Happy New Year!!!

Since Sydney is one of the first cities to hit the new year, let us wish you all an amazing year 2006, love, health, happiness...

Olivier and Natasha

If it wasn't for the fact that we also ordered the Caramelised Wagyu Beef, Kylie Kwong's recipe for Mandarin Crispy Duck would have become our absolute favorite chinese dish ever. Natasha and I first came across the Australian-born Chinese chef Kylie Kwong while watching her cooking show on ABC, got her recipe book Heart and Soul, and we always promised ourselves that we would go to her restaurant in Surry Hills called Billy Kwong.

They don't take reservations so the trick is to show up, leave your cellphone number with them, then go for a drink or two at one of the nearby pubs on Crown Street. Be warned that the wait can be up to 2 hours... but the food is definitely more than worth the wait.

The restaurant is small and stylish, and while we didn't meet Kylie she was there eating with friends or family when we left our name on the list. But back to the food! as I said, the crispy duck is fantastic, and came with a superb mandarin sauce and beautifully fragant cinnamon sticks. Natasha and I were already in heaven when our second plate arrived with the caramelised wagyu beef brisket, we each took a bite and both had a food orgasm on the spot, the meat was incredibly tender with that amazing fat marbling that is the signature of the Wagyu Beef (also known as Kobe).

Billy Kwong
355 Crown Street, Surry Hills
(02) 9332 3300

Brought to you by my trusty Slimserver here are my favorite new releases for 2005, a Top 10 lists in no particular order.

This is the last week of the year, Christmas is behind us, the new year is rapidly approaching and in that lull between the two comes the time to start making lists. Restrospective lists for the year behind us, and Predictive lists for the year ahead. And what best to start the ball rolling than with the content aggrator itself, Mr Google.

Google Zeitgeist

Google.com - Top Gainers of 2005

1. Myspace fastest growing social networking site, with a musical slant.
2. Ares The newest P2P decentralized file stealing sharing software.
3. Baidu China's overhyped search engine, with an IPO bubble never seen since the days of eToys.
4. wikipedia The biggest multilingual open access encyclopedia on the internet. Over 500000 articles and still growing.
5. orkut Google's social networking site. 6 degrees of online separation.
6. iTunes Apple music player and media portal, its first cross-platform application
7. Sky News News from the Rupert Murdoch empire.
8. World of Warcraft Blizzard Entertainment's massively successful MMORPG.
9. Green Day No, not an eco-friendly event, punk-pop band.
10. Leonardo da Vinci the multi-talented multi displinary renaissance man, and inventor of the blog.

Presented as a limited edition prototype at CEBIT 2005, the Sony ROB-1 is a wireless mobile camera can be steered from your bluetooth mobile phone (only if it's also a sony, I'm sure) and transmits pictures back. I can't think of any useful use for such a device right now, but I'm sure it'll come to me.

This reminds me of the other impractical bluetooth device that I got a few months ago, the Bluetooth CAR-100, which can only appeal to the narrow segment of the market than can both afford to buy a bluetooth remote control mini car, and find it cool to do so. Maybe I can use the robot-cam to follow the car around and take pictures?

Rustle the Leaf is an environmental comic, like a green version of Calvin and Hobbes. Created by Dave Poncé and Dan Wright, Rustle and its friends appear in a weekly strip to talk about the environment in a smart and witty manner. And because it's available online, no need to feel guilty about the paper it's printed on. From their website:

“ We live in challenging times: meaningful discussions about conservation, pollution and use of resources have been reduced to oversimplified sound bites, political positioning, and pejorative labels like 'tree hugger.' Populations are getting larger. Consumers the world-over are craving and demanding a lifestyle similar to what they see portrayed in the Pop Culture of North America. Alarmingly, we know — for a fact — that the Earth's resources can't support unbridled growth without serious changes in how we all live, use fuel, produce goods and services and grow crops.

Less fossil fuel being burned. Less exhaust gas choking our atmosphere. Less wasted irrigation water. Less persistent poison like petroleum distillates and chlorine compounds being used and diffused into our world. More talking about problems. Less fighting about them. More conservation. More education. More valuing this amazing, miraculous Earth and its ability to support us all. Put simply, Rustle the Leaf is about all of that.”

Part of my resolution this year it to become just a little shade greener, by making a few simple lifestyle changes. Reading this comic might help...

[via Treehugger]

Cut from a single piece of stainless steel, these picture frames are a good example of what I see as the new eco-friendly design generation, that combines simple recycled or recyclable materials with modern manufacturing techniques. The frame itself ships flat folded inside minimalistic cardboard envelope.

Just bend the side flap, slide a 4x6 picture between the slots and you have an instant picture frame. You can even use the packaging to send the picture and its frame to a friend.

Framed, designed in Australia by Alexander Lotersztain.

Natasha got this as a stocking stuffer present from a friend. The thumbthing is a little device that you wear on your thumb (which is probably where it got its name) and allows you to hold and read a book one handed. From the website:

"A brilliant new invention for reading books – it makes reading more comfortable. Also use it as a bookmark. Ideal for reading in bed, or in the bath or on the beach. Great for commuters. Everybody will want one, everyone should have it."

I like the fact that it can apparently use not only as an amazing reading device, but can also double up as a bookmark as well. Where will reading technology take us next?!?

The little decks of cards contain a list of bars, restaurants or shops in Sydney, Melbourne and other Australian cities. Natasha and I had found the first one last year while in Melbourne for the weekend, and used them to discover some great little shops. The cards from Decks Of Secrets have a picture of the locale, the address and a small description on the front, and the location on the map on the back.

This year, without knowing, we both added one of them to each other's Christmas stocking. I found the DINE. (Sydney formal edition) in my mine, and I put the Sydney Casual EAT. deck in hers. We both got them (separately as I had no idea) from Kikki K. which also happens to be in the Sydney SHOP. set of cards. We now have a great list of restaurant suggestions for this year, for ourselves or anyone who visits.

Billy Kwong

3/355 Crown St, Surry Hills
+61 2 9332-3300

"Here lies Kylie Kwong's modern take on Chinese cuisine is created in harmony with Yin and Yang principles, using organinc ingredients where possible" We discovered Kylie in her cooking show on ABC where re-imagines her grand-mother's traditional Chinese recipes with a modern twist.

Sushi-E

Level 4, 252 George St, Sydney
+61 2 9240-3041

"If you like your sushi couture, then sushi-e is THE place to get your fix of designer rolls."  When the alternative is a sushi train featuring such australian classics as chicken schnittzel sushi, or tuna salad sushi drenched in mayonaise, I would rather have sushi couture.

Tetsuya's

529 Kent St, Sydney
+61 2 9267-2900

"You may have heard about Tetsuya's - widely lauded as the best restaurant in Sydney, a place where you need to book a month in advance to sample food transformed into edible art..." Actually the wait is now 2-3 months for a reservation for friday night or the weekend. Which is starting to feel like a pose rather than necessity. Hopefully the wait will be worth it.

The remix culture is everywhere. Chad Doane had a simple idea when he was sitting at a product design meeting and noticed that half the group was using legal paper, and the other half grid paper. He combined the two and called it Doane Paper. I would personally have used a different color for the grid than for the legal lines so that it stands out more, and possibly left the lower have of the paper completely blank so you could also use it for freestyle drawing.

[via CoolHunting]

Draw in 3D using the incredible 3D Doodle Kit! In principle, by drawing using 2 pencils joined by a compass you could probably draw lines that seem to float in front of your eyes. In practice, unless you can animate the distance between the drawings I'm not sure you can do much more than that, assuming that the glasses even work and you can actually separate each pencil color with the correct eye.

With the announcement of a simultaneous release of Happy Feet (my little CG penguin movie) on IMAX and 35mm, we've been doing a lot of work with 3D stereoscopic imagery, learning about intra-ocular distance and how the offset between the two 3D images translate to depth perception.

This would make a great novelty item for the Art Department, so we can ask them to draw 3D storyboards of the IMAX version.

You can buy the 3D Doodle Kit from Hawkin's Bazaar.

[via Retro Thing]

Limanlamabitta!!! this beverage is quickly becoming my favorite non-alcoholic summer drink. An Australian tradition, it took me a while to decode "limanlamabitta" from its native australian to Lemon, Lime and Bitters. Made from lemonade, lime cordial and a splash of Angostura Bitters, the drink is refreshing and while it has a taste that is difficult to describe, it just works.

You can buy it either already mixed, or you can make yourself one just like they do at the pub, with the following ingredients.

Lemon, Lime & Bitters

• Lemonade (this is the soda like Sprite or Schweppes, not lemon juice)

• Lime Cordial (aka lime or lemon syrup. if you don't have any, lime juice and simple syrup will also work)
• Angostura Bitters

A properly made limanlamabitta ( try to say that five time fast... ) will feature a beautiful gradation from an pale transparent green at the bottom of the glass to a red tint from the angostura at the top. This is done by starting with the lime cordial, adding the ice cubes, then pouring the lemonade to fill the glass, then a few splashes of angostura bitters. You can then watch as the bitters slowly sinks to the bottom of the glass.

4 days until Christmas and it's already 35˚C in Sydney... I think I'll have another limanlamalamanamla now.