On deciding where to go to dinner last week, we decided upon the new(ish) Crosstown Eating House at Woolloongabba because we have heard good things. It was actually one of the best meals I have had for quite a while in Brisbane. The actual building is very cool too, although my only complaint is that it is very noisy because of the raw surfaces (it used to be an antiques store), so I reckon some rugs on the floors would really help out.
All the meals are designed to be shared, which is a little hard cause Kitty’s a vegetarian, whilst I am not. I had the steak & horseradish, some potatoes & greens, and we shared a soup which was a corn chowder (yum!). We ordered the trio of tarts (mini) to share. The actual tarts change but ours included passionfruit cheesecake, a lemon tart and a caramel tart, all of which were delicious.
The bill came to $80, although we don’t drink so it didn’t include beer or wine, which could really add up. We felt like a pot of tea at the end but strangely they only serve a single type of hot drink: a short black, apparently you’re not cool if you drink anything else.
I saw this bed of flowering agave attenuatas yesterday on my bike ride. I think the garden bed had perfect winter sun and they just couldn’t help but burst out in bloom. Appararently these Mexican natives can take up to 20 years to flower.
We spent the weekend reorganizing our apartment in anticipation of junior pixels. We managed to sell just about all our excess stuff to people in our building (awesome reuse), and got a few new IKEA things that are a bit more practical.
My favourite new item would be our IKEA fusion table and chair set. I love the retro styling and rounded corners, plus the chairs have backs and padded seats which is something our old stools didn’t have.
I will post some pictures of our redone rooms in coming days.
On Saturday we went to the CSSQ 2009 Annual Cactus & Succulent show at Mount Coot-tha Botanic Gardens in Brisbane. The plants on show were amazing, and we purchased about eight plants for ourselves, which are mainly small varieties we haven’t seen before.
I really love this time of year as it is not too cold and the sun sets to the North which means we can watch it from our balcony. The sunset yesterday was particually dramatic.
We saw Lior play at the Brisbane Powerhouse on Thursday night (23 April 2009). It was yet another amazing Lior show, this time he was accompanied by a string quartet, a shadow artist Stephen Mushin, and a special guest who played a tabla for a couple of songs, which was really amazing.
Lior singing "I'll forget you" with Katie Noonan
The shadow artisty really made the show, it was simple yet so effective. It was projected on a round screen directly behing Lior. Originally Lior planned on having two shadow artists on tour, but he quickly had to change plans when of them gave birth very recently. Stephen Mushin did a really great job by himself, changing the screen in time to each song, with very subtle indicators of change. The concept of shadow artistry can be seen in the film clip for Lior’s “I’ll forget you”:
All in all, it was a very enjoyable concert. Lior finished this two song encore with a brilliant instrument-less solo chant, which reminded me of Fajr we heard every morning in Malaysia.
Posted by juiced 
Posted by juiced 
Posted by juiced 
