You know, I really do love cake. If I think back over the years there have been so many wonderful cakes in my life. The first cake of memory I was only 5 years old (or there about) It was a Train cake, covered in great icing and colorful Pebbles (M&M’s for those who have no clue what I am talking about). My granny had made it (well I assume she made it – lets not pop that bubble just in case anyone out there knows that in fact she got it from the Chinese Bakery up the road in Grey Lynn). Then there were the years of banana cake at home – it seemed to be the cake of choice in our household – mmm with lemon sugar icing – just the way it should be. This was the staple of my cake diet – maybe it was the only way that my mother could get me to eat fruit. I remember German Plum cake, initially from that little bakery on Akland St in Melbourne, and my own version for years after – which we all agree was far thicker and plummier than any Australian bakery could make (in such a way as to actually make a profit). German Plum cake is guaranteed to make you happy when you are down, as Tim knows.

It’s just that cake really is a happy event thing. It’s simple and has this wonderful capacity to console and bring joy to just about any situation you can think of. It is also an interesting side note that there are very few, if any, cakes that are linked to terrible situations (happy to be proven wrong, but in the end the mass of opinion supports cake as a happy thing).

Eggs, flour, sugar, butter – with plums, bananas, coconut, lemon, orange, rum, candy – an over abundance of icing. What else do you need (well a gym membership probably).

So this needs to be my next endeavor when I finally get out of the corporate life. Cake by the slice to address the inherent nostelgic need many of us have to be comforted. Each time I walk past Magnolia or Billy’s Bakeries, it reminds me how right this would be. So there we are, cake-by-the-slice (sorry no wedding cakes – weddings, whatever else they may be, are a hotbed of dramatic tensions, not a place to sell cakes).

Categories: Dreams
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Okay, a couple of friends have suggested that I might be a little focused on life within a 10 street radius from where I live. I like to consider it an environmentally friendly position to take, with less drain on the social infrastructure by traveling outside my realm.

That all said, I ventured to Times Square for the first time in six months to see the movie “Talk to Me”. I am freshly reminded as to why I don’t travel north of 23rd Street too often – it was maddening chaos, which took nearly half an hour to get 100 yards down the street to the theater. But hey, since I was there I did the tourist thing an took a photo or two of the chaos.

So let’s see, the movie, “Talk to Me” was the history of a Washington DJ, Petey Greene (Don Cheadle) and a radio manager , Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Set across a 30 year span, taking in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It’s a beautiful movie, just about real life, making it, limitations, some great lines and a message that the people we travel through life with offer us the things that we are too often afraid to grasp for ourselves. Oh and I swear to God, if that’s what my parents wore in the 1960’s, I am totally shocked

Besides all that I found Dale and Thomas, gourmet popcorn on the way to the movie (yes I know, New York does have a tendency to call things gourmet when in fact it is actually dingey self-serve hot food that has been sitting in the corner store for too many hours than is healthy – but in this case Dale’s is great!). This meant that I picked up a bag of Spicy BBQ, mixed with Buffalo and Blue Cheese for the movie … mmmm.

Categories: Entertaining, Movies, New York
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Well all I can say is that the iPhone Rocks! It has it’s glitches but it still Rocks!

In New York, the hype was palpable – every water-cooler conversation you could imagine included the phrase “iPhone”. If you really thought that 6:00pm Friday June 29th was when Happy Hour started, you had clearly lived the previous fours weeks with your head in the sand.

So what to do – do I get sucked into the hype machine, or do I go with my normal dislike of investing in first generation. Haha I mean it took 15 years of being a PC user before I dared move to the dark side and became a Mac User. I did the rational research, the really reviews, and by 6:30pm on Friday 29th I was standing in a massive line outside the Apple Soho Store waiting for my turn to get the iPhone.

And getting it within the first hour of launch meant I avoided the technical problems connecting with AT&T. For me it was straight home, plugged into iTunes and had a new AT&T account within 5 minutes. And then the fun began …

Seriously it is one sexy, sleek phone. The functionality that is on the phone is faithful to what had been advertised – which means that not everything you would want is there – but what is there works well and integrates beautifully with each other piece of software. There are some minor software glitches and hangups that occur, but you would have to be pretty naive to think these wouldn’t have been there. Thankfully they will likely be addressed over the first few software updates in the coming months.

There are some great little tips and tricks within the phone and if you are a true Mac Geek, then you will spend lots of time on the Apple Discussion Forums understanding the in’s and out’s of the device.

And have to say, Saturday June 30th saw more New Yorkers wanting to stop and talk about the phone than in the whole year that I have been living in Manhattan. It gets attention that is for sure.

So my rating – its worth the hype and I know it will only get better over time – this is a great step forward in the mobile market. And my favorite feature – Google Maps simply ROCKS!

Categories: Computer, New York
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