2008-09 highlights

I haven't touched this blog for a year and a half! Actually, I thought I'd only written a couple of posts but have way more than I remember. Discovering new things around Sydney has become a regular part of my life which is great. I'll try to go through some of the highlights from where I left off up until the end of 2009.

Jervis Bay
A bunch of friends rented a couple of houses in Hyam's Beach. It's a beautiful spot and on the Friday afternoon I arrived I was swimming with dolphins. Green Point is near by and a good place to get back to natures. It's a beach with wallabies with many camp sites. Having lunch in Berry Wood-Fired Sourdough Bakery on the way home was enjoyable.

Fitzroy Falls fire trail fun run
I camped at Bendeela in the southern highlands for a night, and went for a 10km fun run at Fitzroy Falls in the mist the next morning. It's a beautiful trail. I stopped at Bowral on the way home. There are bicycle tours from Bendeela, which looks like a lot of fun. Brunch at Bendeela was really nice, and inexpensive. Bendeela is the town famous for banning bottled water.

City 2 Surf
It was cold to begin with but now I'm experienced enough to know to wear some old clothes, well, my sister's old clothes, and strip them off. I really enjoyed this run, especially since I could start in a faster <100 minutes group this year. I finished and waited for pizza place Pompei's to open. After polishing off I pizza, I shared a rack of takeaway ribs from Hurricanes on the beach with the boyfriend.

Sydney Spring Cycle
This is a cycle from North Sydney to Homebush that's 40km. It was an extremely windy day which made it quite challenging. I'll admit it was very challenging - I was very tired by the end. Worth doing though as I would never have otherwise ridden my bike across the Sydney Harbour Bridge or the Glebe Island Bridge.

Trishave women's triathlon festival
I participated in another triathlon. It felt pretty hard going. I did the midi Distance - 350m Swim, 15km Cycle, 3.5km Run. The cycle was very hard, and I will not be doing a cycle with a bike on the mountain-bike end of the spectrum I think. It was also a very hot day. I had the chance to swim at the lake at the Regatta Centre used for the Olympics. The water was filthily warm - 28 degrees. Consistent with the other triathlon, the run was the best relatively, then the swim, then the bike. I'll need to work on the bike next time, because time-wise, it puts me much behind. Not a comfortable experience, but I'd do it again.

White water rafting at Penrith
I had a go on the white water rafting on the course for the Sydney Olympics and had a great time. It's not cheap,$89 for 90 minutes. It was fun to stick the raft against a bump and have water push it nearly vertically. They dubbed this 'surfing' and I fell out twice. You need a bit of guts to do this, because you are under the raft for a split second before surfacing. One guy in our raft fell out, lost his shoe at some point, and decided that he couldn't go on after about half an hour. I saw a group of Asian students having fun, and the army practicing water rescue. Surprisingly great coffee there - after a year I haven't forgotten.

Penrith Panthers is great by the way. Looks great, and the food was not too bad either. Singaporeans pay a lot to sit around in places that look like this. Here the pokie players pay for me.

Melbourne Comedy festival
What fun times! I had never seen comedy before, and there was a play in there, stand up and a bunch of comedians in the pub. There has been plenty of comedy since then.

Sydney Theatre Company
I had season tickets to the Sydney Theatre Company and saw the following plays:
The Removalists - a snapshot of the Police force in the 1970s
Travesties - not sure I understood this one
When the Rain Stops Falling
Elling - a couple of guys move out from a mental institution on their own
Poor Boy - Matt Newton in a play where a young boy is the reincarnation of his dead character
A Streetcar Named Desire - Cate Blanchett was amazing in this play, I will not forget her voice!

Tender
My sister's friend wrote this play, and we saw it at the Nimrod Theatre. A girl is living with with a shocking memory from the past.

The Importance of Being Earnest
Performed by NIDA students this is a great play! It was long though, around 4 hours in three sections. Liked the costumes.

Lao airlines new website

I am seriously impressed with Lao Airlines' new website. They have a schedule of prices that represent the maximum price- why don't all the other airlines do this? I want to go to Laos next year and think I will be looking up the flights here and contacting my travel agent in Vientiane to make the booking.

http://www.laos-airlines.com/index.asp

Don't get Lao airlines mixed up with Lao Air as I nearly did. I tried to add Lao Air to Wikipedia last year, but couldn't work out how. Hopefully someone has put it on there already. Lao Air flies to the more remote provincial capitals only, ie Sam Neua, Phongsali and Sainyabouli. Their their only booking office is at the domestic airport and this airlines is not very well known. I did fly with them and are a bit unreliable because they rely on sight to fly and when it gets foggy, which it often does in the mountains, they can't fly. I showed up and the airport for the flight and it was closed and instead took at 24 hour bus trip home from Sam Neua to Vientiane.

Aria

October is good food month in Sydney. I always try to go out to one of the rated restaurants offering a lunch special in October and have never been disappointed. This year I chose to go to Aria by the Opera House and I really enjoyed the food, service and atmosphere there- a totally worthwhile experience.

We ate:

roast barramundi fillet with gamberetti and a pea and zucchini risotto

with a glass of 2007 Brown Brothers' Vermentino, Coopers' Pale Ale or San Pellegrino and tea or coffee at $35.00 per person.

The fish was very moist and the cheese flavoured, green risotto too. I don't think I'm going to be able to make it to one of the fancy hotels for the dessert specials this year, but there will always be next year!

Friends visiting from Laos

My Lao friends came to visit! A couple of people from my office in Laos came for a conference and leadership development training over four weeks for people with disabilities in the Asia Pacific region. I took my friends on the train because one of them had never been on a train before. I was pleased when a shiny new millenium train pulled up and not some old dirty one. We caught the train over the bridge to Chatswood where the hideous discount stores near the station are still 'closing down'. Sydney is not beautiful here. I took them out to have pho for the first time during their trip. While they eat this nearly everyday, they were missing rice- based dishes. They were complaining about the quantity of bread and sandwiches they had over the past week. The first thing my friend did was dump a huge quantity of chillis on top of his pho for flavour and energy.

They missed papapya salad so we went to a Thai restaurant, Saap Thai, that has north- eastern Thai dishes. They got a fix of sticky rice too. That's the thing I love about Sydney- the variety. My friends ordered in Thai language, and I agreed with them that we could have been in Thailand. The next night we managed to have kangaroo larp, Thai/ Lao spicy salad with a distinctly Australian touch. Crocodile Senior Thai on George St completely aced this. The chilli and snake beans went really well with the roo meat. I came up with this idea independently also, cooking kangaroo larp when I came home. My Lao friend said that when he read the email that I had cooked this roo larp he laughed out really loud! I reminded him there is one kangaroo in Laos in the zoo...

The next weekend I took my Lao friends to the beach. One of my friends had never seen the ocean or the beach in his 25 years. It was funny that his shoes got wet when the wave came in! Then we had a beer at Bondi Icebergs- what a beautiful spot! I had never been there before, but I liked it because of the unobstructed views, it's casual and you can watch people do ocean swims and surf.

It was great to see them and they promised they wouldn't forget me.

Triathlon Pink- my first triathlon

I participated in a triathlon for the first time in my life! I had lots of fun. Triathlon Pink was a women's only triathlon that raised money for breast cancer. It was held at Sydney's Olympic park. I liked the emphasis on being fun and participating. I did the longest event which was 300m swim, 9km bike ride, 3km run. There were about 1000 people that participated on the day over 4 events. They were great to give you a bit of coaching beforehand. It took a bit to get myself organised- I had to have my swim gear, biking gear and running gear.

The swim- I expected this to be my worst event but I ended up being ranked lower for the bike ride. I swam breast stroke for pretty much all the way- I wish I could've swam freestyle but I haven't been able to do that since I was an 11 year old kid. That's something to work on. It was fun getting to swim in that Olympic pool- I've never had the chance to do it before! I ran 250m to my bike and very quickly put on my clothes.

The bike ride- I had my bike seat really low- I had forgotton to adjust it after a mountain bike ride the week before. Something to remember for next time! I liked the bike ride, and didn't really go out too hard at all. I was so cruisy about it my ranking for this leg was the worst! I parked my bike and changed hats for the run.

The run- I felt hot and sticky in my swimmers- not a pleasant feeling! I ran all the way, but didn't really push myself too much. This ended up being my best event, even though I felt like I didn't do it very well.

Bring on the next triathlon!

Lao words

I've tried to make a list of Lao words that I came across which I thought were interesting because of their literal meanings. Some are just so logical which made it easy to learn the language.

Literal meaning translated to English- what the word means

Vicks tree- Gum tree
Clean plastic bag- condom
Chewing gum- foreigner's fruit
Understand- touch heart
Sour water- vinegar
Sour milk- yogurt
Flying boat- plane
Mother of water- river

The Kitchen play

I went to see this play which was a 2nd year NIDA production at the Parade Theatre. It is a play by Sir Arnold Wesker. I thought the play was ok but my friends didn't really like it but it would have helped if we had read the brochure and understood what it was about before we saw it. It is a play set in a kitchen of a big restaurant and looks into the lives and relationships of the workers. According to the director 'The Kitchen is a satiric portrait of the world which has its own unique hierarch and limitations... orignally the play reflected the social and racial tensions in London int he late 1950s...'

The set looked great, the acting was pretty good but my friends agreed that the actors needed to work on their foreign accents. I do recommend watching plays at NIDA. They're around $25 and it's good to see the upcoming talent. I saw the play 'Closer' a few years back and it was the best play I have ever seen.