{"id":216,"date":"2005-02-17T15:25:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-17T21:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/?p=216"},"modified":"2005-02-17T15:25:00","modified_gmt":"2005-02-17T21:25:00","slug":"europa-rosebank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/europa-rosebank\/","title":{"rendered":"Europa, Rosebank"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Thursday, February 17, 2005<\/h2>\n<p><i>Service: * * * *<br \/>    Food: * * * 1\/2<br \/>    Ambience: * * * *<br \/>    Babe Count: * * * *<\/i><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been on hold to Telkom for 11 minutes now. I&#8217;m waiting for one of their technicians to help me sort out my wifi connection. Europa in Rosebank is a hotspot, and I thought I&#8217;d treat myself to a birthday supper WITH free internet access. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also just bought myself a cool book for my birthday. It&#8217;s called WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL WORKBOOK by Donald Maass. I&#8217;ve got the book it&#8217;s based on, but haven&#8217;t read it yet. I&#8217;ve been eyeing this one for months. I figure that my credit card is able to support this little indulgence, and I actually want to honour the fact that I&#8217;ve finished a second draft of my novel by treating it to an expert third draft. This book is the real deal. It&#8217;s about dedicating a languid year to fixing the book. I&#8217;m keen.<\/p>\n<p>The decaf cappuccino is delicious. But the phone call isn&#8217;t. I hang up, and ask the waiter if he knows anything about wifi. He calls Vasco, the owner of the place. &#8220;Nuh!&#8221; he says. &#8220;Telkom has stopped the service. It&#8217;s finished. Trial period only. Now they want us to pay.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I presented a near-final cut of the video to our clients this afternoon. They liked the work, but there are inevitable changes. Which is cool, cos that&#8217;s how this strange industry works. We&#8217;ll be presenting the next semi-final cut to them tomorrow morning.<\/p>\n<p>My Fettucini Avo Rock arrives. It&#8217;s got fresh rocket, avo, sundried tomatoes, goat&#8217;s milk cheese, sweet basil, cream and roasted almonds. If the pasta were a little less well-done, this dish would be sensational. It&#8217;s hugely tasty.<\/p>\n<p>Karen calls.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hey, birthday boy,&#8221; she says, &#8220;where are you?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Rosebank, Europa,&#8221; I say. She&#8217;s my ex-girlfriend, the babe who introduced me to the delights of D\/s. Ah. Bondage. Tying her up. Indulging in the odd bit of perversion. Hmmmm. &#8220;Where are you?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Mugg &#038; Bean, Rosebank,&#8221; she says. &#8220;I&#8217;ll pop in and       say hi.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s going dancing tonight at the studio upstairs at the Rosebank Mall. Her date hasn&#8217;t arrived, and there&#8217;s nothing happening at the venue. So she&#8217;s on the move.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Happpy birthday!&#8221; she says, and gives me a huge kiss.       &#8220;Here&#8217;s something I made for you.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a card with a hand-drawn bare butt on the front. Inside, she&#8217;s written, &#8216;Thought you&#8217;d like a piece of ass for your birthday!&#8217; <\/p>\n<p>Turns out it&#8217;s a voucher.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I owe you a birthday shag,&#8221; she says.<\/p>\n<p>Hmmmmm. I haven&#8217;t been getting any for a while. Tempting.<\/p>\n<p>She says, &#8220;But not tonight, birthday boy.&#8221; So Saturday it is. Hehehehehe. Her phone rings. It&#8217;s her date. She gets up. We hug. Kiss. With tongue. &#8220;Seeya Saturday,&#8221; she says, and breezes off in her mini-cargo skirt.<\/p>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!-- google_ad_client = \"pub-8680280551933258\"; google_ad_width = 125; google_ad_height = 125; google_ad_format = \"125x125_as\"; google_ad_channel =\"5392963680\"; google_ad_type = \"text_image\"; google_color_border = \"CC99CC\"; google_color_bg = \"E7C6E8\"; google_color_link = \"000000\"; google_color_url = \"00008B\"; google_color_text = \"663366\"; \/\/--><\/script><br \/><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\"><br \/><\/script><\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">Roy Blumenthal is a writer, director, artist, and <a href=\"http:\/\/snipurl.com\/visualfacilitator\">visual facilitator<\/a>. Hire him to make pictures of your meetings or workshops.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thursday, February 17, 2005 Service: * * * * Food: * * * 1\/2 Ambience: * * * * Babe Count: * * * * I&#8217;ve been on hold to Telkom for 11 minutes now. I&#8217;m waiting for one of &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/europa-rosebank\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Europa, Rosebank<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p521FP-3u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}