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Good things that happened in 2025:

  • Scott got the hole in his spinal canal patched up and successfully got through the no-BLT time and recovered back to normal! He also started working again.
  • Rosemarie and I ate our way around peninsular Malaysia and had the best time. We ate kaya roti twice in 12 hours. We didn’t die on the world’s longest zip coaster.
  • Rosemarie came to Melbourne and we played 4000 board games and twinned at pickleball, which they have still not recovered from.
  • Scott and I finally got to go on a real holiday together. We went to Hanoi for six jam packed days of fun and eating and shopping and sweating. I survived crossing a parade line clinging to the back of a scooter.
  • Dad and Diane finally made it to Australia! Two family visits in one year, what a treat! I won a game of Wizard!
  • I found out that I am neurodivergent. Maybe confirmed is the proper word.
  • I started going to Bodypump and pickleball drills sessions.
  • Made some new friends through pickleball. Many fun meals out and lots of laughing.
  • A lot of games days and crafternoons and trivia days with my pals. My friend Bis prepared the most epic New Years Eve hot pot party that put me into a food coma, but I did actually stay up until midnight this time!

Favourite Books:

I actually only rated one book 5 stars this year and that was The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne, another sad book, I just found the way the parents interacted with the son really funny.

Other good ones were:

  • You Are Here by David Nicholls – nice story about people walking across England
  • Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy by Lisa See – historical fiction about life in China in the 1900s
  • The Women by Kristin Hannah – historical fiction about American women who served in the Vietnam War
  • Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton – a thriller that talks a lot about nature
  • The Trees by Percival Everett – a wild book that is kind of funny and also ultra depressing?
  • Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (audiobook) – cute story
  • Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid – easy read, good story
  • The Dutch House by Ann Patchett – easy read, good story
  • Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (audiobook) – nerdy science entertainment

Board games:

I played 27 games this year, with 20 different people, in 13 locations.

11 were new games! Critter Kitchen, Finspan, Qwixx, Uno No Mercy, Deep Sea Adventure, Nekojima, Farkle, Micropolis, Wayfarers of the South Tigris, Verdant and just snuck one more new one in last night: Flamecraft Duals.

Critter Kitchen was definitely my favourite new game. It’s so cute and unique and fun! And Wingspan on Steam continues to be our go-to game, we played even more than last year. I played Wingspan 65 times and I have improved my win rate, I am now at 49% and Rosemarie down to 38%. Muahahaha.

Great new recipes: The Moroccan slow cooked lamb shoulder I made when dad and Diane arrived was probably my favourite new recipe, but it’s from the Recipe Tin Eats cookbook so I can’t really link it.

This beef rendang was also delicious. And I finally made Singapore carrot cake (black style) using a combination of this recipe and this recipe (and advice from Doreen).

Favourite bird pics:

I am not actually that happy with any of my bird pictures this year. I saw a lot of cool stuff through my binoculars but by the time I got my camera in the right spot the bird would be long gone. This is ok, I like seeing birds with my eyes too. I do wish you could just take like a screen capture of what you can see in the binoculars though.

Knitting:

I knit one sweater, one tank top, two beanies, three pairs of socks, and one pair of fingerless gloves! I just posted individual pics on my Instagram here.

I learned how to knit with mohair, how to alternate skeins to avoid colour pooling, and a new way to do really neat folded collars.

2026 Goals: I didn’t make any resolutions last year! We had enough going on. This year I’m resolving to PHONE LESS KNIT MORE. I have uninstalled all the dumb games on my phone.

Last years thoughts: “2024 wasn’t our best year. Unemployment x2, injury, chronic illness, saving up for trips that might not actually happen, and leaving weightlifting. But alas, we truck along. Hopefully we can get things back on track again in 2025.” I think we did.

This years thoughts: A much better year. We are healthy. We got to travel, spend time with family and friends, eat delicious things, and play A LOT of pickleball. What more can you ask for.

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I went to a birding outing to Cranbourne Botanic Gardens. My first time there. It is quite an elaborate place.

There were plenty of birds around, including tons and tons of New Holland Honeyeaters, but again I didn’t get any fantastic pictures. Still feeling a bit rusty after not really using my camera much over the last winter.

I like the background and perch of that New Holland Honeyeater picture but why does he only have one eye??! And this galah picture really made me laugh… you want as much foreground as possible in a bird picture, yes? I submitted it to Crap Bird Photography on Facebook and got a pretty good response, hehe.

I do like this picture though.

After a pleasant morning of wandering around looking for birds I headed over to Ash’s house, who moved out to the boonies over a year ago and I hadn’t visited yet. After chatting for a few minutes I looked up how long it would take to get to my pickleball drills session and realised it started half an hour earlier than I thought it did and I only had ten more minutes to visit. OOPS. Well it was enough time for a tour and a cookie. My bad.

We played Critter Kitchen with Nick and Lara. Nick made chilli and Scott made lemon tart. We also played Wayfarers of the South Tigris which was a little bit confusing, and took us most of the game to figure out what was going on, but then was ok, but we’ll probably never play again because there are always new games to try, lol.

We watched the AFL Grand Final in Boronia with Vicky and Brett. It was a good game, extremely even until half time for excitement, and then Scott’s team (Brisbane) dominated the second half and won convincingly.

I got some new ear plugs made and spent the hour waiting time at Bonbeach. Was pleasant until it started pouring.

Post Pickleball Pizza Party. Our usual Friday night pickleball sessions at Ashburton have come to an end, so we had one last dinner out together. Fun group. Hoping they migrate over to the new session at the venue right around the corner from our house.

Good lunch, bad lunch. Diane brought me Kraft Dinner powder!! Happy Katrina. Another day I completely forgot I was cooking a gozleme on the stove until I smelled a lot of smoke… oops… Sad Katrina.

This is probably only interesting to me but whatever. My pickleball coach kept telling me that the handle of my pickleball paddle was too thick for me, but I also needed to put overgrip on it because I am so sweaty. So I took a risk and peeled off the factory grip that it came with, and added overgrip directly over the bare handle…. and it’s ok!! It took a session to get used to it again but now I feel One With My Paddle.

Finished budgie paint by numbers. I kinda want to add a little speech bubble… what should it say? Something short.

I started making a hat with the neon hand-dyed yarn I got at the Wool Show. I had to split the ball into two balls and learn how to do alternating skeins to avoid colour pooling.

Unpictured things:

  • We also had a games day with Michael and Gina but I guess I took no pictures! Scott made pulled pork for lunch and we played Crokinole and Empires End.
  • Scott came to pickleball drills sessions a couple times because they were in the evenings during school holidays.
  • We saw One Battle After Another at the theatre as a #SMAJ activity and I did not like it. Three hours of bad people and someone banging on the top keys of a piano… it gave me a headache.

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August was a busy month. Scott worked his first graduations days, and we went to Vietnam for a week, and in between we squeezed in lots of activities and some tasty meals.

We went hot air ballooning, and then went out for breakfast at Warung Coffee. We got a beef rendang toastie and a mie goreng toastie and they were ridiculous and salty and delicious. Yes that is a sandwich full of noodles.

I made Scott come with me to a birding photography outing to Muckleford and Newstead Cemetery. It was a cold but pleasant day. We saw a few new birds, but I didn’t get any particularly great pictures. At least now I know where to come back to try to see the rainbow bee-eaters this summer though.

Australian Pipit

We knew the steam train would be passing through around noon so everyone stopped birdwatching and changed their camera settings and got into position to best photograph the train… and then waited… and waited… and then finally fifteen minutes later it slooooooooooooooooooowly came around the corner. I think you could walk faster than this train haha.

Trivia. It was so loud. We didn’t do well.

Malaysian food all day every day. We went to Pappa Laksa again and had Pappa Special Laksa and Beef Rendang Nasi Lemak. Delicious.

RTE Pork Adobo and cucumber salad. Tasty, and affordable!

Trying out different methods of Brain Off time. Paint by numbers was pretty fun. Good ol’ Kmart.

Tiny bit of progress on the cable knit blanket.

Slow progress on Lauren’s hat. I only manage to get a couple rounds done at a time on my lunch breaks at work. And the pink thing was a project for Lara which I have now abandoned. Knitting it was going way too slowly, and crocheting was turning out way too heavy. I think a sleeve scarf would be a better project for someone with a knitting machine. (Can I buy a knitting machine??)

Unpictured stuff:

  • We took my whole work team to play pickleball at Pickle Play. Almost everyone came! We had to rent three courts! It was chaotic at first trying to teach them all how to play, but once they got the hang of it it was very fun. And no one hurt themselves. Success.
  • Scott took Beau to open day at UniMelb. They went to a bunch of science lectures and had KFC and had a good day together.
  • I’ve still been going to Bodypump pretty regularly. It is kind of stupid but at least it’s something.
  • And of course, still pickleballing. I usually do one drills session, and two social sessions per week. Still loving it.

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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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Some might say that wolfing down a spicy som tam salad and a spicy nasi goreng immediately before going on a 5 hour bus ride to the Cameron Highlands was a risky move.. but thankfully we survived. Iron stomach. Our bus broke down on the way but they organised a replacement bus quite quickly and the new bus was better so all good.

Eventually we made it to Tanah Ratah where it was at least 10 degrees colder than Kuala Lumpur. Our hotel booking got upgraded to a two bedroom place so we had lots of room to spread out.

The area is known for tea and strawberry farming in particular, so I had strawberry juice several times. It looked like they grow all sorts of stuff in the area, there were really crazy looking vertical farms on the hillsides everywhere.

The next day we took a half day tour of the area. It was very foggy/cloudy/misty so we didn’t get to see that much of the view, but what we did see was still beautiful!

The first place we stopped was the Boh Tea Plantation. I think Boh is kind of like the Lipton of Malaysia, but the scenery was awesome and we really enjoyed the tour of the tea factory. We saw how they do the plucking, drying, rolling, fermenting and more drying. It’s a pretty quick process. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in there though.

So many colours of flowers.

After that we stopped at a couple other places to admire the views. :D

We went for a short walk on the side of the road on the way to the Mossy Forest where the guide pointed out a bunch of edible plants. It was so lush. The guide said “OK?” after literally every sentence he said and it really made Rosemarie and I giggle. OK?

The Mossy Forrest was indeed very mossy. And moistly. And cold. We were wearing every layer of clothes we brought and still had to keep moving to stay warm.

There were tons of these endangered carnivorous striped Malayan montane pitcher plants (thanks Wikipedia) in the Mossy Forest. Pretty neat.

Then we went to a tourist trap strawberry farm but it wasn’t really strawberry season so instead of buying anything I looked at birds.

Found some!

That was the end of the tour. We asked to get dropped off on the side of the highway so we could walk to a restaurant that was serving bamboo biryani. I didn’t know what bamboo biryani was but after seeing it on a billboard I had to try it. Turns out it’s rice cooked inside tubes of bamboo which they dramatically knock out of the tube onto a plate in front of you. I couldn’t really taste the bamboo but whatevs it was a fun gimmick.

Afternoon snack. Mangosteen are so good. It was only the very tail end of the season so they weren’t even at their prime but they were still amazing. Next time I go to Malaysia I’m going to make sure it’s mangosteen and durian season.

We went on a short hike to a garbage-filled waterfall and then warmed ourselves back up with a giant steamboat hot pot. This meal was a splurge meal for us… I think it was $20 hehehe.

In hindsight we should have booked a morning bus to Penang because we didn’t really have anything left to do in the Cameron Highlands at that point. Instead we slept in, had roti for breakfast again, went for another short hike along garbage-strewn streams, and attempted to find birds.

We had Indian food for lunch and epic mango smoothies before catching the bus to Penang, about another 5 hour trip.

Cameron Highlands is beautiful, and the cool temperature feels great after being so sweaty in KL, I would recommend going there, but you only really need one full day there and then you can continue on.