I'm sitting on Delwood Beach, harbour side of Manly and decided my blog was long over due an update.  What an exciting start to 2013 already, I am very excited to be off to Rio Carnival in a month!  As always this was a very spare of the moment, grab the opportunity and live life to the absolute max coming about!
I had met up with an old friend in the Opera Bar (one of our favourite city side watering holes) on a Sunday afternoon in between Christmas and New Year when the plan was hatched! After a mooch round The Rocks Markets and the natural tourist pictures of us under the bridge and by the opera house we hit the bubbles! 
It seems that to do Rio from here not only will break the bank but also is a hideous non-direct route.  However, just perfectly I had a weekend break booked back to the UK for Paula's wedding and it must be fait because to extend my flight back out of the UK with a trip from Heathrow to Rio and back in between seemed not only easy but bloody reasonable!  Done deal!
So since my last random trip whats been the crack? 
We had a work camping trip up to Wiseman's ferry where all bar one of the team plus partners went for a weekend of wake-boarding, mini golf, frisby and cricket.  Fascinating to observe the dynamics outside of the office, the roles individuals take and how personalities change when taken outside of the office and Dumped in the bush!  Having not been on a wakeboard in a good four years, I was a little rusty to say the least but definitely won first prize for the best face plant! 
I had my first Australian hen weekend, although the Irony is we didn't have one Australian with us.  Welsh, English, Irish, French, Kiwi but no token Aussie! A hysterical weekend of wine and cheese tasting, karaoke, naked butlers And very random hen party games (one in particular involving an orange and a pair of tights)!
We attended our first Aussie festival called Homebake.  Throughout the summer there are a number of one day festivals in Sydney with the famous probably being FieldDay on New Years Day.  Unlike a UK festival there are no queues - ok so you have to wait for a couple of ladies to go to the toilet before you and it takes you 5mins to get a drink, but bearing in mind the loos at Glastonbury and the bar at V, this is a refreshing change.  The atmosphere is relaxed, crowd great and sun out to play!  Mostly Australian musicians and bands, hence the name we didn't know many of them but highlights were Tim Minchin (more than hysterical) and Blondi.  Some of the attire was as random as that of a traditional UK festival, and to think individuals of size 28 must look in the mirror and see their reflection staring back at them with a bright orange tie up boob tube, extremely short ripped denim shorts and tie up high heeled black ankle boots and think "god damn I look good, ready to bear all at a public event" ......seriously!  Nowhere more have I seen the proof that if you got to age 16 in Australia with out a tattoo it's a miracle, by 25 the majority will have at least 50% body surface covered!
And of course we have had our second Christmas here in the heat, although this year it hammered down from dawn to dusk!  Christmas day was a kind of nonevent after the ritual of opening stockings! A champagne breakfast followed by champagne lunch followed by champagne in front of back to back Vicar of Dibley and champagne with friends at ours in the evening, ok so not a non-event more of a champagne filled event!
For New Years Eve and Tims birthday we escaped the city and visited Jenolan Caves.  Certainly not the idea of many Sydneysiders or others, to be perfectly honest the Blue Mountains was dead.  We welcomed in 2013 in front of a big screen showing the Sydney fireworks with two other guests from the hotel and our glasses of bubbles, very uneventfully I was in bed by 12.30 and woke on the first day of 2013 with an fresh head and feeling very virtuous!  But as uneventful as NYE was 2013 has so far been anything but.......here's to Rio people!