Spring fever at Coogee Beach

Last weekend it was a BEAUTIFUL Saturday! And it was warm - 27 degrees! Even though Sydney winters are nothing to complain about, the lovely weather got me so excited for springtime. I decided we should take a little journey out to Coogee beach and spend the day seaside. 

Heading to the beach!

Coogee Beach is out towards Bondi, so when we go there, it's usually as part of the beach walk. But it's a really cute beach with a lovely park nearby and a lots of little cafes, so I was excited to spend some time there. 

We got off the bus at the hill at the top of the beach. We just happened to get off at a stop that was at the entrance to a little nature walk down to the park near the beach. 

Starting on our nature walk

These trees are all in bloom with red flowers. The rainbow lorikeets were going nuts for the flowers. There were tons of them in the trees, all just talking to each other, happy as can be. 

Our impromptu bush walk took us down the hill and out through the park near the beach. It was a very Australian scene: lots of people having barbies (cookouts!) and a surf club meetup - also having a barbie and drinking beer. These people know how to enjoy a sunny day. 

We walked down along the beach and then climbed the hill to the south of the beach and found a spot to let the warm winter sun beat on our backs. We watched the surfers, read books, and maybe even napped for a little minute. 

After a while, we headed over to the little beach cafes in Coogee. This is a pretty common sight on a Sydney weekend: people packed into cafes with their family and friends for a coffee and their weekend breakky. And you can tell by all the people wearing shorts that it was a pretty good day for a coffee outside!

Even though the next day was back to being in the upper teens, the sunny beach day gave me a much needed boost and shot of Vitamin D. Bring it on, springtime!

A KitKat Popup

Something fun and exciting showed up in the shopping center near where I work: a KitKat popup shop! Now to add a bit of context to this, I should say that here in Australia, KitKats are much more varied than they are at home. There are always a few unique flavors of KitKats out, like minto chocolate or peanut butter. They also make big KitKats that are in three connected sections - one section is creamy, one is crunchy, one one has the whafers like a normal KitKat. It's a whole new world!

So when I read there was a popup coming, I wasn't sure what to expect. I went to check it out at lunch one day and realized that you could CRAFT YOUR OWN! Of course there was no way I was letting this slip by me. So I made plans to get there when the stall opened the next day so I could do it.

The little setup was pretty neat: you used an iPad app to pick your chocolate type, three toppings that got layered in and put on top, and then a patterned box with your name to be printed on it. The toppings were fun ones too - like rose petals or meringue pieces. Not your run of the mill KitKat ingredients!

Then the people in the little making station assembled the KitKat.

It took about 45 minutes, so I just got a text message to go pick up my creation a little while later. And it turned out amazing!

They were also selling custom KitKat flavors at the stand too, things like peanut butter creme brûlée. And let me tell you, Sydney went nuts for this! On the third day when I went back, there were probably 30 people waiting in line to make their KitKat. I am such a trendsetter! =D

Posted with Blogsy

Some fun at work

I've been working a lot lately, but my big project should be over soon. In the meantime, though, there are still plenty of things about work to make me smile. For one, we just expanded into the building next door, and the new workspaces are really lovely!

The new office puts us with a nice square view of Martin Place.

And, of high importance is the new claw machine full of candy. It forces us to make at least some effort to get our candy!

Even though I don't sit in this nice new area, I still get my lunch in the new kitchen. Too fun!

Last week I also made a trip over to the Sydney Google offices. Atlassian women were invited for a Women in Tech meetup. I didn't see too much of the office, but the part I did see was cool and unique like you'd expect. There were fun unicycles and jumping shoes for getting to the other Google buildings. The kitchen was full of candy jars and lots of fresh juice and food. It also looked like a pretty cool place to spend a workday!

And my favorite update from work is Bosco, the newest office dog. He was just 12 weeks old on his first office visit, and now we are BFFs!

Posted with Blogsy

Happy birthday to the T!

My work schedule has been pretty full-on, so I've not had much time for adventuring lately. But I did take a nice weekend to fully celebrate T's birthday last weekend.

Of course, there wasn't much that Toby wanted to do on his big day. But I had other ideas, surprise! So we compromised and I kicked off his birthday weekend with some fun Friday evening activities, and then the rest of the weekend was left to his choosing.

No successful activity happens on a hungry stomach, so we started Friday evening with a walk down to Walsh Bay for dinner. I really like Walsh Bay because it's mainly restored wharves and warehouses from Sydney's early port days. It's also pretty quiet, even though there are a few fun restaurants scattered here and there.

Our dinner destination was El Phoenician, a Lebanese restaurant. I'd picked it out for Toby's dinner, mainly because there were plenty of small plates involving dips. He agreed it was a good choice!

We had a leisurely dinner, but we were also on a schedule: our tour at the Sydney Observatory started at 8:15 sharp! This was my other choice activity to kick off T's b-day, but I didn't tell him about it until we were at dinner. I think of all the activity scenarios he'd been worrying about in his mind, he was pretty happy with the observatory tour plan!

I didn't get too many pictures because of course it was dark. But we had a pretty good time! Toby volunteered to turn the crank to close the telescope silo, which was pretty cool. All the other parts of the observatory have been mechanized, like the rotation of the telescope and the silo itself. But one bit was still by hand and that was very cool! We got to look at a lot of stars, star systems, and the rings of Saturn. All very fun and interesting!

The rest of the birthday weekend was spent playing games and eating birthday cake.

Some loved ones made the birthday even more special by sending a few care packages our way.

I am not 100% sure, but I think T had a pretty good b-day weekend!

Posted with Blogsy