My Italian is so-so. ‘Buffonata’ if you can see the links to the related English word, means something like a practical joke. And taking the bus down Via Della Buffalota to the Australian Bar on the corner of Via Canberra and Via Tasmania put me in mind of a good old fashioned buffonata. You see, …
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When in Rome, eat burgers!
Sightless in Dubai
I’m in transit right now, in Dubai. Never been here before and I had a window seat for a change (I outgrew window seats about 20 years ago). Sadly, some sort of haze means the skyline can barely be made out in the distance. I can only barely make out the silhouette of the Burj …
An undiscovered treasure…
Although Buller Wines has changed owners in the past decade and I have transferred my loyalty to Andrew Buller Wines, just saw this 2009 Cabernet Merlot blend in the local bottle shop for $32. Great value at that price and I will enjoy it with Thai food tonight.
Soon I will be in Italy and I am getting excited!
This is the Duomo in Florence. Regrettably I have decided to skip visiting Florence on this trip.
First World Problems: The End to My Team’s AFL Season…
I have said for a rather long time that most of my problems are first world problems. Until 35 and a half months ago, one of those problems was that my AFL team had not won a premiership since 1954. That changed on 1 October 2016, when, after four wins in a row over a …
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The beggar outside The Paperback
I’ve been going for many years to the Paperback Bookshop at the east end of Bourke Street. For at least the past three, an elderly down and out chap named Tony has been sitting just outside it most days, doing crosswords and with a hat out for any donations people might make. Past few months, …
Elegance, Magnificence, Crassness, and Crudity: What I learned from my first trip to Italy….
When I visited Italy three years ago, I was amazed. Aside from when I had first sighted Ayers Rock, I have never had a moment in Australia where something caused my heart to almost literally skip a beat. In Italy, seeing St Mark’s Basilica, the Arena of Verona, the Duomo in Florence, the Leaning Tower …
Dare to Dream! The 2019 AFL Finals Series….
3 months ago, I did not really think the Western Bulldogs had much chance of playing in the AFL finals this year. But a dream run home in the second half of the season has got us ending in 7th place, just as we did in 2016, when we stormed through September to a fairytale …
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Word Became Flesh: The Strange and Real Afterlife of Ces Bludgett….
Some of the more colourful political news of the past few days jarred my memory about something from over three decades ago…. In the mid 1980s, the Melbourne University Student Newspaper Farrago occasionally ran an ‘Op-ed’ piece by a fictional character called ‘Ces Bludgett’. As I was never a student at Melbourne University, my readership …
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Lost For Words! 