Gecko, Brighton le Sands (via Cooks River cycleway)

One bright Saturday morning, me and 2 friends decided we'd take our bicycles along the cooks river cycleway to Brighton. It's a very safe ride and quite flat.


The bikes at the start of the trip. The green one is making it's maiden voyage!




One of the many bridges along the way.









We picked up a flat along the way, but this green bike, had green goo in it to patch up punctures without any tools. It was awesome!


The awesome puncture repairing goo.


Gardens beneath the flight path.


The menu! A friend recommended we try Gecko! for breakfast in this part of town, so here we are. They do a special breakfast menu, but we skipped that and went a la carte.


Chocolate milkshake, vanilla smoothie, and coke.


Mixed Grill. Consisting of our usual bacon, eggs, and tomato, it replaces your greens with ... sausages and a steak. Totally needed after the 18km ride. 2 of the guys order it!


Turkish Melt. We actually saw another table with something that looked amazing, and on scan of our menu, thought it was this. It wasn't of course, but either way, this Turkish Melt was nice :) Though we would have loved to have had whatever the other table had. Isn't that always the way? :)


Fruit Salad. Yay for me, all healthy and all. A refreshingly cool meal to bring the body temperature back down to a nice comfortable level after a warm ride. The weather by now was reaching nearly 30 degrees and pretty warm for a ride.


Ourdoor dining, with views of the beach, and The Grand Parade (road). Quite a pleasant way to spend a saturday morning.


Checking the tyres are still held together by that green goo


Nice day for some windsurfing

An excellent way to kick off a morning. A gentle ride beside the scenic Cooks River to start the day, an hearty breakfast amongst friends, enjoying the beautiful beaches which Sydney has on offer, and then the long arduous ride home... back in time for lunch at Flemington!

Himalayan Masala Restaurant, Darlinghurst

One of our vegetarian evenings, we stumbled across an Himalayan restaurant along oxford st. Though they don't serve a dedicated vegetarian menu, there were some vegetarian choices and so, this was our place for the evening.



Starters. I forget what this was, but it was pretty nice! It's some vegetables (I spotted a tomato in the photo) in a yoghurty sauce.


Mango Lassi. To offset the spiciness of the food later :)


Sweet Lassi.


Aloo Chop $5.90. Mashed potato pate, pan fried with spice.


Potato Paratha - $2.90. Bread with ... potato inside. It's quite nice :)


Palak Paneer - $10.90. Cottage cheese cooked with leafy spinach.


Mix chat (I'm guessing here).


Korma? I'm sure we ordered one, so this might be it. Yum :)


Garlic naan

It was quite a pleasant meal and the staff, very friendly. The dishes that we had were mainly, northern indian as most of the Nepalese dishes had meat. Perhaps we'll try those next time :)

Da Niang Dumpling, Haymarket

With some spare time to kill before dinner, I join up with some friends to try out the largish dumpling store located at the corner of Dixon and Goulburn Sts.


It's a pretty large joint for a dumpling restaurant


The ordering has all the attributes of a fast food joint.


And the cool jtec buzzers to let you know your dumplings are ready to be picked up.


While you wait, chinese television on plasma screens. That's one way to provide the 'chinese' ambience :)


The all important, vinegar jar to add some kick into those dumplings.


I did ask my friends what these were, and the response I got was "red beef side dish" and "cold duck". Err... thanks.


Chinese Spinach Dumplings


Dumpling soup


A broken dumpling

I can't say I found it fantastic, but then again, I didn't really eat much :) Maybe it was just coz it was spinach dumplings :)

Ramen Kan, Haymarket

For a friend's 31st birthday, we meet up for a light dinner at Ramen Kan. This has been a favourite haunt for a few years now, and it's always been good value for money.

There are the usual small queues at the top of elevator. The busy attendant has disappeared to look after the restaurant guests, and we are left to place our own names on the queue list. We don't have to wait long (3 mins) as we were only a party of 2.


View of the Sydney Entertainment centre outside


Milk shakes (seriously, I wrote the price down somewhere, but forgot it)






Agedashi Tofu

I should blog more often as I forgot our orders :) I'm sure we'll be back :)

Melbourne Cup Lunch

One of the ladies in the office organised a lunch for our tiny corner of the office. It was out of her own goodwill, so we contributed $12 a head, which mostly went to the wine, and extras as she hadn't counted on 'everyone' (about 15ppl) coming, compared to the turnout last year of 5 or 6 people.

Melbourne Cup day is an excellent excuse for the ladies to don their fancy day dresses, and pretend they look a million dollars (and they usually do!!). Yes, it's more about the fashion than it is about the racing, but who am I to complain? :)

I entered our office sweeps, and drew Pop Rock. Having no idea of the odds, all I could do was cross my fingers and hope my horse won.



Chicken. Mix of breast, wings and thighs.



The table offerings. Apart from the chicken and sausages, this is a totally vegetarian lunch ;)



Garden salad. Is it still garden salad even if there are cherry tomatoes in there? I'd always thought it was green...



"Special" orange juice. (I think we bought too much wine).



Couscous, sour cream, mint, chillis, nuts, .... I forget the name of this dish. It's very nice though.



Yep, sausages. I didn't try one myself though. There's a little bit of the cheese platter and crackers in the background here.



Doritos. Snacks for watching the race afterwards.

The race came, and went, and my horse placed 2nd by a nose! I picked up $30 in the sweeps though - wicked :)


Cookies. Someone found a whole packet of cookies left unattended. Apparently, it was for a meeting which occurred earlier in the week. I took this photo before those biscuits just disappeared. The empty 3/4 of the packet was already consumed by me :D~~~

Windows Live Cakes

I thought I'd post a quickie.

Here are some photos of some cakes that my friend, Annie made.

Pretty funky huh??


4 cakes in all.





One close in close-up.

You can check out more of her cakes at http://www.funkycakez.com.au/