Engineer Andy's Journal: On restaurants of high quality (wed and thurs nights)

Two very fine restaurants in the space of two nights. The best of the bunch we went to this week.

Wednesday

Restaurant was Pesci's on the pier at Cairns . The girls and l were united in saying it was the best restaurant of the week
1. Entrée: Oysters Kilpatrick. Oysters with bacon and Worcester sauce on the half shell. I'd never had this before, and it was great
2. Yellowfin Tuna on a wasabi mash and Chili jam . The tuna steak was cooked to perfection on the outside, and nicely pink on the inside.
3. Matua 2004 Pinot noir accompanied. Very Nicely.
4. One of the girls had a licorice ice cream for dessert.
5. The other had a chocolate tart
6. I had a sticky date pudding.

Thursday
Started with wine, beer and cheese on a balcony BBQ area over looking the esplanade (the girls needed to finish of the beer, wine and cheese they had bought for the week)
1. Restaurant was two fish (on the pier again), Top class food and service
2. Entree was a dish with baby octopus
3. Main was a seafood risotto with king prawns.
4. For dessert we had espresso martini (vodka. Espresso, butterscotch schnapps) Very very nice

Work continues to be a very mixed thing. The project I was sent away for is fun enough, but it is hard on the ego when you get daily calls on minor problems on home projects. You only hear of things not going smoothly so a distorted picture builds about how things are in the home office. At the moment, my distorted picture is that it is all custard.

I emailed HR to express some of my concerns abort being pulled between the two offices, and my people in the other office not babysitting the projects effectively. I will use wisdom and will wait until I calm down before telling my bosses how it has affected me, or discussing these concerns. With a couple of projects which have not gone smoothly in the last year I kinda need the reassurance of a good performance review (happening before Christmas) to know I am still loved by them.

My friends were incredulous that I would be sent away for a month and would be staying in a unit without a laundry built into it. I have just got on with it rather than complaining but world put my foot down if I ever had to be seconded again. It's one thing to have to live away from your home base, and another to not have basic facilities provided.

The apartment they were in had a full sized fridge/freezer, a four element stove so you can cook proper things, and a different room for the bed to the living area. That's the kind of thing it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect as a replacement for the home I've left behind.