Hey there, !

1. Just got an email last week from the Attorney's General Department asking about some follow up details for my celebrancy appliaction - MAYBE IT'LL BE SOONER THAN I THOUGHT! I'm about to embark on my first ever hosted ceremony - wish me luck. Also, new stationery for VowsByVince :D I went out to this guy in Kilsyth who makes these in his backyard shed and see how it all gets done. Very fun, and very beautiful things.

   

2. To know beautiful friends and their minds is a wonderful thing in life. My friend Jeff aka @picklefightclub hosted a night alongside @supperhour at Manze called 'A Chinese Trattoria' - reinvisioning Italian and Chinese flavours in one delicious tasting menu. A few highlights!:

   

   This one was a century egg bagna cauda crostini - a fantastic umami flavour with amazing bite! My dish of the night and it was one of the first!

   

   A few weeks ago I told y'all about the Chaozhou Malaya Bistro cafe where they made this amazing chive savory kueh - that dish inspired this cavolo nero kueh with firehorse sauce that SLAPPED. The skin of it is kind of like a dumpling but also fried, which gives a really cool sticky but crunchy texture. YUM.

   

   It's such a simple combination but it's so FUN - XO pipis with conchiglie and youtiao pangrattato - it works so well! It's just the normal XO pipis dish you would get in Chinatown but the conchiglie (shells pasta) so it's shells on shells on shells. And the normal youtiao you'd dip into the sauce becomes the breadcrumbs on the dish! So satisfying.

   

   Petit fours: red bean torta caprese, pistachio ball, soy milk jelly, and osmanthus bay leaf granita - the most nostalgic of these was the soy milk jelly because it was a play on the 'ginger juice smashed with milk' HK dessert that my dad loves, and it was delicious to have as a one-bite cold jelly.

   

   THE BEAUTIFUL MIND BEHIND BEAUTIFUL DISHES. Look out for more!

3. The MICF is over :( But I ended up getting to 15 shows, and that was really good - I feel like it's the most I've been to the festival in one year. I missed a whole bunch of them but that's okay - just another year to wait for the shows to come around again.

4. I have been studying the BILLIONS CLUB playlist on Spotify in order to make sure I can guarantee we get one of the questions right at our weekly trivia night, which is always 'does [x song] have MORE or LESS than 1 billion streams on Spotify?'. Gangnam Style? LESS! Tiny Dancer, by Elton John? LESS! But From the Start by Laufey? Dreams, by Fleetwood Mac? Don't Go Breaking My Heart, by Elton John? Redbone, by Childish Gambino? Man I Need, by Olivia Dean? THEY ALL HAVE MORE THAN 1 BILLION STREAMS. Enjoy the next few weeks as I post songs as my way of studying.

5. Gandalf is as happy and healthy as always - he's been very kitchen based this week because of the sunbeams and warmth 🌞:

6. 

Chat soon :)

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✔️Real Life Recommendations

1. Boogie Nights - 4.5 stars - one of Paul Thomas Anderson's first films and it ROCKS. It's about the porn industry, and about the people in it, how it has to adapt to the changing times, and how the people in it are being sold a dream. It's got some AMAZING performances from John C. Reilly, Don Cheadle and Philip Seymour Hoffman but most of all ALFRED MOLINA (who was Doctor Octopus in the Tobey Macguire series of Spiderman) who doesn't have that much screentime but has SO MUCH FUN. The soundtrack rocks as well. GO WATCH!

2. Sons of Mary - a brunch place out in Brighton that's pretty nice - the main thing I saw on their insta and menu was the Monday night steak frites for $28, but otherwise everything else on the menu is pretty good too. I had a flatbread (essentially a pizza), but the fish and chips, and calamari dishes were very lovely too.

🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway

1. Where the goblins came from | OpenAI - I just love thinking about the fact that someone is being paid 300-500k+ to write about why goblins are in the machine. Also a hilarious breakdown!

2. How Indian Perfumers Capture the Smell of Rain - its called mitti attar and comes from Kannauj, a town in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The way they distil this smell from clay (?) to create the oil is fascinating. I wonder if I can find this to buy anywhere in Australia!

3. Introducing talkie: a 13B vintage language model from 1930 - I mean, why not? It's an interesting way to try and see what someone from that time might know or think about, but just like the episode in Black Mirror Be Right Back, there are just some things that aren't written down, and are lost forever.