Tina's wanderings around the world

A blog can really only be as interesting as what is written in it. When nothing is written, it gets pretty boring...and so my blog has gotten boring! I've fallen out of the habit of writing, in general, which tends to be pretty detrimental to my mental health. If there's no writing and no outlet, then things bottle up and explode from the slightest prick. Let's talk about yesterday. I sent out a holiday e-card to around 840 of our donors here at work. It was a two liner, that despite being so short had edit upon edit heaped on its shoulders by its higher ups (or rather my higher ups) until it cracked. A bit of background info--our workplace is cursed with old technology. We use MS Office 2003 and instead of Outlook, someone thought it would be a good idea to use some never-been-heard-of piece of sheize software called Groupwise. I can appreciate not wanting to buy into monopolized software but when it works, it works. Don't mess with it. So emailing and scheduling is th...

Our biggest fundraising event of the year went down a few weeks ago. It was a fundraising dinner with many of our top donors, lots of well-known Australians, actors, personalities, etc. Our Artistic Directors were there (Cate decked out in Armani as per usual--well, he's our patron and the dinner was held in his honor, so that all makes sense), Hugo Weaving (Mr Smith from The Matrix) was there as well as the Olympic gold medalist swimmer, Ian Thorpe. It's a pretty impressive event, actually, pulled off by two of my lovely co-workers with the help of the rest of our development department. I just thought I'd share some pictures of the event because it was certainly the most posh fundraising event I've ever been to. (Err, worked.) It was held on the stage of Sydney Theatre, our largest theatre. They made it snow in the theatre. I don't know if you can see from the pictures, but it was pretty amazing. Though I missed the snow as I was ushering people in, running acros...

Sydney has been awfully rainy this winter and spring, which means there's been a plethora of umbrellas making their way about town. Yesterday was one such of these umbrella days, and I found myself swinging the umbrella to and fro as I walked home. Sydney umbrellas are not the little shooka umbrellas where you press the button and they shooka right on out to protect you from the rain. Sydney umbrellas are the old man umbrellas that you could use as a walking stick--there's no shrinking those suckers! And, well, they need to be because when it rains here, it's usually accompanied by wind. And the little shooka umbrellas get rocked by the wind and have a tendency to break and fall apart. Hence the proliferation of old man umbrellas. This city is a bustling city with lots of walkers on the streets, which means that when it's raining outside and everyone has a giant old man umbrella, you have to be careful. I'm conscious sidewalk walker at the best of times, trying to ...

On occasion, I have those days where I feel 100% wretched. Last week ended with said wretchedness, a slow spiral into an abyss of self-pity. Do you know those days? They're usually the ones that end in tears, refreshing, cleansing tears. Only two days ended in tears, and they were sort of forced just to get the yuck out of my system. Work was boring, and I felt isolated in my tucked away little corner. Marcus was leaving town for the weekend. My friends were busy. The "Australia hates me and I hate Australia" feelings started to rise, though thankfully they went away without getting to an alarming point. This country has certainly been a hard one to adapt to and my efforts don't seem to have paid off as much as I'd like...but I persist. I've been trying to stop the self-pity and try to look at things from another angle, but haven't read nearly enough positive-thinking self-help books lately. :) Though when these shite days do roll around, you can be sure t...

Yesterday was the first day back at work after daylight savings kicked in. My body was a bit cranky at the early wake up, but was delighted at the lasting sunshine in the sky still there when I walked home after work. Maybe I'll go for a run? Maybe a little bit of yoga? Yeah, the body is definitely in need of a bit of physical activity. Get ready to rumble! Umm, the rumble has been delayed. I got home and went to the bathroom (gotta take care of business), only to find it covered in water. The ceiling was leaking in a few different spots and the lights refused to come on. Bad news. I called the building manager to arrange for a plumber to come out, then went upstairs to see if they had a leak, an overrunning faucet, or any awareness at all of our predicament. After a ring and two knocks, the less than impressive neighbor opened the door. Nope, no awareness and certainly no help in finding a remedy for the situation. So I showered by candlelight (which was quite nice, actually) and ...

As I sit here munching on some delicious pumpkin bread (thanks Tara and Peter), I am met with a recurring feeling of disappointment. It stems from having brought in pumpkin bread to the office yesterday, my first foray into the pumpkin bread-making business. Pieces of the freshly baked good were passed out to the gals in my department, and received positive reviews all around. The positive reviews are great and, admittedly, it was quite exciting to introduce five people to the goodness of sugary, spicy pumpkin (pumpkin is reserved for savory dishes around these parts and I've been eager to share the brilliance for some time now). A few people have asked for more today, which could easily be taken as a compliment since the bread was so good! (Well let's be honest, it was.) But over the last two years, my experience in sharing the baked goods has been a bit disheartening. Let's take a bit of a backtrack and look at the history of sharing all things homemade and sweet. The fir...

As I have a habit of doing, I'm just loading up while I'm in the groove. So here are a few pictures from this past weekend up in Nelson Bay. Marcus savoring the sand and hair blowing into his mouth. Our little crabby friend who wandered very far from the water.

For those of you who were wondering, Marcus did finish his 100km bushwalk. A few days after we returned to Australia, he went out for a 27im run to get himself prepared for it and pulled his hip flexor in the process. He was devastated and didn't think he'd be able to finish the bushwalk, but boy that kid is stubborn as a mule! One of his fellow trailwalkers somewhat appropriately stated that he may have a weak self-preservation instinct. :) As well as having major guts! He finished in about 24 hours, injury and all. This may have been the only smile that mug saw during the entire walk. (This is around hour 19 and kilometer 70.)

At this point, I won't begin to undertake the task it would be to write about my trip back home. I saw anybody who actually reads this, anyway, so for those of you that might be reading this--I love you! It was great to see you. Australia and I await your visit. ;) In the meantime, I'm getting back into the groove of things at work. I've gone to four shows already since I've been home--two proper plays, one dress rehearsal and an opera. (Although I think Pirates of Penzance should technically be classed as an operetta.) One of those shows was August: Osage County , a pulitzer prize-winning play which has also won five Tony awards. It's basically the shit, and somehow we snagged the American tour and veered them south. Most of the original American cast performed at our theatre and they were a-mazing. It was easily my favorite show of the year and had quite a few recognizable people in it including the mom from Rookie of the Year --awesome. More dysfunctional family ...

9 times 3 is 27. That's the first thing that comes to mind when I think of 27. But this birthday year is off to an excellent start. Marcus and I took the day off to do some celebrating, so the day started off with a bit of a sleep-in. Sleep is guaranteed to bring happiness in our house! So after a morning snuggle, Marcus asked if I wanted some birthday tea in bed, to which I responded, "You bought special birthday tea?!" "No," he said, "it's basically any tea already in the cupboard and then I whisper 'Happy Birthday' into the cup and voila! it's happy birthday tea!" That brought a smile to this girl's face, and I was treated to some vanilla spearmint happy birthday tea. My first birthday present was the West Side Story soundtrack, which was perfect. West Side Story is in town right now (though an inside source tells me it's not a great production), so I get to introduce Marcus to its wonders and then some day we'll go see...

What's the point in having a blog if you don't write in it? Silly bear, it's time for me to add some words to the page. The catharsis of writing begins to flow. The most exciting event of late is at work. It happened yesterday afternoon, mid-mail opening. As a novice fundraiser learning the tricks and trades of asking for money and building relationships, my confidence in my ability to perform this salesman-seeming role is not astonishingly high. But that's okay since my fundraising activities, though vital, produce the smallest amount of moolah out of all fundraising methods employed in our little foundation. However, it has the largest numbers, with the bulk of our donors being communicated with through my channels. I manage the direct mail campaigns, the website, and basic donor communication (surveys, results reporting, etc.). We have two fundraising campaigns per year--season tickets (I came just at the end of the 2010 season ticket campaign) and End of Financial Y...

Happy International Children's Day!! As with most communications, this is a few days late. International Children's Day falls on the 1st of June, so at least I'm only a few days tardy. Actually, this year I ended up celebrating a day early, so why don't we just say Happy International Children's Week? A few weeks ago, I was popping bubble wrap and discovered that a co-worker was also a bubble wrap popping fan. I proceeded to tell her that there was a Bubble Wrap day and that at one of my old offices, I tied up little squares of bubble wrap and left them at everyone's desks in celebration. She got so excited by it that we decided to find all the fun holiday days and make up an entire calendar of them. Naturally the first fun, non-traditional holiday I could think of was Kids' Day. Back in the day, the Ferguson family celebrated all three family holidays--mother's day, father's day, and kids' day. I'm not sure where it came from and really can...

It's a late-seeming night at work--the office is quiet, the sun has set for the day, and my belly is grumbling for sustenance, clearly not convinced that it will be satiated by a few pieces of dark mint chocolate. Rightly so. I'm killing time, waiting for the beginning of another opening night. This is certainly one of the fun things about my job, getting to go to opening nights and getting free tickets to all kinds of different shows. One night found us in the basement of the opera house in an intimate cabaret show where the singer danced on our table and ate some of my Toblerone. Another night saw us sitting inside one of the grand sails reacting badly to Australian opera in the form of Tosca. We also found ourselves viewing a show by what is likely the premier modern dance company in the country. A show that mostly consisted of sidelong glances between we, the audience members as we watched the dancers writhing on the massive stage in front of us. Irish comedies. Shakespeare...

It seems as though Australia has more public holidays than we do in the states. I have to say, in terms of days off, Australia kicks the states' ass. I get four weeks of paid vacation per year, plus 10 (11?) sick days. Although around the Christmas holidays when the offices are closed, there's forced vacation which kind of sucks, but overall it's pretty good. Today is Anzac Day. Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Day is a day of rememberance for the troops who fought at Gallipoli in Turkey in World War I--it was the first battle against their troops during the war. They were attempting to force Turkey out of the war, but after eight months the battle ended in a stale mate with loss of life of tens of thousands of soldiers. The day the battle began, April 25th, is now the day they recognise the armed forces for their sacrifices. There are memorial services, marches, and a dawn service to link back to the quiet, pre-dawn moments experienced by the troops prior to t...

I'm not entirely sure I have anything in particular to write about at the moment. Marcus is out of town at the moment visiting a friend who lives in rural NSW so I'm holding the fort down at home. Last night we held a donor thank you event, and invited our 280 highest donors to a special dress rehearsal of our production opening at the opera house next week. Other than the director being unhappy that a few people left during the play (rude, certainly, but theater is meant to be divisive and to challenge), it was smooth sailing. It's funny, most people here would go out for a night on the town after a Friday night play (especially one that gets out at 9:00 pm), but I was really happy to go home afterward. I really enjoy being at home... Then today I went and picked up the lovely Maria from the ferry wharf (that's right, another stint at driving on the left side of the road) and went outlet shopping. A sweater, a hat and a scarf for $30. That's cheap even for US stand...