It’s weird that a lot of the media I have consumed lately – Wolf Hall, The Tudors, and Conclave – revolves around cardinals and Popes. Yesterday I was talking about papal conclaves with Rodd and he told me in all seriousness that they check the genitals of every papal candidate these days. “What?! No way,” I scoffed. “Yes way! It’s because there was a lady Pope once. They even have a special chair,” he claimed. A few minutes of research later, I crowed as I revealed to him that the papal toilet chair is a myth. He remains disappointed.
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The Quoin and Canva
A company in Tasmania has purchased an ecologically-damaged 5000-hectare property called The Quoin that they are restoring and rewilding. I was stunned when reading this story to realise that the folks behind this effort are my friends Cameron Adams and Lisa Miller from Canva.
The news story was linked on Metafilter, and here’s what I wrote as a comment there:
I was one of the early Canvanauts (as they call themselves), working there for 16 months across 2015-2016. The job involved a pretty serious pay cut for me, but I was burnt out after working in streaming video (“How many ads can we cram in this before people stop watching?”) and it was so nice to work on a product with no ads, and that people loved enough to pay for. Cam was a colleague and a friend, and I met Lisa and their kids on many occasions. Melanie (CEO) and Cliff (COO) interviewed me and I worked with them on a daily basis. I didn’t always agree with every decision they made, but it was clear to me that their ambition did not extend to screwing over users. Even back then, when Canva was far from the unicorn it is now, the founders put their principles into action. I remember in particular a company offsite in Manila (we had a large team there) where the entire company spent a day giving back. I went with a group of colleagues to a shelter for women and kids who had been sex-trafficked, and we played games and I taught them to knit and it was one of the most meaningful things I’ve done in my whole tech career.
It’s wild to me now to see people that I am still Facebook friends with referred to as some of the richest people in the country. No, billionaires shouldn’t exist. But I’m really happy to see that these three continue to do good with their fortunes, and I’m proud to have contributed in some tiny way to important projects like the Quoin in Tasmania.
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Shared today on Facebook
We had a fantastic lunch from a Michelin-starred Thai chef (who relocated from Bangkok to Mittagong) at @pasteaustralia… and followed it up that evening with meat pies and sausage rolls on the train ride back to Sydney. 😂 #classy
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Mittagong and Bowral
We recently learned about Rail Discovery Passes, which allow you unlimited travel on NSW regional trains, as well as extending all the way to Brisbane and Melbourne. This suits our goal of doing more regional travel in 2025, so we recently bought six-month passes. Today we used them for the first time, catching a very early train from Sydney and riding 90 minutes to Mittagong in the Southern Highlands.
We started the day by grabbing some coffee and heading to Lake Alexandra. We patted dogs, looked for turtles, and learned about the history of the Fitzroy Iron Works.
The park has a fun playground too.
We spent an hour or two shopping in town, and I got a couple skeins of wool from Victoria House. Our real destination though – and the original motivation for the trip – was Paste Australia. This award-winning Thai restaurant is run by a Michelin-starred chef who relocated from Bangkok to Mittagong, and we’d heard great things about it.
We had a booking for noon, and it turns out we were the only people there! Other dates were booked out, so I think the cool, rainy weather kept people away. We had the set lunch and chose to start with the grilled eggplant salad…
…along with the roasted duck with rice crackers.
For mains, we had Jeen Juan chicken curry…
…and the restaurant’s speciality, Sator Pad Goong, with prawns, pork, and “Thai cluster beans.”
The set lunch also came with green beans (with garlic and chilli) and rice.
Everything was delicious, and of course, the service was phenomenal since we were the only ones there! Well worth the special trip.
After lunch, we went for a wander over to Eden Brewery and sampled some of their brews. Cool place.
The weather had turned seriously windy, cold, and rainy, so we called an Uber and headed to nearby Bowral. We had several hours until our return train, so we joined every pensioner in Bowral for a showing of Conclave at the New Empire Cinema.
After the film – which is fantastic – we did some window shopping along Bong Bong street. Hey, that’s right, Don Bradman is from here!
And then it was time to head home! Our train was a little delayed so we watched the darkening sky from the platform.
From Michelin-starred lunch to a meat pie on the train. Classy 😂
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Shared today on Facebook
Another shift at the Colour Maze! Today I was in the swinging ball room, making sure that kids didn’t brain themselves too hard or strangle themselves in the nearby rope room. #sydneyfestival
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Colour Maze Redux
Another shift at the Colour Maze! Today I was in the swinging ball room, making sure that kids didn’t brain themselves too hard or strangle themselves in the nearby rope room.
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Shared today on Facebook
Another volunteer shift, this time at the Colour Maze. See all those dots of colour? Those are stickers. And I’m the one handing out sticker sheets to hundreds of hot and overstimulated children. 😅
Snack recommendation! The Coles at Broadway had these Korean seaweed snacks on sale, so I picked up a package. And they are GREAT! Savoury, salty, crunchy. I might try to get more.
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Roasted seaweed snack
Snack recommendation! The Coles at Broadway had these Korean seaweed snacks on sale, so I picked up a package. And they are GREAT! Savoury, salty, crunchy. I might try to get more.
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Colour Maze
Another volunteer shift, this time at the Colour Maze. See all those dots of colour? Those are stickers. And I’m the one handing out sticker sheets to hundreds of hot and overstimulated children. 😂
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Shared today on Facebook
Blog post: another recipe from the CWA 1965 “Dessert a Day” cookbook. This one is called Peach Marshmallow, and we did a fun experiment where I cooked it as written, and Rodd Snook did a modern, fancy take on it. (SPOILER: the fancy version was better.) 🍑
Congrats and to many more 🙌🏽