After our monster weekend of painting, what better idea when you are exhausted and slightly covered in white paint than to drive out to Homebush to watch Kylie in concert. It turned out to be just the thing we needed, Nicci and Joe arrived (on time) at 5pm and we proudly showed them our handy work before heading out for an early dinner. Thai in Newtown is always a good bet and this was no exception. The food was great at Doytao but the service was as frosty as Tony the Tiger. Still, we were in and out in good time and $70 for 4 people isn't bad. We headed out to Acer Arena expecting traffic delays all the way but were super surprised when we arrived in about 20 minutes! Finding a car space was also far easier than expected, all the good omens were there.
We took our seats (unfortunately not sitting with Nicci and Joe) to the left of the stage and pretty close to the front too.
Now this was Kylie's "Showgirl" tour postponed from last year after she was diagnosed with Breast Cancer and was the last of 6 Sydney shows and she sure did put on a show.
Kylie obviously recognised her status as a gay man icon and the show certainly catered for that market pretty well! From the "I'm a Show Boy" merchandise to the buff semi-naked dancers in budgie-smugglers you'd enjoy the show much more if you are a twenty-something queen than an adolescent school girl.
Now I have to give credit to whoever arranged the Chicago inspired version of "Locomotion" which I really enjoyed!! The versions of "Especially for You" and "I should be so lucky" were wonderously shit as ever though.
Taken on Jo's mobile phone
My favourite parts where the space themed part of the show where the backing dancers resembled Cybermen and Fembots that Doctor Who and Austin Powers would have been proud of and "Can't get you out of my head" really does live up to it's title. Cathy Dennis has come a long way since I was a kid :)
We turned into Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen on the weekend and started to decorate our new flat. Well, not quite as bad as old curly cuffs himself but we did get the paint out for the first time.
The weekend started early as we spent a fun filled Friday night at the Aussie B&Q equivalent "Bunnings" buying paint, rollers, brushes, trays and other such exciting things. What an odd place the world is when Bunnings is busy enough to stay open to 9pm on Friday nights! Once home we started to sugar soap the walls and taping up places we didn't want to paint so we could have a head-start.
We were up bright and breezy on Saturday morning and started work at 8:30am. I'm afraid our colour choice wasn't quite "Changing Rooms". No hot pink and canary yellow for us. We went for a custom made white to freshen the place up and to re-paint the stairs and doors which are an odd cream colour and to paint the back of the front door which is an even odder bluey-grey.
By 3pm on Sunday we had finished about 95% of the downstairs, everywhere had two coats as stipulated on the tin and everything was cleaned and back to normal. The place still smells of fresh paint but we can't worry too much as we are in for more of the same this weekend when we tackle the upstairs.
Can't wait to do the feature walls and finally get to use paint with colour that I can actually see on the wall while I'm working!
Another busy weekend for us. Up early to get things organised before heading up to the delights of Woy Woy on the central coast for Dale's dance performance. We arrived at the motel by the water on a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon around 2:30 and with Guy in tow we met up with Mrs B and Andrew who had headed down from Port Stephens.
The Watersedge motel was basic but clean and comfortable and had everything you could want for the price. Later that afternoon we took a walk around wandered around by the water to catch the last part of the sunny arvo.
Woy Woy in the Sun
We all had to have a bite to eat (great fish and chips from the Fisherman's Wharf) before heading off to the Laycock Theatre to see Dale in his end of year show. Dale has been studying at NAISDA for the past year and the show was the culmination of countless hours of hard work and practice.
The show, "No Answer" took us through an exploration of aboriginal identity with dance and spoken word. Dale earnt himself a reputation as the comedian of the show with some great acting and witty one liners. The show was great and we all really enjoyed ourselves, especially from our hand picked seats in the second row! After the show we caught up with Dale to congratulate him on a great performance but we could hardly get to him for the hoards of kids wanting his autograph! Awww!
We all hoped to be up early and out walking on Sunday morning but after getting to bed about 1am we didn't quite make it. We were up and out by a respectable 9am though. Andrew, Guy and I drove out to Mt Penang to drop off some things that Dale needed for his performance with NAISDA at the Sydney Opera House that night before packing up and having some brunch.
We said goodbye to Mrs B and Andrew and headed back to Sydney via Berowra Waters, a beautiful by impossible to park spot where Mrs B used to live before Jo was born.
The all too real fire danger at Berowra Waters
Yesterday was the famous Melbourne Cup (like the Grand National for any pommies). There is a tradition at work that everyone heads up to Level 12 where there is a big screen, food and drinks and prizes for the Best Hat and Worst Tie!
For those that have seen my blog before, you will notice my "Top 5" section that for the past few days had been tipping horses for the Melbourne Cup. It wasn't until yesterday at just after 3pm that I realised I am a horse-tipping genius - I picked First AND Second with Delta Blues and Pop Rock respectively. Only one more and I could've had the horse racing holy grail of the trifecta!
This would have been much more impressive had I actually put some money on these horses but alas I only went in the work sweepstake (where I invariablely get the lame three-legged nag each year) and this track record was not broken this year. Ahh well, maybe next year I will get them right AND put some money on them!
I've only just found the time to post a review of the past week! We were super busy on the weekend as we had Jo's cousin Karen and her boys down from Coffs Harbour to stay the weekend.
They arrived late on Friday night and amused themselves at the Motor Show while Jo and I went to Lisa's Baby Shower that we organised. Lisa and Christian (our ex-neighbours but who still live in our apartment building) are expecting twin girls in about 4 weeks time!
Saturday night Karen went to a School Reunion and Karen's partner Paul took us and two of Karen's boys to see the Basketball at Homebush. Karen's other son, Luke, is part of the Australian Children's Choir and he was staying in the city preparing for their peformance at Town Hall on Sunday night.
On Sunday we all drove down to Cronulla to check out the beach and have some lunch. Karen met up with one of her friends who lives down there and we enjoyed a nice sunny day by the beach. The surfers were out in force and were catching some good waves.
Surfer enjoying the surf at Cronulla on Sunday
We had Sunday night to ourselves while Karen, Paul and the boys went to see Luke perform at his concert in the city. They spent their last night with us on Monday and very kindly took us out to dinner for some great Thai in Newtown. We treated the boys to Gelato for dessert, while we were in Newtown we walked past the brand-spanking-new Bank Hotel which (we found out from the General Manager who came out to talk to us as we were all peeking in) was opening the following night.
Work has been full on this week too as my team takes on a completely new direction by being responsible for TIBCO BusinessWorks, of which I will be the transition into being Team Leader over the coming months and hand over my current role to someone else who is yet to be appointed!
And we have still been getting up at 5:20 for our runs! Zzzzz.
Well, Jo and I have been doing really well on our early morning fitness regime. We have diligently being getting up at 5:30 on Monday's, Wednesday's and Friday's for either Tennis, a Jog or a good 50 minute walk.
This morning was no exception, as we walked for 50 minutes and we back home eating our Weetbix before you can say get-out-of-bed.
I had a health check (provided by my very generous company) on Wednesday to check my blood glucose, cholesterol, BMI, Waist/Hip ratio and blood pressure. All my results were either in the normal range or were even better so I was very happy with that, and it is definitely an incentive to keep up with the exercise rountine.
Unfortunately for us, Daylight Savings starts on Sunday so we will put our clocks forward 1 hour on Saturday night meaning by Monday morning it will start to get light at about 6am instead of 5am. This will be the biggest test to see if we can continue the early morning starts when it still feels like midnight. Wish us luck.
Yesterday was my 'Team Building' afternoon at work. Usually this conjers up thoughts of corporate idiots in combats pretending they are commandos on an assault course. This however, is the 21st Century, and 21st Century post Secret Life of Us teams go Lawn Bowling!
There are 16 people in my team, and we all trudged up Miller Street on a cloudy and slightly chilly day up to North Sydney "Bowlo" for Rock 'n Bowl! An idea created by an ex Rugby Wallaby and self-title "Minister of Fun". The Bowling Club is in a great location, with a beautiful view over Sydney Harbour. It was a shame that the sun wasn't out and it was overcast but the view was still good.
Basically, they divide you into teams (we had 4 teams of 4) and then you play round-robin style against each other. Then there are semi-finals, and the winner of these play for the Winner's Trophy and the losers of the semi-finals playoff for "The Horse's Arse" cup. Our team played really well until the semi-final where we came unstuck. Ronald and Simon in my team but put in excellent performances and seem to be lawn bowl sharks from way back! Unfortunately, my team was the winner of said horse's arse, but still a trohpy is still a trophy!
Inspired by the "Three Beautiful Things" blog I discovered today, where everyday the blogger describes three beautiful things she has experienced, here are my three beautiful things for today.
1. Feeling the cool breeze wash over me as I lay down on the grass of Sydney Park at 6am this morning after an early morning jog. It was slightly muggy this morning and after finishing my run the breeze was so refreshing.
2. There is nothing like a well made fresh coffee and turkish toast and vegemite in the mornings! A fresh coffee everyday is one of my vices and I don't often get toast as I eat breakfast at home but this morning the smell of butter and vegemite on hot turkish toast was too much to resist.
3. The feeling of accomplishment and pride as a shiny new home owner today :)
I bet you're all dying to know, did we manage to get our bums out of bed at 05:30 this morning. And the answer is..........no we didn't. We were up at 05:20 instead!!!!We were up bright and early and set off on a nice warm morning (it is supposed to hit 34 today!) for a half hour jog, followed by some weights at home, and we were eating our weetbix earlier than usual!!The trick is now to try and do this a couple of times a week and keep it up - consistency is the key!
Tomorrow morning sees the start of Jo and I's GOYA Plan (or Get Off Your Arse Plan) in an attempt to get fit for summer. The plan is to get up at 5:30am and go for a run. Yes, 5:30. Now, anyone that knows me should also know that for me there is usually only one 5:30 in the day and it is not of the AM variety. But we have to start somewhere and this exercising before work is one way of doing that as usually by the time I get home from work I can't be bothered. Jo can also break-in her new luxury runners.
It is part of a multi-pronged attack on our continuing lazieness, the other prongs being:
- Play tennis (although the council are demolishing our local courts - bastards)
- Go swimming
- Go to the beach (and run, swim, surf etc)
I will provide an update tomorrow to let you know if we actually went for a run, and if not I will try to come up with a good excuse :)
Google continues it's innovation in presenting Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets to us users. I've had a play around this morning and while it's not going to give you all the functionality that Word and Excel offer (of which about 90% of it we never use anyway), it is what the online concept brings. The idea of a collaborative document that can be viewed and/or updated by invited guests may mean the end of sending huge documents and clogging up inboxes all over the world. Here is my boring test document for you all to view. Google assigns a unique URL to each of my new documents allowing me to easily send you the link, publish to my blog straight away (which I haven't tried yet) and either invite you to update it, doing away with Microsoft Words irritating Tracking feature :)
We have been very lazy for months now, so on this glorious Sunday morning we decided to drag our lazy butts to the pool for a dip, some laps and some sun.
We headed to the newly refurbished Victoria Park Pool and enjoyed a great hour of sun and relaxation. After about an hour though, from absolutely nowhere came a huge gale! The quickest southerly I have seen for a while, instant gale force winds and a drop of 10 degrees in about 20 minutes saw us only stay at the pool for about an hour and a half before we went in search of some good coffee to warm us up! The Varga Bar hasn't let me down so far, and they didn't again. God their coffee is good.
We went out to try a new pizza place on Thursday in Surry Hills. Pizza e Birra had looked good went we went to for brunch a few weeks ago to a cafe next door so we thought we would give it a try.
We went with our neighbours Lisa & Christian and we put our names down before heading to The Clock pub for a nice glass of wine. We met up with friends of L & C and enjoyed the upstairs bar at the pub. The Clock used to be a local of mine when I was living in Surry Hills but I think I must have overdosed on it as I haven't been there for years. It had a nice cosy atmosphere upstairs and I barely had time to finish my drink before Christian's mobile was buzzing telling us our table was ready.
Eight of us sat around a long table in the dimly lit and noisy restaurant, we got our priorities right and ordered a great bottle of Shiraz to kick things off. Jo had to make a trip to the ladies before the long, I normally wouldn't mention her toilet habits, but bear with me. After about 10 minutes (which is long, even for Jo!) I was wonder where the hell she had got to. She eventually turns up after having to send a message for help as she had been stuck in the loo! Hahahahaha!
After we all stopped laughing, we decided we were happy to share our dishes so we ordered a garlic pizza to share and 5 very different pizza for main. The pizzas were excellent, light and crisp with some great toppings! My favourite was the one with peas! Very odd, but strangely the pick of the lot.
We went to see Cirque du Soleil's "Varekai" on Thursday night at Moore Park. We were there early as parking at Fox Studio's is usually a nightmare. Parking actually turned out to be very easy and as we walked around the "Entertainment Quarter" at Fox it wasn't hard to see why. It's gone to the utter shithouse. Fox Studios used to be ok, had a few good shops like Stussy, Beach Culture, General Pants etc. Now, it's full of cheap asian crap clothes shops and if it wasn't for Cirque I'm sure there would be no-one there.
We walked through the gates and took our seats under the Grand Chapiteau. Our seats were fantastic, on the side and close to the front. The show started slowly with the odd characters creeping out onto the stage.
The people behind Cirque du Soleil must be absolute nutters as their stories never make any sense to me but you can't question the talent of the performers. The show is a blend of gymnastics, theatrical dance, acrobatics, comedy and traditional circus skills (see the mad juggler below) with a twist.
Everytime a performers has finished their act, you think to yourself 'That's my favourite'. That is until the next act comes on! Every part of the show is just amazing, every performance is timed to perfection. We both really enjoyed all parts of the show, but if we had to choose the stand out acts we would go for:
1. The two guys on bungee ropes
2. The contortionist lady who could bend her body into any position possible3. The three cute chinese boys (couldn't have been more than about 8years old)
This weekend was supposed to be peaceful and relaxing, just pottering around Sydney doing a few bits and pieces but all that was shattered as it turned out to be one of the busiest weekends in history!Friday night saw us head to the Kirribilli Hotel after work for a few well deserved cold beers (that eventually turned into beers and pizza). Saturday morning saw us up and out to Guy's place by about 10:30 for Dale's birthday 'coffee and cake'. We then all headed into Chinatown for Yum Cha, Jo and I hadn't been for months and Dale had never been at all. We did well, sampling the best that the East Ocean had to offer and the bonus was that we didn't have to wait for a table as we were at their doors by 11:45! After Yum Cha, Jo and I treated ourselves to a goodie from the best Chinese bakery, while Philippe went for Cold Rock Ice-Cream and Dale and Guy went for Gelato!We left the boys around 12:45 and decided to walk from Chinatown to Paddington via Oxford Street. We walked and walked and walked and practically made it to Centennial Park before we walked down the other side of Oxford Street back towards the city. Jo picked up a couple of really nice tops along the way. We made it all the way to Crown Street before diverting through Surry Hills. By the time we made it to Cleveland Street we thought we might as well walk home. We arrived home after about 4.5 hours of walking and about 20kms at about 5pm.I spent the night on the lounge watching the NRL and the Dragons lose to the Storm and went to bed completely shot.We were up early on Sunday as we were meeting Lisa & Christian for breakfast. We headed to 'Bird Cow Fish' on Crown Street and I enjoyed a fantastic cappucino and egg & bacon roll with homemade bbq sauce. Yummy! Jo went slightly healthier and opted for the bircher museli with yoghurt, apple and prunes!We headed off to Manly in the afternoon to see Carl & Martinette, they are moving from Mosman to Manly and had offered us some furniture they are putting into storage. The furniture looked great so we said we'd look after it for them instead of them storing it. This saw us spend the rest of the day moving furniture and dismantling a bed as the movers were coming to put the stuff into storage on Tuesday so we didn't have another opportunity to move it! We finally finished moving at about 7pm and we both had a 2 minute shower before heading over to Bo & Claire's for dinner. Claire arrived home on Thursday after a 3 month stint in the UK and Spain, we went with Bo to pick her up from the airport. She brought us back a huge back of PG Tips and some squeezy Marmite!! Bo & Claire cooked the best pork roast I think I had ever eaten and we enjoyed it with a nice bottle of Taylors Shiraz. We left them at about 10pm and Jo was still on high when we got home and she wanted to move the furniture to clear the lounge. We finally hit the sack at about midnight and I was up at 6am for work. ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
This weekend saw two big footie games take place. Firstly the Dragons got beaten by the Storm in the NRL on Friday night dammit! So close but yet so far for the Dragons team that couldn't shake off the demons of their Grand Final loss to the Storm in 1999 despite being 14 points clear. The Swannies did Sydney proud though by making their second AFL grand final apperance in as many years. They'll be hoping to back up their fantastic win last year against last years rivals West Coast this Saturday at the MCG.Go the Swannies!
We re-arranged the loungeroom furniture on the weekend (getting ready for when we can buy new things as we will officially be 'homeowners') and we love the new look. The only thing wrong is that we really need another sofa or chair to fill up some space and provide some more seating. We don't really want to be spending a lot of money on a brand new lounge or chair so I thought I would do some research (god bless the internet) and I came up the most fantastic, the most genius idea ever. Are you ready? Sure? OK here it is....a bean bag. No, no wait you have to hear me out. Not any old beanbag, but the godfather of cool beanbags.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you....the MILANO!!!
I know, I know. It's the coolest thing you've ever seen, you don't have to tell me :) If you have beanbag envy, you can purchase one at www.beanbaglounge.com.au
An update on our impending house purchase, we finally got the approvals that we needed and exchanged contracts last thursday. We now have about six weeks until settlement when we will be the proud owners of a mortgage and apartment :)Jo's cousin came to visit from Coffs Harbour on the weekend, she and her partner Paul went to see Hugh Jackman in "The Boy from Oz" currently playing at the Entertainment Centre. Jo and I spent most of the weekend looking around for things that we want to get for the apartment, starting with replacing the ugly vertical blinds - yuk!Will keep you posted on any further housey type updates.
My iPod sadly departed us on Monday. RIP.
After our monster weekend of painting, what better idea when you are exhausted and slightly covered in white paint than to drive out to Homebush to watch Kylie in concert. It turned out to be just the thing we needed, Nicci and Joe arrived (on time) at 5pm and we proudly showed them our handy work before heading out for an early dinner. Thai in Newtown is always a good bet and this was no exception. The food was great at Doytao but the service was as frosty as Tony the Tiger. Still, we were in and out in good time and $70 for 4 people isn't bad. We headed out to Acer Arena expecting traffic delays all the way but were super surprised when we arrived in about 20 minutes! Finding a car space was also far easier than expected, all the good omens were there.
Taken on Jo's mobile phone
