A short while ago our friends Gavin & Will (the Barbeque Magnates) were good enough to send us one of their new ‘balcony-sized’ BBQ models. Thanks guys!! It’s taken us this long to find a gas bottle and suitable plumbing to get it all going, but finally we’ve done it!

Christening this coincided with our first use of one of Paul’s Christmas presents, the sausage stuffing attachment for his beloved Kitchen Aid mixer. I’d managed to find this, and the skins, in Toronto when I’d been visiting there, and they’ve spent the last month hiding in the fridge wrapped up and looking mysterious.

To cut a long story short our sausage-making exercise was a great success, yummy and they can’t help but be healthier than any you’d buy. Grilled to perfection on our new barbie, I think we’ve managed to bring a bit of Aussie backyard cooking culture to Thailand!

I decided to take Pete to a place in Bangkok he hadn’t visited yet, the Grand Palace. Built in 1782, it houses the Royal residence, throne halls and the renowned Temple of the Emerald Buddha.

It’s magnificent; let the photos speak for themselves. Pete thought this was a great idea & we had a lovely day.

Well, our first international Christmas. We decided to host lunch at our place with some of our close Thai friends.

Lunch comprised roast pork, roast turkey and of course a ham - the latter took a lot of walking-around tyring to find a half-leg, not such a common thing here, but I got one! - and some of our families’ favourite traditional salads. Pete and I had also made a Christmas cake a few days before, to a recipe which is a hybrid of both of our mothers’, with a bit of local dried fruits and other touches.

Our guests for lunch were Khun Dao, who works in our building, and Khun Pae and Georges, work colleagues of Pete’s. We also had a second sitting, for dinner, for Khun Aom and Khun Poo, my Thai teachers from school. Khun Dao was the stayer who was with us for both, and then cocktails late into the night!

It was a lovely day which everyone enjoyed - it was nice to have some friends to spend the day with when our own families were so far away, which we really felt.

To all of our families and friends, we wish you all the best for a Happy Christmas and a wonderful Year 2007. We miss you loads and can’t wait to see you all again, be it here in Bangkok or back wherever home may be.

(Photos are from Pete’s new Sony DSC-T50 camera, his Christmas present from me!)

Six months ago, we received a cryptic email telling us to be in Hong Kong on December 9, 2006. No further details would be divulged, just be there! Gavin’s 40th birthday celebrations were to be a mystery until we got there, but were not to be missed!

The only other information we had was the dress code from the invitation- “Dress: Up”. So much time and deliberation was put into choosing suitably fancy outfits for what we knew was going to be an amazing night, knowing too that Will & Gavin had put a lot of secret planning into it.

We certainly weren’t disappointed! It was such a fantastic, memorable night. Friends and family flown in from Australia, China and other parts of Asia all met up at JJ’s bar at the Hyatt, before we were escorted from the hotel down to the waterfront of the harbour - whereupon we boarded a luxury yacht and then spent the next four hours cruising around Hong Kong harbour quaffing French bubbles and munching on a divine finger food buffet. Normally people would say “how the other half live”, except this time it was us, and of course we deserved it! And it was an absolutely fitting way to celebrate Gavin’s birthday, suited him to a T.

In preparation for the next project I’ll be working on, I needed to make a quick visit to the office in Toronto to learn about some of the new technology we’ll be using. So let’s just jump on a plane for a quick 20 hour trip to Toronto for a week of learning and meeting all the right people there.

Apart from the hideous flight it was a great week, very productive work-wise and the new product lineup is great. I’m looking forward to putting all this into practice on my new project. My personal highlight of the week though was the coooold weather. It even snowed a bit on my last day! It was nice to be able to walk around without sweating all the time and fun to be able to wear all the winter clothes which, strangely, haven’t got much of a workout while living in Bangkok.

Had the opportunity to do a little bit of touristing and a bit of shopping, well let me say that North America is now re-confirmed as my favourite place for shopping for men’s clothes, although of course there wasn’t much point in buying any of the winter stuff which the shops were all full of, which was a bit disappointing. Never mind, it was fun to look. And Toronto is a great city, lots to do and quite ‘cultured’. I managed to visit the CN Tower for a bird’s eye view of the city (yes very touristy but hey, I’m a tourist, all right?) as well as the fantastic St Lawrence Market which is quite a foodie’s paradise. I’ll look forward to visiting there again, hopefully with Paul in tow so we can have some adventures there together.