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World Youth Day!

July 3rd 2008 00:45

Sydney-siders face 'unreasonable interference' during World Youth Day

Pope Benedict addresses a youth rally crowd

Pope Benedict will arrive in Sydney amid tight security. (Reuters, file photo: Erin Siegal)

Draconian, repugnant and unnecessary. These are just a few of the criticisms of special regulations coming into force for the upcoming Catholic World Youth Day event in Sydney.

Civil libertarians and legal experts say the regulations could see situations such as someone deemed to be wearing an offensive T-shirt being arrested and given a hefty fine.

New South Wales Police say the measures are designed simply to ensure that World Youth Day is a peaceful and happy event.

The event runs from July 15 to July 20, but from today until the end of the month the regulations come into force.

Under the regime SES and Rural Fire Service volunteers will assist police in bag checks at World Youth Day locations.

And anyone deemed to be causing annoyance could be arrested and fined up to $5,500.

New South Wales deputy police commissioner Dave Owens says the regulations do not restrict democratic rights.

"If people wish to lawfully protest, we will facilitate those protests as long as they are law abiding," he said.

"Police officers always maintain a discretion, and I expect them to use that discretion."

There have been suggestions that people could be arrested if they wear a T-shirt that promotes the use of condoms. Mr Owens refused to rule that out.

"There are individual circumstances that will have to be dealt with individually," he said.

'Repugnant'

President of the New South Wales Bar Association Anna Katzmann says she does not understand why the regulations have been brought in.

"They are repugnant for two reasons," she said.

"First of all the Government has by-passed the normal parliamentary scrutiny that would be available if they were introduced by an Act of Parliament," she said.

"Secondly they are an unreasonable interference with people's freedom of speech and movement."

She says there is a chance people could be arrested for trivial offences in the areas that have been declared as special World Youth Day zones.

"These World Youth Day-declared areas are numerous and they encompass places like Sydney University and the Opera House. Places that you and I would travel to regularly, not just churches or church schools," she said.

New South Wales Council of Civil Liberties president Cameron Murphy says he is opposed to the proposed measures.

"A police officer may find someone's T-shirt annoying and on that basis issue them with a fine," he said.

"That sort of thing is likely to escalate any problems that occur rather than prevent them."

The Greens have joined civil libertarians and the Bar Association in calling for the regulations to be cancelled.

Based on an AM report by Barbara Miller.

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Posted By: Troy McNaughton - Category: Rants, Chai, Paraphernalia, Inner West, CBD, North Shore, North West, West, South, Miscellany, Food

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Bad Managers in Sydney--Part Three

December 31st 2007 12:40

Bad Managers in Sydney—Part Three

Bridie O’Wiggie, Operations Manager

Bridie O’Wiggie was different from most bad managers I have met. While ambitious and occasionally ruthless, she was not power-hungry or vindictive. She was perhaps the truest example of the Peter Principle—that people are promoted to their level of incompetence.

Bridie was so unattractive that she frightened people. A firm believer in the ‘can-do’ attitude, Bridie systematically and ineptly attacked her appearance one element at a time. A creature of impulse, Bridie opted for the quick fix as opposed to the careful makeover. Bridie had teeth sticking out at crazy angles. Lacking the patience for traditional orthodontia, Bridie had her teeth capped, resulting in a mouthful of dull, squarish piano keys. Bridie’s natural ginger hair was unmanageable, so she covered it with a black wig that resembled an electrocuted cat. Her skin was the palest pale short of albino, so she periodically went for dark orangey spray-tans.

Homely but clever women often resort to fabulous wardrobes to distract attention from their looks, and Bridie spent a lot of money on her clothes. Unfortunately, her taste ran to vivid colours, busy prints, rhinestones, and outré stiletto heels, usually all in the same outfit.

Looks are unimportant. I’ve mentioned Bridie’s only because the way she dealt with hers is a perfect example of the way she dealt with everything—tremendous enthusiasm, bad judgment, and no forethought.

Bridie really tried to be a good manager. Her bookshelf was lined with titles like “The 50 Habits of Successful Managers,” books full of clichés and dumbed-down McNuggets of information designed for people like her, busy people with short attention spans who believe that for every problem, there is a quick fix.

Bridie gleaned the following ideas from her library of management theory drivel:

• A good manager has a sense of humour.

Bridie did not get jokes, but she learned to recognise from facial expression and tone of voice that a joke had been made. She would force a laugh, but only after taking a split second to send the joke through her political correctness filter.

• A good manager promotes a ‘fun’ workplace.

Bridie did not understand fun, either. Fun is essentially pointless, and Bridie never did anything without a goal in mind. But since the management manual said that employees work harder if they have fun, Bridie organised cricket matches, trivia contests, and Easter egg hunts. She never noticed that employees resented this enforced jollity, as it often meant that they would have to stay back to get their work done.

• Having a company mascot is a great idea to improve morale.

Why stop at one mascot? Bridie populated the office with several, all of them stuffed animals that made some sort of noise when you pulled a string.

• Team-building exercises foster an atmosphere of cooperation.

Bridie forced all team leaders to conduct team-building exercises with their plebs. We did. Nothing changed.

• Negative language leads to an unproductive work atmosphere.

Bridie forbade us to say ‘no problem’ or ‘no worries’ on the grounds that these ‘negative’ phrases falsely implied that our company had problems and things to worry about. (We had a 48% turnover rate. No problem!)

Would that Bridie’s shortcomings had been limited to a love of hideous clothes and goofy management theories. Unfortunately, she had an explosive Irish temper and a ‘ready, fire, aim’ style of implementing her madcap schemes.

Bridie announced that the Quality Control department would be a thing of the past. Why? Bridie decreed that ‘going forward’ (one of her favourite phrases) no one was allowed to make mistakes, therefore, Quality Control was not necessary. Bridie shouted down anyone who predicted this would not work. Once Quality Control was gone, Bridie shouted down anyone who told her it was not working. When clients started complaining about defective products, Bridie shouted at the employees who had made the mistakes. When employees quit because of the verbal abuse, Bridie shouted at the team leaders for not retaining staff. When the team leaders resigned, Bridie hired new ones and shouted at them when mistakes kept happening. Finally, Quality Control was brought back. Bridie claimed that she had been opposed to the demise of Quality Control all along, and blamed the fiasco on another manager who had left the company.

Variations of the Quality Control debacle never stopped happening. Bridie instigated many other costly disasters, and to my knowledge she was not held responsible for any of them. The Director lived on a higher plane of existence, buzzing in and out of the office with his mobile stuck to his ear, repeating ‘price per unit’ and ‘return on investment’ like a mantra. My guess is that Bridie presented him with a spreadsheet of massaged figures and distracted him with fanciful descriptions of her next master plan.

My, this post is getting long. I haven’t the space to describe Bridie’s many other displays of bad judgment and just plain lunacy. I bailed from the company when Bridie sent a lackey to our overseas branch to sort out the problems they were having with English. The lackey was a functional illiterate who failed to solve the problems and created several more. Upon her return to Australia, the lackey was promoted.

I declined an exit interview.

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Posted By: Mitchell Hooter - Category: Miscellany

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Shopfast--is anyone else giving up on them?

December 15th 2007 07:49

Shopfast--I give up!
When I started using Shopfast in 1999, they were great. Buy your groceries online, and pay only six dollars to have all your stuff delivered. For someone like me, who does not drive and buys lots of bottled water, it was a godsend. No more schlepping back and forth to the neighbourhood grocery with a little upright trolley, which for some reason, made people eye me with curiosity and/or suspicion. The trolley was wire, red, and purchased at a two-dollar shop in Marrickville--there was nothing inherently threatening about it. I guess the problem was that people associate trolleys with (a) stooped little old ladies carting crates of cat food back to their flat, (b) Asians going to and from Paddy's Markets, and (c) derros wheeling around their filthy blankets, newspaper clipping collections, and casks of Arkansas Jed's Fire Eagle Piss. The spectacle of a young, healthy person pulling a trolley down the footpath screams "WEIRDO" in the mind of most Australians.

Shopfast rescued me from this weekly embarrassment, and had other benefits, as well. The groceries were delivered in enormous, sturdy cardboard boxes that made excellent storage containers, and came in handy during my too-frequent moves, whenever I was bounced out of a house-share. The variety of goods on Shopfast always exceeded the choice of goods at the local supermarket. Premium cat food that you can usually only buy at the vet's. Premium wine and liqueurs. South Cape feta cheese. Amazing choice of bottled water--sparkling and still, imported and domestic.

First, Shopfast replaced the deluxe delivery boxes with cheaper and less sturdy boxes, then did away with them altogether. Fair enough. You weren't supposed to keep the boxes anyway, and anything that saves the environment is good. I did feel sorry for the delivery drivers though, who had to unpack all the merchandise from the reusable plastic crates.

It was around this time that the delivery drivers started looking more rushed and harrassed. One driver told me he was quitting because Management were cramming more deliveries into time slots and demanding that he work inconvenient shifts, without increasing his pay. More work, more time-pressure, and complaints from disgruntled customers who were too stupid to assign blame where it belonged. As someone who was temping in call centres, being screamed by middle-class farts in a froth of impatient greed about the accrual of their credit card reward points, I could empathise.

Then the range of items offered narrowed. No more vet-approved cat food. Gone was my preferred brand of cheese biscuit. Oh well. I could get those items elsewhere and carry them home in my backpack. Anyway, I primarily used Shopfast for things too bulky and heavy to fit in my bicycle panniers.

Then I stopped buying milk, because the cartons delivered only had a few days to go before the use-by date. Shopfast always credited my account when I complained via email (not to the downtrodden driver), but it kept happening, so I gave up ordering milk.

Then things were frequently out of stock. Anything over a certain number of items triggered an 'unusually large quantity' flag in the minds of the Shopfast computer, which meant my bottled water orders were frequently unfilled. 'They'd be using Just In Time inventory control,' my husband sneered. 'Modern companies are run by middle-class deadshits showing off all the fancy systems they learned in management school.' In other words, the sort of people who threatened to call the Ombudsman in my call centre days when I explained that I could not reinstate the expired bonus points that they'd been hoarding for six years.

Prior to the delivery of my most recent order from Shopfast, I got an email saying that seventeen of the items I had ordered were out of stock. I called Shopfast's 1800 number, waited in the queue listening to the 'your call is important to us' recording, and explained to a weary-sounding, patient, and exquisitely polite operator that I would like to cancel the order, and that Shopfast's management needed a kick up the backside.

Guess it's time to buy a new trolley.

Does anyone else use a grocery delivery service in Sydney? Please comment below.

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Posted By: Mitchell Hooter - Category: Miscellany

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Bad Managers in Sydney--Part Two

December 5th 2007 09:10

Mr Bakayaro, the most disgusting Japanese I have ever met

Mr Bakayaro was the owner and manager of a tiny human resources agency that, theoretically, specialised in the placement of Japanese speakers. I say ‘theoretically’ because in my two months there, we never actually placed anybody. The other four employees of Bakayaro Pty Ltd speculated that his family in Japan were embarrassed by him and paid him to stay away, or perhaps were yakuza using him to launder money.

Mr Bakayaro was extremely short, plump for a Japanese, had dandruff, and frequently came to work unshowered. He freshened up in the men’s room with deodorants and a weird-smelling cologne that he kept in an ancient, cracked vinyl gym bag. He also suffered from chronic tinea, and walked around the office barefoot to expose his fungus-plagued tootsies to fresh air. In moments of deep concentration, he would rest his bare feet on the desk whilst staring at the breasts of whichever of us four women was in his line of vision. During stressful telephone conversations, he would wind the telephone cord in between his toes.

The job was typing in Japanese, translating articles for a shitty self-published bilingual newsletter, and expanding our client base. Fresh from a six-year sojourn in Japan , I thought Mr Bakayaro had hired me for my language skills. It soon became apparent that I had been hired because I was tall and blonde. I also discovered that the agency’s core clients were older men whom Mr Bakayaro entertained at a mid-price massage parlour somewhere along the Pacific Highway.

The Japanese typing was more difficult than it should have been, and not just because Mr Bakayaro’s handwriting was sloppy. He was also too cheap to buy a word processing program. I had to work on a free demo version one in which the dictionary didn’t contain polysyllabic words. Rather than phonetically typing in the whole word, I had to type each syllable one by one, and chose the correct character from a long list that popped up on the screen.

The translation was even more needlessly difficult. Mr Bakayaro enjoyed seeing his employees make errors or take a long time to do something, as it gave him an excuse to shout at and belittle them. He would hand me a fax to be translated, making sure the print size was small and the quality adjusted to the lowest resolution, so that difficult characters with lots of tiny strokes came out blurred.

Sometimes I accompanied Mr Bakayaro taking prospective clients to lunch at a private club, where the silver-haired, bespectacled receptionist greeted us with impeccable politeness and a frigid, unwavering stare. I assumed she was just another menopausal cow who disliked seeing a younger woman accompanying an older man. I later found out that the club was quietly initiating proceedings to throw out Mr Bakayaro after some unspecified offensive behaviour on his part. I never found out what that behaviour was, but I did find out, months after I walked off the job, that two of his female clients were suing him for sexual harassment.

Can you top this? Please comment.

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Posted By: Mitchell Hooter - Category: Miscellany

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((((()))))------------ A Dandelion!

August 30th 2006 11:28

("Of parentheses I may be too fond - and will be on my guard in this respect -. But I am certain that no work of empassioned & eloquent reasoning ever did or could subsist without them - They are the drama of Reason - & present the thought growing, instead of a mere Hortus siccus.")

(Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

(Hortus siccus = a dry garden)

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Posted By: amy - Category: Miscellany

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If Coleridge were a coffee connoisseur...

August 26th 2006 05:04

Nothing pulls you out of pointless, indulgent, wallowing self-pity like reading about someone else's. Poor Samuel T. Coleridge was a chronic whinger, and frankly he inspires me to cut the crap. Don't get me wrong, there are glimmers of poetic genius - but there would have to be in a lifetime of deluded grandeur and lyrical waxings.

Mr C also inspires me to get on with it. The perfect procrastinator, he scribbled his musings in notebooks, often unintelligible, full of slashes and dashes and squiggles, and left so much unperfected, unpublished. A mere germ of an idea here, a few lines of philosophical fantasy there. For a prolific writer, he rarely produced finished products.

And here am I, deadlines approaching, battling through the life and times of a man who, when he got anything done, was often half-assed about it. Better not to try than to fail, he thought. Better to expound in all manner of informal scrawlings (letters, marginalia, scribbles on his own works, scraps of paper) than finish a poem anyone could assume was a measure of his potential and have it criticised.

So maybe I won't put my heart and soul into this paper. Who wants to know what they're capable of, when instead they could walk the earth with the quiet smugness of unlimited potential?

Instead, perhaps, I will wander the streets of Sydney drinking cappuccinos with whoever cares to join me and letting the caffeinated energy evaporate into the air like heat from the cup - wasted, irretrievable potential.

Coffee gets cold by itself, but it doesn't get hot by itself.

"This is your life. And it's ending one minute at a time." -- Fight Club.

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Posted By: amy - Category: Miscellany

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Solid sustenance in SE Asia

July 21st 2006 14:55

What do they eat in SE Asia? (in no particular order)

1. Stray dogs. Okay, to be fair, this is a minority - a crazed hill tribe in the North of rural Laos. But we were privy to a sight I wish I wasn't the other day - an entire truck stacked full of mangey dogs in tiny tiny tiny cages all squashed in, stinking and crying and whimpering and generally making the Westerners seriously uncomfortable. No refrigeration means they kill everything on site and don't much care what happens to them in the meantime.

2. Crickets. Yes like small grasshoppers. They are dried and salted. Apparently they taste like chips. Just, you know, with legs. I'm not nearly that brave, not even for your education, dear reader.

3. Tarantulas. Ooooooh yes. If you can kill it, they'll eat it. With the possible exception of geckos. This is lucky. I am going to introduce geckos into Australia. They only eat insects, they'll get along fine. Cutest things ever. Except baby chameleons. Miss E had a tarantula leg. Chewy, apparently. With a hint of hair. *Slaver slaver*

4. Frogs - blame the French if you like, but see above.

5. Pond snail. Doesn't that sound so much more appetising than just plain snail? This one is encrusted with pond scum.

6. Snake - barbequed of course.

7. Porcupine - this one is anecdotal, but apparently one drowned in a river and the local reaction was to fish it out, deep fry it whole and eat it. You've seen whole deep fried fish. I imagine it's a similarly disturbing sight.

8. Fertilised eggs. *Ewwwww* I hear you say. Oh yes indeed. We saw some hungry kids wolf down these things like they were ice cream. There were these chicken foetuses inside a cooked egg. They fished them out with a fork and dangled them into their mouths. Half-formed bones and all. It was at this point that we reswallowed that night's "normal food" and wondered what heathen children would choose such a supper. We were truly, truly shocked. Then we decided it was probably more nutritious than anything we had ever eaten in our lives. Suffice to say, that didn't inspire us to partake.

9. Dried pork - pressed and spun until it looks like a mixture between wood shavings, raw cotton and brown fairy floss. It tastes creepy too. Meat was not meant to be fluffy.

10. Rice rice rice rice noodles noodles noodles rice rice rice.

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Posted By: amy - Category: Miscellany

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Liquid refreshments in a hot, wet country

July 18th 2006 14:43

What do they drink in Laos? (in no particular order)

1. Lemon juice with the very minimum of sugar and lots of ice. Okay, it IS good on a hot day. And every day IS hot.

2. Orange drinking yoghurt. I can't think of anything worse. It was masquerading as orange juice and poor Miss E was the first to get the little poppa (popper? juice box? drink box? whatever) straw in and have a suck - both thirsty after a night out before. My heart went out to her when she found it was drinking yoghurt of the worst kind. I have never laid eyes on an orange yoghurt in the developed world!

3. What looks like orange cordial but is actually bits of floating solidified jelly that is VERY gelatinous - quite a bizarre combination of liquid and solid. Not unpleasant but again certainly a shock if you're not expecting it!

Inventive name, eh?

4. Beer Lao - apparently Laos' primary industry! The beer company is also the biggest supplier of bottled water (which is all most people who can afford it drink). Beer Lao is a very very light lager. Even a non-beer drinker like myself can down it with only the minimum of lemonade (shandy pamby), or if pressed and if the beer is VERY VERY cold (-2C) then maybe without. Shock and horror. I'll even wear the T-shirt!

5. Condensed milk in their coffee - get out of town! Yum yum yum. More of that. I might start carting around a tube of the stuff (greatest marketing ploy ever - much better than a lollipop) It's great - it takes care of your sugar and milk in one and you don't have to be paranoid about the dairy product factor in a place where most tourists avoid ice, salads and dairy altogether.

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Posted By: amy - Category: Miscellany

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Vientiane - the sleepiest capital in the world (bar Canberra)

July 14th 2006 14:31

Question: What is the definition of expat paradise?

Answer: Former French protectorate capital "cities" in developing countries.

Remind you of anything?

Vientiane may look like a French name; it may be stacked with patisseries and cafes and bakeries and French restaurants; there may even be French on some of the menus. But nearly everything is SE Asian prices! Huzzah!

You can get French wine, pate, chocolate and all manner of delectable delights, but you have to be careful of overloading on the caffeine because there sure as hell isn't anything to stay up for in the evenings.

Today we witnessed two of the strangest iced coffees and iced mochas ever. It included: plenty of ice, real expresso, a little bit of milk that turned watery quite quickly and (I have no idea what the actual process was here) cold foamed milk.

It is SO wrong - completely couldn't get a cold cappuccino out of my head. I don't recommend we follow the Vientiane example.

Additionally, the mocha tasted as if it got its darker colour from burnt expresso. Very bizarre, not particularly pleasant. An iced mocha really has to be made with the same chocolate syrup that would be used in an iced chocolate. At the very least, it should be made with the chocolate powder that is used in hot mochas.

Brown food colouring will not cut it!

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Posted By: amy - Category: Miscellany

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Guess who's on holidays....???

July 11th 2006 18:15

Thai Airways - the greatest, most deregulated, most laid-back, most alcohol friendly and most hydrated airline in the world - gave us a room that we sat in for 10 hours and when we left the room again, something told us we weren't in Kansas any more.

But before we got off, we were served coffee by the most convincing coffee addict ever - if I didn't think they probably had regular drug tests I would have guessed speed... As it happens, I guess caffeine. Suffice to say, the steward in charge of dishing out the coffee looked like he'd had a few too many. Somewhat earnest. Somewhat bug-eyed. Somewhat don't-make-a-sudden-movement-he-might-freak-out.

But here I am in Bangkok and our copious shopping odyssey took us to the night bazaar, which not only yielded a ride in the world's largest portable ferris wheel (Le Roue de Paris) but also had Miss E and I stumbling across a tea stall.

There was set out the cutest little tea pots, tiny little cups and a miniature stove on which to boil water.

After I convinced Miss E that boiled water, whatever the origin, was probably okay, we were treated to a sample of some kind of tea, the name of which currently escapes... Ool.... Ool.... Does anyone know? Help me out - I'm just having a memory lapse.

But THEN, but THEN, we tried green tea. Infused only for a short time, with one teapot full of hot water just rinsed through and discarded before another teapot full was left for mabe 40 seconds to a minute and it was very very pale tea....

At first, it is like drinking hot water, slightly sweet. But afterwards, the greatest after taste we've encountered in a long while. No noticeable perking up effects but enjoyable none the same.

Suffice to say, I bought a small packet. Not a large packet. A small packet. Must do some highly scientific empirical testing of how long to leave the stuff.

Thou shalt not over-infuse green tea.

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Posted By: amy - Category: Miscellany

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Cafe Quirks: Unplugged

July 2nd 2006 18:04

I’ve seen Friends. Phoebe* might not have been the greatest musical talent of our time, but at least she added some character to Central Perk, ("Smelly Cat") an otherwise terribly Starbuckian nightmare saved only by its oversized cups. Give me a ceramic bucket from which to drink my coffee any day.

It’s like Julia Baird says, (she of the SMH Good Weekend pseudo mag, ‘Flaws for thought,’ 24 June) and it applies equally to people, political parties and coffee houses who are trying to walk the middle line in a bid to snare the majority for their favour:

“Boring though, isn’t it? The pursuit of this brittle, impossible ideal is tedious, and the final product is worse.”

So amidst all the musak and the subdued neutral hues and the perfectly unremarkable thermostat controlled temperature of Sydney cafes, why don’t we have any of this? Yes, I’m aware our friend Tian is lamenting the faux pas of the caffeinated live performer. Yes, I have already whinged about Sofitel Wentworth’s choice of performers. But we also like to bag out rugby league players, and how boring would life be without THEM? (How safe, how un-misogynistic, how dignified…) Honestly, who else would sit on street sweepers for our anecdotal entertainment?

But I’m so jealous Tian has the experience to bag these guys out. If you don’t count our run-in with the duo from easy listening hell, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a life performer in a café in Australia. A restaurant, a bar, a nightclub, yes. But never a café.

Oh, I lie. There used to be a piano guy at Belaroma in Lindfield. He got away with it because it was a white piano and he played genuinely classic jazz and oldschool stuff without the R&B interpretation. My clearest memory is of him playing As Time Goes By. Or perhaps I just watched Casablanca around that time…I don't think he's still there.

Music is so important for atmosphere. It’s hard to get the right mixtape, the right volume, the right style to appeal to your patrons. Most places, playing it safe, don’t play any. This to me is not the answer.

Particularly if you’re coffeeing on your own, music can be a welcome rest from your internal monologue, otherwise you find yourself chatting up a waiter you’re not the slightest bit interested in just for the human interaction.

At any rate, if anyone knows of any cafes in Sydney that have the odd amateur acoustic guitarist or something, I’d love to know about it! (Comment below)

As long as the choice remains – to be deep in conversation or watching the performer – it can only be a good addition to a café with character.

*For Phoebe's lyrical genius, click here.

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Posted By: amy - Category: Miscellany

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Liver Little!

June 27th 2006 18:49

Huzzah! It’s another vindication of my coffee habit! It’s been taken off that very very long list of things that give you cancer and appears to have been added to the very very short list of things that might be good for you. Or at least good for your liver.

ATTENTION ALL TEA-TOTALLERS: it only works if you drink enough alcohol to give yourself alcoholic cirrhosis. Sucked in, no benefits to you.

ATTENTION ALL TEA-DRINKERS: tea won’t cut it – whatever the active chemical is, it isn’t caffeine. That’s right, remember? Tea contains caffeine? Good health move all you health nuts.

ATTENTION ALL HEDONISTS: always follow your big night out with a good coffee the next day – your liver will thank you.

Happy drinking!

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Posted By: amy - Category: Miscellany

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How to Choose a Date Cafe

June 13th 2006 19:55

So The Lovers card comes up...
What to look for:

1) A neutral location – meet in the middle unless one of you is ultra keen to do the travelling. Some people just like to drive. Just consider the cost of petrol people. You also don’t want to come across 6 people you know in the space of an hour date – yes you look popular but one can never help thinking your ‘friends’ might be paid extras.

2) Somewhere you’ve been before – don’t be responsible for choosing a crap café at random, you’ll find yourself apologising before anything between you two lovebirds has even begun. Plenty of time for apologising when you’re married and bickering.

3) Mid-range – don’t embarrass your date with somewhere out of their price range. Similarly, rarely do you get a wholly satisfactory café experience at a bottom-end budget café. Go for reasonably priced to put you both at ease and make you more likely to order multiple coffees while you keep the conversation going.

4) Ambience – arguably this consideration should be your Numero Uno. Atmosphere is everything – it can push you in or out of your comfort zone, you can be distracted where you should be paying attention, there might be too much pressure. If you don’t know this prospective chicken very well, you don’t want the most exclusive little nook in Sydney: what happens if you run out of things to say? Find somewhere good for people watching (you can always bitch about strangers at a pinch) that isn’t too noisy. Also, look for lighting of the non-fluorescent kind – if we all lived in a fluorescent world the birth rate would be zero in no time at all.

5) Service – there is nothing worse than looking over your company’s shoulder every 10 seconds in an agitated fashion because you’re famished or parched or just impatient. You don’t want a 10 step, 40 minute strategy for getting the wait staff to take your order or bring the bill, so choose somewhere they will be attentive but not too in your face. After all, you don’t need them stealing the show/your thunder/your date.

6) Food – you know it, but you still ignore it – AT YOUR PERIL! Beware of spaghetti, lettucey salads, burgers and massive sandwiches. Make sure there is a reasonable range, though, so you can both choose what your stomach butterflies like to eat. Nobody likes a vomiting date.

7) Seatage – strange but true. Avoid very straight-backed chairs or very deep cushy armchairs – you want to be able to sit comfortably as well as in an attractive fashion. I’m not going to go all finishing school on yer asses, but posture is important. More important, however, is that you feel at ease. No sense sitting on the edge of a great big beanbag because you don’t want to show off your double chin actually being comfortable.

8) Always use protection. Ok, it’s not about cafes, and we might have skipped a few steps, but it’s good advice!