5 posts tagged “sydney”
i found my old slr film camera among our boxes, my canon eos500, so i've been having a play and giving it a trial run to see if i feel it's worth taking it back to the uk with me. i probably will - i suspect my poor little sony dsc-v1 may be on its last legs, thanks to an heroic effort to capture a magnificent wave in wales which then drenched both it and me. and now the lens cover doesn't close any more. oops. i'm going to put it in for a service when we get home, but i thought it might be worth digging out the eos500 to see if i can produce some decent photos with it, now that i've experimented a bit with composition, macros etc. i'm still a bit hazy about the manual options, but it always made nice photos for me in the past, so i took it out on tuesday when my mama whisked me off to lavender bay to see wendy whiteley's beautiful garden.
wendy whiteley is the widow of the great australian artist brett whiteley, and the garden isn't officially hers - it was railway dump land which happened to be right by their house, and over a period of years she just started building a garden on it and fortunately the railways didn't object and apparently helped to remove some of the larger bits of junk, such as old train carriages. now it's the most fantastically beautiful garden, hidden away down near the water (if you're looking for it, you go down the steps in the pedestrian side of walker street in lavender bay - i hunted all over google trying to find where it was, and couldn't find an address anywhere. in the end we drove around where we thought it might be and eventually found a gallery which had someone who could tell us where it was!) with scattered benches in quiet spots, lovely secluded paths and the most wonderful random bits of junk transformed into sculptures. very inspirational.
photos to follow, when i finally get them processed... grrr film :-)
so i went off to see the oral surgeon today. lovely chap. very friendly. very confident. i'm perfectly happy to have him excavating my wisdom teeth. but i have to say words like "can leave a permanent hole in the floor of the sinuses" and "chronic sinusitis" and "may require further surgery to fix" and "can damage the nerve" really make me a little flustered. i know he needs to advise all the possible risks so i'm aware, and yes, he followed all of these with "but i've never had that happen to a patient of mine" but ... getting a little nervous here. my surgeon's name is dr hook. i was expecting an eyepatch and flares but was disappointed.
i walked for miles today in the stickiness. first to crows nest to see the surgeon, then back to st leonard's station, then the full length of chatswood shopping district (a not inconsiderable span) to buy blank CDs, then back to chatswood station, then to killara to the hospital where i'm having the wretched teeth removed, and then back to the station where i sat for 3/4 of an hour awaiting a train. by then i was quite glad of the rest!
we walked across the sydney harbour bridge yesterday to celebrate its 75th birthday, which was fun. photos to follow when i can be bothered thinking about them (gosh i'm slack). so lots of walking all round, which may be sticky but overall is A Good Thing.
i have started ripping cds - 113 piled up to be ripped from the first box with at least another two, possibly 3 or 4 boxes to go...
my humble apologies for the randomness of this post. will try to do better when i'm feeling less flustered and sticky.
although perhaps i should wait to pass judgement until i talk to my doctor about my insulin levels tomorrow, but so far things are going ok. i had my dentist appointment today, which i was really nervous about (always am these days, scared he'll find something appalling), and more so for today as i thought i had a cavity, but it turned out to just be normal [for me] sensitivity for which i was prescribed strawberry flavoured tooth mousse. i do have to go back for two more visits in april though to fill a few holes which were tiny a couple of years ago but which now are starting to look threatening, which is an expensive bugger, but better to have it dealt with, even if the whole dentist experience ends up costing nearly $800 which i hadn't planned on, and i'm happy that it's just a couple of fillings and not more hideous root-canal work.
poor djelibeybi's trip to his dentist was not so relaxed, i fear. he broke a tooth in rome the other week and when he went in to the dentist, they found that another tooth had cracked and so he needs two crowns urgently, with one more recommended although at $1200 apiece, he's decided to put off the third for now and hope it doesn't need to be attended to within the next year and a half. eep! well, at least we have a recommendation for a dentist in ealing if he needs it.
once again it feels like we never left sydney, which is odd, after nearly 2 years away, but at least this time i'm enjoying it more. i think after nearly 2 years in england i can sort of almost nearly see sydney through english eyes. the sunshine really is rather nice. the colours are sparklier. when it rains it goes all green or purply rather than just grey. it's quite nice to be warm after the long winter - by the end of february even i tire of being chilly. and of course, it has much better medical facilities :-) i'm certainly not ready to move back and i suspect when the time comes there'll be a certain amount of kicking and screaming, but that's two years off at least and by then i hope i'll be able to appreciate the good points and not lament the parts where london is way way better (not too hot mostly, better concerts, better art galleries, more professional opportunities). hmm. but i'm glad i'm not hating it like last time. and today's dental verdict has me feeling a good deal calmer too.
and of course it's lovely seeing the parentals too. i do miss them, even if they do sometimes drive me nuts when i do see them. i guess it's a parent/child thing - presumably i drive them nuts too! we've already been treated to fudge cake and were offered strawberries this evening, although we were both too tired to take up the offer and really appreciate it. tomorrow i think i might take charge and cook dinner so they don't feel too much like we're freeloading. which we are, of course, but i don't want them to *feel* like we are :-)
only 12.45 and i do believe i'm ready. i'm 99% packed - just a few last minute things like makeup and hairbrushes and deciding which jumper i want to wear on the plane, and i didn't get my expenses done, but i'm packing my receipts and will post them from australia if i have to - and no particular panic attack on the horizon. even djeli's still up and it's pretty much unheard of for me to be ready before he's been in bed 2 hours. i bet i've forgotten something vital. the bag is pretty full, but most of it is easter eggs - we did a special trip to hotel du chocolat which is my favourite chocolate shop in the whole wide world (and yes, i'm including lindt chocolate in that) and bought the most awesome eggs for my parents. drool will happen. oh yes. the plus with this is that i'm having to pack *around* easter eggs, which leaves space for things like orchestration books and watercolour paints on the way back.
so tomorrow at 7am, we leave for the airport and the prospect of a 22-hour flight. gawd i hate those things. but i have my book (danny wallace's join me! which i believe is hilarious. if it's even half as good as yes man i'll be a happy passenger), my magnesium tablets, my fabulous greek anti-travel-sick chewing gum, i'll be buying a copy of wired at heathrow - the usual. five minidiscs at the ready. i have headphones. i have a headphone adaptor so i can wear comfy headphones while drooling over casino royale and more restrainedly watching the devil wears prada and other films (or possibly just casino royale several times in a row). so sydney here i come. to see my lovely parents, who i have missed (even if i don't show it and don't keep in touch with them very well). and to get my wisdom teeth removed. and to celebrate my 34th birthday. and of course easter.
so if i'm a little erratic in my posting over the next six weeks, please forgive me - i'll be back soon enough, even if it feels like a lifetime!
Show us something interesting in the sky.
kinda cheating here with an old photo from a city i don't even live in any more. but i still remember the night i took this - the moon was absolutely spectacular. true harvest moon... i got back from uni and dragged out the tripod to the hill at the end of the street and messed about with the settings to get... not quite what i was after. um. but i still quite like it.
