You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2007.
Talk about a wonderful Christmas present!
We discovered that SBS was going a Miyazaki special, and we’ve seen 2 of his wonderful animated movies so far. We caught the tail end of Howl’s Moving Castle yesterday (thank goodness we’ve seen it about 5 times!!) and tomorrow Laputa: Castle in the Sky, is on. (Carlos, I can tell what you’re thinking, please don’t laugh…)
Anyway, if you’ve been living under a rock, read my post about Miyazaki (and other yummy things to watch). And check out the preview videos on SBS.
If not, stay tuned! I know I will!
Sometimes I love being the wife of a scientist. Aside from the low pay, you get some cool benefits, like flexible work hours. One of the best perks is scientific conferences. This is when a bunch of certifiable nerds gather and attempt to network. (Actually it’s just an excuse to travel, eat free food, and maybe talk about your most recent research…). Usually in some exotic locale: if they hold it somewhere boring, who’d attend? 
P was being sent to attend one of these junkets in Christchurch, New Zealand. So I hurriedly bought a plane ticket and headed off to join him. I left a week early, taking advantage of cheap tickets, and landed in Christchurch on 4 Dec.
D, my CouchSurfing host, took me straight to C1 Espresso for a pick me up. I had fun playing with the funky water dispenser:
I ate a giant sausage roll which was absolutely yummy!
When P joined me in Christchurch, and I took him around my favourite bits of the city. We wandered around High St and Tuam, and found some cool spots, like these buildings which reminded me of East Berlin:
There is a fountain nearby which for some mysterious reason was churning out large chunks of bubbly foam. I spent a happy 5 mins flinging foam in the air, laughing in glee. Sometimes I forget I’m 31 (which is a good thing).
Then we stopped off at Alice in Videoland, where they have the best video collection I’ve ever seen!
If you wander down Tuam St, you’ll come to this corner.
Where you’ll find some interesting shops to browse your way through, including 2 2nd hand bookstores and a chocolate shop!
We also ate at Sala Sala, where the food was top notch and not much more expensive than the other run-of-the-mill touristy Japanese joints. I would gladly have paid the extra $1 or $2 for that sort of quality. Here’s my yummy tempura soba lunch.
I also spent time communing with ducks near the Avon river.
The next day, I wandered around Cathedral Square watching people watching a chess game.
Then I stayed for evensong at the ChristChurch cathedral, which was absolutely divine, highly recommended and best of all, free!
There I was, innocently searching for a recipe for my all time fave dessert tiramisu, and I found this blog via PheistyBlog.
Oh.. My.. God!!!
Talk about major food porn – her photos are amazing! This woman writes excellent prose too, very Southern tongue-in-cheek (my old boss J. is a Southern belle with a sweet-as accent, so I know a Southern accent). I couldn’t stop surfing and drooling.
We’ll see what I end up cooking in the next couple days, I’m thinking about trying the tiramisu recipe… and I still have to work on my NZ trip photos for you guys!
And it’s Christmas and I have a whole bloody house to clean, presents to wrap, food to eat, more food to eat, arghhhh.
Stay tuned.
… and ready to crash! It was a wonderful holiday, but I’d had 2 sleepless nights in a row – one because I had to be ready to swim with dolphins at 5.30AM and the next night I slept in our rental car at the airport before a 6.20AM flight. (Yes, I slept in the airport, and yes, it was pretty safe!)
That means I have at least 8 hours of sleep debt, excluding a good night’s sleep tonight. When I return from the land of nod and finish cleaning up the travel detritus, I will blog again!
Stay tuned!
Today I hung out with a Melbourne CSer (CS= CouchSurfing) who was a member of BookCrossing, and we went on a book hunt through Christchurch. Under her guidance, I found Isabel Allende’s Daughter of Fortune and now I can’t wait to get back to Melbourne and release or hunt some more books. She also managed to influence another CSer I was hanging out with to try it! Cool… Let’s see how many people I can convert by blogging and talking about it.
Here’s some info from their homepage:
BookCrossing provides a whole new chapter to traditional book clubs. Best of all, membership is free. BookCrossing helps people share books through our unique release program — leaving books around for others to find and enjoy. Look for books on park benches, coffee shops, vacation spots or tucked in a bookshelf at the gym – anywhere a new reader might be found! What happens next is up to fate.
Everyday, world-wide, people come to BookCrossing to register books they own, add volumes to their online library, and explore book reviews. Previous readers can follow a book as it travels, by way of an online journal, or our live Google Book Tracking Map. Join multitudes of BookCrossers in our forums to discuss your favorite authors, characters and books of every genre throughout history right up through current releases. Discover opportunities for get-togethers with other BookCrossers, local meet-ups, and book swaps.
Help make the whole world a library and share the joy of literacy. Reading becomes an adventure when you BookCross! Become part of the BookCrossing movement today.
Also, tonight will be my 5th night with my CS hosts in Christchurch, and they are still SO cool. I am going to go home and be a better host now! And no, surfers have never stolen any of my stuff, they are too busy traveling light. And yes, sometimes I give them my keys if I trust them. If you’re at all curious about CouchSurfing and have some questions, send me your comments!
…an outdoor bathtub!
I am staying in Christchurch with a CouchSurfer and they have an absolutely lovely outdoor tub in the garden! I filled it with the garden hose and we turned on the gas burners under it (perfect for cooking Asian in..) We also dropped in about 3 bath bombs. It got all lovely and warm, and I got in for a read and a very long soak. It was nice having the cool breeze on my skin, and hearing the wind though the trees and the birds singing. Now I smell lovely (thanks to all the fizzy bath bombs), feel absolutely relaxed and am ready for bed! Ahhhh this is the life. Thank goodness there are no water restrictions in New Zealand!
First, I quit work. The day after that, I celebrated my birthday. And the day after that, I flew to Christchurch, which is where I am right now!
If this is the first you hear about me quitting, it’s been a long time coming and I’m so glad I’m not working anymore. I’ve never been this happy about leaving a job, but it’s a long story and you can ask me via phone, email or IM if you really want to know!
I also had a wonderful birthday dinner, with very yummy tiramisu from Madonna’s Pizzeria for a birthday cake and had an unexpectedly large amount of presents so THANK YOU to everyone who brought me something. And thanks for making my birthday absolutely brilliant.
I barely had time to enjoy being old before I was off again, first thing the next morning! I flew to Christchurch yesterday and have been relaxing with my CouchSurfing hosts here all day yesterday. I was just too buggered to do anything else.
Today, after a good night’s sleep, adventure awaits! More news, and photos, when I get organised! Stay tuned!
