The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

You know things are sad when a serpent gets more satisfaction and fulfilment wiping windowsills and tabletops and mopping floors than pottering about and slinking in Cyberia
This has been the case for quite a while now but this week has gotten particularly crazy

Since last year now adopted a rather peculiar ritual to go along with the daily Scrooge routine
As well as writing down every single silver sickle spent during the day and on what and preferably in chronological order, I have also taken to using the appointment section of the old fashioned dead tree diary to list what I was doing at the assorted half hour intervals and adding a little grumpy or smily face to indicate how I felt at the time

( Mundane musings, rantings and ramblings )

It's now the serpent weekend. Time to stock up on the stash of bottles. Original plans were to visit The Juicy Beetroot on Tuesday for half price happy hour and then drop into the big bad First Choice bottle shop on the way back to the Lair. They have some seriously good specials this week. But the problem is that there are only 3 or 4 stores in the whole metropolitan area
Ended up feeling too cranky and zonked after the day job and today wasn't that much better. Went to the city instead and decided to try something different.
Adopted a policy recently of whenever faced with a choice between same old routine and something different to get in the habit of going for the random or new option

So decided to go for the never before visited store south of the city. Soon discovered where the mysterious 213 and 220 buses vanished to once they got to the city. Had been meaning to try them out for a long long time but always saved it for a rainy day
Passed by a favorite cafe only to notice that where a big blue F used to be was now a big green D on the sign post. Little old Farrell's cafe had been gobbled up by the Dome Empire. Got sort of sad and nostalgic but there are some advantages to the new state of affairs

Been a long time since venturing past this particular cafe on the Victoria Park cafe strip. Been a lot of changes including some new eateries and a large Indian grocery store but the place is still dominated by sleazy car yards, pawn shops and "Quick cash now" loan sharks.

The shopping centre near where this large bottle shop is located is a rather grungy run down place. It turned out to be the new home of some of the popular Chinese eateries that got demolished to make way for yuppification of the local shopping centre. Much prettier and posher now and probably also less greasy.
Was almost tempted to get a fix of deep fried tofu in satay sauce but figured that a visit to the made over cafe would have more sentimental value.

There were a lot of ethnic grocery stores including the usual Chinese stores. But they also had a Turkish store which is very very unusual. It was strange to see rows and rows of Knorr and Dr Oetker packets of soups and sauces with the labels all in Turkish and German. One thing that really stood out was that nearly everything marketed to the Turkish market was labelled in both Turkish and German. Got rather nostalgic for the old days of lurking in D'land many moons ago.
Got a tin of tahini and a few packets of dried figs which are half the price there than most mainstream shops. They have become rather a decadent luxury over the last few years.

Pottered off to the main part of the shopping centre and it was just as miserable and grungy as Izzie remembered it from our flobberworm days many moons ago.
In spite of the two main supermarkets having stores there, lots of free parking and being between 3 and 5 in the afternoon, the place was amazingly empty. A bunch of bag ladies and burqas but not much else.
One of these women had nothing but her eyes showing and had a three year old in tow wearing a pink head scarf. Assumed she was Somali or Saudi or some such thing only to hear her say to her pink and fluffy daughter in a typical Ocker accent. "Oh you can't have that yogurt sweetie. It's much too expensive"
Yessss. It looks like one of the new Oz converts trying to outdo the old believers in the outrageousness of her outfit. Most of them were quite content with headscarves or old nun style veils.
Needless to say, there were no burqas in the bottleshop. But it did have coin deposit trolleys unlike its other branch near the Leopold Hotel on the famous Highway to Hell.

Got the bus back and decided to take a chance on a coffee crawl using the two hour ticket limit. The cafe has got the usual Dome decor - brown or wicker chairs, the occasional big fat luxury leather armchairs, lots of newspapers, ceiling fans, and wood decor.
The outside veranda with the gorgeous views to the park was still there and the toilets had been only slightly tweeked to match the new old looking decor
The previous owners had the place at least 15 years. It was more of a proper restaurant than a cafe so not really suitable for serpent lurking after 6pm.
Dome cafes are more suited for lounging about although they do have snacky stuff and nibblies - sandwiches, soups and seriously tasty wedges at cafe rather than restaurant prices

Along with wireless internet, being only one bus away from the Lair and nostalgia value - being an Izzie 'sacred site' in its previous incarnation - it's got everything necessary to be a nano cafe come November.
Had been on the lookout for a new one ever since the quirky and quaint Village Cafe closed in May.
Found three so far and two of them are Dome cafes.

So while missing out on a Juicy Beetroot feast, found a whole bunch of other new and interesting things and all in a one zone bus area. That means less money for transport and more for caffeine

Yessss. There's a lot to be said for randomness. So much so that the serpent will soon be dedicating a whole 30 days to indulging in it.
Finding connections between randomly chosen cards, locations, events, stories or whatever can be so much fun.