It’s Wednesday night, close to midnight, and I’m wide awake. I had to go into work tonight at short notice – a baby arrived early for one of the blokes I work with – and so I’m mentally very alert. And with this alertness, I thought it a good idea to update my website, as a fair bit has happened since last Friday night when I last posted.

Saturday was a reasonably social day, starting off with Yum Cha at the Regal on Sussex Street. After Yum Cha we wandered around the new World Square building – even though it was replacing a thirty year old hole in the ground I didn’t think it was much better – and then had a couple of beers. Later in the afternoon, Yvette came over to watch Melrose Place which is currently being replayed on Foxtel. Unfortunately they’ve already by-passed all the “crazy Kimberley” episodes, but “kooky Sydney” and “whacky Michael” provided enough comic relief to make it worth watching.

And then on Sunday afternoon my friend John and I went to the Italian festival in Stanley Street, East Sydney. The street – the site of the first Italian community in Sydney – was turned into an Italian Piazza with lots of Italian motor bikes and scooters on display. There was also an Italian photographic exhibition called Che Evoca and a replica Trevi Fountain.

I suspect it was far busier than the organisers had expected since the were lengthy wait-times for all of the restaurants. We waited almost an hour to get into the place we decided was “the place to be”. As John is quite a social person we got chatting with a lady behind us and a couple – Judith and Bill – in front of us. After chatting for quite some time they asked us if we’d like to join them for lunch. Over a couple of hours we chatted about the life, universe and everything. And then, 10 minutes before we paid the bill, it turns out that I actually work with Judith’s brother in law. Small world, eh?

After that, it was birthday drinks for Michael from work.

And then last night I went to a Sydney Bloggers Meeting.

On the way there, though, something really odd happened in my taxi ride from Ultimo to Newtown. As I got in I noticed the cab driver was listening to a talk radio station and was seemingly enjoying the program. At first I thought he was asking me questions, but I soon realised he was repeating everything the announcer said. When I asked him why he was doing that he replied that he was practising his English language skills. Although I thought that was really great blah blah blah, I gotta say that a five minute cab ride with someone repeating everything they’ve just heard can become slightly annoying.

The Bloggers meeting was pretty good fun. I missed last month due to work commitments, and so I was pleased to see two new people attending. We had a great night, perhaps largely due to the $7.50 jugs of beer and free pool. What a bargain on both counts. Both Mark and Glen have declared they woke up with terrible hangovers. Tragic!