365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 79 : I Like Technology But I Am Not Going to Marry It

I went grocery shopping today.


No, that's not the point of this blog entry but it is does lead to a sort of a Grumpy Old Men rant against technology. I am usually a massive fan of technology - well unless it doesn't that is and then I am damn near ropable and apt to start railing against every last megabyte of the damn device! - and take to new ways to do things with alacrity. Today however my fondness for the new got me into trouble when I used one of the new fan-dangled self-scanning devices so beloved of retailers because it allows them to shed staff like a politician dispenses with morals and ethics on their climb to power.

Usually these devices work well, and I am out of the supermarket in no time flat. But today the scanning device I used didn't like how I placed things in bags, queried why I had put x or y product into the bag at all, disputed that I'd even scanned it, helpfully got me to pay twice for something because of the confusion over whether I had scanned it at all the first time (I had) and generally made my checkout experience a living hell.

Naturally being the good ex-practising Christian that I am - though I do still believe in God - I naturally saw this as divine judgement on me for buying 4 more Smurfs I didn't really needed but wanted  - yes there is no rhyme of reason or logicality for a collector of any object - at the nearby Glebe Markets since usually technology and supermarkets and I get on swimmingly well.


Not today alas, but thankfully the afternoon itself was relaxing and consisted of some blogging, a nap, reading Saturday's paper a little, and then dinner out with my friend Fahmi and 6 others (my dentist, Andrew and his boyfriend, David / their friends Justin and Martin / Fahmi's work colleague Deb, who's a delight, and her husband, Ron) at a great Mexican restaurant called Pepino's in Gladesville (which I dare not truly like as every time I really like somewhere, it usually closes shortly thereafter... thank you Posh Spice!).

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 78 : Ghost Stations and a Zombie Tiredness

Yesterday, about mid afternoon, I started to itch a little.


That little itch became a bigger itch and a bigger itch - yes I know I am veering dangerously into children's book territory here but bear with me! - till little red welts began appearing on my face, shoulder and chest and back and I was finding it hard to concentrate on my job. I have to say that having itchy red welts appear on your face is not the most wonderful of looks - I did check with my boss and also my colleague, Sandra, to make sure I didn't look so bad that children would run from me in terror and was told that while I looked polka-dotty, that alarming 'the villagers' was unlikely - but since the red welts had largely abated in colour and itchiness by 5 p. m. when I caught the bus and I was able to go shopping for the last part of my boss's maternity leave gift and get the antihistamine medication I needed, I shrugged of the allergic reaction, which is something I usually never have, and went home and chilled.

But this morning I woke up after a full night's sleep feeling my body had been through 10 rounds with a really pissed off prize fighter and his equally angry 6 'roids-fueled brothers, a feeling akin to the exhausted feeling you get the day after a major prize fight. But I still needed to go to work, exhausted or not, to deliver the last part of the gift, and to work on switching across four calendars simultaneously with Sandra, on what was the perfect day for quiet uninterrupted work while everyone else was at an offsite event, onsite..... yep it is all very Monty Pythonesque isn't it?


By mid morning, I'd had it, and when Sandra remarked that I looked exhausted but antihistamine medication will do that to you, and I said I hadn't taken any yet, I knew it was time to head home, which I duly did via the deserted train station near work at Macquarie Park. The less than fun part was that it took close to two hours in off peak to reach my home, into the welcoming day time TV bosom of Ellen and The View before sleep claimed me for a very long nap.....


After that less than pleasant start to the day, it did end up wonderfully when my beautiful guy came home from Bathurst, into my arms and we snuggled close and caught up before heading into Newtown for dinner at Tamana's, a yummy budget Indian eating house on King Street.

The only sad note tonight was that my favourite Indian restaurant in Sydney has closed, Posh Spice (it sat above Tamana's, its less glam cousin) has closed. We were headed there for dinner when we saw the closed signs, and while King Street isn't short on places to eat, it is short on restaurants that serve really delicious Indian food, served by warm, friendly staff in very tastefully, intimate surroundings.


RIP Posh Spice - I will miss you......by the way can I use your name for my own Indian place or is that a tad tacky so soon after your demise?


Oh by the way, here's a photo I took of dawn breaking over the building complex I live them. Thankfully it broke gently and damage was minimal....

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 77 : At Last a Bridge Not Too Far!

Around about October last year, Cityrail, in their infinite wisdom (yes there is a healthy heapuin' dollop o' sarcasm slathered all over that phrase) decided to rejig their timetable, take away some well timed trains and replace them with other trains not so well spaced to meet ' consumer demand'. Presumably these are the same commuters who like arriving late for work, spend their day around the water cooler, and leave early.... but I digress....

Anyway, one very positive upshot of this change - not that it appeared that way at the time because it added about 5-10 minutes to my trip to the City to catch my bus - was that they reversed the direction the trains travel around the City Circle (the ring of train stations in or near the City Centre, many of which are underground). This meant that instead of hitting Town Hall first after Central, and shortly thereafter the station I alight at (sounds so fairy-like and gay, like I should be trailing glitter and stardust from my business pants!), Wynyard, I instead hit Museum, St James, Circular Quay (the station just near the Opera House) and then Wynyard. The positive part of two extra stations added to to route to the City?

Every day as we sweep into Circular Quay station from the dark underground tunnels that precede it, a wonderful vista opens up in all it sunshiney glory before me - the Harbour Bridge in the near distance rising resplendent as it has for 80 years over the Harbour, the busy ferry terminus, the Museum of Contemporary Art and The Rocks, all awash in the frenetic fury of Sydney busy getting started with yet another working day. However jaded I may get with commuting, when this view slaps me ever so nicely but dramatically in the face with its glorious charm, I drink it all in, and delight in the fact that I live in a city where this amazing sight is a part of my daily commute. Imagine that!

It has me taken me weeks to get these photos because either there are too many people in the carriage or a train is passing through in the other direction blocking the views or I can't get a seat facing the right way, but today, finally, success, and while the photos don't truly do the vie justice, it does illustrate why this view is such a rich and rewarding part of my commute, and a constant reminder that I live in a remarkable, and beautiful city.

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 76 : The Smurfy Luck of the Irish - Happy St Patrick's Day!

So its St Patricks Day, and with an Irish CEO and an Irish flat mate, it's a bit hard to escape. But then hey, why would you want to? If anyone knows how to party it's the Irish, and while time in Cubicleville precludes any sort of heavy partying - oddly enough getting sloshed at your desk in work time and photocopying usually hidden body parts is seen as a no-no! - I marked the day in my own quiet day, photographing my Irish Smurf (yes really!) in a number of different places during the day, all of which reflected the type of day I had......

I started with my usual ablutions in the bathroom - yes I know its sounds rather disgusting as words go, and seems to indicate something messy and vomit-like, rather than the cleansing it refers to - and part of that is washing my mouth out with Listerine after a vigorous tooth brushing to keep my teeth in my gums (they are relatively healthy but my dentist says I have gingivitis so I now I have a mile long list of things to do to keep my mouth in perfect functioning order.....what fun!)

Then I dropped into friend Fahmi's on the way to work to feed his cat while he's away for work. He doesn't like being alone, and while I'd loved to have patted him and let him snooze on my lap, the best I could manage was to give him food, and pat him a few times. He seemed OK with that....

Then I caught the usual 7.40 train, had a lovely chat with my good friend and now train buddy, Waz, to Wynyard before jumping on the Optus bus to work and checking out emails via the Blackberry, which only goes on during work hours. Yeah, I know, I am not much of a Crackberry user am I?

Then it was breakfast time and my yummy cereal.... I usually only eat a particular brand or flavour for a while before changing so I don't get bored - yes sad that new cereal is a highlight of my working day but then working environments are not usually hotbeds of daring thrills and innovation are they? - and I have developed a habit of eating the inside part of my friend Sammi's toast (she only eats the crusts)....

Just checking what day it is and yes it is indeed St Patricks Day. I love my Rubes Cartoon-a-day calendar...it makes me laugh at the start of what are usually exhausting, fraught and tension-filled days....

I love thee Pepsi Max. Though thou leadest me through the valley of chemicals that are turning my innards into a goopy formaldahide-like broth, thou dost keep me perky and upbeat when all around is yawning boredom, beige and corporate inanities....

Today was the first part of my PDR (like a Performance Appraisal) with my boss Vicki and it went swimmingly. She loves working with me - always good to hear! - but we jointly decided that I need a new challenge in a more creative job within the company I am with now, and that the Executive Assistant role is nearing the end of it's usefulness for me, which I had decided was the case anyway. It was great to be affirmed in my current role, but to also have my boss genuinely want to see me advance and grow.... naturally I ate Rocky Road to celebrate with my fellow EA, Sandra....

Ah the headsets. Much easier to use than a handset when you're typing on the computer, or trying to type notes, or miming that you're killing yourself because the person who's called you is so annoying that you can't STAND IT and you need to....sorry, now where was I? LOL

I did a health test a few weeks back and apparently I am dehydrated. Likely due to all the sweating I do - I have prodigiously overactive sweat glands that erupt at the mere mention of the word 'heat' - and the salt I add to my meals and the fact that though I fill up my Dalek-reminiscent water bottle that I forget to drink the water in it. Still I am trying to drink more than I was, and if my many extra trips to the toilet are any guide, I am succeeding!

Of course he had to pose on the green glitter hat. Like that wasn't going to happen....puh-lease....

Its a Thali Jim but better than we have eaten before. I had dinner in the City at a fabulous place on Elizabeth Street near Central with my lovely cousin, Ngaire (pron. Ny-ree) who was in town for training. We had a lovely time catching up on all our news and shooting the breeze generally - no actual invisible currents of air were injured during the course of our gabfest - and the food was super-delish!

The lovely Ngaire itself.....

I finished the day off with a wonderful chat with my beautiful, sweet gorgeous guy while he filled up his iTunes library and then synced up what he jokingly refers to as his 8 Gigawatt Nana....

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 75 : Zigga Zara! Haaaa......

These are the latest shots of my darling uber-cute adorable niece, Zara in the oh-so-sweet pink tshirt I bought her at Christmas in Ballina. As expected, she models it beautifully, as she practises her newly acquired clapping skills (early attempts had her slapping her forehead as the hands missed each other; thankfully she learnt to connect the hands quickly - she is a very bright girl, and no, that is not just an uncle's pride speaking thank you! - and averted potential brain damage), and amps her crwaling skills to, no doubt,soon to be road-tested walking skills.

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 74 : Great Caesar's Salad! It's the Ides of March!

For those of you not familiar with ancient history, and specifically the history of the Roman Empire, the Ides of March is the Roman number for the 15th day of March (and originally May, July and October and the 13th day of the other months - thank you Wikipedia! Which I hope is accurate...hmm), better known these days as the day Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the Roman Senate in 44 BC.

So why the brief history lesson? Well, apart from the fact that I love information and regurgitating it - think of me as the mother bird feeding you....ugh, oh, never mind!) the cartoons above and below, inspired me to mark the day by making a, what else, Caesar salad for dinner, along with salmon fillets and mango chilli salsa. It may have been a reasonably cheesy joke, but my gorgeous guy thought it was hilarious, the food tasted great, and I am always up for a fun, quirky reason to mark any day given the ceaseless bland rush of most days into featureless nothingness. Particularly in the midst of a busy working week, it's just cool to have some FUN!

Eevn if Julius Ceasar didn't exactly have the best day ever.....

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 73 (Sunday 14 March 2010) : Days of Dumplings, Delirium and Daquiris

Man I love Yum Cha.

What's not to love? Food that comes to you on trolleys in cute bamboo baskets, tastes exotically different from the run of the mill flavours, carries with it the chance of a fun new taste discovery, like the sweet sticky rice treats I had yesterday for dessert (along with the usual delicious custard tarts and mango pancakes), allows you to talk to your friends knowing that the food is spread before you and you can dine at your leisure... there's much to kiss, hug and embrace with ardour, and I love it.

Oddly though I hadn't been for ages, with all the many and varired Summer activities consuming all available time like a locust plague on the march, and so today, with my gorgeous guys, 4 friends from the group we do our Fair Day extravaganzas with, and two of their friends, we hit one of my favourite Yum Cha haunts, Marigold on George Street, for one of the culinary experiences, of many, that Sydney does very well. We ate our way through all sorts of dumplings, sticky rice, beef tongue (no, it doesn't taste like chicken, and no, I didn't pick it off the cart but it had a ginger zing and wasn't as bad as it sounds!), and the aforementioned desserts, and all for just $25 a head. YUM!

Full as a goog - no, I have no idea what it is either but it seems they have overwhelming gluttony issues needing 12 step therapy and/or an intervention - we wandered through the backblocks of Chinatown to the IMAX Theatre in Darling Harbour to see Tim Burton's take on that iconic childhood tale, Alice in Wonderland. Fed on rather ordinary reviews of the movie, I was expecting a visual feast - and it was stunning and imagantive in ways that delighted me in ways I can't even describe - but a rather lacklustre film experience otherwise, but what we got was a movie with a delightfully wacky sense of fun, more substance that you'd expect, and a whimsy and silliness that didn't belie any of the serious issues of tyranny and cruelty than it sought to address. We were entranced, even if the 3D effect was a little blurry at times, and I walked out absolutely in love with a funny, clever, visually rich cinematic feast.

Once we'd overloaded on pixels and fabulous imagery, we headed to the Watershed pub for a 2 hour wine and beer drinking fest - well Coca Cola for the most part for me since I was driving - looking out on the City and calm blue waters of Darling Harbour on what was a perfect Autumn day. All around us, Indian people surged, covered in bright dyes, celebrating Mahotsav, the festival of friendship, colour and harmony, and we drank in a quintessentially Sydney Sunday.

After a brief lie down and kiss & cuddle at my place, my gorgeous guy and I headed back out, this time to the Union pub in Erskineville where we caught up with very good friends, Stephen, Fahmi and John. The food here is wonderful - much better than you'd ever expect pub food to be - and once again, we sat outside in the courtyard, soaking up the dying embers of light, and the richness of friendship we enjoy. It didn't take much convincing to collapse into bed when all the talking and drinking was done, and the day ended in my gorgeous guys arms, pretty much as it had begun.

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 72 (Saturday 13 March 2010) : Sleeping, Walking and Eating

With all the fun activities over the last 2 months, a relatively unstuctured weekend day has been a rarity indeed.

Today, however, there were hens' teeth lying thick on the ground as my beautiful guy and I enjoyed a meandering day that involved a lot of sleeping in, and cuddling in bed, then a langorous lunch at Badde Manors, an idiosyncratically funky vegetarian store in Glebe. I had a divinely delicious eggplant schnitzel - yes apparently it was so yummy I was brought closer to any number of gods....take your pick! - on mash, and my gorgeous guy chowed down on agigantic, planet-crushing lentil burger. I nornmally would grab and gobble down a lentil burger in a flash but this one contained much of my mortal enemy, tomato, and so could not be seriously entertained as a lunch time option.

Lunch happily digesting in our guts - a delightful image that may take you days to expunge from your short term memory - we then wandered through the messy wonderfulness of Glebe Markets, past all the one-of-a-kind arts and crafts, t-shirts, exotic licorices, candles, with the only purchases being two early 1980s era smurfs for my collection (yes I now collect them! Cue a segment on the ABC's The Collectors before too long!). I managed to reist buying anything else and we went into the absolute den of temptation for me, Gleebooks, where I bought a book by Richard Dawkins on evolution, which while I may not completely agree with its theses, looking compelling and thought-provoking and worth a read.

All that wandering donw, my baby and I were ready for a nanna nap, and we had the loveliest one, snuggled close together on my bed for 2 hours. It was utter bliss to be close to him, and to spend such lazy, open-ended time just being with each other. We finally roused ourselves from the bed, and watching TV - saw a fascinating programme on the engineering challenges inherent in the building of the Sydney Opera House - and after a quick stop into my friend Warren's place, we walked up to King Street via the back streets of Erskineville for dinner at Happy Chef, ostensibly to have a vegetable heavy dish.

What we ended up with was combination soups, with delicious ingredients and broth, and not that many veges at all but we made up for that with a long walk up and down King Street, dodging falling cats and dogs all the way, but managing to get home reasonably high and dry.

A wonderfully unstructured. immensely satisfying day.

TGIF Funnies

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 71 : At Last My Cheque Has Gone.... and I Drank to Celebrate It

Life always seems to be busy.


I do like lots of activity, and getting lots done, but I am also a fan of chilled weekends and doing as little as humanly possible.It's the former state that seems to hold me in it's grip most often though, and one of the consequences of running hither and yon - hard to do in these days of modern English! - is so many things get half done, partly done or not done at all. One way around this is to do what I did last Friday and take a day off work to get my life organised but while that can be highly effective, it is always possible to do.

The other option, and work very rarely permits this, is to take a longer lunch - hell, in my case, a lunch of any time frame would be wonderful! - and go to the nearby shopping centre, and run some errands, with the added bonus of getting out of the office. Today was one of those days, and I finally managed after 7 weeks to get two cheques from Medicare cashed into my bank account, and to get a pin assigned to my debit card which I have had for months sitting in an envelope (thankfully the temporary card kept working just fine), and I feel a little lighter in the soul knowing that one more thing has moved from the shadowy netherworld of the Not Done, to the Done, Hell Yeah! pile. It may not be earth shattering or game changing but it was bugging me that it wasn't done, and now I can relax just a little.


Now to completely do all my filing, and put some on Ebay and.....OMG I have a headache and need to lie down....

LATER THAT SAME DAY.........

My beautiful guy and I had champagne at my friend Waz's, with his good friend Sue who we've met previously. She is bubbly and very friendly, and always great fun to be with, and all the champagne and yummy food added to the fun of an end of week chilled get together. Plus after tramping through a lot of units with Waz while he searched for an apartment to rent, my yummy guy finally gets to see the apartment Waz ended up with, which hilariously, was one of the few we didn't see!

A great night, and wonderful start to the weekend.