Spur of the Moment

This little dude greeted me when I got home today.

Guess where it came from? Maybe Jupiter?

Here’s the foyer looking out the door:

There’s a closet for cleaning stuff on the right and mirror doors in the middle hiding the coat rack. Kitchen (oven, more specifically) peeks on the right hand side of the photo.

Here’s the kitchen:

There’s a slot for the microwave oven. Spices go in the cupboard above the stove (it’s a very shallow cupboard). The dishwasher is to the right of the oven.

I love the faucet!

You can see a bit of the fridge-freezer on the right. The drawers hold slots for utensils and also a cutting board.

Here’s the living-room:

The door to the balcony is on the left.

And there’s lots and lots of wall for a biiig bookcase for instance. We’ll see.

The wall stretches uninterruptedly to the foyer.

Now, here’s the shower and sauna door (missing the doorknob):

There’s a glass wall to separate the shower from the toilet/sink side of the bathroom. It didn’t fit in the photo there. The bathroom is surprisingly roomy. I love the grey tiling! It’s in the shower corner and on the floor (both sauna and bathroom).

Pretty lights in the sauna:

And here are the sink and cupboards:

There’s space for the washing machine to the right of the sink. (Toilet is to the left.) There’s also a closet with two laundry baskets and some shelf space.

And here’s the bedroom:

It’s quite small but it’ll be a nice den for reading and computer-ing. Oh, and sleeping.

Here’s a taste of the closet space:

The closet on the right (door closed) is similar to the one you see. There’s also a double-door closet to the right of these doors with a bar for hanging clothes (and a top shelf). I’ll have to put some drawers or storage baskets under the bar because I don’t have anything awfully long to hang in there.

The balcony floor is lovely! It’s not ugly grey concrete like I was afraid of but some sort of “fake gravel”.

I forgot to take another picture of the balcony…

I went to the construction site at 9 am and stayed for about 45 minutes. I probably could’ve stood there for a long time just looking around and enjoying the space, but I had to drag myself to work.

It’s perfect. Absolutely perfect.

The colour palette at the train station this morning (Friday morning, that is):

(Not very good quality because a) camera phone + little light, b) I thought I needed to hurry to catch a train.)

Yesterday morning I went to the bathroom, as usual, to wash my face.

I noticed an odd pile of sand on the tiles…

Duh-dun (thanks, Kory! (I couldn’t figure out how to spell the Jaws “theme”)), duh-dun, duh-dun…

I directed my gaze straight from the pile up to the ceiling.

Duh-dun, duh-dun, duh-dun…

While we were sitting on the subway, a colleague of mine said I should throw a house-warming party when I finally get to move into my new apartment. A really good idea, but I have a problem: I’ve never been to a house-warming party!

What do people do at a house-warming party?
What should I serve? (I’m not going to serve alcohol.)
Do I need to have seats for everyone or are people prepared to stand around?

And most importantly: Should I hide my alien collection?

I think I should at least have a sofa and kitchen table + chairs before I invite anyone, but I don’t know how long it’ll take for me to find them! Also, I would hate to see my brand new sofa ruined by food or drink. (Or am I being too obsessive?)

I’m thinking I’d have it on a Thursday or so. Friday nights most people want to go out and get drunk because they don’t have work the next day; and my house-warming party wouldn’t be the best place to spend a Friday night…

Luckily, I have more than 6 months to think this one, too, through.

(What’s up with that misaligned window?)

Tomorrow’s my last day before the 2-week vacation (my first part of vacation — I have 2 weeks left after that). As usual, I’m worried that I haven’t shared enough information with my project manager back-up — or the tech people for that matter. Oh well, I have a few must-do things tomorrow, including a work-related phone call I must make. I’ve been postponing it for eternity because I don’t like official phone calls.

I did make an official phone call quite easily yesterday: I was inquiring about an apartment I heard about through the grapevine but, alas, it had been reserved when I called. Too bad; it would’ve been at an excellent location. The thought of reserving it, though, made me want to get an own apartment — desperately. I’ll have to go to the bank some day to make plans and hear what sort of price range I could consider.

This week has been really busy. On Tuesday I went in to the city for the first time when we had dinner at Sydney Tower (Centerpoint Tower).

The food was really good; I even tried some kangaroo and camel. The camel meat was really tough but the kangaroo was alright. I wouldn’t eat it regularly though. There also were tiny octopi (octopuses) but I wasn’t feeling quite that adventurous. We saw the fireworks they had arranged for the cruiseships Queen Mary 2 and Queen Elizabeth 2.

On Wednesday we went to Stanwell Park for some nice views

and then to Scarborough for some lunch (I had fish and chips — how boring am I?! It was delicious, though). Then we drove down to Wollongong for some more views and choc tops (soft ice with chocolate coating).

On Thursday we went into the city again. We walked through the Rocks (the old part of the city) to the Opera House.

Strolled through the Royal Botanical Gardens to the Library of NSW. There were some nice exhibitions there about old books and escaped convicts. The last stop was the Sydney Aquarium where I saw the platypus! I didn’t know they were so small — only 30 cm (about a foot) long. It was a fast bugger so I couldn’t get a proper picture…

We were knackered from all the walking so we decided to leave the Wildlife World for the next day. So, today we went to the Wildlife World where we saw all kinds of insects, reptiles and of course…

the wombat

the wallabi

and of course, the koala

Unfortunately there were no kangaroos, probably because they need so much space to live in.

I had good luck in shopping too: found a book on Stephen King’s unpublished stories (I forget the name and it’s safely wrapped up) and Dreamfall (PC game). I can’t buy much more — I only have 20 something dollars (AUD) left!

My friend’s mother-in-law took me to Cronulla Beach today. On the way there we drove through a national park and it was like in a jungle there! It was all green even though there had been a bush fire a few years ago. I got an amazing look at the area because there were loads of steep hills. Beautiful!

At the beach we walked through the rocks that are under water at high tides.

We stopped for a bit in the shade

When we got up from the rocks onto the pathway we came across a palm tree!

Quite beautiful, isn’t it?

After the walk we went for a lunch at South Beach Seafood. I had my first taste of fish and chips and also tried some crab. The crab was in a funny looking dough ball with the claw sticking out. Really good though, quite sweet. Then we walked down a street full of shops and I bought some things to take home. Can’t tell what they are yet because my sister’s reading this.