Foundation Day!

We get 5 days a year to volunteer, so I spent one of those days this past Friday volunteering at a charity called Good360. The charity collects surplus goods from businesses and then redistributes it to charities that need those types of goods. For example, companies going out of business might donate all their excess inventory to avoid paying landfill fees.

I went with a team from work, and the work we did was in the Good360 warehouse. We spent the day unpacking boxes of donated goods and then repacking them into smaller quantities to be shipped out. Since we were in a warehouse in Sydney in February, to say that it was hot and sweaty work would be an understatement!

Some of the good we repacked were kind of odd! Like 15 pallets of custom-made shoes. Not all of them seem exactly suited for charity donation, but hopefully the majority of them do some good in the world!

It was a good day and I'm so lucky to work for a place where I get paid to do volunteer work.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Chinese New Year was this past Thursday, and the city has been all over it.

Down by the Opera House, a whole army of terracotta warriors has been set up. They're actually made out of silk and fabric like Chinese lanterns. 

We celebrated at work too! The Events team organized Chinese street food for the company for lunch and decorated the office to bring the feel of China to us. 

A few misc pics of the week

There was a dinner with the vego people at work. The dinner was at a restaurant down by Hyde Park. I snapped this pic of St Mary's in the afternoon light on my way to dinner. 

Even though our office building doesn't *really* allow dogs, people bring their dogs in by the back lift. Doggie Jess hung out with us while we were workshopping the other week!

And we also celebrated World Nutella Day on February 5th. The best way to celebrate World Nutella Day? Eat nutella out of the biggest jar ever!

And here's a handsome fellow that I had breakfast with on the weekend. 

And finally, Toby got an email offer for the latest Pizza Hut pizza special. If there is a grosser sounding pizza concoction in the world, I don't know what it would be. 

A walk to the Botanic Gardens

Last Sunday, T and I got up early to walk over to the Botanic Gardens. We went out early before it got too hot, and it was a lovely start to the day!

The gardens were nice and quiet that early in the morning. 

We weren't just there for the views, though. I was trying to win a TimTam photo contest with a trip to Paris as the prize. Toby helped me with my creation...

And cleanup too!

It was a pretty great start to the day!

Checking out the Sydney Buddha

Carriageworks is a heritage site in Sydney. The buildings used to hold the old railways maintenance and blacksmith equipment, and now they've been converted into performance spaces.

I went out to Carriageworks on Sunday to see the Sydney Buddha. Sydney Buddha is an art exhibit that's on until March. The Sydney Buddha is a statue of Buddha made up of 20 tons of ash. The ash is from incense from Buddhist temples around the world. As the exhibit is on display, it slowly disintegrates over time. And across from the ash Buddha is an aluminum sculpture of the same Buddha. It's meant to represent the passage of time and the fleetingness of life.

There weren't a lot of people there, which made it really nice for taking pictures. 

It's hard to tell a scale from these pictures, but Buddha was about 25 feet tall. 

I took the Redfern train back to Milsons Point. On my way to catch the train, I came across these yarn-bombed bike racks - so cute!

It was a fun day and a good way to escape the 90+ degree weather!

Playing hooky on a Thursday!

Well, I suppose it's not technically hooky if you tell your manager that you're taking a few hours of leave. But leaving work at mid-day to go to the beach still feels pretty great!

The Australian Open of Surfing was on this week and Thursday was supposed to be full of sun and breeze, so Toby and I headed out to Manly to watch the surfing competition. The competition is a weeklong, from Sunday to Sunday, and the women's semi-finals was on Thursday. We don't really know anything about surfing competitions, but it how can you go wrong watching people surf at the beach!?

I caught the 2 o'clock ferry up from the city and Toby caught a bus from work, and we met up at Manly. The town has been taken over for the open! There are concerts going on in the evenings and there the random things you see at an event like this. For example, a pop-up fitness competition. 

Along the beach, there were lots of fun sponsor exhibits, food trucks, and random surfing displays.

The beach has been taken over too. They've constructed a giant concert pavilion on the beach, as well as a skating stadium. Apparently there's also a skating competition going on at the same time as the surfing one.

We grabbed a spot in the semi-shade on the beach wall and watched some heats!

The surfing was super fun to watch! We of course know nothing about how any of the heats were scored and really how they were run, but we managed to follow along. It was really fascinating, watching the waves and trying to see which ones were going to turn into something. 

The waves weren't huge and they definitely seemed to be getting less good through the afternoon. But occasionally a good one would come in and then it was just so exciting!

We stayed for a good while watching the surfing. Then, we made time for some gelato, as you must do when you'e at the beach to watch surfing!

By the time we were done with our day, the clouds were starting to roll in. So we had a nice cloudy ferry ride back to the city.

A pretty good Thursday!

Watching the big game!

And by big game, I mean the AFC Cup of course!

I had never heard of the Asian Cup before a few weeks ago when I started seeing signs and posters for it around the city. The Asian Cup is kind of like the World Cup for countries in the Asia Pacific region, and the Cup is every two years. This year, Australia made it to the final, so it was a big deal here!

Out in the city the day before, there were plenty of people in the Aussie Green and Gold colors.

Since it was a soccer event, we had to celebrate properly too. So we planned some good game snacks, used my kangaroo cookie cutter to make some proper dippers, and settled in for a fun game night!

Toby's Packers jersey was the closest for being team colors!

After a tense fight in extra time, Australia pulled off the win against South Korea! It was a great game!

And as for the American "big game" - the Super Bowl - that falls on a Monday during work. No Super Bowl parties for us this year!