Australia Day(s)

It's been a busy few weeks and here are a few of the highlights:

1. I managed to convince my boss to let me have a laptop so that I can 'work from home'. It was actually much more painless than I thought even though it did need approval from my bosses' boss! Once approved though, my Lenovo T43 arrived swiftly and I know think I'm all important :)

2. The surfing continues with us renting boards to take out at Manly. We've now tried a few shapes and sizes ranging from a 6' 6" Webber Afterburner to a 7' 6" nsp. I'd love to say that the 6' 6" was easy to ride cos it does look cool but unfortunately the 7' 6" is a breeze in comparison.

It's been interesting as we went out this morning before work with a new teacher, Mark, who has shown us the 4th different technique by 4 instructors! Good news was that his way definitely is the best as I caught my two best ever waves this morning! Nothing bothered me much as work today as I felt so refreshed, relaxed and pleased with my efforts.

3. We've finally been out to sample the delights of the Thai at the Bank Hotel. After closing for about 12 months for a $5million refit, this pub is a monster! Huge with 3 large bars, masses of outdoor seating and a Thai restaurant good enough to rival any on King St - which is no mean feat! There must be 20 Thai restaurants on that street!

The massaman beef is so huge I think it would feed about 5 people. My fave's include the duck stir-fry and the yummy curry paste prawns. Mmmmm.

Sorry, I can't talk. I'm listening to Jazz!

For the second year in a row we thought we'd go along to the highlight of the Sydney Festival - Jazz in the Domain.

This basically involves getting as many people and different types of cheeses along to the Domain in the centre of Sydney, getting a plot of grass and staking your claim with whatever blankets and bags you have brought with you, drinking lots of wine and eating lots and lots of food while listening with another 100,000 people some of the coolest jazz there is going.

Our 'plot' at the Domain

Nicci and Carlos were on plot staking duties this year and arrived super early around 4pm to get a good space. We arrived with Carl and Martinette a little later about 5:45pm and were joined by Gary and Wendy-Ann, Brenton and Joe throughout the evening.

It was great night, a perfect warm evening to spend outside with friends, enjoying way too much food and listening to music. This is such an excellent and free event you can see why over 100,000 Sydneysiders decided to go along. Looking forward to next year!

Twenty20

There isn't really much to say about England's form this season. But being a glutton for punishment I went along to the Twenty20 game that England played against Australia on Tuesday night.

England are so hopeless they couldn't even win the toss and Australia chose to bat first. Probably a good thing as otherwise the crowd wouldn't have seen much cricket!

Australia were ruthless with their demolition of the English bowlers, but Monty didn't do too badly much to the delight of the crowd of this now cult figure.

The man, the legend, Monty Panesar

We had great seats in Bay 9, an excellent position for Jo to experience her first ever live cricket game. Twenty20 really is like Diet Cricket so for someone who can't watch cricket on TV as it's "too boring" it's a good version to watch as it's so fast paced and there is lots of action.

Thank god Jo is Australian though otherwise I'm sure she'd never watch cricket again after yet another woeful performance by England. Not one member of the team stood up to take any sort of leadership role. Flintoff, who was remarkable in the previous Ashes series has shown that he is actually not Superman by obviously not coping with being a top order batsman, a bowler AND captain all at the same time. Stupid selectors.

Still, the Barmy Army were out in force but even they couldn't muster much enthusiasm for what must be the worst display yet.

Mmmmm, Heineken

Life on the Beach

Ok, ok I know this is getting boring as we went to the beach surfing again today but stay with me. We headed over to Manly to take a surf lesson with Carl and Martinette. We bought Martinette the lesson for her birthday ages ago and this seemed a good weekend to cash it in. We arrived at Manly at 8am for our lesson at 9am. We walked the 2mins from Carl and Martinette's apartment to the Manly Surf Lifesavers Club where the Surf School is based. After filling in our forms we all got into our steamers and rashies, got issued a softie and walked about 200m down the beach as there was a surf carnival at the top end of the beach. There was heaps of us for this 2 hour lesson, at least 20, with 5 instructors for us all.

Once there, we all sat in a semi-circle around our instructor as he explained about the beach, where the rips are, some basic rules etc. We all then hopped into the water to check out the sweep and to cool off (very hot and sunny morning).

After that we all returned to our boards on the beach for our instructor to explain the technique of getting up on the board. His technique was very different to what we learnt at our previous lessons in Anna Bay and actually turned out to be far more effective.

We all took to the water for 30mins to practice before returning to the beach for a quick re-cap and some more tips and pointers. Then it was straight back in for more practice.

There were some good and bad things about this lesson. Firstly the good;

• the main instructor's technique was much better than what Jo and I had previously been doing
• the instructors in the water were excellent and were really helpful
• the weather was great
• taking the lesson with Carl and Martinette was great fun

And the not so good;

• the waves and overall conditions were not the greatest for learning - the current was strong and the waves were really choppy
• waaaaay too many learning in the water, even with all the instructors to keep us safe there just wasn't enough space for everyone and I missed heaps of waves as there were people hovering in front of me - it would've been heaps better if it was quieter

There was a professional photographer at the lesson and I had been wanting to get some good pics of us so here are a few of the best ones....

Martinette practices on the beach
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Carl almost wiping out!
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Jo concentrating on her technique
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I make it up
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Jo's concentration pays off

The Ashes

I took a day off work today to go to the 3rd day of the 5th test at the SCG with Nicci and her two friends Gary and Adrian. I woke up to rain and cloud and I thought I'd spend the day watching England get slaughtered in the drizzle, but as it happens about 9:30am when we had arrived at the SCG and found our seats the sun came out and we had a wonderfully hot and sunny day (while still watching England get slaughtered though).

The Member's Stand at the Sydney Cricket Ground

Play started slightly late at 10:15 and an early wicket got the crowd going. The Barmy Army weren't far away and were a bit quiet in the morning session but livened up in the afternoon with their repertoire of "God Save Your Queen" and after Flintoff's dismissal a great rendition of Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer"!

The Barmy Army kept the crowed entertained

Nicci and I applied her bizarre coconut smelling spray on sunscreen about a zillion time as the sun was so blazing hot and in the Concourse where we were sitting we got no shade at all until about 6pm! I think this was probably the only event I have been to where the queue for the men's toilet was longer than the women's.

The crowd must have been about 70% - 30% in favour of the English who were absolutely everywhere, god knows how many are in Sydney at the moment for The Ashes. We didn't see much trouble, only a few people got kicked out and that is probably due to the ground not serving full strength beer, only light beer.

England's 2nd Innings

Overall, England played so badly it wasn't funny. Not that I know much about cricket but when it came to their second innings they all looked scared shitless! Especially after Andrew Strauss took a Brett Lee screamer right on the head that practically knocked him out!

All in all, The Ashes were lost long ago and this display showed me exactly why.

Happy New Year

December 31st was a busy one for us this year as it is our good friend Bo's birthday. Bo arranged lunch for 10 of her good friends at Sugaroom at Pyrmont (where I went a few weeks ago for my work Christmas lunch). We arrived at 12:45 just in time to find Bo pulling up behind us with Liv and Claire.

I knew what I was in for as I had been only a few week ago and the food was so good I went with my same selection as last time!! The BBQ Pork Belly was fantastic and the salmon was equally as good. Liv arranged for a Mango-Passionfruit birthday cheesecake for dessert and this was soooooo good!! The base had coconut and pistachio in it mmmmm.

Bo and her yummy birthday cheesecake

It was a really nice relaxing lunch and everyone had a great time and it was good to see Bo really enjoying herself :)

After we said our goodbyes Jo and I headed home to feed the cats and get ready for our trip over to Manly to spend New Year's with Carl & Martinette. We were so full from lunch but it didn't stop us from nibbling at the cheese and dips Martinette had organised.

We walked down the the wharf to catch the 9pm fireworks and then headed back to the apartment for a late BBQ dinner and some drinks to ring in the new year. We watched some of the midnight harbour fireworks on TV and toasted the new year with some champagne.

We woke up on New Year's Day hangover free (yay!) and were hoping for some good weather so we could go for a swim but it was cloudy and raining :( The weather started to pick up later in the day and Martinette, Jo and I decided to go shopping. We had a successful trip with me buying two new sets of swimmers from Quiksilver (only $60 each!) and Jo getting a new set to go with her new set she got the other day while we were waiting for our haircut appointment. We are now officially set for our planned trip to the Gold Coast in February!

In the afternoon the weather had become really nice and sunny so we took a walk over to Shelly Beach for a nice swim and walk. I've never been to Shelly Beach before but it's a great spot as the beach is really sheltered and is almost like a lagoon as you can go out quite far but it's still quite shallow. It seems to be a great place to snorkel too judging by the number of snorkels I saw around the rocks.

The nice and cool Shelly Beach at Manly

A great end to a really nice New Year's Day.

Baby's first surf lesson

We arrived for our surf lesson keen as mustard at 12:00 even though the lesson didn't start until 12:30. Once our fellow wannabe surfers arrived for the lesson (two brothers aged 12 and 7!!) we went round the back of the surf kiosk and we kitted out with wetsuits and a soft surfboard each. Mine was 8' 6" and I could barely lift the thing, I had to drag it along the sand to our surf spot!!

Our teacher for the day, Angela, was a young Aussie girl and she sat us all down to explain a bit about rips and what to watch out for (namely each other and other surfers) and to demonstrate what we'd be doing first.

One Mile Beach at Anna Bay

Our first challenge was to get out into the water up to our waists, wait for a wave (or more precisely white wash was this is easier), when the wave was approaching push the board out in front of you, hop on, paddle and when the wave reaches you to put your hands at chest level around the 'rails', push up with your arms but still be laying down but with your chest raised and follow the wave back in.

Sounds easy doesn't it. The tempation is when the wave catches up with you to put your arms out in front of you which then tips the board into the water and you wipe out! We had a few practise runs at this and we all had the hang of this part quite quickly.

Angela called us back to the beach and demonstrated part 2 of the crash course, which was to attempt to stand up on the board. This involved raising your bum up after you had lifted your chest up and then moving your legs one by one to the correct position on the board (your strongest leg at the back, which is also the leg you attach the leg rope to). Jodie is left foot at the back (otherwise known as being 'goofy' footed) and I am right leg at the back.

Someone else's board, much smaller than mine!

We hit the water again and Angela spent some time with the youngsters to make sure they were ok, Jo and I caught wave after wave and eventually we both managed to stand up on the floating raft that were our softboards!

The 2 hour lesson went surprisingly quickly and we had such a great time that we signed up to do another lesson the next day!

Day two saw me "progress" to an 8ft board and it was much of the same really, just consolidating what we had learnt the previous day. Jo made excellent progress and was catching about 80% of her waves I reckon. I was a bit slower on the uptake but towards the end of the lesson I managed to work out where I was going wrong and caught a few goodies.

The father of the two boys we did the lessons with (they joined us for day 2 aswell) took a great picture of his son that managed to capture Jo full flight and he said he would e-mail to us, if we receive it I'll be sure to upload it in all it's glory :)

Aussie Christmas

Christmas is over for another year and it was a busy one for us. We left on Christmas Eve to make the drive up to Nelson Bay to spend some time with Jo's Mum. The journey was as predicted; long, full of Zhanna being sick in the car and boring. We made it up safe and sound and unpacked our car full of pressies.

Christmas Day was a bit of a wash out as we woke up to rain and cloud but we had a nice day none the less. We all swopped pressies in the morning followed by a visit from Jo's brother, sister-in-law and nephews. Jo's Mum put on a great lunch for us all and we all ate until we felt sick!!

Boxing Day was a much better day weather wise and Jo and I decided to head to the beach. We checked out a few but decided on One Mile Beach near Anna Bay as it was more sheltered and less choppy than some of the others. The surf was good but very cold and we lasted a few hours before heading home. We spotted on our way out that they had a surf school at the beach so we enquired about lessons for the next day and by the time we got home we had talked ourselves into it :)