Going home (for a short period of time)

This is your 5 month warning:

My wonderful sister has decided to get married in late March next year, so I am going to be in Sydney again sooner than expected. With Jed.

Yay sister marrying fantastic guy! Yay March is one of my favourite times of the year in Sydney! Yay being able to see people that I’ve been missing lots! (apparently this is another Yay post – might need a new tag)

We’ve starting talking about what we want to do, and the major thing is – see people! We’ve not booked the tickets yet, but I imagine we’ll be there from around 21st March until about 4th April. So, make a note, find time for coffee/beer/lunch/amusing diversionary entertainment, I’ll probably organise at least one central pub-type gathering in Newtown (yay Newtown!)

Incidentally they’ve chosen a date that is exactly one year since I stepped on a plane. Spooky!

-I went through all the photos of my sister and I, and decided that this was the one that made us both look equally good, also it has the awwww factor appropriate for this post. This was my 30th brithday cake, as made by my sister, a replica of the one my mother made for my 1st birthday-

Read Full Post »

Biennale

trees grow rocks, don’cha know
Originally uploaded by Miss Krin

I’ve had a bit of time off work in the last couple of weeks as I’ve had a visitor from overseas, which is a perfect excuse to run around my city being a tourist.

One of the things we did was go to the Biennale exhibit at the NSW Art Gallery, which was fantastic. Lots of provocative pieces on change, time and flow.

Some of the my favourite pieces included a pool of alien bobble heads floating around, a pencil drawing of men spiralling around inside a panopticon of woman staring at them, lots of photos of objects balancing on each other, a changing display of decorators at work in the main foyer and the graffiti on the front of the gallery.

It’s on until September and is in the open section of the Gallery so I suspect I’ll be going back a few times. It’s well worth a look if you have the time.

There’s also an exhibition at the MCA, which we’ll be checking out this Thursday.

Read Full Post »

Childlike behaviour

Bay of the Hawkesbury
Originally uploaded by Miss Krin

A friend and I went to Kuringai National Park on Saturday to go on a walk and do some camping, but the closure of most of the walks in the park due to fires stopped that idea.

Instead we had a day of spontaneity which was wonderful.

First stop Illawong Point (the photo) where it was shoes off and stand on rocks in the water time while chatting about the nature of the universe.

Then a drive around General Martin Drive until we hit the edge of the national park and an inviting hillside encouraged us to climb it, sit on a rock for 20 mins and just listen to a whip bird calling his mate. It was a she-oak, bracken fern and cabbage tree palm forest, nice and open, yet a bit lush with hidden pockets. The fact that the incline was essentailly a soft cliff made the climb just enough of a challenge, particularly as we were making our own path.

Just around the corner from there we found a picnic ground with a wharf and people fishing. Better yet we found a medium sized fig tree that was crying out to be climbed. So we did. And then lazed about in the branches for a while enjoying the sensation of doing stuff just because it is fun. Saw some poocackle birds (my family’s name for yellow-breasted honey eaters) having a territorial scuffle, and saw an badly disguised sleepy possum up a tree. Badly disguised as it was a single tree, which was quite bare and he’d wedged himself a third of the way up. We sort of stared at each other for a while but he was too dopey to do much else than move his ears a bit. It’s good to know that he was fearless enough to do that, mustn’t be too many cats in the area.

Stormy weather broke over our heads at one point, which was exhilarating, but as it only lasted for a few minutes we didn’t suffer any consequences.

After describing the day on my radio show later that evening I was sent the xkcd comic below. Sums it all up really. Hurrah for simple, happy days.

Read Full Post »

Le Plan de Paris

• Croissant for breakfast – Check
• French onion soup – Check
• Wine, baguette, cheese, pate all eaten al fresco – Check
• Crepe Bretagne – Check
• Creme Caramel – Check
• Citron Presse – Check
• Cafe – Check
• Al Freco lunch (lots of it, as often as possible) – Check
• Wine – Check
• Tarte Tartin – No
• Geraniums in wondow boxes – Check
• Walking – Check (Mat’s walking tour de Paris is a wonderful introduction to the city)
• Parisien watching – Check

My Paris experience wasn’t entirely about the food, really it wasn’t. Well, actually it was. Good food and seeing a good friend. It was the perfect way to do Paris in Summer. But I didn’t get to try a tarte tartin, despite two attempts to do so. So. I’ll just have to go back. Soon.

Read Full Post »

UK Holiday week 1: London

Rooster
Originally uploaded by Miss Krin

I’ve only been here for a week, but it feels like a month. In a good way. I’ve packed so much into this week, as anyone who’s been keeping tabs on the Flickr account may have guessed.

I have:

• Rambled in many public gardens and admired the English Summer flowers
• Seen so many old buildings and statues
• Done most of the sights of London
• Been to many exhibitions
• Got lost on the tube
• Found my way around the tube
• Been asked my a tourist for directions and had other people assume I live here
• ought stuff, but not too much
• Eaten good food, and drunk beer. Occasionally I find a decent coffee as well
• Been rained on many times, and enjoyed some lovely sunny weather
• Had “historical” experiences where I finally “get it” in relation to the History I’ve been studying since my Undergrad
• Relaxed
• Laughed
• Got Drunk
• Run around London until 2am (see previous line)
• Eaten in pubs
• Walked so much that my feet hurt, but was still excited about seeing more things that I walked even further

But perhaps most importantly, and as I suspected:
Met some lovely, lovely people whom it will be very difficult to say goodbye to. I knew they were going to be fun people I’d get on with, I just didn’t realise how much. Had to say goodbye to the first one the other day and almost got teary. And she’s possibly coming to Australia in a couple of years. Everyone else… well that will be more difficult

Read Full Post »

I’m leaving, on a jet plane…

… in three weeks. Into the UK. London and surrounds for a week, Bedford for two days, Nottingham for 3 days, St. Andrews in Scotland for 2 days, Glasgow area for 2 days, Paris for one day.

I’ve never been there.

What should I do? Suggestions please, so I can keep them all in the one spot.

There’s an online itenerary up, which I will update, and has emergency contact info on it. If you’d like to be able to view it, let me know and I will send you the link. I’m not posting it here, as it’s not really supposed to be common knowledge.

Read Full Post »

Trip

This was the last view I had of Sydney on Friday night:

Sunset over Croydon trainsho

Then I got on a shiny rail type thing, then a shiny winged thing, and ended up in Hobart.

This is what I woke up to the next day:

Hobart hills

And this:

Hobart

A completely different universe. Trees and mountains and cold.

Two days later, Monday morning, this was the view out the window when I woke up:

Out the spare room window

And this, the view from the front door:

From the front door

By lunchtime on Monday I was here:

Reflection

Holidays are fantastic. You can see the rest of the photos here. I thought you all needed a break after the recent long text only posts.

Read Full Post »

Cafe grumps then cafe bliss

One of my favourite things to do on a quiet weekend is to pay someone else to make my breakfast for me while I read the weekend paper and watch the world go by. Generally I head to Envy in Summer Hill for this, since they have a wonderful courtyard to relax in, or gorgeous Vietnamese art inside to look at, good food and good coffee and attentive staff.

Very occasionally I head out to the Bakehouse quarter in Homebush to a cafe called Zenja, and I’m not entirely sure why I still do so, and after today I won’t be doing it again. Service there has always been patchy, the owner is a grumpy Italian man who is quite patronising, the food is decent but only comes in one size: huge. Generally I just want a poached egg or two on some toast.

Today I headed there for breakfast, arriving at about 9am. Gave them my order for scrambled eggs and ham on toast, which was way more than I wanted to eat, but was the compromise, since I’ve experienced their inability to cook outside the menu on the weekend before.

9.45, after the tables around me had received their breakfasts I was still waiting. Flagged a waitress over to ask her if my breakfast had even been started, and if it wasn’t then I’d be leaving. She spoke to grumpy man, who spoke to the kitchen, and then she came back to say it was “up now”. Upon questioning I discovered that meant it was starting now. To which I responded with, “stop them, I’m starving now, and I will be going elsewhere to find my breakfast”. Paid $3.00 for coffee, no word of apology and walked out.

Never, never, never going back. That was strike three hundred million. Time to stop poking forks in my eyes.

Anyway, it was now 3.5 hours since I’d woken up and I was starving. The closest place I was likely to find some decent food was Majors Bay Rd in Concord. I’d never stopped there before, only driven through, but it was precisely what I wanted.

A street lined in crepe myrtles in flower, one of my favourite trees. Large footpaths, with tables set out under umbrellas. A wealth of cafes to choose from, ranging from a coffee and toasted sandwich place in the back of a boutique to a good Italian cafe and some patisseries. I was in heaven! eventually chose the Italian place, got good decent coffee immediately, had my order made up in 10 minutes, with my simple request listened to. I felt like gushing all over the wait staff, a quiet Indian man and a gregarious and friendly Italian man. Although that might have just been the relief of eating some food.

I noticed a Macro wholefoods, some good fish and chip shops, a patisserie that reminded me of the cake shop that reminded me of Ackland St in Melbourne and the one that my mother used to take me to when I was young.

So despite the grumpy/disappointing false start to the morning it became relaxed and shiny.

Read Full Post »

Drunken Scribblings

I have a couple of things to write after the busy weekend that just was, but first the post that I penned on the 8.52 train out of Circular Quay last Thursday night. Be warned this is a direct transcribing of my scribble after 3 glasses of champagne and no dinner, it’s a free flowing stream of consciousness.
————–

There are many things about my new workplace that I love, the respect shown to colleagues, the friendships that exist in parallel to the work that we do and the engagement with the world that is exhibited. This evening’s activity/ adventure was one of these.

5 girls from the office caught the 5pm ferry from Parramatta to Circular Quay then had champers at the Opera Bar and gossiped and people watched.

The ferry ride was lovely, mangroves, the small of salt water, a touch of rain, memories of a Rod Quantock trip that Fitz and I did last year. I finally saw the elephants on the property next to Drummoyne. Pity I didn’t have my camera out.

It was on the train ride home that I remembered why I love Sydney. It is just pretty, especially on a Summer’s evening. There is a sense of relaxation and of gentle light, of trees and old buildings mixing with the new, modern glass ones. It just seems to shine. There is a feeling that you have all the time in the world to absorb the peace of the city, but also to indulge in its activity if you like.

The past few months have found me spending more time around the harbour than the previous 2 years and it’s a bit of a revelation how much the harbour both grounds me and uplifts my spirits. Time for some more ferry rides methinks.

—————-

On the whole not a bad drunken sentimental ramble, I even managed to bring it back round to the early ferry trip. I was hard pressed trying to work out whether to include a photo of the ferry trip, or the city since it rambles around both. Hopefully the best picture won in the end. Now I am carrying a notebook in my bag with me where ever I go there may be a few more of these. Scared?

Read Full Post »

Dancey feet

I’ve been going to a lot of live music recently, and Marina keeps poking me to write about the Vulgargrad concert (warning: link opens in a myspace site with music) we went to a week ago. So here’s some thoughts on that and the Lily Allen concert (musical myspace site again) at Luna Park last night.

Vulgargrad: A Melbourne band that plays street music of the Russian underclass. I went to see them play last Friday night with two friends, one of whom speaks fluent Russian. It was fun. Eastern style beats with a sort of swinging, slightly punky influence. Didn’t quite get up and dance, but I did have my toes tapping the entire show.

Marina’s translations of the lyrics added an element of surrealism to the experience. It was a good crowd, happily dancing away to what, on the surface, was nice traditional Russian music. However I’m not sure they’d have been so calm if they’d understood the swearing and innuendo that was actually being sung at them. Here’s some examples:

• “Why did the Aboriginies eat Cook? Because they were hungry. Though possibly it was out of a deep respect. Who knows.” Which apparently is a well-known song in the Russian community in Australia.
• “Normally, I’m a womaniser, but tonight, I’m just hungry and lonely.”
• “You can be my cow and I can be your cowboy.”

Lily Allen: A solo artist from the UK, confident, cynical, lyrical with reggae & hip hop influences. Her album has been frequently played in my house since I bought it last July. The concert lived up to the promise of the CD, natural, unaffected, fun, energetic. I was a little annoyed with the dead crowd, who didn’t seem to be getting into the music at all. It was an all ages gig, so I suspect there may have been elements of “too cool for the school” there, as well as people only knowing her for one single rather than the entire album.

She seemed to be quite unapologetically herself as well, she walked on stage with a cigarette in one hand, and asked for another two during the show, which possibly goes part of the way to explaining the loss of voice towards the end; she informed us that she was a bit tired as she’d stupidly gone on some of the rides before coming on, and had never been so scared in her life; dedicated the song “not big” to Chris, the drummer from Jet because of an incident at the Big Day Out on the Gold Coast; paused in the middle of a song to throw a jacket back into the crowd as “can’t wear that, it’s got Man U. on it!”; and got the end of “everything’s fine” and told the “younger girls” in the audience that no one should ever tell them to be skinny, that curves (she used a different word that I forget) were wonderful, indicating the gorgeous curves that she has.
All in all, very happy that I went to see her on a school night, and got a spot close to the front. Especially as she’s not yet “big” here, which will happen.

Read Full Post »