Polish Cuisine

I love Polish food, so when Oleg called up to organize dinner this week and gave me the option 'Japanese or Polish' I voted very enthusiastically for Polish, so much so that even though his sister who's out here for a visit voted Japanese, I won.

Mai was late, held up by some work being done on her flat, so we went ahead and ordered without her. When she arrived and found out Oleg had ordered Tripe Soup as an appetizer, she was shocked. "Don't you know what tripe is? You hate tripe! It's that thing in Vietnamese soup that you never eat. It's, um, chewy stomach lining." Oops. Turns out Polish tripe isn't chewy. There was great amusement when the food came.

East Coast Adventure

I flew out to NY for the weekend, where I met up with Roland, who was in the area for business all week. We also met up with Kate Fisher, who's working over at IBM, so we had a proper little UNSW reunion.

Two days is NOT enough time to explore NY! I will have to go back at some point.

Great things about my flatmate

When I bike home from work in the rain, and it's cold, and I've got a cough, and I'm contemplating making some KD for dinner, she's already made pasta from scratch, opened up a bottle of wine, has chocolate from some unwanted admirer, and her boyfriend's done some baking, all of which I'm welcome to take part in.

Sooooooooo nice!

Torres del Paine

I met up with a bunch of my former undergrads and some of their friends in Patagonia to do the W-Trek in Torres del Paine national park. It. Was. Spectacular.

Unexpected Stop-Over

Because United kinda sucks, the first flight on my ridiculously hopscotch journey to Chile was delayed due to mechanical troubles. I got into DC sometime after midnight, and all my connecting flights were gone and screwed. They put me up in a hotel for the night, and rescheduled my flights to the next day. 10pm the next day. Sigh. So I spent the day doing some awesome stuff in DC.

Here I am with Abe Lincoln:



The National Mall:



The Lunar Lander:



and the Wright Flyer:



Pretty awesome mandatory stop.

My Life Is Ridiculous

Excerpt of a gmail chat with Sue about exactly 2 weeks ago:

good luck!

Sue: i will call tomorrow afternoon and let you know how they went

ciao

me: excellent

8:22 PM hey, did I tell people I'm going to be in Chile next week?

Sue: what

why

me: fun

more hiking

Sue: with friends?

me: yeah, some Aussies

Sue: sweet

me: :)

I should send an e-mail