National Day Weekend

On Thursday I met with Robert, Maria and their visitors from the Central coast for a tasty lunch in Bugis. After work it was home for a shower before heading to the airport for the trip home. Friday was a public holiday in memory of LKY, and Sunday was Singapore's big birthday celebrations. I was able to use my LSL day to stretch my weekend out to make a trip home feasible. It was a long night/day as I had to travel via Sydney to Ballina.
After meeting the visiting cat, Michael, Pauline and I had a quiet dinner at the Shawsie before I collapsed with weariness. I was very pleased that I was clever enough to buy Michael a scarf on my recent trip to Penang as it was a might cooler than I am used to. On Saturday, my delightful hairdresser, Nick, said he would have been prepared to see me after hours if necessary, but instead he had an 11.30 time slot for me. The Guests and Youngs joined us at Pauline's for a delicious home-cooked meal, Sue looking a little battered and bruised after a face-plant at netball.

I dragged myself out of bed on Sunday to accompany Michael and David to Byron for the usual Sunday morning ritual. We both wore our SG50 t-shirts in honour of Singapore National Day. When we returned to Ballina, Sue and Pauline were ready to head out for breakfast so after a couple of false starts we settled down by the river for a very tasty breakfast. This venue was blown away in a storm some time back and this was the first time we had tried it since it re-opened, and I think we'll be back.

Michael has decided he will be returning to our unit when the current lease is up at the end of October so it was time to do a little furniture shopping. We have ended up with only one bed so we spent the afternoon at Snooze trying their bedding system and came away with lighter pockets but, what we hope will be, a very comfy bed. They are happy to deliver it after Michael moves back so it should be in place when I return for his birthday celebrations in early November.
We met up with Chris and Steve for dinner at the RSL, when Michael stunned me by actually discussing the possibility of doing some travelling in a caravan...I almost fell off my chair!
After dropping Michael at work on Monday I was able to do a bit of shopping and pottering before returning to pick him up at the end of the day. We then drove up to Varsity Lakes where I got the train to Brisbane. Duncan met me at Roma Street and after collecting Bianca we went to the very appropriate Kookaburra Cafe for some delicious pizzas. On the way home they took me to their favourite gelati bar for dessert.

You really do appreciate Changi Airport when it takes a long, winding, half hour queue to get through security in Brisbane. Everything was going smoothly until our Qants plane had rolled out to the edge of the runway where we heard the announcement that we had to go back to the boarding gate as there was a malfunctioning smoke detector light on the bridge! Two hours later we took off having been given a bottle of water only, so by the time lunch arrived at around 3.30 I was very hungry.
Arrival in Singapore was seamless, as usual and I didn't take much convincing that it was time to sleep.
While I was away Helen had been considering her options, and as I was expecting, she has decided that sharing next year is not really an option for her so I'll be going it alone. Something for me to tackle next term.