The One in the Oldest Restaurant in the World

During our Spanish tour we dined (twice) at the oldest restaurant in the world. The ambiance was excellent, the suckling pig devine and the wine very agreeable. It is called 'Botin' and in the heart of Madrid. My recommendation could not come high enough and all I can say is sample it for yourself to experience what cannot be described by words.

The One introducing Kai (nee Benny Jr)

Those following my blog my remember a certain bet my sister in law made with me last year at Oktoberfest. The choice of name for their first born child will be made by me - Benny Jr. I was very skeptical at the time whether such bet would be honoured (can anyone imagine my brother agreeing to this one?) but such was the amusing nature of the bet a fair few people had been calling him (unknown sex at the time) - Benny Jr. So it became no surprise to anyone when the gelfling was born that they indeed would not uphold the bet and decided to go off with a very different direction - Kai John Gilkes. I suppose I cannot begrudge the little fella for his parents misgivings, however I will be sure to tell him in the future at some stage. Otherwise he will end up reading it here anyway....

The One with the Vomiting Gelfling

Got back from Nogland last night and was in the process of trying to clear immigration when a very unfortunate event happened (well not for me). Lucky I was in a fast moving line which I pride myself on being able to pick. I usually see how many desks are open in each line and make sure the immigration officer manning the desk are not smiling (= chatty to people) or frowning (= scrutinise the passport of anyone withour ginger hair). Avoiding queues with families is another handy tip as they are never prepared when they reach the desk and the smaller the children the more likely the immigration officer is likely to try and have a talk with them. As such my theories came to fruition when I heard a lady a couple of desks over ask for the family with "the little girl" to come and be let through. As I turned my head to see why she would be saying that I saw a poor gelfling maybe 5 years old with a gush of vomit pillowing from her mouth. Had I not seen it from my own eyes, from the amount that came out, I would not have believed it was entirely from this child. I doubt a tanked up bogan after a night on the lash, full of booze, a kebab and portion of chips would have come close to this amount. Never the less I continued to move on satisfied that my knowlege of British immigration was absolutely flawless and proceeded to leg it home.

The One with the View

So I am back offshore - getting towards the end of my trip. We just moved to a new location overnight. Opening the window blind in my cabin this morning I was greeted with this sight. A drill rig on location about 100m from us. Being a BP job I wasn't too keen to hang around this at all, so we finished up as quickly as possible and hastily made our exit!

The One with the Photo of the tiny..... um.... Boots?

You know when you think up something in your head but don't really follow the thinking through to the end? I posted something the other day about my diary from our trip around the world when I was about 6 or 7. It is a very good read and a laugh. For some reason I mentioned though that there was a picture my parents had of me as a child that I probably should have kept to myself. Never the less I am a man of my word, so here it is, me in the Buff.

Notice the size of the boots that are almost fitting me. They are my dads....

Not really sure what I was looking at here. Maybe my parents decided to finally tell me I had no pants on?

The One with some interesting speeds

The girl and I drove up to the Lakes District for a weekend away. I had borrowed the cuz's Audio A3 Turbo which despite being a diesel - has some zip. The funny thing about London is there are numerous locations for speed camera's (not necessarily an actual camera at the spot). When you get out of the city and onto the motorway it appears that you can choose to go whatever speed you want. The reason I say this is because there is a distinct lack of camera's and actual speed limit signs. Supposedly you are to know the motorway speed limits before you travel but we thought it rather odd they wouldn't have a sign along the whole route.

The thing with being an Australian is we are used to dealing with kms. Unfortunately the brits have not taken on the metric system fully (perhaps a reluctance to go for anything invented by the French) so distance and speed is measured in miles. The distance doesn't really seem to throw you however the speed aspect does. The difference between a couple of kms and a couple of miles is significant and it is quite easy to rack up some excessive speed when overtaking.

Without a doubt BMW owners are hoons. I did a fair share of passing on the journey however if there was one constant - I was frequently being passed by BMW's and can't recall ever passing one myself. There was the odd Lancia, Merc or fellow Audi driver that cruised past but not in the quantity of the beemers. In fact I use the term "passing" lightly because they quite literally flew past. The sleek sedans, top off convertibles and even the poxy 4-wheel drives head their feet made from metal!

(Interestingly H+ has a BMW and I can imagine her passing quite a few people on the Motorway).

The One with the Norwegian play

Trying to culture myself up, the girl and I decided to go to a play by Henrik Ibsen, a Norwegian playwrite, called "Hedda Gabler." This one starred Rosamund Pike as the heroine, which certainly increased my interest in the play. I have to say her performance was superb and if the girl wasn't the hottest thing since sliced....um.... toast? Then she might have some competition.

The story itself winds along with a steady pace before an almighty fast paced climax that took everyone by surprise. I would highly recommend this play on the proviso it is well presented with some decent acting. A good lead is also a bonus!

The One stuck in Nogland

The day the girl and I flew back from Aus we went straight into work. This seemed like a reasonable idea at the time (especially after we secured business seats) until after catching up on a few emails I got called into the bosses office. "Norway wants you to fly over tonight" was her opening statement and I could see she was reluctant to force me to go. Not really thinking it through I decided to leave my comfy bed for a couple more days and headed for Norway.

This turned out to be a critical error as the day I landed that unpronouncable Icelandic volcano, blew its muffin top. Not realising the impact to my next couple of weeks I found it mildly amusing that I was stuck in Norway with barely a change of clothes and not much on the agenda. The next day it was brought to my attention that our offshore crew was stuck in London with no way to get over to the boat that was moored in the North of Norway. About this time the cogs in my brain were starting to grind and I realised that we would probably have to be the likely candidates to reach the boat.

This didn't really worry me until we realised how big Norway was and that the flights here were also grounded. "No problem," said our accomodating hosts, "we have hired a bus for you to get up there."

And so began our lengthy bus ride from Stavanger to Kristiansund. To add to our misery 2 clients were added to the passenger list. We later found out that ironically both drivers were themselves from Iceland. Fortunately they had a sense of humour about it all.

We got about halfway when we stopped for some water at a nearby creek. I decided to get out of the bus and was greeted by some exceptionally cold snow. I only lasted outside the bus long enough to notice that a hose had broken and the water they were refilling was spewing out under the bus. Another stop for a couple of hours while this was fixed was certainly not appreciated.

We continued the rest of the journey without much more drama to finally reach the vessel some 20hrs later. Once we arrived there I was greeted by a 12hr night shift in which a blizzard had decided to keep our morale at all time lows.

The one with all the dinners....

The Girl and I were at the parentals consuming a vast amount of booze. The bro and sis in law were there too and it wasn't long before the baby shots were brought out. Unfortunately for me there is a classic of myself wearing nothing but a pair of cowboy boots and shirt. All I can say is it must have been damn cold that day! (Note: by popular request if my parentals scan and send me the photo it will be put up on this site - I just hope they have stopped reading this thing....)

Moving forward after the photo show we found my old diary from the trip my parents took me on when I was a wee tike. This trip was 2 months around Seppo homeland and the UK. I remember large portions of it when reading back through but I was quite surprised the quality of detail in my early years.

It was quite amusing to read through the matter of fact description of what happened - probably a quality far removed from my current writing style of comedy and embellishment. The brutal honesty and descriptive sentences were certainly hilarious however only to be outdone by my sign-off on the majority of entries:
"and then we had some dinner and then we went to bed."

The One with the Awesome Kebab

The thing about living away from your home country is missing the subtle things. Sure you can pretty much get vegemite everywhere and Selfridges now stocks Kraft Mac and Cheese (my mouth waters everytime I say it), and even the Australian shop in Cov Garden has a vast range of things you never new you missed until you see it on the shelves.

One of the many things I didn't realise I was missing in London (until a very long Saturday drinking session) was a late night Kebab. Alas it wasn't until the last night of my visit back to the motherland that I managed to end an epic boozing day with a hearty feast. And what a feast - I think I added every ingredient and sauce that I had ever sampled on a kebab. Then the final act of my grand feasting accomplishment was to be laced in the hottest curry sauce they could offer.

The thing that makes the Aussie Kebab so much better than any attempt by a British Kebab is the range. If you think it will taste good on a Kebab an Aussie place will most likely have it. When you ask for a Kebab in London they quite literally make you a kebab without asking what toppings you want except for maybe the choice of 2 sauces. When you start saying what else you want on it they look at you with a grimace and keep doing it there way.

UPDATE: I have now found myself a fairly good kebab shop in South Wimbles - not quite a big range yet (although he is taking my advice and trying to add more) but he likes to sort out exactly what I want.