Sydney Food and Wine Fair 2005

I love Good Food Month; because there is nothing I love more than gourmet food. So where else would I rather be on a sunny Saturday than at Hyde Park enjoying the Sydney Food and Wine Fair. There were over 100 stalls boasting names like Rockpool, Wildfire, Bill’s, Café Sydney and Ocean Room to name a few. The fair exceeded all my expectations and I was able to sample some of the restaurants signature dishes paying a fraction of the price, with all proceeds going to the AIDS Trust of Australia.

Armed with our Vouchers we decided to get something to eat - only problem, what to try first!

After being drawn to the delicious smell coming from the Australian Mushroom Growers stand - I just had to try their beef and mushroom burgers. For the record I am not a burger person, but this burger tasted sensational! It was really good quality beef and the dressing...if only I could replicate this at home.

Lanni on the other hand decided to try some seafood noodles prepared by the Shangri-La Hotel, after making friends with the chef they gave us another for free! That's the luck of being female sometimes - free food and drink everywhere we go.

Above: Two for the price of one, Lisa with her burger and us sitting by the fountain

After round one finished came round two, this proved to be a bit of a challenge as our stomachs were slowly getting full but there was still so much to try. Lanni had a Satay chicken Thai Salad from Eat in Thai (I'm sure there was a more fancy name for the dish, but I forgot)

I finally settled on the Seared Tuna Taco from Ocean Room - Yum Yum Yum Yum!! And Lisa had the Squid Salad by Mantra, everything was just so fresh!

With the last of our Vouchers in hand we moved onto dessert, unfortunately we were newbies to this game and didn't purchase the really nice desserts when we first saw them. By the time we went back for them they were all sold out! Boooo!! Sweet Berry tart from The Bathers Pavilion we just weren't meant to be.

We settled for the above instead: Berry waffles with honey cream, Blood Orange jelly with panacotta, Orange chocolate cup cake with choclate (something) & banana cupcake with orange frosting - Don't ask me who they were by, I was in my own happy little world by this stage.

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I’m definitely coming again next year and I’m going to bring Jacky and my family. I’m exhausted but I’m off to another birthday tonight.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend everyone and eat well!

*edit* I love visiting this (Grab your fork) website check out their review of the Good Food and Wine festival.

24/10/2005 - 28/10/2005

A week of change.
A week of telling myself to hang in there because things will be ok.
A week where an important client made me feel as worthless as the dirt that he walks on.
A week of beating myself up over it, even when I knew I did the best that I could.
A week of moving on.

This weekend will be a weekend where I will run to Jacky’s arms for comfort and spend time with friends to forget.

Don't ask me if I am ok, because I will smile and tell you I am.

Cont...

Continuing on from last night’s post, I’m still on a high from last night’s party. I decided that I wanted a different look so I started curling my hair, I’ve curled my hair on numerous occasions but this time I accidentally started too high. When I finished, my head had turned into a big afro! (I kid you not) It was 1 hour before the party and I could have cried! Instead I waited for my hair to settle down and tied half of it up to keep it under control, the end result wasn’t too bad.

We then headed off to the engagement only to arrive on time at the wrong place! It was held at the St George Sailing Club in Sans Souci NOT the St George Rowing Club near the Airport! The place was really nice and Christina looked Beautiful in her Alannah Hill dress, Stephen was positively glowing with pride!

It was also my first experience of a Lebanese/Greek engagement the exotic dancing and music was quite an experience.

We took a lot of photos but were limited by our 250MB memory card and our battery ran out right at the end! (Hopefully after pay day I can invest in a 2GB card + spare battery). It was very interesting trying to take pictures in such a dark room, so we experimented with different settings and tried different ways to angle the speed light. Some pictures worked others didn't, the whole photo taking thing is a lot harder than it looks and I’m really bad at taking shots at different angles. It makes me admire Trish even more.

The Rest of My photos here

Deana's Album here

Everyone's getting married!

Luke proposed to Sally on Saturday!! Congratulations to the both of you!!

Christina & Stephen's Engagement

It's 11:30 and we just got home from Stephen and Christina's engagement. It was one of the best parties I have been to, fireworks and all. We took alot of photos and I'll post some up after I have had the chance to go through them. Here is to a great finish to an exciting weekend!

Wedding Bells

Last night some old friends gathered together to Celebrate Yen & Tuyet’s wedding at the Monte Carlo in Fairfield. A big shout out to Cong and Trang who did a great job at being Best man and Maid of honour, you guys seemed exhausted by the end of the night!

It was also the first chance Jacky and I got to take our new camera for a test drive, we played around with different settings and started to get a feel for the camera. The camera is very heavy and I think I was too worried about dropping the camera than paying attention to the subject I was trying to photograph. There’s a lot to learn and a lot more practice needed, hopefully our skills will get better with time.

More Photos from the night Here

End of Quarter/Reena's Farewell

Today was a bittersweet day. We would all come together to celebrate a fantastic quarter 3 and also bid farewell to my direct manager Reena. As sad as we all are to see her go we can't be more excited for her in her new role as NSW Recruitment Manager for KPMG.

The farewell speech

We then headed off to the Woolwich Pier Hotel for a boozy afternoon.

A few of the guys - Left: Jen, Lucy, Adele, JP Right:Mayura, Sarah

The Food

Left: Classic Salad Nisçoise with Atlantic Salmon $16.00 - The fish was fresh and was reasonable for the price. Right: Steak Sandwich with fries (Lettuce, Tomato, Cucumber, Onion Relish & Beetroot) $14.00 - this wasn't a hit with us as the steak tasted like boiled meat

Left: Tempura Battered Fish Of The Day with Fries & Tartare $19.00.

Right: Garlic Prawns with chilli on fettuccini with spinach and coriander $20.00 - I found this dish to be a bit too oily, the pasta was a bit plain on its own and the prawns a tad too salty, I was left feeling a little disappointed.

Left: Scallops on Half Shell with Tarragon Butter - 1 Dozen $25.00 & Bowl of Fresh Prawns with Garlic Aioli (serves two $28.00) - seafood was very fresh and scallops had just enough flavour, would recommend.

Right: Vegetable Stir Fry with Fresh Singapore Noodles $16.00 - ordinary for the price.

The Cocktails

Our Company gave us a $500 bar tab to drink the afternoon away. And drink we did! I'm really not sure when I became such an alco but in 2 maybe 3 hours I managed to consume:

1 x vodka lemon lime

2 x caprioska cocktails

1 x lychee with cranberry Cocktail

1 x shot of Sambucca

The service was exceptional! and the barman was really sweet making his own little cocktail creations especially for us. The weather and waterfront view made it a really easygoing and fun afternoon, just what we all needed. At around 4:30pm we all hopped on the ferry to the city and finished the night with more drinks @ Opera Bar.

Before Reena left she handed me a present with these parting words of advice for me:

"Take Pride in how far you have come,

and have Faith in how far you can Go!"

(Christian Larson)

So I'm taking up Pole Dancing Classes...

A few girls from my team (including my Manager) were looking for a new way to have fun and keep fit. With the magazines and celebrities all screaming the benefits of pole dancing, we just had to give it a go. We're trying to get a group of 10 and there's a few spots left (see email below):

"OK Girls
I have spoken to the lady from Bobbi’s Pole Studio on 203 Castlereagh St that does lessons on the weekend. They do lap dancing too! Provided that we can get a minimum of 10 of us to commit she will run private classes for our group. She can do them at 9.00am on a Saturday morning.

The cost is $220 for 8 weeks. We will need to pay half of this on the first lesson and the balance a few weeks into the course. The first class will be on the 5th of November. Can you please get back to me ASAP if you are interested in moving forward with these classes so that we can confirm.

We have a few spare spots so if anyone else has a friend they would like to bring along that is fine, however we just need to have definate numbers.
http://www.bobbispolestudio.com.au/nsw/home.php

If my Cousin is reading this, I assure you I'm in it for good clean fun! Does anyone else want to do this with me?? msg/email me asap! It'll be fun!!

*edit* The classes have proven to be very popular! so besides Di + 1, I think I'm out of spots as we have over 16 people - but if you are keen still let me know and I will find out for you.

The slip of a button

Imagine my horror this morning when instead of sending the link of the race photos to my team, I sent it to ALL of Hudson non-exec accounting in NSW (this mailing list included various managers across the business). The worst thing was that I didn't even notice that I had made the mistake until I started getting read receipts from people who were not suppose to ever read the email.

Technology can be a very dangerous thing.

Carnival Day @ Randwick

I hadn’t been to the races before, but there’s always a first time for everything and the girls assured me that I would have an excellent time! It was really nice getting all dressed up, the dress was a lot lower that what I have ever dared to wear, but I bought it so i had to wear it! (at least once anyway). It was also a nice change from corporate wear and something to brighten my mood.

Armed with our passes to the member’s area we made bets on 4 races and picked the winners of all 4. I only made small bets like $5-10 here and there but finished the day $40 richer (thanks Mitch!). We spent the rest of the day eating gelato; fighting off cheesy pick up lines and having some guy who we named “Mr Lucky” buy us free drinks for the day.

On the drive home we worked out the 3 most common pick up lines (for the races):

“Have you won anything?”

“Are you up?”

“Ladies!?”

We came to the conclusion that if they were good looking it was cute and if they were ugly it was sleazy. Shallow...I know...but hey! We had such a good time that we're considering going to down to Melbourne for the races next year.

Member passes, My 2nd winning ticket, Miss leopard print Lisa

Di to answer your question of "What's the appeal?" - I think it's about dressing up, feeling good and getting into the spirit of things. Come along next time and you and Ken can enter the 'Cutest Couple comp!'.

Sarah - Wish you were here.

More photos here.

*edit* - Betty & Lisa's photos added