Mostly Feasting

We had a lovely time at Matt and Belinda's place on NYE.  Matt had made a slow roasted lamb shoulder and Belinda some lovely salmon.  We had those with gravy soaked vegetables and roast vegetables, and perhaps a glass or two of wine. It was a very merry evening.

We greeted 2017 by taking the three dogs for a nice walk, starting the year as we mean to go on.  I don't have New Year Resolutions.  It never really seems worth it to me. After all, how long does the "New Year" last?  How long do I have to maintain these resolutions before the "NewYear" Simply becomes "This Year"?  No.  What I have this year is Ambitions for 2017.  Three of them, although the third one isn't properly formed yet.  I have some work to do on it before it is implemented.

My ambitions are:

(i) to walk 750 km as measured by the Runkeeper app. So proper walking, not incidental pottering around.  A 3km walk on the first day of 2017 seemed an appropriate start to this ambition (although disappointingly it said I had achieved 0% when I logged it :-( )

(ii) to lose 10 kg over the course of the year.  This should be achievable without much actual effort; it's less than 1 kg a month!!

(iii) to be more structured and focused in my Japanese learning.  I need to think about this a bit.  At the moment it's just an amorphous aim and certainly not SMART.

Anyway.  Back to New Year's Day.  After our walk we went to visit my friend Jan who recently moved to a place about ten minute's drive from Matt and Belinda's. We haven't seen her for ages; we have been in the habit of lunching with her when visiting Melbourne but didn't when we were here last December/January and there hasn't been chance to visit since we got here in August. It was good to catch up.

Lindsey and Ian made their way to the flat. So did we.  Austin, Kaori and Tatsuki arrived. And we all spent the evening together with Christian, Cassie, Simon and Jacob munching on a Chinese Banquet in The Builder's Arms.  It was Austin, Kaori and Tatsuki's last full night in Melbourne and feasting seemed appropriate.

The 2nd of January was a public holiday.  Lindsey and Emily hit the shops.  The rest of us hopped on a tram and headed into the city.  I don't think Tatsuki had been on a tram before.  He was quite intrigued

Ian is hiding behind Austin's hat!!

Jim and I separated from the rest when we got into town. We had different errands to run. But we ran across them again in the David Jones Food Hall.  And Ian says that they had lunch in the same complex that we did, but in a Japanese rather than a Greek cafe and probably about 20 minutes later.

And for Austin, Kaori and Tatsuki's final Melbourne dinner for this trip we all gathered at Simon's place, along with a few extras for steak, roast potatoes and salad.  I don't think Tatsuki has had roast potatoes many times before.  He thoroughly enjoyed them

Photo by Lindsey

And then suddenly, they were gone.  Ian took them to the airport.  Lindsey, Jim and I headed back to the flat.  The holidays were over.  Time to get back to work and to "normal" life