Some background! Every night when I get home from work and greet my better half we generally start on the same old timeless argument “What’s for dinner?”. Tonight I was the last one home, I started my quest or mission on my iPhone googling for a deep fried mars bar. I was told to stop playing and go use a laptop to do it properly.

I spent about 30 minutes unable to find a deep fried mars bar for sale in Auckland (New Zealand) – granted my Googling skills are not the best on the block but I can generally find what I’m looking for. Then a great idea comes from my better half who’s no internet guru by a long shot, but she does have her moments, and this is a biggie! “Why don’t you ask on twitter?” What a great idea! So I put the word out “I’m on a mission I’m looking for a deep-fried #mars_bar in Auckland! Please RT” I tagged it so that I can do a search later (at the time I didn’t realise that I’m going to blog about this event). A few minutes later I get this “@ebenbruyns Fish and Chip shop on Riddell Rd in Glendowie. Never tasted them though.“. Great a quick look on google maps indicate that it’s only around 6 km away from where I live (how great is that!). So out goes the word “@antnzdotcom Thanks, I’m going there right now I’ll update on the deep fried #mars_bar when I get back. Twitter FTW!!!“.

So the results of this little experiment: 30 minutes of searching Google left me empty handed, in about the same amount of time I did the “twitter search” and I made it to the shop, check out the google street view:
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Success

The Results

What’s the story without giving a review of the food? Well here you go: Snapper was the same as everywhere else, chips was good, scallops was not all that great (I blame the batter), squid rings were great last but most important the fried moro bar (yeah I know, not a mars bar but I’ve never actually had a deep fried mars bar, the one I got last year in Palmerston North was actually a moro bar too!) not as good as the one I had in Palmy the batter was not on par with the only other deep fried chocolate bar I’ve ever had. Over all I think it was a successful run and a very interesting story to boot!

In closing, I set out trying to find a deep fried mars bar (I really really wanted it!), google left me empty handed (not the kinda thing you search in google anyway?) but twitter came to the rescue – Yes I have a decent sized group I follow and that follow me in return, but I’m sure that it’s not that hard building your twitter presence to the size of mine (it’s tiny in comparison to the masters!). I think it’s a great world we have today, I managed to find something within minutes which I couldn’t find by conventional means. I was able to update on my progress while out on the road (via my trusty iPhone 3G), I was able to determine where and how far away the shop in minutes too! I did all of this with web 2.0 and the iPhone!

Now that I’ve written this, nobody will ever read it! Just like all the technical documentation I’ve written as a Software Developer!