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!

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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!

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A cross-continent cooking competition

One of the things we miss the most about home is hanging out with our friends. No big surprise there! In Tennessee, almost every Friday night was spent hanging out with Chris and Michelle, either going to dinner or cooking together. We decided that it was time to try and recreate some of that fun with the magic of Skype! We planned a cookoff based on the Food Network show Chopped, but where we had to use the honor system & vivid descriptions to choose the winner.

A few days before our designated cookoff, we all picked an ingredient that had to be in our dishes. We all took pictures of our ingredient written on paper and simultaneously texted it to the group so we couldn't be influenced by other people's picks.

We ended up with a couple days to think about our dishes. Toby and I made a trip for supplies but didn't share what we had in mind for our creation. I think that we were both worried that we had the same idea, but it soon became apparent that we were on very different pages!

Then it was cookoff time! Here in Sydney, we made dinner dishes, while Sweden had to make breakky food. I felt like we had an easier mission, but their food did sound pretty delicious!

Our apartment kitchen is small and not stocked with an over abundance of cooking equipment. So we took turns prepping all our food, and then finished everything off simultaneously.

We also had to set up the Skype/food presentation area. Not quite how it looks on Chopped, but it worked!

Our Skyping session consisted of lots of food close ups and self-evaluations of the successes of our concoctions.

For the curious, the ingredients we all had to incorporate into our food were pear, blue cheese, artichoke hearts, and sausage. Toby pulled together an impressive sausage dumplings with pear and blue cheese dipping sauces. Mine was sausage sliders with blue cheese sauce and pear & nectarine chutney. Michelle crafted eggs benedict with zucchini. But Chris won the day with his sausage hash and toast with artichoke hearts!

Even though we were looking at a screen, it was a pretty good substitute for our fun Friday nights! I anticipate more weird, honor-based competitions are in our future.

And just for fun during our respective Saturdays, we also took pictures of what we wore outside on the weekend. Depressingly enough for the Sweden team (who are in the middle of "summer," the type of clothing was pretty much the same!

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Hangin out in Bondi

Last weekend, I met some of my girlfriends out at Bondi for a day of hanging out. Of course Bondi is mainly known for the beach, but there are lots of cute cafes and shops in the main part of the town. It's a pretty hip place to be on a Saturday!

Australians are pretty serious about their coffee. During the workweek, the thing to do is go out for coffee breaks at cafes at least once a day. People are very particular about the places they go, since it's all about the technique and preparation. On the weekends, like the nice one from last week, people head out to their local cafes for their coffee. The popular ones, like Harry's where we were, have lines of people waiting for coffee. I'm not much of a coffee person, but I've learned to drink it since it's such a part of the social scene!

After we had brunch, we walked down to the Bondi Saturday Markets. It might be one of the most hipster gatherings I've ever been to. =)

And of course every market needs a puppy parking lot!

 

There was also a "rescue lizard" hanging around.

Even though it's the middle of winter, there's still plenty of lovely produce from out in the country.

After we went to the market, we decided to walk down to the beach - it's just what you do at Bondi!

The day was so lovely, people were hanging out at the beach, just like it was summer! We camped out on the hill above the beach and watched the surfers with the sun on our backs.

It was a pretty good way to spend a winters day in Sydney!

 

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