The unplanned long weekend

With the crazy week I had at work, I could barely remember that it was a long weekend. I had to keep reminding myself not to go to work on the Monday. I guess because I've been so busy, I didn't plan to have a huge long weekend like I usually do. And maybe thats why it didn't seem like a long weekend to me. Anyway, with the weather the way it was, all I wanted to do was go home and curl up. Alas, I had arranged to have a catchup dinner with the old CBA gang. (Not before a few drinks though!) We headed downstairs to Chicane before 5pm and started hitting the drinks with a few of my workamtes. After A LOT of drinks, we battled the rain and wind to make our way to Encasa a good 40mins late. I had to walk in the rain since my umbrella couldn't fight the wind.

We actually ordered less food than when I went with Cookies and MnMs the other week, but I was SO unbelievably full I couldn't even drink sangria! Me! Not being able to drink sangria! Anyway, we had an absolutely wonderful night. I even did it as a surprise birthday thing for one of the guys. We didn't do a cake or anything, but I did rock up with a birthday hat and a lei, which he walked around the city with afterwards. And by the way, if you're ever at Encasa and they have a fig creme brulee special, GET IT!!! YUMMMM!!!

Saturday I slept in until about 11 when the doorbell started going off every few minutes. I spent the afternoon entertaining relatives and family friends before I met up with Cookies and Karen at Broadway for a bit of retail therapy. Battling the rain and wind, I managed to get there in one piece. We ended up watching Shrek 3 using my free movie tickets. I really enjoyed Shrek 3. It wasn't as good as the first 2, but after a hard week at work, it was great to unwind with.

After the movie ended, we decided to wander up and down Glebe Point Rd to look for some food. Nothing really inspired us so we headed to Spanish Tapas, a restaurant I've been meaning to try for a long time:

How cute is that jug?

Clockwise: Stuffed Capsicum in salsa sauce, Fried chicken wings cooked in white wine and garlic, bread for sauce mopping, creamy garlic mushrooms, fried potatoes with spicy salsa sauce

The food was nice even though it was bland. We had to ask for salt to season every dish. It was much nicer after that. However, it still couldn't measure up to Encasa. And it makes it particularly hard to compare considering I only had Encasa the night before! Their sangria, however, was delicious! I'm tempted to keep going back just for the sangria! Although next time I'll order Paella instead of their tapas.

Pretty much all of Sunday involved sleeping in and watching Ugly Betty. I did have a volleyball spike training session at night that left me all achy and sore. Who knew you could grow muscles around your shoulders like that??

Monday morning was absolute agony for me. Everything hurt. And it made it worse that I had to get up at 5am to take my parents to the airport in the freezing cold!!! After dropping them off, I quickly drove up and hopped back into bed. I refused to get up until after 12. It was then I dragged my half beaten up body out of bed. And again, more Ugly Betty and then grocery shopping. The one thing I love about my parents being away is that I can cook what I want, when I want. And to start off, I decided on a nice healthy and hearty breakfast:

Seriously! It is healthy! No butter on toast, practically no oil when cooking the eggs. I used leftover bacon that was sitting in the fridge, and most of it had all the fat trimmed off (Except for that one evil tempting piece at the bottom)

Expect a lot more home cooking photos!

Pointless rant about volleyball and photography

I had an exhausting weekend. Usually after my 1.5hrs of beach volleyball, I go home, shower and passout. This week, after our class, we commandeered a court and played a few games with the other people in the class, plus a few stragglers on the beach. So after about 3hrs of beach volleyball, I get home, shower and sleep. Surprisingly, I didn't sleep the entire night away. I managed to drag myself out of bed after an hour nap, which was sooooooo hard to do! All I wanted to do was sleep! But then considering the past week, the earliest I've gone to bed is midnight, beach volleyball may not be the cause of my zombification.

I finally got to sleep in on the Sunday (First time in agesssssssssss!) and decided to take my camera for a spin at the Auburn Japanese Gardens. I haven't been to the Japanese Gardens in YEARS! I used to go there all the time with my family for BBQ. The last time I went would have been......10 years ago? And the time before that would have probably been about 5 years? I was quite disappointed when I got there yesterday. It seems to have lost all its glory. Of course, I was going in Autumn, and all their Cherry Blossom trees are bare or missing. The wandering peacocks also seem to be missing. I remember as a kid I could wander through the gardens and see a dozen or so peacocks roaming around. Yesterday, all I got was a few swans and ducks. Quite boring photography subjects to be honest. But then, to make a shot interesting, its up to the photgrapher more than the subject itself.

I'm quite lucky to have a workmate who is a top notch photographer. He's the one who's been convincing me to get a DLSR for about a year now! So when I finally caved in and took the plunge, he promised that we'll go out one day and take some shots together. Of course that hasn't happened, and the little photography tutorial he was supposed to give me, hasn't happened either. But me, being the curious beaver that I am, has been a little obsessive about photography lately. I've been fiddling with my camera whenever I have free time. Turning this dial and pressing that button to learn what my camera does. So without any proper instructions, I took my camera out to the Zoo the other week and went nuts with the camera.

When I showed the photos to my workmate, he was impressed that I took so many shots all in Manual. He had guessed that I would be using the Auto function until we get a chance to take the camera out for a spin. But why spend so much money on a camera, only to use the Auto function? If I was to do that, I should just use a Point and shoot. And even then I don't use the Auto anymore on it! My philosophy is that you need to take a lot of bad photos, to take a good photo. Yes, initially a lot of my photos are going to be crap, but I need to learn WHY they're crap and improve on them. Taking photos in Auto is just the easy way out and I'll never learn how to take better shots. Photos in Auto would be "good", but considering the money I spent on the camera, I want them to be "F**kin awesome!!". Of course, sometimes you just have to use Auto, like when the scene is just too hard to take (Cloudy, sunny and raining all in one go) or when you're drunk. :D

The other thing I've noticed since I got my camera is that I am addicted to Flickr. Not only are there thousands and thousands of awesome shots that you can use for inspiration, but its a chance to get feedback on your own shots as well. I've also used it as a backup of my photos. When I spent the long weekend battling a stupid computer virus, there was a 10min window when I tried to reboot and it said "Disk Failure". I had seen something like that previously, when my computer got fried. I felt the blood drain from my face when it looked like I had lost everything on my computer. Lucky it was a false alarm. So for the past week, I've been uploaded a whole heap of my photos onto Flickr. I've even upgraded myself to a Pro account so I can have unlimited storage. For a trigger happy person like me, I need all the backup I can get. Plus, I figured it'll be a good way to post up photos of my trip without completely killing this blog with the 234452353 photos I post up!

Anyway, you can check out my photos if you're bored.

Weekend recap

Friday:

I did absolutely nothing. I slept in, I ate, I messed around on the computer a bit, I watched A LOT of TV and I recovered from Thursday night with about 4L of water.

Saturday:
I woke up at 6am and it was POURING down with rain. I woke up again at 7am and it was only raining heavily. By 8am, it was reduced to a drizzle. When Moishii finally called at 9am, the sky outside my window was a nice clear blue. Decision was made and we're off to Taronga Zoo! I jump out of bed and quickly shower, grabbed a bite and before I could even pack most of my gear, Moishii was at my door. I rush out with my brand new Lowepro Slingshot bag and my baby Nikon D80 and we were off to the Zoo! 2 blocks from my house, it started raining. The next suburb away, the sun was shining. Another suburb away, we had the windscreen wipers on full blast. It looked like it was going to be one of those days.

We stopped by Toby's Estate for the best coffee in the world to prepare us for a long day at the zoo. After a relaxing coffee which we sculled down (Not because we were in a rush, but because the coffee was at the perfect temperature you can't help but gulp it down!) we headed off to Taronga Zoo. It looks like whether it was going to rain or shine was a suburb by suburb thing, so we thought we'd risk it and rock up the zoo and see how we go.

Well, it was pissin down rain. We were standing in the rain, with all our gear, waiting to get in. Why didn't it occur to us to go home? Well, it did, but since we drove all the way there, we thought we might as well go in. Within seconds of going in, we had each bought a poncho. This was a real sight......I had a massive hump on my back from the backpack, a massive lump on my chest from the camera. My head could barely fit through the poncho hood, and I was choking myself with the weight of the camera and the bag! Plus, the sleeves of the poncho was too short so we had to hold an umbrella to stop our sleeves getting wet! All of this whilst trying to take photos in the rain!! It didn't help that we were taking photos of animals that wouldn't keep still!! GDI!! Plus, it would go from pouring rain, to hot hot sunshine in a matter of minutes! AND I was trying to do everything in Manual Mode! Manual focus, aperture, shutter speed etc etc. Anyhoo, heres a few photos from the day. More can be seen at my flickr page:

We ended the night at Broadway, having more coffee and a movie session of Mr Bean on Holiday. We definately needed a good laugh after an exhausting day!! Little did I know that I was to have a long night ahead of me.

I got home ready to transfer all my photos to the computer, only to find out that I had a virus on my computer. I spent the entire night trying to kill the sucker.

Sunday:
Sunday morning was a real pain in the butt. The virus was still on my computer, luckily I had my laptop to use in the meantime (And yes, I isolated my desktop so it doesn't infect my other machines). I had to go to the cemetery early in the morning for our twice a year ritual. We then rushed home around lunchtime to grab a quick bite before dashing off to the driving range with my brother in law and the kids.

I was sooooo proud of myself! I haven't been to the driving range for over a year, but I was consistently hitting 100m with a 7 iron (For those who don't know golf, a 7 iron can only hit a ball to about 100m). My dad was saying he should take me onto the green. Over my dead body! I only like the driving range because I get to hit the ball and not have to chase it! Besides, I suck hitting with a wood.

After an exhausting session at the driving range, I headed home to work on my computer. I then proceeded to spend a good 6-7hours cleaning my computer of all infections. I was 30mins away from completely reformatting my machine when I found the little bastard and exterminated it. Then I had to fix my dad's computer because my nephews had gone and deleted all his bookmarks and changed all his settings! ARGH!!!

Monday:

I woke up in absolute agony. Everything was hurting from golf! It was like "OMG just rip my arms off NOW!!". I managed to drag my ass out of bed and slowly started processing my photos. I need a newer machine if I'm going to try and simultaneous edit 50 photos.......but I did get a few photos done despite my struggling computer.

Around 6pm, I had to drag my aching, creaking body to Volleyball. Its been a good few weeks since we've played indoor Volleyball (We've only been playing beach volleyball) and because we don't have enough people to form a team this season, we've asked the organiser to put us into a team. It was interesting playing with different people, but it also made it quite enjoyable as there is no expectations on the team. We did really well considering it was 5 people vs 6. We managed to take a set off last seasons first runner up team, so I'm happy.

Now all I want to do is just crash. When is the next long weekend??

Ouch!

Who said Volleyball is a non-contact sport?

It sucks being short and on the receiving end of an elbow..... Could be worse though. I could have panda eyes. Right now it looks like I had an accident with a magic marker.....or really poorly done runny makeup.....

Strange that I got elbowed in the cheekbone, but thats not where it's bruise. Oh wells. Lets hope it clears up for next Friday's massive company party. There will be plenty of photographers there.....