Balmain Weekend
On Saturday, Lil took me to Balmain for breakfast (it was her idea :) where they apparantly served the best potatoe hash browns around :). The place was Balmain Town Hall (the pictures above show the inside of it...very errr...publike look, but it was clean and neat). We sat upstairs over looking the road. Our purpose...yes you can see it in the picture on the left (that roundish fried thing...is the potato hash brown). Now unfortunately, according to Lil, it has changed as it use to be much nicer, now having never tried the original one...this one tasted quite nice. Lil had the vegetable big breakfast (with nice mushrooms, eggs, tomatoe, hash brown, chutney and spinache!), whilst I had the super big breakfast (see photo below) with bacon, eggs, tomatoe, sausage, hash brown, chutney and bread...yummm
After a very filling breakfast, we decided to walk around Balmain (since I have never been to it before but have heard of it..its well known for its numerous cafes and eating places). The atmosphere is very relaxed and I cannot describe it but it felt very Bondi like...meaning the 'locals' you see there have that certain 'air' about them (nothing bad or anything...just feels different from other Sydney suburbs). Oh and there were tons of people walking their dogs too...we spent about an hour walking around and looking the shops (good for digestion) and saw no less than 20 dogs. These weren't ugly dogs (hence the reference to Bondi) too...all the very very cute terriers, poodles, other cute breeds. Needless to say, Lil stopped at almost every opportunity to admire the dogs and reiterate the need to get a cute dog :P (which I again stated that I won't look after..haha)
Whilst walking we stumbled upon Balmain markets, which is just a small set-up with numerous small stalls selling all sorts of home-made, second-hand, etc trinkets and other items. Just had a wonder thru there (you can see Lil's head at the bottom of the picture ;)
One of the many 'residents' of Balmain, they are all very well behaved also (in addition to being cute)...must have gone to some private dog school as a prerequisite for living in Balmain. We saw quite a few dogs just left outside the cafe/bar/resturant without a leash...and they are like so well behaved...just don't bark or chase after anyone :) haha...nothing much happened after we walked along the main street of Balmain, just chilled thats all :P
Later that night I played a 3 hr game of volleyball :) a nice way to end an uneventful Saturday :)
The next day, I went for volleyball training at Marrickville with the Netrix crew...it was our biggest turnout yet...about 12 people and thankfully instead of doing any actual training...we played volleyball games (since we had enough people for 2 teams) it was all fun fun fun...if only all trainings could be like that haha :)
As usual for lunch (do you remember Leo?) we went to the 'traditional' Vietnamese resturant which served some pretty delicious foods...
Fried Chicken + Tomatoe Rice
Pork Chop + Broken Rice + Shredded Pork
PT and myself (eagerly waiting for the food..so hungry :P)
Gab, Jul and Franco
After Lunch, I started training Lil on the basics of volleyball (as instructed by Maz..haha)...she's pretty decent for a first-timer (hey even I am a first-timer and really in no position to coach haha...maybe you could give us some pointers Leo!). You should see the bruises on Lil's arm...a sure sign of a beginner (luckily I told her to wear a long sleeved shirt to at least absorb the impact on her arms :). Anyway, after volleyball lessons 2, we met up with Bradley (actually he called me to help him carry some stuff...muscle power!) at Ikea. Bradley was looking for a new study table and chair (and help in the assembly of it...although I think on that point we offered to go back with him to help him with the assembly haha). Here is a picture of him (with the cute Ikea yellow bag looking at the pots and pans there :) haha. After some deliberation between both Lilian and Bradley we decided on a suitable table and colour for his room (I was recommending the baby pink coloured chair) so that it stood out...but he went for the dull wooden coloured chair :P) Wouldn't you agree, that in a normal bedroom, a hot/baby pink chair would standout and be something different?? haha...* I don't know...maybe I am just entering a phase where the colours can be outrageous and just not 'blend' in with the rest of the furniture :P haha...better not let me decorate your house!
What'cha looking at???
After a fantastic assembly effort by the 3 of us..we headed off to Ashfield for some steamboat with Maz and Terrence. Now the last time I had ma la (spelling?) was in Singapore and thankfully there is still this sort of steamboat in Sydney (to ragtaggers: I cannot wait to come back to Singapore possibly in Dec and eat this sort of thing at Bugis!).
This is the after picture (I was too hungry and didn't really have time to take the before picture with all the ingredients for the steamboat - but there was quite a lot :P) Just look at that deadly red colour of the chilli type soup, the other half was the beef one and after our meal...the soup was absolutely delicious and flavoursome with all the previous ingredients having been cooked in it. An excellent stock!
Full + Contentment = Happy :)
Please see below for the slide show:
posted by Darren at
10:29 AM
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