Posts by Simon Grigg
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I've bought four pairs of glasses online and all of them are as good as any I've ever had. Of course, I'm a small-plastic-frames person, retro-librarian-styles, so I don't have any issues with nose-fit or weight or any complicated stuff like that. Plus if they don't work out, you spent $30. No biggie.
I buy frames in those 6 story malls in Jakarta that only sell glasses, bags & watches (frames real, watches & bags not so)..my last ones were rather snazzy Porsche ones for about $100. The lenses I add in Denpasar in a place that puts a device on your nose and then prints out what seems to be a perfect prescription from the top, all for $20 in about 30 minutes including the fitting.
I like.
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O what a trip down memory lane this thread is...
ok, one more, Potter Blair, 'Hairdressers, Art Merchants and Coffee'..initially in the Auckland Star building in Shortland Street, then down to Vulcan Lane where you could get served by some starlet and sit outside in the late eighties looking across at the multi-coloured men's suits being sold by Monsoon.
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Blondies Cafe
Oh dear, yes. We all, quite a lot of us, used to wander down there sometimes after A Certain Bar circa 81 and drink Irish Coffees in some vague attempt to get a hit, as that was all the licensing laws would allow.
Sad but true....
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i should add that i don't hate starbucks, but neither do i buy their product.
Unlike American tourists travelling to Sydney for the 2000 Olympics who were famously told by a US travel advisory website that good coffee could finally be found in Sydney now SB had arrived.....
There is a great piece in last month's Wired, which touts the new Clover coffee machine which SB's USA are investing in heavily to try and turn things around. after a multiple page puff-piece which tells is exactly why it's better coffee, what the new process involves and a whole lot more, the author is then asked to compare the diffrence between the old and the new.He tries both and after being prodded by the guy from Starbucks and finally ends the story by saying he can tell the difference..it's the taste of hype.
No. I was totally up for the equivalent weasel coffee when I visited Vietnam last year, but no bugger had heard of it.
Rp2,000,000 ($20) a pot just down the road from here. I've yet to try it.....
Blake is right, the local Kopi kinda weens one off the espresso. And it's so easy...kopi grounds, hot water. The great irony here is that the Indonesians regard Nescafe as a delicacy and it sells for more than the good stuff.
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In Auckland, DKD opened in 1985, I think. There were a few other places serving espresso (what was the health-food plae in Lorne St?), but it's generally agreed that you can trace the Auckland cafe culture from there.
I think the most of the DKD crew would agree (my wife is an ex-DKD staff member, and studied the history of coffee in Ak for her design degree... I've been given long dissertations on the history of coffee in the city) that most credit goes back to Craig Miller although I note that Derek disagrees.
There was also good espresso being served in Tommy Adderley's place up by the library, the Judith Barragwanth owned place in Vulcan lane, another Vulcan Lane downstairs cafe with pinball machines, and the glitzy, mirror filled, half hairdressing salon place next to the Herald in Queen St, all in the very early 1980s.
Then there was John's Diner at the top of Swanson St which deserves it's own place in our cafe timeline.
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Me too. That was after trying Coffee Connoisseurs, where I was made to wait ages for a very expensive and completely hopeless long black.
Agreed, much coffee is Singapore is shocking, even at those little cafes just off Chinatown which try to be European. The best European styled coffee I've found there is in a bar called The Imperial, also in Chinatown. Then again Singapore is all about franchise-everything. Good espresso coffee demands soul and it's something that has been franchised out of the island.
But for all that, if you want Asian coffee, Little India has dozens of places serving fluffy Kopi Taurik (pulled coffee) or there are plentiful Malay or Indonesian places serving Kopi Jawa which is hot and sticky and quite wonderful. When in Rome....
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The Falklands crisis merely coincided with a jump in government popularity which would have occurred anyway in the wake of Geoffrey Howe's 1982 Budget.
Having been in London at the time the bounce from the very real and tangible patriotic fervour was obvious. The, for want of a better phrase, working class, embrace of the 'gotcha' fever, the patriotic songs in pubs and the gung-ho-ness of traditional labour voters was hard to miss. I well remember groups of guys chanting 'Maggie-Maggie-Maggie' in the streets.
Whether it would've lasted is another matter of course.
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Simon, Maureen Dowd! You mean the elderly schoolgirl of the NYT. Doesnt get any lighter weight than that.
Oh, okay, if you say so. The reason I posted that was not because of Dowd but because of those she quotes in the piece, all of whom are taken from other places, and much quoted. I'm guessing those folks are lightweights too?
Your ad hominem swing against Dowd is neither here nor there....
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Maureen Dowd on Dougie...
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I'm still furious/horrified/gobsmacked by how all that played out.
Al Jaz has been running a series here of after-the-afterwards pieces recently and the stuff two years on was almost as horrifying. Warehouse full of donated goods being left to rot, donated goods sold, and so on