"Dreams from my father", Barack Obama

Have just finished reading this book, which is Obama's first book, written before he got into formal politics and just after he finished Harvard Law School. It's an exploration of race issues in America, seen through the prism of several key phases and experiences in Obama's life including growing up as the mixed race son of a white mother and absent black father in Hawaii, living in Indonesia as a child, working as a community organiser in poor black neighbourhoods in Chicago, and finally during a trip to Kenya to meet with his father's family.

I was really pleasantly impressed with this. It's written beautifully and is very, very personal (rather than political). It's a strong insight into Obama's values and where they've come from, and reading it with the benefit of history passing, it's easy to see where his political philosophy has come from and how it's been shaped by a very personal connection with 'the political'. More than anything it gave me a great sense of hope that someone with his level of integrity, deep thinking and willingness to challenge and be challenged, can make it to the position he has. I don't often feel inspired but reading this, I truly did. Recommend it to anyone who wants to feel like that!

Aaargh bureaucracy!

This week's stress has been the nightmarish process that is replacing a UK passport while living in Australia. K and I had holiday planned for mid September - Vanuatu, diving, mmmm! - when I realised that my passport had gone missing from its usual safe place (obviously not so safe after all, yes yes I know!)

For some reason known only to them, the British High Commission in Australia has decided to 'outsource' all of its passport application processing to a 'regional centre' in - wait for it - New Zealand!!! The local consuls refuse to answer any queries about passports, and you can't contact the main embassy in Canberra other than by post or in person. So all you have to go on is website information or information from a helpline that costs $3.50 minute and seems to connect you to a call centre in Inverness (judging by accents of staff I spoke to!)

Then there's the fact you have to get your application and photo signed by someone who's known you for 2 years and is a 'professional' - not that easy when you've only lived somewhere for 1 year! And don't even get me started on the rules for photos...

Anyway, having jumped through various hoops this week, the application is now in progress but will take up to 4 weeks, and could be longer if they decide they need more info, which was cutting it v fine for our holiday. Thankfully the lovely people at Dive Adventures, our travel agent, managed to postpone it for us for not too much extra, so we're now going in November. Fingers crossed for no more hoops!

Possibly the worst restaurant in Sydney?

Last night K and I had by far the worst meal / eating out experience we've had in Sydney, where generally the standard is pretty high and you usually feel like you've had good value. Not this time.

The culprit - the Coachmen in Surry Hills. It's a Russian restaurant which may not be instantly attractive to everyone, but was the appeal to us as we still have very happy memories of the fantastic Russian place in Glasgow's East End.

Sadly this was a complete letdown on all fronts:

Service - appalling. Slow and totally incompetent. Long wait to ordering, then once we'd ordered, the waiter came back not once, but twice over the next ten minutes to tell us that first one of our starters, and then one of our mains wasn't available. Then he brought the wrong bottle of wine, then he took ages to bring the right one. We had to ask twice for tap water, then we had to stand up and search the place to get our bill at the end of the night (the waiter was found in the bar chatting to his mates).

Food - mediocre at best. 3 out of 4 of our first choices weren't available. K's borscht and beef stroganov was ok apparently. My crepes with caviar were ok, but my cabbage rolls with beef were pretty disgusting and I had to leave half of it. Our selection of pickled vegetables had come straight out of a supermarket jar as far as I could tell.

(Note when waiter came to clear our plates, he asked how my cabbage rolls had been and I said 'hmmm, so so', to which he replied 'oh well, at least you've left some for my dinner' - cementing him in my top 5 bad waiters of all time list!!)

Atmosphere - non existent. The place was cold (the advertised 'roaring log fires' were piles of ash), the music was dodgy, the 'decor' consisted of shelves lined with cheap Russian dolls, the bar / lounge area where you're supposed to relax with a vodka was full of staff loafing around and/or shouting at each other.

Price - shocking. We chose the place partly because it's in the list of places we can use our Sydney Entertainment Book (various discounts & offers), so we got one of the mains free. But by the time the $5 per head charge for the 'floor show' (some dodgy singers that we could hardly hear or see) and the 2.5% credit card surcharge was added, not to mention the pretty exorbitant prices in the first place, we'd paid $120 all up (about £60). For Sydney that's expensive and you'd really expect to get fantastic food and service for that.

Please never, ever, ever go to this dive of a place.

Running diary / blog

Have decided to set up a new blog / running diary, mainly to help me keep track of what I'm doing and give me a bit of motivation!

Anyone who's interested can find it at http://mylifeinmiles.blogspot.com and I'll put a link on the sidebar too.

August already!

Wow, it's 1st August already...

This week has been busy and eventful, starting with an early start on Monday as I had to fly up to Brisbane for work. Good to pass time at the airport catching up with my brother. Didn't see much of Brisy other than a couple of offices and my hotel room as I clocked up a couple of long days in my last week of juggling 2 jobs...

Weds I was tutoring for the School for Social Entrepreneurs (I do this as a 'spare time activity' - hmm!) and then in the evening took part in my first ever book group meeting - how I love being a thirtysomething cliche! Was a fun evening - group of women who all catch up over dinner once a month and then get round to talking about a couple of books for 10 minutes at the end of the night! Swapped a couple of my books for Barack Obama's first book and a New Zealand book about a homeless guy - a good way to expand my reading I reckon!

Thurs & Fri were pretty hectic finishing up with my job at Mission Australia, possibly not helped by a late night on Thurs where K and I met up after work, ended up going out for dinner then chatting till the wee small hours over one or three glasses of wine - we've not seen much of each other lately so it was good to have some 'quality time' but obviously not for my liver...

Good training though for Fri eve where I had my leaving drinks in the Orbit Bar, which is on level 47 of the Australia Square tower, and which rotates, doing a 360 degree tour of Sydney in 2 hours. The cocktails were good, the views were great, the service was terrible, so we headed off after a couple of drinks and ended up on a bit of a pub crawl of Sydney without having any food - surprisingly I felt ok this morning and we've spent a relaxed day catching up on the papers, eating lots of food and generally chilling out. Bliss.

Photos are of the famous "Sydney sprawl" captured on descent into Sydney airport from recent flight, and of the view from halfway across the Harbour Bridge at night. I finally remembered to take my camera and tripod with me when I walked over it this week! This is what I see on my regular running route - I'm a lucky girl!

Christmas in July

A few months ago I said to K, ‘why don’t we have a few people round for some mulled wine and nibbles to do the whole “Christmas in July” thing?’ Christmas in July being an Australian tradition which must have been conjured up by European settlers who felt that, frankly, winter in Australia should be marked by some festivities involving lots of food and drink. Quite right too I reckon as Christmas here is completely wasted on summer – who on earth wants to have all that going on when it’s 35 degrees outside!

Anyway, as these things do, our ‘few drinks and nibbles’ turned into a feast fit for kings for 12 people (was meant to be 16 but we lost a few on the day to the ongoing lurgy striking people everywhere which may or may not be swine flu).

So last week I spent most of my evenings (when I wasn’t in Melbourne!) preparing mince pies, cooking a turkey, chopping veg and generally making lists of things we needed to buy (like plates and cutlery!)

Saturday itself was about 5 hours of prepping and cooking and making the flat look presentable, which was all good fun and very much worth it to have our first proper hosting in our flat since we moved in 9 months ago! The mulled wine went down a treat, as did all the grub, including some fab additions brought along by guests. I’m no domestic goddess but I was quite proud of my mince pies I must say!

Good chat, good fun and K did all the washing up – that’s what I call a successful evening! Oh yes and we’ve got more wine left over than we know what to do with thanks to the moderation of Aussies when it comes to drinking (seriously).

Theatre, magicians & coffee!

This weekend has been packed with lots of lovely things. It began with dinner in the pub and a couple of glasses of red on Friday night, before a play (The Promise) at the Belvoir Street Theatre in Surry Hills. It’s a fairly funky theatre but unfortunately the play wasn’t up to much. Three acts, three people, lots of long, drawn-out script and just not a lot of anything to hold on to. It was set in Russia during & after the war and was all about a love triangle but don’t know what the end was because we gave up after the 2nd act! Bizarrely the female lead was played by the same actress who was the female lead in the last play we saw – I wonder if she’s been on Neighbours!!

After cleaning the flat and doing other Saturday things during the day, we then went out to the Opera House on Saturday evening. It’s a 7 minute ferry trip from our flat to there, which is especially beautiful to do at sunset. We had a pre-event glass of wine sitting outside watching the sun go down over the Harbour Bridge. Moments like that are when I really love living here.

Then it was into the event itself – a magic show!! 90 minutes of brilliant fun and really classic entertainment and I absolutely loved it!! (It was a surprise from K – he really is good to me). Couldn’t figure out how any of the tricks were being done, although after a few hours of post-event dissection, we reckon we’re onto most of them now – very, very good though and would recommend it to anyone (Holy Cow 2, global tour underway!).

As it was an early show and was finished by about 7.30, we then went for dinner at Waterfront, which as you might imagine, is on the waterfront…We used our new Entertainment Card (you pay about $50 and get a card that gives you discounts at hundreds of restaurants) so got one of our mains free; we had seafood and a bottle of verdelho and it was a definite 9 out of10. A few drinks after dinner, accompanied by lots of laughing at very pissed people (we were in The Rocks, the tourist district where every pub has its own bouncer), and then we taxied home.

This morning (Sunday) we were both up fairly bright and early (well, for us that is!) to go for a run as the “City to Surf” race is in 3 weeks and it’s 14km. Unfortunately K seems to have torn or pulled a muscle in his calf and looks to be out of it – he had to hobble home from the run this morning. Apart from the pain I think he may be secretly relieved that he doesn’t have to do any more training!

This afternoon we met up with some friends to sample the delights of the annual Sydney Coffee Festival, which was absolutely packed with thousands of people sampling coffees, teas, hot chocolates and snacks among the crowded streets of The Rocks (yes, we were back there again!).

It was an unseasonably warm day today, reaching 24 degrees at one point, so a very pleasant time was had by all and we pootled back on a ferry about 5pm, just in time to catch another beautiful pink and blue sunset sky.

Snapped this picture of the Opera House with shadows as we waited for ferry back. The apartment block at the left hand side is ours – so lucky!