Adventure, baby!

Month: August 2008

Perisher Snow Trip

/ Australia, NSW, Sydney Life, Travel / 2 Comments

The annual Google Ski Trip is a wondrous event. This year the engineers were bussed down to the resort on Lake Crakenback on Monday for some days of skiing and, umm, making coffee? The rest of us departed later in the week. While the official ski trip departed Wednesday afternoon and arrived Wednesday evening, giving us only one day of snow, my team of crazy hyper athletes decided to drive down on Tuesday night so we could get some extra snow time.

We spend Tuesday night in Cooma, at the pub / hotel. It cost us $25 a night per person for a room with four beds – and yes, we really did get what we paid for!

I was so happy to drive on the next morning into Lake Crackenback and grab my boots and board from the resort. Alec left a spare Perisher pass for me at the resort so I let my uber crazy team head on off to Thredbo to throw themselves down black runs, while I joined Alec and some of his team for some easy green runs at Perisher.

I’m not an awesome boarder by any means. I have boarded exactly four times now over 10 years. Each time I go to the snow it takes me the entire time I’m there for my body to remember how to board – just in time for me to leave again!

I had two good days of snow on this trip so I spent day one literally falling down the slopes and day two began to regain any skills that I had once had on previous trips.

There was a lot of snow up on the mountains for the end of the season, and we were blessed with sunny, warm days. Unfortunately, this also meant the snow wasn’t nice and fluffy – instead if was pretty icy and hard in a lot of places – I seemed to find quite a lot of these icy patches with my butt.

Ready for take-off!


Cheesy!










“I’m the king of the world!”


Just before my board slipped out from under me.





Tired!





Sunset at the resort.



This kangaroo and I eyed each other off … note the joey in the pouch!






The actual trip was fabulous .. only bad side came at the end of the second day when I was struck down with a nasty virus. I was the sickest I have ever been, and was eternally grateful that I had Alec there to take care of me. I was told that the virus was going around the area – it was pretty concerning how many of us got sick! At least I didn’t waste any precious snow time being sick however – now that would have really been terrible!

Puppies Galore

/ Animals / 1 Comment

I miss my babies and wish I could see them more often. The naughty pair came over for visit this weekend and did cause some havoc, but isn’t that what puppies are for?

Buffy likes to burrow into the cushions – as captured below. The girls liked to cuddle up to their dad as well. Alec calls them “stalker dogs” because they don’t like us to be out of their sight. If I get off the couch to go to the kitchen, I turn around and there is one or both of them, at my heels looking up expectantly. Somewhat disturbing, somewhat cute. It’s hard to decide.





I met up with my parents to hand over my babies again. I really like walking the dogs here on a nice day like today.

Mum with baby Buffy. She is such a little micro dog.


Kahlua – my soul mate in doggy form.




RSPCA Cupcake Day

/ Sydney Food, Sydney Life / 1 Comment

Anyone who knows me knows that my passion in life is animals. I am the hugest fan of the RSPCA and would do anything for them to help them fundraise.

2008 marked the first year for the Cupcake Day for the RSPCA and I decided to bake up a storm and raise some cash at work.


Since my oven doesn’t work, I went over to see my parents and baked with their state-of-the-art wonderful oven. The recipe I used was the same one I have been using since I was about five – it’s a very simple, never-fail, vanilla cupcake recipe that always turns out perfect – fluffy and crumbly in the middle with a great texture and taste. I did however tempt fate by making a second batch and throwing in a good heap of Cadbury drinking chocolate to see what happened. What happened was I stuffed up the recipe and half of the chocolate cupcakes sunk in the middle so were un-sellable. They were still tasty and devoured by family however, so it turned out OK!

Batch number two goes into the oven.


Batch number one comes out – perfect!


Iced! Glorious sprinkled cakes with lemon yellow icing.


Chocolate with white butter cream icing and chocolate sprinkles.

Dispite some hiccups at my work, the day went off very well. Several other Googlers brought in treats they had baked as well, and together we raised $170 for the RSPCA. Google also gift matches any money we donate to charity, so it ended up being $340 we made in total. I hope to raise even more next year!

Girls’ Day Out

/ friends, Sydney Food / 2 Comments

Beverly has been telling us about this fabulous French cafe for a while, so I was more than happy to begin our shopping bonanza with hot chocolate and pastries. I’ve been to France a few times and am planning another trip, so it really got me into the “I’m going to France” groove. Which also reminds me that my lapse in practicing French has left my language skills as abysmal. Must refresh my memory before venturing the land of chocolate!

Back to the cafe, it’s called La Gerbe D’or and is in Paddington. Beverly knows the owner, a lovely French fellow, who recognised her and came over for a chat. The cafe was extremely busy, both with fellow diners inhaling gigantic amounts of hot chocolate, as well as locals popping in for exquisite pastries and baguettes.




Beverly points to the many items she is about to order.



This is not a distorted image. The bowl is as large as my head. We worked out it was about four cups worth, and only cost around $5. Bargain – and sickness-inducing.


Onion tart.


Mushroom quiche.


My late breakfast – so tasty and fluffy. It cost around $8, which I thought was a reasonable price.


Yes, another demonstration of how piggy we are.


Three girls, ready to pig out and buy lots of pretty things.

Lisa’s dessert.

Drinking my way into queasiness. It was so divine I just couldn’t stop. It was very sweet and light, but next time I will split it with someone.


In Alannah Hill I fell in love with this princess dress. I wasn’t exactly in the market for another dress, but what can you do when fate throws you the perfect frock?


After a day of trying on dresses, we adjourned back to the apartment for pizza gluttony from LCC. After boasting about the glory of LCC pizza, the girls insisted we all try it and decide once and for all if it is indeed the fairest pizza on the North Shore. The evening did not start auspiciously – the pizza took an hour to arrive. That is the standard delivery time for LCC and we’re used to it, but our guests were impatient for foooood.

Posing. Of course.


“Limpeted!”


Don’t know what was going on here. Beverly has “I’m cranky, feed me” face. And Chris has … I don’t know what to call that.


Finally! Food! LCC were good to us and threw in a large garlic and herb pizza and garlic bread.


Alec tries to save me from myself.


Chillin’. Ahhh pizza satisfaction!


Spellbound by the Wii.


Cuties with their toy ferrets.


Couldn’t resist throwing this one in. Too cute for words.

La Gerbe D’or
255 Glenmore Road
Paddington, NSW 2021

Google vs eBay Touch Footie Match

/ Sydney Life / 1 Comment

I don’t think I’ve ever played touch football before but somehow I was recruited to organise a touch football match between my team and eBay. I find it to be quite a strange game where not much really goes on unless someone passes you the ball.

It was a lot of fun however, and I manged to catch the ball a few times – woot! We also won the game and raised money for Animals Australia.


Sakura Japanese Kitchen

/ friends, Sydney Food / 2 Comments

Shelley took me to Sakura Japanese Kitchen before we saw a movie last week. It’s a tiny little place that serves fast, tasty, cheap Japanese food. There were lots of Japanese people in there so I think it’s safe to say if it’s a hit with the locals then it’s more than good enough for us!

The service is fast and friendly and the food come out within 10 minutes of ordering. Shelley had rainbow rolls and prawn and vege tempora, and I had vegetables tempora and udon noodle soup. The noodles were super tasty, the soup was delicious and the veges were huge! I also thought the food was good value – it cost about $11 for my dish. We will be back!

Sakura Japanese Kitchen
Shop 325 Pitt Street
Sydney NSW 2000
Tel. 02 9261 0711
Open seven days

Birthday Escape: Glen Davis and Katoomba {Day 3}

/ Family, Holidays, NSW, Sydney Life / 1 Comment

It’s cold out here. Bone-chillingly cold. The sky is blue today though so it’s a great day for the drive to Glen Davis, a tiny little town where my dad grew up. It was a mining town where my uncle, grand-dad and great grand-dad all worked in the mines, but became a ghost town at some stage, and has now come full circle with people moving back into the town to retire. It’s quite eerie as it is a town in name only – there’s nothing there except for the houses that have moved back, and they sit amongst the ruins of foundations from the previous houses, school and shop buildings.

There is nothing left here of my dad’s house except the front steps and some foundation blocks, but it was really amazing to visit it and see where my dad was a little boy running around. The countryside is amazingly beautiful, so it would have been a very pretty place to live even though it was so isolated it would have been really hard to get anywhere to get supplies.














After visiting Glen Davis we slowly drove back to Sydney, stopping at Lithgow for food and Katoomba for hot chocolate and waffles. I love this little art deco cafe called Paragon on the main street of Katoomba. It has fabulous chocolate for sale, hand-made on the premisis I believe.






Since we were so close we drove down to the Three Sisters Lookout. We came up here on one of our first dates, two years ago, so it was really sweet to come back and look around again and reminisce.








Birthday Escape: Mudgee and Relaxing {Day 2}

/ Family, Sydney Life, Travel / 0 comment

A big fail on behalf of Google Maps (or my map reading skills) lead us to drive into Mudgee while looking for a little town called Glen Davis that my dad grew up in. Turns out Glen Davis was in the opposite direction .. whoops! Never mind, it still ended up being an interesting drive.

A pretty church in Mudgee. Everything was closed when we got there just after 2pm. We ate an an Asian bakery as it was literally the only food place open apart from Subway.

We stopped off at Windermere Dam on the way back to our cabin. It looks fairly good weather here but it had been raining all day on and off, and when we got back in the car it started to snow!