My phone tells me that it’s Tuesday the 22nd of January 2008, just after 11pm, and I’ve just returned home from four-and-a-half hours parceling greasy popcorn out to overweight tourists. I’ve come home by myself, as the others have gone a-drinkin’ and so I find that I now have the perfect opportunity to blog once more.
Some of you may cry to hear that this is largely a text-only blog. So once you’ve dried your eyes please read on if you wish at all for any deeper insight into our travels so far.

This isn’t a tale of adventure in exotic places, a gripping thriller or even a heart-warming romance. I’m sure I could twist enough words to turn it into any of the above, and sure there are elements of all of these to a certain degree, nor am I going into any extraordinary detail journal entry by journal entry staying as closely to each factual event as possible, because that would be either pure genius if I was able to execute it perfectly, or a huge piece of boring shit if I didn’t. Instead I want to give you ‘the gist.’ Provide you guys back home with more of a sense, feel or taste of what our journey has been about so far, and I hope you can take something away from it as well.
As a group of mates, and all of you know this, we’re not without a flaw or two (the list has not yet been completed after all these years) and many of you reading would consider yourselves very familiar with the group and our idiosyncrasies. Some of you would consider yourselves integral to some of these idiosyncrasies.
To roughly outline what I’m talking about, I think as a whole ‘the Fags’ have been known to be friendly but bitchy, fun but lazy and hard to organize, and also generally good blokes whilst remaining somewhat insular at the same time. We certainly aren’t known for taking huge leaps out of our comfort zone. The reader will also note that these characteristics can also be applied (to some degree or other) to any one of us, and perhaps even yourself.
Having said all this one would have to question how this trip came to be at all (given we can’t often organize ourselves into being in one place at any given time when we’re in Melbourne).

I remember in 2007, maybe not much longer after the infamous canoeing adventure and possible even before, Josh began talking to me about going on a trip. Now when I say ‘talking’ I mean in the sense in that Josh always proposes his ideas. Josh is quite thoughtful by nature (surprising to some) and when it comes to big events like these he can be extremely cautious. It was the same with canoeing, and I completely understand his motivations. Josh likes to test the waters before he takes the plunge (that’s a metaphor, idiot). Josh likes to ‘fish.’
‘Hey Cam, how cool would it be if we all went camping somewhere random together.’
‘Yeah, it’d be pretty cool I guess. We could just stay the night at someone’s place, though.’
‘Well, yeah, but what if we did like an awesome-canoeing-camp thing. Like a canoe-camp. Have a lazy paddle during the day, sit back with some drinks around a fire after dark kind-of-thing.’
‘Would you like to come for a swim, Joshy?’
And so you get the gist. After a few more of these conversations I might eventually get the point that Josh actually is serious about the idea (even though it isn’t that crazy to begin with) and I would inevitably sign up to the idea, thinking that I had so much time before the event that I would have plenty of wriggling room to back out. Sometimes, I might need some help to get the message, though.
‘Hey Cam, Josh is organizing a canoeing trip,’ announces Jin. ‘You in?’
His success with that particular trip no doubt bolstered Josh when it came to his ultimate plan. Josh of course has plenty of Canadian connections through his family, and has visited the country several times before.
‘Hey Cam, how cool would it be to randomly fly off to Canada for three months once uni finishes this year?
‘Yeah, that’d be pretty cool. Who’s doing that?’
‘Oh, no-one. I meant how cool would it be if you and I flew off to Canada for three months?’
‘Yeah that’d be alright, I guess. Why do you ask?’
‘Let’s just play Halo, ok?’

Golden was next to sign on, with only the giddy school-girl enthusiasm that Golden can muster. An eternally optimistic chap, young Michael is characterized by his ability to love almost anything so long as you can sell it to him correctly, only becoming disagreeable when he is disagreed with. I wish I could claim, I taught him everything he knows, but at the least I have further refined his unique persona over the last few weeks. (The lessons may not be peaceful, but at the same time no one has been hurt, either.)
‘Hey Goldie. Josh and I are going to Canada. It’s going to be the koooooots! We’ll do the skiing, the parties, the women and we’ll also get awesome jobs while we’re there, too. Imagine!’
‘Yeah sure, mang. I’m in!’

If I remember correctly we found out Heathy and Jinna would come with us, at roughly the same time, a little closer to the departure date. Apparently Josh’s mum had been talking to Heathy’s mum, trying to get the pressure on Alex to go. He certainly had the funds we soon discovered, (the Handsome Man possesses the riches that Golden covets so greatly) and as soon as we helped convince him to come Jin had to seriously weigh up his options. In Jin’s case, an extended, late-night, bilingual discussion at home with his brother, Sam, convinced him he should come with us. (After many shots of soju they retired for eight-rounds of bare-knuckle kickboxing and nine-rounds of flaming hot dragon chicken.)
At this point I decided that I was past the point of backing out and my secretly provisional ‘yes’ was a decidedly real ‘I’m practically gone.’

This blog has gone on too long already, I know, so I'll have to continue it some other time. Hopefully I'll get to writing about the actual trip, rather than the events leading up to it....

Mediterranean Salad

Ingredients for 2:
4-5 leaves of romaine lettuce chopped
1 small sliced tomato
3-4 sliced radishes
1/2 an onion sliced
1 small carrot finely sliced
About a 1/2 cup of sliced cucumber

For the dressing: lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Cornish Hen with herbs and salad

For 2 persons: 2 cornish hen
Herb mixture: 4-5 crushed cloves of garlic, 3 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of mixed mediterranean or Italian herbs (or any herbs you like), 2 tablespoons of fresh chopped thyme.

After washing and cleaning the hen and letting them drain, rub them with salt, pepper, 1 teaspoon of butter for both as well as the mixture of herbs prepared earlier. Heat the oven for 375 and bake until done. everynow and then bathe with the juices and drizzle white wine until golden and done.

I normally serve the hen with this:
Mixed green salad with avocados and asparagus:

lettuce (of your choice), sweet corn, asparagus (canned or cooked earlier), half a red bellpepper diced, 1 avocado sliced into 4 or 5 slices and some onions on top.
Dressing: juice of 1 lemon, 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard, 3 tablespoons of olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon of some italian herbs mix, salt and pepper.

Banff at night.

These are some night shots of Banff that I took a few days ago. It was snowing pretty heavily, but it's only appropriate I think.


Banff downtown.


Random house with random scary red light.


Lights at the bottom of Tunnel Mountain. I've lost count of how many times I've walked up and down this little mountain.


Tunnel Mountain continued...


Ground-lamp thingy surrounded by snow.


As a side note (mainly so that I don't forget) this was on the same night as staff-only, midnight viewing session of Cloverfield, just another perks of working at the cinema! By the way, not to spoil the movie or anything but Dumbledore dies.


Spot-the-campbell game.


A cool shot of Cam, who accompanied me on my night-shooting expedition.

I'm going to do this again on a clear night.

After work today, Josh pointed out how we seemed to have adpated completely to our Banff lifestyle. We've gotten into a comfortable living pattern of waking up, skiing and going to work on days we have work. Which is good in many ways, but I'd better make sure not to let my remaining days in Canada fly by aimlessly.

Jin.

Whirlwind

January 18

I did what I thought was impossible last night. I went to parties on the Upper East Side, Astor Place and Times Square, all in one evening, and was home before 11.
I wasn't even going to try to make it to all three, but by 5:30 I realized that my productivity in the office had come to an end for the day, so I hopped uptown on the 6 train and made it to 2nd Avenue and 84th by a little after 6 to witness the opening of Cafe Notte, a cafe by day, wine bar at night kind of place, with a focus on local, seasonal stuff and using recycled furniture and so on.
Just so you know, I’m sick and tired of all the green rhetoric. I was raised by dyed-in-the-wool (using environmentally safe dye, of course) environmentalists and I find many of the people jumping onto the green bandwagon (hybrid bandwagon, acoustic guitars, or perhaps solar-powered electric ones) over the past couple of years, without really knowing what they’re talking about, to be venal, insipid and kind of gross.
But Steven Salsberg seems serious about his mission at Cafe Notte. A representative from the Greenmarket was there to chat about the food, and to hand out a list of farms whose stuff was being served that evening. The soup recipes come from Steven’s wife, and so does the challah recipe. The young beverage manager seemed genuinely excited to be sharing his wine discoveries. It was really very sweet, and I was sorry to have to cut my visit short, but the Astor Center awaited. I rushed to the 6 train.
I was not actually interested in seeing the opening of a new event space, not really. But it was definitely the see-and-be-seen party of the evening. So I went, I saw, I was seen. Publicist Jesse Gerstein, the only male I know of to have worked for Philip Baltz for an extended period of time, was bragging about all the cocktail experts who were there that evening (basically, all of the New York-based ones were there except for Jerri Banks). I gave him a bored look just to be a jerk, because it was an impressive turnout. I wandered over to Dave Wondrich’s bar to drink his Manhattan, which I sipped, appreciating the lemon twist, while circulating through the party.
And then who do you think stopped me but Elizabeth Andoh?
Elizabeth is probably the most knowledgeable native English speaker about Japanese food on Earth. She enchanted the audience at NRN’s Culinary R&D conference last year when she broke down the fundamentals of the cuisine for them, and in general she is a fascinating and charming person, and I was very glad to see her. We spoke of weather and the quality of fish and what makes Japanese food so expensive in Japan (she contends that it’s the labor and serving accoutrements, not the ingredients).
So that was fun, but it was time to hop on the N train to Times Square for the opening party of Chop Suey.
Chop Suey is the really bad name for Zak Pelaccio‘s latest venture. It’s supposed to be a Koreanish restaurant and I have no idea why it’s called what it is, as chop suey is a Chinese-American dish and has nothing to do with China, let alone Korea. But it’s in the Renaissance Hotel in Times Square, so what do you want, authenticity?
I have no idea what the food is like because they had stopped serving savory food and were only passing around dessert. I guess the desserts were developed by Will Goldfarb, but I really wasn’t in the mood.
I did have a nice chat with Zak, though, and he advised me of a new Thai restaurant in Astoria to try, which I’ll have to do.
Apart from Zak, the only person I knew at the party was Tara Mastrelli of Hospitality Design magazine, so I sipped red wine and hung out with her and other design people, who didn’t seem to mind the space.
Meeting Tara late at night is potentially dangerous, as it can lead to a long night of karaoke and other things, but tonight it did not. We headed home early and, as I said, I crossed the threshold of my home before 11.
Amazing.