Chucking a sickie

Chucking a sickie means in Australian speak that you stay home from work because you are sick. You watch series and sleep and have cups of tea. However in hubby's world it means that you do everything work related that you would normally do at work but sitting surrounded by Kleenex and empty cups in your bed with your laptop. He actually is quite miserable but feels he has to go back tomorrow, one sickie is enough.

The weekend was both fun and not so much fun. I had to go to hospital twice to get an antibiotic drip because I have a staph infection in my right leg. Today I didn't have to go because a nurse came here and took care of it. Now we are nervous about me not being able to fly to Europe next Monday but I feel it will be ok. Fingers crossed.

The fun part was that the kids came around, flowers and all. They had a stop at IKEA on the way so we had lots of goodies plus the gigantic meatloaf that hubby had prepared. They stayed and watched part of the Eurovision finals with us. It's a big deal here. Yes, I think I have mentioned it before but Australia considerers itself part of Europe when it comes to Eurovision. Can you just imagine what will happen if they win one year and the whole circus has to travel all the way here Down Under.

There will be more shortly. Take care dear readers.

Anzac Day

G'day! 

Today is Anzac Day and people are generally off work. it is observed on 25^th April each year and it was originally to honour the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. There is usually a dawn service but these days none of the soldiers from the first World War are alive to participate of course.

You can buy Anzac biscuits in the shops; it is an oatmeal and sometimes coconut biscuit that was originally baked and sent out to the troops during the war. I quite like them and they are very easy to make.

Hubby is in the kitchen cooking away. It gives me great pleasure to see. He has really taken to it, and sometimes he starts planning lunch already when we get up, asking me what I would like for lunch!! I'll have to put his name down for MKR if this continues. Don't get me wrong here, I am enjoying it and I hope it's not just a fad. I am thinking of buying him a proper chef's hat like Pascal's below. He is the chef at Chez Pascal where we had dinner a while ago.

My nephew has returned to Sweden and soon we will go there too, only a month left. I think he realised how big this country is after having spent a whole day on the train to get to Broken Hill (he likes trains). It is really worth flying if you are planning on doing big distances here in Australia. It is just so big. Here is a map showing just that.

We didn't buy the house that we so liked in the end. The time frame didn't work out since we are leaving and the owners couldn't move out immediately. Anyway, something else will turn up I hope.

This means that we can't really have people over, not to this warehouse (we still haven't unpacked). So we are opting for having a few people come for dinner at a restaurant. Last weekend we had a test lunch at one that we hadn't been to before, just for fun. It was great apart for the steep staircase that you had to get down (and then up). So I think we are back to our fave in Wollongong.

Father and daughter doing what most people are
doing these days when they see each other.

Time to go and do chores. Bye for now!

PS I know I mentioned that we went out for a meal last week with our niece and here is a photo from that.

Bush fire

Hello dear readers!   

Yes, we have had bushfires very close to where we used to live in Menai and also near where hubby works. In fact they have been told to work from home both yesterday and today. It's a good way to start getting into retirement mode, having cups of tea and working in your boxer shorts.

Fortunately nobody has been injured in the fires and no houses have burnt down as far as I know. The smoke has been horrible though.

This is our neighbour's place in Menai and our
previous rented house was right next to it.

My nephew from Sweden is visiting at the moment. Right now he is in Broken Hill and will be back on Thursday. Before he left we had a day outing to the Hunter Valley wine district which is always good fun. If you are more of a beer drinker they also have several breweries that you can visit, which we did. 

He was also able to add the Big Kookaburra in Kurri Kurri to his list of Big Things. The public toilets below were beautifully decorated with murals. In fact Kurri Kurri is well known for it's many murals and it's worth having a little walk around to see them.

The first weekend he was here he came with us down to Albion Park where we have been looking at a house. Both he and our daughter approved wholeheartedly of the house, but unfortunately we have run into complications due to my non-citizen status and we are still trying to work it out. We went up to Saddleback Mountain where you have a fantastic view of the whole valley and where you can also go for nice walks. Then we went to the Minnamurra rainforest and saw a very rare lyrebird. It was actually quite fearless and walked around without taking notice of us. They can imitate any sound. For instance if they hear a motor mower or chain saw they can imitate that perfectly. Check it out on YouTube.

Tonight we are meeting up with hubby's other niece in Sydney for dinner. She is here for work and it will be nice to catch up.

Time to say goodbye. Cheerio!!

Good Intentions

One of my intentions this year was to write a little blog entry every Monday, mainly to keep it regular, and also write while I remember what we have done. Well, as you can see that clearly has not happened, and now I am sitting here racking my brain trying to think what we have been up to. It doesn't get any better with age. Hubby and I can spend a happy but a little tortuous Saturday morning trying to think of the name of a certain actor. "You know the one who is married to such and such who played in such and such movie". Oh, how tedious it can get!

We were invited to the Chinese Yuan Xiao festival at our friends' house. It was very nice. We sat outside and had a lovely hot-pot which is like a Chinese version of fondue. You have a broth with lots of different fish balls and tofu swimming in it and then you get a little implement to put your meat, finely sliced and your different mushroom and fungi and other things in and cook it in the broth. It's a very enjoyable way to spend an evening. For dessert we had the famous glutinous rice balls called Yuan Xiao filled with a sort of sesame filling, very nice.

Last week-end they had a graffiti or rather street-art "Happening" in Caringbah which we went to. We should have had more tattoos and piercings to really fit in, but it was still fun. I am glad my painting takes place standing or sitting on the ground and that I don't have to climb up ladders.

Another fun thing was that a couple of weeks ago we met up with hubby's niece and her husband and their two adorable kids. We went into the city one evening and had a meal together in the hotel restaurant. We had never seen the younger of their two girls and come to think of it we had barely seen the older one either, so it was very nice to catch up. Sorry, but I can't put up pictures of the event since I have not spoken to the parents, but there were some good ones with hubby speaking baby speak.

So now we are looking forward to my nephew coming in a couple of weeks. I am sure we will have some fun outings with him. Maybe to our favourite Japanese restaurant in Sutherland?

Take care now, dear readers!

Central Coast

We are back from a house-hunting week-end on the Central Coast, alas without success.

Already on the way up there on Friday afternoon we had second thoughts due to the horrible traffic conditions. However once there we cheered up a bit. Our hotel was called The Clan and it was situated right on the beach in Terrigal. The receptionist saw that I had a wonky knee and proposed a change of room. We were allocated a comfortable family room on the ground floor with access to the beach with no additional cost. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant and it was top notch, plus hubby could have some wine and not worry about driving afterwards which is normally the case.

The next day was a flurry of visiting different houses and in fact we saw one in particular that we both liked but realised that we couldn't even contemplate.  It would have meant spending three hours one way to go to work for hubby and that would just not be possible. Still we had fun up there and enjoyed seeing all the beautiful beaches - Umina beach, Pearl Beach, Ocean Beach, and a few others.

The weather was also very nice over the week-end, not like last week when it actually got up to +38 ° C. Many people spent the whole day in the shopping mall, even going to the beach was too hot.

Can you see the young boy jumping from the bridge? Well it happened when hubby was walking on the bridge to take some photos and approaching these three young boys, the youngest probably just eight and the oldest maybe twelve, one of the boys asked hubby if he had come to jump. When hubby laughed and said "No", the boy said, "Come on, there is still some life left in you. You are not at the end of your days yet". It was such a challenge and hubby might have done it but he had his camera and wallet so he couldn't do it or so he says!

Another challenge that we (hubby) would like to take up is SUP and they even say that you haven't been to Sydney if you haven't tried it.

Have a nice week dear friends!

The week that was

You know the little joke that goes "What is worse than finding a worm when you bite into your apple?" and you answer, "No, what?" and the person telling the joke says, "Finding half a worm".

Well, I came to think about that when I had lunch with my friend A in Glebe the other day. We had a great meal in a very small Thai place and afterwards we just wanted to use the bathroom before leaving. It meant going through the kitchen area and I felt happy that I had not seen it before eating. It was pretty grotty. While waiting for A, I stepped outside into the little alley way and this is what I found there just outside the kitchen.

Maybe being a vegetarian isn't such a
bad thing.

Anyway, other than that we have had the usual intensive house search going on every weekend and we have managed to narrow it down now both concerning the area that we both prefer and other criteria.

The weather has been very hot and sometimes very windy. Just this morning I heard that a friend of our son lost her property out in the bush in the bushfire. She had made it into a real little paradise far from civilisation, way out in the wilderness. I hope she has the courage to build it up again.

Australia Day is coming up and as always there is a bit of controversy about it. Indigenous people are not happy with celebrating the day that their country was invaded and their children taken from them and that is totally understandable. I am including a calendar of significant aboriginal events in the year.

My home country, Sweden, also has a fairly large group of indigenous people in the north. I am a little ashamed to admit that I know very little about them. However, I watched the Swedish annual film festival this year and there was a movie there that I would love to see called "Sameblod". It was nominated in eight categories and won the Guldbagge (the prize in the form of a large chafer) for best script.

Sweden is a relatively small country but very long, so for people like me from the south west it is a very different land up north and also not so common for people of my generation to have visited. However I would like to visit during the time of the Northern Lights.

Another thing I would like to visit is the big Sapmi market in Jokkmokk.

 

I have to leave you now and get some chores done. It doesn't look so good when hubby comes home from work in the evening and the bed isn't made and I am still in my night gown.

Have a good rest of the week!!!!

Pantry moths

Hubby has an on-going fight with pantry moths. Every morning I hear him cursing and opening doors and hitting the walls with a newspaper to kill them. We don't have tons of them but enough that it is annoying. He read on the web that when you buy new products you should put them in the freezer for a week or so to kill the eggs that might come with the packaging, so now we do that. There is no room in the freezer for anything else though. We also have everything else in sealed glass jars so I think we will soon be moth free.

Yesterday was very hot and today should get up to the +36°C they have forecast. It is even worse for Melbourne where it was up to +40°C yesterday and I think it will be the same or even hotter there today. It is a little bit too hot for me; I prefer a nice 25-27° with a slight breeze.

The house we sort of fell for in our house search yesterday has a pool and is also a short stroll from the beach. There are a few negative aspects though, so we are weighing up the pros and cons before maybe putting in an offer.  I'll let you know how it pans out.

Naturally we had to have our weekly oyster lunch and this time we drove up to Mount Kembla and had lunch in the only pub there which we had always wanted to try. It was a little gem. So if any of you readers come to visit we will take you there. The only thing was that the cicadas were so loud that we had to sit inside, otherwise you couldn't keep up a conversation. It was truly deafening.

Otherwise it has been a nice peaceful week brightened up by a lunch date with our daughter on Friday. We had tapas in Glebe. In this one street we could have had Japanese, Vietnamese, Mexican, vegan, French, and much more, you name it. It is incredible how the food scene has changed since I came to Australia the first time in the early eighties. I would go shopping with my mother in law in the High Street and we might lash out and have a cuppa (Australian for a cup of tea) and a sandwich.

Speaking of the eighties or more the nineties, I received this photo from my friend in Sweden who lived in Grenoble when we did. Their son and ours played together all the time and we saw lot of each other, lunches, dinners, picnics etc.  As always, when you look back, it is with a little melancholia and longing for the times gone by. Anyway here it is!

From the right, me and my father in law and mother in law and my friend M. Behind is hubby.
Stretched out on the grass is our elder daughter and then our son and our younger daughter, and
then barely visible A, my friend M's son, who now is a father of two himself. Life is wonderful!

I have to leave you now. Wishing you health and happiness.