William Chong

Ph: 5328161; 9 Cook St, Howick 2014; mains $15-27.

Rating: A

(A=return customer, AA=worth going weekly, AAA=so awesome so awesome so awesome)

During the middle of 2008, the owners of Café Hasan Baba in Howick had the bright idea of setting fire to their own restaurant. It’s not as if their food was bad, and they did feature a belly dancer on Friday nights (perhaps that’s why it was burnt down…). Fiery demise aside, the good news is that the phoenix rising from the ashes is undoubtedly Fig and Olive, Howick’s latest Mediterranean-style restaurant.

When we arrived at 6, we were offered an outside table by the helpful and attentive waitress. The restaurant was otherwise fully-booked – not bad for a normal Friday night. A couple of nice paintings, clear roadside signage and the warm sienna/tan-coloured interior must all play their part in pulling in the crowds.

We began with some garlic breads to whet our appetites and take in the view. Looking across the bustling road to the graveyard at All Saints’ Church brought a touch of evening tranquility to the occasion, as we reflected on how “life is but a breath“.

For our mains, C played it safe and ordered a mushroom fettucine, while I opted for the mussaka with rice and salad. The food arrived quick – definitely prepped beforehand, but the portions were very generous. Both our dishes were packed with flavour: a hint of aubergine among the seasoned mince and potato made it just right for me. The mussaka’s dressing – a mix of yoghurt and chili – was particularly nice, though the bottom was a bit burnt. A creamy tomato sauce gave an interesting twist to C’s fettuccine, while the mushrooms were cut in an array of interesting shapes (much to her delight). I have to say though that her carb-source turned out better than my rice, which was a bit dry and Uncle Ben’s-like.

We closed off the meal with a vanilla ice cream sundae with rose water flavouring. The turkish delight taste was great, and it’s probably a dessert flavour worth replicating at home in future. Their other dessert offerings included creme caramel and baklava, which would have tempted us on another day.

Service was appropriately attentive and not pushy, and the staff seemed to cover all the tables reasonably well that evening. Fig and Olive is definitely a keeper, and we’ll look forward to trying more on their menu.

This is the start of a semi-regular series on food. But let me give you some context.

Every Friday, Cheryl and I try to set some time apart for ourselves – a “Date Night”. We’ll pray, read some Bible together, chat and exchange lame jokes, perhaps go through a few questions in some pre-marriage books we’ve got, and then we’ll do something fun (movies, games, etc.). In addition, we normally do dinner and take the opportunity to either try a new restaurant, revisit an old favourite, or cook at home.

As you know, I have a penchant for writing things up. So these posts should hopefully reflect the range of places we end up going to, from the $6 noodle bar right up to the revolving à la carte restaurant, and perhaps even a random cook-up recipe from the domestic front.

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In December 2008, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a literature review, by Drs Sarah Bache and Frank Edenborough, of the numerous health problems and injuries associated with making music.

Under the subhead of “Dermatological conditions”, they included references to various conditions such as guitarist’s nipple, cellist’s chest, cello knee and — get this — cello scrotum.

Every cello player is aware that even the most vigorous playing style would still never be able to cause such an awkward injury. Indeed, Elaine Murphy, the senior doctor who first posited the condition in 1974, has ‘fessed up in a subsequent letter to the editor:

Perhaps after 34 years it’s time for us to confess that we invented cello scrotum.

Reading Curtis’s 1974 letter to the BMJ on guitar nipple, we thought it highly likely to be a spoof and decided to go one further by submitting a letter pretending to have noted a similar phenomenon in cellists, signed by the non-doctor one of us (JMM). Anyone who has ever watched a cello being played would realise the physical impossibility of our claim.

I guess this guy will be less worried now!

(This post is replicated on our wedding site, which is still under construction.)

I found an excellent site a few months back called My Heritage – it’s a site which lets you build your family tree as far as the branches will go.

I started working on this site, as one of the things I originally wanted to include in our wedding day programme was a detailed family tree. This hope of mine quickly faded away when I looked closer at the Chong family details. You see, my paternal grandmother (Jong Ah Moo) – when she passed away in 2004 – had around 200 descendants!

It took me a good part of a week to painstakingly trawl through the Chinese names in a printed newspaper obituary (which included a comprehensive list of family members down to great-grandchildren) to realise that there’s actually just too many names on the Chong side to possibly fit onto an A5, A4 or even A3 programme!

Have a look at the family tree and see if you can figure out how to fit it onto a piece of paper: Chong | Ning family tree.

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Hope everyone’s been enjoying the fantastic NZ weather.

Other than random timewasters, I don’t think I’ll be putting anything up for a while – I’m doing some biggish, behind-the-scenes work on another website (nothing sinister at all!)

So in the meantime… here’s something for a laugh – Microsoft’s up-and-coming music making software:

I guess software designers don’t always make great lyricists!