02006-07-24 | Touring, Uncategorized
Drive to Newcastle. After the show there we will return to Sydney for the night.
The ceiling of the Civic Theatre.
Lunch at the restaurant next to the venue, then coffee across the square.
The café has photos from New Mexico and Arizona on the wall and a little shrine to TV…
During soundcheck we discover that the Motu’s fuse has been blown. The Motu is used to convert the digital signal from the softsynths on Jon’s laptop to an analog signal that goes out to the mixing console. We prefer the sound of the softsynth as opposed to a regular synthesizer. A replacement is found in Newcastle and the Motu comes to life again.
02006-07-24 | Internet, Touring, Travel, Uncategorized
It rains off and on all day. I take a brisk long walk to get my body going after drinking more than usual last night. I find a place with Aboriginal paintings, Gallery Savah in Paddington. Beautiful, abstract, encoded, map-like, Landkarten, hidden but not secret communications, stories…
Internet access sucks so far. The Grace Hotel in Sydney is in a nice location, but has an awful policy: $3.95 for the connection (per 24 hours) and then 1 cent per 1KB with a cap at 100MB and $25… but it means that if I upload a bunch of photos, the connection times out after reaching 100MB – after a couple of hours or less… Then I tried a cafe with free WiFi access – the coffee was great, but the connection very slow even though I seemed to be the only person in the cafe with a laptop… The situation at the hotel in Melbourne was better – free WiFi in every room, but again I had a totally crappy connection. The next day I heard that some of us had better luck but it was not consistent.
02006-07-24 | Art, Food, Touring, Travel, Uncategorized
7:30PM reservation at Tetsuya’s. Someone tells me the restaurant is quite near the hotel and we could easily walk. It starts raining cats and dogs about one block into the walk and we discover that it is actually six or seven blocks away. All taxis are taken already and although we try to stay under awnings we arrive soaking wet.
We are seated at a table with a view of the Japanese garden in the atrium.
A glass of 1980 champagne welcomes us…
We declare that we have all the time in the world tonight and that we would like whatever Tetsuya wants to make and yes, could he select the wines as I know very little about Aussie wines and he is a master at selecting the perfect wine with each course… in fact some the wineries make special Tetsuya-labelled wines for him…
The first dish is served in an espresso cup and contains a puree of sweet potato with a little feta cheese and arrugula… I give it one stir with the tiny spoon and drink it down in a few sips… wow! My taste-buds are waking up and I am saying to them “I told you!”…
We leave the restaurant at midnight… after four and a half hours and an unforgettable meal. An amazing symphony of flavors. Tets is a genius.
02006-07-24 | Environment, Philosophy, World
The State is destroyed, but the mountains and rivers survive
Du Fu (712-777)
The mountains and rivers are destroyed, but the State survives.
Nanao Sakaki (Born 1923)
02006-07-17 | Environment, Uncategorized
Treehugger: Cycle Commuting, Bike Buses and SUV accidents
The Sydney Morning Herald ran stories this weekend just past, regarding the rise in cycle commuting as a reaction to the rise the oil prices. One of the city’s bicycle stores reckoned on a 20-25% in sales of bikes, and had also observed a greater number on pedal pushers on commuting routing into the central business district. The City of Sydney had earlier this year completed its own research which gave credence to such anecdotal observations. Cycle traffic across two major bridges into the city had increased five and sixfold in recent years.
Read on for the whole story.
