Australia Day lunch

Today was Australia Day, the annual day when half of the country celebrates and other half wish that we were celebrating the occasion on a less controversial anniversary.

We hosted a lunch for my wife’s immediate family. We made some salads and roasted some chicken breasts to go on bread rolls. My wife also made a batch of brownies.

Over lunch we discussed our upcoming trip to Japan, and organised some planning details. I booked our tickets to Shibuya Sky, the observation deck to get a view over Tokyo. We wanted to get tickets for a bit before sunset, the best time to be up there. But even though the tickets only went on sale today for the day we want to go, when I logged in to buy them every entry time from 14:40 to after sunset was already sold out. So we settled for a 14:40 entry. Since there’s no time limit to your visit, we can choose to either stay for sunset, or leave a bit early after we’ve had enough.

Lunch took most of the afternoon and I went into ethics classes after that, so didn’t get much else done. Oh, in the morning I did a 5k run and had a shower afterwards, which consumed a big chunk of that time. So that was pretty much my day.

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Moving neighbours, booking Japan, games night

Yesterday I had my usual ethics classes during the day. I was also franticly updating the JR East website to see if I could buy tickets from Tokyo to Kawazu for our upcoming trip to Japan.

We’re planning to go to the Kawazu Cherry Blossom Festival, and the only day we can go is Monday 24 February. Which happens to be a public holiday in Japan. And over a million people go to this festival every year. And I’d previously checked about buying train tickets to get there from Tokyo, and seen that the JR East website only makes tickets available one month in advance. So on the 24th of January it was the first opportunity to buy tickets. I wanted to get them as quickly as possible to avoid missing out if the trains sold out.

But when I checked in the morning, I could still only buy tickets up to the 23rd of February. So I was intermittently refreshing the page, thinking it would probably tick over at some time during the day. 9am Japan time came and went, and still no change. I had to teach a couple of ethics classes, but sneaked in some updates. No change. But then after midday Japan time he site updated and I could book tickets!

I chose a train departing Tokyo just after 8am, arriving in Kawazu about 10:30, and a train returning at 15:44, getting back a bit after 18:00. I managed to book the tickets. But I noticed that the next two trains returning to Tokyo (about every half hour) had no seats available already by the time I’d finished! I suspect that given it’s a long weekend, a lot of people want to return to Tokyo that evening.

On Friday evening it was board games night at one of my friends’ place. I arrived while some of the others were playing a game of Landmarks, a new game for us. Since one person was giving clues and the rest of us were trying to solve them together, I could join in. In this game one player is trying to lead all the others across a hexagon map, by giving word clues. It starts with three hexes having words on them, and then the clue-giver attempts to direct the guessers where to place new hexes by writing related words on them. You should put them near hexes with related meanings and far from hexes with opposing meanings. It was tricky and we messed up several times, but ultimately managed to win by the skin of our teeth.

Our host made home made pork, fennel, and apple sausage rolls, which were delicious snacks.

Pork, fennel, apple sausage rolls

Then we split into two groups since we had seven people. I played Root with two others, while the other four played Ticket to Ride: Europe. In the Root game, I played the Vagabond, with the others playing the Cats and Birds.

Root game

It was a very close game, with all of our points tracking one another closely throughout. But in the end the Cats prevailed. After this we rejoined groups for a big seven-player game of Apples to Apples to round out the night.

Today I went for a 5k run in the morning. I took it easy since I felt a bit tired, but was still pleased with my time. Then I cleaned the bathroom and shower while cooling off afterwards.

I’m making sourdough today and we didn’t have any bread left, so we walked up to the pie shop for lunch. Then later we went out again to do some shopping for lunch tomorrow, when my wife’s family are coming over. We’re just going to roast some chicken and make potato salad and a green salad.

On the way back we passed this brand new public art installation near the shops – it wasn’t there just a couple of days ago:

Brand new sculpture

The bird in the statue’s hand looks like a tiny pelican. I’ll have to take a closer look another day to see if I can positively identify it.

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The giant corpse flower

Today I spent a lot of time keeping track of the opening of the giant corpse flower which is blooming right now at the Royal Botanic Gardens here in Sydney. The specimen of Amorphophallus titanum is the first one to flower here since 2012, and it’s become a media sensation, with a live stream on YouTube that got up to almost 10,000 viewers at various times during the day.

The queue to get into the hothouse to see the flower is apparently now almost 3 hours long. They are keeping the Gardens open until midnight tonight specially for this event, but closing the queue at 9pm, to account for the waiting time. Oh! I just read on the livestream that they’ve already cut the queue off, 3.5 hours before midnight. Yeah, expected waiting time now 3.5 hours.

It’s a weird thing, but this has really captured the imagination of Sydney. A positive thing bringing people together as they celebrate a wonder of nature.

The other main thing that happened today is the guy finally came to install our new window blinds, that we ordered in early December. The delay was caused by the previous installation guy taking emergency extended leave from work because of a family health issue, so they had to reschedule our installation with other staff. The guy arrived after my morning ethics classes and spent an hour or so installing the new blinds. Thankfully he took the old ones away too, which was good, because I don’t know how we would have disposed of them otherwise.

Oh, and while that was happening, another guy knocked on my front door. When I opened it he said he was here to measure the door, for replacement. This was the first I’d heard of any such thing. It turns out at the annual fire safety inspection for the apartment block a couple of months ago, the inspector failed our front door, and we have to get a new one installed. But nobody told me about this, until today when the guy knocked on the door! HE said it’ll take them a month or so to make the new door to the right measurements, and then someone will come and install it.

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Lunch expedition to Bourke Street Bakery

That was about the only noteworthy thing about today. I went for a short drive over a couple of suburbs to the Bourke Street Bakery at Neutral Bay. I was feeling like a nice lunch and they have some excellent pies and sausage rolls. I wanted the beef, beer, bacon, and cheesy mash pie, but that was the only one there sold out of, so I got the beef brisket, mushroom, and red wine one instead. And a pork and fennel sausage rolls, which is the go-to item there. They were delicious as usual, although honestly I think the pork and fennel roll used to be better.

On the way home I stopped at the local shops to pick up some hamburger buns for dinner tonight. We had vegetable patty burgers. By the timer I parked, walked over to buy the buns, and stopped for a gelato because it was a hot day, it was time to pick up Scully from my wife’s work, so I drove straight over there and waited a bit until she was ready.

At home I made some Irregular Webcomic! and Darths & Droids strips, before three ethics classes tonight. The new topic on Bio-Engineering is going well, with some very diverse opinions from the kids about the merits and dangers of the technology. One question is: If you could make a brand new life form, plant or animal, what would you make? And there was a new girl in one class who loved dragons, so of course she was enthusiastic about the idea of making one. And then I asked what we should do if they got released into the wild and caused problems…

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Lots of running and walking

My wife took Scully to work this morning, giving me a free morning. I considered driving somewhere interesting, or going out for a nice lunch meal, but I decided to be good and do some exercise. The day was not too hot, while tomorrow is forecast to be very hot, so I wanted to avoid going on a run tomorrow. And so I took the opportunity today, and I also decided to push myself to 7.5k. I completed the distance in 43:15, about mid-range in the handful of times I’ve tried that distance.

After cooling off and changing clothes, I had some lunch at home (simple tomato bruschetta on home made sourdough), and then went out again, to walk to my wife’s work to pick up Scully and bring her home.

In the afternoon I wrote up my lesson outline for the new week’s worth of ethics classes, on the topic of Bio-Engineering. And then used it for the first class this evening.

I also spent some time doomscrolling all the executive orders that newly sworn-in President Trump signed in his first few hours. I don’t usually comment on politics online, but yikes, this is pretty much a living nightmare.

Speaking of which, I’m in the middle of watching Terminator: Dark Fate, which I’m enjoying so far. The first two Terminator movies were among my favourites when I was growing up. I haven’t seen any of the other media like the TV series or whatever it was, but I understand they are ignorable in the movie continuity of the first two movies and this one., which seems to flow nicely directly from them.

Weather today was pleasant and warm, but tomorrow is forecast to be very hot. Not looking forward to that.

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Taking Scully’s prints

It was the usual busy Monday with plenty of online classes today. I didn’t do much else of note, except for one thing this evening.

My wife found a jewellery maker that does silver castings of custom wax moulds that you make. They suggest doing fingerprints of yourself or loved ones, or nose or paw prints of pets. So my wife decided to get one and make a wax impression from Scully. We did it together, heating up the small wax balls supplied by the jeweller with a hair dryer, then squashing them down and then getting an imprint by pressing them onto Scully’s nose and paw. They give you two wax balls and you send them both back, labelled in order of preference, and they decide if the first preference is okay to use, otherwise they use the backup.

She’ll send them back tomorrow and I guess she’ll have a Scully imprint bit of jewellery within a few weeks. I’ll see if I remember to take a photo to share when it arrives.

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Exploring Summer Hill

This morning I did a 5k run. I wanted to beat 28 minutes and put an extra effort in and ended up recording 26:46, which I was very pleased with.

Afterwards, my wife and I went for a drive over to the suburb of Summer Hill. She had proposed we go there to look around as it’s a place we’ve never been before. We wandered around several of the streets, checking out the shopping area and some residential streets. We found an amazingly good patisserie, called simply the Summer Hill Village Patisserie. While we were looking hungrily at the pastries in the window, the woman inside stuck a note on the window right in front of our noses: “Special: 3 items, $3 off; 4 items, $4 off”.

Summer Hill patisserie

So we had to go in and get three items! My wife got a croissant, while I decided to make this lunch and got a cherry danish, and a sfogliatella filled with ricotta and candied orange peel (top right in above photo). We sat in the small square across the street to eat them, and they were delicious!

Summer Hill architecture

Walking around, we admired the architecture: a mix of Victorian terrace houses:

Summer Hill architecture

Victorian/Federation hybrids:

Summer Hill architecture

Federation Free with classical columns:

Summer Hill architecture

Art Deco:

Summer Hill architecture

And modern murals:

Summer Hill mural

It was a fun and interesting slice of Sydney history.

Back home I had three classes this evening, punctuated by an hour break in which I made Thai red curry Brussels sprouts with rice for dinner.

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An easy Saturday and a closed restaurant

I was glad that I did a 5k run yesterday, because this morning’s weather was miserable. Cold and rainy and still very, very windy. But the awful weather eased up today and the sun finally came out in the afternoon, heating things up and releasing a ton of humidity into the air.

I basically took it easy, doing some comics stuff and random puttering around. I took Scully for a walk at lunch without my wife, and we got fish and chips for lunch. We planned to stay in for dinner again, but my wife got a hankering for dinner at Organica restaurant, so we walked up there with Scully early in the evening. This has become her new favourite restaurant, after the closure of some of our other favourites over the years.

But when we got there, it had closed down! The furniture and signage had all been removed! My wife checked online and sure enough, it’s listed as permanently closed. So that was a big disappointment. We walked over to Green Gourmet, the vegetarian place that last time said we were welcome to bring Scully inside. So we popped in and they confirmed Scully was welcome. I actually don’t think this is technically legal in New South Wales – dogs are allowed in commercial outdoor dining areas, but not indoors. But it’s on them, so we were happy to enjoy a nice meal there. Another couple came in with a dog too while we were there, and they looked like regulars, as the staff greeted them and knew the dog by name.

Not much else to say about today.

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An extremely windy day

Everything about today was about the wind. It was extremely windy. A bit of rain, overcast and cloudy, but super super windy. I had two incidents. I went for a 5k run in the morning, and leaves were blowing all over the place, and bits of twigs, and one actually got stuck in my shoelaces and I had to stop running briefly to extract it. When I’d finished and was walking back home I passed a broken lamp post, which had suffered a fatal hit from a fallen tree branch.

Broken lamp post

I took the photo because there’s an app here where you can report incidents like this to the local council, so they know about it and can come fix it.

At lunch I didn’t want to brave the wind and so drove to my wife’s work to pick up Scully. On the way home we stopped off at Maggio’s Bakery where I got a porchetta roll for lunch. This is a thing I’ve been wanting to try for some time, but I usually default to a slice of pizza when I go there. But today they were out of pizza, so I tried the roll. It comes with sliced porchetta, chunks of potato, rosemary, and mayonnaise, and was delicious.

On the way driving home, I turned down a street and ahead of me was a roadblock, with emergency workers in the middle of removing a tree that had fallen across the road. I had to turn around and backtrack and find another route home. (I didn’t get a photo of it since I was driving.) We’re predicted to have similar weather tomorrow, though easing off a bit.

Otherwise, I did my four ethics classes, did a bit of puttering around with comics stuff, and made potato and pesto pasta for dinner. And tonight is board games night online. We just played a couple of games of Codenames, using the dedicated Codenames site rather than Board Game Area since for some weird reason one of my friends can’t load their site.

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The backwards day

After last night’s storm, the rain continued through the night and cold winds blew in. Today’s maximum temperature was at 1:30 am, at 21.1°C, and it just got colder from there. The minimum temperature was at 1:00 pm, at 18.3°C, and then since then the rain and wind has eased off and the temperature has climbed again! We may set another maximum later this evening. Very weird.

It really was a big storm. By this morning there were still over 100,000 properties without power. This was combined with industrial action by our train drivers here in Sydney, who didn’t exactly strike, but did a go-slow on the train network, so this morning we had heavy rain, a lot of trees and power lines down, and reduced capacity on the train network. So it was pretty miserable for anyone having to commute to work.

After two classes in the morning, I took Scully for a walk at lunch, in the rain. We went up to the pie shop, which has been closed for a few weeks over Christmas, so I haven’t had my regular fix. I like the spicy ones, so chose the butter chicken and Mexican beef ones today.

In the afternoon I processed some more photos from 2023’s trip to Japan, and used some of them to fill in my travel diary page for the day. I really want to get all the photos from that trip sorted before I go to Japan again next month! Here’s an amusing photo that I didn’t put into the diary:

Cat bricks

And in other travel news, I’ve managed to book a hotel in Berlin for my June trip. The first hotel never got back to me about the corporate rate, but the second hotel I emailed got back the same day with full details and took my booking when I replied to confirm. So good business to them, and none to the first one that never responded! I can leave that trip for a while now and think about it again after we get back from Japan. I still have some things to organise for our itinerary there first.

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