Hospitality

This is another blog that’s been kicking around the dusty alleys of my mind for a week or so.

I have a running joke with Paul Vallee and Alex Gorbachev that, should they find themselves in Edinburgh in future, they’d better arrange some hotel accommodation, don’t upset the waitresses and don’t come round my place to bother me without plenty of warning. It’s an exaggeration because Scots are generally pretty friendly, but I have to say I’ve found my colleagues and Canadians in general to be extremely hospitable.

Standards of service are very high and, whilst I’d rather a waiter I’ve just met didn’t pretend to be my best friend (too much service for my taste), it is nice when someone who sees you sitting by yourself asks whether you might like a newspaper to read or someone remembers what you were drinking the last time you were in their restaurant. A particular highlight is being able to ask for food prepared as I like it without provoking a big fuss.

I’ve been invited over for dinner time and again and haven’t been able to make every occasion, particularly since I started being on-call this weekend, but thanks to the various people who’ve made me feel welcome.

Last week Alex Gorbachev, who is the team lead of my new team – Team 8 – and a very smart Oracle guy and Guinness drinker, invited me over to his house to have dinner with his wife Olga and son Alex Junior (or Sasha Junior would be more correct). We stopped off at a Russian shop on the way so that we could pick up some appropriate delicacies and visited the LCBO for vodka. Alex was slightly amazed to discover I don’t usually drink spirits but decided we should get one bottle anyway and see if he could talk me into it later 😉

Alex’s family are lovely although Olga would be the first to tell you she’s shy, so I agreed that there would be no family picture on the blog. She made us some soup that’s a particular favourite of Alex’s, followed by meat-filled dumplings. Apparently non-Russian dumplings just don’t taste right! The inside of these was a little bit like Campbell’s meat-balls that I remember from childhood. However, the next delicacy was a stretch for my tastes, to say the least. Whilst I am perfectly aware that the true flavour of pork, for example, is to be found in the fat, I always trim as much fat from my meat as I can. It’s not for health reasons, I just don’t like fatty meat. There’s nothing worse than a bacon roll that’s riddled with uncooked fat 🙁 Imagine my delight to realise that the next course was, well, a lump of fat really. Salted and no doubt very tasty, but I took one attempt at a bite and that was more than enough for me! Alex popped a big bit in his mouth and just eat it! In fairness, I don’t think it’s neccessarily one of his favourites either and he just wanted me to try it. It’s a bad photo, but necessary for the story. You might just be able to make out my teeth marks on that.

Next up was something altogether more sensible, the Vobla.

Dried fish, to be eaten with alcohol in particular. Now there isn’t too much flesh on these little guys, so the stripping of them is a time-consuming task whilst drinking and chatting so you need a good stack of newspaper on your table so that you can clear up the mess easily afterwards. (That’s Olga on the right, by the way, being shy). I’m glad they were around to do the stripping for me as there’s clearly an art to it and Alex was able to point out a bit that’s softer which he isn’t keen on so I gave that a try and it was horrible! With much reluctance, I eat some of the better bits, which he left lieing in front of me to tempt me and it was pretty nice and definitely goes well with the beer.

I’ve had a few good times while I’ve been here and it strikes me that, whilst I probably revel in being a cantankerous old Brit, it’s good to get away from all of that moaning for a while. Having said that, Alex suddenly has a lot more of my moaning in his life and, whilst he’s very good at listening to it, I think he deserves the break from it he’ll get when I fly home on Friday!

(He’ll need to watch out, though. I’m confident I can produce some of the most sardonic, negative instant messaging conversations in their short history.)

P.S. I did drink a little vodka in the end, but apparently I’m doing it all wrong. Sigh …