In which I make a rare foray outside Sydney

My goodness the weather has gone wonderful. Walking around the last few days in glorious sunshine, no coat, not even a jumper on. Perhaps spring has made it through. Time to plant some herbs.

Last week I was down in Wollongong, a couple of hours south of Sydney, for a work conference. It was long and tiring, but this was the view from my hotel room:



At 5pm on Thursday evening.



At 7am the following morning.

A busy few days were punctuated with walks on the beach and evening fun times with my work buddies. The last night was a Friday 13th themed dinner and ball, and everyone went all out on the fancy dress! I went as Alex from Clockwork Orange, borrowing Mark's white skinny jeans and braces and adding a black bowler hat to complete the look!

On Saturday, after it was all over, I checked out of the hotel and had a little walk round Wollongong. It's a hit and miss kind of place. Nice along one stretch of the water, a bit bland in the town itself and some parts seemed a bit run down.



I didn't hang around too long and headed for the station, where I caught a south coast line train 50 minutes further south to the little town of Kiama.

Kiama is a very attractive place and has a lot of historic buildings in its little centre. It's set around a little bay with a shingle beach, the main sandy surf beach being in the next bay down.



The main attraction however is the blowhole, up on the cliff, a natural feature where seawater is forced up through a hole in the cliff creating a huge plume and a very loud gurgle. There is a viewing platform built all around the blowhole, so I hung out there for a bit. I could have watched it for hours, it was brilliant! I never expected it to shoot out so high in the air.





Lighthouse and blowhole viewing platform.

Blowhole visited, I had a slow wander back to the station. My bag with all my stuff in from the conference was becoming pretty heavy so it was time to head for home. Unfortunately, the train ride was a long 3 hours, but there was a lot of great scenery on the way, along the coast and, further north, the Royal National Park.

Got home and Mark met me at the station with much needed Shenkin coffee! Then we spent the evening eating thai food and drinking wine up at Thai Passion in Newtown, before a long long sleep.

In which the sky is blue and the Opera House gleams

Opera House in mid-winter......

Sunday was the most beautiful, sunny warm day. I took the train to Circular Quay and walked up to the Opera House, out of boredom more than anything. There were so many people. Opera Bar was heaving and they had live music outside.



The sails look so smooth from a distance. It always surprises me to see the mosaic effect close up.



The city gleams. I took a very similar photo back on the first day I arrived in Sydney.

From the Opera House, I walked back round Circular Quay and into the Rocks, stopping at that little cafe for a Florentine (my favourite ever biscuit). Wandered further on up George Street suffering a severe coffee craving and trying to find a flat white that wasn't $4.50 ($3.50 is really my upper limit when paying for coffee) but failed. Sat around Susannah Place for a little while, then gandered back down George Street all the way to St James for the train home.

Tonight I am working uggh. Although it is less painful when at home on the sofa with a cup of tea and the tv on. I'm out of the office on a management course for the next couple of days, so it's going to be very busy trying to catch up. Mark is back home first thing in the morning, so hopefully I'll see him before I go to work!

In which I become older, eat a lot, and be spoilt.

It's so waaarm today. Well, me with my English-person-temperature-tolerance thought it was warm anyway. I also saw a mega-cockroach scuttling across the pavement on the way home from work this evening, a sight normally reserved for summer, so I'm obviously not the only one that thought it was warm.










Mark and I walked the full Bondi-Coogee cliff walk over the June bank holiday weekend. It was actually the first time we'd ever done the whole thing in one go, which was surprising! We did it both directions for good measure, which took about 3 hours with a good bit of dilly-dallying thrown in. It was a glorious day for it, blazing sun, warm but not hot. I carried my jacket most of the way but wasn't sticky and uncomfortable. I guess something like this is much better done in winter than summer.
When we got back to Bondi we went straight to Fishmongers on Hall Road and STUFFED ourselves on fish and chips.

My birthday was fun! I especially liked having a birthday on the Saturday of a bank holiday weekend! And it was the Queen's Birthday Holiday so I was able to fib that I was actually the Queen and the day off was in my honour. We got up and went for breakfast at Black Star in Newtown - delicious pastries and coffee and it was great to sit out on the pavement in the winter sun. Then we hit the CBD for some shopping - I ended up with a great leather jacket and a new blouse - and we ate lunch at the antipasto bar in the food hall of David Jones. Cheese and antipasto plates and a glass of wine later, we headed to Surry Hills for a little more shopping and a coffee in Kawa on Crown Street, before heading back to Newtown for a cocktail in Corridor followed by dinner at new restaurant Bloodwood.

Bloodwood was a really good experience. It's quite an industrial looking place, with exposed bulbs and pipes along the ceilings, so a bit different to the average cosy restaurant set up. The menu consists of lots of smaller dishes made for sharing. We ordered cuttlefish salad, polenta chips with gorgonzola dipping sauce, mushrooms in red wine sauce and trifle for pudding (posh trifle!). Haha, I was on the phone to mi madre and told her I had "mushrooms on toast and then trifle" and realised it sounded like I'd been to a rubbish cafe in the 70s or something. It was good, honest!

For my birthday I got cake forks, cheese knife, cake slice, the new Snow Leopard operating system for Mac (haha, a bit like the Simpsons episode where Homer buys Marge the bowling ball that says "Homer" on it hahaha), and SEWING MACHINE(!!!) from Mark, sewing bits (including the best pin cushion EVER) and books from Mark's parents, and Alice in Wonderland DVD, jewellry and poems from mi madre and padre. What a lucky pie !!

After all that fun it was so hard to go back to work after the bank holiday! It doesn't help that my job has been a bit frenetic these past couple of weeks. It's the end of financial year on wednesday this week so the pressure is on!

Mark has been a bit under the weather this week - on Thursday morning he was in bed until 9.30am which is quite worrying for someone who considers 7am to be an EPIC lie in. He's a bit better today though so hopefully a great deal of marauding can be done at the weekend. We need sun to be healthy!

Day in the Life of Pie

It is rather unfortunate that I am not even coming close to achieving my one post a day aim for November. There just aren't enough hours in most days to do it! Here is an outline of an average weekday in my life at the moment:

Morning

6.50am: Alarm goes off. snooze for 15 minutes. If I'm lucky Mark brings me a cup of tea.
7-7.10am: Out of bed! Drink juice. Have shower, wash hair.
7.30-8.10am: Dry hair, get dressed, pack lunch and other bits for work.
8.10am: Leave for train station.
8.19am: Board train for the city. Then I chill out and listen to Bartok or Saint-Saens or Sigur Ros and read my book.
8.50: Train arrives at Town Hall station. Walk to office on George Street. I work for a Health Insurance company. Sometimes buy muffin or banana bread on route.
9am: At work! I look at claims. Lots of claims...

Afternoon
1pm approx: Have lunch. Do any errands in the city that need doing.
After lunch: Process claims and other fun work stuff.
5pm: I endeavour to leave work around 5, but often it's 5.30pm.
6-6.30pm: Arrive home.
6.30pm: Often I go for a run or a walk in the park, or I sit and have a cup of tea or tidy up some stuff.
7.15pm-ish: Start doing dinner.
8-9pm (depending on what I've cooked!): Eat dinner with Mark.
9pm-ish: Wash-up, clean kitchen.
9.30pm: Get ready for bed. Wash face, clean teeth, and I always wash my feet before bed. If there's time, watch an episode of House or another series on DVD. Or read.
10-10.30pm: Off to slumberland!

So there is unfortunately very little time for blogging :( Or any of the other things I want to do :(

North Sydney

I worked in the North Sydney Central Business District Monday and Tuesday this week, preparing and formatting documents for a construction company. I prefer the North Sydney CBD to the main Sydney CBD - it is quieter and feels cleaner and more relaxing.

I need to get a real job, an interesting job.

Temp bush ranger

Here I am in North Ryde! The accommodation up here is actually pretty nice, and it's good to have our own bathroom/kitchen again and not have to share. The house is nice and spacious, with big open plan area downstairs and bedroom, en suite and main bathroom upstairs - a nice change from two of us in one small double room! The downside we already knew about - it is literally in the middle of nowhere. There is a bus stop outside but there is only one bus an hour into the city for most of the day, and the nearest life is Macquarie University 20 minutes walk away. The Macquarie shopping centre is walkable too though, in about 30 minutes, and there are some pretty good shops there. Otherwise there is just a park on every block and a few houses.

We have been trying to make the best of it however. We explored the complimentary sauna facilities yesterday evening, which was lovely, and today we went to Mac Uni sports centre and played squash and then went swimming. I am horrific at squash, but then I am horrific at all sport except running, and the squash was ok so I shall go again I think. I am also horrific at swimming but it's fun to flap around.

On Friday I started my new illustrious career as a.... temp. Haha. I had a day assignment, and have work again for tomorrow and Tuesday this week. Going ok so far, and I am getting about £10 an hour, but I need to get a proper job asap really so I don't feel like a failure!
My Friday assignment was down in Pyrmont. I didn't realise how easy it was to get there (basically I didn't realise there was a bridge over Darling Harbour you could walk on), so I was there an hour early! Fortunately it was a nice day and it was nice wandering around on the wharf, so I took some pictures to entertain myself. So here is the view from Wharf 7 in Pyrmont at 7.30am on a winter's day, with the sun just rising over the Central Business District.