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Last weekend we made return visits to a pair of dinner spots: Kamel and Shakahari.

On Friday, without a reservation, we were initially turned away from a packed Kamel but one of the wait staff was nice enough to chase us down the sidewalk when a table opened up. Their dining room is a tight but comfortable collection of maybe ten tables and a bar and the food is served in portions to share, almost tapas style. We started with our two favorite dishes from our last visit. The marinated mushrooms with feta are incredible but I thought the pan-fried muscles, clams, and prawns were a bit bland this time. We also tried an Indian spiced, fried cauliflower, green beans, and tabbouleh. Altogether a nice meal but it wasn’t quite as good as I remembered.

Shakahari, on the other hand, was better this time around. My faith in humanity was restored when I spotted jalepenos in the sweet and spicy Tokyo rice balls; I wasn’t sure they existed on this continent. The baked polenta I ordered was great especially with the medley of root vegetables and mashed peas. I vaguely recall that Pete had quinoa with mushrooms and bok choy but I must have been too enamored with my own meal because I can’t recall what Twyla ordered.

As we left Shakahari we stumbled on Brunetti and spent a good twenty minutes staring wide-eyed at the elaborate desserts and confections. We tend to stay away from sweets but Brunetti overwhelmed the senses and we sampled a flour-less chocolate cake, a cheesecake, and some from fruit for Pete.

New books in Australia are expensive. Here is my tab from a recent Amazon.com ^[1] purchase and what if would have cost locally:

I wasn’t in a hurry so needless to say I opted for the cheaper option from Amazon with a two week delivery estimate.

Our local book seller, Avenue Bookstore, has a great selection, the staff are smart and friendly, and the store itself is beautiful. It just drives me crazy that the prices are so high. But it’s not just them; they seem to be competitive with the other Melbourne bookstores I’ve visited. I don’t understand the book business at all so I can’t tell if it’s the publisher, the distributor or the retailer demanding the higher prices.

Another problem is the lack of used bookstores. I’ve browsed a few in the city but most are specialty stores focusing on a specific, non-fiction genre. I can’t find anyone with relatively recent, popular fiction. I miss Half Price Books!

1. There is no amazon.com.au!
2. All prices are in USD$.
3. These prices are from dymocks.com.au which is a bit cheaper than our local bookstore.

I owe my new web hosting company a big apology. I signed up for namecheap.com’s new and very cheap (<$3/month!) basic hosting package last week but never received a response with my account details. After a half dozen emails and posts to their support center and various hosting forums it turns out that Gmail was flagging their responses to me as spam. Damn. I never check that folder.

One of their support guys got me all straightened out and even bumped me up the pro package for my troubles. It turns out they responded to all of my support requests almost immediately and have been extremely helpful working out the remaining kinks; shell access wasn’t enable by default and they run sshd on a non-standard and apparently not documented port.