A few of my mates and I were discussing the cost of food and how we tend to veer towards Asian cuisine for a good quality, bang for your buck work lunch. Then came up the topic of Pasta and the pricing of pasta in general. An Italian in our group had little light to shed on the topic but here were the topics we discussed.

How Much Does Pasta Generally Set You Back?

Whether it be at a cafe or restaurant, a good bowl or plate of pasta will generally start at around $13 for a basic to the more involved pasta dishes in the mid $20 range.  Let’s compare this to other meals you could fetch for lunch in the city of Melbourne.

• Pasta $13 -$25
• Quality Fish and Chips  (Exchange Tower Little Collins Street) Less then $10
• Quality healthy, substantial and fulfilling Tapas – $12
• Clean quality Sri. Lankin\Indian Food – Less then $10
• Quality Asian Food – $8.00 – $$11.50
• Large Focaccia and Sandwhiches – $5.50 – $8.00

How Much Should It Cost?

• Pasta is cheap, even good quality pasta sourced from the markets.
• Some of the sauces, particularly the tomato based sauces would be cheap and easy to make in bulk, sustaining their quality. Some of the creamier sauces may be a little more difficult, more involved and unable to keep while retaining their quality
• Once cheap quality pasta is sourced by the cafe/restaurant, cooking of the pasta is easy and quick
• Unlike some Asian food which is very cheap and if you know what to look for is great quality, many of the pasta dishes which are being paid larger amounts of money for can be easily and cheaply recreated at home (I don’t care what the chef in the kitchen says)

Why Is Pasta Comparatively Expensive?

I’m sure there’s some logical explanations, otherwise we’d be able to source more places that sell quality pasta at the prices we think they should cost.

• Is there a pretense attached to the quality of pasta that makes people believe that the price is justified?
• Is there a lot more to making each bowl of pasta then I think?

Fresh and quality ingredients? No ingredients is fresher then the ingredients I source myself.  In the list of alternative lunch food above, we source the right places and dishes, we are looking for fresh and quality ingredients without being told we have to pay extra for it.

As for the places that do quality pasta at the right price. I had one, but changed chefs and the quality of the pasta is no more. Sad face.

SHUT UUUUUUP!

Okay, I dont condone child abuse or leaving marks on young children BUT I do condone smacking and pinching to discipline a child. Which is why when I read this story on ninemsn, a part of me thought this grumpy looking psychotic man did what millions of us have thought about doing regularly when a child is screaming in public. Smacked it.

This is a photo of a heavily armoured policemen guarding Scotch college after a man phoned in a threat (everyone is safe). There’s something hilarious to me about a police man that looks like a member of the military being photographed by a small boy in school uniform on his mobile phone. Who’s the police man protecting?

Can we please stop giving attention to people who waste tax payers money and resources by getting lost in the bush.

Tim Holding – The most recent to be found

Our own water minister, gets lost for 2 days. A large scale search is underway and they find him with his backpack, sitting on the ground happily and giving a wave. Now he’s plastered all over the news, talking about his experience at conferences.

Then there’s this loser

Jamie Neale, the british tourist who got lost in the blue mountains. Again, a large scale search and mountains of money to sell his story. The worst part is, he and his father have a huge falling out over the money he scored from it. They both look like scummy crooks.

Crazy Machines

This is my favourite game yet. The aim of the game is to manouver equipment and items to satisfy the requirements of the task such as “move the ball into the target zone”. It can be very challenging and sometimes requires some extreme accuracy with timing and placement but I found the completion of tasks to be very satisfying. Well worth the $3.99 I paid for it!

Everest: Hidden Expedition

This little gem is the game I am currently playing from “Big Fish Games, Inc” who are well known for making such games. I’ve just realised it is apart of a series for the IPhone and Touch, just search for Expedition.

Blue Fish games are popular on the PC and those of you familiar with the “Mystery Case Files” series will LOVE this. The basic premise of the game is to find objects in beautifully detailed worlds. Sounds like boring Eye Spy but I’m not the only one who can’t get enough of these. There seems to be free Lite versions you can try also, just type in that “expedition” keyword.

According to this little story I read, Kyle has a following that is calling for his return to Australian Idol. The story has TWO whole Tweets which echo this sentiment.

Kyles Strong Twitter Following

Oh…and we all know how strong Kyles Twitter following is.

Bogus: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,25736824-5012980,00.html

This Summer should be very interesting. With what looks to be our hottest Winter on record, who knows what’s instore for us this Summer. They’re expecting a worse fire season, which last season was particularly fatal to Victoria. This in part is due to what they also expect to be a very windy summer which has already shown itself in the last few weeks.

How To Cope With Heat At Home?

I don’t know how my household is going to cope, it struggled enough last season without any airconditioning and a lack of any wire screening on the backdoor which prevents us from being able to leave it open so air can circulate through the house. If anybody can give me any hot tips on how to cope with the heat or how to prepare my house and my body for extreme heat, that would be great.

I like you wordpress, I don’t think you’ve sabotaged me, but I’ve clearly had issues with comments being deleted that I had not marked for deletion and as of this morning ALL my comments since the blog began are GONE.

Sorry Posters
Apologies to all the commenters who stumbled upon one of my pages and left your 2 cents, back to the drawing board.

Well funnily enough this has made big ongoing news in our media, the opening of a SUPERMARKET! It really is big through, the supermarket that is. And it’s a Cosco, which is big news in the U.S. And it is our first one of it’s kind with plans of another in Sydney.

Official Opening Today!

Yep, she’s open for business and apparently has generated a large amount of interest. After scoffing about the place since even before it was constructed, up to an hour ago I had absolutely no interest myself in stepping into this enormous store of stuff and stuff.

But now, the place sounds so ridiculous in an American way that I find myself curious as to what this freakshow of a supermarket has to offer and whether amongst all this freak, there is to me the shopper, enough logical reason to consider this place as a place to actually shop.

Someone, prices?

There’s been rough guides in newspaper articles as to the cost of eggs and what-not, but details on more of the many products in the place would be of great interest. Perhaps this will come up a lot more in forums and things once more people frequent the place. At the moment I would like to know more about the cost of the electronics.

Clearly, the violence, or reported violence in Melbourne has taken a massive leap in recent years. We’re hearing and seeing reports of violence every week. But when I’m watching the media there’s just some things that I have to question sometimes.

Are “Victim’s” Asking For It?

I have no doubt that for some people the attacks that have occurred are completely unprovoked such as the racist attacks or those attacks on individuals for money or assets. However, the word unprovoked in the case of attacks is thrown around all too liberally these days. We have to ask ourselves, what about those that are in a way provoked by a comment here, or a look there.

Questionable

• Were this couple back in 2007 REALLY just ”admiring” the hummer? According to the couple, yes. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/09/2027952.htm
• Are we sure there was no previous altercation of any sort between this carpenter and a member of the group? According to the brother, he had no history of violence and probably did not deserve the severity of this attack
  http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25923213-661,00.html

Quite Possibly Asking For It

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25892074-2862,00.html
Recently an actor from the theatre show Jersey Boys was in the news for an altercation that left him bashed on a Saturday night/Sunday Morning. We know there were words exchanged in this case.

“Scott had a verbal altercation with an unknown man at about 3.50am…”

Can The General Public Learn Something From The Violence

I don’t expect people to handover the streets to those who carry weapons or who are likely to be violent. Nor do I justify the violent behaviour, particularly the severity of it.  But we could definitely take note as to the serious consequences of our attitudes and actions. If you are going to say or do certain things, there MUST be a understanding that this could result in a consequence of a violent nature.

Take for example the weekend just past. I was walking the streets with some friends on the way to a club and we observed the inappropriate staring and comments many people made to other people in the street.

• Men learing at woman
• One man with 2 friends passed a much younger man with some girls and said hello to the girls in a suggestive tone
• The much younger man, possibly in his teens slurred a response that was loud enough to be heard
• In a busy street a man in his car with a friend continued to beep his very loud car horn in amusement, gathering attention and irritating people standing by
• People looking at the appearance of other people, making it quite obvious they were watching and talking about them

In any of these cases, the people involved could very easily have been the “victims” of violence as a result of their behaviour regarldess of how petty it may have seemed to them at the time.

Are these people REALLY victims? Do people need to learn to pull their heads in a bit?