A taste of Vivid

The annual Vivid Sydney festival is underway. The light display is spectacular and well worth a visit into Sydney's CBD even though you have to battle horrendously packed crowds to view the buildings and installations lit by displays. The only aspects of the light display evident from my suburban home are the lights on the Harbour Bridge and a search light display.

This was the view of those lights from my home tonight. The lights on the Bridge changed colour and movement continuously. The search lights fanned around Hollywood or Battle of Britain style.

Rain

We can enjoy splendid weather in Sydney but each year we can be guaranteed one or two wet spells that run for days. When that happens you wonder wether the sun will ever shine again. We're in one of those wet spells at the moment. Four days of rain so far with occasional very brief sunny moments and more rain forecast for the next four or so.

It is pelting down at the moment.

Raindrops keep falling.....

NYE

ABC News: Photo by Brant Cumming

On the past two New Years Eve nights I hosted small groups of friends at my apartment from which I enjoy an enviable view of Sydney's fireworks display.

This year I played the NYE equivalent of Scrooge by staying at home and inviting nobody. It can feel selfish not to invite friends to share this comfortable way of enjoying the event. There are no crowds to battle, no need for milk crates to stand on for a shaky glimpse of the festivities, no fee charged for the 'exclusive' viewing location and I provide comfortable furniture for guests to sit on between displays. To top off, even my 'cooking' would be marginally better than fast food options at harbourside fast food outlets.

But I invited nobody. I didn't feel guilty about it; just a bit weary. Weary from a hard year of volunteer work four days a week. Weary from a commitment to play bridge two nights a week, a commitment now given up. Weary from an enjoyable overseas trip that involved huge amounts of walking plus the stressful, if eventually satisfying, experience of driving on scary mountainous, hairpin roads in Sicily.

My immediate neighbours, a youngish upwardly mobile couple, showed off their fancy view to a full balcony load of guests. I'm not certain exactly what form their party took. It was slightly odd. Their apartment was packed with oggling guests for the 9pm 'Family fireworks' display but fifteen minutes afterwards all the guests had departed. The apartment was packed again for the main display at midnight. What happened in between? Did everyone adjourn somewhere else for dinner? Was the second group a different group from the early guests? Did the couple offer two fireworks 'sittings', so to speak?

I'm curious but I won't ask. They might think I am stalking!

And, they're off....

The annual Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race always provides a spectacular sight with its start and early moments played out on Sydney Harbour and through the Heads into the Tasman Sea.

I am lucky to have a view of the start from my apartment, albeit from a long way behind the starting line with the fleet sailing further away from my location.

Some photos from today's start;

Sixty yachts tacking for position ahead of the start

The starter's gun fires and they're off

The maxi yachts surge to the lead

Before the start 10 helicopters buzz overhead like mosquitos

Grubs up!

DIY

I'm always in admiration - but not envious - of Andrew and his Do It Yourself attitude and abilities. He solves many problems with his own hands and no doubt also saves himself considerable maintenance costs.

I've never had an aptitude for DIY. It has never interested me, although I have noticed that DIY types are often rather delicious looking.

This morning I was ready to depart for my volunteer work at the hospital. It was 6.20am and it was dark. The sun was still to rise. Sitting in my car I pressed the remote control for the garage door to open. It rose several centimetres and then froze. I pressed the remote again and the door closed. I pressed the remote once more and it opened only to again freeze several centimetres up.

In a scene fitting for a Marx Bothers movie I repeated this loop - open and close, open and close - another four or five times finally conceding that something was wrong and someone must fix it.

It took a while for me to find the documentation for the garage door. Actually, I didn't find it. I noted the name of the garage door device and looked the company up on the internet. There was a 1300 number to call. I called it and a recorded voice told me (in effect) to wait for their business hours which commence at 8am. Only on weekdays. Bad luck if your door jams on a weekend or worse still on a public holiday long weekend.

At 8am, I called the number back. I was offered the choice of two repairer/dealers. One located 49 kilometres away and the other 16 kilometres away. Guess which one I chose. I rang his number. He asked me numerous questions about my device including colours of buttons on the remote and the wall pad. I dislike these questions. I have colour defective vision (colourblind) and always have a sense of uselessness when a tradie or call centre asks me (for example) 'is the displayed light red or green'?

'I'll be there by 12 noon', the repairer assured me. Filling in time I noticed a rusted spring on the garage floor and nearby a small ring which seems to have snapped away from it. Looking further at the door itself and I noticed one newish looking spring at the eastern end of the door and no spring at all on the western end. Even my non-DIY mind registered that the problem may be a broken spring.

The repairer called from his car to announce his arrival around 11.15am. Good sign, he was on time, even a little earlier than promised.

A quick examination of the 'crime scene' and some chat about his latest golf holiday to Las Vegas and Palm Springs followed and within about 20 minutes my garage door had a new spring on its western side. My forensic assessment had been correct.

$231. Yep, a new spring and 15 minutes labour plus the holiday chat.

The door works better (smoother) than ever now.

I took the repairers business card. He was on time and he fixed the problem. That's all I need to become a loyal customer.

He wasn't as good looking as the DIY man in the photograph nor was he better looking than Andrew either.

One pest too many

The pest control man visited this morning. The appointment was for 8am. He rang at 8.30am to apologise that he was running late because the prior appointment took longer than expected. He was at Marrickville and would be with me shortly. Oh no, he wouldn't, I thought. Not at that peak time. The traffic would be too heavy. Of course he wasn't with me shortly. He arrived at 9.30am.

He was quite thorough spraying in every room and applying his magic sticky stuff in dobs on every internal hinge he could find. All the while, he talked. And talked.

He'd recently relocated from Perth, Western Australia. He is starting a new life. He is divorced. He doesn't want more children. If he finds a new 'woman' he wants her to be ten years older than him so there will be no young children. He is almost a grandfather at nearly 41 years of age. The traffic in Sydney is far worse than in Perth. The view from my apartment is fantastic. The rent must be huge. I must be a lawyer or a doctor to live here. You can buy a whole house in Perth for under $500,000 but not so in Sydney. His rent in Sydney is $$$$$ .......... And so and so forth.

All that in about fifteen minutes.

Once he departed I felt that at least one pest had been eradicated.

And then there are the cushions

The mirror was not my only new purchase. I also purchased an array of cushions for my charcoal coloured lounge suite. Here are three of them (just lined up for the photography not as they are meant to be deployed;

Mirror, mirror on the wall

I have purchased a new mirror for my apartment which is placed to take advantage of the reflected view. I'm quite pleased with the purchase. The glare from the daylight the day I took this photo was such that I couldn't manage a photo which actually showed the harbour reflected in the mirror without me standing within sight.

The chandelier is a leftover from the prior owners and not to my taste at all. One day I'll install new lighting.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

A friend is undertaking a course in Design and has unilaterally offered her thoughts on ways of improving the design of my apartment.

All from the goodness of her heart of course and nothing to do with improving or rehearsing assignments for which she might be marked later. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Actually I don't mind playing along because she has some interesting suggestions and my apartment could benefit from some design improvement.

Today we looked over mirrors, cushions, lamps etc.

Friend is somewhat taken with this mirror for my apartment;

but I have a preference for this;

No decisions yet - and no rush to redecorate either.

Lincoln Place

An update of the Lincoln Place development next door.

16 May 2015

Today

Lincoln Place

Updating construction of Lincoln Place the new apartment complex next door.

10 February 2015

Today

Lincoln progress

Progress at the Lincoln Place development adjacent to my apartment building.

Yesterday

23 December 2014

Come rain and come shine

Looking down a section of our driveway following a night of rain around 9.30 this morning;

Lush and green

Returning around 1.30pm the rain has disappeared - for the moment - and the sun has appeared. Looking back up the driveway a section of the wall has been demolished as part of the adjacent Lincoln Place construction site. Our neighbourly developers will be reconstructing our shared wall once they have completed the construction on their side.

I suppose the house behind the wall at the other end - which actually is a triplex of three house size residences - is dreading the loss of surrounding space and whatever view they once enjoyed when the Lincoln Place complex is completed.

I want to be alone...

Sometimes I 'get' Greta Garbo, the Swedish actress who in her later reclusive years of retirement in the USA yearned to be left alone. Well, that's the mythology anyway.

Greta Garbo

After years of solo living, a week like last week in the 24/7 presence of three house guests can be fun and tiring at the same time but afterwards it is oh so nice to just be solo again. I was going to take myself out during the day but as the hours passed by I knew I would remain home and so it transpired.

I did do some housework and even cleared some paperwork. I did take shower - eventually - but otherwise I spent the day in a nightshirt being a real lazy bones.

I 'vanted' to be alone.

The clean up

The final laundry load

The post party, post visitors' laundry and kitchen clean up.

Three lots of queen size bed linen, four bath towels, six face towels, eight tea towels, one dining table table cloth and three loads of my personal laundry in addition to two loads in the dishwasher.

All done.

Twas the night before Christmas....

...and no construction work could be seen
on the building site beside us
nor anywhere in between...

Lincoln Place construction site today

Compared with a month ago.

When you call on me

Our body corporate has just had a new intercom system installed for our building. It is the third intercom system I have experienced living in this building for the past twenty four years.

I can't recall what was wrong with the system that existed when I first moved in but the second system was quite unstable often failing to ring through to the apartment. It was not unusual for a visitor to telephone me from the front door after failing to gain a response from buzzing my apartment when I was at home but the intercom call had not activated in my apartment.

Previous intercom panel

Previous intercom handset

Hopefully the new system will be more stable.

New intercom panel

I don't understand though why the intercom handset we have been given contains five buttons; four of which do not activate or respond to anything.

New intercom handset

Lincoln Place - two weeks on

The Lincoln Place development two weeks on from the previous post;

29 November

compared with the earlier photo;

14 November

Not a huge difference on the face of it but there has been a lot of activity and some very large equipment on site at various times in between.

We received notification from the Council during the week of an application to vary the development approval for a period leading into Christmas. Basically the developers want permission to start earlier in the morning and to work longer hours including the already approved morning hours on Saturday. That's a surprise.

There is no activity on site this Saturday morning although they already have a limited approval to perform their work. Did someone obtain an injunction preventing work? Seems unlikely. Maybe it is just too nice a morning to be working?

Lincoln Place

For the twenty-four years that I have lived in my apartment building two adjacent parcels of land have remained undeveloped. With a maintained covering of grass, some attractive perimeter trees and no fencing the two land parcels have provided a discreet park for the local community. Occasionally neighbouring children have kicked a football around or played impromptu games of cricket in the informal park.

Then last year Woollahra Council notified that a development was planned for the joint properties. Six full floor apartments will be constructed across two buildings. This week a chain fence appeared around the land parcels and then on Thursday a bulldozer started to rip up the lovely grass topping and what lay beneath it. At some point the trees were also removed but unobservant me didn't notice their absence until yesterday.

Here is a photo of the state of construction, or rather at this stage the state of destruction, as glimpsed from my dining room.

The development is named, rather grandly, One Lincoln Place after the tiny Cul-de-sac that will be its address. One parcel of land is visible in my photograph and the second is immediately to its right but obscured by the eastern wing of my building.

There is a compatibly grand website to promote the project. You might find it interesting if only for its tempting photographs of the community in which I live.

If I have sufficient discipline and memory to follow up, I intend to post occasional photographs to report progress with the build.