaginary flipside, but heigh.. why the hell not.
Comments Off