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Another one! Here we go!

I voted in the Australian Election! Very different than the Canadian ballot, haha. We went in the afternoon and they did not have any democracy cake left.

After six long months, Scott was finally allowed to play sports again! It was very exciting and he managed to come back to pickleball without immediately hurting himself, something I was very worried about. He is now back into everything, and doing well.

The Friday night pickleball crew has started going out for dinner together afterwards sometimes. We actually went out for dinner twice in May! The first time we had DIY hotpot, and the second time we had Korean fried chicken. Delicious and fun. There’s a whole strip of great cheap Asian restaurants nearby which is very handy. Always great to hang out with new friends in a different location and get to know them a bit better.

We went over to Scott’s friend Kerry’s house for dinner and games. We played Azul with Sophie and Wingspan with the grownups. (She started off helping me but lost interest.)

We went to Sonika’s board game charity event that we went to last year as well. It was a very fun and successful afternoon. We played two new games with Bis, Lara, Jen and Robert: Verdant and Micropolis, which were both simple and strategic games. And then Scott and I did very well in the raffle! We ended up getting three of our tickets pulled, including one very close to the beginning, so I got to pick off the best shelf. I picked a game called Critter Kitchen, which we have only had time to play once so far but seems cute and fun. We also got a dexterity game about cats, and a cooperative game (oops, lol).

I went to a big nuclear medicine conference (in Melbourne). It had been about 12 years since I’ve been to a big national nuc med conference (the last one was in Vancouver). I found this one pretty good and useful… sometimes they can spend too much time talking about experimental PET tracers and theranostic stuff that we will never get to see in real life… but this conference had a lot more common day stuff. I learned some new things and got reminded of some things I had forgotten, and caught up with some old pals from other hospitals. The food was pretty good too!

The craziest thing was one morning I was going up the escalators for an early breakfast lecture, half asleep after going to the sponsored event the night before, and I really recognized the person in front of me, but it wasn’t making sense. I was so confused. I followed him into the session and went to the same table and took a peak at his name tag… aha… it was the doctor I worked with in Vancouver!! I told him who I was and asked him what he was doing here and he said he came to visit his daughter who lives here now/come to the conference! We got to have a really nice catch up and he took a picture of us so he could show it to the team back at VGH and it was all really random and cool!

Because I went to a conference on the weekend I got to have two days off work later on (pretty sweet eh). I used one of them to drive to Brunswick to get tailored jeans at Dejour Jeans, and vegan ice cream. I got two pairs of wide leg jeans and the ice cream was toasted almond caramel flavoured from Luthers Scoops. Delicious.

Do you like the onesie that Scott got me?

Knitting Updates:

I finished the mohair fingerless gloves and then realised that mohair gives me the ick. It doesn’t bother Scott though so he has claimed them.

PS I don’t like how it is really obvious where I’ve caught the floats in the middle of the light squares and blocking didn’t really help get rid of it… any tips?

I also finished the drab sweatshirt! I think it’s my favourite piece of clothing I’ve made so far (although Rosemarie’s sweater is also really nice). I’ve been wearing it a lot, it’s nice and warm.

I started a cable knit blanket. It’s going to be couch sized, so this will be a long running project.

Unpictured stuff:

  • We had a Mothers Day dinner at Brett’s house with erryone.
  • We signed up for the Fitness Passport program through my work so now we can go to tons of different gyms. I’ve tried a couple metcon classes and Bodypump, and Scott has been dabbling in pilates.
  • I got called in to work. Very rare. Cha ching.

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A busy month, but I mostly only took food pics? Oops.

We went out for gnocchi for my friend Jen’s birthday. Our group took up almost the whole restaurant. I had vegan gnocchi and it was a fun and delicious evening.

One of Scott’s #SMAJs was to take us to the Werribee Open Range Zoo. We walked around a lot and saw lots of stuff, like the elephants, hippos, zebras and gorillas… but we didn’t go on the safari bus! Which is apparently like the best part of the zoo!! Because we didn’t know that it was free!!!

(The key part of SMAJ activities is that Scott is supposed to do all of the planning and research and I just get to show up, so I had not talked about the zoo with anyone ahead of time because I didn’t know we were going.)

So a little bit of a SMAJ fail. We still did have a nice enough time, but maybe didn’t see everything there, and definitely not as close. It did make for some funny conversations at work the next day when they told me that the bus was free. I guess we have to go back some other time.

We went to see the Crash Test Dummies! I thought it was funny when they asked “Who listened to us in the 90s??? Who are the adult children of people that listened to us in the 90s???” (Me.) The dude still has a super low voice. They are one of the few bands that I know most of the words to their songs.

I voted in the Canadian Election. At least I think I did. The envelope has one of those Postage Paid printed stamps… I don’t know how high priority that gets sent through the postal system.

I woke up on a Saturday morning desperate for a cold cut sandwich. So we headed to Saul’s Sandwiches for lunch and had a lil picnic in the sun. It hit the spot.

Damien cooked up an epic Easter lunch for the whole family, with lamb and potatoes, and we all brought salads. Jemma made a delicious carrot cake. I feel spoiled.

Another #SMAJ! This time he took us out to try Burmese food, under recommendation from his new Burmese coworker. We just ordered things that we hadn’t heard of before. Everything we tried was tasty!

We had a very spontaneous afternoon games sess with Michael and Gina. Maybe it’s better to do it this way? Short and sweet and no pressure to clean and prepare everything perfectly. We played Finspan.

KNITTING UPDATES:

I started a pair of fingerless gloves because I wanted to try knitting with mohair, and finished the pair of slightly tweedy ribbed socks. I really like how the mohair looks, and how the socks turned out.

I nearly finished the drab sweatshirt, and then ordered a bunch more wool for a blanket and a cardigan and realised that maybe I am always drab.

Unpictured stuff:

  • Between Scott and I, approximately one million medical appointments. There was some concern that my heart was going too slowly but turns out everything is fine, I am just healthy.
  • I went to Hawthorn to watch the Oceania weightlifting comp. Enjoyed how supportive (aka LOUD) the Samoan team is of each other. Nice to catch up with a few of my old weightlifting buddies, but they did not manage to convince me to start weightlifting again.
  • Scott started working!!!!!!!!! He is enjoying the job and they seem really good and organised!
  • We planted 50 bulbs of garlic. If they grow properly, you may receive garlic as part of your Christmas gift.
  • I started going to pickleball drill sessions where we just do drills for two hours. Some might find it boring but it’s been really helpful for me and it’s very physically and mentally challenging. Ana is very strict about technique. I now do 2-3 social sessions a week and one drills session.
  • We went to watch the movie Sinners which I enjoyed quite a bit! I think it was good that I went in blind as well.

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Just a quickie little post.

Scott made chocolate shortbread cookies with the wombat cookie cutter he got at the Lost Trades Fair. He made them again another time with a shredded coconut “fur” as well. Adorbs.

I continued to play pickleball three times a week.

And I continued to minorly injure myself at pickleball. This was from my partner crashing his paddle into my hand when we were both going for the same ball. Lesson learned: remember to call the ball.

PS the bruise is gone but there is still a lump underneath the skin from this… several months later… should I be concerned??

I finished one ribbed sock. I think they look quite professional if I do say so myself. My most successful socks so far.

I continued working on my drab sweatshirt. Pretty happy with this one as well.

I went to a board games night at Bis’s where we played Rosemarie’s copy of Finspan. For a first time playing, five player game, it went quite well, it didn’t drag on too long. Finspan is simpler than Wingspan.

Unpictured stuff:

  • We did a barefoot bowls session at Scott’s club with my work team. Scott came and helped. We had a good turn out and the bbq was great and everyone enjoyed the cheap prices at the bar.
  • Scott had an interview at UniMelb and ended up getting the job! Hooray!!

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So after Malaysia, Rosemarie came back with me to Melbourne to hang out with us for a couple weeks while Scott was still not allowed to BLT (bend, lift, twist). She is a good sister/sister-in-law.

As usual we tried to cram a million things in so we had to have a group meeting about our goals, and a whiteboard, and a schedule. This is normal family behaviour, right? Rosemarie wanted to see an emu in the wild… unfortunately we didn’t find any of the four-legged variety for her.

We checked out Moomba. Saw some waterskiers and some jetpack people and some skateboarders. Got tacos and horchata from Dingo Ate My Taco.

Piccolina vegan pistachio ice cream. Yum.

We made Nagi’s beef rendang and tried three player Unfair a couple times. Still hate it. Scott sold it after that.

Rose and I drove across town so I could play free pickleball and she could have a swim. Then we went to Girls & Boys ice cream shop, the completely vegan ice cream shop I love. The lady scooping our ice cream told us about her explosive diarrhea. But the ice cream was amazing, as usual.

The next day I dragged Rosemarie to my usual pickleball session where we accidentally dressed the same and confused every single person there. They still have not recovered from this.

We went to the new St Kilda Pier to see penguins for free. They haven’t opened the penguin viewing platforms though so instead you have to cram together at the fence and hope a penguin decides to come out into the open. A few did, but I forgot to put the memory card in my camera so this fantastic phone picture is the only photographic evidence you’ll get.

Rosemarie really wanted to use our new mixer to make a pavlova. It turned out great! We brought it to family dinner at Jemma’s house.

My friend Steph told us about a free archery session we could do for International Ladies Day. It was fun to try a new thing and catch up with Steph (unpictured).

White-plumed Honeyeater
Magpie Goose
A lot of Magpie Geese
Emu

We went on an excursion to Serendip Sanctuary, near Geelong, to try and find Rosemarie an emu in the wild. It’s a lovely state park, with lots of different short walks and bird hides. The emu was technically in an unenclosed area, however I think it does get its food from the park, so not sure if that counts as wild or not. Most of the emus I’ve seen have been in campgrounds though, so I guess that’s just kind of how they get their food.

On the way back we stopped at Tofu Shoten, where we ordered one of everything. This was something like a strawberry mochi red bean deluxe dessert. It had a lot of elements. I liked some parts but not the others. Rose and Scott got things with matcha and coffee and I can’t remember what else. We also bought some biscuits that I really liked, and some savoury tofu for cooking later.

Cookin’ sisters.

Our final project was to make roti at home. The dough was easy enough to make in the mixer, and once we accepted the sheer quantity of Nuttelex we needed to stretch and form and shape and fry the roti, they turned out pretty good. We made plain roti and egg roti, served with a random curry pack we had in the freezer, and then a dessert course of Mars bar roti. Epic meal.

Unpictured stuff:

  • Between each of these activities, we played A LOT of board games. We played Everdell, Orleans, Kingdomino, Wingspan, Unfair, Qwixx, Empire’s End, Drop It, Welcome To, Deep Sea Adventure, Concordia and Crokinole.
  • We did NOT play Finspan because it arrived two hours after Rosemarie left. Womp womp.
  • We took Rose to the footy and we got drenched by ice rain and had to move undercover but still had a good time.
  • Rosemarie helped me fix up the backyard that desperately needed some attention. We did some major lemon tree prunage. Thanks sister.
  • We went to trivia in the boonies with Ash and Charlie and we won!
  • Rose did a bit of work, Scott did a couple job interviews.

All in all, it was an excellent visit and we were sad for her to leave. I wish we could spend time together all the time.

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Just a quick little post as there’s only like 18 hours left of the trip, but I couldn’t skip posting about my favourite roti of the entire trip!

So we had one night back in Kuala Lumpur before we were flying back to Melbourne. We booked a hotel near the airport rather than bother going back into actual KL. After flying in from Kota Bharu we caught the free airport shuttle to the outlet mall, where I bought a cheap pair of Nikes, and then dropped our bags off at our hotel.

Then we walked around the neighbourhood to find something for dinner. We picked an Malaysian/Indian-ish mamak because it looked like we could get roti again, even at nighttime, a rarity.

The guy in the drinks booth was very funny. He was like TAKE A PICTURE OF ME WHILE I POUR THIS TEA!!! We had a couple more limau ices, delicious.

We tried rojak again, but decided it’s not our favourite. And we got some tandoori chicken that was GREAT. They really know how to cook meat well in Malaysia.

And some roti of course. Plain, and KAYA. They absolutely loaded it with kaya and it was amazing. (Not sure why they still served with daal though.) As a person who never really liked any breakfast spreads, the discovery of kaya has been life changing.

Happy sister.

Another reason we love Malaysia – they use Planta for everything, which is dairy free!

After eating the kaya roti I asked the man if they would be open the next morning, and he said yes because they are open 24 hours a day! So we went back the next morning and had it again for breakfast. :D

Happy Kat.

We went for a quick swim at the hotel and then headed back to KL airport, which is pretty much like a mall itself. We had curry laksa and got bubble teas to take on the plane. Great.

Even my $6 airplane nasi lemak was pretty decent for plane food.

And then Rosemarie and I headed back to Melbourne!