navy

Never been too great a swimmer.

I could keep afloat, but to swim distances with any stroke other than the frog was beyond me.

when we were kids, Lee would regale me with tales of her olympian style butterfly strokes

while i would mentally picture myself doing the doggy paddle while gasping for breath.

Skipped the mandatory swimming lessons in secondary school

as they were clearly for losers haha

though many times since then i ve wished i tried a little harder.

what this brings me to of course,

is that miracles of miracles, i passed the surprise swim test on my Navy undergrad officer's course!

we were woken up with a fire drill at some ungodly hour, bundled us into a bus, and off we went.

dont have many photos, as it was neither the time nor place

but i do have one of the group.

because Creswell is a national park, and there were plenty of shrubbery (and kangaroos!) and therefore lots of pollen everywhere

had a bit of asthma and was hospitalised.

must say, this year's hayfever season seems particularly bad!

also attended the 2010 Naval Engineers Grad ball

held at San Remo Ballroom

i must say, the male uniform looks much better than the female equivalent

very pretty ceiling!

and this photo is for tracey, who wanted me to keep it because 'we look so white!' lol

been also trying my hand at picking up the chinese tea ceremony from mum

its smoothing and each movement flows from the next

sure beats popping a teabag in hot water!

dad bought some amazing tea back from China and Taiwan

so been using these.

everything you need for the tea ceremony. kind of hard to explain the procedure in detail, but its the kind of thing that needs constant practice and i only recently started trying in earnest

will blog more when i am back from queensland, made the christmas ham for dinner!

just tried to upload ham photos but blogger seems to be down.

splurged yesterday on the most amazing, fantastic, gorgeous bed sheets

i couldnt resist

1000 thread count of pure luxury

and i cant wait to hop into bed

night!

press club movida bacash

i have a little confession to make

the reason i can go for so long without updating, is that sometimes,

i blog in my head.

pictures, captions, the whole she-bang.

but of course, there's nothing like a little sms or email from friends to remind me its high time to blog again.

for real.

there was some drama with my camera before, but its all fixed now.

unfortunately that means that some of the images are corrupted (!)

so i ll blog what i have.

had an ahmazzzing dinner at Press Club with Nick, Helen and Viet.

been reluctant to try it as I am not a fan of greek food

but, every dish we had was oh-my-god delicious, and although we initially booked a 2 hr slot for dinner, upon choosing to have the degustation, the staff were most accomodating and extended the dinner to 3 hours.

i hate buying into hype but i have to give credit where its due, and Press Club is fantastic!

started off the night with some wow factor. dry ice, cheese (boccocini?) and moscato d' asti. yum. btw, i apologise in advance, but i know close to nothing about greek cuisine, and the menu was all, well, greek to me!

kingfish and calamari.

zuccini flowers.

beef. apologies for the brief descriptions! but ALL the dishes were exquistely prepared and well matched with the elements on the plate, and i was a fan of every single thing I ate. it was that good!

Aphrodite. i used to be a big fan of aphrodite when it was a black forest cake, but Press club changed it to this- panna cotta. liked the rose flavours and the marshmellow. a nice light dessert to finish off the huge meal! had a great photo of Helen and I with our dessert, but alas, that is lost to the technological abyss.

Can view the Press Club's menu here

The degustation should set you back about $150 per head, but worth every penny.

And book early!

i only have three measly photos left of our epic night out before B left Melbourne

dinner at Bacash. Great seafood restaurant! I had the warm rare roast ocean trout with fennel confit and an orange and beetroot salad. Nice generous slice, cooked just right, with that smoky flavour i love. Hen, in the above photo, has the scallops.

Had some Pieropan soave. Great wine, full but perhaps a bit acid heavy. Went well with my trout main though!

At Movida after. A crazy amount of desserts, the chef was impressed! Wont elaborate on the exact number of dishes hehe, but the Marquis, which is a chocolate dish with sea salt and oilve oil, is absolutely delish! Dishes pictured here are the strawberries in cava and the churros.

have a snapshot of my amex bill from last month. the ones underlined in yellow are restaurants. uh oh, somebody isnt going to dine out for a while!

:(