chill'axin weekend

Following a horrific week at work (don't ask), i was due for a weekend of relaxation... and i sure got one!

Saturday was a warm (and humid) day in London... I met May Ching at Southbank in Waterloo for a delicious lunch (thanks!) at Giraffe ~ three-courses of yumminess ~ sambal edamame (sounds weird, tastes superb!), chicken/prawn/mango/walnut salad, finished off with belgian waffles with bananas & ice cream. I am spoilt!

After lunch we went to relax under the shade of the London Eye, which ofcourse, moves - duh. So instead, we found us a stationary tree, whose shade was inhabited by about half of the people in Southbank, but we found a little spot and made ourselves comfy. It was great fun relaxing and playing with the little monkey, Keira... until she got restless and agitated, which duely indicated home time for them.











I made my way to Piccadilly circus where I met Mel C for some Movenpick ice cream (is it a wonder I have serious muffin-top in tight jeans??), a fruit smoothie and some retail therapy at Topshop - last week Mel found a new indy brand called pa:nuu (how cute is that?) and thought I, of all people, should really own a pa:nuu t-shirt *grin* and now i do!

Panu (the guy, not the t-shirt) was working on Saturday night, so I spent the evening curled up with take-out pad thai, watching PS: I Love You. And ok guys, Gerard Butler? Forget Aaron whats-his-name. Gerard Butler is to. die. for. The movie made me all weepy and warm, and i know it must have seriously screwed with my mind cos after watching it, I stayed up til 2am waiting for Panu to get home *awwww*

Back to being spoilt, after working a ridiculous 19 hours yesterday, today Panu decided to take me to Harrods for sushi lunch, something I had always wanted to do, but normally persuaded by my rational mind to not spend that amount of money on sushi.











I think it goes without saying that the food was phenomenal, and the price even more so. Loved it, but my rational mind has kicked in again.

To top off my weekend, I bought some macaroons from Laduree in Harrods, and I had me a little nap this afternoon... happy me.

my mate boonga

Today I walked down the road to the Post Office to send boonga is birthday present. For those who don’t know, we share the same birthday, albeit the fact that he has 3 years and exactly 57 wrinkles on me. I know we’ve only celebrated 2 birthdays together, but the first one was so mind-numbing-stupefyingly amazing that it replaced all birthdays preceding (which isn’t hard) and set the par way high for any upcoming birthdays.

anyway, it’s a bit sad not partying with boonga this birthday, but we always have next year, and the next, and the next until we decide that it just ain’t a cool birthday anymore. But that isn’t going to happen. I know at least 3 more people with the same birthday and we are all cool. Right?

this is probably a good time to give y’all an update on me and my friend boong boong. You probably know about how we met, how we were flung together by incredible forces of nature (known as the mcauleys), how we tried to make this unconventional thing work, our ups and downs, and eventually us parting ways.

it was only after the madness had passed that i discovered what i really had was a friend.

So there really isn't an update. we are now friends, just friends, and the best of those. so i'm eternally sorry to those of you who wanted something raunchy, or at least some gossip. i know the boy aspect of my life was terribly exciting before i became all settled down, but hey, it's exciting now in a different way!

the cutest thing...

It was about time. after dating for 8 years, these guys finally got hitched on the 8 of the 8 of the 8. How very Chinese!

Even before they were hitched, Bec was like a sister to me. one of my earliest memories of her was when we were in Brissie, in her little red car which was struggling so enormously that we may as well have been running (like the Flintstones!) up Stafford Hill.

Usually the story goes that eventually you make it up the hill, however embarrassingly slowly. But this time, we did not. We rolled all. the. way. back. down.

I think the traumatic start to our friendship paved the way for lots more happy (holidays!) and equally traumatic (emergency hospital visits) events... and here's hoping for lots more to come.

Anyway, the cutest thing at the wedding was actually not the new Mr & Mrs. But look at my folks dancing! How adorable are they??

more breakunch..mmmm!

before we traipsed off to Oz for some sun, Mel C and I realised it had been almost a month since our last breakunch, and we were more than overdue for some foodie goodness. So off we went to Flaneur, an incredibly well hidden jewel, just around the corner from Farringdon Station.

Despite the grandios red bleachers depicted on the website, you could walk right past Flaneur if you weren't paying attention, but gee you'd kick yourself. behind the heavy wooden doors lies a world of mouth-watering delicacies, my favourite being the chocolate nougat cake... a whole cake worth of soft chocolate nougat....










French toast with caramelised apples & pecan, and Vegetarian english breakfast with sauteed spinach, fried tomato, fried haloumi cheese, portabella mushroom, bubble & squeak, free range eggs.

a slice of heaven

i know that if i dont get cracking on this therapy session, it will long be forgotten as we're going to Helsinki this weekend... and god knows how many foodie photos I will take there!

so. Hamilton Island, especially on the back of a hectic week in Sydney, was more than heaven. it was more like heaven, wrapped in a giant kinder schokobon, delivered to me by a toga wearing (loosely) Aaron Eckhardt. ok, now I'm having terrible schoolgirl thoughts at work. *tsk tsk tsk*

you get the idea.

our expectations rocketed through the roof when upon arrival at the quaint but stylish Hamilton Island Airport, we were greeted by hotel staff holding a plaque with my name on it. Eh? so apparently we'd been upgraded from the 4 star Reef View hotel, to the very exclusive 5 star resort, The Beach Club.


we spent the next 2 days soaking up the sun and cooling off in the hotel's private climate controlled infinity pool. nothing beats climate control, my friends. we opted to see what the commoners were up to one afternoon and wandered out to the communal pools (which, don't get me wrong, they are still gorgeous) but one dip of a toe in the pool and back I was at my own private heated pool again. life is grand sometimes!


the food on the island was magnificent, the sunsets were romantic, and they mysteriously did not have one single mozzie on the whole island. bizarre? yes, but good.


2.5 days was a treat, however short. Heaven indeed.

More photos here.

current crush...

... aaron eckhardt. i dont care that half his face in burnt off in that movie, just look at that jaw line!

post holiday funk

ok, i gotta dig myself out of this post holiday funk. they say the best way to deal with anything is to face your demons head on and cleanse. and i think to cleanse, i need to do this holiday blog. it's almost like therapy.

"Hi my name is Cat and I have a baaad case of the post holiday blues.."

i'm sifting through literally hundreds of photos, not really knowing where to begin. Sydney, obviously, as that was the first leg of our tour. i wanted to write about the highlights of Sydney, then i realised that every day was a highlight. Argh. why do you frickin' people have to be so damn lovable!

still, i gotta rattle it all off so here goes...

i love boombooms, harry's, babs!, morty, waffles!, boongboong, hog's breath, the crew, the mcauleys *heart*, urban bites, gelato... and... little milo...
























































more photos here.

i loved the shopping, eating, chatting, sleeping, chilling, movies - every single minute i spent with every person was brilliant. if only i could capture it all again, stick it all in a vacuum air bag, suck the air out and stuff the wrinkled little bag into a time capsule. i would.

hour's up. until the next therapy session, where we have to deal with the real scary stuff - Hamilton Island!

home

home. we've just arrived home from our holiday yesterday. home right now means London. home sometimes means Sydney, and always means Australia. home is where the heart is, and i've come to realise that home on a granular level to me was, and to an extent still is the Sydney innerwest suburb of Newtown.

i know it might seem ridiculous, i only lived there for 12 months, but whenever i think of Newtown and almost paralysingly so when I am in Newtown, i feel gut-wrenchingly homesick for everything about the place ~ the street, the people, the smells, the food, the shops, the eclectic mess of everything, and most of all the memories.

Newtown represented a period of my life when I was me. Not that i am not myself anymore but I live within the constraints of life, with rights and wrongs and expectations - which are all good things, for this stage of my life. But my year in Newtown was a time when I shunned my fair share of critics, who all with good intent I'm sure, advised me on how I should be living my life, and with whom.

It was a year when I was able to do whatever it was i wanted, literally. I know I did things which were proverbially stupid, things which were frowned upon by many around me. but as I went on living life the way I wanted, I learned more about myself than I ever did, and along the way I made some amazing new friends and cemented some old friendships.

Sometimes when I am in London and i feel homesick, all I want is to be back in Sydney. But then i realise that in my head I'm picturing Newtown but for 6 months before London, I wasn't in Newtown. I had moved in with Panu, onto the next phase of my life. But all i want is Newtown and to be back in my apartment on King Street. I try and stifle the thought.

But I've now learned that instead of stifling it, I should just embrace it as the year that was, and arguably the best year I have had so far. I love my life now, it's evolved and I'm happy. It's not the same, it is better. But that doesn't mean I have to give up the memories.

shopping & geography

Mel: "hey, is there FCUK in the UK?"

ahhh, i missed you Mel.. *hugz*