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Sydney

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!

 

 

its been nice being back in our old neighbourhood again. we bump into familiar faces daily, and i’ve enjoyed seeing how much each kings cross kid has grown in the three months we have been gone.

our new friend this time around is sugar, the cat we are taking care of. in fact, sugar is the whole reason why we are house sitting for hugh and lissa in the first place. sugar was a bit shy for the first few days but now he loves to hang out with us. he is by far the fluffiest cat i have ever seen.

today it was rainy so i took nayou and his friend ollie to the australian museum. ollie is a super mellow, funny kid and nayou gets along tremendously with him. it was so funny watching them interact. being able to communicate in-depth allowed nayou to role play and organise/compromise/discuss a lot (as opposed to bali where verbal communication doesn’t work as well). i basically followed them around with a camera all day filming their antics.

 

so here we are, back in sydney again after an amazing three months in bali. we bid farewell to our ubud family on wednesday night and took a very stress free flight back to australia. there was some last minute drama in ubud over this gorgeous piece of land that we were trying to get a 30 year lease on. buying or leasing land in bali can be tricky and potentially disastrous, but we had an excellent broker and things were going very smoothly. we had our contract in hand and were pretty much ready to go, but decided to get a lawyer to do due diligence before taking the plunge. unfortunately something happened when the lawyer went to visit the land owner and he ended up calling off the deal. apparently lawyers only ever visit you when there are serious problems and i guess the owner got scared… or something like that. we got two different stories from our broker and our lawyer so who knows? in any case the deal is off, although i am still holding out hope that once the dust settles the owner will change his mind. we shall see. in the meantime, here is a video of us checking out the land… its in the middle of ubud, but it feels like you’re in the middle of the jungle. and its huge – 32,000 square meters (345,000 square feet)!

we arrived back to the cold and rain that has apparently defined summer in sydney this year. we lucked out with accommodations because we are house sitting for some friends right in the heart of kings cross while they are in thailand. so in some ways its like we never left! its been nice to reconnect with old friends and go to our favourite hang out spots.

we have also been catching up on sleep…. in any place that seems comfortable.

the day after we arrived we hit up bondi junction to get some new shoes and clothes for nayou. we left his flip flops in a taxi in bali so he made the entire trip over here in a pair of socks! ghetto fabulous. he is making up for it all with a new pair of styley converse taxi shoes.

we got him some spiffy new pajamas as well. lord knows he needed them – his only surviving pair of pants were really threadbare!

we are in our friends’ house until the 24th. after that we have another month before we leave for africa. because the shoot got pushed by six weeks, the production company is frantically trying to save money by pushing crew start dates and asking people to take time off. i am still slated to start work on the 12th, but it looks like i may have to take not one but two weeks off in april. which is more or less as much as i can take because this family needs some cashflow and being unemplyed in sydney is expen$ive! lets hope they can work things out with their budget!

the movers are going to be here in about and hour and after we return the keys to the real estate agent we will be errand free! its been a very easy move for us and i like to think that this bodes well for the rest of our trip.

i am so excited to be going to bali! its is definitely time to just relax. although it always takes a while to switch from busy bee mode into “its ok to not be doing anything right now” mode. nayou has been a superstar while we run around getting things done. aunty yanny and aunty r’adele have been awesome too!

potts point was a fun place to live and we’ll definitely miss it. lots of cool people live here 🙂

the wifi at our house in bali isn’t working, so this might be the last post in a while. i’ll write more from bali!

its always a whirlwind in the final days before a big move, and this one is no exception. so busy, in fact, that i have neglected to post about a very exciting event that almost got lost in the mix – nayou turned 4 on friday! i can’t believe that its already been four years, but looking at him now he is most definitely a boy, not a toddler or a baby. he says so many funny things and has so many crazy ideas, its a joy to converse with this kid.

we had a low key day on the 2nd, opening presents, going to gymbaroo and then spending the rest of the day hanging out. as requested, we got him a remote control car for his birthday. a blue police car at that! its been quite a hit and it will be one of the few toys we’ll be schlepping to bali. we had a combined farewell/birthday celebration on the 3rd. we chose the only sunny day in the last week which was lucky! it was good to hang out with everyone one last time.

grandma sent him a very fetching hat, which we pretend is a constable hat. it makes it much easier to give out speeding tickets!

oh, and we got some cool new shark flip flops for bali as well! this one’s for hana 🙂 rrraaaa!

we’re almost done with all of our packing – just the bedroom and bathroom left to go! the house is looking pretty empty right about now. which is a bit sad, but not really when i think about where we’re going to be in just a couple of days!

 

one of the bonuses of delaying our departure was that i got to go to the happy feet 2 premiere tonight. originally they said the event was for crew only, but i asked for two tickets and got them! this time my hot date was nayou and not brenda – mainly because brenda’s still healing her knee, but also because there aren’t that many chances to take your kid to a movie premiere. we walked the not-so-red carpet amidst a flurry of fake snow.

robin williams and george miller were there to hype the crowd up, but they showed up 45 mins late, which is an eternity for kids to wait.

but the movie did start eventually and i must say i was pleasantly surprised. given all the problems that it took to get this film on screens, the end result is gorgeous, and the story is passable. its not going to redefine cinema as we know it but perhaps it will keep some kids entertained this year… for the most part nayou liked it, although some of the story scenes were a bit over his head. he did like all the chases and the parts with the rescue boat though!

41% on rotten tomatoes and counting! which is nowhere near as bad as some of the films i’ve worked on.

p.s. a birthday update is coming soon!

finally, after four days of miserable weather, we finally got some sunshine in the afternoon. i’ve been going a bit stir crazy in the house, although it has been fun hanging out and doing whatever. we managed to scrub the house clean as well which is a good thing. a clean house is a clear mind! we’ve been busy with preparations for our bali trip too – we leave in exactly two weeks from today!

another thing that rainy days are good for – taking photos. here is a cool series that brenda took this arvo.

this one is from yesterday when we went to gymbaroo in bondi. the trenchcoat from grandma is perfect for wet weather!