Mister Brisbane: Mango madness
I moan about fruit, remember free milk, and discover a holiday in a galaxy far, far away
What a difference a week makes. A fortnight ago, I bought some mangoes and they were dry and tasted sour. This week, I had another go and they were everything I hoped for and remembered.
I know there are different varieties of mangoes that “peak” at different times, and that a lot of what we buy is stored in vast chilling facilities for months on end. But is selling a mango — or any product — that’s objectively awful really a good business practice? Could the bad ones be directed into making chutneys or juices or some other product where other other ingredients might be able to redeem them, rather than sold directly to consumers?
It’s my fault, I suppose, for buying fruit and veg at the supermarket. As well as storing out-of-season fruit, they have to buy in bulk so they can advertise and sell the same produce around the country. A local fruiterer can go to the markets and select whatever looks (and tastes) good on the day.
COINCIDENTAL TALE
Is this the ultimate Brisbane “small world” story, or just a typical one? A colleague, recently arrived from the Northern Territory, told me he went to visit a friend on the northside of Brisbane. Turns out the friend lives in the street where I grew up.
NUMBER’S UP
I’m fascinated by the things we say even though we know they are wrong. And chief among them is saying “oh” instead of “zero” when giving out a phone number. How many people do this? Well, according to a Twitter poll I conducted last week, about half of us.
Comments included:
Jen: “I get quite frustrated with the ‘oh’ when hubby uses it, instead of zero.”
Daniel: “Years of working in a call centre, I enunciate zero. No ambiguity.”
Sam: “Strangely [I say] ‘oh’ in my mobile number but ‘zero’ in my old home phone number.”
Jim: “For those who say the letter ‘O’ when it’s the numeral ‘0’, do you say the letter ‘I’ when it’s the numeral ‘1’?”
Meanwhile, my mate Jonathan hates the term “social distancing”. He says you can still be social at a distance, so we should be saying “physical distancing”. Thoughts?
CHEWIE, WE’RE HOME
I love the experience of cruising. Would I love it so much on dry land without the opportunity to visit foreign countries? Well, it may just be that this is the future of “cruising”: The Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser Resort. It’s a hotel at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida that offers guests a Star Wars-themed immersive experience.
Is this a bandwagon Brisbane could jump on? It doesn’t need to have a Star Wars theme. Maybe the resort could be built so the theme could change — from movie or TV franchises to, say, an outback, rainforest or reef experience . Is anybody as excited about the possibilities here as I am?
TETRAPACKED
Also on Twitter, somebody (sorry, I forgot who) posted a picture of what I know of as a Tetra Pak, which is a drink container in the shape of a tetrahedron.
When I was in primary school in Brisbane, we used to get free milk — first in bottles, then in Tetra Paks (which I think is the name of the company that made them rather than the name of the container itself. The free-milk scheme ended long ago, but Sunnyboys — frozen orange cordial treats — came in similar packaging. From memory, the red-cordial version of a Sunnyboy was called Razz. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
DO YOU REMEMBER?
This story (well, just the headline really) about Prince George having to collect litter at school reminds me of “emu parades”. Are they still a thing?
PHOTO FINISH
Either my local Maccas at Cannon Hill is celebrating Halloween or … actually, I don’t want to think about the alternative.