Nosh at Harsha's gaff

For those of you who speak English, that roughly translates into "Dinner at Harsha's house".

After 5 years, my colleague Harsha has decided to move to greener pastures and invited myself, Gary (my boss), Karen and David over for dinner on Thursday night. He made us a delicious fish pie and some cheesy mozzerella things as an entree. We had bread and butter pudding for dessert.

(From left) David, Karen, Gary and Harsha

We will be sending Harsha off in the usual style on Thursday night. So, I'll probably be putting up some drunken photos next week.

PS. Pictures of our holiday in Greece have finally been posted! See the Island in the sun entry...

A postcard from Spain

Although we didn't go to Spain exactly recently, there are loads of holidays over the past 12 months that haven't made it on here. So to rectify that, here are some pics of our trip to Spain (Alicante, Madrid and Barcelona) in February 2005. Barcelona is full of amazing and surreal Gaudi architecture - as you'll see below (and from the picture above which is taken on the roof of a hotel Gaudi designed.

James at the beach in Alicante

The view from the jetty at Alicante

The view from our hotel - unfortunately we arrived two weeks before the Carnaval festivities

Some examples of Gaudi architecture above and below...

The Gaudi gardens in Barcelona above and below

Outside the Dali museum in the Gaudi gardens

Cape Shank

While we were in Melbourne, we drove down the coast to Cape Shank:


We parked up and ate our lunch amongst a plague of flies

Then we went for a strole down to the water




On the way down we saw an echidna




After cape shank we went on to Sorrento, almost near the end of the Peninsula. Mum and Dad used to take us here during summer holidays. We visited an old haunt of ours - "Buckley's Chance" - a pancake parlour in the heart of Sorrento town. The name is described on this site:

[Sorrento] was in 1803 the site of the first white attempt to settle in what is now Victoria; the settlers struggled here for four months before giving up and moving on to what is now Tasmania. One of the convicts in the expedition was the infamous William Buckley, who escaped, was adopted by the local Aborigines and lived with them for 32 years. When the "wild white man" was seen again by settlers he could scarcely remember how to speak English; his survival against all odds has been immortalized in the phrase "Buckley's chance".

After Buckley's Chance we headed for the beach

Happy Anniversary

It's our 3rd Wedding Anniversary today! Unfortunately we have to spend it at work and the weather isn't nearly as nice as it was three years ago today (we got married in Sydney during summer). Still, we're going out for a romantic dinner a deux at a restaurant down at Butler's Wharf in Shad Thames tonight after work so it will be a nice way to round off the day.

Stop press!

Apparently there is a new flavour of Cheezles which I've never heard of before and didn't spot in any supermarket while we were stocking up on snacks to bring back to London - cheeseburger! I discovered this on my new favourite website http://www.taquitos.net/snacks.php?snack_code=1267 - a fully searchable website of worldwide snacks. Has anyone heard of this mysterious new flavour? Did they withdraw it because it was a massive flop or has this site stumbled across the Cheezles marketing plan for 2006?

Our next holiday!

Now that we're back at work and still faced with the long grey days of winter ahead, it's easy to slip into the winter blues. So we've booked another holiday to keep us motivated! We're off to Prague in February. We tried to book it for the weekend of my birthday but by the time we compared flight and hotel prices on a few different websites, the flights we wanted had gone so we've had to book it for the week afterwards. We're just off for the weekend unfortunately but it looks like a brilliant place and I'm really looking forward to it. Plus, they'll probably be snow!

New year's eve on Sydney harbour

Well, it's been a while since I've written stuff on here, but since we just got back from Oz recently, it's time for some more piccies.

New Year's Eve in Sydney



View from Darling Point









Me enjoying the shade









Lu and Kris








Everyone enjoying dinner












Dusk over the harbour










The bridge pulses:



Finally, some fireworks (shaped like hearts)

We're baaaack!

Well it's back to work again after a lovely 2 week break back in Aust. This cold weather (even though it isn't even that cold for London at the moment - it's an almost spring-like 11 degrees today) is a bit hard to get used to after all those 30 degree days back in Aust but hey ho.

We went to Sydney first where we caught up with friends Pete and Bettina and Alex and Louise for dinner down at King Street Wharf in Darling Harbour. Amazing how quickly that area has changed. Last time I was there the wharf just ended but now they have extended it and the King Street area is packed with trendy restaurants and bars (so many we had to do two laps before deciding on where we wanted to eat). We also caught up with my bridesmaid Kris who flew down from Brisbane on New Year's Eve to watch the fireworks with us. James chose a great spot to watch them - at McKell's Park at the end of Darling Point Road. We had a fantastic view of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House and there even fireworks at the little island across the water from us (photos coming soon). We were in Sydney for a week before flying down to Melbourne for a week where we checked out all our old haunts and managed to sneak in a fleeting catch up with our friend Dave on the day we left.

Although it was the longest trip back to Aust we've had since we left it still went by too quickly - and I was just getting used to all that hot weather. Mum and Dad have given us a 2006 calendar of Sydney with lots of shots of beaches etc to make us home sick :)

Hoping to catch up with everyone in London again now that we're back. We've been extremely slack at keeping in touch with everyone just before Christmas because work was frantically busy but things seem to have settled down a bit now. Famous last words!