Even though I’d warned my inter-state colleagues there would be some food-throwing involved, I don’t think they quite appreciated how much there would be until we visited I Chi Ban Japanese Teppan-yaki BBQ on Wednesday night. It was my suggestion we had dinner there, and today I received quite a few thankyou emails to say it was probably one of the most enjoyable “conference dinners” they’d ever been to.

It’s been several years since I’ve been there myself, but have some fond memories of the last I visited the restaurant with some colleagues. I remembered the food throwing, but I didn’t remember the care and precision with which the food was prepared: how the prawns were so beautifully de-veined, how the eggs were so beautifully prepared.

And then of course, it was “show time” with the chef leading us in a series of adventures where we had to catch bowls of food. One poor guy missed catching it and ended up with a shirtful of fresh egg. Another poor woman ended up with some rice in her hair. While not exactly covered in food, I’ve never been very good at catching things (have always been a little bit unco) I also ended up with a bit of rice decoration. But despite the apparent indignity of it all, we had enormous fun. “This was probably the best team-building activity I’ve ever been involved with”, one of my colleagues half-joke. So yeah, a great night.

And my favourite final comment was this : “I think a little karaoke after dinner could have taken it to a new level”. We kept ourselves nice.