Wedding cake?

I think maybe I've found Tim's ideal wedding cake!! It probably won't actually look anything quite like this.

I do have other posts pending (even halfway through) but then there were visits to Hobart, an assignment due today, another one due next week.. and so on! Back to it... will blog again one day soon!

First night in Melbourne

Naturally its all about the food (or at least the shops haven't opened). We went to a Korean restaurant called the Oriental Spoon for dinner and shared some entrees and a main. All very tasty with a good crowd of locals.

As entrees we had a familiar but tasty seaweed salad, some steamed pork and vegetable dumplings, kimchi jeon which was a kind of pancake, and some little balls which where a bit like croquettes with pieces of octopus hiding inside them. Main course, which was shared at the same time was pork ribs -  we think baby pork given they were tiny - but delicious!

By the time we finished it seemed to only be 9pm so we had a pleasant wander the long way home picking out all the shoe shops to come back to in shopping hours!

And the top 20 were...

If anyone is interested, I'm sure you can find this out but... look here for the full list or here are the top 20:

1. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
2. Rage Against the Machine - Killing In The Name
3. Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah
4. Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart
5. Radiohead - Paranoid Android
6. Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
7. Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye
8. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under The Bridge
9. Foo Fighters - Everlong
10. Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven
11. John Lennon - Imagine
12. Oasis - Wonderwall
13. Radiohead - Creep
14. The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony
15. Radiohead - Karma Police
16. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
17. Hilltop Hoods - The Nosebleed Section
18. Muse - Knights Of Cydonia
19. Metallica - One
20. White Stripes - Seven Nation Army

Overall the group at my place enjoyed the countdown, but were probably a bit suprised by the top 5. Nathan wanted Bohemian Rhapsody higher, I never would have thought of Rage against the machine - although Richo liked it, and so did Hamish. After talking to Hamish and finding out Joy Division was the name for the nazi sex slaves or something, Joy Division has a new meaning and I'm not sure I like it. Still no suprise their song was up there. I liked White Stripes Seven Nation Army also - might have voted for it if I'd thought of it (though it was hard to pick 10!). The song I voted for that got highest was Massive Attack's Teardrop at #22.

Enough about that - it was a pleasant laid back party but now its a new week. And I'm on urology which mainly means 7 or 7;30 starts (or 6:45 on Fridays to check up on patients before grand rounds with the consultants). As far as surgical specialties go, its not bad, and the consultants are pretty nice. Still, despite the interesting parts, I'm not sure I'm that keen on endless prostate examinations! Last Thursday was good though: journal club = breakfast at a cafe with intern, RMO, reg and consultants (their shout) and we discussed a couple of journal articles! Eggs benedict was a good way to start a day - and I was grateful for a good feed after assisting in a nephrectomy operation for several hours later in the day (yep we took out his kidney).

Hottest 100 of all time party

Its a rainy Sunday and there's a bunch of us at my house listening to the final 50 of the countdown. One reason for this post is because I have a new toy and I'm trying out blogging from it- its a new HTC magic phone with Google android operating system. It links in really well with gmail, gtalk and all other Google bases things. Its arival to iphone and so far I like it!
The party is low key but fun. We had to turn up the music go hear over the hail, and the brief sunny spell is gone!
Better go be social, plus the orange glow at the bbq suggests our lunch is on fire!

Dinner was Gorge-ous!

Last night Tim and I ate out at the Launceston Gorge Restaurant for our 2 year anniversary. It was a beautiful setting - in fact, not actually the spot I'd pictured. I'd seen the building before but not realised it was actually the restaraunt in the Gorge!! It was lovely at night - lit up and surrounded by very wet and drippy trees!


The waiter with his slightly English accent was very helpful and frequently refilled our water glasses, attended to the wine glasses and looked after us well. The winter special was on so we got 3 courses for $40 which was a very good deal.

We got a bottle of wine - some WA one called Bandit, because it was one of the cheaper ones, but also because it had a grape called Tampranillo which we'd never heard of. We asked our English waiter, and he said he'd not tried it but the bottle was pretty and it had been very popular and it was possibly the last bottle left - so we got it! Reading the bottle told us that the Bandit label was based on a WA bushranger, Moondyne Joe who was caught drinking wine in the Houghton cellars in the 1860s.


For Starters, Tim had half a dozen natural oysters, and I had deep fried King Island Brie with tomato and peach chutney. We shared of course because I'm not sure how that much deep fried cheese would have felt later - but it was delicious!


For mains, Tim had Tasmanian Atlantic Salmon with Proscuitto and some herb butter or something, while I had confit of duck with shiraz figs I think. The duck was delicious! Tim's fish was tasty although he did confess to wondering how the steak (his other shortlisted option) would have been!


By dessert time, Tim was very full. Still, he pushed through and managed to eat all of his chocolatey swirly icecreamy thing (didn't look at the names as carefully) with kahlua and a meringue nest on top. I also enjoyed by duo of brulee's - although I believe they were different flavours and mostly I could taste creme and brulee! But I always love the crunchy top and the smooth stuff underneath!

Then we were done.. we finished up the wine, and had a quick play in the gardens! It was raining and late but while we waited for Tim's Mum we had a quick wander around the pogoda thingy!