Archive for June, 2000

Hummus Fest

Published
by
Robyn
on June 24, 2000
in Events
. 0 Comments

The Food Show was on this weekend. It claimed to be, “For people who love eating, drinking, cooking and entertaining.” That didn’t sound like me, but as it was a food show I figured there would be lots of free samples, so I decided it would obviously be perfect to go to.

Three-bloody-dollars for parking. Ten-bloody-dollars admission. At that price, I had better be getting thirteen dollars worth of goodies.

Upon arrival, I entered the exhibition hall and started to wander around. I fought my way through a sea of old ladies in search of free stuff. Oh, there were lots of free goodies. But there seemed to be a lot of places giving out the same sorts of free samples. After much investigation, I found that most of the samples could be put in one of these categories.

* Wine
* Hummus
* Cheese
* Coffee and tea
* Hummus
* Jams
* Healthy drinks
* Sauces
* Hummus
* Breads
* Instant meals
* Hummus

I don’t know why there was such an extraordinary amount of hummus. Even stands that didn’t seem to have any apparent connection with hummus had samples of it (”It slices carrots, onions, leeks, tomatoes, hummus…”) It was almost as if hummus was the magical sex appeal that could get people excited.

Then out of the hummus one stand caught my eye. A giant sign with “M.O.M. MICHELE’S ORGANIC MEAL” stood out. This is the description of the “M.O.M.” from the show programme:

“A delicious meal. Three organic meats and four organic vegetables beautifully layered and baked and delivered to your door.”

From that it sounds ok. Like it might be quite enjoyable. I was in the free sample mood and was about to taste a slice of M.O.M. when I looked at it.

Imagine stripy spam. Like, a red stripe, a white stripe, a green strip, and some brownish stripes. It looked really unappealing. It was like the sort of food you’d expect to have to eat if it was the year 2000 and the cybertronic warlords had taken over the earth, forcing the few remaining humans underground to exist on a diet of M.O.M. as that’s the only thing that can be cultivated underground.

However, as I didn’t taste it I don’t know if its flavour matched its appeal. It might be really delicious, so I’ll attempt to give M.O.M. the benefit of the doubt.

In the end I had sampled so many goodies (and there were some goodies - kia ora to Wild Appetite’s chocolate paté) that I was really full. I had also managed to acquire three coffee bags and five tea bags, a sachet of olive oil, some garlic salt and a scone.

Later in the day I was at the supermarket doing my weekly shopping and found myself in front of the refrigerated goods section. There it was. Row after row of hummus. I bought a pot of chargrilled capsicum hummus. It rules.

Taxi Driver

Published
by
Robyn
on June 4, 2000
in Observatory
. 0 Comments

I’d walked in to see a movie, but when it came time to go home, it was, as the young girl whose friends hassled her about her bad English skills said, “raining cats and cogs”. Fortunately a taxi rank down the road provided me with a means of transport, so I jumped in the first available cab and was on my way home.

It was all going well until the driver started talking. He started talking about the Fijian coup, but when he realised that my lack of knowledge about foreign affairs meant that “Uh-huh” was the only response I could manage, he switched to a subject closer to home.

He told me that another driver for that taxi company had “fiddled with a drunk girl,” or, as the New Zealand Herald’s report phrased it, “allegedly assaulted a female passenger”. The driver in question was arrested by the police, and sacked by the cab company.

The article in the Herald focussed on an email that had circulated falsely stating that the driver was still employed and calling for a boycott, and how the cab company’s general manager was saying that business was down since the email got around.

However, my driver was more interested in telling me about the drunk girls. Oh yes, he had stories to tell.

He said that every night he would get two to three drunk females who would offer him sexual favours instead of them paying the cab fare in cash.

He told me that one night he’d dropped two girls off and one of them had gone inside the house, but the other one stayed in the cab and said to him, “I don’t have any money to pay, but I will give you anything you want. Anything.”

I made comments to the effect that it was wrong and immoral and that I always carried enough fare for the taxi. But the conversation was strange and creepy. Fortunately I arrived at my place (across the road and a few doors down, the old trick) and paid the fare and left.

Being alone in a taxi with a strange man who is talking about drunk women who offer him sexual favours is not a comfortable situation to be in. If I’d known it was going to turn to that I would have gladly faked my way through a conversation about the Fijian coup.