The Whole Five Acres

Temasek, Parramatta

What is that saying about the best laid plans? I wish I could remember, because it is quite appropriate with regards to Temasek Restaurant in Parramatta.

Mother's Day was fast looming and it was important to find the right place to eat. I am blessed with two daughters who love their food, love to cook and also love to try new restaurants. My youngest daughter and I are both lucky to have partners who don't care where they eat so long as there is lots of food. This works well for the five of us, as we all get to indulge our passions without anyone missing out. The final blessing is a 20 month old, who is charming, funny and incredibly good when it comes to dining out.

With all this in mind and my favourite yum cha place scratched off the list (too far, too often, too much the ordinary sunday feast) I searched through reviews online until I found a place that was closer for us all and had the added of bonus of being in the SMH good food guide 2009. In fact it could well have been in the guide for the last umpteen years from all the hype I read about it.

Sometimes I turn my intuitive ear off when making restaurant plans - this time I should have made sure it was switched on. The place was fully booked, but the helpful gent at the end of the phone said he could squeeze our party in for the first of the lunch sittings only trick was we had to turn up at 11am to ensure we could finish our meal before we would get turfed out. 

With a tot in tow I was not pertubed by an early end to lunch. Finishing lunch at 1.30 was quite enticing too because this would be one of the first Sundays Happy and I have not been at the markets for nearly a year.

My girls, dutifully warned, and obsessively obedient turned up 10 minutes after we arrived to secure our table, this a full fifteen minutes before the requested 11am. Imagine our surprise when the staff at the restaurant this day are adament that there will be no food serving before 11.30am. The restaurant wouldn't even be ready for us until close to 11.30. After cooling our heels literally in the alley way for over half an hour, we were lucky to have them rustle up a table and seat us just before 11.30. The day was taking a nose dive south, and we were all starting to wonder if the meal would live up to expectations.

Navigating the menu, my eldest daughter and I couldn't find any of the dishes we had read about in the reviews. This is not surprising as the menu was set out in order of sauce, rather than by meat. We'd remembered calamari as one of the must haves, but had no idea what sauce it was with. Ordering took us to a new level of difficulty.

We'd also ordered two crabs, yet the staff were undecided if we could have each of these $90 crabs cooked separately, and with two different sauces. Eh? My heart sunk at this stage thinking we may be only going to get what the chef wanted us to eat. With the timing woes and now the crab woes, were we in the Parramatta Malaysian Singapore Faulty Towers?

After maybe an hour of hiccups we finally had our menu decided. They WERE a little concerned about the amounts we ordered, but then they weren't used to a group that had one muslim, one near muslim, one Tongan, a baby and three women who all have differing tastes. They also weren't used to a group that is prepared to order big and divvy up the leftovers.

The server said  'Don't order bread, it comes with the crab.' 

This simple sentence still rings in my ears. The muslim amongst us really wished to try their roti. There was a lot of food she couldn't eat due to the pork and meat, a bit of bread for sauce would have beeen nice. But no, the server said we wouldn't need it, as there would be tons of bread with the crab. This never arrived - and with all the other necessaries we had to keep asking for, the bread never got mentioned.

The crab crackers, the fingerbowls or the serviettes never arrived either - not before we had requested them three times! The first time when we asked for some extra serviettes, with crab sauce running down our chins and faces the waiter brought us four. FOUR! There were five adults eating, and a bub who likes to suck on bits of this and that. WHAT WERE WE GOING TO DO WITH FOUR STINGY PAPER SERVIETTES?

I digress, this is not the story of how we had bad service in a restaurant famous for its food. This is the story of how we had ordinary food, AND bad service in a restaurant bestowed with the title 'Best Malaysian food (insert year)'. Here's why...

If you do go to Temasek, forget the entree menu. We poached a few dishes here to ward off hunger as things were a tad slow and we were all hungry (half an hour in a cold lane will do that to you - especially when everyone has not eaten breakfast due to the early lunchtime). The prawn cutlets were fabulous - but then again they were also stock standard flattened prawn with breadcrumb coating Chinese style cutlets. The beef curry puffs were like dry old bullets - what gives with that pastry? The spring rolls were rather nasty rolls, chock a block full of meat and not much else as far as flavouring goes. There wasn't really much else to order quickly for entrees so forgive me if I missed something in thelist of five that may have been a showstopper.

Let's move onto the mains...

The first dish to turn up, Crab with Black Pepper was the star of the day. This is the crab dish we almost didn't get, and I'm so glad the chef bent over backwards to produce this. The sauce was delightfully spicy, creamy and also did not need a humungous platter to contain it. There was enough sauce to complement the crab, enough zing in each bite to make us search for more, and the crab was sweet. I am a sucker for black pepper and creamy sauces and this was just how I like it. Worth going back for in my book and others.

Shame we can't say that about the rest of the dishes.

This was quickly followed by the Gado Gado. I loves me my Gado Gado. For some reason this didn't even push my tilt metre. The veg were swimming in sauce. A smooth peanuty nothing sauce, that just about covered the plate and everything within a three mile radius. But then the veg were also very uninteresting. I don't recall finding any chunks of cabbage, the potatoes were bland as were the green beans, and hello, were there any eggs in this dish? I'm not a expert though - maybe I expected too much.

Singapore Chilli Crab - served on one ginormous humungous platter. The crab was lost in a tart sweet tomato sauce that did nothing to complement. Interstingly this crab was the same size as the previous crab which didn't need the table sized plate for serving? Oh...and none of the promised bread mentioned earlier to suck up the sauce! 

Assam Seafood - the other winner for me - I loved this soupy dish. Then again I also love tart vinegary things. Apart from my son in law the rest of the table did not fall over backwards for this dish. 

Kang Kong in Belacan, and Eggplant ditto. Hmmm...get that rank smelly prawn paste out of my way. The chef by this stage must have been grabbing and chucking in a frenzy. There was nothing delicate or delectable about either dish. Shame is, I really wanted to try the Kang Kong as this is one of the main veg we sell at the markets. Eggplant ditto, because it's hard to ruin eggplant in my book. Hmm...

Followed with the famous squid in thick soy - or should I say thick burnt caramel soy sauce. One bite and I'm done. As is everyone else. Nasi Goreng, which seemed to be fried rice with lots of soy sauce added to be almost black, and finally a crazy butter prawn dish that looked amazing and was much better eaten cold at home.

Overall, for a restaurant that has been so popular for so many years, I'm thinking the service could have been much better and the food a lot more consistent. We may not be experts on Singapore Malaysian cuisine, but we can't see the appeal for the masses. Perhaps the palate required for this type of cuisine is a little more obsure than we brought to the table. (Hard to figure when I live with someone who happily will eat all manner of crazy foods)

My moral to this story is, don't believe everything you read either in the SMH good food guide, or in online reviews. For not the first time we have been sadly disappointed - and when that involves a $500 bill for lunch it goes beyond tragic. Not complaining though, it's just another place to cross off the list.

Note: If I could I would add photos, except I can't get over the cheesy photos I'm seeing of late on the internet - Food Bloggers world wide going mad with camera lenses in restaurants. it's like Facebook and Twitter and all that is wrong with the world these days.

Good intentions...really...

I did start out today thinking I would clear my head with a few words on here. There's a new routine, maybe it will just take time to get going.

7am the alarm goes off. This is the beginning of my half hour reading time. Today half an hour turned into an hour and a half. The books not that great, the bed is. Happy gets ready and leaves while I'm swanning around in bed, and I have to say I like it.

8.30am out of bed an hour late! Ok. Walkies. I start this segment of my day with a lot of mumbling and rummaging around in boxes, bags, rooms and wardrobes looking for something I can wear on my walk. Huff, puff, must-go-faster-to-lose-belly-flap. It's a tougher walk without the dogs as no one stops to wee along the way.

9.30am Home again with lovely large latte in hand. Who knew the local baker makes a good brew?

BING! Email!

Damn, not meant to read email. Supposed to get on and clear head through writing drivel. Tell myself I won't read it until I finish (or even start) writing. Need to go to toilet. Go. Notice mess in kitchen. Clean mess. Find washing to do. Sort laundry.

BING! Email!

Dang nabbit. Forgot there were emails to read AFTER I write my bit.

BRING! Phone!

Hello? Yes did send email. Yes, you should have it already. Yes will resend.

Email swallows blogger whole!

DINGDONG! Chillies!

Forgot I had chillies in fridge waiting to be cooked into paste. Put oven on. Finalise preparations. Write down recipe. Cook. Turn. Cook some more. Prepare bottles. Bottle. Admire.

BING! Email!

BRING! Phone!

BING! Email!

Shoot. Must do work. 

4.15pm Now where was I? Oh yes, about to write some stuff to clear my head. What was I going to write? hmm...

4.30pm. Realise will never remember the clever story I wrote while walking. Will have to rely on bragging about our write up in local newspaper. 6 weeks after publication journo finally decides to send me a poor scan of the article. See below.

Maybe it's a good thing as we can't make out our faces. Who knows what silly looks we were pulling as Happy presented me with a bunch of zucchini blossoms!

Now, if only I could get a hold of the segment they did of us on TV!

We're stars I tell ya, stars!

A new start is as good as a holiday...in fact often better!

After much dillying and dallying we finally started to shove boxes in the van and move to our new home. There was a little fear I think for both of us - fear that we didn't really own the home, fear that this would be our new residence for FOREVER, and fear that something would not be how we dreamed.

Let's just put all fears aside and say the new home is fabulous, and we wished we had started moving earlier. In fact if we could wind back time, we would also have cancelled our disastrous trip to Tonga and spent that time moving instead.

It's taken me years to get a handle on life, and I'm quite proud to say that I now seem to understand the ebb and flow around us a bit better each day. The Tonga trip was a disaster only to finally show us that living there is not an option. We'd had inklings of this before when we had visited, pigheadedness though had pushed those little insights deep down into our subconscious, and with optimism we kept sailing forward thinking we could make life there a goer. 

This time though, the universe decided that we needed a wake up call, and everything that could go wrong did, and until we finish with the legal matters I can't really say anything much at all. Suffice to say that I was shaken and unbelieving when we finally managed to get on the plane and out of the country. 

From the moment we set foot on Sydney soil though, everything started to fall into place. And this may have just been the jolt we needed. It's like we are being watched and pushed and prodded into a new life, and the feeling is quite nice. Everytime we mentally think of the next task, and the help required, there's a knock at the door with someone there to help. 

Yesterday is a prime example of this. We had a list as long as our arm of whitegoods required to furnish our new home and new work kitchen. We'd prepared ourselves for the cost and started shopping around last week. On a whim we went into our local Hardly Normal store, to continue this research. Two seconds into the place and Happy is greeted by an old acquaintance from year's gone by - he just happens to sell all these goods and was happy to give us everything at cost! Our $10K bill was reduce to $8K in a blink of an eye! All to be delivered this week.

We also voiced the thought that an electrician was required to no one in particular. The next day our landlord comes over for his usual catch up. Out of the blue offers his nephew's services if we need to get some work done. He wasn't aware  we would need an electrician, he just thought he might mention it.

There have been many more of these experiences in the past couple of weeks. Let's hope they continue.

I'm also finding that every time I sit to write there are a million things trying to escape from my brain in one go. So...I'm going to attempt to write a little every morning* to see if the backlog frees up my thinking and relieves some of the pressure! 

*Every morning except market mornings. I'm hard pushed to get up in time on those days to even make us a cuppa!

Are we there yet?

I can't believe it. We've owned our new home since Tuesday, and we have only spent one night there, camping out on a little mattress in the middle of a bare lounge room floor. We did though, manage to hop in the spa bath, talk all night around the garden about our plans, plan some more, and then christen the place with a little spot of bubbly. The crazy thing is that we may not be able to move in until mid May! Yep, Mid freaking May!

Life is so crazy busy that moving has to take a bit of a back seat. We're off to Tonga for a week on Thursday. Much needed rest is in order and it's also time to look in on the family. I have a book of 1200 not well written pages to get through, and the other half has two boats over there that need to get out in the water for a run. We're booked into some place that promises to be by the lagoon to make this fishing adventure a little bit easier, but given that we're talking Tongan Resort Promises, then we may find the lagoon pictures were taken somewhere else, and we may be in the middle of the island for all we know. We do have crabpots too to throw out, and the best bit is that Tongan rules do not govern how or when you can fish. Fingers crossed dinner each night may just come out of one of our little boats.

Between now and Thursday we have two days at the markets, a birthday dinner to prepare, a ton of Mother's Day advertising to produce, some packing and planning to do, a book to finish, invoicing to do, some cooking to do (special requests at one of our markets), weeding, animal husbandry, house cleaning, staff paying and a bit of packing if we aren't sleeping.

It's safe to say our lives have just spiralled out of control. For the life of us we can't manage to get all things in order so that we can take a well earned break without freaking out beforehand. If only we could get an interested pair of hands to help us out on the farm properly. And another interested pair of hands that would happily work on the design side of things without expecting to be the new Siimon Reynolds. You'd think given the doom and gloom about employment these days we may find a couple of people ready to risk a stress free employment life with us - but hey, nope, all the young'uns still want to earn a million before they get experience. Eventually though something has gotta give.

But it's all good. The new house is lovely. We can't wait to get in there and make it our own. I have a fabulous new work space, and already the kitchen plans for the workspace are taking shape. Yep, that's right, I said kitchen plans. The design biz is going to take a backseat as much as it can so that I can continue to develop the chilli sauce/paste/pickle range that is getting all our customers excited. 

I'm not a great chilli lover, it has to be mild for me to enjoy it with my food. For some reason though I seem to be able to turn out a mean chilli preserve, and it doesn't seem like i can cook enough. We spent Easter Sunday cooking through 40kg of chillis and putting them into pretty bottles in all different ways. Those bottles are pretty much all gone a week later. We ran out of three versions on Wednesday and there just wasn't enough time to replace the stock before our market today. this is why we need the commercial kitchen. A fat oven big enough to triple output without tripling time. A huge stainless steel bench to make prep-work a cinch, not to mention cleaning and disinfecting. And shelves by the mile to store our stock until it's required. I see it all now, a veritable treasure trove of all things that are good with the cooking world.

Bugger me, if i don't already have a shop that wants to test out my wares so they can stock them! Bring on the asbestos hands!

The most peculiar part of chilli being my foreseeable future is that I appear to be allergic to the wretched stuff and if I'm not careful preparing it my hands, arms and face all puff up and blister. When the farmer comes home with more, I'm generally sitting at the table nursing some very sore appendages unable to hold more than my book. I'm a rare sight for sore eyes...oh yes, that's right...my eyes don't like the stuff either.

All in all though, I can't, and shouldn't complain. Many of my clients are complaining that their workloads have gone through the roof, and their job security has plummeted. In this crazy time of economic uncertainty it appears that chilli is my friend if only we can harness it's power for good.

There would be pics, except that would involve adding another 10 minute job into my day. As Rhett would say, frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

The ones that got away...

The yabbies you see in the photo above were rescued from our car this evening. And no, we're not underwater here, or staving off floods, these guys were invited into our vehicle of our own free will.

We'd purchased a kilo of these fine beasts, and after a roundabout trip home were ready to throw them in a pot of boiling water to see what all the fuss is about. You see, these yabbies we think, are the same as Lousianna crawdads, and that thought alone had our mouths watering at the hint of dinner. The plan was a big hint of chilli, some tomato, a hot walk in the wok before being served on a bed of steamed rice.

Unbeknownst to us, while we were away from the car for a little while, these plucky buggers had broken free from their wrapping and were making tracks around the underbelly of our car. Through a plastic bag, some newspaper, and then another bag...these guys were earnest in their pursuit of freedom. In the dark we had no inkling that anything untoward had happened to our fish shop purchase...all seemed right with the world as we made our merry way home.

Happy's hearing is at times appalling (usually when I'm talking) and at other times amazing (usually when I'm not). So as we're driving along, he's going 'what is that nip nip nip sound I hear?'. I'm all 'go back to sleep, there's no nip nip nip noise' and can honestly say I didn't hear a thing. 

Turns out, nip nip nip was our dinner tromping around under the seats of our car, and looking for new homes to roost in. It wasn't until we were in the kitchen assessing our booty that we discovered we were short half a kilo of our fine crawdads. 

We found the blinking things everywhere! In the shoes we leave in the car, under seats, in jumpers, tissue boxes...you name it. They didn't leave a stone or shoe unturned in their pursuit of freedom. If freedom fighters they were, I would commend their creativity, however, please never put me on a team run by crawdads. I do not wish to end my days in Happy's shoe! Where on earth did these crawdads think they were heading anyway?

A few died in the freedom skirmish, so we quickly cremated (boiled) them and I gotta say, as nice as each tiny bite of meat was, they will need to be less than $29 per kilo for us to buy more.

Just so you know, the photo above represents about half a kilo of yabbies. Happy's hands make the bootie look far smaller than it is in real life. The yabbies were about 6-8 inches long each...his hands are gigantuan! There's no meat to talk of in their claws, none to speak of in their heads and just a medium tiger prawn's worth in their body. Yes, I'll admit, it's lush and succulent...just figure though that each one is but a mouthful. Effort to mouth-profit is very low, which is not good unless you have just won the lottery.

I love this pic too, it captures his delight at an unexpected skirmish for food. Happy has the gift of enjoying every moment in this world and never looking back. I wish i could be the same way.

Fed up!

Only 85 more days until I get my license back. It's been an interesting time without the means to get out and about. It's also been a frustrating time too, having to ask for lifts, or to be taken down the road to get essentials (I hate it especially when I need tampons). If only we had been able to move sooner, the lack of transport may not have been such a burden. Imagine being able to catch a bus, call a cab, or even walk around the corner to the store! At least I WILL enjoy the remaining two months of these luxuries before I stop being one of the driven.

I'm also fed up with some of the blogs I read around the place. So few people seem to be able to actually write. Perhaps I'm one of these people. Good writing used to be all over the internet, and good writers used to also be frequent writers. Perhaps good writers were the early adopters, and now after a few years the novelty has warn off, field has been laid open for the wannabes. I don't know, it would be lovely to come across more sites that have interesting commentary, without the constant need to check grammar and innovative word choices!

And lastly I'm fed up with my kitchen. My constant mess. Life. Work. Clients. Men. And food. Not necessarily in that order. It seems I spend and enormous amount of time serving all of these, and yet not one of them is clicking into place. 

My kitchen is always a mess. it's not that it is small, it is just old and impractical. At least this will change soon - fingers crossed. 

My constant mess? There never seems enough time to sort through all the crap that arrives in the post, is brought in the door, is generated by work, is given to us, is stored somewhere, is living on the floors, the shelves, the desk, everywhere. The mess just grows and grows. 

Life. Work. Clients. Men. It's all work. Hard work. We're currently doing seven days a week while we try to grow the farm side of things, and it's dragging us down. When I'm not at the markets, I'm then squeezing a huge design load into the other four days of the week. The design work after 9 years is starting to become so repetitive that I almost could do it in my sleep, except, hey, I can't. Clients are often nice, but then some of them just like to stamp their feet and demand more and more, just so they can feel they got value for money. Whatever happened to paying for quality? And Men! Go back to the beginning of this paragraph and you'll realise my man works seven days a week too, so he's crotchety and tired and in need of a big sleep. At least I don't lug a half ton of produce in and out of a van eight times every day we do a market! Then again, I also don't say things and immediately deny I said them at all. Is it tiredness really? or just a moonal phase?

Most of all though, I'm fed up with food. Don't get me wrong, I love food. I love cooking. And I am particularly enjoying researching recipes and selling food at the markets. There isn't enough time in the day to do the thing that I would love. Then add the crappy kitchen scenario into the argument and suddenly all pleasure is drained.

So yeah, I'm a bit overwhelmed tonight, feeling that everything is pulling us in a hundred different directions and wishing life was more simple. All I need, most likely, is a good slap, and a friend that turns up with a pot of heartwarming soup.

And probably a good S-L-A-P!

Do you Yahooooo!

We surely do! We finally managed to get approval for the housing loan and now it's all systems go. Apparently we own the house in just over two weeks if all the paperwork is completed by then. Lucky I didn't unpack last time we moved.

Choosing the right plates

It seems that Tonga is currently experiencing a few troubles with earthquakes. In typical Islander style, there seems to be no mass confusion, no great worries and no need to lock up your daughters. Anywhere else in the world a 7.9 on the richter scale would be a big worry.

On the other side of the pacific, Melbourne too is experiencing earthquake dramas. Nothing to scream about, just enough to keep everyone on their toes.

From what I can deduce, with google as my friend, there is a huge plate in the Pacific which slides under another plate that hits Australian shores. The Tongan Trench lines this, to the west of Tongatapu, and from what I have been told this is the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean.

Let's just add to this with the eruption of a sea volcano somewhere near Tongatapu. Tongatapu is the main island, and where we spend all our time when visiting. Not to mention our family over there.

The comings and going of these plates seem to be in accord. Is there a big eruption about to happen?

If you look at this link the yellow plate in the centre is the one in question. I appears to border many areas in the pacific including california, canada, japan and possibly other nations. For my eyes a little to small an image to see clearly.

So we have a few quakes under our belt already, and a volcano erupting. Where else may this plate shifting show itself?

I'm figuring we've either had the worst, or that is yet to come. We have about 5 weeks or so before we leave for our weekly break on Tongatapu. Should I pack my floaties and a hard hat? Should I up the ante on my rolling freezer bag we use to import meat to Tonga, and take a ton load more? And to be honest, that is all rather flippant...I fear that there may be something terrible coming for someone somewhere along the edges of this plate that has decided to move.

If only I was a man...

It seems the lobster was right. While the lobster looked fabulous on the outside, on closer inspection the inside was rotten. My plans for sauce, curdled. Nothing was as it seemed.

Ditto with my mortgage application. We're still no closer to have anything signed sealed and delivered.

It appears that even though I have ticked all the boxes in my application, some 'guy', sitting high in his chair at the financial institution is still not happy enough with me to provide funds for the house. Four weeks into the loan application fiasco he's still requesting more and more information, which even other 'guys' within the same institution consider unreasonable.

I'm sure if I were a man, the application would have been approved yonks ago. Let's face it, there's just something terribly fishy about a self employed woman having the funds to buy a decent three bedroom house and being able to afford the repayments. 

Is it unreasonable of me to think that my squeaky clean record of paying rent (which is almost double the mortgage repayments) should be used as a guide to my ability to service a loan?

There are some who may say that my thoughts are just fanciful notions, but in the nine years of self employment, financing problems have always gone the same way. Normal requirements are doubled, and often tripled, information quadruple-checked. 

Yet, I know of a much younger man, in business for far less time, who tripped into the bank one day and secured a loan. He didn't have to prove where he got his deposit from (he'd saved it at home in a sack and duly turned up at the bank with a wad of notes a mile high), and he certainly didn't have a ten year history of business and finance to prove his worth –they would have had to go back to his school days for that.

So why else could it be that the banks don't like the colour of my money?

Lobster = celebration. Right?

Patiently we have waited for a celebration to bring the lobster our of the deep freeze. We're so close now to getting that blinking unconditional approval for our house loan that I foolishly whipped the lobster from one side of the pidgeon pair into the other for a s-l-o-w defrost.

At 4pm this afternoon the mortgage broker emailed to say the bank was running behind, and we may again need to increase the cooling off period before we sign on the dotted line. In the old days, when purchasing, the whole loan agreement was based on mortgage approval. These days, we risk a reasonable sum of money to take the house off the market, in the meantime the banks faff around like a bunch of green water fairies. While they faff, the legal process continues and we keep extending our cooling off period. This is all good if we were only risking a small amount of money, but until we get approval nothing is guaranteed. And then, the longer the cooling off period extends the shorter the settlement period becomes. Let's talk squeeze folks, freaking heck we're moving tomorrow!

So, with my lobster now cool and defrosted, and the bad news coming in from the mortgage broker i was none too cheery about hoiking out our celebration dinner. 

I'm positive the lobster felt the same way. After it's preboil, in readiment for the thermidor sauce, sonny set to cut it up in preparedness. Oik...yuk...the mess that came out of the lobster was not pretty. Our 3kg lobster was a mess of guts and muck and very little meat. This poor lobster had seen better days and could possibly have been anorexic (and on steroids becuase it's shell was huge and fat and very enticing looking). 

While sonny's over on one side of the kitchen pulling apart our (mucky) crayfish, I was at the other end of the kitchen making a thermidor sauce. The sauce wasn't meant to be curdled but somehow within in more than a few minutes of heat the milk curdled. The milk had been fine yesterday and was earmarked for a rice pudding. Today, no, it wasn't going to play nice. Lucky really. We didn't have a lobster to play with either.

I reckon the damn mortgage witches were against us! Lobster wet and flabby. Sauce curdled and inedible. There was to be no celebration. I'm not one for over speculating (yeah, right!) but I hate it when things get out of order. I'm wondering if those boring busy-bees at the bank are now, after today's housing prices news, sitting in their little grey padded cubicles rethinking every un-approved housing mortgage and working out if they should hold off for another six months or so before they say yes!

Tonga anyone?

This shot was taken one day when we travelled west on Tongatapu for a picnic. Just over the ridge of rocks in the middle of the pictures is perfect coral and snorkelling grounds. The sea gets a bit rough over there, so you won't find my white ass hopping along, but for other more seaworthy people it's meant to be beautiful. On the sandy side of the reef its perfect for the littlies. High tide and it's hip deep if you are short. Low tide and it's full of all manner of walkabout creatures. Enough to keep you interested and not too much to upset. We also nabbed a bucket load of sea urchin here. To me, slimy snot like fishy slips, to some others (Neil Perry and his like, a delicacy). It's all here for the taking.

Notice too the looming storm in the background. Whilst the weather was quite balmy, we sat and watched this weather roll in fast. One minute black clouds, next we could see rain, and then in the distance little willy willys. I don't know what a willy willy is in any other language, but I fair love seeing them dance on the distant water.

Maybe I should have waited until we could have these lobsters again before we had a celebration. 50TOP ($35AUD) for the whole basket of them, freshly speared in the morning!