Weekend of Fun - Part 2

So after my long weekend of swimming, relaxing, and cleaning - I had tickets to go to a show for the Sydney Festival. Sydney Festival is essentially a month long music, arts, and theatre extravaganza all throughout Sydney. Some of the shows are mystical/magical, some are new takes on old shows, and some are just concerts. I've never been too into the art scene, but my old flatmate is so she had her eye on a couple of shows. One of which was this hip hop group called the Tom Tom Crew. Her description to me was that they were a percussion and acrobatics group which had received rave reviews.

I went into the show open minded but was not expecting anything too fantastic. I was wrong - it was amazing!!

So the group is made up of 6 people (7 but one was injured for our show). One guy is a DJ, another a specialist in percussion instruments of any form, three acrobats, and an amazing (and very cute) beet boxer named Tom Thumb. The show was truly awesome. From the beginning they had everyone involved and engaged with the performance. Tom Thumb was exceptional and was able to use his voice in ways which you wouldn't think possible.

Needless to say this was a very good end to a long weekend and was topped off with some exceptional Thai food and a bottle of wine. :)

Weekend Update - Part 1

It has been a very busy weekend and somehow I managed to make it so that it was productive, relaxing, and a lot of fun - all at the same time! :) I will break this blog up a bit for a couple reasons. Partly because it just makes sense, and secondly if I make the blog too big I'll get intimidated by the task at hand and quite possibly never finish the post (which has happened many times before).

Right so down to business...

As typical of my weekends of late, I was a good girl who only had a couple beers on Friday and was in bed before the coach turned into a pumpkin. This meant I was up early enough to be fresh and ready for my early morning swim training on Saturday.

Now I will pause here to say at first I was a bit reluctant with all this early Saturday morning business. It means I can't really let loose on Fridays and have to get up at around 7-730 (depending on how slowly I'm moving) to be out the door in time to get the public transit to the beach. However, it has turned out to be really quite amazing. There is something refreshing and energizing about getting in the water first thing in the morning, seeing the fish swimming below you in the surf, and having a relaxing swim. So basically I'm loving it.

So this Saturday we did a big swim, which was 1.6K. However it was really pleasant because there were virtually no waves and it was a nice sunny day. This was an additional bonus because I signed up to do another race on Sunday which was 1.8K, so for me this was a great warm-up.

Saturday continued to be a scorching day, so I took my trainer's advice and got one of my recommended bi-weekly massages (he really had to twist my arm on that one). :) After the massage I returned home to catch up on my downloaded Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice episodes while trying not to bake.

A very literal comparison of the two days would be to say that Saturday was day and Sunday was night... I woke up to a very grey sky which was trying to rain, and a light wind. By the time we got to the beach where our swim was the slight wind was stronger and the sea was storming like the rest of the weather looked like it should be. So in comparison to Saturday's swim, the waves were MASSIVE. Now my friend Louise and I were both thinking in that maybe they would cancel the swim because the waves were too dangerous. Oh no, this just happened to be one of the serious swims where they don't really care too much about big waves - they just add another dozen life savers on boards, change the course a bit and send you out there.

The view of the beach from the car park - the swim was from between the two hills to the beach right in front of me...

We sucked it up and worked up the courage to go out for the warm up swim, only to find out that it wasn't as bad as you thought it would be - it was worse!! The beach had developed a ditch, which essentially means there was a sandbar about 20 metres out from the beach, so in the middle and on that bar we were thrown around like a rag doll in a washing machine. After the first instance of being completely thrown around by a wave, Louise and I both looked at each other and said "I don't like this very much." However once you've gone in the water and lived to walk back to the beach, it's really hard to say you aren't going back in.... so off we went when the horn sounded.

I will admit there are somethings in my training program which I don't do, but all up I would consider myself fit. However, getting out past those waves made me sooo exhausted that I had to flip on my back and just kick for a while to catch my breath. We rounded the first can/booey (which I have no idea how to spell) it wasn't too bad, aside from the up and down action of the waves which made it very hard to make sure I was swimming straight in the direction I wanted to go. For anyone prone to sea sickness this would have been horrible.

I rounded the last can and was excited to almost be done, only to look up to see the life savers trying to point us towards a less than straight angle towards the beach. Now when they tell me to go somewhere - I go. Unfortunately not everyone was as keen to follow their directions so there was some definite collisions going on, which I am NOT ashamed of because getting in was h-o-r-r-i-b-l-e. The waves were bigger, the ditch was deeper which meant I couldn't touch the bottom to regain my bearings and actually use the next wave to help me move closer to the beach. All I could really do for a good couple minutes was hold my nose and pray I got a long enough break to actually swim back towards shore. I was on the verge of putting my hand up for help when like the sun shining from above there was a break in the waves. So I swam as hard as my tired arms could take me, and made it back to land.

View from the beach where the race ended

The rest of Sunday was spent recovering and cleaning then topped up with a fantastic night, which will be the second blog.... can you handle the suspense???

The New Pad

Before Christmas I said good bye to Kingsford and moved to Rushcutters Bay. The move was prompted by the fact that since I'm now working in the city it makes more sense to live in the city. My new place is withing an under 30 minute walk to almost everything I could ever want. Work is 30 minutes, the CBD is just under that, I'm right by where all the clubs and pubs are as well as some really good restaurants. And if I don't feel like walking the cab is usually just around $10.

I'm in a flatshare again, which I really like (automatic new friends, plus it means I didn't have to buy furniture). My new flatmate is a Kiwi named Rachelle who works for Jim Bean doing marketing work. The flat is much larger than my previous place - larger living room, kitchen, bathroom. The main points are 1) it has a dishwasher, 2) the washer/drier are IN the flat, 3) there is a pool downstairs, and 4) there is a dishwasher. :) So now for the main thing you'd like to see... the pictures.

View from the front door... you'll notice the sparse furniture - it is enough to fill the need but I won't be having any fancy parties any time soon

View back to the kitchen

Look at all the space!! and the dishwasher :)

Bathroom picture 1

The shower :)

Now to put this into perspective, here are some pictures from my last place. You'll notice the kitchen isn't nearly as big and there isn't even the need or ability to take two pictures of the bathroom.

Old Kitchen (without the dishwasher)

The bathroom

My bedroom

While I didn't have to buy furniture I did have to buy a bed. In doing so I didn't want to buy just the standard matchy matchy base, so I asked the sales lady about some of the other bases. As it turns out, there were bases which have drawers. Now storage space is always something that you can never do with too much of so I was very keen on this idea. After looking at a couple of different ones I actually found on which was CHEAPER than the matchy matchy kind. YAY!

My new bed has four of these drawers which very handily stash away TONS of just little things which would otherwise be out in the open taking up space.

My new address is as below:

15/3 Clements Street

Rushcutters Bay, NSW 2011

New Years in Byron

I've been told by a couple people that I need to update this more often... but before I do that there is a bit of catch-up in order.

My last post talked about how I spent Christmas in Brisbane. My holiday travels continued after that onto Byron Bay for New Years. Now for those who haven't been to Australia and don't know much about Byron... it is very much a hippie surfer's city. however it is also a place which is known as a big party place - even if the majority of the usual partiers are back packers. I joined a group of friends there for the celebrations.

On New Years Eve I decided to have a go at surfing. Thinking that I took 1 lesson almost 2 years ago now I figured it couldn't be too bad.... but it was! I basically ended up being thrashed about in the waves and didn't have a hope in hell of actually standing up. But I gave it a go and that was the important thing for me. What I didn't realise is that laying on the board had exfoliated all of my sun screen off my stomach and chest. Even though I had put tons of sunscreen on prior to going to the beach I managed to get absolutely fried on my stomach. We're talking lobster red (and I'm not exaggerating here), painful burns. Everywhere which wasn't on the board was fine I might add.

The beach - albeit on New Year's Day when it was a bit more overcast

In true vacation spirit I applied plenty of aloe and continued as normal. We had made reservations at one of the local restaurants for set menu dinner, which was OK if at best. The night time celebrations were a bit anticlimactic. We found a pub which didn't have a ridiculous cover charge and settled in for some drinks. Before we knew it someone was saying "Happy 2010"... no count down, no nothing. :(

New Years day ended up being a bit better as I went on a hike with one of the girls I met on the trip, Mareike. In addition to having absolutely amazing beaches, Byron has the most Easterly point in Australia as well an old light house. Mareike and I hiked up to these see these things as well as spot some dolphins off the coast. Unfortunately these are the only pictures I have from this part of my holiday... better than nothing though!

You'll actually see this lighthouse on many of the tourist brochures used for Australia as it's one of the few still in operation

The obligatory tourist picture

The view south from the Easterly Point

Now in light of my ever present credit card debt over the last few months I've been trying to make sure I have a balance of having fun and 'living' while not spending soo much money. Hence us making our Christmas dinner, fitting 5 people in a hotel room in Byron Bay, and saving $200+ by riding back to Sydney with one of the girls from Byron. Initially I was very excited about driving back. I would be able to see more of the country and it wasn't supposed to be too long - only 7-8 hours (which is short by Australian standards). However.... factor in the highway we took was only 1 lane each way for the majority of the time, would go through the heart of small towns which of course HAD to have a roundabout which backed up traffic for 30-40 minutes... and the drive ended up taking 12 hours. In my book, that's the kind of drive which I would rather pass up for a cheap flight of 2 hours. Oh well... 20-20 hind sight I guess. By the time we got home, I was very excited to have my new bed to sleep in (by myself) and having a good sleep in the next day.

A Brissy Chrissy

For Christmas I went and had a bit of an orphan's Christmas with my friend from school Nicole and her husband and two dogs. It was a nice break to get out of Sydney and see a new city (not to mention not spend Christmas alone). :) To start the holiday spirit off we decorated the two dogs with holiday scarfs which they surprisingly left on.

Weston and Molson sharing the holiday spirit

Unfortunately the weather was very rainy and not very conducive to doing anything outside. So the holidays included my introduction to my new obsession - Wii. I love it and want one! This has now become my new reward for once all my credit cards are paid off (yes I do find it ironic that my reward for paying off my debt is making more, but this is how I manage myself to do this).

Along with playing lots of Wii we were able to go see Avatar and Sherlock Holmes the moves. If you haven't seen Avatar - go. see. it. Preferrably in Imax. 3D glasses are not an option - they are must have. I must admit I have a new heart throb in the form of Jack Sully (Avatar and human). *sigh* :)

For Christmas dinner we did manage to do something a bit formal and had a lamb roast, asparagus, and a very nice bottle of red wine. It wasn't anything big but for three of us it was good. :)

Our Christmas dinner

One thing I was exposed to for the first time in the high intellect of the Queensland public, as demonstrated by these signs at the Burger King (aka Hungry Jack) drive through windows...

For Boxing Day we went to a BBQ at some of their local Canadian friends place. Our dish was salad and desert, so we got a bit creative with the deserts... below are the photos of the cupcake cheese burgers we made from vanilla and chocolate cupcakes, colored icing, and some sesame seeds.

Nicole demonstrating the percision necessary to decorate the 'ketchup"

Masterpieces

The end result... and they tasted fantastic!