past halfway, bday celebrations, $2 sushi, & putput madness

It is now past halfway on Katie's trip to Hong Kong - she will be back in 6 days. I know she is having a great time there, but I miss her - so i am selfishly glad that she will be back soon. Tomorrow I am rostered to work from 9-6, but I am hoping to finish at 1pm so that I can go and enrol in the Tafe course for Cantonese. Unfortunately it begins the following week, which is when I will be at an orientation week on the Northern Beaches. Hopefully I can arrange it so that I can drive down to the training whatever night it is on.

The other week was my birthday, and we had some friends up for the night - it was fun, some pictures below.



The Japanese chicken and egg dish i cooked for dinner

And the birthday cake colin and laura made for me!

During the week I went into the city and had lunch with Kayo. We went to a new sushi train in market city that had an opening special where all dishes were just $2. It was great. See below.





Oh, and for Australia Day colin and laura again came up, and we had dinner (bbq), played a little poker and a round of mini (aka put put) golf. It was another fun night.

Can you guess which smug long-limbed chap won the golf?

Precise....

Katie off to HK

This morning Katie flew out to Hong Kong... she is going back until Febuary 3rd, for a friends wedding and to catch up with her friends and family. It is good that she was able to head back - it has been a year since she was home last. It's disapointing that I was unable to go back with Kate - I couldn't afford it, and I need to work.

Oh well, she will have a great time - and has earned it with her hard work and saving - and hopefully we will both get to go to Japan in late April for Kayo's wedding.

I am back to work tomorrow, and friday. I will hopefully catch up with some friends of Kates and mine for Yum Cha on Saturday (my b'day), and then good friends are coming up for dinner that night. Should be good!

Other good news - we got a small gymnasium at our apartment building. The strata put a small one into the pool room, it has a treadmill, 2 bikes, a cross trainer, and a few weights machines. It is great - because it is free! Just a $150 key deposit. So today i went down, and it was great to work out again - its has been over 6 months (omg!) since I last went to the gym, as the private gyms are too expensive. So hopefully i will keep that up!

Job for 2007..... finally sorted

I can finnaly report that I will definitely be starting with nsw Department of Environment and Conservation early Febuary. This is after lots of back and forth, tossing up, and date changes. I have let the other employers know I won't be taking their offers, and have today signed the DEC offer. At this stage I have not told my current casual employer, but I will do so in the next week or so.

It is really good to finally have it nailed down. After passing on my other offers, I was really nervous waiting for this final offer - what if it never arrived and I had burnt those bridges? I would be stuck in a call centre forever!

Thankfully not the case. Sadly I won't be able to join Katie in Hong Kong (she goes back on 17th Jan.), but hopefully she will have a great time, and I will be all prepared for the new job.

Tonight I think we are going ten pin bowling (!), should be interesting....