Hyde Park Hotel

Hello friends! I have decided to expand the reach of the rambling extrovert into... FOOD REVIEWS! Yes you heard me.

There's something called "Pub Crawl" which I have started going to. It involves people eating regular food and having fun. It's more of a "food crawl", but the food is at pubs.

My goals at "Pub Crawl" are similar to the ones of the writer of http://weeklypubcrawl.blogspot.com/ , and I will enumerate them below:

• Spend at least $25 (not including drinks)
• Not make myself sick by eating anything with vegetables in it
• Have a terrible evening

 I will score based on the following criteria:

• 1 point per menu item over $25 (max 6)
• -1 point per vegetable on my plate (max +3, min 0)
• Rating of how much I hated the meal (max 3)

 So, with the business out of the way, on to the review of the pub!
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Food Prices

Unfortunately, because this was my first pub crawl I had not yet realised I would suddenly grow to have a passion for food blogging; as a result, I'm not going to be able to rate this menu on the number of over $25 options. I know there were at least two or three; however I would like to point out that I don't particularly care for steak or seafood so spending over $25 while having a meal that I despise will not be so difficult so long as I order the prawns.

I ended up ordering, at the request of my beautiful and talented boyfriend N, a mole poblano pork belly for $26.50 - within my budget, fortunately! There was also a nice looking "asian taco" that reminded me of the iceberg stage of peking duck, but it was only $19.50 so was outside my budget.

EDIT: I actually found the menu after all, and it turns out they have 4 different items over $25 on the "steak and meat" menu, and the casserecce with prawns exceeds $25, and another 5 items (including two seafood) were also in that price range.

Food Quality

Unfortunately, the Pork Belly was really quite nice - it was on a bed of sweet potato (which I love), had red onion and lettuce. I've only had pork belly once before and that was at the famous Jackson's Restaurant, so I was not in much of a position to judge its quality but according to a fellow diner the pork belly was cooked well but did not have the crispy skin, which was comforting to know.  The balsamic was very nice as well, and there was this rather delicious spicy peanuty mexican sauce on the entire thing.

The number of vegetables on the plate (3) is already too much... but then you turn the plate around and you see this:

IT HAS SUNDRIED TOMATOES ON IT. That puts the number of vegetables up to 4 and would get negative marks if  that was possible!

All in all, I was very dissapointed to find the food delicious and fresh and well-cooked. The only saving grace of this meal was that the pork belly lacked the crispy skin.

Overall Rating

• 1 point per menu item over $25 (max 6) - 6! There were about 10 items that exceeded $25.
• -1 point per vegetable on my plate (max +3, min 0) - This gets a fat 0 because there were four vegetablse on my plate. The small amount of red onions was probably really only worth at -0.5, but that wouldn't make a difference.
• Rating of how much I hated the meal (max 3) - This would have gotten a dismal 0 if it weren't for the saving grace of the meal - the lack of crispiness in the pork belly. I'm going to be generous and give it a 1.  

Overall rating: 7/12 = 58%.

There were too many vegetables and it was far too delicious. Fortunately, the menu had many expensive items - including prawns, steak, and other foods I despise - so if I went again I might be able to choose something that would get a high score.

Another Poly Rant

Much like my partner Mr Wrong did recently, I put a notice up on facebook outing myself as poly and explaining, roughly, what the idea was.

A good guy posted some very interesting comments. He's the sort of person who has a lot to say about things and doesn't quite understand what this whole romance thing is, and he always has a cool perspective.

He makes some good, interesting and probably quite valid points. In the spirit of examining the arguments, I want to go through what he's said and give rebuttals or something.  Yes, this blog should be renamed to "The Rambling Extrovert Defends Polyamory". I hope the guy who posts it never sees this, or if he does, doesn't take offense to it. 

It's hard enough with two people making sure that both people feel about the same level of attraction and commitment to the relationship and you don't get an imbalance of one person putting more in than another, but how much moreso if you're trying to mediate between three people and make sure that you don't get two people becoming too close to the exclusion of the third.

This relies on a couple of assumptions:
a) Every relationship you have must be equal
b) Mediation is a bad thing

Let's go through these assumptions...

Every relationship you have must be equal
Let's go through my entire relationship history in chronological order:
- A guy I went out on one very awkward date with in high school (we saw I, Robot)
- A guy I dated for a year but didn't fall in love with
- My current partner, Mr Wrong, who I've been dating nearly 4 years and love very much
- My new boyfriend, Mr Oldman, who I've been dating just over a month


Now, these relationships are clearly not equal - I'd leave it to the reader to rank them. 


Does it matter that some of them overlap chronologically, and some of them don't?


Mediation is a Bad Thing
The cornerstone of polyamory is about communicating to your partners what you're thinking and feeling - my friend implied a hypothetical situation in which, say, I started spending too much time with Mr Oldman and Mr Wrong started feeling left out. And that could happen - in fact, it did! 

I had to go away for a week, and I'd made plans to spend the day I got home with Mr Wrong and the following evening with  Mr Oldman. Mr Wrong told me he felt a bit uneasy that I wanted to see Mr Oldman on my second night back rather than him; but we discussed it and I explained that I missed both of them very much, and that I wanted to make the most of the New Relationship Energy that I was feeling when I was with Mr Oldman. 


Further discussions with P led me to be more careful about when I scheduled things - now I do my best to schedule my dates with Mr Oldman so that they happen on nights when Mr Wrong is out at concerts or otherwise busy - which also gives me the extra bonus of being able to use any concerts Mr Wrong is attending as an excuse to spend time with Mr Oldman, leading to me potentially seeing more of him than I otherwise would and Mr Wrong still being comfortable with it! Fuck yeah!


EDIT: The main thing I meant to include in this section, but for some reason forgot to, was that in a monogamous relationship a LOT of mediation is going on, or should be. For example, Mr Wrong was once a little annoyed I wanted to spend time alone rather than with him, and we discussed it and worked out an agreement. The same thing happens with the poly issues above, and it will likely get us more into the habit of discussing non-poly sources of conflict/rejection and improve our communication skills.

From a less mathematical objective perspective and from a more emotional personal perspective, to me I simply can't understand the idea, it seems to undermine the very point of having a relationship.

"The very point of having a relationship"? For me, the point of having a relationship is companionship, friendship, support, love, and (of course!) sex. Having multiple relationships will only increase the amount of those things you get. Fuck yeah!

I can only assume that you feel things like love, attachment and jealousy in a completely foreign way to me. I don't think there's anything morally *wrong* with what you're doing, of course, but I think that for most people it would be psychologically unhealthy. I know this sounds harsh, but the only conclusion I can come up with is that sex, love and relationships mean nothing to you. :/

What do we call that, when you can only imagine something happening one way so that must be the way it is? Argument from ignorance? And I do feel jealousy! But you need to identify it's there and think about your reasons for feeling it and then 'get over it', through thinking or just discussion with your partners.


And I hope I feel love the same way everyone else does, because it KICKS ARSE :)

On being a slut

Let me get something out of the way: The Rambling Extrovert is a blog for ranting, and here comes a rant.

"If you have sex with too many people, it's no longer special."

 Somebody said that to me today, and with the most noble intentions.

To be honest, I think that sentence is a crock of shit. I don't think a single part of it is true. I kind of want to go through each individual word and say why it's bullshit, but there's not much I can say about the word "if". This is all going to be rather nit-picking, but that's the idea.

So I'll do a (mostly) piecewise attack on the sentence, and let me know if there's an assumption or point it makes that I haven't addressed or tackled or whatever.

So, in order:

"Have sex with"
What exactly does it mean to 'have sex'? The underlying assumption of the quote is the good old "penis in vagina" sort of biblically-sanctified husband-and-wife sort of thing, but that is not what sex truly is. Yes, we'll be splitting hairs about definitions but that's what I'm doing. To some extent, sex is everything you do with someone you are attracted to. From kissing, to holding hands, to threesomes, even to what you commonly think of as "sex" - it's all part of the same thing, the same wonderful part of life that involves you and another person exploring one another's body sexually. There are gay male couples who do not have anal sex but refer to their blowjob/jack-off/etc filled bedroom life as "sex". There's no reason to be attached to the penis/vagina interaction as something different from everything most people do to each other before that hole gets plugged.

"too many people"
I'm sorry, what? Too many people? What is too many people? If you asked a version of me from a past (catholic) life, I would have said "anyone other than my future husband". Other people might be able to give a number, but it varies depending on the person. And you know what? It's bullshit, too. Is there a limit on the number of people one can kiss in their lifetime? Hold hands with? Be friends with? Smile at?  I guess I could imagine having sex with "too many" people as having sex with so many people that one's vagina ends up being rubbed raw, but even that one could accomplish by having sex with one or two people enough times in quick succession... so I'm not sure.

"no longer special"
What the hell does 'special' mean? Is the penis-in-vagina sex that people have special, really? I would be the first to say that it's a lot of fun, and yes, sure, it gets you more connected to your sex partner, but I wouldn't say it was any more dramatic than any other of the multitude of sex or romance acts out there.

And besides, why SHOULD sex be 'special'? Do you have people not wanting to play soccer too much because it would no longer be 'special'? If you like having sex, it will be special. Geez.

BESIDES,
Having sex with more than one person has, in my (addmittedly limited) experience, made it more special as you can appreciate the differences in the sexual ouvres of each person and come to understand what it is about sex with a particular partner that is really worth it. It makes you realise the difference between having sex with someone you've met recently and enjoy spending time with and want to get to know better compared with having sex with someone you've been with for a number of years and love very much and already know super well. The contrast between the delight in finding out what turns a new partner on and the comfort and security in knowing you know exactly how to drive an old partner crazy. That's why I'm loving polyamory. That's why I love being a slut. That is why the sentence I quoted is a crock of shit.

But hell, to each their own, right? I just wanted to throw my opinion out there =D.