Demolishing Nando's: The Bird Had it Coming

I'd done this 29 times before in the last 18 months, and I think it was finally time to share my strategy for demolishing a Nando's meal. My 30th Nando's in the UK, at Balham in south London, the day before I headed to India.

For those of you that don't yet know, when I arrived in the UK I was invited by a couple of good mates, Sammy Devine and Brett Peachey, to join their Nando's challenge. Their challenge, already underway, was to see how many Nando's restaurants they could go to in the UK. The rule was that you had to eat chicken. Anyway, when I joined them they were already on 21 and 22 each.

Nando's is different here to Australia. It's more like a restaurant, where a Maitre'd greets you at the door and asks whether you're eating in, shows you to a table, and asks you to order at the till when ready. You get all-you-can-drink coke, and they have a basin for you to wash your hands after the meal.

I'm pretty sure the reason for this classiness is related to planning laws in the UK. Restaurants are treated differently (and much more leniently) than take-aways. It's fair to say that most Nando's in Australia would fall on the borderline between the two (there's a drive-thru one in Tuart Hill). Here in the UK they have to be one or the other. So for clarity's sake they've gone with the more lenient (and less objectionable) restaurant. They also differentiate themselves from Burger King, KFC, and the even dodgier imitations of KFC in doing so.

Anyway, back to the chicken. My order is almost always the same: half-chicken combo, with all-you-can-drink soft drink. The chicken is extra hot. With the combo you get two side dishes. I go for chips and spicy rice. The reasons for these choices are many. Firstly, chips rock. They are great at soaking up excess sauce or, as is often the case, any booze still in my belly from the night before.

Secondly, the rice is similarly good for soaking up sauce and is nice and greasy also so it goes down well after a big night.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the rice comes in a little bowl of its own. As soon as I get the meal I pour the rice over the main plate, emptying the bowl. The reasons for this will become clear.

Before sitting down I fill my drink (usually diet coke), get my cutlery (and many napkins, as I'm a messy bugger), and my sauce to put over the chips. I started out going for extra hot, but on the advice of Sammy and Peach I sometimes now go for medium now. Not as hot obviously, but a bit more creamy which is interesting.

So I sit down and wait - usually about ten minutes - for my meal. Usually I'm by myself (to hide my shame), and have a paper with me to read. When they seat me I usually ask for somewhere I can spread out and read a paper ( i.e. a table for four), unless there's not one available.

Then the food comes. I pour on the extra sauce over the chips. Usually liberally. As mentioned, I put the rice onto the main plate, leaving the little bowl empty. And I start by eating most of the rice - that is, eating the rice that's easy to pick up, but leaving maybe 10% or so behind. This isn't laziness (in any internal battle between sloth and gluttony, gluttony wins hands down every time), as you'll see later.

So with most of the rice gone, I step it up a notch and head for the chips. They're in trouble. I scoff them down, again maybe leaving one or two behind, usually the chips left under the chicken itself.

You'll notice, incidentally, that my strategy for eating the meal goes from eating the food I least like first to the food I most like last. It's a habit I've had for ages. It means I always finish my meals!

And so to the chicken. With a half chicken there's white meat and grey meat. I start by pulling as much as I can off the bones and cutting it up (both white and grey meat). It'll sit there for a while though, soaking in it's own sauce as well as the additional sauce left over from the chips. I might have a couple of cheeky bits of meat while cutting it up but most of it will not be eaten at this stage. The only meat I won't take off the bone will be the drumstick and wing.

It can get a little messy, even though I do all this with a knife and fork. Goodness me, I'm not a grot!

Then I usually head for the drumstick. And by now I'm using my hands. Obvious really for a drumstick, especially if you're going to suck every last morsel of meat from it. Which I am.

Now the genius of the spicy rice really comes into its own. The empty bowl is used as a receptacle for bones I've finished with. I think the more comprehensively you go through a chicken carcass, the more important it is to separate the bones from the food still to be eaten.

When you want to get every last morsel of meat, you often get down to individual rib bones. You don't want them hanging around with your still-to-be-eaten chicken, you need it to be separate.

Once you move to using your hands for Nando's, there's no going back. You can't pretend you're dainty after getting stuck in like some sort of barbarian; it's like unscrambling an egg. So I dive in - almost literally. Next stop in the meal are the other bones (except the wing), which will still have some meat on them. Like the drumstick, I use my fingers, although this does get quite messy because these bones are not as easy to strip. But luckily I'm patient (see above comment about contests between sloth and gluttony).

When those bones are picked clean - which can take some time - I move on to the meat I've left on my plate, cut away from the bone. Now soaked in the sauces (rather than just basted with them), I scoff them down. First the grey meat, then the white. Bloody fantastic.

At the end of this all that's left is the wing. Super crispy, heaps of sauce basted on it. I go for the end bit first, the crispiest but the least meat. Then I snaffle the other end, which has more meat on it but is juicy rather than crispy. Finally - my favourite part of the whole bird - the middle piece of the wing.

Once I'm done there the rice and chips become relevant. What's left on the plate is a mix o of sauce, rice, the odd chip, and morsels of chicken (usually thrown off the bone by the violence of my attack on the carcass). The chicken alone would be too difficult to scoop up, but with a bit of rice and a chip or two, I can get every last bit of the chicken off my plate!

That's it! Thirty Nando's, mostly done just like that! You didn't realise there was so much to it did you?

Short-Sleeved Business Shirts and Ties, All the Fashion in Iran

Engineers are funny folk. I think I like jokes about engineers more than lawyer jokes. A friend of mine - an engineer - tells me a joke. You've probably heard it.

An engineer is walking across a park. A beautiful woman is riding her bike across the park and sees him. She stops in front of him, strips off her clothes and says "take what you want." The engineer picks up the bike and rides off.

Later he tells the story to his engineering friends. At the end one of them says "good thinking - the bike is far more valuable than the clothes."

Shut up, I like it.

When I was working for the WA govt I was telling the same friend about some traffic engineers I have to deal with in the public sector. He shuddered - a similar shudder to when I refer to my dentist as "Doctor Brown" in front of my doctor mates. After a couple of moments' careful thought he said to me deliberately: "a public sector traffic engineer would be the very definition of the worst of the engineering crop from any given university - that pretty much ticks all the boxes for uselessness."

Putting aside that I ticked at least one of the boxes as I worked in the public service, I've thought about that comment regularly since then (I work with traffic engineers wherever I go as a planner).

Imagine my shock then when I find out that the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, was a traffic engineer. He's got a PhD in it to boot (his very existence can make the engineers and doctors shudder at the same time - kudos!).

Bearing this in mind, some of his comments make a lot of sense. For example "there are no gays in Iran" - he later added "because I don't know of any". Coz that closet they come out of is see -through you see...

And he wears his "characteristic grey suit" in public. Of course he does - and he has a short-sleeved business shirt, and a tie, underneath (always a good look).

And to top it off, he says he has "no time for economists" - he gets his economic information "from his butcher." Brilliant. This man is building a nuclear reactor - and/or a nuclear weapon.

But more than anything else, this probably illustrates why his country treats women so very badly. I wonder how many of them are lying naked in a park, while the men steal their bikes and ride home. Poor girls.

Oh yeah, and he blogs.

Tis the Season

What is it about September? After seeing only a few people rock up from out of town in the previous 12 months, in September a whole heap of people have turned up in London in their travels. Yes, there is the Rugby World Cup, but not all the people I've caught up with are here for the rugby.

After a bit of thought, I think I have it. It's the weather. If you come in winter it's unbearable, and not worth it (you're missing the southern summer also). Worse, if you come in summer and it's miserable, you feel genuinely let down. Some of that famous English pessimism infects you (it's the closest thing they have to a traveller's disease here, and you can't get a jab against it).

No, the main reason people travelled here in September is because there is still a chance of reasonable weather, but if it's rotten you can just shrug your shoulders and say "oh well, I must have missed summer."

Either way, I've welcomed a heap of people from Perth here in the last few weeks: Mellor, Millsy, Kareena, Benny Crawford, Nolesy, Burgo, Jethro Allen - oh yeah, and mum and dad. It's been great having them here!

And Vicky will be here next week. She's always been a bit tardy.

Pics from the monstrous bender last week are here also.

When Social Calendars Attack

Sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day. Not only at work, where it seems to be really stacking up at the moment, but also in socialising. I'm coming to the end of a long series of weekends where I've been fully booked for months (and also quite a few weekdays) - and while the short, flourishing life of my inner social butterfly is dying, there is one last burst of life to be endured before being allowed to rest, and that is this Saturday. Here's a rundown.

4:30am-9am - Line up outside the Finchley Road Walkabout for the AFL Grand Final. Doors open 5am, bouncedown is 5:30am. It'll be all over by about 9am. A few people are joining me for that, including Jez, Kev and a few other mates not exactly known for their sobriety.

9am-11:30am - A bit of a black spot but it will most likely involve a disgusting, extended and alcoholic breakfast (possibly involving curry, and/or chips with curry sauce). It might involve staying at the Walkabout if they don't kick us out. Eventually we have to get on the tube to travel to Borough.

12noon-6pm - In Borough, Morgs' party kicks off - a combined housewarming and birthday party for Kim (his lovely GF). It'll be a good chance to catch up. The Wallabies play Canada in the Rugby World Cup at 2pm. Oh yeah, and it's a keg party. Two kegs - one of beer and one of Pimm's.

6pm-8pm(ish) - The party moves to a 80s bar in the city, called Reflex. Kegs presumably finished by then. I'm not carrying them.

8pm - Raife's 30th kicks off in Soho. I suspect I'll be a little late, coming straight from Reflex and hopefully remembering to eat on the way. Raife has promised to keep the party going until the bar closes at 3am.

In short, this is going to be one of those mornings/days/nights where I have to take my camera with me so I know what happened. Hopefully joining the dots the following day won't be too painful an experience. This must be what getting attacked by your hectic social schedule is like. In my case I'll just be boozing for 22 hours.

Photos - obviously - will follow.

What I Miss About Perth

Last weekend was wonderful - about 22 degrees, bright sunshine, and we managed to play cricket to boot! I might have even got sunburnt. But like so many bouncers that have come my way at closing time, the weather has closed in and summarily -comprehensively - dismissed summer. I awoke on Monday and Tuesday to clear but chilly conditions (about five degrees), and the sun was barely up as I plodded down to my train. Sigh.

With this in mind, and realising I'd have the next nine months indoors alone with my thoughts (a scary prospect), it is surely time to walk that well-worn path by listing thing I miss about home. I am aware that in doing this I am in fear of being called a whingeing pom. Family and friends go without saying obviously, don't get all soppy though. You're not all friends.

Strip Sub Combos

While my penchant for Nando's is well recorded, not much can replace a Strip Sub Combo from Red Rooster. The crusty, deep fried strips of chicken, the cholesterol-laden mayonnaise with mysterious herbs. The token lettuce. The sugar-laden baguette. Phwoar, not bad!

This, of course, could be extended to a few more foods also: choc milk and iced coffee, Vegemite, decent meat pies (rather than the "meat" pies over here).

The Beach

I'm not a huge beach person - I appreciate it more in knowing it's there and that I can head down there any time I want. Over here, that isn't the case, so I still miss it. From my arrival here on May 9, I didn't see the ocean until the end of August (and that was in Iceland). Almost four months.

To be fair I could add open space and real grass to that.

Taking the Weather for Granted

It's entirely feasible to forget the sky is blue here. Sunny weather is always noticed here. It's a bit disappointing: to appreciate every sunny day because you have to. It'd be nice to know that, bar a couple of humid changes, the next 3 months will feature cloudless skies and temperatures in the thirties.

Optimism

I appreciate the irony of including this in a blog entry full of regret for things I've left behind in Oz. But it's one of the most noticeable. People over here get all hyped up, usually over an individual (Beckham, Pietersen, Wilkinson) and heap him with expectation, and follow it up with an overwhelming sigh and immediate pessimism, with comments like "typical England". The press, especially the tabloid press, do this incessantly. But no one - no one - does this more than Nasser Hussain when commentating the cricket. England never stood a chance under him.

But its not just in sport. It seems to pervade every facet of British culture.

English People

No doubt, there are more in WA than there are in London. If you want to meet a pom, don't go to London.

I don't actually miss them, I just wanted to make that point.

Customer Service

This is well known, and nowhere better than in the bureaucracy. Even confusing bureaucratic dead-ends, which obviously frustrate the hell out of members of the public, are explained with apathy as if going through the motions. Honestly I wonder how much thought some people put into dealing with the public. Put yourself in their shoes.

Not restricted to bureaucracy though. The other night I was getting a night bus home. I waited about 30 minutes for it to come along, and my Oyster card didn't work - it was out of credit. I handed the guy the fare and he said I had to get a ticket outside. I pop out to get it and the bus is driving off! I run alongside it for about 50 metres bashing the door. He opens it and says unapologetically, "Its not my job to wait for you"

I walk away and half-under-my-breath said "Fuck off" - at the pathetic comment.

He screamed at me and kicked me off the bus. I waited another 40 minutes, but I was much happier having given him a piece of my mind.

But the one thing I've noticed more than anything is the pathological inability for people that serve you to look you in the eye - even when they're handing you your change. Very, very unfriendly, and more than a little isolating in a big city.

Diction

For the inventors of this fine language, they do a hell of a job bastardising it. It seems everyone wants to substitute glottal stops for every "t", so they are actually silent. In short, people don't know how to pronounce words. I give some of my English mates shit about this when we give each other a ribbing, and that's where the fun ends. They take exception to it - even when they do it themselves. So if you ever want to annoy a pom, that's what you need to do.

I guess writing about missing home means I'm becoming a Whingeing* Pom. Talk about irony.

I'm sure there are heaps more. Any suggestions??

(* I'm not comfortable with that spelling of "whingeing" - never have been - but "whinging" just looks ludicrous)