Sunday, October 7, 2007

The 10 "best ofs" for this week

1. Best meal: Although the Nokia's flash found it hard to cope the atmosphere and food at "The Jimbarin", Avoca Street Randwick was the outright winner for us. Sharing wonderful Indonesian food with a Balinese twist in the outdoor courtyard with Ros, Pete and Rob on my 56th birthday was pretty wonderful. Eggplant with green chilli and anchovy sauce, kangkung, pancakes stuffed with beef and the sea food curry were our favourite dishes.

Rob and I returned to Binh Tranh at Cabramatta on our way home yesterday. The sugar cane prawn rice cakes (number 58) keep calling us back (along with the sticky rice cakes for dessert at the nearby bakery - the best ever).

2. Best walk: In a week where we walked everywhere, walking to the Clovelly Hotel with Ros and Pete was pretty special. We had the deck, the million dollar view and reasonably priced Coronas all to ourselves. I like the way Rob has managed to get my favourite Strylitzia (spelling?) plant into this picture.
3. Best Coffee: Cafe Mado, Auburn Road, Auburn - Turkish coffee and pastries to die for. Fascinating to sit and watch the multicultural passing parade- very strong traditional Muslim presence. Rob and I found amazing Afghan bread and hand made (in Auburn) Turkish delight to take away as souvenirs from our visit to Turkey in Sydney.
4. Best show: The only show in town for us this week was the Saturday matinee performance of Miss Saigon at the Lyric Theatre, Star City Casino. The theatre was packed, with a predominantly Asian audience. We were mesmerised by the show - not a particularly joyous one with its tough subject matter - but quite moving even with all the burlesque sparkle and helicopter special effects.
5. Best movie: We fulfilled my little Sydney apartment living dream of walking to the Randwick Ritz to catch a movie: "The Bourne Ultimatum". I experienced every knock, thump, bash and smash in the small but well set up Ritz theatre number two - here's to seeing many more movies at our "local"!
6. Best ice cream: Just to be sure I had two, both enjoyed sitting on the circular steps down to Coogee Beach as night time descended over the sand and rolling waves - my favourite was a double cone gelati - blood orange and pistachio from Gelatissimo, on Coogee Bay Road.
7. Longest walk: On Monday Rob and I walked to the Sydney Antique Centre, South Dowling Street, Surrey Hills - took us about one and a half hours. At least we can say we've done it. Without internet access it was really hard to locate where all the cool Antique shops are in Sydney. They are definitely not cool at Queen Street Woollahra (which we tried exploring on Tuesday). Way too posh; I felt a complete outsider, too intimidated to even enter most of the shops!
8. Best shopping experience: I spent nearly seven hours at Bondi Junction (by myself) on Wednesday. I had promised Rob I was going into every single shop I fancied. The time just flew and I only went into a couple of shops but I had the luxury of time to try lots of things on. Came home with heaps of parcels - new sunnies, David Lawrence coat, two pairs of jeans, a few Country Road tops; all good fun - lucky me!

Rob and I spent five hours at Ikea, Rhodes near Homebush Bay on Thursday. I swear Rob has been permanently traumatised by this shopping overdose, especially in the hyper controlling and consuming Ikea environment. We were very pleased however with our Expedit TV cabinet. It was delivered (exactly as promised) on Friday after which we spent three hours putting it together. We only made two fairly big mistakes despite Ikea's clear instructions, but they are not too noticeable in the finished product. We enjoyed sitting watching TV on Friday night and admiring our handiwork.
9. Best hardware store: One of Rob's happiest moments this week was when he discovered there is a Mitre 10 hardware store close by, on Clovelly Road at the Randwick end.
10. Best Service in Sydney Award: This has to go to Sam from Accept Electrical who responded to our temporary lighting problem on Thursday night with speed and diligence. We are going to get him to install more power points for us next weekend. He's keen to refer an excellent painter to us - she's female, paints like an artist and "doesn't charge too much". We are keen to talk to her!

Maxie and Rod hosted a big family get together last Friday night 28 September to celebrate Ros and Peter's visit. I came straight from a "hard day at the office" but didn't take long to enter into the celebratory spirit.

4 comments:

davey said...

1. Happy birthday Judy! Sorry I didn't text, but I was swanning around the Croatian coast, you know, as you do. Very impressed that you are taking photos on your Nokia, AND transferring them to your computer. A mean feat and no mistake!

2. Love the Cloey! (note colloquial usage) My good friends Jane and Greg met each other there, and then subsequently celebrated their engagement there. We got soaked in champagne, much to the chagrin of the fastidiously attired maidens present.

5. Glad you guys are enjoying Randwick. 'The Spot' (where the Ritz is) is one of my favourite late discoveries in Sydney.

8. HOLY COW. Are you serious? Even by Kenyon standards that's staggering. No wonder Rob's head was all-a-kilter by the end of it.

My favourite blogger on Ikea:

http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/002069.html

Send my love to everyone! x

Judy P said...

I even found the defectiveyeti IKEA strategy blog in the archive. Hilarious - that man has nailed it! Loved the image of needing 16 blows of the "allen wrench" to kill someone. Need Rob to read it too but I think he is still a little brain damaged from his own IKEA experience last week.

Love hearing news of you Davey - and I LOVE that you leave comments on my blog. Need your advice on how to fix my formatting problem. It allows me to space my paragraphs for the first few and then won't allow me after that. Looks crappy and makes it harder to read.

Got your postcard from Santorini- did you really go there?

Would love you to redo my header properly! Hope you love London. I remember returning to London from Paris for a few weeks in mid November. We stayed in Kensington in some cheap dive. It was so damp and rainy all the time that our flares got covered in wet mud right up to the knees when we went out walking the streets. (It was the seventies).

davey said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
davey said...

Oh, haven't seen that one! Will do a search for it later this afternoon.

We did manage to go to Santorini. It was breathtaking. Such a pity that my land purchasing deal fell through!! Stupid donkeys.

Yep, flares sure are hopeless at dealing with extreme terrain conditions. Long live skinny jeans!

To fix the formatting problem, go into:

Customize --> Settings --> Formatting

And then in the 'Post Template' field, enter the following text:

[div style="line-height: 18px;"]TEXT[/div]

----------------------
!!Judy!! Please replace all:

[ with a <

and replace

] with a >

as blogger won't let me put in the code apparently.
----------------------

That will fix all the subsequent post from now on. If you want to change your old posts with that problem, you'll need to edit the post, then switch to 'HTML' view in the editor (top right). Once in there, put:

[div style="line-height: 18px;"]

at the VERY start of the text, then..

[/div]

at the VERY end of the text. (please do same replace of [ and ])

Good luck!