Smoking Garnish

Something that Frank had pointed out our second night eating dinner was the fact that where ever you order a steak here, you'll be given a slice of tomato and a mushroom on the plate. Not sure exactly why. I'm not sure if the tomato slice is nothing more than garnish on the plate (I still eat it as it's the only vegetable dish you get with a steak). Last night I ate a sirloin steak with garlic prawns. Sounded tasty. The prawns tasted like...nothing really. They did not provode *any* taste what-so-ever. I take that back, one of them had a slight hint of garlic. Slight, I tell you. But, not one of them actually tasted like shrimp. The steak was likewise lackluster. The most flavorful item on the plate was the mushroom (it was quite lovely). Sad really. The garnish was better than the actual dish. That's what I get for demeaning my palate with something other than a filet (not pronounced 'fill-a', it's 'fill-it' here, yes, with a hard 'T' at the end). With it being Valentines day, I'm going to have a hell of a time trying to get into a restaurant tonight. Looks like another pub dinner. I need to find a new pub. I've tried all of the beer at the Halfway House next to my hotel and the food is mediocre there (better than the steak from last night, though).

One of the things I've noticed here is the smoking. I'm not used to smoking being allowed all over the place. I can handle a little smoke. I actually expected it in the pub. I just have a hard time with the copius amounts of it while I'm trying to eat in some places.

Criminy! The stupid "background" virus scanner on this computer is taking up half of my processor. I had to actually stop using Eclipse as my development IDE. This computer can't handle it. It was taking too much time to code something. The editor was having a hard time keeping up with my typing...think about that (bing cherries)...you type and have to wait for the *computer* to catch up to you. Just pathetic.

I've been told that people are having to sign up to comment on the blog...I'm not sure what to say. It's set to accept comments from everyone. I didn't want to exclude anybody who wanted to speak up. Freedom of speech and all. Yup, I just checked the commenting area; You should be able to post comments anonymously.