Sydney Stories - Week 66 - Easter Special

Hello,

Life seems to be getting interesting every 33 weeks in Sydney. Week-33 was when we had bought the car. It took another 33 weeks for us to actually do some sight seeing in and around Sydney. Brace yourselves...this one is going to be long.

We had a very refreshing discovery this week in a nearby suburb called Pendle Hill. This place has a row of Sri Lankan - Indian restaurants (take away places rather) that serve a dinner for a family (of 4) for about $15. To give you a comparison, in any other restaurant a single dish  would cost about $15. You do the math...

The other day I was on the train and there was an Indian woman and 2 caucasian kids (girls). The first instance I thought maybe a baby sitter. However the kids very soon broke that speculation by calling her mom. At some point the kids started fighting over some candy and the elder one (probably about 7-8 yrs old) gobbled the particular colour that the younger one (about 4 yrs) wanted. She started crying "It is not fair...". The mom quickly quipped - "Life is not always fair darling." and went to explain that concept of life's unfairness. Could only think - WOW - now that's quite an early start for life's lessons.

Good Friday, Easter and ANZAC day - put together gave us a 5 day weekend. The longest public holiday I've ever enjoyed so far. I guess Prabhu Deva's song "Pandigai thaethi Sundayil vandhaa.." does not apply to Australia. Holidays have to be taken during week days even if it means 2 events happen on the same day, 2 week days have to be given off. So our weekend started on a Thursday night when we had friends come over for dinner and hence the Gobi Manchurian. The girls did have a lot of fun.

A lot of plans were thought of for months on what could be done during Easter. For a long time we were contemplating on a road trip to Melbourne. However decided against any major trip for a simple reason -  we haven't looked around much in Sydney yet. Decided to take a completely casual "play by the ear" holiday without any concrete plans.

On Saturday we left on a short trip to Hunter Valley Garden along with 2 other families. 1 of them was Nandhitha's pre-school friend's parents and another of their friends - both of them from Wipro. Hunter Valley is the wine country for this region in Australia. It was a nice drive up there with just a little bit of scare from the rain god. Probably not a great season to visit though as the vines were all dried up. Uma took over most part of the driving. The main agenda was to take part in an Easter egg hunt which was organized in Hunter Valley Garden (www.hvg.com.au).

 Our last memories of an egg hunt was a few years ago in Phoenix when Nandhitha was about Nandha's age and we didn't want to miss it for any reason. We somehow made it to the last session of the egg hunt. Nandhitha had fun and Nandha had his own private egg hunt too without the pressure of his peers running over him. At the end of the hunt each participating kid was given a bag of Cadbury Easter eggs.  A trip cannot turn out to be too pleasant if you are tagging along with some one where your cell phones don't work. The battery in mine died and the pre-paid call charge in Uma's drained up after (quite) a few calls. It was a comedy of life. Got to make another trip to the garden some other time in leisure. We made it back home by around 7.30 PM completely drained out on energy. Wonder how our parents managed to take us out while we were this age. I was telling Uma that next time we go out on such trips need to have an energy shot taken - double shot long black (aka strong black coffee) couldn't do the trick!!

Sunday our plan was to take a ferry to the city and cover a bit of Sydney CBD (Central Business District - Downtown in USA). We had a pretty lazy start without any hard bound plans. The ferry was an interesting experience too. We parked our car near the ferry wharf in Parramatta. Being the Easter sunday the ferry was quite crowded that we had to wait for 2 hours for our turn. We had to "reserve" our seats so we could get on to the ferry. Of course we made the best use of the time - had lunch which was originally scheduled to be had in the city. Went to a Thai restaurant - Saute Thai. More about that in the kitchen. Got to know a bit of history of Parramatta - which is an English version of the aboriginal word Baramada (or Burramatta) meaning the place where eels rest. Now I understand why the local rugby team is called Parramatta Eels.

The ferry ride as such was nothing great. It was a typical ride along the backwaters of Sydney. However the view that we got just as we were entering the city was something. The ferry reached Circular Quay after a 45 minute ride. It usually stops in a few places along the way, but since it was full occupancy it turned to be an express ride. Circular Quay is where we need to go to the Opera House.

 Even though we initially thought of covering a few places in the city, yesterday was spent completely at the Opera.

 This was the first visit for Uma and kids to the Opera. My first with a camera so I was having a field day myself. We took the guided tour around the house which is considered to be one amongst the "World Heritage Sites". It was an interesting tour even though we had taken only the basic version. 

There is an extended back stage version - maybe some other time. Nandhitha became the star of the tour. When the guide took a short break for questions it was Nandhitha's hands that went up first. :-) Of course she "forgot" what she wanted to ask. The next time she stopped for a question everybody was looking at Nandhitha if she had any. ;-)  Anytime a project goes over schedule and budget it can easily be called as "Project Opera". It was initially budgeted for 7 million dollars to be completed in 3 years. It "just" took 102 million dollars and 16 years to complete. Not sure where this can be attributed to. We hung around there till about 7 PM to get a view of the skyline at night. 

 and returned by train. I asked Nandhitha whether she wanted to go back by the ferry or by train. She says "It's Daddy's choice isn't it how we go home?" and then adds on "but but but...in the boat there are too any holes (windows) and lot of cold air and I feel cold. So better take the train so it is not cold." And so the train. 

The transportation for the entire journey costed $5. In Sydney they have a concept called "Sunday Funday" where they encourage families to get out and use the public transport for quality family time. So each ticket cost $2.50 for the whole day and you can take a train, bus or a ferry anywhere within metropolitan Sydney. I already had my monthly pass and just had to buy tickets for Uma and Nandhitha.

So long folks...the weekend is yet to be over. More about that in this week's ramblings.

More photos available at: Hunter Valley Gardens and Opera House.

Have A Great Week!!

C

Sydney Stories - Week 65

Hello,

Hope you had a good week.

Weather here is getting "pleasant"er and pleasanter day by day with the minimum going below 20s.

Me and my train journeys...continue to be interesting. I have slept on the way home and missed my station, slept on the way to work and missed the station - but the heights was this week. I took a completely wrong train to home. I was so engrossed in reading a novel that I didn't bother which train came on the platform. The first few stations were along the same route and of course I didn't notice. Luckily I realized the moment it took off from a station about half-way along the way. Something told me that something was wrooong. Got down at the very next station. It was one lonely station at about 8 PM. Fortunately the next train back came in about 2 minutes.

My company's logo has changed last week from a dull grey pyramid to a more colourful one. A major facelift to the website as well - http://www.igt.in/. Remember this rainbow flower thing happening in Wipro. Millions of $s spent on designing the new look. It was IGT's turn now.

After my take at cricket the previous week it was a Tennis tournament last weekend. What made it interesting was that I forgot about it. ;-) I went to the courts about an hour later than the tournament started. I had forgotten about my signing up for it until the time I left the house. Once I reached there I was told someone else filled in as a substitute. It was a round robin mode so I had 4 chances to play. My substitute gracefully agreed for me to play the last 2 sets. He happened to be a super duper player and had gathered a lot of "points" under my name. At the end of it I was tied with another guy with points in my group for the prize. However I was "disqualified" since not all the points were mine. Technical issue.. ;-)

Have been experimenting quite a bit on my Thai culinary skills. More about that in the Kitchen.

Have A Great Week

C

Sydney Stories - Week 64

Hello,

Hope you had a good week.

The week just zoomed by without much notice. The highlight though was this weekend.

Don't remember when the last time was I held a cricket bat in a proper pitch. Probably the last game ever played in Gandhi Stadium as "Leaping Leopards"? Somewhere around 1987 maybe... Of course I am not counting all the garage cricket played at Yercaud or Jagadeeswaran St. I guess even that stopped sometime in 1996. 

So, after all these years I was involved in a game of cricket over the weekend. There is a group of friends here who have formed a sports club here in Sydney - Sydney Super Sonics Sport Club. It is actually a registered not-for-profit organization with probably about 100+ members. We were introduced to the club by my neighbours and we were playing shuttle with them on Friday nights for the last few months. Each year this club organizes some games / matches or the other throughout the year.This year, this was the first tournament - Sydney Premier League (SPL 2011).

Given my "interest" in Cricket, I was initially the least interested in participating in this. However decided to give it a shot for the heck of it. It turned out to be quite an interesting day out at the "Jones Park Oval". This was a very family oriented game organized as you would realize shortly. It was a 10 over per innings with  10 team members in each team. There were 6 teams in total split across in 2 pools. Yes, all very professional but yet quite fun. Here's a sample of the rules of the game:

1. The maximum number of runs scored off a female bowling can be 4 even if the ball clears the rope without pitching.
2. Player will have to retire after hitting 25 runs. He or she can then bat if there is a fall of all wickets
1. Players retiring should be getting back on to the field in the same order 
2. First player being taken out of the field should enter first at any situation
3. Girls will be awarded 1 run for touching the ball with the bat.
4. Any running runs by girls will be doubled.i.e 1 run will be considered as 2 runs and so on.
5. Each player in the team must bowl 1 over.
6. No LBWs and leg byes, Over-throws and byes are there.
7. Under-arm and regular bowling  NOT allowed, only overarm throwing allowed.

They have tried to promote utmost family read...women participation in the game. Something tells me that this is probably a plot to increase the interest level with the women folk so that the guys (the serious cricketers) can get on with their weekend games without much of a hassle.

Uma and I were in different teams. Multiple reasons for this, the key being one of us can watch over the kids at any point of time. The game was held in a proper cricket ground with a pitch with artificial lawn laid out. The people were so enthusiastic over the last few days on this. We all had a team name, logo, a punch line, a uniform and what not. I was in the "Fire Blazers" team and Uma was in "United Knights". Lunch (Chicken / Veggie briyani) was provided for the players with soft drinks / water to be purchased from the organizers.

The games were well organized as well. The captains obviously knew what they were doing rotating people around during the innings giving a fair share to all team members to bat and bowl. That usually will be the dampener for me for "liking" cricket because I've probably not given a decent chance then. I was able to score a few runs within the short time I could face the ball and took a wicket - some good soul caught the ball. :-) 

We had 2 chances in a day long league. The first time we won over a technicality where the opponent team supposedly forgot one of the rules and allowed their star batsmen to come back (out of turn). Lost the 2nd one though. I couldn't believe that I stood there for so long playing even in the rain!!

Some photos taken by me have been uploaded. Hopefully I will get to see some photos taken by our official photographer.

Life IS different in Sydney. :-)

Have A Great Week.

C

Sydney Stories - Week 63

Hello,

The week went on quick as usual. The weather is slowly getting to be pleasanter having the need to wear a light jacket or blazer.

I must admit, I have succumbed to pressure. The pressure of following cricket. Especially when there is a match like India-Pak semi-final I would've been shunned if I had not watched it. I didn't have this pressure elsewhere...not in US and not even in India during any of the prior world cups. So, yes I did watch the India-Pak match, but slept midway (on the couch with the TV on).

The weekend of course was the highlight. Got to play cricket as well at Nandhitha's tamil school. For a change I could actually connect the willow and the ball and could score a few runs. I scored a few wickets too...thanks to my slow bowling and people were too eager to hit and either got out (just by the rule that ball should bounce before it hits any boundary) or got caught. This am sure would act as a good practice game for the next weeks SPL. More about that later.

Saturday night we ganged up at a friends place in Baulkam Hills to watch the finals. There were about 10 other families. There were kids of varying age groups which left us adults to continue watching the game. We had taken Kothu Parotta from here. More about that in Chetty's Kitchen. It was fun to watch with a bunch of  people passing comments. We were there till 5 in the morning. We had a very upset Sunday routine - thanks to Team India!!

Have A Great Week!!

C