Exciting last couple of weeks (very long post!)

It’s been an exciting last couple of weeks. Photos after the jump.

At first I was bored at work… taking pictures of myself with my new camera… seriously lame…

Then, almost out of the blue (with only 2 days notice!), my mum arrived to visit. We went to the Powerhouse Museum and checked out the exhibit on greek stuff (including many, many antiquities of old).

Of course, she made me some curry puffs to take to work before she left! Everyone was very appreciative.

The day my mum left in the afternoon, Meng arrived in the morning. Heidi and I had to get up freaking early to get to the airport. Meng mentioned that he might look different because he hadn’t shaved for 4 months. He looks pretty much the same to me… it’s not like… say… Jim not shaving for 4 months!

A few nights later we went out on the town and had Pho (is that pronounced poh or fuh?) from Pasteur. It’s really, really good. There’s even something for Heidi (fried tofu with rice noodles). Even better, Heidi actually likes it!

We went for a drive and took Meng to see a few of the sights. Obviously, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House.

A lot of the trip revolved around food. Here we are in a food court in China Town. I’m looking deep and Heidi and Menghis are making eyes at each other (hey!).

Meng cooked Korean pancakes for us one night. The vegetarian ones were really good, but the pork ones were a bit too meaty. Ja came over and was very appreciative! (quote: “It’s sooooo great!”) Heidi reckons her reaction is due to two facts: 1) She is generally very appreciative and 2) She usually lives on college food (ack!).

I spent most of last week learning how to snowboard at Thredbo. It was a long road trip with Steve and Meng. We stopped off at Canberra on the way and walked around Parliament House for a bit until the security guards starting looking at as weirdly because Meng wanted to roll down the grass from the top (near the base of the flag pole).

We finally got to Thredbo after stopping at Jindabyne to pick up our gear from the rental store. I got a snowboard with some sort of green wizard on it (kick ass!).

We arrived after the chair lifts had closed so we had to find something else to do. Luckily Meng had brought his newly-acquired XBOX. A lot of Burnout 3 action was had in the following week between trips to the slopes.

I didn’t take any formal lessons because Meng offered to teach me. He was a really good teacher actually; he was always encouraging and happy to wait for me. Unfortunatly, I didn’t take any photos on the slopes because I kept falling over too much and would have damaged the camera (like my knees, arse, sunglasses, wrists, thumbs…) Anyhow, here is a pic of Meng and me in our snowboarding gear. I guess that I’ll leave it up to you to imagine us carving it up.

The day after getting back from snowboarding (today!), Menghis, Heidi, and I went to the Spring Fair at the College of Fine Arts. Heidi had booked us in for a few workshops. The first was sculpture. I made a nose and a scale model of a larger piece I call “Clouds”.

After that we went to a felting lesson and I made two pieces. The first on (on the right) has a couple of flowers and a butterfly on it. The second one was a little rushed and has on it a weird looking cat wearing a scarf.

The last thing we did was Shibori and Batik dying. It wasn’t as cool as sculpture or felting (but maybe it just felt like that because it was the end of a long day).