Spitting it out

Today I learnt a few new skills at my wine tasting course.  Hosted by the Wine Society, I went to a fairly intensive course called Introduction to wine - Level 1.  

It was a 6 hour course starting at 10am (which I had thought was a little too early to start drinking!). The course included learning about how wine is made, different types of grapes, learning what goes with what food, different harvesting methods, what regions produce what types of wine best due to their climate.  The course presenter was great, he has been in the industry for 35+ years, working at wineries, working in the industry, being a sales rep, being a taster and a judge, his knowledge was fantastic and he ran a great day.

And there were 36 wines to taste!  We had 6 chapters and each one had 6 wines.  We were advised that they encourage when learning to taste wine, to use the spittoon and literally swivel and swish the wine around your mouth and then spit it out like the professional tasters do. As I'm racing the next day and had to drive to dinner, I decided that it would be a good idea, I was also intrigued on how the wine was going to taste without swallowing it.  The answer... it tastes exactly the same except it doesn't affect your mind and body... I tasted 36 different wines and was sober!  We got to take home leftover wines from they day so I took my 2 favourites from the day - a Pinot Noir and a Merlot.

Thoroughly recommend doing the course, whether you think you know a lot about wine already or know nothing... we had a range of all in the room!

Racing in the rain

Well this is officially my 10th thing completed on The List!

Today, Australia Day, I participated in my first ever ski race.  I borrowed a ski from Steve and a paddle from Annett (I have done a few training sessions on the craft but really not very many).  The event is the Cockatoo & Cupcake Cups (I competed in the Cupcake Cup - the short course event), which is a good & fun handicapped race that has been an official race now for around 6 years now, hosted by my paddling club the Pacific Dragons.  I raced at pretty much exactly the speed I had been handicapped at (luckily I changed my group with the handicapper the day before!).

It was a good race and when I had someone catch up to me from the starting group behind, I managed to keep up with him until the end of the race which I was happy with.

Astrology

I asked my friend Kay for the name of her clairvoyant recently as she had been to a lady a couple of years earlier who she believed was fairly accurate with some of her reading.  I looked up the website ready to make a booking and it turns out that this medium and clairvoyant was taking a sabbatical... literally starting the next day!  

So, by chance when I was in Agra, India recently for a work trip, and I saw the words 'Astrologer' near the lobby of my fancy hotel, and a nice looking older Indian man sitting at a table with no clients, I thought - why not!

My Astrologer read my palm, talked about my past, talked about what he saw in my future and we had a good chat.  I asked a couple of questions and he was fairly accurate about big events in my past. I have kept the piece of paper and hidden it in my drawer to let the universe take it's course. 

So... let's see what happens in my future!

The Bonus

When I started writing The List, I asked some friends to help come up with suggestions as to what I could put on it.  One of my friends, Michelle, suggested I added 'visit a country I have never been to'. It didn't make the final list as I already had a point to book and plan a trip to Hawai'i in 2015 which meant really there was no additional time (or money) to add another country within the 8 month period.

As it turns out, work decided to send me to India to visit a company we do a lot of business with and a couple of areas I work closely with, for introductions, relationship building and training.

I went for 7 days of work which also included a weekend, and then onto Hong Kong for a couple of days before coming home.

India is an interesting country... 

I was in a city that was regional of sorts (not the type of regional town you would find in Australia... it still has 4-odd million people in it) and as I was there for work, so I spent a lot of my days in a car to and from the office to the hotel.  I did eat out a couple of times, and everyone thought I was very brave, India is just not safe for women to go out by themselves, especially after hours.

On the weekend, I took a flight to Delhi where a driver picked me up and I went to Agra, the Red Fort and the Taj Mahal (you can't go to India with out going to the Taj if you haven't been before!!). The weekend was great, the Taj amazing and all the people I met were great.  I was quite lucky in that I didn't get sick, I didn't get harassed, I ate lots of Indian food (and put on 2kgs), I stayed in nice places but I was ready to leave when I did.  India reminds me of old school Asia: dirty; crowded; poor in some parts (although there is also a cast system in the slums and the more fortunate than some have satellite dishes on their slum for cable tv); but also very fascinating, it's hard to describe.

I was very glad to land in Hong Kong, which was great as usual, and I got to catch up with Greg who I haven't seen in a few years. Working in our HK office was also good, and so was the food and shopping!  And I could have a shower with my mouth open without fear of getting sick... you would be amazed at how important this little bit of luxury is.

Consolidation

Today I received confirmation that all my superannuation funds have been rolled over and consolidated into one fund!  I have been in the workforce for 20 years now and have had 5 jobs and 5 different superannuation funds, so it was about time I did something about it. Now to add around $1million to it so I can retire with enough money... not long to do that!

This is a good week for getting some challenges done, another one coming up on Thursday...

Learning to Draw

2 challenges in one day complete!  The second one today was suggested to me by my niece Lily - learn how to draw.  We took that challenge a step further and added an OR... attend a life drawing session, which is what I did tonight.

Stuart has been going to the Arthouse Hotel to do life drawing for a while and I have always been a little intrigued so along with Kath and Michelle, we all went after work.  

So... maybe I should have actually taken Lily's advice and learnt how to draw before going to a life drawing session!  The model was quite skinny which made it harder to draw and I most definitely was the worst drawer in the room at the start of the night (drawings at the top of the pic below).  But over the course of an hour and a bit, my drawing developed (mainly because I decided to stop trying to draw the model's face, feet and hands and also I started to add in a little shading to help cover bad bits!) and I was proud of a couple of my drawings at the end (the second pic below). 

Thanks for the intro to life drawing Stu... not sure that I'll go back, but it was a treat!

The swim

The idea for this challenge came from my friend Michelle... to swim the length of Coogee or Bronte.  For some reason I chose Bondi (I think mainly because my friends Fran and Karen live in Bondi and I thought it would be a good way to see them too!), not realising that of course it is a significantly longer beach!

So before work today Michelle, Kath and I decided to swim the length of Bondi - within a week where there have been 2 great whites over 2 metres long found in the nets at the beach (albeit 500metres from shore which was nowhere near as far out as we were going to go!) and a weekend of Northerly winds which bring blue bottle jellyfish to Sydney, we decided to still give it a go!  

Fran came and met us down at North Bondi before heading off to work and with a few words of advice we were on our way.  We didn't end up taking the Bondi Escalator (the rip at North Bondi that takes you out to the best spot to swim from), we went through the yellow and red swimming flags instead and plunged into the surf, picked our line and started swimming.  

Well... after less than 2 minutes I was exhausted!  Much like my first ride back on the bike, swimming in the open water is quite confronting and tiring. Waves coming from one side, goggles that don't work, seaweed disguised as who knows what, water up my nose, water being inhaled... wow!  I must say, freestyle makes a massive difference swimming in the waves, breaststroke gets you hardly anywhere.  But through all that it was actually fun!

After about 20 minutes, (unfortunately/fortunately??) Michelle got stung by a blue bottle so we (I) decided we should go in!  Shell would have kept going if I had wanted to but safety first... right Cath?!  We had actually swum about 3/4 of the way and I was happy with how far we had come.  Swimming back in to shore and catching the waves was also fun and a challenge, I know the theory but putting it into practice when I am out of practice was interesting - caught a really good last one into the beach to top off the experience nicely and then a good stroll, people watch and gossip back to the car along the beach. 

I headed over to Karen's place for a lovely cuppa tea, shower and breakky.  It was great hanging out with Karen and her beautiful girl Skye before going to work.

What a great way to start the day!