The UAE blocks Flickr? That's why I haven't posted here any of my photos from Abu Dhabi. Watch this space.

Raining and 12 degrees in Geneva. Why did I come back again... someone remind me?

I departed Canberra, very sad to go. I had a wonderful farewell dinner hosted by R&J and got to spend a large chunk of my last afternoon and night with my friend M, which was great.

I caught the train up to Sydney, which was slow but pleasant enough and was met by the wonderful V. My last night in Australia was a gorgeous one with a bunch of friends who I hadn't seen for ages, swapping NSTIW* stories - just grand. I even got to recap with some the next morning for a scrumptious brunch hosted by V&B.

The flight to Abu Dhabi is SOOOOOO long, but was pretty ok actually. I do recommend Etihad as an airline I must say! And my hotel choice seems to be an excellent one. While not close to the town centre, it has its own 1.3km beach as well as multiple swimming pools, the toiletries are l'Occitane and the room is just sumptuous. Now to find out how good the bed is....

night night!

So I am packing my bags to go home. I arrived with two full suitcases and am returning with two full suitcases but full of completely different stuff. 3 new pairs of shoes, 6 new shirts, 2 new mid-weight coats, 1 tailcoat, 1 new evening dress, and all sorts of lovely Australian gastronomic delights such as licorice bullets, jelly snakes and apricot delights.

I managed to eat a great laksa (Dickson noodle house), fantastic pho (Tudo in O'Connor) and kabak mucveri from my fave Turkish restaurant (Alanya, Manuka) and a good dose of my mum's cooking and my dad's barbecuing. All good.

I managed to: a) celebrate my birthday with friends and family; b) go to someone elses birthday celebration; c) injure myself requiring stitches; d) go to a wedding; c) go to a cocktail party; d) get a new house loan; e) organise bathroom renovations, garden clearing and repainting of the house; e) spend four days at the seaside; and f) not see nearly enough of anyone! Still, a lot done in a short time eh?

Tomorrow I take the train (1st class no less!) from Canberra to Sydney and then get to spend the evening catching up with a bunch of the Sydney peeps, which should be a hoot and hopefully will distract me from feeling sad about departing. Maybe. If you are a Sydney-sider, please join me at Miros on Liverpool street. 7pm.

 I was hard, harsh and unforgiving.  Three trailer loads to the tip (1 gone already 2 tomorrow), one trailer load for charity. 2 wardrobes given away. Old and ratty bookshelves and stereos and electronic stuff thrown out (with mental sighs).  3 fridges to be taken away for other SCA use.  Loads and loads of SCA stuff returned or donated to the Barony or others and old costumes finally given away (yes the famous coalwash elizabethan has been given to hospit).  

What a team effort!  I went through boxes in a mad sort, and people just kept feeding them out to me.   There were 8 of us for most of the time and we went continuously from 3.30pm till about 9pm. Whew.

Learning experiences: We discovered that rats REALLY love Tupperware.  All my cheap plastic containers are untouched. About $1000 of Tupperware had to be thrown out as being completely irretrievably eaten.  Rats particularly enjoy maroon lids (the green herb jars are untouched).   The surviving containers have been put in double garbage bags inside a chest of drawers and surrounded with napthalene which will hopefully put the nasty buggers off. 

Rats did chew into some of the boxes of paper, but then simply treated the books and papers with complete distain. The rolls of fabric were remarkably untouched,  phew!

I have a lot of jewellery boxes and a lot of jewellery. 

I have a lot of fabric

I have a lot of books - I can see a big big book sale when I move back to Australia. 

I did find some remarkable 80's clothing.

i did not find my ring. Damn. 

i did find a single photo of the first ever event held in Politarchopolis.

I did find the first edition of Bardic tales and my first edition of Cockatrice. 

I did find some photos from Rowany festivals past  with myself and my friends looking incredibly young (to be scanned). 

I am feeling tired, and smug and like I have well and truly earnt my trip to the coast tomorrow. 

 So today is the day to deal with the garage.  The goal is to try and dispose of a whole pile of furniture bits and pieces that I don't really want, clothes that no longer fit, and to rearrange the lot in some sort of useful and ordered fashion.  That is the theory. 

But it is 32 degrees (blech!) and the pile of boxes is huge and daunting.  But I do have a lovely team of people who have said they will spare some time to give me a hand.  Friends. Where would I be without them?

Junk food, gloves, dustmasks, drinks, all at the ready..... charge!!!

A tired but happy Kiriel am I today.  I got to see a good number of my dearest friends over the weekend, some all the way from Melbourne like montjoye and erudito , and also quatrefoil and other Sydney-siders. My dress was a success, my shoes a brief triumph (because of the hole in my foot I thought it best not to stretch it for too long in high heels). The only minus really was that it was a cocktail party and I could drink no cocktails.  The drama of my injured foot (I am such an attention seeker!) expanded to include a moderately impressive allergic reaction to antibiotics and the resulting cocktail of corticosteroids, antibiotics and phenergan (3 times a day!) didnt sound to me like a good thing to mix with alcohol.  But it is not like I am a big drinker anyway, so it was not a huge loss. 

A lovely party!

This morning I organised a Yum cha for brunch with those who had recovered enough to be awake. The restaurant is a little odd, being a chinese restaurant inside the Croatian Soccer Club, but was pretty ok, and good value for money I thought. $20 each in total. 

 11am start at the XY Dim Sum Dumpling House, 1st floor Grose Street Deakin.  You can drift in and out as you wish.  Cost is about $18 plus jasmine tea.  Let me know if you will come and how many you are.

1. Yum cha this Sunday - most likely venue seems to be Ginseng at the Hellenic club
2. Farewell for me!  Turkish restaurant in Jamieson if it is still open. 18 November
3. Hello goodbye dinner in Sydney, 20 November. Venue is open to suggestion. 

Let me know for which ones you will join me!

 I have decided that I am looking for shoes that have the EX factor.  Not the X factor, but quite deliberately EX.  You know the ones. The ones that are so gorgeous and sexy and elegant that it would make any ex-partner look at you and think "damn but I was a stupid p**ck for dumping her".  And they must be comfortable enough that you can continue to look poised and elegant for the whole evening. 

I don't have any ex's in particular who's nose I want to rub into their foolishness, but this is still what I want from my shoes. 

I have been looking at some of those shoes with the platform-y front, but though this would in theory give you the chance to have shoes that would be relatively comfortable and still have an elegant height heel, they instead make them ridiculously high at the heel as well so that they remain hideously uncomfortable.  sigh. 

Abu Dhabi was both interesting and ordinary.  On the street, many women are covered from head to toe in black and men pass in their equally long white robe, red and white or blue and white covering their heads. I thought at first it was a uniform and I guess in some ways it is - formal business dress. Canberra is looking very green - the grass is long, and I can't stop sneezing! 

• Golden orb spider silk cloth. (for my arachnophobic friends, the previous link does show spiders. If you just want to see the cloth without the article and photos of spiders, go here)
• Plush beating heart
• Furry Yay! scale
• Guerilla knitting
• Covent Garden yarnstorm

Thank you Book of Joe.

So I was offered a catering gig last weekend: a dinner party for 10. One vegan, one coeliac (also no dairy). Indian seemed the obvious choice, as it is very easy to cater to everyone's dietary quirks.

Easy to cater to dietary requirements, but easy to do? NO. Sure, I could go buy some curry pastes from the local Indian shop and whip up something, but c'mon, I am being PAID to do this... this is no throw-together dinner for mates.

Ok, so no problems. I will simply make the curries properly, from scratch. Easy.

HA! I say, HA!

For example... did you know that the first curry masala for Beef Vindaloo has 18 different spices in it? And that isn't the actual vindaloo, which has even more spices. You see, once you have made the masala, you use that to make a sauce (adding a pile more ingredients). That is still not a vindaloo sauce though..no no no! Because you then have to make another masala, which you cook with onions, and add the sauce and meat to, and then cook. The effort you put in though, does really show, producing a far more complex multi-layered curry that is genuinely spicy rather than just hot.

The menu:

Mango lassi 1
Mango lassi 2 (made with soy yoghurt)

Dahl (using 4 different dahls)
Palak panir 1 (with home made fresh cheese of course, and fresh spinach)
Palak panir 2 (the vegan version using tofu and soy yoghurt)
Potato and cauliflower curry
Beef vindaloo
Tandoori chicken 1
Tandoori chicken 2 (using soy yoghurt)
Pork vindaloo - goan style (very interesting; marinated in red wine and vinegar)
Lamb korma, Moghul style (also interesting, finished off with rosewater infused with saffron)
2 cucumber raita (one with soy yoghurt, one with dairy yoghurt)
... and of course all served with rice, chutneys (bought, I admit it) and some really scrummy home made naan.

Dessert was a choice of freshly made mango sorbet, or kulfi.

The kulfi was hell to make - again, if you "cheat" and use evaporated milk this would be quite straight forward. But if you decide for authenticities sake (well ok, I admit it... really because I couldn't find evaporated milk for sale anywhere in either Geneva or crossborder Frrance), it takes HOURS to cook down 2 litres of milk to 1/3 of its bulk. Still, moulded in a pretty shape, and sprinkled with gold leaf, it was almost worth the effort.

I was asked what was in the mango sorbet. Love that question. That would be mango, a squeeze of lemon juice, sugar and water. Doesn't get easier than that eh? Pity they didn't ask about the vindaloo!

Spices included: Turmeric, coriander (seeds and fresh leaves), cumin (ground and whole), mace, chili, red chilies, green chilies, saffron, ginger, garlic, besan (yep used as a spice.. who knew?), cloves, cardamon, cinnamon, cassia, mustard, fenugreek, asafoetida, pepper, fennel seed,

The Human Rights Council has been pretty grueling so far. Have managed to keep under 12 hours work a day, which is something I guess.  There are around 28 different texts being negotiated at the same time as a continuous stream of panels, side events, reports, debates and interactive dialogues go on. Some of the texts seem almost medieval in their thinking, while others are so weak and watery they might as well be blank sheets of paper.  All in all it is both terminally dully and endlessly fascinating.

If anyone is suffering insomnia, you can watch the webcast of the council .

Well the reception seemed to go swimmingly.  The attendees ate and ate and ate, which means they were either starving or my cooking was good, or pehaps a little of both.

I had been told there would be 50 people, and then yesterday afternoon found out that they had had in fact 70 people rsvp. Luckily I had catered generously, plus had a little on-the-spot canape up my sleeve.  I was able to throw together smoked salmon, ricotta and sage crepe rolls on the spot. With that addition, there were 10 pieces per person. Generally at a pre-dinner reception, people will eat between 6 and 8 pieces of food each. 

There were about 12 miniature chocolate cupcakes and 5 cucumber and salmon canapes left.

Client happy, Kiriel happy, and the money earnt from this should cover nicely a long weekend away in Ticino.

Tomorrow is a busy day.  Meetings all day, Robert arriving in the morning, choir starts up again, and I am catering a reception for 50 people.  Trying to keep it simple so I don't actually need to be there...

- sundried tomato palmiers
- gruyere gougers
- potato and pesto tortilla
- caramelised onion and gorgonzola pizzettas
- mushroom mini focaccias
- five spice duck and mango salsa croustades
- cucumber boats with smoked salmon and pickled ginger
- miniature chocolate cup cakes

Best of all, I got to use my new toys... my gorgeous new knives.  Interesting that my facebook has rarely excited so many comments as the photo of my knives!  Mind you, I can't blame them... they are very very lovely.

As an insomniac I am ridiculously sensitive to sleeping tablets. 

In reality, I am not actually an insomniac... I suffer from RLS: Restless Leg Syndrome. It has the effect of keeping me awake, as I am unable to lie still. RLS is that awful "something crawling around inside my legs" feeling that means that I sit on the aisle when I go to the theatre, or when I fly, so that I can get up and move around. My family calls it "twitchy legs" and it was ony relatively recently that I discovered it has a name and that other people suffer from it apart from my mum and I!

Mine meant that for quite a few years, I managed on about 3 hours sleep or less a night. I would go to bed and lie in bed, unable to lie still or to rest, until that time just before sunrise when the sky lightens. For some reason my body at that point in time would give up and let me sleep.

It got a bit better when I started taking iron, magnesia and vitamin b - while there is no distinct causal link between a lack of these and RLS, studies have identified that many people who suffer from RLS are also anaemic, and I (and mum) have a tendency to both.

Once I got to Switzerland my doctor introduced me to sifrol, which is a drug given to people who suffer from parkinsons disease, and alleviates the symptoms of RLS. Nowadays I actually do sleep most nights, which is a very nice change. I can still cope with the nights when I don't sleep well - as long as I can get more than about 3 hours I can function pretty normally.

But last night I had things on my mind and combined with the RLS I just couldn't sleep.  So I took a 1/4 of a tablet that the doctor had prescribed me after my op to help me sleep.  I know I am somewhat sensitive to it, as the one I have is almost the weakest you can get (30 mg) and  I once took a whole tablet and lost 36 hours of my life.

So last night, I took the 1/4 tablet and slept through my alarm clocks (both of them). I then slept through 5 sms's and 5 phone calls on two different phones. I woke up to a thumping on the door at 1pm - my boss and a colleague had driven to my place to make sure I was ok. How lovely they are.   I then went back to bed and slept again, missing another three phone calls from a friend and 4 sms.  

The plus is that I guess I have found what I should take to survive the 15 hour segment of my flight to Australia later this year!

 The wedding seemed to be a smash hit.  Certainly I feel like someone has been smashing my feet!  Even after a good nights rest they ache a bit.  There was SO much food.  I overcatered just a tad (grin) and there were a few less people than expected, so there were floods of food, especially dessert.  I could not have done it without my friends Tamara and Terry who worked super hard. 

Thanks to the help of my friends I had a high achievement day. 

I managed to get most of the shopping done, and baked a pile of truly miniature chocolate cupcakes. There were mango coconut cakes made, and flourless orange cake, smoked chicken and peking duck stripped, which is not all that needs to be done, by a long shot, but it is a good start. 

Tomorrow's big task is to roast 5 legs of lamb and cook a pile of potatoes for the potato salad.  But it is all feeling scarily under control. 

I have never disliked a book enough to be willing to cut it up, but always liked the idea of having a secret hollowed book. Maybe that ghastly novel will be good for that.... although it does mean I would have to keep the book on my shelf. blech