Thank You Gerry Harvey

Earlier this month Gerry Harvey went public about his distane for overseas online retailers being exempt from GST for purchases under $1000. Even though I'm on the internet quite a bit I had never really considered buying products online for anything other than computer equipment. The GST exemption debate that Gerry Harvey became quite vocal in inspired me to have a look online for products other than computer equipment. What I discovered has now changed the way I shop. It's probably also been influenced by a fellow colleague who before xmas was getting a delivery almost every day from online purchases.

Mr Harvey is claiming that overseas online retailers have an unfair advantage because their products don't incur the 10% GST. He also claims that this is one of the reasons that Australian retailers had a lack luster xmas sales period. On point number one it does seem a little unfair that no GST is charged. This does give overseas retailers an unfair advantage. The tough question is how do you go about charging the GST for overseas purchases. It would be costly and time consuming to process every package coming into the country in order to apply a GST amount.

On point number two. From my recent experiences people are not choosing to buy online because of a 10% price difference, they're choosing to buy online because the prices are often 30% to 40% cheaper. If you don't believe me here is a list of purchases that I've bought lately with the price differences. The OS prices include shipping. Clearly the difference between these items is more than 10%.

Product	Price in Aus	Price OS	% diff
Rock Band 3 with Pro drum set.	$299.95	$229.95	23%
On Food And Cooking	$70.95	$33.56	52%

One of the reasons why prices are more expensive in Australia is because global companies see us as a specific channel with which they can choose to inflate prices. I've been looking into buying a mountain bike recently and have been researching bikes online. One of the bikes I've been looking at is a Specialized Rockhopper. On the Specialized website the retail price for Australia is $1299AUD where as the US price is $799USD. Given the AUD is almost at parity with the USD you would have thought the prices would have been a little closer. I'd expect shipping to be somewhere around $100 and GST to be $80. Even taking this into account the bike is still over $300 more expensive in Australia.

I hope this inspires you to consider online purchases in the future. My advice to Mr Harvey is start making prices in Australia comparable with OS prices if you want people to consider buying products from your store.

My cooking challenge

So, I've been pretty busy in the kitchen over the last couple of months. One thing that hasn't quite felt right is the fact that no one has been able to benefit from all the work except me. Well, I hope to change that.

This years challenge is a monthly 3 course dinner party at my place. Every month I'll organise to have 3 to 5 people over to enjoy a meal which will be from a specific cousine. I'll aim to do a dinner from a cousine only once. I'm thinking the list will be something like French, Spanish, Moroccan, Italian, Greek, Peruvian, Persian, Indian, Thai, Malaysian and Japanese. A few friends have mentioned running something similar so there may be some intertwining of groups which is all the more merrier. Will open up the invites to friends of friends to spread the food love a bit more.

At this stage I'm looking to host the first dinner on the 26th of February. Who's keen? Since I'm having a birthday bash in early Feb I might try and get people who couldn't make it to that to come over for the first one.

Paella

My parents were down from Brisbane this weekend and seemed to enjoy their xmas present which was a night at the tennis. It was a pretty busy weekend. We started with breakfast at Q11 which is one of my favourite breakfast places. Mum and Dad had a mexican quesadilla which mum described as one of the best breakfasts's she has ever had. I had a tortilla which was quite different and nice and spicy. We then headed down to Inverloch where I had a kayak event on followed by a speedy return to Melbourne in order to get them to the tennis on time.

Sunday was again all about food. In the morning I bought a new webber BBQ (to be used on the 6th) and a paella pan. I've made paella a few times but each time its come out more like risotto than a paella. This time round, however, I was sure that it would be different. In both previous attempts I've used a recipe from Gabriel Gaté and Frank Camorra (Tour De France). This time round I used a recipe from Carlos Lopez. Paella is remarkably simple to make but oh so tasty. I should point out that this was the first time I'd cooked since getting my new knifes. Oh my buddha, what a difference a good knife set makes. The end result was pretty good. I could have had the temperature up a little bit more but the paella was definitely not a risotto this time around.

Croissants

Sometime in November last year I set out to learn how to make French pastries. My first challenge was chocolate eclairs which turned out to be rather hard and after 3 attempts I finally got it right. As a result, I developed a healthy respect for pastry chefs. I love croissants (I love most pastries to tell you the truth) but after reading a croissant recipe in a book my sister gave me I became a little less enthusiastic about attempting to make them. Fortunately, my enthusiasm levels took an upward trend after my Mum got me a French pastry making DVD for xmas. And so today was my first attempt at making croissants.

I didn't get started until early afternoon which was not great as temperature plays a pretty big part in the process. Making the dough was really easy, although it would have been nice to have had a mixer with a kneading instrument. Making the dough into pastry is a little involved so I'm not going to go into too much detail. The temperature was a bit of a nuisance as the pastry got sticky very quickly after removing it from the fridge. The DVD showed a number of different styles of croissants so I tried 3 of them, chocolate croissant, raisin brioche and the traditional plain croissant.

Overall, I was really quite happy with the outcome. Definitely have some improvements to make in the process. I think I could have let the dough rise a little longer the first time round. On hot days the fridge is your friend so leave the pastry in there a little longer. I also need a bit of practice cutting up the pastry and rolling the croissants. Will be taking the goodies into the office tomorrow. Hoping for a thumbs up.

First Pasta Salad

I've pretty much decided which salads I'm going to make for my little get together in February. I haven't made any of them before so I thought I better try them out first. One of them is going to be a pasta salad. Its kind of got a Moroccan theme to it but I got my ideas from a few different recipes. The basic ingredients are Fusilli pasta, cherry tomatoes, green capsicum, spring onions, dill, ground cumin, salt, pepper, olive oil and lemon. It was pretty simple to make and I was pretty happy with the outcome.

I made quite a bit so had plenty of left overs. The following night cooked up some chicken in small cubes added the pasta and presto, a hot chicken pasta for dinner.

Faith in Humanity

As I write this post the residents of Brisbane are preparing for some of the worst floods the city has ever seen. I've been on the phone to mum and dad getting the latest updates on what's been happening. I've also been following the situation on the ABC. An ABC reporter was on location in Caboolture (just north of Brisvegas) covering a story on a family preparing their house for possible flood damage. What struck me was that there was a guy, who did not know this family at all, giving them a helping hand. He didn't want his name disclosed and when asked why he was helping his response was something like "when someone needs a helping hand you give them one".

When black Saturday occurred in Melbourne back in 2009 we saw an amazing outpouring of human generosity and good will. My housemate at the time had volunteered to join some colleagues up in Alexandria. I ended up joining them for a day. I'm sure there are plenty of similar stories. When the Asian Tsunami hit Australians made a significant contribution to the relief effort. I had a mate of mine, who is an engineer, request to be on location to help out.

Whether it be a suburb of Caboolture, a region of Victoria or a country in South East Asia disasters like the current Brisbane floods always seems bring out such incredible human spirit. I might be being slightly patriotic but I do think in general Australians punch above their weight when it comes to responding to such events. And for the majority of us our motivation is free from religious, political or personal biases and views. In one way or another we belong to a community and when our community is in trouble we respond with passion, generosity and good will. This seems to be part of our make up and instinctive way of behaving in the face of adversity. It's events like these that give me faith in humanity.

Summer In Melbourne

I bought a new Canon PowerShot SX10 before heading over to Africa last year. I don't really know much about photography so figured it couldn't hurt to start learning. On average I don't think my photos from Africa were particularly great. Some of them were pretty good but there weren't too many that really stood out and made me go wow (from a photography point of view).

The weather in Melbourne was pretty good last week so headed down to Port Melbourne to get to know my camera a litte better. I basically fiddled with all the settings for an hour and took a ridiculous amount of photos. Here are some of the photos I quite liked. Hmmm, I'm a little afraid of how boring they may be to some people.

Rest of the Photos

Evolution Of Human Skin

I watched a documentary the other night about the evolution of skin color. I had always thought that evolution was responsible for the differences in skin color among humans but didn't know the extent of the evidence.

Skin color is determined by the concentration and type of melanin found in the skin. So why do people from the northern parts of Europe have light skin and people from east africa have dark skin. Well, melanin is produced by the body to protect us from harmful UV radiation. It is then not surprising that when you overlay a chromatic distribution of skin color with that of UV radiation you get a 90% match. Essentially those humans living in high UV radiation areas have a higher concentration of the melanin type which causes dark skin color. When humans started migrating away from the equator around 120,000 years ago the amount of melanin required for protection was less. This is why people from the northern parts of Europe have fair skin.

In order to show that human skin color evolved over time scientists had to prove that protection against UV radiation increased the reproductive success amongst humans. Whilst working in WA Dr Nina Jablonski discovered a link between UV radiation protection and reproductive success. Folate is a chemical which is important for embryonic development and also for sperm production. It is also very susceptible to prolonged or intense UV radiation. So humans which are exposed to high levels of UV radiation without the necessary protection have a lower chance of reproductive success.

UV radiation isn't all bad for humans. Type b UV radiation is essential in the production of Vitamin-D. This was discovered at the turn of the last century when there was an epidemic of rickets amongst children in the UK. So humans living in areas with lower levels of UV radiation needed to absorb more radiation in order to produce Vitamin-D. What's also interesting is that African Americans living in the northern parts of America have been found to have high levels of Vitamin-D deficiency. In this case they are not getting enough UV radiation because there skin is so good at blocking it.

The final and most impressive piece of evidence was the discovery of a specific genetic mutation which suppresses melanin production. The discovery was first found in a small fish and then the same mutation was found in Europeans with fair skin. The significance of the discovery was not fully realised until the discovery of a similar mutation in the DNA of a Neanderthal. Neanderthal's share a similar ancestor to the modern day human, migrated from Africa to Europe and were fair skinned. This discovery shows that the skin color of both Neanderthal and modern day humans evolved in the same way.

What a great doco. Thanks SBS. If you want to watch the whole thing go here.

Baked Spring Rolls and Summer Greens with Honey Balsamic Vinaigrette

I caught up with one of my good friends from Canada between xmas and new year. She unexpectedly bought me a xmas present which was the White Water cook book. In 2009 I travelled back to Canada for some awesome skiing action. Three of us went on a road trip which I have to say was probably the best road trip I've ever done. We didn't care where we went so long as there was new snow. As it turns out we only had one day with no new snow. Our first stop on the trip was to a town called Nelson. Nelson is to skiing what Byron Bay is to surfing. Just outside of Nelson there is a small ski resort called White Water. It is here that we discovered the best ski food in Canada. So good is the food the head cook made a cook book.

I decided to cook the baked phyllo spring rolls and the summer green salad with honey balsamic vinaigrette. I've previously had mixed results with phyllo pastry but this time I got it just right. No tears, no holes and no uneven cooking. The salad was also pretty good. I had to caramelise pecan nuts which is something I hadn't done before. Overall I'd say it turned out pretty well. Big thanks to Kim for the cook book.