Adventure, baby!

Month: November 2007

Kayaking at Rose Bay

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I spent Friday afternoon kayaking at Rose Bay with my team and an agency. It looks pretty grim in the pictures, but it was a really warm day and the water temp was beautiful.

We spend about an hour and a half kayaking across the bay and doing some races. I thought I would find it easy because of all of my climbing, but it used totally different muscles and I could feel the burn pretty quickly.

I had a really great time and really enjoyed it. It was quite amazing to be so close the the water and to look around and see so many beautiful things across the harbour, like all of the Sydney icons and beaches.

We paddled from here directly across. I don’t know how far it was, but it certainly FELT like a long way.

These are the little kayaks we used.

The harbour – grey but still beautiful.

Purple Flowers

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Alec gave me some lovely flowers out of the blue. What an awesome guy 🙂 The photo doesn’t do them or their beautiful colour justice.

Pho Xic Lo

/ Sydney Food / 2 Comments

We tried a new Vietnamese place in Chatswood last night.

Photos taken on my handy iPhone.

Vegetarian spring rolls.

Some kind of extra hot and spicy thing Alec had.


My vegetarian fried rice. As the waitress described it “with no veges”. Hmmm!

Doodle for Google

/ Sydney Life / 1 Comment

Today was the big Doodle for Google day in Sydney – where all of the finalists were flown to Sydney and the winner was announced. It was great to see so many kids who were excelling in art and enjoying themselves, as well as being fun for us big kids too.

I meet Dennis Hwang, the original Google Doodler. He was kind enough to sign some doodles for me.

The finalists.

Dennis takes centre stage.

One of the doodles Dennis signed for me. It will be auctioned off to make money for charity.

Yaaaaay Doodle for Google day. 🙂

Boat House Restaurant

/ Sydney Food / 1 Comment

This was a work lunch with some fave clients. I was a bit concerned at first because it’s a seafood restaurant, but it turned out to have the most amazing vegetarian food. It was my first true vege outing and it was great to see not only that the food was delicious, but everyone was looking at my food with envy and wanting to eat it instead of theirs. Woo! Yay veges!


We give our sign of approval.

Tomato and almond gazpacho (I thought the waiter was saying gestapo. I had to Google it.).

Woodside Goats Curd Tuile with Borage & Cucumber Dressing. Soooo tasty.

Some kind of tomato salad with amazing feta. Best balsamic dressing ever.

Potato Gnocchi with Broad Beans, Asparagus & Lemon. Yuuummmm. By this time I was stuffed but kept going.

Hand Cut Chips, Fennel & Lemon Salt. I asked for tomato sauce, which surprised the staff. I guess it’s not the done thing in a posh restaurant.

Rockmelon Sorbet, Jasmine Petal Mousse & Citrus Israeli Cous Cous. My favourite flavour sorbet. Delightful!

By the end of lunch my stomach was so huge it was poking out of my dress. I am such a piggy.

Green Thoughts

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Is it possible to be vegetarian if you don’t like vegetables?

I’ve been dwindling further and further away from eating meat for the last year, and have just read a book called Committed by Dan Mathews, the VP of PETA, that has made me want to give up all meat.

The dilemma – I don’t like/can’t tolerate a lot of foods. And vegetables – I only like a handful of them. While I would love to be able to easily replace meat with alternatives, it’s a bit of a struggle to find things I can eat. I’m trying new foods to give myself a more balanced diet, and giving it my best shot, because I would be really proud if I could call myself a vegetarian.

Europe Mini Vids

/ Travel / 1 Comment

An accidental mini video – we thought it was on photo mode. Whoops. Taken in Florence, Italy.

This is at the Roman Forum, one of my favourite places we saw.

Lions For Lambs

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Alec and I had a dinner and movie night, and decided to see Lions For Lambs, the new Robert Reford movie. As it stars Tom Cruise, we were a little apprehensive about it, but after some glowing reviews decided to give it a go.

Lions For Lambs is a very “talky” political movie. Nothing much actually happens, but there is a hell of a lot of talking going on, which makes it hard for me to condense into a short review.

Tom Cruise plays a smarmy senator – perhaps the most perfect role he’s ever had. Meryl Streep is fabulous as a hard-hitting journo wanting to tell the world what’s really going on but facing opposition from her commercially-bent TV station. Robert Redford is a university professor who is trying to inspire students to reach their full potential and give a damn, frankly. In the midst of these three characters talking, talking, talking, a deadly situation is being played out in Iran. Two young soldiers involved in a new military strategy (being hailed as the new solution by Cruise’s senator) find themselves alone and stranded while the enemy approaches on all sides.

When the drama flicks back to Cruises’ smarmy senator telling Streep’s journo how they have to do “whatever it takes” to win, you can’t help but think of all of the young men and women in the Middle East right now whose lives are being sacrificed because of men like this, for a cause that has been warped by propaganda to resemble nothing of the real reasons the troops are actually there.

It’s time we all opened our eyes and stopped being apathetic.

Exercise Junky

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I have been exercising like a mad woman this week to get fit again. This is what I’ve done so far:

Monday: Netball
Tues: Dance class
Wed: Day off
Thurs: Indoor climbing
Fri: Two back-to-back netball games.

No wonder I’m about to collapse. How long till I start feeling the benefits?

On a different topics, I saw Shannon Noll in Pitt St Mall yesterday. He was singing and promoting his new album. I jumped in and snapped him with the iPhone camera. Not a bad quality shot! On ya Nollsy!

San Churro

/ Sydney Food / 1 Comment

I found a delicious new chocolate cafe in Chatswood called San Churro. I only stopped by the have a hot chocolate but it was so tasty I had to blog about it.

The chocolateria is Spanish, and they also make a specialty dish called churros I believe – some kind of dough deep fried and dipped in chocolate. Yuuuum.

I didn’t have my camera with me, but I did have my shiny new iPhone and took some pics to test it out.

I loved the hot chocolate so much I bought a box of it for Alec to make for me when he’s feeling extra nice. He makes the best hot chocolate.


Yuuummmm….


Inside – lots of delicious chocolatey things.