Category: Miscellaneous

Bernard was 43 yesterday. Happy Birthday! To celebrate, we all dressed up 🙂

Included among his gifts was a very difficult puzzle (which he’ll never solve) and some origami paper. Although he doesn’t know it yet, he’s going to make an origami item for me to reveal on this blog 🙂

Here’s a full sized shot of him wearing a shirt of himself.

In the evening, as if to celebrate his birthday, a poker machine repeatedly insisted on letting him win, and he ultimately walked off with hundreds. Happy birthday indeed 🙂

It never ceases to amaze me that Australia – a country with less than a tenth the population of America – has such an enormous and diverse range of candy and ice-creams in the market.

Champagne or slime in your ice-cream?

What about Lemonade chocolate?

Or this evil-sounding thing:

Here’s one of Bernard’s favourites, donuts and frozen coke:

And here’s tuna named after a genus of mammal but using a different mammal as a mascot:

Incidentally, I’ve only eaten one of the items shown above 🙂

January first means two things:
1) New Years Resolutions are broken, and
2) Racing at Randwick!

I didn’t make any resolutions, so off to the races it was!

There have been major upgrades since I was last here, including an all-new stadium. The place has ‘ritzed up’ a bit but still welcomes a diverse crowd including these three punters:

The serious look in their eyes is a hint to the theorycrafting going on inside as they pick their winners. More on the results in a bit 🙂

There are 8 races in total, and we all bet on each. The boys drunk some beer, and I shuffled around (Bernard says I’m like a shark because I can’t be still!) and watched the activities.

Here’s the view from where we sat, dubbed ‘The Kings Seat’ by Adam:

Needless to say we all had a flutter! In the interests of privacy, I was requested by East to anonymize names. Who is East? Well, I’ve given the four of us code names as you’ll see on this chart of our cumulative winnings per race:

In total, $638 was bet, and $790.30 was won. Much of this was due to a single spectacular win of $360 by North on Race 7. Not bad for a $20 bet. Even the three of us who lost overall didn’t lose much and great fun was had by all.

The question remains: who is who? Rather than say, here’s a puzzle that will let you work it out.

Four punters went to the races. Two of them always tell the truth, and two always lie. When asked their real names, here’s what they said:
North said: South is Robert
South said: West is Pat
East said: North is Bernard
West said: I’m Adam

Can you work out who’s who?