Desk

So where do I spend most of my life? Behind a desk... wanna see?

(Looking at someone's desk you can tell a lot about them. Even the completely bare desks say a bit about the personality that has to be so ordered!)


From the left:

• Pot plant (belongs to the office, but there's a good chance I'd have brought one in if there wasn't one).


• Wedding photo.


• Phone.


• Printouts, pad and pen: this is whatever I am currently working on. Completed/upcoming work is in the tray on the right of the desk.


• Mug (tea usually).


• Litre bottle of water and a glass: I try to drink the whole thing every day. Yes I do visit the bathroom a lot!


• Computer... of course.
  On the PC is my glasses case (sigh - getting old), a DVD I need to return (Horton hears a Who), raffle tickets for Surf Life Saving (the draw is in Feb), a highlighter pen and a couple of post-it notes with my user id, the helpdesk phone number and a test system login.
  Plugged into the front of the PC is a USB connector that I use to charge my mp3 player and download photos from my camera.
  And a mouse and wrist-rest thingy.
  And that's a mobile phone charger next to the mouse.


• To the right of the PC is hand sanitiser, hand cream and a box of tissues.


• A bowl of fruit. I eat lots of fruit.


• Tray of paperwork that I'm not working on right now, and a file with manuals and so on.


• Ugly but very functional handbag.

Under the desk:

• A backpack for the gym: this lives at work, I just take sweaty clothes home and bring clean clothes back.


• A backpack for walking to or from work.


• Running shoes, airing between gym and walking home.


• Bin.


• Drawers: mostly containing packet soups, tins of tuna, herbal teas and work socks. And a few bits of office paraphernalia.

And if I turn to the right this is what I see:


Very nice.

Movember

So I've already told you guys about Ocsober : an Aussie month-long sponsored sobriety challenge to raise money to educate kids about the dangers of substance abuse.

Well, now we're well and truly into Movember: an Aussie month-long sponsored [mo]ustach-growing challenge to raise money for men's health issues, specifically prostate cancer and depression research.

Now, while I don't know of anyone who took up the teetotal month, there are a few boys in my office doing the "mo-grow".

Gawd it's nasty!

Of course they're having fun with the idea so it's all a bit porno, with sideburns and handlebars and... ugh. Sooo unattractive! Did men really wear them as a matter of course back in the 60s? I'm finding it hard to believe.

One particular bloke in my office, a stunningly attractive American who is usually the epitome of clean-cut, well dressed, nicely built easy-place-to-rest-my-eyes-ness (hey, I'm allowed to look, right?) has started his mo. And overnight has become the epitome of sleazy, unwashed would-cross-the-street-to-avoid! Very sad.

If you feel like a giggle then google images of "movember". And be very very grateful that the mo is out of fashion!

You want me to eat what?

I've mentioned before that the area we live in is a bit of a melting pot, with a strong Asian influence. Every time I walk into my nearest little grocery store I spend a lot of time thinking "What on earth is that is that and how (or why) would you eat it?".

About once a week Milord or I take the plunge and buy something we've never tried before. Last week he came back with 5 little parcels of banana leaves.
"What are those?"
"I don't know but they looked interesting!"


(image nicked from here)

Luckily there was a label on one saying "sticky rice", so I googled for a while and discovered that this is a snack of pre-cooked sticky rice usually with some sort of addition (which can vary wildly). We boiled them for half an hour, peeled the leaves off and nibbled at the compact rice cake revealed. Turns out there was a kind of bean paste in the middle.

Verdict: bleah.
We won't be bothering with these again!

Yesterday I came back from the store with these:


Salted Duck Eggs. You should have seen Milord's face!
"What are you trying to do to me?!"
(this from the man who is still munching his way through the jar of dried anchovies coated in wasabi)

Take a duck egg and soak it in very salty water for a couple of weeks. The egg absorbs loads of salt and will keep for many months, plus it now tastes rather different.

I sat down and googled for recipes for ages. Sounds like one generally uses the yolk in cooking, or else you hard boil the egg (like a normal egg) and use it in salad.

So I boiled a couple of eggs, let them cool and peeled them. I lined up a few crackers, topped them with a slice of tomato, added a slice of yolky boiled egg, sprinkled some pepper, and handed a plate to Milord. After a long hesitation he took a bite.


"Hmmm. Not bad. Guess we don't need to add salt though!"

The white of the egg is incredibly salty - I discarded any that didn't have hardboiled yolk in the middle. The bit left on the cracker was deliciously salty, and the yolk was rich and, yes, a bit salty too!

Verdict: yum.
Now I need to think of something different to try with the 4 eggs left over!

Sick Puppy

I'm at home with a nasty cold...

I woke up on Wednesday night with bad hay fever and kept Milord awake for ages while I sneezed and snotted and waited for the meds to work. I get the sort of hay fever where it feels just like a couple of thousand ants have taken up residence in your sinuses and pharynx and are running around. It's mind bogglingly uncomfortable and all you can do is wait for the antihistamines to kick in.

On Thursday I still felt a bit rough but assumed it was a hay fever hangover... until the afternoon when I realised I probably had something else because the tickle was gone but my head was still clogged and running.

We had a another horrible night last night (we have GOT to sort out the spare room soon, so that I can give Milord some distance at these times!) and there was no way I was going to work today.

I got up in the afternoon to wander around the shops for food, but that was actually very difficult. It is impossible to food shop when you have no sense of taste and no appetite and have a head full of cotton wool! I'm thinking of steak, salad and baked potato tonight, but I'm not bothered...

I almost paid $40 too much for something because I handed over a $50 instead of the $10 I thought I'd taken out of my wallet. (10s are blue and 50s are yellow. yeah)

Some nutty old lady with her spectacles held together with a sticking plaster cautioned me about showing too much skin (I was in a tank top and jeans) and said god wants us to be modest. I congratulated her on looking like she'd come in from a snowstorm.

I stumbled back into the house needing a serious lie down. The drugs have the cold under control but I still feel particularly rotten.

I'm on the couch with a glass of wine, reading a medieval drama set in ancient Sicily, and MTV on the telly. Some of the videos are utterly mesmerising after a couple of codeine!

Whitsundays Holiday - Part 3

Day 3 – Tuesday 14th October
...continued from here.


It turned out our anchorage in Stonehaven (3) did not settle down much in the night! We rolled and swung in the current, and bullets of wind hurtled down from the surrounding hills to tear at the boat. Oddly enough I didn’t sleep too badly, as the night was cooler than the one before and with Milord in another cabin I was able to lie across the bed so that the rolling was feet-to-head instead of side-to-side. The sound of our anchor chain scraping across the seabed as we were pushed around was a bit disconcerting, but I got used to it after a while. Milord reckons he had a horrible night though – he hates high winds at anchorage.

We were up early and cooked breakfast in spite of the rolling, as well as coffee, orange juice and champagne (there is something really decadent about champagne for breakfast)! Then we raised anchor and went along to Luncheon Bay (5). The plan was to spend most of the day there and snorkel 3 bays (Luncheon, Manta Ray and Pinnacle Bay).


We anchored in Luncheon Bay and took the dingy over to the reef for a snorkel, after which we buzzed to the next bay, Manta Ray Bay (6), for some more snorkelling. It was pretty good, but we decided we were cold and had had enough, so we skipped Pinnacle Bay and headed back to the boat for a hot shower. The sea was really rolly back at the boat, making the shower a bit interesting! We decided to move on to our next anchorage, Cateran Bay on Border Island, in the hope that it would be more comfortable.

As we came around the northern tip of Whitsunday Island we realised why the water had been so rolly in the bays – the sea was very rough and lumpy as we rounded Pinnacle Point (7)! We had a bit of fun sailing through it, tacking[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacking#Maneuver] a couple of times as we were heading almost straight into the wind. I learned quickly to move across the boat while Milord brought her around on the new heading, otherwise I’d end up practically in the water as the boat lay on her side and I would have to “climb” to the upward side!

You also learn very quickly to have everything on the boat well put away before sailing like that, as all loose items leap from one side of the boat to the other!


We came into Cateran Bay (8) at mid afternoon and picked up a permanent buoy mooring. Finally we were in calm water, and I produced a feast of cheeses, pates and biscuits, which we helped down with gin and tonics while stretched out in the shade with our books, listening to the Café del Mar cds[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_del_Mar] Milord had thought to bring along. A nap may have ensued, and as night fell we cooked salmon steaks on the barbie and had them with avocado and salad and white wine.



Continues here.

Weight Update

It's been a while since I did one of these, and that's because I do not have any good news...

Septsober did nothing for me, and last month spiraled out of control with weddings and holidays. Bugger.

I need to get back into exercise, as I seem to be doing less and less. Milord and I have done nothing for exercise on the weekends since before our wedding, and I couldn't run a 6min km right now if my life depended on it!

Look at this:


Revolting.

Can you see my holiday week? Oh yes.

Grump grump grump...

Milord is in the pub after watching the Melbourne Cup all afternoon. He sounds half-plastered. We are supposed to be going out to dinner together tonight but now I don't much feel like it...

Or maybe I should get over myself and go and join him and play catch up? Hmmm.

If you can't beat 'em join 'em eh! Byeeeeee blogees!

Whitsundays Holiday - Part 2

Day 2 – Monday 13th October
Continued from here:


The sun finally rose after an interminable night in Cid Harbour (2). It had been a very hot night, but because it kept raining we were unable to have our hatches open so it was rather stuffy in the cabin. Milord snored and twitched until I was ready to kill him and I had managed to get sunburnt the day before which didn’t help, as every time I moved in my sleep that woke me up too!

(How silly is that? Lily-white after a Sydney winter we walk into the tropical sun without any sunscreen or even a hat. Born in Africa, living in Australia – I have no excuse! Milord also has no excuse, and his burnt baldness was bright red for days until it started to peel. Nice.)

Milord volunteered to move into another cabin for the rest of the trip, which made a great improvement and will go on the to-do list for next time! The beds on a boat are just too small to share with a large man.

Apart from that our anchorage had been perfect – out of the wind and practically no rolling.


I made coffee and orange juice and unearthed provisions from the bottom of the chest fridge, and Milord cooked us bacon and egg sandwiches on the deck barbeque. Although we had the occasional rain shower it was pleasantly warm and we were sheltered by our awning. We tidied up, consulted the charts, packed away the awning, raised the anchor and headed north again.

We were headed to Butterfly Bay on Hook Island for a spot of snorkelling, which involved us sailing past our proposed night anchorage in Stonehaven (3) on the way. We got to Butterfly Bay (4) a couple of hours later, took the dinghy to the reef and dropped its little anchor on a patch of sand, and slipped into the sea.

Diving in the Whitsundays is horrible. The islands are close to the mainland so there is plenty of runoff carrying silt, plus the tides get compressed and churn up a lot of muck too. The visibility is not great – probably about 5m (15ft), so once you get to 5m it’s pretty murky down there! We dived on our last trip and didn’t enjoy it, so this time we had decided just to snorkel.

The reef and fish are superb, although the visibility isn’t very good. The water was 26C which is a little chilly – we didn’t wear wetsuits but a shortie wetsuit would have been nice - I might have to buy one! I did wear a “stinger suit” which is a full-body swimsuit that protects you from sunburn and coral. I’m glad I had that, because whenever I went swimming without it I came up in little incredibly itchy welts on my body that lasted a week, possibly caused by bits of jellyfish or nymph anemones. Luckily I’d thought to pack antihistamine ointment and pills.

We snorkelled for about an hour and we saw huge napoleon wrasse and a school of baby barracuda in addition to the normal oodles of fish among the coral. It was pretty good.


Then back on board for a shower, and we headed back to Stonehaven with a ham and cheese roll and a beer in hand.

Dinner was barramundi (fish) on the barbeque with salad and white wine, watching a spectacular sunset. Our anchorage was a bit rolly and gusty, but we hoped things would settle down in the night.



...continued here.

Lazy Weekend

I'm busy busy busy at work... so busy in fact that I decided to come in for a few hours on the weekend to get ahead. Milord dropped me off just before 10am on Saturday and I bleeped my way into the building, then hopped in the lift and waved my pass across the sensor to go to level 25.

*bleep* Lift ignores me.
*bleep* Lift ignores me.
*bleep* Lift ignores me.

Aargh - my access has not been updated since I moved floors! I manage to get to level 21 where I used to sit, and wander the floor asking people if they can get me to level 25. No luck. I ring my manager at home and she tells me no one else of my team is in and she can't help me.

So I went back to the ground floor, crossed the road to the supermarket and did my weekend shopping, and caught a bus home after ringing Milord to tell him I didn't need fetching.

The rest of the day was spent like this:


Sipping wine on ice under the big umbrella while reading the newspapers. This is the best angle of my backyard.


Sadly it actually looks like this.


And this. Rather revolting really, but we can't do anything about it until our finances recover - probably next year!


Most of the planes pass to the side of our house.


But the odd one comes right overhead!


And this is what happens when you send your spouse out shopping for nibbles at the asian supermarket:


Rather peculiar!

Whitsundays Holiday - Part 1

We flew from Sydney at 7am, landing two and a half hours later on Hamilton Island at 8:30am (Queensland does not do daylight saving!). We made our way to the marina, to be told that our boat had not turned up yet, so we left our bags and browsed around the waterfront. It was a lovely day, warm and sunny with scattered clouds.

At 10am our boat finally arrived in the marina (1), and we went aboard to meet our "briefer", who gave us a quick rundown of the boat, discussed our sailing plans, and took us out on the water to check Milord’s sailing prowess. We got rid of him at about 11:30 and headed off to sea with a couple of cold beers.


This is the living area of the boat looking forward – a 41foot Beneteau monohull. There are 3 double cabins – one in the bow and 2 aft. There are 2 toilet/showers, an electric fridge, gas stove, cd player, electric lights, and a gas barbeque on deck - just perfect for two people!

I had sent the charter company a list of provisions and it was all aboard, packed neatly into cupboards and fridge, including a decent amount of beer and wine. Fab.


We went north, with a following south-east wind which was perfect for easy sailing.


By mid afternoon we were anchored in the lee of Whitsunday Island, in a very sheltered bay called Cid Harbour (2). I rustled us up a late lunch of cheeses, salami, ham and French bread, and we opened a bottle of cold white wine and relaxed in the shade of the awning over the back of the boat. When we got hot we stepped overboard for a swim, and as night fell we had hot showers then cooked up T-bone steaks with stir fried vegetables.

Then to bed in crisp sheets watching the moonlight in the clouds through the skylight…

...continued here.

Back from Paradise

We are home after an idyllic week sailing around the tropical islands called the Whitsundays (because they were discovered by James Cook on Whit Sunday in 1770). We had every kind of weather including rain and wind, but also enough sun to accidentally get quite a tan!

I’m going to try to do a detailed blog series about our trip, because I couldn’t find anything on the blogs about sailing a hired yacht around the Whitsundays and I think it could be useful and informative for anyone out there who is contemplating it.

In the meantime though, I am trying to get my head back into work mode, while my desk bobs in front of me… I get a sort of sea-echo for a week after I get off a boat, and my body tells me everything is moving slightly as if it’s floating!


I love this photo - it says it all! It would make a good ad for Billabong, don't you agree?