I’ve been tagged by Andrea, an Australian living in Paris, from Buy Organic for the “five things” meme. Sorry it has taken me a while…
1. I was exposed in The Australian today. Yes, it is true that this food blogger soon becomes part of the “enhanced” food media landscape. I was first approached by the Herald Sun (Australia’s biggest selling daily newspaper) last November, it firmed up earlier this month and I finally signed a contract last Wednesday. The column comes out weekly on Tuesdays in the Citystyle section of the paper. While on a similar subject matter, and a rival to John Lethlean’s gossip column in The Age, it is a case of “same same but smaller”. While everybody knows that John Lethlean’s column is quite large, mine is quite small in comparison. I should add that one Sydney journalist said to me last week: “Apparently, John Lethlean’s huge six foot six or something; they can’t miss him when he’s reviewing restaurants.” While I can confirm he is extremely large in Melbourne, Lethlean does get smaller on interstate visits and is roughly normal size overseas. I in comparison remain a throughly modern and rather cosmopolitan 1.9m wherever I travel. I have requested that my face is obscured in my picture byline to maintain some anonymity. For now, thank goodness, there will be no photo byline so I can preserve some anonymity. I hope to be able to enhance the profile of other local food blogs in my column on occasions.
2. As the above has raised my profile, (and some chefs already know me from my blog) and the gossip maybe getting round, I may as well reveal this one . After my review of Gingerboy last year, John Lethlean and his co-editor Necia Wilden invited me to review for The Good Food Guide. I don’t see any conflict with my column for the Herald Sun (I won’t write about GFG restaurants there) and there appear not to be any restrictive clauses. Most popular disguises: beard/sandals and painted toenails.
3. Currently my toenails are painted acquamarine. The food angle on this is that I was lying on the beach in Cambodia eating a local type of crustacean that looked like a deep-fried giant preying mantis while it happened. Drink: Ice-cold Angkor beer.
4. I studied Theoretical Physics at Liverpool University (in the UK) and thanks to student laziness (I hated lab work) and drunkenness have a mediocre honours degree. I still can, however, calculate whether or not the universe is expanding or contracting and a rough approximation of the probability of an electron-positron collision producing vector bosons (maybe not now I think about it). I’m useless at plain vanilla linear mechanics. My unfulfilled ambition was to work at Cern in Geneva where the Internet was invented. While all this was going on I was living on chips, rice and curry sauce. In many respects Liverpool is very much like Melbourne. Great music venues and bars are hidden in alleyways between the warehouses. As a seven-year-old educational psychologists wanted to send me to a special school. It was only thanks to my mother’s belief in me and persistence that I wasn’t consigned to the educational scrap heap. Personally, I think I was bored. Also I hated school because the food was inedible. Teachers used to detain me until I ate the gunk, which I rarely did. That’s why I hated them too.
5. The other week I ate out six evenings. Even though I sometimes look slim, I weigh 105kg and I feel a little seedy from eating so much rich food. I hate the gym and instead have started kitesurfing and am probably the worst person on St Kilda Beach. I have one giant 16m kite and another dinky 12m one. However low or rotten I feel, all it takes is a half hour of being dragged face-down through the bay (emerging with lavatory paper in my hair) to feel refreshed and ready to attack the next restaurant review. I seem to have no feeling for aerodynamics despite having gained a private pilot’s license (as a series of articles for Australian Flying) when living in Sydney.
Anyone feel free to join in but I’ll come back and tag a five people later.
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