Last week was a good week for work, just motoring along. I'm going down to Melbourne for the export conference in March. It's on a Tuesday, but I managed to convince my boss that it would be a good idea to go down earlier and set up some meetings on the Monday. And then I said "well, since it makes no difference to the price of the airfare, how about I go on the weekend?" and he agreed.
The downside is that he's not paying for accommodation, but that is okay as I still have friends and family down there, so I'll be staying with my cousin. Hoping to do high tea while I am there, and visit the zoo, but alas, I think I'll run out of time. I wish I had longer. I like Melbourne.
On Friday DC sent me an invite to high tea set up by his PR friend, part of a tour by Dilmah founder Merrill J Fernando and his son to celebrate the 21st anniversary of Dilmah in Australia (any excuse, right?). The worst part is that the invite is for the Melbourne event ONE WEEK before I will be there. So I passed it onto my cousin, who is a food blogger and am crossing my fingers for an invite to the Sydney event. The funny part was that I can't recall ever talking to DC about high tea, but he remembered.
The weekend began on Friday night when Ass and I went to Newtown to see Baby et Lulu (Abby Dobson and Lara Goodridge of FourPlay) do their turn as French chanteuse at The Vanguard. The gig was preceded by soft shell crab, green curry and pineapple rice at Thai Passion and then chilli chocolate gelato at Dolce & Gelato, and followed by Italian hot chocolate at Dolce & Gelato. D&G is my new favourite dessert place in Newtown, can you tell?
The show was okay but I felt Abby was doing most of the work because I think Lara's voice is a bit plain so it was a shame that Lara got to do Piaf's 'Je ne regrette rien'. They did really well in harmony, though. I also saw a girl I went to uni with, Angela, who is also (FourPlay cellist) Peter Hollo's partner. He was there too, supporting former bandmate Lara. Angela now works for ABC online, which seems a good gig.
Saturday was Alg's wedding, which began at the Chinese Gardens, remarkably free of the rain that has plagued Sydney for the past week. After the ceremony, which was short and sweet, my friends and I wandered around the garden while the wedding party had their photos taken. The cutest thing was Gla (Alg's twin sister and the bridesmaid/flowergirl) who started crying during the vows.
We then went to Regal Restaurant for the wedding banquet, which was thoroughly enjoyable. We had a good table - a mix of high school friends and their partners and Alg's uni friends (I went to her uni so there was a point of commonality). The speeches were really touching and somewhat amusing, and the food was great.
After THAT we kicked on to Helm Bar where there was a bar tab awaiting the after-party guests. Most of us hung around for a few hours chatting and drinking cocktails and stickies (mmm, moscato...) and dubbing the words to an episode of The Flight of the Conchords, which was showing (silently) on a TV not far away. It was a cool wedding, what can I say?
Yesterday I failed to finish writing my novel and then went to The Vanguard again to see Jeff Martin (ex The Tea Party) play a solo show.
This morning there was a fire in my building on the floor above mine and flooding on the floor above that. The fire alarm went off just as I was stepping out of the shower so I hurriedly dressed and as soon as I was ready to go, it stopped. The corridor was filled with that horrible burnt metal smell and the driveway was filled with fire engines. A bit o' drama to start the week.
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