Museums in Sydney (AUS post3)

Howdy again mate!

Well...slowly but surely I am posting photos from my OZ adventure. I really made every single day of my stay in Sydney worth remembering. We didn't mind going to the city everyday. The city or central station is a one hour train ride from Liverpool station where my boyfriend and I stayed. It's my cousin's place in Goulburn St. near the Liverpool hospital. We did that routine for a month but it was fun because of the different suburbs we saw. Up to now the voice of the girl announcing the next train station stop still echoes in my ears.

This is the Art Gallery of New South Wales located along Dominion and Art Gallery Road. Few meters from St. Mary's Cathedral near Hyde Park and St. James train station. The places seem near to each other, but they're not. Quite a long walk, to be honest. But I didn't mind the exercise because of the different parks, nice streets, and disciplined motorists.

We went to this gallery twice. The first time we came here was around 6pm. We were surprised to see that the museum was closed. It closes at 5pm along with other establishments in the city including malls. So on our second time, we arrived at 2pm and we are able to explore the museum.

Oh my! Broken pieces of the ceramic sculpture! who broke it?

Was it me? Nope!

Part of the design, actually.

Nice statue and architecture of the gallery.

Names of different famous artist were written on the top of the wall.

Another way of exploring the city is by going to the major part of CBD which is the Circular Quay. I enjoyed this part of Sydney because almost all the landmarks of Australia can be found here. The Opera house, Harbour Bridge, Botanical Garden, The Rocks, Ferry Terminal, Train Station and of course the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Before entering the museum I sat on this nice brick wall with nice flora to read the city guide book.

A pose with a photo collage of women in the history of art.

Aerobics?

Christmas 2007.

Turned out to be fairly tame. The cinema crew had the day off, while the Earl's boys were rostered on. And with Josh gone off to Calgary to spend his christmas with his brother and cousins, Cam and I spent the afternoon by ourselves.


This is where I spent my Christmas afternoon, practicing jumps on the shown tabletop. There's something so calming about being away from people and being surrounded by powder snow.

Anywho, we decided to head out to Earl's for dinner that night, as if Golden and Heathy hadn't had enough of the place already. It must've been the cheap beers and discounted meals. It turned out to be a good move though, as Heathy and Golden managed to get all six of us into the place eventhough it was quite packed.

Photo of my Christmas eve dinner.


Campbell not posing at all.


Golden smiling awkwardly at the camera.


Heathy and I being our natural handsome selves.


The man in the centre is Francis, a French-Canadian (from Montreal) who stayed with us at the YWCA for a while. We'll talk more about him later, but this was his first night in Banff. And he got to spend it with us. The poor bloke.


A poorly taken photo (by whoelse but Sanor Michael) of myself and comrade Jae. He is now our roommate at the Tunnel Mountain Resort (TMR)! More on him later also.

Here are some photos of the food;

Cam's Quesadilla.


My seafood penne. YUM.


Golden's shit on a plate, I mean prime ribs with potato salad.

We had few drinks there, and had some more when we got back our dorm room back at the Y, and that was about it for our Christmas.

Unfortunately Josh being away at Calgary and draining (and also being a lanky bastard; muttered angrily by Golden as I am typing this,) our plans to Kris Kringle this year was abandoned. So noone ended up with presents this Christmas.

That's about it, and here are some more photos from the night.

Jin

About the author

I’m Alex Rushmer, a freelance writer who specialises in food, cooking and all things edible.

In addition to creating the globally popular food blog Just Cook It where I document my culinary adventures, my writing has been featured in a range of publications including Waitrose Food Illustrated, the Financial Times, Home Farmer, Cambridgeshire Agenda and Portfolio Magazine.

Previously I’ve tackled challenges from molecular gastronomy to charcuterie and am available for commissions large and small. Click here to email me any enquiries, requests, comments or thoughts.

In 2010 I cooked my way to the final three of Masterchef, a competition to find the best amateur cook in the UK. I finished runner-up along with Tim Kinnaird losing out to the incredibly talented Dhruv Baker. During my time on the show I created a wide array of orginal and modern British dishes. My next challenges will involve writing a book and opening a restaurant. Best get cracking then...

Lake Louise.

Much has happened since Golden's post but I figure writing about everything in one long and boring blog post would be lame so here is a brief look at Lake Louise instead.

Last Saturday (22/12) Michael and I ditched the drainers who were either working or being lazy and went up to Lake Louise for a full day of skiing. I decided to take my camera up as well, and it turned out to be a good move because the sun was shining, ever so brightly.

The photos don't really do the place justice but here they are nonetheless.

Lake Louise from the front.

Golden and myself in the gondola.

View from the top.

View from the hills. The second shot is especially nice, if I do say so myself!

These next few were taken from the chairlift;

Golden looking out into the sun, I don't know why, because it would've hurt his eyes, but I guess it's okay since he's a big poser anyway.

Who is this handsome looking man I wonder?

and here is one more for the Golden family.

Beautiful.

So that was a little something about Lake Louise, hopefully I can take some good photos throughout the season, of the mountain as well as of the guys.

We are stuck at the crappy YWCA until the 2nd of Jan, so it might be hard to blog again for a few days but it should be all smooth sails from then.

Happy new year to everyone,






Jin.

Soba Totto

December 28

Hungry for a little something after work last night, I popped my head into a new place that the very enterprising people at Urban Daddy alerted me to, Soba Totto (211 East 43rd Street, between Second and Third avenues, 212-557-8200. For more descriptions of the place, please take a look at this entry and this one. Thank you).
Not surprisingly, the restaurant’s specialty is Japanese buckwheat noodles, called soba. Also not surprisingly, sitting with the owner and some guy from Chicago, was Grub Street’s Josh Ozersky.
Josh seemed, oh, I don’t know, maybe just a tiny bit troubled that I, too, had heard of Soba Totto, which had just opened a couple of days earlier. Maybe he doesn’t subscribe to Urban Daddy, or maybe it’s his week off and he hasn’t been reading his e-newsletters. People do need a week off from time to time, you know.
Josh is probably best known for his job as editor of New York magazine’s food blog, but what he really is is a meat expert — hence his nickname, Mr. Cutlets — and he was gracious enough to send me a galley of his soon-to-be-published book, The Hamburger: A History, for an article I’m working on. It’s a terrific read, clever and witty, informative and sometimes strident in that way that Josh can be with regard to subjects pertaining to meat (I think we amused casual listeners with our conversation about deckle at the reopening-party of Picholine).
To wit (from his book):
"To admit ground beef on toast as a hamburger is to make the idea of a ‘hamburger’ so loose, so abstract, so semiotically promiscuous as to have no meaning."
Because hamburgers come on a bun, you see.
He's right, of course.
Anyway, I ate at Soba Totto’s bar, which is sleek and decked out in earth and wood tones. Behind it are young, hip-looking Japanese chefs, heads covered with urbane-Japanese-looking versions of do-rags, grilling things with a sort of casual earnestness.
Soba Totto is owned by the same people as Yakitori Totto, and so grilled meats are another restaurant specialty.
I had two draft beers (Kirin, I believe) assorted Japanese pickles, a skewer of chicken oysters (the “oyster” is the bit of meat on the chicken’s lower back, just above the thigh, that is highly prized by certain meat aficionados, maybe including Josh, although I can’t say for sure) and a bowl of hot soba with "poached egg” although really it was more of a swirled egg in the style of egg drop soup.