Coogee to Bronte

The weather this weekend has been wonderful. Unfortunately we didn't make the most of Saturday after our Friday night out but today on Sunday we certainly did a lot better by doing the Coogee to Bronte walk. We set off about 10:30 and the day was just perfect; blue skies, beautiful temperature and just enough breeze. We even found it easy to find a park in Coogee which was a bonus.

Take a look at the day....

Gordon's Bay

Jo at Bronte Beach

The pool at Bronte, don't let it fool you that water is freezing!

Kebabs & Bellydancers

Saturday night we headed back to Surry Hills for Neil & Nicci's birthday party at Amira's Palace Lebanese Restaurant. At first we had trouble finding the place as downstairs is a pizza take-away but upstairs is the 'Cushion Room' were we found many of Neil & Nicci's friends waiting.

Nicci enjoying herself

After the Noiseworks night on Friday we stuck to the water this time! Nicci was fashionably (and typically) 20mins late and when all 20 of us had made ourselves comfortable on the cushions the banquet began!

Nicci and I in an extreme close-up!

We started with bread, hummos, baba ganoush, then chicken and beef kebabs, falafel, more bread, lamb koftas, and the food just kept coming until we couldn't eat any more. Not bad for $35 a head and no corkage fee! Good job too judging by the amount of wine bottles everyone went through!

The belly-dancing was great fun!

Towards the end of the night, the belly dancer arrived and ensured that everyone (except me, hehehe) got up to have a go. Some surprising performances from Jamie and Jason ensured we all had a good laugh!

We finished off with a sing-a-long of Happy Birthday while Neil and Nicci blew out candles stuck in Turkish Delight and Baklava - Yum!

Noiseworks

"Reach out! Reach out and touch somebody...."

We headed off after work on Friday to meet up with Donna and co for a girls night out to the very glam (not!) South Juniors in Kensington to see the Choirboys and Noiseworks.

We arrived at Donna's place about 6:15pm and enjoyed some nibbles and champers before all heading out to get taxi's to take us to Kensington. We did very well and all managed to get 3 cabs in about 5 mins, not bad in Surry Hills on a Friday night.

We got to Souths and had to sign-in as it's a leagues club and took up position at the front of the stage and got in some cheap drinks ($4.50 for a Pure Blonde, not bad!). There were three bands on; Move Trees (fronted by the Muldoon-look-a-like bassist from Noiseworks) who I really enjoyed. They seems a little Audioslave cross Soundgarden. They were followed by the Choirboys (of 'Run to Paradise' fame) and then finally Noiseworks (fronted by ex-INXS stand-in Jon Stevens).

Donna took along her camera and we all took turns taking shots and we got some great ones. I've added some shots above. And how funny is this! Donna was in Bondi the next day getting these printed out and who does she bump into? Yes!! Jon Stevens himself, so she got that black and white shot about signed for us! Hahahaa!

Unfortunately, we were all a little worse for wear by the end of the show and Jo and I did feel the need for a little McPick-Me-Up on our way home, but we did have a ball.

Mahjong

We enjoyed a great day yesterday learning how to play Mahjong properly. About 3 or 4 weeks ago, Jo and I wandered past this place called Mahjong Room on Crown Street in Surry Hills were people were all learning to play Mahjong and when we enquired they said they did this once a month and it included a Yum Cha lunch - sounded good to us! We booked for the session September and invited Nicci and Joe to join us.

We arrived at 11am and sat at our table for 4 (you need a minimum of 4 players) and we started our lesson. The "class" was really well run and once we started to play, all of the rules eventually started to make sense even though we did confuse our "pung" and "chow" most of the time!

The food they served was fantastic. Really fresh and yummy dim sum, dumplings fried rice, steamed asian vegetables and endless Chinese tea - we've already booked in for November!

TV

This weekend we decided to treat ourselves and we bought a new TV from our mates at Bing Lee in Alexandria :) After much deliberation we opted for an LG LCD that has built in HD, Digital etc etc. Anyway, it looks really nice!

Busy few weeks

It's been a busy few weeks since my last post. We've been to Bryon Bay and back with Bo and Claire - staying in a really nice house close to the beach. The weather was a bit wet and windy and our flight home was cancelled due to the the rain and poor visibility but we made the most of our time there and all the yummy food on offer! We also took a drive to the famous Nimbin, home of all things marajuna! What an odd, odd place it is.

Nimbin: Subtle as ever

The following weekend Jo and I finally got around to having our massage that was bought for us by Dad and Maria. We went to Endota Spa in the city at Martin Place and were treated to a 1 and a half hour full body massage. It was fantastic!!

I'm still in my job, which is a good sign and am slowly getting more and more comfortable with the idea of being in charge and am getting my hours under control as time goes on. Unfortunately, as my job started to be managable, Jo's job is going completely bonkers as they give her more and more people to support, I think she's up to 5 now. They are slowly making people redundant but Jo is hanging in there still.

Today is a public holiday due to the APEC Summit (Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation). World leaders from 21 countries are in Australia at the moment, as the city is in complete lock down (well, except for the 11 comedians from the TV show 'The Chaser' that pulled stunt including a fake motorcade whilst dressed up as Osama Bin Laden and managed to breach the $250m security crackdown! Hahahaha). So we're avoiding the city today and are off for brunch. Yum.