Tina's wanderings around the world

I know of very few people who love their birthdays as much as I do. It's the one day of the year that I get to celebrate me, and I like to do so with a little thread of humility and much glee. This year will probably go down in the books as my best birthday in Australia. The day started off with a good morning snuggle, lots of alarm snoozes, and with the first rendition of the "Happy Birthday" song of the day by a sleepy Marcus. We got up early and headed out to our favorite city breakfast spot, the Central Baking Depot, for raisin toast and sourdough toast with jam and ricotta. Very good start to the birthday. This year I decided to act like an adult and actually go to work on my birthday. Not a huge advocate of going to work on your birthday, but it turned out nicely this year. I received lots of hugs, smiles and birthday chats all day, everyone wanting to know what I was doing for my birthday. One person, on their way into the office, took one look at me and somehow de...

As much as I would perhaps like to think otherwise, I think this blog is mostly defunct and now only serves as a random sounding board when I feel the need to output. In a non-facebook and yet more public than journal-writing mode. I've come to the conclusion that there truly is something cathartic and more rewarding about physically writing in a journal rather than typing out thoughts (not that I've done much of that, either). Typing allows me to get my thoughts out in a more stream of consciousness fashion and therefore more quickly (and ironically less thoughtfully?) than when writing with pen and paper. Strange. I think that when the traveling commences again, I will find again my pen and paper as an old soul mate. My journals kept me company and sane for well over a decade. In the happier, more neutral periods my writing and output stops. These last few years in Sydney have been happy, though certainly not without trial. In fact it feels like one of the most difficult peri...

For the last, oh, 8 years I have felt the particularly strong need to find out what my purpose in life is. What should I do for a career? What should I dedicate that third of my life to? What am I best at? How can I use those skills (whatever they may be) to my advantage? Before I left Seattle, I started a series of conversations. Well, I meant to start a series, but it's quite possible that I only got one. In fact I remember only one, so strike that series (even if that's what I had intended!). While part of the Achievers Alumni Association board, I realized what an amazing group of people we alums had access to--the board of the College Success Foundation. Here was a group of successful professionals who were making a difference in the world, and in fact had made a huge difference in our worlds. One of their main strategies in making a difference was mentoring, so who better to look to for advice than them? So I arranged a lunch with the Vice Chair of the board (and one of m...

It's amazing how much people can chatter away at work. I don't think the following remarks can be stereotyped as "Australian" or even as a "Sydney" thing (as I oft catalogue things I encounter here), and I only have one real workplace to refer back to in the States so that may add to this particular observation. But I do find this peculiar. People talk an awful lot in my office. In fact, on any normal day, the first thing my department does in the morning is hold a 20-30 minute chatter session. What did you do last night? How about you? Craft comment. Food comment. Lots and lots of food conversation. Boy talk. Girl talk. All and any of the above. Yesterday morning centered on bridesmaid talk, and whether or not a fellow bridesmaid should be booted from the wedding. What did the dresses look like? The bride sounds quite nice. If this girl isn't supportive and this is a friendship ruiner, why would she want her in the wedding anyway? Blah, blah, blah. I ca...

Smiles often come from unexpected places. I'm perceiving life as a bit stressful right now. Work stresses me out, my boss avoids me, and my work is still taking ages to be approved which means my biggest projects take ages. Which annoys and frustrates me to no end. And leads me to look for jobs elsewhere. I was speaking with a gal at work, the one who is notoriously opinionated and who quite frequently grates on my nerves. However, she's one of the only people here who will connect on a real level, if fleetingly. One of the gals from my department merely set a folder of letters on my desk today, which was enough to set off a facial reaction in me. I didn't quite realize it, but it happened. Ms notorious noticed and inquired. I divulged. Tears came. I had to put my face to the computer screen, whereupon she gave me a hug (yay, in a world that gives air kisses instead of hugs!) and a tim tam. Strange, but she's making my day. I'll take happiness in any form.

Sometimes I wonder if at some point in the past few years I actually took my brain out of my skull and left it somewhere, and I'm subsiding on the spirit of my former brain. My functioning is not quite as good as it used to be. I forgot my chocolate and apple at home today. I've recently decided to start taking chocolate from home into the office to satisfy the afternoon sweet cravings. The sweet cupboard at home (yes, the biggest double-cupboard in our house is a sweet/snack/baking cupboard) is the accumulation of prepared for, yet unsatisfied, baking whims; holiday chocolate that fell by the wayside with new chocolate purchases; cookies and biscuits that were bought then not craved thereafter; and all manners of half-eaten nuts that have gotten pushed beyond memory. This special nook even has a small bagful of saltwater taffy from the Oregon coast, picked up during our trip to the states last year. Part of me remains sentimental and doesn't want to eat them...though the o...

I went into the cafe last weekend to spend a few hours "observing" and seeing how the cafe runs. Of course, the first thing they put me to was the dishes. It makes sense. It's easy. And when there's a tiny kitchen and four people milling about, it's not a bad place to put the newbie. After a bit of washing (and worrying about doing the wet work my dermatologist warned me against), I got upgraded to cleaning up dishes from the table, then taking coffee and food out to the tables, then taking orders. Admittedly, I was nervous. Even when it's a job I don't perceive as being difficult, I still take it very seriously and try to do a very good job. Balancing a coffee cup (with a little serving spoon) counts as one of these simple tasks. So simple, yet so simple to screw up. But in a cafe with only four tables, it doesn't exactly get full enough to make too many mistakes. Anyway, the guys I was working with were nice and the owner forbade me from doing the di...

This blogger host is a bane. Thus far I have tried three times to write about NZ part two, but this silly blogger website seems not to like the picture uploading. Boo! It's not for lack of love that I didn't post yesterday--well, perhaps it was, though not a lack of love for the writing but rather a complete detestation of the picture uploading function. It coughs and hiccups and utterly refuses to work. Another try will be made, and we'll see if it will agree. At least a little bit. Other than that, just trying to stop crying at work these days. Does anyone else have a boss that treats them like a petulant child and tries with all their might to avoid looking over your work? Mostly because they're not in the mood? Because they're just too busy and you're not a priority? (Your work never is...) Well this has brought me to tears for the past few days, despite the fact that one of my co-workers brought me a brownie to make me feel better for yesterday...then we ha...

With all of this potential career upheaval, the point remains to be examined--why do I want to open up my own cafe? Here's my own personal brainstorming session on the subject. I would be able to bake my own goods. Cookies, scones, maybe muffins and anything else that strikes the fancy. I could have tasty blended drinks--coffee, chai, hot chocolate, and cider. Nobody really does cider drinks, but they could be amazing! Possibly not as versatile as coffee, but there's great potential there. Ooh, and let's not forget submarinos. Or Italian sodas. And the horchata. There's a wealth of good cafe drinks to be concocted. I like the idea of having my own business. I could be a small business owner. I'd get to be the boss and have my own employees and do the hiring. I love going to cafes and having an alternative to the bar/pub nightlife. Cafes provide a space to work, read, play on your computer, whatever. They're nice places to meet up with friends when you don't ...

Tonight's Friday night and Marcus is away hiking for the weekend. Strangely, I find myself at a loss. Once upon a time I lived alone and spent lots of time on my own--going on walks, to cafes, reading, movies, parks. But when Marcus is away at night, I don't sleep as well. Aaaaaaand sometimes I really don't know what to do with myself. Too much time spent reminiscing on facebook. What about making new memories? Well, new experiences are certainly beginning. :) At work today, while folding hundreds of letters, I listened to some Tedx talks on happiness ans positive psychology. One of the speakers talked about synthesized happiness and how we seem to be happier with fewer choices. I am a lover of freedom and choice, but there's some sense to this theory. If there were only three jobs a person could ever have, it would be easier to choose amongst the three and be happy with it, don't you think? One of the other speakers mentioned being happy with different areas of lif...

I'm still querying the decision, and am going to try to go on in Saturday for a few hours to see what it looks like from the other side. Scary. So, so scary. But is it scarier than staying here and wasting good hours of my life without work that excites and interests me? Possibly not. I would miss the free plays and the interesting events we put on. Though I wouldn't miss the forced socializing (though that's not terribly frequent and I am getting to know people better). There are exciting things in the future at the theatre--bringing on board a whole new client database; refining the communications I finally have a good understanding of; new leadership has brought about more clarification, though I often feel like my brain's a bit muddy when I try to tell people about what we do. Who knows. It's time to stop talking about it at the moment. Tonight I'm going to see one of our plays, Zebra! . It's set in an Irish bar in New York City. Two middle-aged men are ...

If it wasn't obvious from my lack of talking about the work life for ages, I'll make it clearer now--my job has been somewhat less than satisfying for quite a while now. I'm lucky if I speak to my boss for a total of 30 minutes in a week. I've had fewer and fewer work assignments coming in. Because I have so much free time, I spend ages surfing online and reading things that I hope will be useful but don't tend to feed into my work or even in conversation. The gals I work with are nice, but I often feel quite isolated and like I don't click with them. The pay is fine, though I should be paid more for what I'm capable of, though I should actually be paid less for the work done lately because my boss only reads through my work when she's in the mood. I'm not learning anything and there certainly aren't any mentor prospects on the horizon. The perks are great and I love going to the theatre, but I'm so bored !!! I feel like I'm treading wate...

Every once in a while I get a childhood flashback of a series of activities I did as a child, and with my now-adult eyes I wonder if they were actually normal things for a child to do. For example, when I was 8-9 years old, my two sisters (just recently written about) and I made a neighbor friend. This wasn't one of the neighbors that was our old age but a single lady, who must've been in her late 20's or early 30's at the time, and lived just down the street from us. Gretta, she wanted us to call her. She had always wanted to be known as Gretta and we were eager to grant her wish. I don't even remember what we did over at her house, maybe just sat and listened to her talk about her grown-up life with her grown-up boyfriend and her grown-up job (which I think was as a waitress, but I don't really remember). I recall one Halloween talking about what we were going to dress up as, whereupon Gretta related that she had dressed as a lady devil once, which intrigued u...

It's been a while since I posted a reading list, but here are the books that have occupied my spare time lately: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann Chocolate Wars: From Cadbury to Kraft: 200 Years of Sweet Success and Bitter Rivalry by Deborah Cadbury (I really enjoyed this one. It gives great context on the moral values that used to exist in business and how those morals have quickly dissolved. It also talks about chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. How could I not love it?) How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life by the Dalai Lama The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ,by Stieg Larsson (Really sick of reading about horrific rape and murders...I will not continue with this series) Pen/O. Henry Prize Stories 2010 --this was one of the best and most enjoyable books I've read in a long time. My reading is quite scattergun, and my tendency is to jump between four to five books at a time. This book sat by my bedside for the past eight months, filling the gaps between ...

After the previous focus on dream themes, a particularly strange and memorable one. Marcus and I were getting married, a small, non-traditional wedding in a building alongside a lake, somewhere here in Australia. I was stressed out because none of my friends and family were there, which we realized at that moment was because we hadn't sent them the invitation. Then my mom showed up and I felt better, though we weren't sure if we should go ahead or if we should postpone. We had a two-person huddle and hemmed and hawed, not sure what to do. Finally we decided to just go for it. There were maybe 30 people in attendance, most of whom I didn't know. Only two of Marcus's friends had RSVPd and they were late (as usual). Marcus was wearing jeans and a dress shirt. I was wearing a blue-green dress. I started walking down the "aisle" then Marcus came over and we walked down together. There were three lawyer-type officiants at the end, apparently in charge of the ceremon...

When my dad got married to my stepmom, oh, very nearly 20 years ago, I got an additional two sisters. These two sisters were very close in age to me, one almost two years older and the other just three months younger. At the time, and let's face it throughout most of my childhood, this seemed to me to mean competition. I think growing up in such a large family ignited an extreme sense of selfishness in me, the need to protect all things that were "mine" from food to clothes and friends. Mostly the clothes and friends part. :) But as we grew up I came to realize how truly wonderful these girls are. I certainly don't consider them "step" sisters--they're fully my sisters and they have turned out to be some of the dearest people to me in the world. First we have K, an adventurous soul who has always followed the good parts in life. After high school she decided she wanted to be a scuba instructor, though at some point she realized that wasn't really wha...

I feel like my blog is a school assignment, and sometimes it feels very much like a stream of consciousness, free-write where the pencil can't stop moving and you have to keep writing words no matter what they are. Whatever pops into your head is what goes down on the paper. So today the scatter-gun is getting put to good use to thread out a few thoughts. Quite often at my workplace, we come across wannabe star-spotters who know they're in the workplace of famous people and are hoping to catch a glimpse of a home-grown super star. (Currently we have Bryan Brown in a play--y'know, the Australian guy in Cocktail.) And as one of our artistic directors is particularly famous, they tend to look for her. I don't actually look like her, but we do have three common features--tall, blond, slim. There are days when I get stare downs from people trying to figure out if I am said artistic director and have even heard schoolgirls whisper, "Look, it's CB!" as I walk pas...

Just realized yesterday that I really don't spend time on the internet on the weekends (aside from a massive NZ picture upload onto facebook), so I'm okay with just writing during the weekdays. Unless Marcus is away, in which case I find writing to be great company. The weather is slowly turning to autumn here, with crisp mornings, warm days and rain quite a lot of the time. It's time to rethink an investment in gum boots to keep the tootsies dry. Autumn is my favorite season of the year--I love that transition in the weather where you can wear pretty much anything you want. Pants, shorts, skirts; sandals, boots, tights; tank tops, cardigans, sweaters. It's a mix of everything, and it seems so exciting to get back into an extra layer of clothes. It also means I can start straightening my hair again instead of having to keep it up off my sweaty neck. Delightful, I know. It also means a change in flavors--apple, cinnamon, pumpkin, soups, and all manner of warm teas. Over ...

Like most people, I live for the weekend. Every day I eagerly await the end of the work hours so I can go home and be in a happy home space. Work isn't terribly challenging at the moment (it rarely is) and I'm not feeling intellectually stimulated. So the first part of my day is usually spent reading online newspapers, then any work-related articles, reports and extra info I can find. Though that only takes up a small amount of time, and lately I've been lost in boredom. Though I did submit two volunteer applications to try to get into the spirit of community service again--I still support mentoring and have felt the loss of my own mentors quite greatly since leaving Seattle. And if I can be a mentor half as good as the ladies I've been fortunate enough to be mentored by, I know the mentee in question would benefit greatly. The other application was to an organization whose volunteers read books to foster youth, who don't tend to get that kind of one-on-one attentio...

Is anyone else obsessed over all of these coupon websites that are popping up? Discounted haircuts (I've bought two). Dinners (two more). Various lessons (I'll be learning to how to make coffee one of these days). Adventure trips (how do you think the canyoning and abseiling came about?). House cleaning. Photo books. Paint balling, golfing. Massages. Discounted hotels and vacations. I swear, if you hold out for long enough they'll come up with exactly what you're looking for. And why is it that I feel okay buying discounted things online, but am averse to using coupons? There's something strange about that, and I admit that when I give them my voucher I feel a little ashamed for being so cheap. But then I remember that whatever the regular price is is much more than I would consider spending, so they are actually getting something out of the deal as well. But cruising these sites is dangerous, you could easily become addicted. Two days ago I bought $45 massages...th...

Massive fail, picture uploader. I started writing about New Zealand, but the picture uploader is refusing to upload anything for me. So I am forced to write about something else. Boo. At the moment I'm baking Peter's oh so goooooooood Pumpkin Bread, recipe supplied courtesy of the wonderful Tara and Peter. This is my second go at making this lovely recipe and while I'm a famous recipe meddler, I haven't fiddled with this one even a little bit. Well, except half of my mini-loaves are chocolate chip-less. I know, craziness, but my inspiration for making these was one of the gals at work. I missed her birthday while I was in NZ and of all the things I've baked and brought into work, the thing she's mentioned most is the pumpkin bread. And as I love to bake for a birthday, I decided a few mini-loaves would step into the birthday-cake-turned-birthday-cookie role. For some reason, birthday cake just doesn't quite do it for me. Cake. Meh. A cake is a cake is a cake...

We booked our tickets to New Zealand long, long ago far before the Christmas ("winter") holidays. It wasn't high on Marcus's "to see" list since it's just a hop, skip and a jump away from Australia and it doesn't seem much like an overseas trip. The people are very similar, though they tend to centralize their vowels and say things like fush 'n chups, and Australia is so inundated with kiwis that you wouldn't know there are actually any back in their country. :) Kiwis live in the shadow of Australia, much like Canada and the US. Kiwis hate to be mistaken for Australians, though it happens frequently (I still do it) and it's almost unheard of for Australians to be called kiwis. That being said, they are a very friendly bunch and quite a few of my nicest workmates here in Australia are from NZ. Our tickets were a steal at just over $250 per person, round trip. We couldn't not go. I missed my second big opening night of the year and ano...

On top of the other this's and that's that have been keeping the free time happy lately, I had a very unhappy experience. This past Friday night, a bunch of friends were getting together to some recently-wed friends before they take off on their adventures around Australia. Three weeks into theis couple's relationship, they decided to move to Cairns together and have basically lived around the country ever since. She's a midwife and he's an engineer type who picks up random jobs wherever she happens to find a placement. They came back to Sydney for a few months before their wedding to finish off planning and such, but in typical form they are set to leave again! Exciting for them, so we had a get-together to see them off before they disappear for another year. We all met up in north Sydney for a BBQ then set off to the local pub where the wedding band was playing. Off to the pub, off to the pub. We went inside where the fellow pub-goers were beginning their Friday n...

My mind feels like it's going to waste a bit, like it's underused and certainly not challenged enough. I read quite a lot, though often my book of choice is a good fiction. I just finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and got so fed up with the horrible text about rape and murders that I've determined that it's the first and last book I'll read of the series. The New Internationalist is my bathroom companion (yes, I like reading in the bathroom) though I'm also a subscriber to this artsy Australian magazine called Frankie, which is more aesthetically pleasing than intelligent. And I try doing sudoku whenever I can get my hands on it. I'm nowhere near good, but I'm practicing. I'm also listening to these daily Philosopher's Notes that Peter sent me, which are great for the walk to and from work. Anyway, all of the additions above were justifications to make me feel like my brain is somewhat productive, but really it's not. I find t...