A Day of Rest avec un Repas Formidable

Dec 19

Saturday dawned clear and bright yet again. John slept in for the first time since he left London. He spent a lot of time (about three hours) creating videos of his three previous days - trying to get just the right scenes for this blog. He also tried to catch up with email and that took quite abit of time. He also worked on writing the blog. Unfortunately, the Internet was not cooperating.

He tried several times to upload a video but each time the YouTube website estimated that a roughly two minute segment would take over two and half hours to upload. Although John tells me he is a patient man, that seemed excessive. In fact, his computer cannot run for that length of time on battery power and it would be a major undertaking to unplug Derek's computer to plug his in, so he doesn't try. Besides, each of the segments should only take 30 minutes to upload. It is hard to believe that these little videos take such a long time to upload at low resolution.

John did a speed test on the Internet conenction and found that, although download speeds were something like 480 thousand bits per second the upload speeds were only 48 thousand bits per second. At home John reaches download speeds of 2 million bits per second or 4 times the speed. And that is 40 times the upload speed. It could have been the Internet Service provider's fault (NZ Telecom) or it could have been the start of the school summer vacation (more kids online)or it could have been more people connecting for Christmas. So, John decided to keep the videos and upload them when he gets some better upload speeds.

In the evening John took Derek and Sue to a French restuarnt in Mairangi Bay. It was called The Narrow Table. They received small bowls of something created by the chef. It was like the most delicate scrambled eggs you could imagine with truffles (not, not the chocolate kind but the special gourmet underground fungus). They then ordered an Australian shiraz, and appetizers. John had a pate made of chicken with Port wine and truffles along with crusty toasted French bread to spread it on and capers on the side. He forgot what Derek and Sue ordered (some kind of exquisite mushroom dish) but he noted that his was much bigger.

Then came the main course. Derek and Sue had ordered the rabbit pie. It came very hot in a shallow dish covered by puff pastry. John had coq au vin. There were two chicken breasts in the most amazing wine sauce. The mains were served with whole boiled potatoes and salad. Derek and John had a lemon creme brulee for dessert while Sue abstained, settling for a coffee. The meal had taken a couple of hours and the conversation had been very good. John was surprised that the bill was as low as it was (he had forgotten that the prices in NZ always include the tax and there is no tipping per se).

They arrived home about 10pm and all crashed because tomorrow was going to be a big day.

TRB