November was more exciting! It seems like every year my November is actually way crazier than December. Everyone wants to get the celebrations started early.
We had my work Christmas party like a week and a half after our Halloween Bake Off haha! It was delicious. I picked steak for my entree for the exact opposite reason our boss doctor didn’t pick the steak: “I could have steak at home!” (We never have steak at home.)
Our second pickleball tournament went better, but it didn’t get recorded in DUPR so did it even happen?
And then our third tournament went very bad. We lost every game and it was quite discouraging. I was a bit pickleball depressed after that. (Better now.) We haven’t signed up for any more tournaments yet.
This group of friends had been talking about going out for peking duck for literally years and we finally went. We went to Hua Lu in the CBD and it was amazing!! As usual I was too busy stuffing my face to take any pictures of the epic amount of food. We had duck pancakes of course, plus the extra two duck courses, a mushroom dish and two types of tofu. Yum.
Naomi had the old work crew to her place again for a Christmas catch up gossip and pizza lunch. It was too cold for the pool this year but the bird show made up for it. :D
Scott planned a #smaj where we went to the driving range and then got Vietnamese food. The last time I hit a golf ball was with the Monnon’s when I was probably like… 11. Scott is a pretty good instructor but I was still extremely awkward. I missed the ball a lot and hit the ground many times. I can see why people think it’s fun though.
I got my hair cut and then went to a meetup with Discord friends. It was a pretty small gathering compared to some other meetups and I already knew everyone so it was pretty chill. Someone was talking about Caesar salad earlier in the day and then I had to order it for dinner. Hit the spot.
I had a really big fun day where first I went to an anime movie with Maz and Candace. I haven’t watched much anime before but I said yes to this outing because I’m Taking Charge Of My Saturdays (Scott always has bowls) and also it looked quite cute. It was called The Concierge at Hokkyoku Department Store and was about a department store where all the customers are different animals.
After the movie we got delicious Indonesian sandwiches for lunch and then walked to the Design Market. There was tons of cool stuff and I was able to get a lot of cute Christmas presents. Quite enjoyable.
Then we caught the bus to Bis’s for games, crafts, and dinner. I opted to do hand building with Jen and made a cute sturdy scalloped ash tray dish.
We got fish and chips for dinner and then I finally headed home. A big day.
We got a Ninja Creami from Costco during Black Friday sales. (I sold the big compressor ice cream maker because we weren’t using it much.) I think the Ninja Creami is fitting our lifestyle better. My favourite mixtures so far have been strawberry sorbet (pictured), which was just cooked strawberries and a bit of maple syrup, sticky date protein ice cream, and mango sorbet. It’s nice that we can make them with healthy and lactose free ingredients.
It rained A LOT and then we had a couple random super hot days so everyone’s yards went bonkers. Love how we have more stuff growing outside the garden boxes than inside.
Flying along on the pastel tank top. I really like the way she designed the neckline and sleeves. Took a while to do the sewing but it’s sooo neat and tidy.
Nanaimo bars ready for Christmas! I used a new recipe this year and I was quite pleased with how they turned out.
Unpictured stuff:
We had lunch at Jemma’s on Melbourne Cup Day for April’s birthday.
I went to the Western Treatment Plant with the birdwatching group but I’ll make a separate post about that.
We had another #smaj where we went to The Jar and rented a pickleball ball machine and tried to practice our drives (I am still quite bad at forehand drives.)
October was a pretty routine month… lots of pickleball, trivia, a lot of appointments. We had two catch up #smaj events, one was a wine tasting evening at Scott’s bowls club, and the other was writing wills, lol. I didn’t take pictures of either.
Scott and I signed up for three successive pickleball tournaments. The first one was in October and we did… fine. We won two games, and lost three games including getting pickled in one. We didn’t make the finals. Some fun was had.
We went to a pen convention with high hopes of seeing cute stationary and picking up some Christmas gifts. In reality we barely saw anything because it was sooooooooooooooooo crowded. And Scott battled through the crowds to finish the stamp rally but they had already run out of prizes, like an hour after it opened. Then we got heavily rained on. Not the most successful outing.
I started knitting a tank top. It’s a 4-ply blend of merino wool, alpaca, and silk. Rosemarie thinks a wool tank top is funny but it’s actually very light feeling!
I finished the neon barf hat. This one is hand-dyed merino wool and it’s super soft and cozy.
My first time cooking with jackfruit. I made a jackfruit bulgogi bibimbap, which would have been vegan if I didn’t plop a fried egg on top haha. It was delicious!
My work held a Halloween Bake Off and this was my entry. It had a brownie base and spiced butter cookie tombstones, with Oreo dirt and coconut grass. I thought it turned out pretty good! I got a lot of compliments but didn’t win any prizes.
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.
OK we only went to Hanoi for six days but I have about 500 pictures I want to show you!! What an interesting and photogenic place.
Scott and I really wanted to go on a trip together (for once!), but could only manage to find six days we could take off at the same time. At first we thought we would go to Cairns or Darwin, but then my friend suggested that we YOLO and go to Vietnam instead. It was the same price to fly direct to Hanoi as it was to Cairns! Plus then we could stay at a really nice hotel and eat delicious things and shop and do whatever we wanted for less than we would have spent in Australia.
After our ten hour flight we arrived in Hanoi in the late afternoon. I organised airport pickup through the hotel ahead of time so it was quite simple to make it to our hotel, right in the middle of the Old Quarter. We dropped our bags and then immediately headed out to explore/find food. I’ll save all the food pics for a separate post.
Hoan Kiem Lake
There used to be a very notable Hanoi building in this spot but they recently tore it down to make a town square area instead.
We had two dinners and then got a massage with the sweet relaxing sounds of a very loud concert being held right outside the window.
The view from the hotel rooftop.
The next day we started to attempt shopping. Scott wanted to buy some mango chips and agreed to buy 500g for like $3. They kept scooping and scooping, it was quite funny.
We went to Dong Xuan Market to look at clothes but found it very overwhelming and none of the clothes were really our style. We found 50 million types of white sneakers, 50 million types of mens leather sandals, 50 million types of frilly skirts, an epic fabric section, lots of kids clothes. We got Scott one pair of shorts but that was it.
We were there right before Vietnam was celebrating 80 years of communism or something like that so there were a lot of patriotic decorations everywhere, and a lot of families dressed up in special Vietnam outfits. (Unless it always looks like this?)
Scooters everywhere. Apparently Hanoi doesn’t even have that many scooters compared to HCM but it still seemed like A LOT. Crossing the street was always interesting.
One thing we knew we wanted to do on our trip was get Scott some glasses. He already knew his prescription so we headed to Glasses Street and checked out a bunch of stores. He ended up getting a pair and some prescription sunglasses too, for significantly cheaper than Australia, and it only took a few hours. He is enjoying the glasses for things like watching football, and driving, but doesn’t like wearing them all the time.
In the evening we went to the Southern Train Street. I didn’t actually take any pictures of the train LOL! Only video. I’m sure you’ve seen it already. But basically you pick a cafe and then they bring you to their seating area where you have some drinks and food and wait for the train to come and then right before it comes through they pack up all the awnings and push everyone back and then the train comes zooming by super close.
We saw two trains go by, one in each direction, faster than I expected, and yes, I smushed a Hanoi beer cap on the track. Tourist trap but also quite fun.
Before the train came through.
The next day we went to the Womens Museum for some culture. It had some interesting parts. I liked the exhibits about the women’s roles in the wars.
More wandering around Hanoi.
Stopping for a cool drink on a tiny stool near a big church.
Scott loves this picture of me trying on shorts in the back of a shop, haha. We bought lots of activewear this trip. And some t-shirts, shoes, and backpacks. Everything was so cheap! I liked when you needed a different size (XL/XXL!!), they would ninja their way up into the ceilings and throw down new packets of the clothes from storage.
I managed to find us a social pickleball session that we could join. It was so fun!! The venue was huge, it must have had 24 courts, and it’s open 24/7. The guys were all super nice and very good at pickleball. We played for about 2.5 hours before we were about to die from dehydration. It was so sweaty! To make it worse, we forgot to bring towels!!! AHH!!
The pickleball place was in a different area of Hanoi that we hadn’t been to yet. It shouldn’t have been a big issue, we easily got a Grab there, and even though we knew there were going to be road closures due to a Practice Parade, the internet said buses would still be running and there was a bus that would bring us straight back to our hotel. However, this was not true, and after much confusion, Scott and I had to separate and take separate scooters back.
This was stressful because:
The scooters are crazy fast, especially the Grab drivers.
Scott didn’t have a Grab account set up so he had to quickly make an account, and then pay in cash.
I realised after we split up that I didn’t have ANY cash on me.
I did have internet though, but Scott didn’t!
We only had one room key and Scott had it.
SO MANY roads were closed.
We can’t speak Vietnamese.
I was still SOOOOOO sweaty from pickleball.
Anyway I hopped on the back of my scooter and clung on for dear life as we zoomed back towards the Old Quarter. We got about 2/3rds of the way back and then had to stop because the Practice Parade was going through. It was incredible, we were all stopped in this massive intersection watching these military vehicles drive by with people waving, and the crowd was cheering a lot, but every minute more and more and more scooters were arriving and pushing forward and squeezing in. Like, tens of thousands of scooters in every direction.
Eventually there would be little breaks in the parade and the police were letting one direction of traffic through at a time, but it was taking a very long time. I was extremely concerned that when our direction was finally going to be allowed to go that it was going to be like a super crowded drag race. But I didn’t have time to find out because eventually my driver got fed up and just squeezed through the barricades and around the police officers and crossed the parade line!!! AHAHAHA it was crazy.
At least then the road wasn’t crowded after that, LOL. He drove me as close as he could to the hotel but then said ROAD CLOSED and I would have to walk the rest of the way. So I walked the last km back to the hotel on my own, feeling mostly safe, but wondering. And also wondering where Scott was and if he was ok and how far behind me he was. The streets were full of families celebrating Vietnam!
I ended up getting back to the hotel about twenty minutes before Scott, but his Grab driver managed to sneak in and drive him all the way back to the hotel! We both tipped our drivers well for this hassle. Finally we could have showers and try to relax after that ordeal!
The next day we went on a Ninh Binh tour, which will have its own post. The traffic near the hotel was terrible on the way back so we hopped out early and ended up walking through Beer Street at night for the first time. Every street looks totally different in day/night/weekday/weekend/dry/raining etc.
I loved this. Sitting on tiny stools on the street at night. Relaxed. Delicious food. This was such a better idea to come here instead of Cairns. :D
We spent our final day wandering around new areas, checking off a few more of the food places I had saved on my food map. This was Ho Tay, or West Lake.
More cool buildings.
It is impressive what these people can carry around on a bicycle! Who needs Ikea when you have a mobile crockery shop! There were lots of ladies selling amazing looking fruit by bike too. One time we were sitting somewhere and a mobile knife guys bike tipped over and Scott had to help him get it back up, he said it was extremely heavy.
We got some custom wooden stamps made. They look great and stamped perfectly when the lady did it but I have not managed to stamp mine successfully yet, lol. Maybe I should watch a Youtube video.
We ventured to another new area to try and get cheap pickleball paddles but the guy wasn’t home (probs playing pickleball tbh) and got caught in a huuuge rain storm. The weather was mostly cooperative for us on the trip but it did seem to like to pour just as we needed to catch a Grab back and the price would surge and the drivers wouldn’t pick up the fare. Instead we bought a cheap poncho and slow walked back on foot.
I paid to get my hair washed on the last day and it was the bestttt. Should have done that earlier!! She basically spent 15 minutes scratching my head and then 15 minutes massaging my head and then afterwards I felt sooo relaxed and my hair was soooo soft. Scott got a foot massage at the same place and this kid came in and played classical guitar while his mum got a massage and it was all so lovely.
Then the final day we had to head back to the airport and fly home! It was a whirlwind 6 days but soooo fun. I feel like we barely even made a dent in Hanoi, there is even more tucked away behind what you can see from the street!
Pat turned 70 and the whole family got together for a succulent Chinese meal in Boronia. It’s always nice to have the family together (only missing Michael and Luca), and I think Pat really liked it because he teared up a bit when he thanked us all for coming.
We had the girls over for a sleepover before Ava and Jess’s flight back to Sydney. We played some games and watched a movie and had snacks. I heard a lot of thumping and bumping coming from the living room over night!!
An elder millenial giving up her skinny jeans (for now). Ava is my style inspiration.
Geared up for an excursion into and onto the roof. A lot of the insulation had been thrown around during the renovations so we spent some time nestling them all back in place. It felt like doing every single hip mobility exercise in a row. I think it’s worked though (along with some of our other draft reduction projects) because this winter hasn’t felt quite so miserable as the last few.
Michael and Gina had us over for an excellent lunch. I felt like we were at a Japanese restaurant! We played Critter Kitchen and Nekojima. Critter Kitchen is really fun! Lucky that we won that from Sonika’s raffle.
Dumpling dinner in the city. Scott was very brave wearing his brand new hoodie, I definitely would have dropped something on myself.
Scott organised for us to do a printmaking class in the city for one of his #SMAJ activities. It was fun, although I felt very rushed, but maybe that is good for me, to not try to perfectionize every activity.
Scott and I did a pickleball tournament at Eastern Indoor Centre and managed to come second! The tournament ran very far behind schedule and we had to wait AGES in between games so it was a weird evening of warming up and then getting cold and having to warm up again. We only finished second in our pool to make it into the semi finals, but played very well in the semis to make it into the final! And then we got smashed in the final, haha.
We had a family birthday dinner at Jemma’s. Myles and I made lots of origami shuriken, which he later combined into a ULTIMATE SHURIKEN. Love it.
Tiny bit of progress on the cable knit blanket.
Unpictured stuff:
So much pickleball. Social sessions, drills, and private lessons. I also did a DUPR session at Eastern Indoor with a random old man partner to try and get used to the courts/balls before the tournament. Good thing I did because I was hitting everything out of bounds that day. Sorry partner.
Scott worked hella overtime running exams. Very long days for him. He has a lot of TOIL.
I went to a Discord meetup. Was nice to see everyone again and meet a few new people as well. The highlight was the apple caramel slice that one person brought. Delicious.
I started doing Bodypump classes at the gym near my house. It’s a bit silly and I spend a lot of time flailing around, but it’s also fun and at least I am doing something. Gym motivation is very low these days.
