CHONGLAND

During my time working in the city one of the great experiences has been gathering together with my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ to share in a meal. Lately it seems as though this has happened less frequently as the global financial crisis has hit and as my St Paulian counterparts have moved away from working in the city.

Another difficulty has been the limited time in which we are able to meet together, with people having to include travelling to the location of choice. As a result, dinner one evening was suggested, yet met with little enthusiasm. Adri was keen, being one who wasn’t often able to make it to the lunch meets since she worked fairly out of the way, and so tonight I met up with her and Simon to have dinner at the Redoak Brewery.

We met after work and opted to dine in the bar over the restaurant due to the price of the meals. We gentlemen opened with an Aussie Ale. Simon opted for the Tajima Wagyu, tomato and Root Vegetable Pie, Adri chose the Steak Sandwich on damper roll with homemade beer and tomato relish and hand-cut chips and I settled on the 9″ Redoak Pizza topped with Cinnamon and black tea smoked chicken, roasted pumpkin, salsa verde and Swiss cheese and roquette with Redoak Hand-Cut Chips. The meals were satisfactory, but not great…

Post dinner I settled in with a Blackberry Wheat Beer, not sure what exquisite beer Guthers enjoyed, I’m sure he’ll mention it here…, as we retired to the more comfortable loungey chairs… Despite the intriguing desserts on the menu, we decided that a cheaper alternative was required and so we left the Redoak in search of some form of frozen goodness.

After searching underneath the QVB to find places closed, we surfaced to find Passionflower. Simon had Chocolate Hazelnut, Adri went with the Strawberry Swirl and I gave up one of my favourites: Jaffa for Lychee Rose. The benefits of being a student even came into play to the tune of 10%, thank you Moore College!!!

All in all a pleasant evening with a lovely and extremely attractive couple, one that would welcome numerous repetitions. Love youse both!!

The remainder of my time in Melbourne has been pleasant.

Sunday morning after leaving church I met up with an old friend Dimos AKA Archon, whom I know from break-dancing. We had lunch at an Italian restaurant, both opting for the spaghetti carbonara, then just wandered back to Southern Cross Station catching up as we walked.

In the afternoon I got a call from Mr Turner who also happened to be in Melbourne with Thea on holidays. They were keen for a catch-up over a meal, so we’d arranged to do something on Monday. That evening I was making my way out to Balaclava to meet Veigli and Clare for dinner and trivia at a pub, when I saw Matt and Thea wandering the streets. I gave them a call and found out they were on their way to The Local Taphouse. They invited me to join them, but I refused, having already made plans with Veigli. When I met up with Veigli it turned out to be at The Local Taphouse, and 5 minutes later, who should happen to show up but The Turners. They ended up joining us for dinner, which was very very slow to get out, a few tasty beverages and some minor celebrity spotting. After dinner, we jumped in the car and went for some gelato. I opted for some blood orange and chocolate indulgence in the hope of a jaffa flavour, an old favourite of mine. The blood orange was definitely a tasty finish to the combination as well as cleaning my palette. After that it was time to bid farewell to Veigli and Clare as we caught the tram back to town.

Monday morning I woke late, and wandered up to Little Bourke Street to meet The Turners for Yum Cha. We wandered up the street a little before we could find a decent looking venue. We ate a variety of dumplings: Ha Gou, Siu Mei, Spring Rolls, Gou Choi Gou and Pork Buns. After lunch, Thea wandered off herself whilst Matt and I went in search of some laneway pubs. We didn’t end up finding any, but instead we ended up sipping lattes at Brother Baba Budan and looking at cameras and lenses.

In the evening after a swim and a spa I got my photo gear together to go out to shoot some sights of the Melbourne CBD. After wandering for a good hour and a bit with my D50 and gorillapod I was exhausted, cold and a little damp. Here’s a couple of my favourite shots, the rest are in my Flickr:

My final Melbourne experience was St Ali before jumping on the Skybus back to the airport and flying to Sydney and wrestling with the new Cityrail timetable via the Northern Line through Macquarie Park.

On Saturday I spent the majority of my day at the Newport Arms Hotel to mark the engagement of Geoff and Tiff.

I rocked up just after 2pm with Geoff, Tiff and Kim to find the place pretty busy with the lunchtime rush; sitting in the sun, looking over the water and enjoying their time. There was already a table of people when we arrived; we were a tad late on account of a compounded effort.

As the day progressed, many people turned up; uni friends, current and previous church peoples and family. It was good to see and catch up with the many people that I used to church with and don’t get too see as often any more. It was funny how some groups seemed to just keep to themselves, and how others branched out to meet other people. It was also good to meet baby Milo.

For dinner I had the Atlantic Salmon with chips and salad. It was really average, especially for the price…. There wasn’t much to the flavour and it was a bit dry as well.

I got some happy snaps which are up on Flickr, including some guest portrait shots by Geoff.

At the end of the night, about 10:30pm, we ended up leaving the Arms and headed back to Geoff‘s place where the happy couple opened some engagement presents before we called it a day/night.