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Canberra Today 13°/15° | Saturday, March 30, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Canberra Confidential / Chief has a swinging time

Andrew Barr

ANDREW Barr (pictured) must find himself officiating in all sorts of places, though possibly few as different as the new Barton offices of accounting and consulting firm Synergy, for which he clipped the ribbon the other day.

Snapper Andrew Finch caught the Chief Minister gently trying out the indoor, adult-sized swings on a floor of artificial grass.

There’s more: amid what the company characterises as its “Google-esque” workspace are a couple of British-style phone booths and a table tennis table. They describe the new space as a true representation of how the 17-year-old company is “unique”. Who said accounting couldn’t be fun?

Chinese go quackers

IMG_1467“IT seems a bit zany to have a French restaurant in Canberra take out the 2016 Top Choice Restaurant award for a Chinese competition but that’s what’s happened to Les Bistronomes,” writes bemused “CityNews” dining reviewer Wendy Johnson.

Wendy says it all came out of the blue for chef Clement Chauvin (pictured) and his team when they received a certificate at the Braddon restaurant congratulating them on the win.

The certificate was from lianorg.com.

Chef Chauvin’s guess is that the team won in part for their traditional duck a l’orange, which their Chinese guests adore. Also, this year, Les Bistronomes picked up a Good Food Guide chef’s hat.

Jayson still spruiks

WAS that the back of a bus in London Circuit with newly minted Labor MLA for Ginninderra Jayson Hinder’s smiling dial plastered across it? Yup, there was the clearly not-quite-former legal eagle rolling by, larger-than-life and advertising the virtues of his law firm. While it probably predates his ascension to the Assembly, replacing Mary Porter, surely a quick call to Yerrabi running mate and TAMS Minister Meegan Fitzharris would get it fixed, Jason.

CAT causes confusion

JUDGES for Coralie Wood’s annual glittering Canberra Area Theatre Awards tirelessly prowl the region, fearlessly assessing performance art wherever it is played.

The judges stay in various motels all booked by the CAT Awards office. In checking the recent account of a judge, who stayed at a Mittagong motel, it was noticed he had been charged for a double and not a single.

The CAT office sprang into action, called and was told the judge had been charged a single for himself and the extra was for a cat. A cat?

The animal-friendly motel had got confused with the CAT Awards booking. A refund followed a heartbeat later!

Poster boy

Omar Musa in NYIS that Omar Musa (pictured) hanging out with Cate Blanchett? Not entirely, but the Queanbeyan author found himself treading the same boards at New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music during his promo tour to support the US release of his novel “Here Come the Dogs”.

He was invited to the cult series, “The Moth (True Stories Told Live) Radio Hour”, on stage with four US yarn spinners and performed his story – the final one of the night – to a packed audience. That was two days after a sell-out book reading at the Harvard bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He’s now rolling on through New Orleans, LA, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Chicago and Toronto.

 

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