Summer Break
05 February 2013
It felt like a very long time since our vacation in Thailand by the time the weather started to warm up in November. Jay’s work was still in a rush to finish Real Racing 3 and get updates to their other iOS games ready. We hope that the studio taking first and second places in the local awards for best Australian-made game reflects the quality of their work more than the difficulties facing the local industry.
It’s hard for us to avoid the Spanish Festival each year as it is at the end of our street. The weather was kind after last year’s heavy rain and we took the opportunity to try some of the dishes from the local restaurants which had set up booths. Melbourne’s Spanish-speaking community is not huge, and to make up the numbers for the booths, they had not only Brazilian food but also a Korean fried potato stand and a Sikh candy store.
Our other quirky foreign cultural celebration was a Thanksgiving Dinner for ex-pat American friends in November. It provided a good rehearsal for cooking roast turkey and stuffing at Christmas. Jay was quite successful with the meal.
We followed that in mid-December with a roast dinner for an early Christmas celebration with my family. We were leaving for Hawaii on the 19th, so we had a Christmas of sorts the weekend before. It also saved us from having to pack each other’s bulky Christmas gift to fly to the US and back.
We arrived in Maui to overcast weather, with warm rain. After the first day, however, the weather was fine and warm and we spent a lot of time in the pool or on the beach. It was a very relaxing 10 days with Jay’s parents and sister. The house we had rented was very comfortable and right by the ocean. It was also close enough to Kahului for us to get to the gym a few times and go see The Hobbit at the movies.
The kitchen at the house was very well-equipped and there were only a few things we needed to get to do a proper Christmas dinner. It was really pleasant not to have to eat out much during our stay; though we had a great lunch at Mama’s Fish House, doing most of our own cooking gave us more flexibility to relax by the pool and read. There are albums of photos from our trip in both my and Jay’s Facebook.
Rested and somewhat tanned after 10 days in Maui, we headed to California. Our week there was a little frantic. We stayed with Yoav and Guillermo in San Diego before we all went together to Los Angeles for New Year’s Eve. We were lucky to see a lot of friends in Los Angeles, including quite a few who had come from San Francisco for the event. We also met a few new people whose paths I’m sure we’ll cross in the future.
From Los Angeles we flew to San Francisco where I called in at UCSF. Chee, one of our trainees from St Vincent’s, is doing my old job there so I had a coffee with him. He’s enjoying it enough to sign up for another year, which is a good sign.
We had our almost-yearly dinner with Kelvan who is studying hard for his Bar exam. He took us to a new and cool SF restaurant we would never have found on our own.
While in San Francisco we stayed with long-standing friends, Joel and Sam. Their place is certainly the most comfortable place to stay in San Francisco. We got reacquainted with Josie, their dachshund and saw Sam’s new and very intricate ceramic work. I was able to give Joel some pointers about setting up his own blog online.
We returned to Los Angeles for one last frantic day of shopping, gym at Gold’s Venice and dinner with another close friend before collapsing exhausted on the A380 for the flight home.
Back in Melbourne I spent quite a bit of time doing such things with my mother as she is able to do: going to the beach and the park with the dog and watering the garden with her helper Carol.
We did not volunteer for the Midsumma festival this year as we were away during the time when the briefings of volunteers would take place. We still went to the carnival and had quite a different experience from previous years as we were with our friend Tuong and his twin three-year-old boys: more rides on the ferris wheel and less drinking in the riverside bar.
My cousin Elizabeth from Perth came to visit Melbourne so we were able to have a dinner with most of my cousins from my father’s side of the family and this was followed by the dinner to farewell all the anaesthesia trainees from St Vincent’s which Jay and I attended. He kept his spirits up well through the long speeches about people he doesn’t know but when we figured out that this was the seventh such dinner he had attended, I suggested that maybe he was entitled to miss a few if he likes.
The day after the St Vincent’s dinner was the tenth anniversary of our first meeting. We celebrated with flowers and his favourite breakfast in bed and later with a dinner at Enoteca.
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It’s hard for us to avoid the Spanish Festival each year as it is at the end of our street. The weather was kind after last year’s heavy rain and we took the opportunity to try some of the dishes from the local restaurants which had set up booths. Melbourne’s Spanish-speaking community is not huge, and to make up the numbers for the booths, they had not only Brazilian food but also a Korean fried potato stand and a Sikh candy store.
Our other quirky foreign cultural celebration was a Thanksgiving Dinner for ex-pat American friends in November. It provided a good rehearsal for cooking roast turkey and stuffing at Christmas. Jay was quite successful with the meal.
We followed that in mid-December with a roast dinner for an early Christmas celebration with my family. We were leaving for Hawaii on the 19th, so we had a Christmas of sorts the weekend before. It also saved us from having to pack each other’s bulky Christmas gift to fly to the US and back.
We arrived in Maui to overcast weather, with warm rain. After the first day, however, the weather was fine and warm and we spent a lot of time in the pool or on the beach. It was a very relaxing 10 days with Jay’s parents and sister. The house we had rented was very comfortable and right by the ocean. It was also close enough to Kahului for us to get to the gym a few times and go see The Hobbit at the movies.
The kitchen at the house was very well-equipped and there were only a few things we needed to get to do a proper Christmas dinner. It was really pleasant not to have to eat out much during our stay; though we had a great lunch at Mama’s Fish House, doing most of our own cooking gave us more flexibility to relax by the pool and read. There are albums of photos from our trip in both my and Jay’s Facebook.
Rested and somewhat tanned after 10 days in Maui, we headed to California. Our week there was a little frantic. We stayed with Yoav and Guillermo in San Diego before we all went together to Los Angeles for New Year’s Eve. We were lucky to see a lot of friends in Los Angeles, including quite a few who had come from San Francisco for the event. We also met a few new people whose paths I’m sure we’ll cross in the future.
From Los Angeles we flew to San Francisco where I called in at UCSF. Chee, one of our trainees from St Vincent’s, is doing my old job there so I had a coffee with him. He’s enjoying it enough to sign up for another year, which is a good sign.
We had our almost-yearly dinner with Kelvan who is studying hard for his Bar exam. He took us to a new and cool SF restaurant we would never have found on our own.
While in San Francisco we stayed with long-standing friends, Joel and Sam. Their place is certainly the most comfortable place to stay in San Francisco. We got reacquainted with Josie, their dachshund and saw Sam’s new and very intricate ceramic work. I was able to give Joel some pointers about setting up his own blog online.
We returned to Los Angeles for one last frantic day of shopping, gym at Gold’s Venice and dinner with another close friend before collapsing exhausted on the A380 for the flight home.
Back in Melbourne I spent quite a bit of time doing such things with my mother as she is able to do: going to the beach and the park with the dog and watering the garden with her helper Carol.
We did not volunteer for the Midsumma festival this year as we were away during the time when the briefings of volunteers would take place. We still went to the carnival and had quite a different experience from previous years as we were with our friend Tuong and his twin three-year-old boys: more rides on the ferris wheel and less drinking in the riverside bar.
My cousin Elizabeth from Perth came to visit Melbourne so we were able to have a dinner with most of my cousins from my father’s side of the family and this was followed by the dinner to farewell all the anaesthesia trainees from St Vincent’s which Jay and I attended. He kept his spirits up well through the long speeches about people he doesn’t know but when we figured out that this was the seventh such dinner he had attended, I suggested that maybe he was entitled to miss a few if he likes.
The day after the St Vincent’s dinner was the tenth anniversary of our first meeting. We celebrated with flowers and his favourite breakfast in bed and later with a dinner at Enoteca.
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