sydney has over four million people. its not a mega-city by any means, but four million is a lot of people. so you’d think the chances of bumping into someone you used to know when you lived here seventeen years ago would be more or less none. since i’ve been back, i have randomly bumped into enough old friends that its seriously making me lose my faith in chance. the coolest one (to date) happened on wednesday night as i was walking back from work. as i was walking past our local supermarket this girl came out who looked exactly like gemma, a girl who used to live two doors up from me for five years when i was ~9-15. we both looked at each other for a bit before doing the “are you…?” thing. it turns out gemma had just landed in sydney three hours prior from brisbane for an art show of hers. and her sister nicki was flying in later to attend the opening as well. but the best bit was that gemma and nicki were both staying at their mum’s place, which is literally across the road from where we live. crazy!
gemma’s art is cool. at first glance it looks simple, but the more you look at it the more things you notice. its hard to explain, but this site does it pretty well. it was fun going to the opening. its been a while since brenda and i checked out an art gallery. nayou wasn’t that into it, but i bet if gemma painted bulldozers it would be a different story.
the intensity at work has definitely picked up and i have been working late nights with more regularity lately. still managing to avoid working on the weekends, but it still cuts in pretty seriously into the time i get to spend with brenda and especially nayou. lucky for me, brenda has been super awesome about taking lots of photos so i can at least picture what went on during the day. here is nayou being lazy in bed. this kid loves to lounge around in bed in the mornings, which is completely fine with us!
nayou also received a long overdue haircut. his fringe was getting a little too emo for my taste, even though it looked cute. he wasn’t too thrilled with the experience, despite getting to sit in a plane and watch tv.
nayou’s current obsession is digging and construction. he loves excavators, bulldozers, front end loaders etc etc. we don’t have a garden, but there is a small green space next to our house which we have appropriated as our own. lots of people bring their dogs to go to the bathroom, so brenda went to the hardware store and made a quick fence to mark our territory. its been working really well!
brenda has been doing these spectacular sidewalk chalk paintings while nayou digs. everyone who lives in the neighbourhood absolutely adores them because it gives an otherwise public but sterile area a bit of life and colour. i love coming home and seeing the additions to the paintings, especially when they are messages for me 😉 i think this is some sort of cake that they made for yours truly. mmm.
i’ve been making sure we spend lots of time together over the weekends. on saturday he said he wanted to go to see the toys at the qvb and david jones, so off we went. it was so cute to see him go around and around to see each of the toys repeatedly, examining the boxes, asking what certain words meant on the boxes etc. luckily for us, nayou is amazing about not nagging or whining about toys, which makes it a pleasure to take him to places that sell them. he does ask whether he can take certain things home, but is a good sport when we tell him no.
my favourite episode from the weekend was when we walked past a gift shop and saw one of those porcelain human statues that have all of the meridians painted on them. kind of like those phrenology heads:
nayou saw it in the window and says “look, papa, its a person map!”. my second favourite was when we were on the train discussing what each of the colours in a traffic light meant. once we were done, nayou asked “what does brown mean?”. i said i didn’t know so he thought about it for a bit and then goes “i know! brown can be the colour that helps the trains coming up steep hills!”. that’s my boy! hehe. i’m totally turning into one of those parents that can’t stop talking about their kid…. but since most of this blog is dedicated to doing exactly that, i figured this is all being lapped up eagerly…. right?
