Adventure, baby!

Christine Knight

Christine is the editor of Adventure, Baby! She loves cake, her tolerant husband and her busy preschooler.

I Pod Therefore I Am

/ Shopping / 1 Comment

I love my iPod. I know it’s badly designed, I hate iTunes, and I resent the way Apple makes it so hard to upload and download your own music. I am such a trend whore though that I can’t live without my iPod.

I broke my little nano while snowboarding in Thredbo. A lesson to all the kiddies out there. Unless you’re a rocking snowboard, not a novice like me, don’t be a fool and take your iPod up on the mountain.

It only took one spectacular belly flop to crack my iPod’s screen. Interestingly, my Canon camera was in my pocket too and came out without a scratch. Canon 1, Apple 0.

Old iPod meets its replacement.

Awesome cracked screen in close-up.

Hello hot new iPod! I know we’re going to be great friends.

Father’s Day Part 1

/ Family / 1 Comment

The day started with an early morning drive to Newcastle.

Water! Such a pretty day.

Alec got soaked on the way to the restaurant. You can’t make funny stuff like this up.

Wet!

Alec and his dad have a lot in common. Such as their mutual dislike of having their photo taken.

My Big Day Out

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I’ve been super lazy lately so it felt good to have an active day again.

I started the day with a quick climb with Mel at St Leonards Gym, then Alec and I picked up Vladan to check out bathroom parts. We selected a colour theme, tiles, vanity, etc – I can’t wait till it’s done now. We chose a Mediterranean kind of theme – very rich blue floor tiles, stark white wall tiles with blue mosaic pieces as a stripe to run horizontally around the room, and an awesome vanity with lights in the mirror to make up for the terrible lighting in the bathroom.

After bathroom shopping we stopped at my fave Chatswood cafe, Marcello, for lunch. I ordered an open avocado, tomato, bacon and Camembert cheese sandwich with the best ice chocolate in Sydney. It looked so impressive I had to photo it.

After lunch I had to rush to make my 4pm dance class at Sydney Dance with Daniel. We love crazy Kassey’s class, and today was no exception. Lots of fun and make me feel better about all the chocolate I’ve been eating lately.

A quick shower and I was on the road again, this time to Emily and Lorin’s Sydney wedding bash. Em looked radiant, there was lots of tasty food (yes, I am a piggy and I did shovel it as soon as I found the mammoth block of cheese) and great company – a big bunch of Googlers.

Em passed around jello shots and equally popular strawberrys and dipping chocolate. Yuuuuum. What a busy, great day!

The beautiful Emily and her potent jello shots.

With the rest of the Google girls.

Bourne is Back

/ Sydney Life / 1 Comment

Tonight marked the final Bourne Fest, with part three, The Bourne Ultimatum. I joined 10 boys to watch the movie on opening night in Chatswood. The testosterone in the theatre was overwhelming.

I loved Bourne one, hated Bourne two, and loved Bourne three. It was a return to the themes of the first movie, with many very similar scenes marking a full circle.

There were a lot of extreme close-ups of Matt Damon, which made me see things I had never noticed before, like his funny slightly-raised eyebrow, and one eye slightly larger than the other, not to mention the mole on his lip. Interesting how even gorgeous people look odd when their face is several metres tall.

Bourne, as always, was a machine. No-one else except the terminator takes such a licking and keeps on ticking.

The only down side was the excessive use of “vomit cam” as Malcolm called it. Hand-held camera work throughout the action sequences made it hard to follow what was happening and left me with a bit of a headache. Or maybe I’m just getting too old for this much excitement.

Goodbye Emily

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Today was my dear friend Emily’s last day at work.

We celebrated her time with us in true Google fashion – with copious amounts of food and sangria.



Last photo in the Google office. I miss you already Em!

Chinese Noodle Restaurant

/ Sydney Food / 1 Comment

We took Jan to Chinatown for noodles on her last night in Sydney. Alec loves Chinese Noodle Restaurant, so off we went.

Busy! There was a line out the door when we left.

Full of noodle-lovers. Note the decor. Fake grape vines on the roof. Interesting.

Fresh noodle stir fry, dumplings and egg fried rice. Delicious.

Sweet corn, peas and pine nuts. Great combo funnily enough.

Required self-portrait.


At Central station on the way home I impulse-bought a cactus arrangement. I decided it would be nice to have more plants around the place. Let’s hope I don’t kill them all too quickly.

A Day At Sydney Art Gallery

/ Sydney Life / 0 comment

Another full day on the agenda.

We started at the Art Gallery NSW to see the Islamic Arts exhibition.

I know nothing about Islam let alone Islamic arts, so was unsure of what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised to find it fascinating. The exhibition had a lot of versions of the Qur’an – all drawn with the most amazing calligraphy.

It was an educating experience. I learned a lot about Islam and their art. I appreciated the highly detailed drawings and manuscripts in particular, and loved seeing the links between Islam and Christianity and their common stories. Seeing Jesus depicted as a turban-wearing fighter was highly interesting.

We then checked out the Max Dupain photographic exhibition at the State Library.

I love Max Dupain. Seeing his photograph of the bather inspired me to take up black and white photography when I was a young teenager. The exhibition had some of his early work and later architectural photos, which, while exceptional, didn’t interest me as much as his portraits and social documentary of his early works.

Seeing Dupain’s early works amazed me as he took some stunning photos of things like bathers mid-dive from a high board, that are perfectly in focus. This is hard to capture now, with our new digital cameras, so imagine the skill it would have taken to snap such a shot in the ’40s. Completely inspiring.

ABC Garden Show

/ Sydney Life / 0 comment

Jan came down to visit so we went to the ABC garden Show at Homebush. As well as taking almost 300 photos with my awesome macro of the flowers, I came home with a beautiful orchid from Jan (fingers crossed I figure out how to keep it alive), some bulbs for exotic lilies and a bunch of tulips.



Tulips from Alec.


Bulbs that are going to become exquisite exotic lilies.

Snow Dreaming

/ Australia, NSW, Sydney Life, Travel / 0 comment

I was picked up at 3am on Thursday morning for our trip to Thredbo. It’s been seven years since my last trip to the snow. I decided to snowboard again – several runs and awesome stacks later, I was back linking turns and belly flopping in the ice all over again.

On my feet finally!

Oh-oh!

Splat!

Two days later, I was back, with plenty of bruises to show for my little adventure. Can’t wait for next season!