There was a period of time back in the early 2000's when I was a bit of a fine dining aficionado. I'm not sure what prompted it, but at some point in 2002/2003, Adam, Gully, Yvette and I all started going out once per month together to a flash restaurant. It was only ever once a month or so as we always went the whole hog, so it was usually $250+ per head.
Balthazar https://www.balthazar.com.au/ is the first one that springs to mind. The four of us went there a couple of times, and I have been since, and it remains to me, one of the best eating and drinking experiences in Perth. It's a nice balance between cool chic character and intimate private dining, and we always had a blast here. This is the place where I found Trumer Pils, my favourite beer of all time. It is also the place where we found Pierre The Dirty Little Spider. That was a cocktail, and one drunken night we had a huge laugh talking with the German waiter about it. "Oh Pierre, you dirty little spider!". I'm not sure the webpage still works, but the restaurant is still there. Very much worth checking out. The food is absolutely superb.
Friends http://www.friendsrestaurant.com.au/ is also a cracker. This was more a place I went to with Richo and Merryn, old friends from the KCGM days originally, and from almost everywhere else I worked since! It is also a fine dining place, but really more of an upmarket bistro than a 5* restaurant to be honest. Not knocking it, but that's how it felt to me. Still, the steaks there, especially the wagyu, were first-class, as were the desserts and the wine list. It was a wonderful place to have a great meal, numerous drinks, sitting in a comfortable, classy location.
Fraser's https://www.frasersrestaurant.com.au/ is an absolute hoot of a joint. Classy, beautifully located and established in King's Park, and a wonderful place to spend an evening indulging in food and drink. I spent many a memorable night there, with groups mentioned in both the first two fine-dining joints being among them, as well as numerous others. It's a wonderful location among the trees, and the food and wine list match that perfectly. I have always had great food here, and was always excited for a return visit.
So that period lasted about a year or so, at least until I left W.A. and ventured over to Queensland for a look. G & Y are no longer together, so it's unlikely the group will reconvene. Still, Adam and Gully are both still in Perth these days, so possibly a boy's version could be an option if I ever get over for a visit. I'd really like to.
I can't finish without a more contemporary addition to the list:
Lafite http://www.shangri-la.com/kualalumpur/shangrila/dining/restaurants/lafite/
Lafite is a fine dining French restaurant in KL, and was my introduction to degustation. OMG. Seriously, that has to be the most indulgent and funnest way to have a fine dining experience. I have done it twice, once with my baby, and once with Brian and Ailish. Far out it was good. 8 small courses, each paired with wine. So delectable, so opulent, so damn good.
Yeah, if life ever permits me to go and briefly relive those halcyon days where I could afford fine dining, it's going to have to be a degustation for me!
Wednesday, 27 February 2019
100 up
Wow, so when Bidoy turns 6 in September, an interesting statistic will be achieved by our little family.
As a group, we will turn 100.
That's me at 46, wifey at 38, Lala at 7, Bidoy at 6 and Babi at 3.
Quite an amazing statistic really! So in another 20 years, we'll turn 200. Fingers crossed we're still all around for that milestone!
Not to put a sobering thought on things, but while we're talking about family ages, I may as well have a quick look at where my own original family is at as of today:
Dad (deceased): 71
Ma: 81
Mick (deceased): 61
Pete: 59
V: 59
Me: 46
Total: 377
Far out. That's a whole lot higher than I was expecting it to be! Incredible number of years when you add them all together. Obviously it helps when most of the family is over the half tonne mark, even so, it's huge.
The cycle of life hey. Numbers don't make it impersonal, they just contextualise it in my opinion. We're all on a journey, one that has a use-by-date in this physical world at least. As individuals, our numbers don't add up to all that much. As families, wow, suddenly they're massively impressive numbers with vast amounts of experience behind them.
Interesting thoughts...
Footnote/Update: So I am going through the blog and putting in images to make it a bit more interesting, such as the one in this post. It is now 2024, and Bidoy just turned 11. So when he turned 6, we hit thar magical ton as a family. Now though, well I am 51, wifey is 43, Loaf 12, B 11 and G 8. That all adds up to 125. Crikey that shot along quick. Hardly any surprise I suppose, given we go up by 5 each year. We'll be doing a Maxi and limping along to 200 before you know it!
As a group, we will turn 100.
That's me at 46, wifey at 38, Lala at 7, Bidoy at 6 and Babi at 3.
Quite an amazing statistic really! So in another 20 years, we'll turn 200. Fingers crossed we're still all around for that milestone!
Not to put a sobering thought on things, but while we're talking about family ages, I may as well have a quick look at where my own original family is at as of today:
Dad (deceased): 71
Ma: 81
Mick (deceased): 61
Pete: 59
V: 59
Me: 46
Total: 377
Far out. That's a whole lot higher than I was expecting it to be! Incredible number of years when you add them all together. Obviously it helps when most of the family is over the half tonne mark, even so, it's huge.
The cycle of life hey. Numbers don't make it impersonal, they just contextualise it in my opinion. We're all on a journey, one that has a use-by-date in this physical world at least. As individuals, our numbers don't add up to all that much. As families, wow, suddenly they're massively impressive numbers with vast amounts of experience behind them.
Interesting thoughts...
Footnote/Update: So I am going through the blog and putting in images to make it a bit more interesting, such as the one in this post. It is now 2024, and Bidoy just turned 11. So when he turned 6, we hit thar magical ton as a family. Now though, well I am 51, wifey is 43, Loaf 12, B 11 and G 8. That all adds up to 125. Crikey that shot along quick. Hardly any surprise I suppose, given we go up by 5 each year. We'll be doing a Maxi and limping along to 200 before you know it!
Wednesday, 13 February 2019
Where It's At
So here we are, approaching one year into the Kupang experience.
And what an experience. Frankly my boss should probably be in jail. You can't lie to shareholders and expect to get away with it. Stupid.
But, this is an awesome project. I fully expect it to go ahead, I just expect that the people kicking in the funds are going to want to see some changes.
I am going to be one of those changes. Not that anyone wants me to go. Other than me, that is. I have had enough. The unprofessional nature of how we do business here has worn me down to the point of no return. I can't do it anymore.
So I have started looking. And boy, has the industry become interesting since the last time I looked!
There are jobs galore in Oz of course, but I have been asked to consider Finland, Russia, USA, England and Malaysia. Wow! I don't think I've ever seen the first three countries on that list advertise for the likes of me before. And England doesn't come up often either!
So who knows where we will end up next. I can't say too much, but there is another option on the table, from a source much closer to home. That might just end up with us back in Malaysia again....
That, dear readers, would be AWESOME.
Watch this space...
And what an experience. Frankly my boss should probably be in jail. You can't lie to shareholders and expect to get away with it. Stupid.
But, this is an awesome project. I fully expect it to go ahead, I just expect that the people kicking in the funds are going to want to see some changes.
I am going to be one of those changes. Not that anyone wants me to go. Other than me, that is. I have had enough. The unprofessional nature of how we do business here has worn me down to the point of no return. I can't do it anymore.
So I have started looking. And boy, has the industry become interesting since the last time I looked!
There are jobs galore in Oz of course, but I have been asked to consider Finland, Russia, USA, England and Malaysia. Wow! I don't think I've ever seen the first three countries on that list advertise for the likes of me before. And England doesn't come up often either!
So who knows where we will end up next. I can't say too much, but there is another option on the table, from a source much closer to home. That might just end up with us back in Malaysia again....
That, dear readers, would be AWESOME.
Watch this space...
Punt Musings
Well, so much for that little plan. Yesterday I thought I'd fart-arse around with One Note and then transfer my post into here. Really? Fucking useless. No such thing as a straight copy and paste between different platforms. It would take me almost as much time to recreate the post here as it did to write the bastard.
Lucky for me, my conclusions yesterday were inconclusive. So I had to go back to the drawing board, but this time with 2 weeks of data, or 172 races. So rather than deal with how I got to that point, let's just say that W2 was not the same as W1, and that we needed to reconsider our approach.
So here's the summary table of what we've got. The only real difference is I have introduced Provincial as a track grouping, replacing Suburban. Basically any non-metro race in a centre of greater than 50,000 population is classified as provincial.
Ok, so this is pretty compelling. As expected, the base shows a return of -8% on both win and place, and no improvement by getting rid of maidens, <3S or both. So what if we just look at metro, provincial or country?
Well Metro base is actually worse. This data says horses with <3S should be avoided in Metro, and quite possible maidens too. The data for provincial backs this up seriously. Country looks pretty bad all-round.
So from this data, what for W3? I think we're looking at a trial for Metro and Provincial only, win bets only, using my formula, but excluding maidens and <3S. This should reduce our workload considerably. Let's do it.
Lucky for me, my conclusions yesterday were inconclusive. So I had to go back to the drawing board, but this time with 2 weeks of data, or 172 races. So rather than deal with how I got to that point, let's just say that W2 was not the same as W1, and that we needed to reconsider our approach.
So here's the summary table of what we've got. The only real difference is I have introduced Provincial as a track grouping, replacing Suburban. Basically any non-metro race in a centre of greater than 50,000 population is classified as provincial.
Ok, so this is pretty compelling. As expected, the base shows a return of -8% on both win and place, and no improvement by getting rid of maidens, <3S or both. So what if we just look at metro, provincial or country?
Well Metro base is actually worse. This data says horses with <3S should be avoided in Metro, and quite possible maidens too. The data for provincial backs this up seriously. Country looks pretty bad all-round.
So from this data, what for W3? I think we're looking at a trial for Metro and Provincial only, win bets only, using my formula, but excluding maidens and <3S. This should reduce our workload considerably. Let's do it.
Monday, 4 February 2019
New Year, New System
Yep, it's back to a long-lost topic of ours on here - the punt!
Since moving to Kupang, and frankly for the impoverished two years before that, my goal of developing a winning punting system and starting the long journey towards becoming a professional punter, has been put on hold.
Recently, because of our useless funding system at work, I have had little to do. I probably work 2-3 days maximum of my 5 day week. So that leaves me two days in which to fart-arse around, read, write, game, or punt. I was reading through some of the old Race Rate info the other day (RIP Peter, fabulous job setting up that site when you were alive), and one article in particular piqued my interest.
Overall, I find RR's systems aren't that flash for me, but they DO give me a lot of good ideas. I had worked out the throes of my own system in 2015/16, but it wasn't perfect. Reading a couple of Peter's articles gave me an idea of a way to put a different slant on my own system, one that was quite simple to introduce. So I did that, and last week ran a trial. Let's call my system Super 12's.
Without giving the game away, it's pretty simple. It relies on using a lot of the work of the market in finding favourites, then applying rigourous analysis to these favourites, to decide which ones to back. However, I am suspect about this applying across the board, so as well as the basic rule set, I am looking at maidens, horses with less than 3 starts, and where the race is (metro, suburban or country).
So the results are in. As usual, this system can work, but it all relies on the staking approach. Again, if I apply my own variant of Peter's 0.33% per bet system, all in returns 43% over the week long period of the trial, and metro only returns 12.5%. Metro had 64% SR compared to all in of 59%. But the key stat is that both had a maximum run of outs of 4.
Right, so basically if we want a long-term approach we could say go Metro only, as that would still return massively, but only require 2-3 days work per week. Whereas the other system returns faster but requires daily effort. Seeing as this week is going to be quiet, I am going to do a repeat of last week, and see if the results are similar. If they are, it might be time for a live trial.... Watch this space.
Since moving to Kupang, and frankly for the impoverished two years before that, my goal of developing a winning punting system and starting the long journey towards becoming a professional punter, has been put on hold.
Recently, because of our useless funding system at work, I have had little to do. I probably work 2-3 days maximum of my 5 day week. So that leaves me two days in which to fart-arse around, read, write, game, or punt. I was reading through some of the old Race Rate info the other day (RIP Peter, fabulous job setting up that site when you were alive), and one article in particular piqued my interest.
Overall, I find RR's systems aren't that flash for me, but they DO give me a lot of good ideas. I had worked out the throes of my own system in 2015/16, but it wasn't perfect. Reading a couple of Peter's articles gave me an idea of a way to put a different slant on my own system, one that was quite simple to introduce. So I did that, and last week ran a trial. Let's call my system Super 12's.
Without giving the game away, it's pretty simple. It relies on using a lot of the work of the market in finding favourites, then applying rigourous analysis to these favourites, to decide which ones to back. However, I am suspect about this applying across the board, so as well as the basic rule set, I am looking at maidens, horses with less than 3 starts, and where the race is (metro, suburban or country).
So the results are in. As usual, this system can work, but it all relies on the staking approach. Again, if I apply my own variant of Peter's 0.33% per bet system, all in returns 43% over the week long period of the trial, and metro only returns 12.5%. Metro had 64% SR compared to all in of 59%. But the key stat is that both had a maximum run of outs of 4.
Right, so basically if we want a long-term approach we could say go Metro only, as that would still return massively, but only require 2-3 days work per week. Whereas the other system returns faster but requires daily effort. Seeing as this week is going to be quiet, I am going to do a repeat of last week, and see if the results are similar. If they are, it might be time for a live trial.... Watch this space.
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