Winter has been cold as well as wet this year, making me realize that I should try once again to get a contractor interested in fixing the tiny water leak above the kitchen ceiling. My father has continued to recover well and is back to his normal activities: once again working on the house he is renovating. We had a quiet Easter, staying in Melbourne and seeing friends.



In May there was a big anaesthesia conference in Singapore, so we both went for a tourist weekend before Jay returned to Melbourne and I stayed on for the conference. We stayed at the Marina Bay Sands, which is an iconic Singapore building with a long outdoor pool across the tops of the three accommodation towers. It was a spectacular structure but somewhat impractically large for a hotel. The gym was pretty good for a hotel gym.



We took the opportunity to visit the Singapore Zoo and the Night Safari. Neither of us is an avid shopper, so that aspect of Singapore was not so appealing. I was surprised that it was not a cheap destination; prices were largely the same as in Melbourne. The food was good, though the coffee was somewhat mystifying at times. There were a lot of Australian colleagues to see at the conference and also a Singaporean anaesthetist, Kiat, whom we had met when he was visiting Melbourne for his specialist exams. After a week I was happy to get back home.



The conference itself was interesting and valuable. It was five days and I went to a full day of sessions on most of the days. I put some more photos online.



We had one of our occasional trips to the football to watch Essendon (Jay’s team) beat Richmond (my team) again at the MCG. The result was reversed when they played again last weekend, but we didn’t go to the match. For a more cultural outing we went to Timeline, a concert performed by the Australian Chamber Orchestra and The Presets which sought modestly to present a history of music from the beginning of time to the present. Some of the juxtapositions and overdubbing of works was quite striking. It was also the first time I’d seen a theremin played live.



We also went to see the inaugural “Australian International Furniture Exhibition”. I suspect this was not the success its organizers hoped it would be, as the display was relatively small and the nostalgia value of seeing patio furniture from the ‘80s was not really worth the price of admission.

My old house in Fitzroy has had tenants in it now for almost ten years and we negotiated to renovate the kitchen without them moving out, which was a good outcome for everyone. I was pleased with how smoothly the work went. They have been very happy with the result and I was happy that they did much of the organizing. The next priority is redoing the bathroom, but that will be a more challenging project, maybe for next year.

Over Winter we had some visitors to Melbourne to see. Beau's boyfriend Simon came from Sydney a number of times and also an old friend from San Francisco, David, visited twice despite exchanging the northern Summer for our unusually cold Winter.



Neither of us likes the cold, so for Jay's birthday we went for a week to Bali. It was four years since we had visited and it had not changed a great deal. We had a very relaxing week by the beach, either sitting by the pool which overlooked the beach or walking near the hotel. We didn't realize that the upper levels of the hotel we were staying in would not be complete by the time we arrived, but the staff were extremely attentive and the reduced number of guests was actually something of a bonus. There is a small album of additional photos online.



At present we don’t have other travel plans until Christmas, when we are meeting Jay’s family for a seaside Christmas in San Diego. We will have a couple of days in Los Angeles and maybe a trip to the Bay Area as well if his sister’s family are unable to come to Southern California.

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