When words don’t mean what they used to

Had to represent Xero at another awards ceremony tonight (TUANZ, where we picked up the SaaS award) and afterwards had dinner at Capitol with some friends we picked up at the awards.

Here we are holding the prize, and the Mister with our friend from Ponoko

Sitting listening to the conversation at dinner at one stage I felt like I was in one of those are-you-smarter-than-a-fifth-grader competitions when they pull out the riddle “Listen to the following 4 words and tell me what sport I am talking about. Oval, stump, silly, whites. ” (God! Do I really know that many words related to cricket that are not cricket specific?!) Aaaaanyway, the word riddle I was in the middle of was, what is the topic of conversation in which these words would be found: spaces, dock, coherence, expose, spotlight? I suggested to our dinner party that we all come up with a few ‘normal’ words and attach them to a topic and then have an entire conversation where every other word was one of these chosen ones to see how long it would take other unwitting participants to ask what the hell we were talking about!

And in case you were wondering – no we haven’t been to Capitol in months as the owner we know hasn’t been working and the last menu had nothing on it that I’d eat. I’m pleased to report our guy is back (although wasn’t working tonight) and the two excellent choices on the menu for me are rigatoni with zucchini, basil and feta and pea and artichoke risotto with pancetta – the latter I had and it was pretty good although perhaps a bit much pancetta meant that it was hard to break through the salt to taste either the peas or the artichokes.