Sickly Reading

The only good thing about a sick baby is that they tend to have longer than normal day sleeps. For an equally sickly mummy this means mummy has the luxury of sitting in bed for an hour or so. What a treat! While I've been resting up, aside from keeping Kleenex in business I have been finding amusement in strange places.

So what kinds of websurfing does one do when one is curled up in bed surrounded by snotty tissues? One reads the NSW State Government Name & Shame Site. What on earth is this? This is an awesome site dedicated to telling the people of our state which restaurants and cafes have been busted for unsafe cooking practices!

For a clean freak like me, this is the ultimate train wreck. I can't look away but I feel sick as I trawl through the restaurants reading what kinds of ikky food handling offences they have committed.

Take Bourke Street Bakery for example. For my non-Sydney readers let me tell you a bit about this place. It is a bakery that seems to pride itself on amazing pastries and being too cool for school. It is a kind of grungy, trendy place with aloof and often unfriendly staff.

The type that study Kierkegaard at university and wear skinny jeans and have keffiyehs around their necks positioned to look as though they'd just been thrown on, when really we know they spent half an hour fiddling. Unless you are equally cool they just grunt at you or raise their eyebrows when you place your order.

They have delicious pastries and yummy sandwiches but their prices are not so delicious. I've been known to spend a small fortune there. They use lashings of butter on everything so the brown paper bag is always see through by the time you take your first bite. Mmmm fatty goodness. Anyway I found them on the site!

It says their violation was that they "Failed to display potentially hazardous foods under temperature control - Ham, cheese, chorizo and pancetta displayed at temperatures of 19C-20C" Come to think of it, I have noticed that their sandwiches are on the shelf behind glass but they are not refrigerated. Shame on them. I have been reading all sorts of offences, some are more revolting than others. I have a rapidly growing list of places I don't want to try.

It got me thinking, what kinds of weird and wacky research do you get up to when you have spare time online? My mum tends to favour the auction sites. Often telling me of obscure items I could get for a bargain. My husband has been known to waste hours on IMDB looking up random film facts. So, tell me where do you find yourself wasting time on the web?