On Friday I had a busy day. I was chairing the latest meeting of the Standards Australia (SA) committee on photography, held over videoconference. We normally have three meetings a year, but the last one (supposed to be after the New York ISO meeting in June) was delayed so long because of staff turnover at SA (resulting in us not having a project manager for several weeks) that we finally decided to leave it until the next date, after the Sydney October meeting. And then it was tough to organise it in December like I wanted, so it was pushed to January.
It was a fairly routine meeting, except for a new attendee. One of our current committee members decided it’s time to cull his numerous committee roles and went to the effort to find a replacement to take over his representation of their university. The new guy I had a Zoom meeting with on Tuesday (which, looking back, I see I didn’t mention that day) to brief him on what our committee does and what sort of work he’d be expected to do. That didn’t scare hi off, so he attended on Friday as a guest, before they go through the motions of replacing the retiring member.
Otherwise I went through the discussions and progress from both the New York and Sydney meetings. Unfortunately our member from the Art Gallery of NSW couldn’t make the meeting because I especially wanted to thank her for the behind-the-scenes tour she organised for us at the Sydney meeting.
This meeting yesterday overlapped with one of my ethics classes, so last week I rescheduled it to be a day later and told the kids. But without that rescheduled one I still had three more to teach after the standards meeting, which with a break for a late lunch took me up to 6pm.
And then from 6pm we had online games night with my friends. One of them had organised for us to do some roleplaying this time, using Pathfinder 2e rules and a virtual tabletop (VTT). And by 6pm everyone else was ready to play and all waiting for me! So I pretty much had to dive straight in.
It was nice to be a player for once instead of running the game. This was a one-shot test run of the VTT, before the GM starts a proper campaign. There were five of us in the party; I was a halfling rogue who I named Quillby Bramblefoot. We were given a mission to check out a watchtower which had lit its distress fire signal, and told to recover a magical artefact from the tower, although the guy giving us the mission was a bit cryptic about it and wouldn’t tell us what it looked like or what it did. Which in hindsight may have been a hint, because when we got there and after fighting a couple of battles against wild boars and some semi-undead things, we found a cloaked woman who led us to the item and told us a different story about it. We didn’t get much further as it got late and we finished up there.
Today I got up and did a 5k run. It was very tough going because it was 24°C and 75% humidity. I can really see it in my times when the weather is warm and humid; it can make me a minute or two slower than a good time in cool, dry weather. Back home I showered to freshen up and then it was time for the make-up class that I’d moved from yesterday. Three of the four kids showed up, which was a good turnout for moving the class to a different day.
This afternoon I looked at organising more details for our trip to Tokyo in a few weeks. It was time to think about the dinner options and book some restaurants. I went through the vegetarian-friendly restaurants that my Japanese contact recommended for us to meet for dinner. One sounded truly awesome – mid-range fully vegetarian versions of traditional Japanese cuisine, conveniently located, great reviews. I tried to book it for 27 February… but it’s booked out for the whole month! This is another issue with vegetarian places in Japan – tourists book them out well in advance, because there are so few options for all the vegetarian visitors.
So I did some research and found a nice looking izakaya with an extensive vegetarian menu, in a good location. I emailed our contacts there and suggested this. I also booked dinner for me, my wife, and her mother and sister at Sakura-tei, an okonomiyaki place in Harajuku. It’s interesting using a Japanese restaurant booking site. They want to know so much about you! There was a drop-down asking what occasion it is, with about 50 options: Birthday (self), Birthday (spouse), Birthday (friend), Birthday (family), Friends, Women’s group, Welcome, Farewell, Holiday party, Reunion, Tourism, Business meeting, Team drinks, Family celebration, Kids event, Wedding reception, Anniversary, Engagement celebration, Date, Group Date, Proposal(!), Seminar, Music recital, Exhibition, Other. Those are all in the list, and I skipped some other entries. And another asking how many times you’ve been to the restaurant before.
Speaking of restaurants, we tried a brand new Indian place tonight. It’s the new one that opened up where Turka used to be. I checked the Google reviews and… it was very mixed. A lot of 5-star reviews, and a lot of 1-star reviews. People can be very opinionated, so we decided to try it ourselves. Unfortunately our experience was more 1-star than 5-star. The samosas were cold in the middle, as though frozen and not fried enough to warm through. The dosa had a good spicy potato filling, but the pancake around it was a bit tough, not nice and crispy. The malai kofta curry had decent paneer dumplings, but the sauce was fairly bland. So, we decided not to come back. There are a few much better Indian options in the area.
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