I'd signed up to 2 meet ups today, the first was a picnic in new farm park, the second was seeing a band at the story bridge hotel It was a gorgeous day so I decided to walk the 2 miles or so round to new farm, stopping at Coles to buy carrots, humous, snacks etc. There was around 20 people there - none of whom I'd met before, many of whom were Brits! One of them even used to run a pub round the corner from my Marylebone office! It was soon 2pm and time to head...

Today was the Ekka festival. When I bought a ticket I wasn't actually sure what it was, but apparently it's THE event of the Brisbane social calendar! Turns out its a agricultural festival though also includes art, food, a fun fair & something called show bags - as well as firemen selling charity calendars! We saw cows (real and plastic) , horses, cowboys, sheep, wood cutters, pigs, dogs and cats. We also had a strawberry ice cream (apparently that's tradit...

Today to celebrate our 'walk to Rio' we had an international morning tea event at work. Walk to Rio is a charity health initiative where as a department we're trying to walk the 23,000 km to Rio in the 7wks ahead of & during the Olympics. I'm captain of team New Zealand, and if we each walk 10,000 steps a day, around 8km we'll make it from Brisbane to Hamilton (where Andy is) in the 7 weeks Each team had to bring in food & wear costumes which represent...

After a late night Sunday spent by the pool recovering before meeting my bosses Scottish friend Victoria at the night noodle markets. An annual event, on the southbank it's basically multiple food vans selling Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese etc, very yummy! And with all the lights very pretty too!

Another gorgeous day I was up around 9, went to yoga (my housemates idea!) and then spent the rest of the day sunbathing by the pool!! After a relaxed day I'd signed up to a meet up group for sat nights. It's one of the biggest groups & they were meeting at the pig & whistle, a large pub just the other side of the river. However, most of them were 50+ and divorced, and while the people I spoke to were very nice, they weren't going to a replacement for m...