feeling adventurous with your coffee?

ever since my work relocated to martin place, i've been getting my morning coffee's over at mecca espresso - regarded by many as the best coffee shop in sydney (or one of the best).

one morning, i rock on over for my usual 10-10.30am coffee break and i bump into fellow coffee-nerd roly. so we give each other a nod and he's like 'yeh trust to see you here' and i'm thinking the same thing. so we're waiting for our coffee orders and having a quick chat about coffee and a few other things (ok i'm lying - it was all about coffee) and then roly asks me a rather serious question 'so what do you drink?'. i tell him my usual boring latte + 1, so he suggests the following to me...

a long black with a dash of hot milk + 1 sugar. i'm not much of a long black drinker but being my adventurous self (yes i know very life-on-the-edge stuff) and open to suggestions, i decide i'll try and make one at home on the coming weekend to see how it goes. weekend comes around and i warm up my imat napolitana...

1 teaspoon of sugar...

1 espresso shot (looking good)...

add some hot water to about 3/4 cup... (yes i now know to pull the shot over the hot water so to not burn the espresso)

heat some milk up and top up coffee...

and BAM! where my boring latte usually tastes warm, smooth and calming... this drink was a slap in the face! it had the raw taste of a long black but the smooth finish of a latte. now i know that roly's suggestion was 'a long black with a DASH of hot milk', i had already decided 1/4 hot milk would be more to my liking than just a dash (since i'm a latte drinker).

so anyway the following monday, i order the BDHM+1 (i think thats what she wrote?) and burn my tongue trying to drink it. didn't like it much - thought it was too 'long blacky' for my taste.

i have since tried a few other combinations and my fave sits somewhere along 1/2 long black + 1/2 milk. this morning i spotted some condensed milk on the kitchen bench and replaced my sugar with this... turned out to be fantastic coffee! thanks roly - looks like i've found a replacement for my latte at home... at least for mornings where i want a bit more bite in my drink.

so there you have it, if you're feeling a little adventurous one morning - try a half long black + half hot milk + 1 sugar (or condensed milk if found lying around). perhaps theres already a name for this that i don't know of? let me know your thoughts.

(can you see the face in there? is my coffee trying to tell me something?)

just another drive by shootin...

quy and i were bored last saturday evening, so we decided to head out for a random shooting session around sydney. i've always found night photography to really test my skills (and patience) and tonight wasn't to be any different. after 2-3 hours and 3 separate locations, i managed to snap 9 'passable' shots - a rather low percentage if you ask me!

9.30pm - quy and i head off to our first destination. we decide on a location relatively close to home, an unnamed bridge that runs over parramatta river along silverwater road - i remember seeing a factory there that might be worth checking out.

i don't think quy took a single shot of the factory, it was rather unimpressive i must say. the traffic behind us was a tad bit more interesting.

in total we spent 20-30 minutes at this location. i pulled out my flash for a couple of shots but achieved nothing other than perhaps convincing a few drivers that i was a speed camera. it was time to move on to our next stop - the technology park in redfern.

on our way through, we decide to take a quick detour through concord west. i had been meaning to re-visit this 'underpass' tunnel there that i had come across several months back. we manage to navigate there without too much detouring - it's a block away from concord west train station if any sydney dwellers are wondering.

apart from getting devoured by swarms of mozzies and being harassed by drunk kids, we manage to come away with several shots - probably worth the itch.

we continue on our way to redfern tech park (near carriageworks) this will be our final location for the night. the place is deserted except for a lone security doing the graveyard shift - and no, i didn't take any photos of him.

before wrapping up the nights session - the moon peeped out from behind the cloud cover. wish i had a better zoom lens!

and this last shot - caught my eye just before i literally jumped in the car to head off. probably not for everyone but i quite like the result.

all in all - a great way to kill boredom on a saturday night. the only thing i came away with that night was that night photography isn't really my thing. will i do it again in future? yeh i'm always down for a shoot :)