emoticon

My boss is not good with emails. There is often a mismatch between what he intends to say and how it is perceived by the recipient. His emails are often terse, negative and cold (even if he intended the words to be positive). He is so much better face to face.

I had a meeting with him last week and brought up the issue about the tone of his emails. He reckons it might be cultural as several senior colleagues have already been on his back about his email manner. I suggested he uses emoticons to make his intent clearer.

Sydney weekender

Nathan and I were in Sydney on the weekend for a friend's husband's 30th birthday dinner. [Sorry fellow Sydney-based bloggers, we didn't have time to catch up this time...it was a very short visit]

The friend is one of Nathan's oldest childhood friends. Her husband is absolutely wonderful. Super nice guy. Very thoughtful. In fact, we once told the friend that if she and her husband ever split, and if we had to choose, we'd happily be friends with just the husband (you can imagine it didn't go down too well).

Anyhow, it was a bit of a rush on saturday to get things in order. We dropped the dog off to the dog hotel on Saturday morning and flew out of Melbourne in the late afternoon.

We went to Crow's Nest for the birthday dinner...indian food. Delicious.

We stayed overnight at the Park Royal near Darling Harbour. Nathan and I had two separate beds...pure luxury.

On Sunday morning we met up again with our friend and her husband (birthday boy) for breakfast in Redfern. The restaurant is called St Jude's and was absolutely packed with people. There was a big bunch of people outside waiting for coffee. We were fortunate to get a table. The inside of the cafe was decorated with creepy old dolls (I managed to find a photo of the cafe on the web with one of the dolls).

After lunch we walked to one of my favourite interior design shops, where I bought a random piece of Staffordshire pottery that was so ugly that I actually felt compelled to own it. I later found out that this particular figurine (seen on the right of the photo) is called the 'faggot gatherer'. How appropriate.

All weekend long, I have been obsessively looking at the dog webcam installed at the dog hotel. I felt like an obsessive parent. Here you can see a picture of Truffs (she is the black fluffy one who is roughly in the middle of the shot). She has to spend one more day at the hotel because today is a public holiday in Melbourne (except for me...I have to work).

swoon

Every now and then, I see someone who is so gob-smackingly good looking that one cannot help but stare. Today was one of those days. Nathan and I were on our way to meet my family for lunch and this very handsome guy got onto our tram. I had seen him before...on the reality tv show, I will survive. Judge for yourself. 

eating dirt

I've heard a lot about edible soil. Yesterday I got to try it for myself. It was in celebration of my youngest sister's 30th. The restaurant was Maha. We went for the 6 course banquet. It was amazing. It's one of those places where each course is like a work of art. But unlike some fancy places, I actually felt satiated by the end of the evening.