As some of you may know and most of you not care, I am currently in London. London is a rather large city, so you need to have expert help if you’re going to do anything. Well, yesterday the “anything” we wanted to do is eat, and we sure as hell weren’t going to crawl into the first hole that happened to serve leftovers.

In a dire predicament and with precious few (read “no”) ideas, until I remembered that in this day and age you can look things up on the internet, and I remembered I had an account on TrustedPlaces. For those of you who are not familiar with it, it’s a restaurant/bar/anything guide, so we presented it with the carefully formulated question: Thai restaurants in camden! (I know that’s not a question, the exclamation mark is for effect, shut up) and it moaned and groaned and bellowed for a bit and suddenly the screen flashed red: “Cafe Bintang”.

Man. Worst decision ever. There was actually a review that warned me of the fate that lay ahead, but I neglected to read it (also that review was mine, so it would not be there before the day after, but temporal paradoxa notwithstanding, I had no excuse).

We make our merry way for the thing, we get in, have a mild argument about whether prawns were edible decapods or dried fruit (which I have a recollection of winning) and ordered our food. I had the Gili Gili chicken, which sounded spicy with a side of garlic. Garlic is spicy. Milk is not spicy. This distinction will prove useful later on.

Our food arrives. Mine was battered chicken in feet-smelling semen (milk?) sauce. My cousins had the prescience to order the duck, which was actually quite delicious (this only served to the detriment of my mental state at the time, though). My chicken tasted how I imagine cardboard must taste, only with semen and garlic, and thus worse.

I resolved to eat it as a character-building experience. “These are the experiences that shape and mold a man”, I thought, and then immediately proceeded to regret it. I ate it, though, and I can say that its horror will haunt me until the End of Days (not only mine, but in general).

I had to order three bowls of sauce and dump them on the thing to make it taste less like droppings, all this to spare the chef’s life, for I am sure he would perform the thai flavor of harakiri if he found out what I really thought of it. I am just glad the waitress didn’t ask “Was everything OK?”, because I can’t lie.

I don’t know what the moral of this story is. Maybe it’s “don’t order food from weird countries”. I know one thing, though, that TrustedPlaces is responsible for inflicting this blight upon the world! Thanks, TrustedPlaces! (Or maybe I should actually read the reviews next time).

Oh, also! As a reward for making it this far in an otherwise boring post, I am happy to inform you that Moneygement is coming along rather beautifully, and that soon we should have more beta tester spots open. Fear not, you will be able to manage your money in a very short time, and for free, because we were afraid of the universe-destroying recursion that would be caused if you had to enter Moneygement as an expense in Moneygement. That is all.