High Tea at the Hotel Windsor.

Don't panic, folks. I kinda, sorta, almost have an Honours topic. Phew.

I had forgotten that I have lots of Melbourne-ising updates to do. First up is High Tea at The Hotel Windsor. It was $59 each (we went on a weekday) and though that's rather steep for a few cakes and tea in a stuffy old hotel - it was so worth it! My only issue was that it was after the 1st of Jan and the Christmas tree was still up.

The service was fantastic (and cute, even if the dudes were fake tanned) and the atmosphere was great - most people were dressed up and my oh my there were lots of old people (makes High Tea more authentic if you're surrounded by aging wealthy women with clip on earrings). We were greeted at our table by Macaroons! Approve. We were then served champagne. Approve. Then the three tier tray of sandwiches, scones, and cakes arrived - even my approve approves.

We tried to fit it all in, we really did; we hadn't eaten all morning, we timed ourselves before starting on a new tray and took our time with the tea and coffee. Alas, we were unable to finish everything, two lonely cakes remained. Doggy bag? I was too full (and honestly feeling quite ill) to attempt smuggling the leftovers into my handbag.

I know the Windsor is more expensive than most places that serve High Tea in Melbourne, but what you're paying for is the elegant building and the tradition. Get your snob on.

You can be my alphabet and I will be your calculator

I can't think of a thesis topic. Bitch Bitch Bitch Moan. Just spent almost 30 minutes composing a 4-5 line email to my Honours supervisor. I was attemping to inform her, in a grammatically correct fashion, that her most recently acquired student has less focus than a first-year after a few tequila shots. Actually, tequila shots don't seem like such an awful idea....

I've been link-surfing many history blogs this morning. Academic blogs may be my new online obsession; they are more interesting than textbooks and I don't feel guilty reading them when I should be doing honours research. While browsing I noticed something rather amusing, they all seem to have a topic tag for 'cats'.

I've been up chasing my childhood with a pen. These are dreams old men dream.

So I have this problem. I want to study everything. Okay, maybe 'everything' is an exaggeration. How about this, I want to study everything about Europe between..oh, let's say 30th century BCE and the 14th century CE. Narrowing that down to a thesis topic is proving to be difficult.

Photo: Fergus Padel

New Gold Mountain.

Last month I finally got to visit a bar I have had my (online) eye on for a while now: New Gold Mountain. I basically did a 'Melbourne CBD laneway bar' google search and New Gold Mountain was definitely highest ranking in terms of intrigue - mine, that is. A door with no signage down a laneway; it just sounded so damn Melbourne.

NGM is right next door to its cousin? sister? mother? bar, Double Happiness, so in reality it wasn't really a mission to find - since I knew it was there. I took snobby Melbourne pride in the fact that tourists would not be stumbling in and making the bar feel tacky by taking a facebook album's worth of photos(which left me to do so undisturbed). For cute bartenders: A+! The cocktails were fantastic, but my student budget could only stretch to one. Sadly an eighteen dollar minimum for cocktails doesn't seem to shock Melburnians these days. Oh I miss the days of free-pouring Spanish bartenders.

After our first cocktail we headed up-stairs, where we were 'seated' (so effing posh, yo). There is no drinks menu upstairs, you just tell them what you want and voilá...it's created, and you can't afford to eat for a week. While we waited for our drinks we took numerous spazzy photos posing under the flowerbed ceiling (photos will explain).

Another bar visited and crossed off my ever-growing list. For me it was more of a novelty, the kind of place you take friends from out of town and nonchalantly say 'oh well yeah, I guess this place is okay' all the while gloating that they surely don't have anywhere near as cool in their lame-o town.

After our mature start (except for the spazzy photo-taking), we threw sophistication to the wind and headed to The Rochester Castle in Fitzroy. I danced 'til the lights came on at my favourite indie night: Black Night Crash.