A birthday treat worth waiting for!

I am not really into celebrating my birthday... it may surprise you to know I don't like being the centre of attention!
But this year, Hels' promised me cake! It took us three months to co ordinate diaries to get it booked in, but MAN did I get cake!!!
Those reading this outside of Australia may not appreciate it as much, but I think you will still be impressed by the idea.

Adriano Zumbo is a bit of a dessert king here. And his newest venture is a "Dessert Train" concept that is to die for!

Take a sushi train, and replace the sushi with the most amazing desserts you can think of! Add in two chocoholics and what you have is heaven for two girls that are lucky to have not gone into a sugar-induced coma after having 3 desserts between them!

My favourite was the V8 Diesel - goodness that is flourless chocolate, chocolate crunch, burnt chocolate brulee, choc macaron, choc jelly, choc creamaux and choc chantilly... all assembled into one rich, delicious cake.

Just incase there is ANY question in your mind about how we felt after sharing three desserts between two of us, let me assure you, we felt SICK!! It was an amazing treat that I could probably only cope once a year with... se better get booked in for next year Hels!!

Bye for now
Kunj x

My new favourite sport... my Mummy will be so proud!!

Despite my mum, my aunty, my uncle and my father in law being MASSIVE cricket fans, I have never really given it a chance! Usually I jump on the bandwagon of any sport that has a tournament going - rugby and tennis both being recent examples. Football is my only real sport and cricket REALLY REALLY bored me! Or at least I thought it did!

When Baru and Nitin booked their trip, we realised that they would be here during the Aussie/ India test. I didn't fully appreciate this at the time, but this was kind of a big deal... something about it being the SCGs 100th test and some guy called Sachin-something may be getting a century blah blah blah.... Anyway, we booked some tickets as their xmas present and then forgot about it (well I did!)

Then we got to January and it was time to go to the cricket... by this point, we had spent some time with Baru and Nitin while the Perth test had been going on and realised from their regular checking of the scores that they were going to love the day out we had booked.
The day started ok - we had great seats, the weather was glorious and I had packed us a decent picnic. India batted first and we realised quite quickly that it wasn't going to be pretty! I didn't mind though as I was loving the atmosphere and I had Baru teaching me about the game.







By the end of the day, we had seen 13 wickets! All of India and 3 Aussies... my resident cricket experts assured me that this was highly unusual for a test. India went on to be smaashed by the Aussies in what has turned out to be an embarassing tour, but I had discovered thatI quite liked cricket!

India went on to have an awful run - pretty much not winning a single test for the rest of the tour, but that didn't matter cos I was hooked!
At the beginning of Feb, India was playing India again in Sydney - this time it was an evening 20/20 game. The tickets were cheap, so we got a group of our friends together (a mixture or Australia/India and not-a-clue fans!) and as Chris' parents were here on holiday, even his dad joined us. It was a very wet evening in Sydney, but as I was now an expert, I sat between the other girls in the group "explaining" what was going on.

20/20 games are like a cross between a baseball and an ice hockey game with dancers, fireworks, mexican waves and random crowd pleasing music all making it an entertaining and slightly bemusing night out. Of course India lost! But now I had convinced Hels about how fun cricket was... and we have decided that we are Sydney Sixers. We ake this quite seriously - we picked this team as they are our local team and they also wear pink!! Unfortunately, the season is now over... lets see if we are still this excited when 2012/2013 starts... I think we probably won't be!

2011... (ALL of it!)

Sorry, I seem to have managed to not tell you anything at all about 2011!Last year flew by so I thought I better post something on the blog and then we can start afresh with 2012!! So, month by month, here are some of the years highlights and lowerlights(!) of 2011... Some months feel a bit light on things we did, but I have been relying on our Google Calendar to remind me what we did! Even so, this is a long one, so you might want to grab a cuppa!

Jan
We said goodbye to Shakil and the boys :-(
I went on a girls weekend away on the same weekend as my mummy arrived in Sydney! We spent the weekend in a house with a pool and a winery next door - whats not to love?!



Feb
A month spent with my mum! She cooked for us and spent a month making more friends in Balmain than we have managed in over two years!We had Julia's "Alternative baby shower". The venue booked for Afternoon Tea cancelled on us an hour and a half before we were due to arrive, so we cobbled together a little get together at Chez Child-Mitford and all was perfect.

March
Sham started his VMWare course which meant it was a nice quiet month for us socially...

April
We went on our first "interstate holiday"... a weekend in Melbourne with the highlight being some really really good seats at the Usher concert!

May
Ajay made his annual trip over to Sydney this year and this time brought Kay and Aaron with him! We had a lovely weekend with the three of them...

For Sham's birthday, I took him to a Michael Jackson tribute show. We had amazing seats and it was so much fun dancing in our seats!



June
Sham got some qualifications! He completed a recognised VMWare course... I don't really understand it to be honest, but he assures me that it makes him more employable. This turned out to be more important than we ever thought it would be as I was made redundant from my job. I am sponsored by my company so without finding another way, there was a chance that we were heading back to London having lived this dream for two and a half years! More about what happened with this later.

July
I came back to London for a flying visit so that I could be at the lovely Jo and Pete's beautiful wedding!



It was the very first time I had ever flown anywhere on my own... but I had no one sitting next to me for both legs of the flight there so I managed to rest loads!
I had a great trip that was over too quickly, although I did find myself missing Sham more than I thought I would! It was lovely to meet some of the new babies that have arrived since we have last been back- although I didn't get to meet them all :-(

Aug
We celebrated our anniversary and Christmas on the same day! Due to everyones busy diaries, we ended up celebrating Xmas in July, in August! Julia and Grant hosted a spectacular Xmas spread and the only disappointing thing was that the weather was unseasonally warm.



Sept
When we realised that there was a chance that we could be going back to London, I thought that it would be a real shame to have lived here for this long and have seen very little of the country. So I busily started booking some short breaks!The first of these weekends away was to Bryon Bay - a hippy town at the very north of NSW.It was an hour or so flight time but it was a world away from Sydney!The highlight of the weekend apart from the gorgeous weather and beaches has got to be the random musical version of a flash mob that just started up outside the market!Here is a picture of Shamir at the Byron Bay light house.



Oct
October was a particularly busy month for us. We had found a way to stay in the country - thanks to Sham's AMAZING bosses, we were going to be sponsored for permanent residency. We spent a lot of Oct getting together a lot of documents, filling out forms etc. We celebrated baby Fraser's first birthday. Check out the little man!



Nov
We had another short break in Nov! This time to the Gold Coast. It was a nice weekend of eating out and walking on the beach.



I had booked the hotel on a Groupon type deal and was a bit worried it would be rubbish, but it turned out to be a lovely apartment!



This year for my birthday we had a lovely HOT afternoon at lawn bowls... I must apologize again to my team for how bad I was... Let's just say, thank god it was my birthday- so no one could be cross with me!! Here is the winning team.



I am not sure when I got old, but I know that I have because of my excitment over being bought a tree for my birthday! Let me explain:
Some friends recently told us about a "fruit salad tree". Its a tree with several fruits grafted on - so one tree gives you 3-4 different fruits! I wanted one! and for my birthday, the girls got me a lemon/lime/orange tree! It doesn't look like much yet, but I will put some pics up when it does. Thanks ladies for a great present - and thanks Hels for the pot of poo!!



Dec
December brought the Christmas silly season with work parties (including one for Sham's work that involved a weekend in Brisbane for us!), team lunches and gang lunches. On the 19th, we lit a candle to remember our Ba. She must have been looking down on us because on the 19th of December, we got the amazing news that we finally had our Australian residency!! everyone's messages of congratulations were overwhelming- thanks guys!

I could now leave my job by negotiating a shorter notice period on my redundancy. I will miss the friends I have made at CMC and I will certainly miss the view from my desk, but it was definitely time to leave!



Christmas day started the same as every year- on the beach! We then spent the evening with some friends as we ate and drank!



Jo's list made me giggle as she had every minute accounted for - it was worth it though... Xmas dinner was FAB!



Thanks again Jo and Paul!!

On the day after boxing day we headed to the Blue Mountains for our final short break of the year! This was a special one as we were joining my aunt and uncle Baru and Nitin! We headed back to Sydney as they carried on their tour. On December 30th they arrived in Sydney.... also that day, our gorgeous niece Aria arrived into the world!We saw in 2012 in one of the most spectacular ways possible- on a cruise-ship on Sydney's harbour watching the fireworks! Thank you Baru and Nitin!



And that, dear friends, was our 2011... I am sure I have missed out some stuff, but I was mostly relying on our Google calendar and our photos as my memory is not what it used to be in my old age! Sorry if I have missed out anything important! Happy new year to you all and Don't be strangers in 2012 guys! By for now
Kunj x