Sunday, October 29, 2006

It's been quite a busy week, I've been to the gym lots, I'm really enjoying it, although I'm not looking forward to my weigh-in next week! On Wednesday night, we went out to meet Martin's parents who are over from Sweden, we went to the Cushion Bar, they had a couple of guys playing guitars and singing, they were really good. Martin's parents were lovely, they kept inviting us to stay with them if ever we were in Sweden.
Friday at work we had a picnic in the Botanical Gardens, it was a really nice couple of hours, I don't really make much of an effort to go out at lunch, which I should as I'm only a 2 minute walk from Circular Quay where the Opera House is (you can see the Harbour Bridge from my office window, how lucky am I!!). I met Jason after work at Darling Harbour, we had free tickets for the Imax, a film called Extreme, it was really good, lots of rock climbing and snowboarding, cool! After we went to dinner and to a couple of bars. We also popped into the casino at Star City, it was heaving, lots of Asians gambling away their money!
Yesterday I went to the gym in the morning, then cleaned the apartment, then Jason and I went for a game of tennis. We played a proper game this time, and it was much more interesting than just volleying. I was actually quite ok at it, Jason was suprised, I managed to serve pretty well. I won a few sets, but I think Jason was being nice to me! We are playing badminton on Wednesday.
I met up with Sue in the evening to go to my friend Gemma's flat. She had organised a 'girls night in' in aid of the Breast cancer charity. She went to a real effort, we had a really nice evening, she'd made all the dips and breads and lots of other tasty nibbles. I was quite chuffed too, I won the main prize in the raffle (I've been quite lucky lately) one of the girls who works at a day spa got them to donate a spa treatment for the cause, so for $10, I won a $100 Full body exfoliation with mineral salts, followed by a Vichy shower water treatment (sounds intriguing!) everyone was really jealous!! We raised over $400 for the night which we were really pleased about, all in all, a great night....but it wasn't over, I had arranged to meet up with Linn and the guys in the city afterwards to celebrate her 30th birthday, so I had a fun night with them too, didn't get home until about 4am, plus daylight savings started today, so we've lost another hour. It's 2pm, and I've only just got up and showered!!
I've got a busy week ahead. My ex-boss from HP, Munich is in town to visit his daughter, so he is taking Jason and I out for dinner tomorrow night, I'm trying to think of a nice place to take him. Then Nicola, a friend I know from Munich also is out her to visit her sister, so I'm sure we'll meet up a couple of times. And next Friday night, we are off for a weekend at Hunter Valley (wine region). Linn organised it as part of her 30th birthday celebrations, I think there are quite a few of us going, so it should be good fun. We have a wine tour booked for the Saturday which I'm really looking forward to!

Monday, October 23, 2006

We had Rach and Stu around for dinner on Friday night, Jason cooked a nice curry and some mushroom chips. Next day I went to get my eyes tested.... now I've got my health insurance I thought I'd make the most of it. Apparently my right eye has got a bit better and my current glasses are too strong so I have to get new lenses. I was going to keep my frames and just change the lenses, but I started looking at the frames in the shop and mine looked really old fashioned compared to them (seeing as they are about 8 years old, I guess that makes sense!). So I found a really nice pair, I just have to wait over a week while they get made.
Saturday night we went to Curly's for his girlfriend Sabrina's birthday. She is Brazillian, so there was lots of dancing and food and strong cocktails. We ended up getting home about 2.30.
Yesterday we had a lie-in, then we went to the cinema to see a new Australian film, Boytown, it's a mickey take of a group of middle aged guys that were in a boyband in the 80s, they got back together for a comeback. It was very funny, some of the songs they sang were hilarious, instead of aiming for the younger audience, they were dedicating their music to all the older woman that used to be their fans (there was Pussy whipped, Love Handles, Special time of the month) very amusing. After that we took a walk down to the beach as it was a lovely day and sat down with the papers, it was nice to get some sunshine, the weather has been up and down for about a month, you don't know what it's going to be like from one day to the next!
I've just been listening to the news, they are saying that the price of bread and milk is going to increase because of the drought. It's been raining lots, but the dams are still only 40% full. There is a joke that people should go on holiday to the catchment areas cos it never rains there!!

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

I've made myself a vow, I'm not going swimming in the sea again in Australia. There has been quite a few shark sightings in recent weeks, there was a tiger shark at Bondi, it was sighted 50 metres from the shore. Then our friend Sean, who lives right near Coogee beach here said there were a couple of warnings there, apparently the sirens went off and everything.....never again I say.... I'm sticking to our swimming pool!!
I've been really good with my exercising this week, I've been to the gym twice and Jason and I played tennis tonight. I really enjoyed it actually...I haven't played tennis for about 15 years, and I'm still rubbish at it! Poor Jason was probably really bored, it's not as if I couldn't hit the ball at all, but I did miss a lot!! We've decided to try badminton next week as I told him I'm a bit better at that...we'll see! The last time I played that was in Germany with my brother, he was really cruel to me and made me run all over the court trying to hit the shuttlecock...I was knackered after!

Saturday, October 14, 2006

I joined a gym this week. Well it's not really a proper gym, it's called Curves and it's just for women. It's a circuit of strength training machines. I really like it there, they measure and weigh you every month to keep track of how you're getting on, and it's really personalised, normally at a gym you're just another face, but here they really speak to you to see how you're getting on. They promise you that you only need to go for 30 mins, 3 times a week, which sounds good to me! One of the staff promised me lots of toned, lean muscles, which is great! I'm trying to persuade my Mum to join the one up the road from her in England, hopefully she'll give it a try.
I met Sue after work last night, we went to some new bars in the city which were really good. Whilst we were walking to a different bar, I bumped into Satomi (the Japanese girl that I lived with when I first moved to the city...remember she speaks Engrish!!) we were both really shocked to see each other after so long. She was telling me that the house where we lived had been set on fire. One of the girls that lived there left a candle on when she went out...she also left the window open so the wind blew the flame and the place caught fire! This was back in April and Michael, the landlord still can't live there as it's still being renovated, so it must have been really bad. Satomi said he was even thinking of sueing the girl (who is now back in UK) I'm so lucky I wasn't still living there...Satomi said a lot of her stuff was ruined. So that was a bit of gossip. It was funny, I had walked nearby to the house a few months ago and I thought that it looked like it'd been in an explosion!
Anyway, after that we had a few more drinks, but unfortunately Sue had had a really busy week, so she went home at about 11.30...I was a bit disappointed as I was in the mood for a boogie, but it was probably a good thing, I managed to be in bed at a reasonable hour, which meant I could get up early this morning and go to the gym. It was quite tough finding the energy to exercise, as it was really hot (today and yesterday there was a high of 37 degrees!) ...but I did manage some and felt really good after. I was quite flattered...one of the women there was saying how slim I looked, but that was probably because I was so young...she then asked me how old I was and I said 32, she couldnt' believe it, she thought I was about 22!! I just thought to myself, she must be a bit blind, hahaa!!
So after that I got home and we went for a dip in the pool (my first one) it was absolutely freezing, but so refreshing after being in the heat. We stayed there for about an hour, then had some lunch. This afternoon we've just been to the shops to buy some cds and our weekly shopping. Just tried to phone my brother, but I guess he's gone out. Maybe will try again tomorrow. Not sure what we're doing tonight...we're both pretty hot sat at home...the good thing about living in Australia is you can always go to a bar or to the cinema to find some relief from the heat with the aircon, so maybe we'll do that!

Monday, October 09, 2006

I'm just trying to remember what we did last week! I can remember the weekend, so I'll start there. Friday night we went to Bondi to meet up with Mike who was back from the mines for a few days, we also caught up with Gemma and Garry, our Irish friends who we always have trouble meeting up with. It was a pretty quiet night tho, we were home about midnight.
Saturday night we entertained Linn and Martin, they came around for one of Jason's specialities, tuna and tomato risotto. Linn had already drunk a bottle of champagne before she came around, so she was very amusing! I'd been speaking to my brother on Skype just before they came around and was telling them about it, they'd never used it before, so I decided to show them how it worked. We phoned Chris up and Linn was just amazed, then I put the webcam up so she could see him and she went mental, it was so funny...she was right up against the camera waving at him..no wonder he couldn't see us! It was so weird to be able to introduce my friends to my brother over the internet! After dinner I had a singing lesson, Linn is a trained singer, so she was giving me some tips, it was really funny, she showed me how to breathe correctly and then we sang. She said I have a really good ear for music and that my pitch is really good, I was quite chuffed. I'm going to try and have another lesson soon.
Sunday we all went around to Curly's girlfriends friends house, for a bbq. The house was huge and really beautiful, they had a swimming pool too, but unfortunately as soon as we got there the weather turned rubbish. It was a good day though, lots of nice food.
We've got our tickets for New Years Eve now, we are going to see the Basement Jaxx on Bondi Beach, so it should be great fun ;o)

Monday, October 02, 2006

It's been a pretty busy week and weekend. On Wednesday night, Jason and I went back to the Lowenbrau for the Oktoberfest. There was a big table of us, it was quite good fun. The entertainment was fun, but it wasn't very authentic German, more like Swiss or Austrian. The band were playing tunes on the cowbells, then Sue and I and 8 other girls got dragged up to play them...when the guy pointed his microphone at us, we had to ring them....we played Edelweiss very well!! Then they had beer drinking competitions. The food wasn't the best though, I don't think we'll be going back again anytime soon, and it's really expensive too!
here are some pics.....(sorry, I'm having trouble resizing them)
Playing the cowbells
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Sue and I with our cowbells
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Having a beer
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Friday, I won the raffle 1st prize at work ($80) I was well chuffed, so I took Jason for a night out in the city. We went to a few bars along Oxford Street, it was good fun. We didn't get home til really late so we had a lie in on Saturday. We had to go to the supermarket as we were entertaining in the evening, so we bought lots of yummy dips and nibbles. We had a really nice evening, Rach, Stu, Curly, Sue and Roger all came around, they really liked our new home, Rach says it's really welcoming which is nice. We've got even more photos up now, we've ran out of shelf space!
Sunday we went down to the pub in the afternoon to meet Jason's cousin who was over with the navy, we also met up with Sean and his friends. It was a really good afternoon....even better was that there was a public holiday the next day. We stayed there until about 12.30 when it closed, I didn't want to leave as we were having fun :-( it's probably a good job that we did though, otherwise today I would have been even more knackered. We haven't done much today, just lazed around watching tv...I love days like that!