Word of the week: ruup-bpan - statue

In my life: Weekly notes are delayed again because body/brain decided that 8.30pm is a perfectly good time to crash for the day. Not sure if it’s the weather (its cold and gets dark by 5) or my early mornings that are causing that but it’s been a bit annoying as it means I then wake up at 3/4 and can’t go back to sleep for the night.

We started the week with a holiday for Kings birthday, so we paid a visit to Chatswood for some more warm winter wear. This has been a colder winter than our previous three and our workout wear was woefully inadequate. We got some warm sweatpants for both of us and have been using them on our walks.

On the work front, it’s been a bit of a busy week. I finally finished one of the larger pieces of work we had for one of our releases and testing has been completed on the bits that I was worried about. We also had a few back to back releases which meant being on standby for any support requests coming in post business hours.

On the fitness & health front, as my trainer is away I’m now down to one PT session a week. They’ve asked me to do 12k steps on one day instead of the second session, so got that in over the weekend. It’s thankfully not been as rainy as last week but the gloves are also out for walks now.

I made my way down to the Coal Loader for my walks twice this week and barely felt it on the way back. It’s a good 80m elevation differential but just feels very normal now which is a very strange feeling when it used to feel like I needed a Uber back before. Will need to find a more challenging walk soon.

We didn’t have guitar this week, so started Saturday a bit lazily. We woke up at 8 and walked down to Neutral Bay for breakfast and leisurely walked back with a stop at the op shop for some vinyl hunting, at the local sports ground to watch folks play rugby (possibly - I still get confused by which game is which here), stopping for a bit to chat with friends and then a little stop at our local newsagent for some magazine browsing. We came back home and I just fell asleep all afternoon.

Saturday was the last day of Vivid and I hadn’t been to the city at all. I woke up after my nap and decided to at least head down to Milsons point but once I reached I realised there wasn’t much to see from there. I decided to take the ferry into the city and as the one to Circular Quay was busy, I went to Pyrmont instead. I spent a good three hours slowly walking down to Central exploring the installations, the Vivid fire kitchen stalls and listening to artists along the way before taking the metro back home.

On Sunday, we rented a car and drove down to Kiama. We didn’t really have any specific thing to see in mind, I just wanted to get out of the city and Sathya wanted to try out the Haval Jolian. It was the third Sunday of the month so the seaside markets were on.

We went there and spent some time exploring before heading to the touristy sights - The lighthouse, Kiama blowhole and Little blowhole. We grabbed lunch and then went to Bombo Geological site for a bit before heading back home on some very rainy roads.

On my screens:

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  1. Reset (Thai, Queer, Time travel, Ongoing): My Tuesday mornings are spent catching up on this show - love the drama and soap opera-ness in this. I need to find more translated lakorns to watch now that there isn’t much I’m watching on the Kdrama front.

On my bookshelf: Still continuing to read Foundation but it’s very slow as it feels very different to the show. Spy fanfic author has only updated one chapter for my story.

I also read The Blackened Blade as I was looking for a story like Reset, where the protagonist is betrayed, dies and wakes up in the past to get revenge. Unfortunately while I did finish the book (as I wanted to know what kind of magic she had) I’ve DNF’d the series. It had all the tropes I dislike - “not like other girls”, reverse harem, “I won’t let them get away with it while actually letting them get away with it by doing nothing” and was explicit in a way I disliked a lot. There was barely any revenge taking and the reviews for the next books are worse so ending the read here.

What I wouldn’t give for a good complete revenge arc or properly morally grey spy books though. If you have any recommendations, please let me know.

On my pages: Still struggling with the dialogue and between that and my workload and sleep issues this week, I barely got any writing done. I might nix the texting scene and switch to a video call scene instead just so I can get something written.

On my playlist: My sister in law had mentioned that the Samsung installations for Vivid are usually very nice, so I went there first. I loved this year’s installation called Space to Dream and loved the music used by them. It was by Milan Ring, an Australian born, Berlin based R&B artist, Milan Ring. While I can’t find the exact song used there except in some not great videos, I started listening to some of her other work and enjoyed it.

On my plate: Its been a busy weekend for eating. We started with Korean BBQ at our favourite place in Chatswood on Monday. I love their kimchi pancakes. I also made Kori Rotti after a long time since our friends got us some rice rotti when our friends visited us. We tried a new to us cafe, The Grumpy Baker in Waverton for breakfast on Friday and had a delicious matcha chocolate muffin at Ken’s Kissa on Saturday. Our Sunday trip to Kiama started with a visit to Moonphase for coffee and brekkie and also involved an amazing South African platter for lunch at KG cafe in Kiama.

On my camera: Loved my walk through Darling Harbour Vivid installations on Saturday. There were so many things to see on my walk and so much people watching to do.

Favourite shot of the week is this one of a couple in front of the Quasar installation. I only had my phone, so couldn't capture the long exposure I initially wanted but used the Live Photo feature to capture this when the couple stepped in front of the installation. I’d have liked the light installation to pop a bit more though.

Thanks for tagging along!