01. Morning bathing at Aurora, then fish and chips for lunch by the beach. And this view. Best. Day.
02. Charlotte Wood makes the Booker longlist!
03. It’s thirty years since I graduated from university (Bach. Planning & Design). This week we had a reunion at the ‘planners pub‘ and it was such a great, great night. Since then, everyone has shared pics from uni days. Most are from balls and trips away but my favourite is the one below, sitting around on the lawn (between classes?). Never underestimate the joy and restorative power of reminiscing.
04. Readings Top 30 – I’ve read 19 and the list includes some of my favourite books: Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears, The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
05. This week’s Scandinavian Film Festival outing – The Tundra Within Me (Sami). It was a bit weird but I learnt something about herding reindeer and joiking.
06. Watching: Dinosaur (SBS OnDemand in Australia) – it’s funny.
07. Nicole Livingstone’s Olympic swimming commentary – picked up so many tips 😀
08. Listening: Three Associating podcast (in case you’ve ever wondered what therapists talk about amongst themselves…).
09. It feels ridiculous to go on about hummus but this hummus is so delicious.
10. More deliciousness – German cakes (I’m always there for Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and Schokoküsse).
Oh wow, the planning and design reunion… I did not keep in touch with a single person from my year… they were mainly all private school kids from the city whereas I was a govt school kid from the country… but I do often wonder how many of them did become planners or landscape architects!
I still have a few very close friends from Planning (hmmm… the govt school kids, like me!) but also see a handful of others at bigger events. We had a reunion about 15 years ago and held it in a park designed by one of the landscape architects from our year, which was fun (and then we went on to the pub!). So, hadn’t seen lots of them since the last reunion. I was also curious – who was still working in planning? Surprisingly, quite a few (or at least in related fields like property and local government). All of the landscape architects were still working in landscape architecture!
That’s so interesting! There were only about a dozen in my class… I know that one went on to become an Olympic cyclist, another joined Telstra and the only other country kid (who shared my love of books and reading) died on a trip to Ethiopia a couple of years after graduation 😥
I should add, next time you’re in Melbourne, take a walk around campus – the old Architecture and Planning Building is gone and there’s a very fancy new lecture theatre in its place. When I went back to uni 12 years ago, my lectures were in the new theatre (not because they were Planning but because it is the biggest lecture theatre on campus and I was doing some first year science subjects).
What a fabulously blue sky! I love German cake, too, but the Hungarian dobos torte is my new favourite.
It was an amazing day (cool but crisp).
Funny that you mention the Hungarian torte – the one thing that we didn’t make at our recent Hungarian night!
Always enjoy these posts – and government school girl here too. My uni friends though varied, with one of my closest friends being private school, but she was a character. One of the things I most fondly remember was sitting on the lawn between lectures/tutorials and talking. This is something with increasing HECS that doesn’t seem to happen anymore. Didn’t seem to happen when my kids were going through uni in the mid to late 2000s. I thought it a huge shame. Whenever I go on to a uni campus – any campus – the joy of those days floods back. It was hard work but it was exciting.
I’ve read 24 or 26 of Readings list (forgotten now and too laze to check) but it’s a decent list I think. I agree too that it’s wonderful to see Charlotte Wood on the Booker list.
Mr Gums has brought his Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte equipment to Melbourne this visit to make the cake – his specialty. Whether he will remains to be seen.
As an Israeli, I can tell you that most hummus that isn’t made in this region is pretty bad. This stuff, however, looks very good!
Without doubt the best shop-bought hummus I’ve had.
So nice catching up with old friends and classmates (not always nice, but when it works, it’s lovely!)