August was an odd month. I worked a lot as it was a busy time at work. My work contract was scheduled to end in July but they asked me to stay on through at least late August and said they were looking to create a new role for me - either a local one or a global one based in Australia, or some mix of the two. I liked the firm and the team a lot and was hopeful and didn’t do much job seeking.
Our big event was the Saturday before my birthday so I knew I would be zonked on my actual birthday. A wanted to do all this lovely spa stuff but I had a feeling I would not have the mental bandwidth to enjoy it.
One thing I love about my birthday in Australia is that it is usually on/around the coldest day of the year here, so I thought it would be fun to get up early, do some cool water swimming and sauna at a pop up sauna in Barangaroo. The sauna looked lovely and was situated on Marrinawi Cove, which is a really neat swimming hole right in downtown Sydney.
Marrinawi Cove is a special place used for hundreds if not thousands of years by the local indigenous Gadigal people for swimming, fishing and daily life. It was closed for a long time due to pollution but reopened in 2023 as a dedicated swimming spot. I love it there, and was excited to enjoy the pop up sauna. I booked a 7-8am slot, just after sunrise, and thought it would be a great way to start my 46th year.
My work event on Saturday went well, A picked me up and had yummy comfort food waiting at home. Then just before 8pm I got a text message from the sauna place asking if I they could move us from 7am to a 9am spot. I was really PO’d and quibbled a bit with A over whether to say yes. He didn’t see any harm in doing what they asked, but I was annoyed because I picked the spot I wanted to come, they confirmed it, and I thought it was ridiculous to ask to shift us two hours later with less than 12 hours notice. If I wanted to come at 9am I would have chosen that spot in the first place. But A thought I was being dramatic so I relented and texted back “ok.” They said “Thanks, we don’t have anyone else scheduled until 11am so if you want to stay longer than an hour please feel free, in consideration for your flexibility.”
We showed up a bit before 9am and the sauna was warming up. We had a dip and when we went into sauna, there was a woman already in it. She was lovely and very quiet but unfortunately the (very odd) way the sauna was set up, there was only one seat that had a true view to the water and of course she was sitting there. I found it very unrelaxing to look at a stranger or stare at a wall, so we went back out to swim, then came out when we saw here going into the water.
We had the sauna to ourself for a while, then she came back in. Sat for a while but then it was also awkward to have her staring at us, so went back for another dip. Came back in and sat for a while until we realised A was bleeding all over the sauna. He had cut his foot on a rock or something!
There weren’t any cleaning supplies so I grabbed some paper towels from our car, and I had alcohol for ear drying purposes and we used that to disinfect. I got A wrapped up and as we were going home I texted the guy about what had happened, that we cleaned and also put alcohol over the affected areas, but it would be good to clean and disinfect just in case. Never got a response but figured I’d done my part at least.
I wondered if this was an inauspicious start to 46. On the happier side, when we got home we showered, I put on a fun lingerie bodysuit with garters, we got drunk on champagne and had a tipsy photoshoot and hooked up all over the house. (Other than a glass of champagne with my team at the airport home from the work trip in Jakarta, this was my first time drinking alcohol since November 2024, so about 9 months?)
I don’t think we did much else in August. We were inspecting a lot of properties, mostly in Potts Point/Elizabeth Bay neighborhood and nearby, which is a cute area with nice water views but lots of charming little cafes, shops, etc. Then we went to a property auction in a totally different area which was a bizarre experience I should write in depth about sometime but long story short, we got the place.
By September my job still hadn’t come back with a longer term offer so I started applying for things and had a few interviews. I got another contract offer so I set my last day as 12 September. My (old) job had an office move that week so everyone was WFH from the 10th so it was good to have a relaxed day on September 11th which is always a tough day.
I desperately needed a mental re-set after taking almost no annual leave for a year so I had a solo week in Switzerland at a cute hotel right on Lake Zurich. It was great - too short but felt like real life again. Flew back and started my new job two days later on 22 September.
The Saturday fireworks near our current place had been switched to drone shows for September so we went to see that once as well. A little creepy - I like fireworks better.
New job has been good so far. People seem very nice and work isn’t the most challenging but also requiring constant follow up, lots of calls and being on camera/interaction with people which is a bit exhausting.
October was a pretty good month. I am a swiftie so of course we celebrated the Life of a Showgirl album release in the theatre which was fun and then a party at a local hotel. I wore a short red sequin dress with super high heeled red shoes and sparkly nude fishnet stocking and gloves. Party was a bit lame but it was nice to have an excuse to dress up and it looked like most people had at least tried a bit.
We closed on our new place on 20 October but still have not moved in as we’ve been replacing the carpet with hardwood floors, plus having lots of issues with the strata building management over installation of air conditioning and replacing the sliding glass doors. We just finished the floors today, my last day before work again tomorrow.
We went out for Halloween which was fun but also annoying. We booked a couple of events that looked really fun. The first one, the Dark Dinner at the Rocks looked really cool offering themed gourmet dining and immersive entertainment. We put on loads of creepy makeup (whitened face, black lipstick and hollowed out dramatic dark eyes) A in a black suit and I wore a corpse bride-ish black veil, gloves, and long back dress with black mesh bottom/train.
Headed to the party location and there was nothing happening at the address on the tickets/email. No one seemed to know anything so after asking around 4-6 people working at the festival, we found a manager who said they had seen the dinner being loaded in at a different location about a kilometer away.
My mind was blown yet again. We walked to where they told us which was fortunately correct, but it was now about 30 minutes after the start time and there was still a long line for entry. It was raining at this point and line was barely moving. We asked some people it they had received an email or text or something about the venue change and no one had - most people went to the original location and walked like us, but I spoke with one girl who said she had just happened to check the website and the new location was listed there.
Finally we got in and it turned out the reason for the delay was that they only had 1 person checking people’s tickets, who was also opening prosecco and pouring prosecco for each entrant. Unreal. Once we got in it was a bit better but the whole event was very odd. On the bright side, almost everyone was dressed up, and some really great costumes. And food was actually pretty good, with a spooky highlight being fresh oysters served with syringes of mignonette that looked like blood. Pretty creepy but also tasty!
The performances were ridiculous though. They mostly consisted of two men reading lines off an iPad about a “gentleman” who was murdered in a plot by his “servants.” I was mostly annoyed by the lack of effort but A also raised a great point that the story was a bit tone deaf in basically asking us to be horrified by enslaved people, likely indigenous, revolting against their “master”? So strange.
We stayed until dessert and coffee was served then headed out to the regular festival, which was free and also so much fun. Huge installations of creepy spiders and things, people in a festive mood, loads of food and drinks at little carts and things. It was raining but we walked the festival a couple of times, had some drinks, took pictures with people who asked, and had a lot of fun.
November - All Souls Day we went to an outdoor screening of Nosferatu (the 2024 one) which was also kind of cluster. We waited in a queue for over 90 minutes and the movie started about an hour and 120 minutes late - they said it was because there had been some rain in the morning that pushed back the start time of the earlier shows. (Again, if it’s raining why not just cancel rather than delay 3 different sessions for over an hour each? Or build in more breaks or something?) Anyway.
I have nothing written in my planner for November but remember we also flew to Brisbane to see Addison Rae in concert. It was such a fun trip! We stayed in a cute loft apartment in an area with loads of bars and shops and restaurants right by the concert venue. The show was terrific and we went out afterwards, including to a dance club which was really funny. Nice breakfast and we we went to a bakery that my colleague loves and brought back some Brooki’s Cookies for our team afternoon tea. Had an early morning flight home and went right into the office via train from the airport.
At the end of November we had friends from Estonia in town which was really nice. We went for a swim at Bondi Icebergs and dinner afterwards.
December went by in kind of a blur. The terrorist attack on Bondi was shocking and sad. Other than that we spent most of every weekend at Bunnings or doing bricolage. A was injured so we didn’t work out much, but we did go to a couple of concerts, Sofia Isella at the UNSW and then Lady Gaga at a stadium show the next day. Both were good.
We hadn’t seen Lady Gaga since maybe 2010 in Las Vegas and this was a way bigger show. We had front section GA tickets and were about 20 meters from both the front right stage and the catwalk stage. The oddest thing is that even though we were relatively close to the actual performers, almost everyone was facing ahead to look at the show on the big screens, even when this meant facing completely away from the actual people. It was eerie, like they were hypnotized.
It felt like we were waiting for Christmas for ages, then suddenly it was here. We didn’t do our traditional Christmas at Nobu as we were trying to maximize our time to work on the house/floor but we did Barry’s Bootcamp in the morning and went out on a boat to see the start of the Sydney to Hobart sailing race on Boxing Day.
Did Barry’s again on NYE then went to the Sydney Opera House to see the fireworks show. I got a blowdry at a salon where they took me 30 minutes late for a 45 minute appointment and I wore a silver sequined dress and heels and brought sparkly flat orans to walk home in. Sadly it was another laughably poorly managed event but we had fun. We went outside for the midnight fireworks and there was randomly a countdown concert by the Australian Broadcasting Company featuring some of the Australian Idol winners doing covers, then a finale by Mel C from the Spice Girls. So funny. We stayed out until around 3am, walked home and got McDonald’s on the way.
And that was 2025.
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