“We’ve given your table away,” said the Maitre’D.

Admit­tedly Ange and I were run­ning about 10 min­utes late for lunch. But it did get me think­ing, why did I give my phone num­ber to them if they were just going to can­cel my book­ing at the mer­est hint that we wouldn’t show?

Though it wasn’t a good start, the Maitre’D (if he can be called that) did give us another table. He was also kind enough to admon­ish us with a “Next time show up ear­lier” as we walked past him. Prick.

While we waited for Mike and Jus­tine to show — vic­tims of the dreaded Day­light Sav­ings change — we had a chance to watch the restau­rant in full swing. AY Tea­house is bou­tique yum cha for the west­ern cus­tomer. Trol­leys are replaced with trays that the wait­resses carry by hand to each table, sac­ri­fic­ing effi­ciency for style.

The food itself was stan­dard yum cha fare. Though the best thing they had there was only vaguely asian: deep fried chicken wings tossed with salt and spices. Along with the chicken wings, Ange and I tried a few other plates while we waited. The afore­men­tioned wings, prawn dumplings, shark-fin dumplings and chi­nese broc­coli with oys­ter sauce.
We took a break then, after real­is­ing we’d just blown about $40. $10 on the broc­coli dish alone!

When Mike and Jus­tine showed up we shared a plate of salty spiced squid while they grabbed prawn toast, some sort of greasy, rice noodle-wrapped dish and pork dumplings. Dessert, when the tray even­tu­ally came around, was jelly cubes and egg tarts.

The food was good I’ll give it that, but ulti­mately not value for money. Any yum cha bill that creeps into three fig­ures must be looked upon with a cer­tain level of scorn, espe­cially when there’s only four peo­ple at the table.

Well as Mike men­tioned I’ve signed up for Canon’s lat­est photo com­pe­ti­tion. I’m hop­ing the upload, photo track­ing and vot­ing sys­tem are bet­ter than last year’s com­pe­ti­tion. IT was so ter­ri­ble I gave up after upload­ing just one photo. I do think they’ve done the right thing by restrict­ing this com­pe­ti­tion to 2500 peo­ple. At least the vot­ing should be rel­a­tively even.

Though I signed up mid last week, my box only just arrived today. I’ve only been at this new job for 3 weeks, so the box had been sit­ting on some lady’s desk while she tried to fig­ure out who I was. Les­son learned, next time I need a pack­age deliv­ered I’ll add every detail I can to the address field. Geo­graph­i­cal coor­di­nates, alti­tude, dis­tance to the sun, you name it.

For some­thing that was made entirely from card­board, the box was nearly impos­si­ble to open. The lit­tle com­part­ments con­tain­ing the “props” were harder still. But, with a lit­tle per­sis­tence I got there in the end. Once inside the boxes I dis­cov­ered I’ve been given a red bal­loon, piece of blue chalk, strip of yel­low dots and a sheet of blue cel­lo­phane. If I had a pair of blunt scis­sors and a bot­tle of clag it’d be grade four all over again.

So I’ve got until mid-November to take five pho­tos, fea­tur­ing one item in each. Which is good because even though I’ve had almost a week to think up ideas I’m still draw­ing a blank.

“but of course that’s why he was doing that, and that means that…”
Neil Gaiman on writing.

After trav­el­ling Aus­tralia for two months Dad wasn’t par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in hav­ing a mas­sive party for his 60th, so Sun­day the imme­di­ate fam­ily (eight of us now) gath­ered in the city to celebrate.

We’d booked lunch at Antica Gelataria del Corso on Collins Street for 1:30pm. Ange and I arrived at the restau­rant slightly late, but that didn’t mat­ter. Though Sarah had called to con­firm, twice, they had still man­aged to lose our reser­va­tion. Of course that didn’t mat­ter either as the chef wasn’t even ros­tered on to work Sundays!

With the Mel­bourne Romp in full swing, it would be dif­fi­cult, but surely some­where would have eight seats to spare. We set­tled on Chinotto, a lit­tle eatery in Fed­er­a­tion Square that offered us a table sand­wiched between two immov­able bench seats (more on those later).

Ser­vice there was slow, but we were happy with our meals when they arrived. Although a request for more drinks sent the waiter run­ning in the oppo­site direc­tion and we never did get that 2nd round. Strange indeed.

When our stom­achs were full and the con­ver­sa­tion had died a bit down we left Chinotto, but not with­out inci­dent. You’d think with a gath­er­ing to cel­e­brate a 60th there would be a senile moment. And there was, only it didn’t come from the old man, it came from me.

Remem­ber those seats I men­tioned ear­lier?
Those bolted-to-the-table-never-to-move-again bench­seats?
Well, as I was try­ing to nav­i­gate my way between two of them my foot got caught and grav­ity took over, send­ing me crash­ing into a strate­gi­cally placed stain­less steel box. No dam­age down (to me or the box) but I bet it was one hell of a show.

The first rule of show­man­ship is to leave your audi­ence want­ing more, so we escaped back up Street to the new Koko Black store at the top end. Once there Sarah revealed the real rea­son for the trip to the city: They were talk­ing him to see the Priscilla musi­cal. He was thrilled. (Appar­ently he’s a big fan.)

As is the fam­ily way, we all overindulged in the choco­late treats on offer. The choco­late ice cream mar­tini I ordered was both fan­tas­tic and the envy of the table and I rec­om­mend it. The wait­ress had acci­den­tally made one too many Iced Mochas so Dad, being the birth­day boy, got to have two servings.

I wasn’t that inter­ested in see­ing the musi­cal. (I’d watched the film at least a dozen times while study­ing it for high school media class). So Ange and I said our good­byes and headed home, leav­ing them to the mercy of 70’s disco songs and brightly coloured drag queens.

Happy Birth­day, Dad.

More type fun at I Love Typog­ra­phy. Read it for great arti­cles like: Typo­holism. An Addict’s Tale.