The consequences of cake

I was aghast to discover I'd put on two pounds between yesterday and this morning. That's what comes from replacing dancing like a moron in front of a television screen with eating as much Italian food as Hong Kong can provide you.

Yesterday evening it was a friend's birthday, and as any fule knoe, birthdays should always be celebrated with two things: (a) cake and (b) strippers.  In fact, most any social event should be leavened with copious amounts of cake and people taking their clothes off for fiscal reward.

Having said that, I've obviously got in a lot of trouble at golden wedding anniversaries, funerals, christenings, etc.

However, our friend was adamant that we were not to make a fuss about her birthday, and we all were equally certain that some sort of fuss would be made, so as a compromise we made her a cake studded with facsimiles of men with few clothes:



I am, as I've said before, very pleased with my new camera, not least because the combination of an enormous lens and an enormous sensor mean that I get some very nice shallow depth-of-field effects, which in general means 'nicely blurry' and in this particular means 'you don't get to see all the gubbins of the various men'.

None of us were stabbed with a stripper-decorated cocktail stick by our friend, so I think she forgave us this trespass.

The food at Il Maestro is pretty good - at least the pizza and the Caprese salad were - everything else had meat on it, so I could only look on aghast as everyone else chowed down. The service isn't so great, but I think this is because management believe you only need two wait-staff for the entire restaurant, and they were thus running from pillar to post to deal with everyone's needs. I suppose in the short term this saves money, which must be nice for somebody. And at least the staff were just busy and not very attentive, rather than bolshy and rude like the people over at the Stoep. If this restaurant lasts a few years and builds up a reputation, maybe they can get grumpy and unhelpful too.

There's a dessert pizza, which I was very excited by, until I found out that it was just a normal pizza base with cream on top, when I had dreams of a twelve-inch wide biscuit with strawberry jam and lumps of marscapone masquerading as a marguerita. But I can dream...

I can also dream that one day my arms will stop hurting from that ruddy Kinect. Damn you, technology!