Does eating count as being busy?

I was planning on uploding my Gold Coast post today however I have hardly been in the hotel room to blog. And the amount of photos I have taken (and always take on trips) it takes a pretty long time to pick the ones to use and order them into a post.

This is where I currently am, Eat Street east of Brisbane and I think I have produced a short post about it previously. I knew my mum and sister would like this place as much as I have.

Tomorrow I have a lot more free time so the Gold Coast images will be uploaded then, and probably more pictures from here as I really like some of the shots I’ve taken already.

See you soon!

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Thank you again to all my followers and regular readers, and hello to you if you are new to my blog!

New to this site? Click here to visit my About My Blog section

Want to keep up with my travels? Click here for my Travel Diary or follow me over on Instagram

Want to introduce yourself and your blog and discover new ones? Click here for my meet and greet page.

Happy blogging,

Sam

Bloggers are fake

Can you remember when I told you about an article I believe I triggered back home in the UK? It was on a popular Middlesbrough delicacy that is selling very well at a certain chain of pubs here in Brisbane.

No? Well, here it is if you fancy taking a look. It’s like a 30 second read.

I was in this exact same spot yesterday to try the parmo that is advertised, I had been craving it for a long time and decided to check it out. As it arrived to the table, I was about to take a picture to blog my thoughts before being distracted by a young couple in front of me. He was taking a photo of her pretending to dip a chip into some ketchup, it was funny to see it outside of an Instagram shot, a bit like going behind the scenes of a movie. In the end I don’t think she ate the chip.

It reminded me of this post that I typed up about guys being cameramen for their girlfriends and the new trend of looking away from the camera.

I refrained from taking my photo, as I didn’t want to be just another millennial taking a photo of food before I started to eat it. I did just that this morning instead as I logged onto WordPress. This was a very nice breakfast by the way.

I am not sure if the couple were huge food bloggers or not. But it reminded me that social media paints a completely different picture to the reality of the occasion. We act in our pictures and spend more time trying to make the occasion look good instead of actually making the occasion a good one. I actually started to feel a little bitter.

Then I thought to myself, who the hell am I to judge? This could be their job. They may have enjoyed the food but they get paid to review it and of course, this means documenting it. They could have millions of followers and obviously need to keep up to date with whats happening on their page as much as possible, working via their phones in their free time. This might be a one off post and for all I know they usually never have their phone at the dinner table. I made a quick sweeping judgement of millennial culture without knowing the individuals, and failed to look at myself in the process. It was two people having fun. That’s it really.

So I am in two minds about social media. It’s a weird phenomenon. It is full of people pretending to look into the distance at something, when the actual thought is how many likes it will get. We therefore know that this is what everyone else is doing, but we just keep the cycle going. But I shouldn’t use it as an excuse to breed negativity, it is just a sign of the times. And I am pretty confident that if people back in the industrial revolution would have been able to take part, they damn sure would have. Think of all the selfies that would have been taken on the Titanic, lets not pretend that people then would have refrained! Maybe something in our society has triggered our desire for followers and attention, but its only this era that is doing it because we are the only era in history that were able to.

Lets cherish it and the funny things it makes us do. If its harmless, I should be happy with that.

 

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Thank you again to all my followers and regular readers, and hello to you if you are new to my blog!

New to this site? Click here to visit my About My Blog section

Want to keep up with my travels? Click here for my Travel Diary

Want to introduce yourself and your blog and discover new ones? Click here for my meet and greet page.

Happy blogging!

My first paycheck in Brisbane

Is there a better way to celebrate being paid other than that first celebratory pint? I can’t think of a better way. 

Here I am, at the Pig n Whistle, a traditional British Pub not far from where I am currently staying. I prefer to keep my working life and blogging life seperate as work is completely unrelated to my blog, other than that it helps fund my travels and for that I am very grateful.

Funnily enough, I took this photo recently of a sign outside of one of these pubs, advertising the ‘chicken parmo’ that is popular back home, especially in Middlesbrough where they do these very well. 

And recently I was tagged in this article that can be viewed here, from a local news website back home in the UK mentioning these pubs here in Brisbane, with the headline:

‘You Ripper! The Aussie pubs selling 2,000 ‘Middlesbrough parmos’ a month’

Coincidentally, the article starts by mentioning that a picture recently emerged on social media of an A-board advertising the food outside one of the pubs. It was only a couple of weeks ago that I posted my image to social media, could they have picked up on my picture? 

I guess I may never know…

Debate: Should pink be prawn cocktail or salt and vinegar?

So one thing that really threw me off when I was purchasing crisps in Australia was the different coloured packets and flavours. My eye sight isn’t the best (I need glasses but rarely wear them, terrible I know), so when I went to grab what I thought was prawn cocktail was in fact salt and vinegar. 

It’s the same with blue, for me this signifies cheese and onion. 

What a culture shock!

So with that I have to ask you: What’s your flavour? And what colour should it be?

I feel Smiths/ Walkers/ Lays and any other brand of crisps out there need to unify and make their colours universal!

Happy International Womens Day (and the recent debate about pink beer)

I was reminded of the occasion by a female colleague as she wished me a happy IWD as I walked down the corridor. Do you wish a guy a happy International Womens Day? I am not sure. But she did and I didn’t mind at all.

I am not going to get into all the nitty gritty regarding equal pay or gender equality here. Obviously this is something we need to strive for. But I have another question or two that was brought on by an article I read on Independent online. BrewDog, a brewer that I really like, has released a pink labeled beer for girls, the pink label making fun of ‘sexist’ marketing. I thought this was a little strange to fight such fire with fire. Over on their website, they say:

At BrewDog, we have always believed that beer is for everyone, and equality is a fundamental right. So today we are launching a clarion call to end the discrimination of gender pay inequality. In the UK men earn on average 20% more than women. And that’s not ok.

So ahead of International Women’s Day this Thursday, we are launching Pink IPA. A beer for women. A beer for equality.

Satirically dubbed Beer for Girls, Pink IPA is BrewDog’s clarion call to close the gender pay gap in the UK and around the world and to expose sexist marketing to women, particularly within the beer industry. This is our overt parody on the failed, tone-deaf campaigns that some brands have attempted in order to attract women.

Pink IPA, image taken from BrewDog’s website linked above.

So to fight tone-deaf campaigns some have used in order to attract women, rather bizarrely they have used pink beer. I am all for a campaign to fight for equality. I am not sure how happy I am as a working class male to pay more for the same beer as many much, much wealthier females I see everyday in the city, but I guess that is the point they are trying to make. Another thing is this next segment of their page.

What’s more, people who identify as female will be able to pick up Pink IPA in any BrewDog bar for 20% less. The beer will launch in our bars this Thursday 8th March to coincide with International Women’s Day.

So this means that if I go in and identify as female, I get the discount. But would I be taken seriously or be considered a scrooge by bar staff? They would have to accept my decision as anything else would not be politically correct. And what about females that identify as males? Would they be victims of ignorance and charged less, and would this cause offence? Who knows.

At the end of the day, any movement that strives for change is a good thing in my books. As long as it doesn’t do the opposite and create further divide or go about change in the wrong way. No doubt there will be many opinions on this and I know that many people I look up to will have differing opinions.

But regardless of all this, I wish everyone of my readers a great International Womens Day and I hope days like this bring positive change.

What are your thoughts on this, is it a good or bad move? Should only biological women get a discount or anyone identifying as a woman? Should there be a discount at all? As a female would you buy a pink beer if it was a sarcastic dig at companies that do this? As always I would love to know your thoughts.

Debate: Is your coffee a want or a need?

I found this on the counter of a breakfast place up in Cairns. 

After long nights partying and waking up early because of the heat, it is safe to say the coffee I consumed up in Queensland was a need. I do admit that I have it occasionally for social reasons, sometimes regretting the caffeine kick.

Why do you have yours?

Where I come to blog

The WiFi at home has packed up, meaning it is impossible to blog at home unless I use my phone, and this eats my data very fast. For that reason I have spent a considerable amount of time in the local coffee shop, which actually motivates me more as I am out of the house and doing something. There is something about being in public that stimulates me, I feel a bit more alive with all the chatter around me.

I like this place because A, it is right around the corner from my place and B, the WiFi is good. It also has charger points in good locations in case my laptop runs low on battery and the staff are a little friendlier than some of the places I have been to. On top of this you get a nice little addition of chocolate drops on the spoon, which is a lovely touch even if it does quickly melt to the mug. It looks like they added more this time too. I don’t know what I did to deserve that, maybe they caught me blogging and assumed it is a review. I don’t do reviews and I am no where near big enough to promote a business by advertising their products. I don’t want to be that kind of blog anyway.

So I wanted to give a little insight as to where I type my words, like I said I find blogging much easier out of my home. I also mix it up a little bit to keep me from becoming demotivated, a new spot helps perk me up. I do however have to have a secluded spot, I don’t like the idea of people behind me peering onto the screen and watching me work. I have always been a little self conscious as to what I do, I like the mix of being in a place bursting with life but having a little privacy. I bet it is great fun being a very popular blogger, one that has hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of fans that like and comment the second the ‘Publish’ button is pressed, but can work completely uninterrupted in the process. That certainly sounds fascinating.

Where do you blog? Do you have favourite place in or outside of the home? I feel it would be nice to get to know you all a little better.

 

 

 

 

This is such a 2017 thing to do

A gingerbread man with breasts, or a gingerbread woman with a shaved head? I will have to settle with gingerbread person with this one. 

I was given this as a present from someone at work yesterday. He/she/it tasted delicious. It was interesting as I was watching some debates on YouTube on transgenderism and I think there are good arguments on both sides of the debate. The debate being should a male be able to label himself female and be officially recognised as one. I really don’t know. I’m happy to call a man a ‘she’ if he wants to, however to be recognised as one on passports etc could cause problems. For one, he is biologically a male. So that would throw a spanner into the works. Secondly, if Trump decides tomorrow that he is a woman, would he then be the first female president? I doubt many people would be okay with that! 

It also reminded me of a person I met earlier this year. A businessman I interacted with often in a previous job that recognised himself as female. We all called him ‘her’ and she was quite pleasant. She had a girlfriend. And one day when this girlfriend wasn’t with her, she asked us where we think she should go to find straight males that she wanted to flirt with. This person also threatened to phone the police when a colleague labeled her as ‘sir’. If all instincts are that a person is a male, the facial structure, the deep voice, it can be pretty hard to not instinctively go with ‘sir’. What if a blind person interacts with the transgender person? And are the police really necessary?

This to me is a very 2017 dilemma. A man that labels himself as a woman that has a girlfriend likes to hit in straight guys in bars. Does this make her girlfriend straight or gay? If she picks up a straight guy, is the guy homosexual? 

I think 2017 is too much for me to take in.

It has certainly made me think of my stance. I would say I’m left leaning, however I try my best to not get sucked in entirely to all leftists movements. Some of them I don’t like the idea of. 
So those are my thoughts after eating this gingerbread person. I’ll give it my name, Sam, as it is gender neutral. Not like me, I’m a guy.

For now.

Unknown lifelong friendships

Going back to my earlier walk in the park- which was no ‘walk in the park’ so to speak due to the heavy rainfall- I dried off in a cafe and tucked into a chicken and mayo sandwich with a large latte. One thing I’ve noticed is that we really are quick to dish out the ‘legend’ status. 

As I collected my sandwich the nice guy behind the till said ‘you’re a legend, thank you.’ This is great and I appreciated the kind words, however am I really deserving of this title?

Martin Luther King- Inspirational leader in the Civil Rights Movement

Neil Armstrong- First man on the moon

Adele- Billions of YouTube views and multi million record sales.

Blogger Sam- Bought a sandwich and a large coffee

As I took a moment to bask in the glory of being legendary I listened as another waiter let a customer know his coffee was made. The customer was facing away from the counter and using a nearby stool to do some morning stretches pre or post jog. 

‘Oi Ed, your coffee is here’

That wasn’t bad service, instead it was service between two friends comfortable with one another. How many of these friendships do we miss everyday in the cafes we don’t visit? Friendships that formed over that one shared location in their seperate daily routines. It was fascinating to see this one tiny section of a giant web of people that meet briefly everyday before going on with their day. It gave me a much needed warm feeling after a cold downpour.

For every negative story in the media there are billions of happy encounters everyday.

A weird combination?

I went to the sushi stall on Circular Quay on my break. I asked for both a coffee and wonton soup. I craved wonton soup all afternoon and needed a little pick me up from the coffee.

‘Coffee and soup?’ was the response as I placed my order. I hesitated but remained committed. I thought to myself, is it a weird order because they are incompatible in my stomach? Or is it just a weird pairing, like going to a wedding in a clown outfit?

Oh well, it is what I wanted and if I have learned anything in life, it is that humans are capable of doing very weird things whilst being convinced otherwise, especially en masse. Heck, I wish I poured both liquids into the same cup and downed it there and then to really emphasis my point, although admittedly that would be weird, even for me.