When we approached we saw the lunch specials and dinner specials advertised, as well as the full menu placed outside the door on a stand. We flipped through and were suitability impressed at both the prices and the photos of this delicious looking asian food. We walked in and said table for 3, and were greeted warmly by a young Japanese waitress. She led us up the back of the restaurant and we sat down to look through the comprehensive menu. It was so hard to decide, I looked at the first four pages and decided I could probably eat everything listed, it all sounded so good.

In the end we decided on entree’s of:

• Chicken Teriyaki Hand Roll
• Mixed Hand Roll
• Gyoza (Fried pork dumplings with special sauce)

For the mains:

• Chicken Teriyaki and Sashimi Combo Box
• Chilli Chicken
• Raw Beef (Unsure of name, was in Korean)

First we ordered drinks. The boys ordered two Japanese beers called Asahi. I ordered a coke since I was driving.

The Sushi Mixed Roll consisted of two pieces Chicken Teriyaki, two pieces of Tuna, and two pieces of Salmon. It was covered in Japanese Mayo and what I could taste was Teriyaki sauce. It had a big chunk of Wasabi on the side and was absolutely delicious. We shared all of the food so we could get a taste of everything since it was the first time we’d been.

Mixed Sushi Roll - $6.50

The waitress brought out cute little plates for us to transfer the sushi on to. The next things to come out were the Gyoza, fried pork dumplings. There were 5 served with some tangy dipping sauce. These were very nice.

Pork Gyoza (Fried Pork Dumplings) - $8.00 for 5

I didn’t get a picture of the Chicken Teriyaki but it looked much the same as the Mixed Roll. Either way it all tasted fantastic! Now the real fun starts when the mains arrived. The raw beef dish looked like an absolute work of art when it arrived to the table.

Raw Beef Dish - $22.00

The raw beef was served in a sauce with an egg yolk on top surrounded by cut apples, cucumbers and carrot.

Raw Beef - $22.00 and Chili Chicken $12.50

The chilli chicken became more spicy with each bite. It was served with a bowl of rice and a bowl of salad. The salad contained lettuce, carrot and cabbage in a wonderful sweet and sour dressing. It was vinegar based and nicely balanced the rest of the meal. It was a breast piece, and had a wonderful flavour I assume from the marinade and being cooked on a grill. It was thinly sliced and melted in my mouth!

Chilli Chicken - $12.50

They offer a bento combo box of Teriyaki Chicken and Salmon Sashimi for $16.00. What a bargain! It comes with rice, side salad, 4 pieces of Sashimi and a bowl of Miso soup.

Teriyaki Chicken and Sashimi Combo Bento - $16.00

The total bill came to a reasonable $96.00. Service was excellent, the staff were not noisy or annoying despite the kitchen being right next to you. The restaurant has been done up quite nice and had several diners while we were there. I would definitely eat there again, the food was fantastic and they were very large portions for the price. It will take me a year to try everything on the menu though!

Recently the season finally of Grey’s Anatomy force me into unchartered waters. I had to find something new and different to watch, and the shows on TV were all either repeats, or shows that were half way through and I’d already missed the first or second season. Hmmm what can I watch I wondered? After speaking to a few people apparently the TV Show “Entourage” rated pretty darn highly among both female and male friends alike.

I started watching season one, and within the first 3 episodes I was hooked. It is the story of a young up coming movie star (Vincent Chase played by Adrian Grenier) and his “entourage”, including his brother, friend turtle, best mate and manager “E” and of course the ever present agent, Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven). I think the reason I enjoyed this show so much is due to the excellent cast. You have the brother of the star, constantly trying to score a part in his movies and at the same time struggling to land his own work - all while living off his successful brothers money. You have the eternal stoner and hanger on  Turtle, who is a mushy bag of laughs but always loyal and there for Vincent when needed. “E” also known as Eric has a good run on picking excellent scripts for Vincent Chase until they make his dream movie and it turns out to be a major flop.

My favourite character by far in the entire series is that of Ari Gold, the high stress high power agent of Vincent Chase played by Jeremy Piven. The one liners alone make this show.  He works with his ever flamboyant gay personal assistant Lloyd, and some of the things they come up with have literally made me spit drink out of my  nose.

For example, there are entire websites dedicated to documenting all of the ridiculously funny quotes. One of the major players i the site “Ari Gold Quotes” which is the most comprehensive and accurate on the interwebs. Here is a quick selection:

Ari: You wanna hug it out? Let’s hug it out bitch.

Ari: Games are games are games, Davies, but that is the mother of my children. So apologize, or I will kick your ass in front of your entire dead beat agency.
(Slaps Davies in the face): That is what we call a bitch slap. A bitch slap for a bitch.

Mrs. Ari (doesn’t want Ari to pick up his phone during couples therapy): I ask for one hour of a day for his undevided attention, and I can’t even have that.
Ari: You could have it if you want to live in Agoura fucking Hills, and go to group therapy. But if you want a Beverly Hills mansion and you want a country club membership, and you want 9 weeks a year in a Tuscan villa, than I’m gonna need to take a call when it comes in at noon on a motherfucking wednesday.

Ari: People, staff meeting has been cancelled. You all have one goal today: to get Vincent Chase’s brother, Johnny Chase, a job. Any job! I don’t care if it’s a porn shoot in which he is being gang raped by a gaggle of silverback apes, if there are cameras rolling, everybody wins. 10 grand for anyone that can deliver this to me, today.

Another show which I have recently started watching is 30 Rock. It was one of those shows I used to see win awards at big American award shows and wonder to myself “I wonder if that is actually any good”. Well I’ve watched season one, and I can say that yes it is pretty funny.

It centres around an NBC TV Studio where they film their own show. It follows the dramas and quarrels the show has, and the main character “Liz Lemon” played by Tina Fey’s awkward personal relationships and her relationship with her boss, Jack Donaghy. Her boss is played by Alec Baldwin, and the role is quite eccentric and down right strange at times but it does in fact work.

Tracy Morgan also stars playing an ex movie star who apparently suffers some strange mental issues. These issues always lead the cast into crazy shenanigans, and usually involve page boy Kenneth Parcell. By his own admission he lives for TV, and will often be seen doing mundane tasks like getting lunch for people and sourcing a horse for Tracy Morgan’s next set of shenanigans. All in a days work!

Tracy: Yeah yeah yeah, I like risky. See, me and you, we play the game. We know how to be acceptable. Hello great meeting, I drink coffee please. This show is our chance to break the shackles cause the white dudes want to see us fail.
Liz: What white dudes?
Tracy: All of ‘em. Jack Donaghy. General Electric. George Bush. Karl Robe.
Liz: Karl Robe, you say?
Tracy: Affirmative action was designed to keep women and minorities in competition with each other to distract us while white dudes inject AIDS into our chicken nuggets. That’s a metaphor.
Liz: Sure

Dot Com: Yo, Kenneth, we need to talk now.
Kenneth: Oh, I’ve had this conversation before. You’re marrying my mom, aren’t you?

Jack: You’ve been avoiding me, Lemon.
Liz: How do you do that without turning around?
Jack: To be perfectly honest, the first couple of people I did that to were not you, but… here we are.

Now third and final on the list is a show a bit different to Entourage and 30 Rock. This one is called Fringe, and it’s basically a science fiction series based around all aspects of things classified as Fringe Science, and all things unexplained. Yes, my X Files alarm bells did ring, similar premise but done differently.

The official excerpt from IMDB reads as follows:

A television drama centered around a female FBI agent who is forced to work with an institutionalized scientist in order to rationalize a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena

The series was partially created by JJ Abrams, but unlike Lost this seems to be fast paced and moving. It also stars Joshua Jackson, some may remember him as the ever loving Pacey from Dawson’s Creek. Oh back in the day he was the bee’s knee’s. Unfortunately I’ve only watched the first 3 episodes, and while I can see it has a promising future, it’s one of those shows that may get axed purely because people don’t understand it. You also need to follow it from the very beginning in order to keep up with the story. Either way, I will keep watching it as I love some good Sci Fi and the special effects are quite good.

And that’s what I’m watching. And now the blog looks like it’s been updated at least once

So after my last experience dining at an RSL in the local area you can understand my reluctance to go to another RSL. We decided to go because they advertised $5.50 Roast Dinner’s on Sunday, and had a variety of Chinese food. They did have two Australian things on the menu (Grilled Perch and Scotch Fillet) but I was pretty happy with some asian to be honest. We hadn’t really eaten alot of it since we moved.

We called up and the phonecall went something like this:

Us:  Oh Hello, what time are you open til tonight?
RSL: Oh yes we open, we open!
Us: Yes we know you are open but we want to know how long you are open for!
RSL: We open? We open now!!!!
Us: *Sigh* When do you close for the night, stop serving food etc
RSL: We open now!…..but not at 8.30
Us: Ok so you close at 8.30?
RSL: We open now, bye!!!

Wow. He was really Chinese! This is usually a good indication when it comes to food.

We walked in and unlike a certain OTHER RSL, we didn’t get dirty looks or stares. There were a few families dining but apart from that there was us and 3 other people in the bistro. My SO ordered the $5.50 Roast Dinner (beef) and I felt like Chinese so I got the Honey Chicken and an entree of Spring Rolls to share. About 10 minutes later our beeper went off. I went up to the counter to collect our food when I saw the most beautiful looking Honey Chicken I’d ever seen! They also put half the cow on the plate for the Roast Dinner. I was amazed.

Here are some pictures of the awesome food:

Last night was my significant other’s birthday. Yes how unfortunate, having to share your birthday with a public holiday! Due to this, we usually end up having dinner at a local RSL as often they are the only ones open. Last night was no exception.

We decided to go to ******* RSL. We had previously been there, and mainly decided upon it as we remembered it was cheap, and we wanted to see if the food and service had improved since the last time we were there. I will call that time the lasagnegate incident.

Several weeks ago we were there for dinner, and I made the mistake of ordering the lasagne, chips and salad. Oh boy, If I could have gone back in time. Basically they served the food extremely quickly, usually this is a good thing. Well it was until I looked at my plate. The lasagne was black, it was so hard you could not even put a knife through it. The best I could do was stab it from the side and try and pry some meat and sauce out. Turns out there was no sauce because the think was as dry and hard as a leather boot. It was that bad I even took photos. What I did manage to taste of it, well it was like dirty socks. It had obviously been sitting in the oven for hours waiting for some poor sod to order it!

Yep, I paid $13 for this!

So last night we decided to give them another try and went with Mr. Ray Jertop and his lady friend. Nothing wrong with two couples going out on New Years Day for dinner right? Wrong.

We were under the impression the dining section was BYO, as we had previously been there and had brought our own wine and no one had said anything. This time we walked in through the front desk with a bottle of red and no one said anything. We were eye balled by a guy who looked like Walker Texas Ranger but weedier and walked right through.

We then realised half the club was closed, all of the downstairs smoking area and entertainment (pool tables, dart boards, jukebox etc) which left us the pokie room, and the restaurant (if you could call it that) to wander around in. If you wanted a smoke you had to go out the front of the club itself.

We were sick of being eye balled by Chuck Norris so we decided to go into the restaurant section and order. We sat down, and were given menus. As we looked at the expensive prices my SO got out the bottle of wine. As soon as he had poured a glass the waitress (a different one than usual) ran over and said “You can’t drink that here, it’s a licensed venue”. The whole time I was bewildered, as why did they allow it once before? Oh well I suppose we may have got a new waitress that time or something.

After much deliberation I ordered with a sinking feeling the Chicken Parmigiana with Chips and Salad, for $16.90. My SO, and Mr Jertop ordered Chicken Schnitzel, chips and salad for $12.90 a piece. Now Mr. Jertop’s ladyfriend is a vegetarian, and decided against the “Vege Burger” for $8.90 and ordered a plate of vegetables, with mashed potato and mushroom sauce.

When she asked for this and explained she was vegetarian, the waitress said “Oh I’m not sure if we can do mashed potato tonight”, when clearly on the menu several things came with mashed potato. You had a choice of chips and salad, or mashed potato and vegetables. If she was ordering vegetables why the hell wouldn’t you be able to get her some mashed potato? We shook our head and quietly waited for our food.

I ordered a pepsi as I was driving and unable to drink, and it was the most watered down premix I’ve ever had the displeasure of drinking. Eventually the food was served. Meanwhile, we were being eye-balled by Walker Texas Ranger again and his waitress lady. It was like a horror movie, you know how there is a bar fight going on and a group of kids walk in and everyone stares at them as if they don’t belong and just interupted something super important? That’s the feeling we always get at this club. It’s like they haven’t seen a couple of people in their early 20’s before.

Now onto the food.

My Chicken Parmigiana was burnt around the edges, and the chicken was so cooked it had the texture of tuna. It was later we relised that all of our chicken schnitzels were the frozen ones Chickadee Chicken sell for like $2 each. The cheese on top was browned too fast and had that awful chemical cheese burn taste to it. The chips were soggy and the salad was full of brown lettuce leaves that looked to have been from a week old salad. They had unusually included a slice of week old Watermelon with the salad. I guess it was to make up for the lack of cucumber or any salad that was not showing signs of aging.

Mrs Jertop received her vegetable plate. It was horrific. There was literally a quarter of a cup of vegetables (I’m no expert but when someone asks for a plate of something they mean a full damn plate!), mashed potato that looked like it was made from “Deb Insta Potato” and a small tub of mushroom sauce. The meal was 70% potato, 20% vegetable and 10% sauce.

Mr. Jertop and my SO’s plate were equally disasterful. Slice of stale watermelon, browning salad, and dry overcooked frozen chicken. All in all it was pretty horrendous meal. I’ve eaten bad food before but nothing like this. Not having to pay for the priveledge of something I could have made at home cheaper and alot better.

As the plate of vegetables were not on the menu, we went up to pay for the bill and see how much they thought their insta mash potato and vegetables were worth.

I stared in horror at the bill.

$13.90

That’s right. $13.90 for the most pitiful excuse for a meal I have ever seen them serve. The boys Chicken Schnitzel, chips and salad was $12.90. How does something half the size and with no meat warrant such a high price? We were so depressed with our meal we wanted to leave ASAP. We paid and Mr. Jertop bypassed the pokermachines on the way out. Meanwhile, we were being followed and staired at by Walker Texas Ranger again. I swear that guy must have nothing better to do than eye ball people. Must make him feel tough like Chuck Norris. It didn’t help that Mr. Jertop won $100 on the pokermachines and then had to ask Walker Ranger to pay it out. You see, they don’t have cash machines, you have to get someone to write you a ticket to take to the cashier.

As soon as he got the money we left. We could not believe how bad it was. The food sucked, the venue sucked, the service and attitude of the staff sucked.

We will never go back again! (Although I should have realised last time after my burnt lasagne).

Well I’ve kind of been neglecting the poor old blog lately. I suppose that’s because no one ever wants to write about bad news and lately that’s all we seem to be getting! There was a few good parts though, I got a promotion at work which was great. It was part of my five year plan, so now that it’s happened 3 years early I will need to kick ass even harder, and learn as much as I can.

The first part of bad news was my poor cat Possum had to be put down. We were basically ripped off blind by the local veterinary clinic, and it was quite obvious they were just trying to bleed us dry. I’m an idiot for not picking up on it sooner, but when someone quotes you $500 for a surgery (which didn’t even happen mind you) you expect to pay $500. Not $1500 including $300 in bandage changes because your poor cat has no immune system and can’t heal properly from a biopsy the vet did that was supposed to be a full surgical procedure to remove the damn lump. At first it was cancer, then it wasn’t cancer, then it was leukemia, then it wasn’t, then it was cat aids, then it wasn’t. Finally it was a rare fungal infection that had spread through out her entire body. She wasn’t sick to look at but internally she was diseased. If we had of caught what she had, we would have been spending the next month in hospital.

After being quoted $1000 for the displeasure of stuffing tablets and liquid down her throat 3 times a day while paying $50 every 2 days for the biopsy wound that wouldn’t heal for a 10% chance she would be fine, we decided against it. It’s not worth putting a cat through another month of suffering for a slim expensive “maybe”. So we took her to get put down on the 13th November, 2008. Ironically this was actually her 7th birthday, so obviously it was not a lucky number for Possum.

In happier times

So anyway, after that debacle the tax man caught up with me. Well it was my own fault, I can’t read numbers and put them in the correct box on a tax return so I had to pay a bit back to them. That was OK, but then like 8 other bills came in all at the same time including car rego and insurance. The money I spent on Possum would really come in handy right about now!

But it’s after Christmas now, and things worked out. Still I can’t go and blow $350 on an XBOX (but oh you wait, I will come January. Rock band shall be mine!). I got quite a few nice presents for Christmas, which was more than I was expecting. I figured once you hit a certain age presents stopped but it seems now I’m getting better stuff than ever despite the economic down turn.

I decided to reward myself after Possum died and signed up for a 16GB Black iPhone. I tell you I could never go back to a normal phone, it’s like having the internet in your pocket. You can do so much with them, and hey the entertainment value is priceless. It made sense considering how much I was spending on pre-paid Optus Cards and everyone I know is with Virgin for mobile phone plans. Free to other Virgin people pretty much sold me, the iPhone was an added bonus.

In nerd related news, I removed the monstrosity that is Windows Vista. It will never grace my PC again. I’ve gone back to trusty old reliable Windows XP. It’s probably good, I shouldn’t even run Vista without an upgrade. My PC is kind of ancient now.

Had some more bad news when I found out one of my mates I met at my old work died on Christmas day. Unfortunately it looked like suicide, and was completely out of the blue. Although I suppose most suicides are completely out of the blue. He was too young to go, a good person and a funny guy too. Hopefully he is in a better place now.

On a lighter note, if anyone who reads my drivel has not yet seen Zac and Miri Make A Porno I highly recommend you do. We watched this last night and could not stop laughing. Seth Rogen is a comical genious and everything Kevin Smith touches turns to gold. It was the best comedy I’ve seen this year. Sure it’s pretty dirty and copped an R18 rating but still, great story, hilarious cast and very well written.

Miriam Linky: Nobody wants to see us fuck, Zack!
Zack: EVERYBODY wants to see ANYBODY f***. I hate Rosie O’Donell, but if somebody said “I got a tape of Rosie O’Donell getting f***ed stupid” I’d be like “Why the f*** aren’t we watching that right now?”

I think that will do for an update, I have to go to the shops and do other house work like things. Yay Christmas holidays.

• It’s such a beautiful day, why am I inside! Damn you working life! Now to ponder lunch. Happy Birthday Jay you big jerk #
• @LIV2 I’ve been a member for awhile just couldn’t be assed using it LOL #
• Hurry up stupid train. Good work shittyfail! #
• @LIV2 I had enough assing up from Harrison and Mr Jertop!!! #

• So sleepy, but this phone makes it so easy to internet! Hopefully this won’t post a separate entry. Go go daily digest feature #