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Monthly Archives: April 2012

today is saturday. in two sleeps we will get on a plane and head off to africa! as usual there is a bit of a last minute mad rush to get things done, but since most of our stuff is already packed up on storage and we are only dealing with 2 months worth of living its not too bad. as you are well aware i haven’t been very regular with my posts… i’m not sure whether the situation will improve much in africa as i will be working like crazy, but i will try and keep you updated! even if its just a photo dump of our activities, like this post 🙂

sydney continues to deliver impeccable weather and today was no exception. we finally had a good reason to get out of the sun and sand with a visit to the hockeys (known by nayou as “aunty yanny’s house”) for some hot cross buns. the usual suspects were all there with sean + mary to make things even more merrier. its always amazing to me how time seems to fly by when we’re over there. we booked our car share from 11am-5pm and we barely made it back in time. actually we tried to extend it but the car was already booked!

the buns were delicious and i had a good time getting some info on my australian family tree. i knew my great grandmother immigrated from india to australia, but i had no idea they were planning on going to new zealand instead. apparently she and her husband met a minister on the ship to new zealand and he convinced them to try their luck in australia! i was also surprised that our ties to india go back quite a way. quite weird to think that in the not-so-distant future perhaps we will pop up as a blip in some relative’s investigations!

uncle colin recorded a special video for nayou who went missing for a good hour while he watched it! aunty yanny even made him some snacks which he thoroughly enjoyed, julius caesar style:

the day was too gorgeous to resist visiting the beach in the evening. i’m finding it hard to go without seeing the ocean at least once a day! the moon was stunning tonight.

happy easter everyone! i hope you are spending it with your loved ones, physically or virtually. thanks to aunty yanny and uncle colin for hosting yet another super fun gathering 🙂

p.s. in case you haven’t had your fill of nayou today:

ooh yah its been a while. sorry if we dropped off the face of the earth. things got busy for three weeks once i started work, and then it took me a week off hanging out at the beach to get off my butt and update the blog. here are some snaps of nayou in case you forgot what he looks like 🙂

nayou in a set of brenda’s creations:

and some last snaps from our time in potts point. the family who we were housesitting for also own the rooftop garden of the building across the street. the garden is a stones throw from my office, so we took maximum advantage of our proximity and had lots of lunches up there.

i love the buildings around potts point. this one looks like it belongs on the coast of italy or something.

grandma also celebrated her birthday. happy birthday grandma!

we have now settled into this really cute apartment in bondi, about a seven minute walk from the beach.

we are living in cosy quarters, but it hardly matters because the weather has been amazing and we are at the beach every day. brenda and i were hesitant about bondi at first, mainly because of our concerns about living space, but we definitely made the right choice – being close to the ocean is awesome! especially since i am currently in the middle of a forced two week holiday 🙂 not getting paid sucks, but getting some serious beach and family time more than makes up for it. its actually a blessing in disguise because i can tell that i’m going to be working a lot once we get to namibia. the first three weeks haven’t been really stressful, but there is a lot to do. its been fun getting back into work. i was glad to see that i still remember how to write code. hehe. going from chilling out every day to ten hours in front of a computer is tiring though. good thing i have mastered the art of falling asleep on couches.

the apartment we live in is part of a large house that is owned by the same guy, dave. he rents out most of it to various short termers like us, and lives in one of the rooms. he is big into sustainability and the house reflects that – lead free pain, beeswax treated furniture, worm farm, organic linens etc. there’s also a big terraced garden in the front yard with all kinds of things growing in it. he is in the process of getting his backyard ready for chickens. he just built a coop over the weekend and we have appropriated it as a cubby house until the real residents move in.

this is our backyard.

the house feels a bit like a commune, with lots of shared space but with privacy as well. for our first week there was a swiss (!) family from zurich living upstairs and we hung out with them a lot. dave comes over for dinner every now and then, and i am teaching the guests yoga twice a week. its the perfect place to spend our remaining three weeks in sydney.

here is what we spend the bulk of our day doing:

its not all beach all the time though. we did sneak in a visit to the hairdressers, where nayou got his hair cut really short. i asked nayou if he wanted to keep it longer or if he wanted it short, and he chose short. i think it was because he knew that a shorter haircut would take longer, which would mean that he got to sit and watch videos for longer!

so we got it all hacked off and he looks adorable. a bit older, maybe?

nayou’s beach steez has also been very. very hip. he’s been rocking his scooter all over the place, looking very dapper in his hat from grandma and shorts by brenda. nayou’s latest obsession is policemen and robbers, and sea creatures. they are separate, distinct obsessions, although i would rather like to see those two worlds intermingle to see what kinds of stories come out of his mouth. anyway, his black hat has a checkered band which kind of looks like a constable’s hat so he likes it.

this shot reminds me of lookbook:

we also had a visit from our housemate in bali, oksana! she was here shooting a documentary and we got a chance to catch up over dinner. i liked catching up on all the happenings from ubud, even though we’ve only been gone one month.

happy easter everyone!