Winter 2019
01 August 2019
This year is the first time in almost a decade that we haven't travelled to somewhere warm during the Melbourne Winter. As the plan this year is to go to South America, we decided to do that in November as it will be Spring. The result is that the Winter has seemed like quite a long grind.
May brought the Federal Election. Our seat is a fairly safe one for the Greens, so there was not a lot of polling or campaigning. Our polling place reflected the local community with vegan snacks for sale and an espresso machine on a bicycle. The election result was quite a surprise, reflecting most likely the increasing difficulty of doing accurate opinion polls now that many people don't have landline phones and also the disconnect between professional media and the unregulated but effective social media in which messages are fragmented and "narrowcast".
For 15 years I have had the same tenant in the house I bought when I was an anaesthesia trainee. In May he let me know that he and his family were moving to a place they had bought nearby. He invited me to his 40th birthday party/moving/album launch party. I think it's probably unusual to know a tenant from his student days through his wedding, having children and buying his own place. He and his wife completed their almost perfect record as tenants by finding a replacement: a family they are friends with who had always liked the house.
I spent most of my spare time in June fixing up the house for the new tenants. Having had some practice at this kind of thing with the two houses we had to sort out after my father's death made it a bit easier, but it's not something I enjoy. The new tenants moved in at the start of July.
We saw a bit of theatre during the Winter. There was an excellent production of Cloudstreet at the Malthouse which my sister gave us tickets to. We saw Megan Mullaly's band Nancy & Beth and we also went to the Dreamtime game at the MCG. We were lucky to get seats on Level 1 under cover as it rained during the game. In July we saw the charming Canadian musical Come From Away.
For the Queens Birthday long weekend at the start of June we went to Sorrento. There were some maintenance tasks to do there and it was a sunny, if cold, weekend for walking on the beach. It’s also the only place where we get to light a wood stove, which for Jay is reason enough to go there.
We had dinner at the Portsea Pub which seemed to be doing their own version of Sydney's Vivid.
We had a surprise visit from Yoav, a friend from California, the following week. He came with us to Nancy & Beth and I was able to take him for a walking tour of the city and the NGV. He left the same weekend as Jay travelled to Vancouver for work. Now that his team is working with other EA studios around the world, there has been more travel for him this year.
While Jay was in Vancouver he had Derek for company; I wasn’t so lonely because our friend Beau came to visit from Sydney. We had a couple of meals together. He stayed with us again a few weeks later when he came to Melbourne for a wedding.
Jay didn’t get a chance to visit her in Vancouver, but my cousin Elizabeth came to Melbourne a few weeks later and brought her children to dinner with us. The 40 year old video games I had for them to play after dinner seemed to hold the same fascination for kids now as they did for us in 1980.
At the end of July Jay went away again, this time to LA for SIGGRAPH. This meant that we spent his birthday apart and Derek had to keep him company. The tickets I had booked for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child had to be changed for a date two weeks later when he was back. He had a week of hot summer days in LA while I went to the Gertrude St Projection Festival, an MSO concert and a review screening of the new Fast & Furious at IMAX. I’ll get some time in a warmer environment in October with the Anesthesiology 2019 meeting in Orlando and then we are both looking forward to vacation in November. At the same time I have to start making some kind of plan for turning 50 in March.
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May brought the Federal Election. Our seat is a fairly safe one for the Greens, so there was not a lot of polling or campaigning. Our polling place reflected the local community with vegan snacks for sale and an espresso machine on a bicycle. The election result was quite a surprise, reflecting most likely the increasing difficulty of doing accurate opinion polls now that many people don't have landline phones and also the disconnect between professional media and the unregulated but effective social media in which messages are fragmented and "narrowcast".
For 15 years I have had the same tenant in the house I bought when I was an anaesthesia trainee. In May he let me know that he and his family were moving to a place they had bought nearby. He invited me to his 40th birthday party/moving/album launch party. I think it's probably unusual to know a tenant from his student days through his wedding, having children and buying his own place. He and his wife completed their almost perfect record as tenants by finding a replacement: a family they are friends with who had always liked the house.
I spent most of my spare time in June fixing up the house for the new tenants. Having had some practice at this kind of thing with the two houses we had to sort out after my father's death made it a bit easier, but it's not something I enjoy. The new tenants moved in at the start of July.
We saw a bit of theatre during the Winter. There was an excellent production of Cloudstreet at the Malthouse which my sister gave us tickets to. We saw Megan Mullaly's band Nancy & Beth and we also went to the Dreamtime game at the MCG. We were lucky to get seats on Level 1 under cover as it rained during the game. In July we saw the charming Canadian musical Come From Away.
For the Queens Birthday long weekend at the start of June we went to Sorrento. There were some maintenance tasks to do there and it was a sunny, if cold, weekend for walking on the beach. It’s also the only place where we get to light a wood stove, which for Jay is reason enough to go there.
We had dinner at the Portsea Pub which seemed to be doing their own version of Sydney's Vivid.
We had a surprise visit from Yoav, a friend from California, the following week. He came with us to Nancy & Beth and I was able to take him for a walking tour of the city and the NGV. He left the same weekend as Jay travelled to Vancouver for work. Now that his team is working with other EA studios around the world, there has been more travel for him this year.
While Jay was in Vancouver he had Derek for company; I wasn’t so lonely because our friend Beau came to visit from Sydney. We had a couple of meals together. He stayed with us again a few weeks later when he came to Melbourne for a wedding.
Jay didn’t get a chance to visit her in Vancouver, but my cousin Elizabeth came to Melbourne a few weeks later and brought her children to dinner with us. The 40 year old video games I had for them to play after dinner seemed to hold the same fascination for kids now as they did for us in 1980.
At the end of July Jay went away again, this time to LA for SIGGRAPH. This meant that we spent his birthday apart and Derek had to keep him company. The tickets I had booked for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child had to be changed for a date two weeks later when he was back. He had a week of hot summer days in LA while I went to the Gertrude St Projection Festival, an MSO concert and a review screening of the new Fast & Furious at IMAX. I’ll get some time in a warmer environment in October with the Anesthesiology 2019 meeting in Orlando and then we are both looking forward to vacation in November. At the same time I have to start making some kind of plan for turning 50 in March.
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