City 2 Surf

Today was the big day! Together with Ian and two other friends I started to run the 12 kilometres from Perth City to the beach. It was in fact the 50th anniversary of the City2Surf and a record number of 36,825 people participated. Again it was fantastic to run within this huge crowed and I was quite excited. But shortly after the first big hill I got stitches which would follow me during the whole race :-(
I made it to the finish line but I was actually quite disappointed that I did so badly... since I trained much more than 2 years ago I thought I would be faster... bloody stitches ;-)

Go Kart Challenge

Being part of the social committee I helped organising a "Go Kart Challenge" for the whole department including professors, lectures, PhD and master students. We divided everyone into three teams and planned a racing challenge. Each team would do a practice run, followed by the qualifying. The fastest ones of each team would then qualify for the final. It was really good fun and I think a great success.

Yoga

I started yoga a couple of months ago. Once a week I am joining a yoga class here at uni together with some friends. And I am loving it! Our yoga teacher is really great and I always feel so good afterwards. We usually do several different poses and the aim is to stretch further or hold the pose for longer. But today we actually did the opposite. The aim was to relax the body, even though poses like this one don't really look like they actually relax ;-)

City 2 Surf - Practice Run

Done my 10km practice run on Sunday - tick. Compared to 2 years ago I am much better prepared this time :-)

Dinner for Ten

Another advantage of living in a bigger house: We can have lots of friends over for dinner at once. [And the dishwasher does all the dishes :-)] So we had 8 people over for dinner on Saturday. I prepared German lentils soup for entrée and Ian made Osso Bucco - yum!
Since I have known Ian he keeps saying 'I am going to make flambéed strawberries for you one day.' So after saying this for the last 2 to 3 years he finally followed up on his promise. Strawberries tossed in fresh orange juice, grenadine and other secret ingredients - delicious! I am very happy to have a man who loves to cook :-)

Scooter Stories - The Choke

I just found out how important the choke on my scooter is - because it stopped working. The scooter was getting harder to start in the mornings, so I took it to the mechanics. They just cleaned the choke and said I should try whether this fixed it. But well... it didn't. Every morning it takes either ages to start or if it starts straight away, I need to keep revving the engine so it doesn't stall immediately. And this is quite tricky because I have to do this for the first 10 min. or so. And if I need to brake or even stop I would brake with one hand and keep the revs up with the other - no this isn't good for the scooter nor for my safety. So I took it back to the mechanics today. They put a new choke in but this still didn't fix it :-( So I am riding a hire scooter now and hoping that they will fix my little scooter soon!

City 2 Surf Training

Ran for 5km and done yoga for 1h on Wednesday, cycled to uni (40km return) today and I am going to do a 8km practice run on the weekend. Only 10 more days to the 12km City to Surf fun run!

I love dishwashers!

The last 2 years we've been living happily without a dishwasher. In fact I was the dishwasher - but for a 2 person house hold this is not such a big deal. The only time when I would have loved to have a dishwasher was when we had friends over for dinner. All the glasses, plates, cutlery, pots and pans would keep us occupied for quite a while the next morning :-(
But the house that we are house sitting at the moment comes with a dishwasher :-) So we had friends over for dinner on Monday night. It was a really nice evening with lots of food, wine and great company. We had entrée, main and dessert and after dinner all the dishes magically disappeared in the dishwasher. What a great invention. I am so looking forward to having a dishwasher once our place is renovated!

Gardening Weekend

We are house sitting a friend's place at the moment which means that we now have 2 gardens to look after. So we spent Saturday afternoon pruning our mulberry tree and on Sunday we were busy weeding our friend's garden. Apart from that our social calender was booked out with dinner at friends' places on both nights. Quite a busy weekend.

Renovation Approval - Finally!

I started posting about our renovation story in November 2006. Back then we had our first Strata meeting and people had to vote on our renovations for the first time. Our plans were rejected but we nevertheless started to do bits and pieces. The second vote was in November 2007 and again the same person objected, so we took it to court. And funny enough this made him change his mind rather quickly. So last night everyone had to vote again and this time no one objected. In a couple of weeks we will finally have our building permit and of course we duly celebrated it - with champagne :-)

Local Shops

Having a few local shops just around the corner is another big advantage of house sitting our friends place. Today we discovered that the little supermarket and the butcher are both open until 7pm, which is great. And if we are not in the mood for cooking there is also pizza and fish & chips just next door. Local shops are probably more expensive than the big chains but we like supporting them, if we in turn get high quality fresh products. The almond croissants we bought on the weekend were just fantastic!

A weekend on the farm

When I started my PhD more than 2 years ago I met a girl who grew up only 40km away from my home town. Since then my circle of (German) friends grew continuously, through her I got to know another friend and another and another... Amongst all these Germans that I know in Perth there is also a elderly couple originally from Dresden. This weekend they invited us to stay together with 2 other couples at their farm down south.

While driving down south inlands I was pretty amazed by the country side. I didn't expect all these rolling green hills and forests - a very scenic drive. They built their little farm house quite high up to enjoy the view, a view which makes you feel like there is nothing else around. You can't see any roads or cars not even other houses - just trees and rolling countryside - very beautiful.

When we arrived a glass of red wine awaited us already and this ritual wouldn't stop until we left ;-) All the wines we drank on the weekend came from vines that grow just in front of their house. Our friends own a little vineyard with about 1600 grapevines - just for their private consumption ;-) They are probably also the only ones growing Scheurebe in Australia - a very lovely white wine. But we didn't just consume the wine we also helped (indirectly) with it's production. It is winter right now and so the grapevines needed to be pruned. I was a bit surprised how radically they were cut but I was told that vines are quite tough and that they can handle this.

One of the best things about staying on the farm was the food. We had home made German!!! meals each day. It would start with a traditional German breakfast with rolls, boiled eggs and home made jam, followed by morning tea, then a cold lunch with German bread, cold meat and liverwurst, followed by freshly baked cake to have with afternoon tea and a big warm home cooked dinner - it was fantastic!! I can't remember the last time I had 5 meals in one day - prepared for me! Yeah, some times I miss living at home ;-)
We had a great weekend - eating, drinking, talking, planting trees, pruning vines. In fact Ian was surprised about how much our hosts knew about Western Australian history. We had some very interesting talks and really enjoyed ourselves.

City to Surf

Yep, I just registered for this years City to Surf 12km run. Actually Ian's new company paid both our entries, so I like them already :-) At the moment I am also quite confident that I will start and finish the 12km run for the second time. But I am not sure what I am going to do in bad weather - chicken out like last year or run the 12km anyway?! I probably see how I feel on the day ;-)

I would give a kingdom

... for a bath! A bath is the only thing I really missed during winter. When it is cold and rainy outside I am really longing for a nice long bath. Just laying in the hot water slowly relaxing every muscle - wonderful :-) And since we are house sitting this huge house at the moment we can actually enjoy the luxury of a hot bath. And since the weather was really miserable and wet ealier this week I had to have a bath! And it was fantastic - just what I needed!

Babies

I didn't trust my eyes when I saw Ian cuddling and playing with the little baby girl of a friend of us at the sushi night on Saturday ;-) So far I haven't seen him together with little kids very often - probably because of lack of opportunity. And there is this one kid he doesn't get along with that is still stuck in my mind. So I was very happy to see him getting along with this baby girl so well. Kind of reassuring and promising ;-)

Sushi Night

Friends of us organised a Do-It-Yourself Sushi Night - what a great idea! I love sushi! I've done this before back home in Germany with a couple of friends so I was really looking forward to this night. They bought all the necessary ingredients, cooked the rice and prepared everything perfectly. When we arrived we helped chopping up the veggies and the fresh fish and started rolling :-) We made sooo much sushi, sashimi, special omelette ones and even dessert sushi with strawberries and kiwis instead of fish! By the end we had much to much food so everyone got a doggy bag ;-)

New Job

Ian is going to start a new job next week and I am also looking forward to this. Because during the last half a year he has been quite stressed and unhappy with his job, so I am hoping that this is going to change now. So he is enjoying his last days by taking his team out for lunch and having drinks with his colleagues. Fortunately for him I was still sober enough to drive and pick him up ;-)