Swimming Pretty in the Glass-Half-Full 2012: Day 77 - Out and About In Sydney Town

 It's a truism that's been been proved time and time again - you never really explore your own city until visitors comes to town.

So it was that today I went to Paddington Markets - where I bought the coolest hand painted cloth cats (trust me, totally awesome) and a pair of authentic 70s-era silver sunglasses, unearthed I think in an archaeological dig somewhere in Europe! - the Paddington Reservoir (an old 19th century brick reservoir that been converted into a cool sunken garden), Rekorderlig Swedish pear cider at the Paddington Inn, and Brett Whiteley's gallery in Surry Hills, which was fascinating, absolutely fascinating since it came complete with his art, the LPs he listened to as he painted, his graffiti still on the wall... as I said fascinating.

My guy glaming it up

The delightful Darren and Melissa

Melissa told me about this cool new photo app called Hipstamatic. So much fun!

And why did I do all this cool stuff, stuff I wouldn't ordinarily do? Because my gorgeous guys brother and sister in law, Darren and Melissa were in town for the weekend and wanted to hang out, and so we did. We had a ball! For a start they're seriously fun people to spend a day with - the conversation and laughs don't stop, and they're willing to explore and see all sorts of things. I haven't enjoyed a day more in a long time.

One of the things I am grateful for, apart from primarily being supremely grateful U have the beautiful partner I do, is that his family are the loveliest people. Spending time with them is such a joy and frankly I wish we saw more of them. The same goes for my family too. It's the one part of living in Sydney I don't like - not seeing family as much as I want. Anyway we got to see them today and it was so much fun.

Then after a quick dash home, we had dinner out at Blu Ginger, an Indian restaurant I love in Milson's Point - our first choice, Ripples was booked out - and Steve's friend from Canberra days in the late 80s joined us, Lynette. She is animated, fun, extrovertive, and it was such a pleasure to meet her after hearing so much about her.

Awesome view of the harbour down on Lavender Bay (and of Melissa's arm too!)

Steve and Lynette as we dropped her off at Double Bay

An awesome day and night all around. Thank you everyone!

Swimming Pretty in the Glass-Half-Full 2012: Day 76 - All the world's a play we've seen before

In this case a play out on by Cityrail.

After last night's fiasco, they did it again tonight. Granted not on as grand a scale, but on the exact line I needed - the Bondi Junction line. My plan had seemed trouble free. Leave work, get a train to Town Hall, go to King's Cross, get off, meet friends, and my beautiful man, and see a play.

But thanks to Cityrail's inability to run a train network - kind of deal breaker when that's all you're tasked with doing - my simple plan became a complicated meet Fahmi in the City, run over to Bathurst Street, jump with as much speed as possible into my guy's car (thankfully he hadn't reached the city when the plan burst into flames) and get to King's Cross 1/2 hour late.

We still managed to get dinner at the gorgeous Anong Thai - both food and service are stellar - and get to the play, The Paris Letter, in time. The play was awesome as was the cherry and cheese strudel we had at Maggie's German restaurant afterwards and the company of my wonderful friends.

TGIF funnies

Swimming Pretty in the Glass-Half-Full 2012: Day 75 - The horror and the happiness of life

Tonight did not start well.

In fact, it was hell on earth. The poorly maintained Cityrail network experienced another of its all too frequent "signal failures" plunging every commuter into layers of horror even Dante would struggle to comprehend. Trains were listed on the electronic boards, were supplanted in the order of priority by others or simply ceased to exist at all.

As usually happens in these instances, the Inner West ceased to exist as a destination. So any trains going to Newtown/Macdonaldtown (on one line) or Erskineville/St Peters on my usual line essentially stopped running. It took me just over an hour to have a train turned up going to Erskineville - and by turn up I mean actually physically materialise at the platform as opposed to just being promised like some sort of public transport prick tease - and then the train sat outside Central for 10 minutes with no explanation.

I was supposed to be going to Newtown to have dinner with Justin as a new place we both wanted to try called "Sultan's Table". In the end, when trains to Newtown went the way of the Dodo, we had to rearrange our plans and we needed up having dinner at Stir Crazy Thai at Erskineville since that was a station I could actually reach. Eventually.

I arrived at Erskineville beyond angry and unfortunately my anger leaked a little onto Justin, poor guy. Thankfully he is a very dear, sweet friend, let me get the anger out of my fashion, realised any accidental anger splashing was not personal, and we settled into an absolutely delightful wonderful night that was so good I was almost skipping as I went home.

Thank the universe for friends as wonderful as Justin and the time to properly spend with them.

He saved my night.

Swimming Pretty in the Glass-Half-Full 2012: Day 74 - Mooses and cats oh my!

Nothing remarkable happened today so here are fun LOLZ pics from the web that combine my love of mooses and cats. Perfect.

Swimming Pretty in the Glass-Half-Full 2012: Day 73 - New sneakers

I road tested my new $70 sneakers (down from $120 at Rebel - yay!) today and they were great.

I went out walking with my good friend Fahmi and while the shoes did their usual new shoe thing and pinched my toes, they were contour to my feet and all will be well.

The best thing is that now with more support, my legs aren't aching which they do when the shoes are old and can't protect my legs from the shock of walking 7km on the footpath.

Swimming Pretty in the Glass-Half-Full 2012: Day 72 - Zara makes my Monday wonderful

It's no secret I adore my animated, fearless, fun-loving niece Zara so whenever new pictures are available of her I rush to check them out (my sister lives on the Gold Coast so I sadly only see Zara in the flesh every few months if that), and naturally publish them on the blog so the world can see how utterly delightful she is.

Here she is at the Macadamia Castle at Knockrow which is, as my sister so beautifully puts it, her second home. She loves all the animals, the putt-putt golf and the playground. She loves it all.

Feeding the chooks

Playing with her friend-for-the-day

She loves holding the bunnies

Swimming Pretty in the Glass-Half-Full 2012: Day 71 - The Yum Cha catch up that wasn't

We were supposed to have Yum Cha today with Jeff and Jane, but as we waiting outside Palace Restaurant for them, and it crept past the meeting time, I thought I should just call and see how close they were. 


They weren't close at all as it turned out. They'd forgotten! Yes, we'd confirmed with each other it was on as recently as Thursday or Friday. But they were exhausted, chilling at home after a crazy busy week and just forgot. I wasn't annoyed - we all do it when life overloads us.

So we did what anybody would do. We had Yum Cha together. It turned into a lovely date lunch with shopping for running shoes at Rebel afterwards and boxer purchasing at GAP before my gorgeous guy Steve had to leave for his monthly Australian Chamber Orchestra concert.


Turned into a lovely day in the end. Chilled afternoon. Simple dinner when Steve came back to my place that night and we watched an episode of Once Upon a Time.


Quite lovely and the perfect finish to an unhurried weekend.

Swimming Pretty in the Glass-Half-Full 2012: Day 70 - Long chilled day

While my poor guy caught up on a mountain of work, I sat back and read, slept and blogged. A gloriously unbusy, uncomplicated day that finished with dinner at Minh's, our favourite Vietnamese restaurant in Dulwich Hill. 


OK, the only one. But it is very good.


But before all that, we had a Yellow Breakfast! It was all yellow. What's not to love?

Swimming Pretty in the Glass-Half-Full 2012: Day 69 -

Awesome night!

My gorgeous guy and I drove out to Parramatta for dinner with my lovely sister Rachel, hubby Mike and the ever adorable Bodhi. The plan was to get there by 6.30 so we could have 2 hours with them before Bodhi needed to sleep but thanks to Cityrail stuffing up the trains AGAIN, and horrendous traffic on Parramatta Road, we didn't get there till 7.30.

Still Bodhi was bright and happy, we found a quirky Chinese restaurant to have dinner at - the salt and pepper King Prawns were delicious! - and even though Rachel and Mike had to scoot off early to the hotel, we picked up some desserts on way back, and had coffee and high-calorie sugary things with Rachel in their room while Mike spent some time with his family (they were all down for a family wedding).

I hardly get to see my family so this was a wonderful special treat!

Sunset is the one thing that can make Parramatta Road somewhat beautiful.

Stunning oranges and yellows.

We ordered pumpkin dumplings that were delicious - almost like fritters.

** Bodhi was wonderfully well behaved for a very tired little boy and managed so many lovely smiles and cute moments. Naturally I tried to take as many photos as humanly possible while talking to Rachel and Michael, and eating dinner...

TGIF funnies