Employment Beckons!

So, the second interview obviously went well and by Friday afternoon I had a job offer... to start in one week's time!  That left me with one week to enjoy Sydney without having to spend my time looking for work or worrying about how much money I was spending!  I started as I meant to go on with a night on the town celebrating with a couple of my new friends on Friday night.  After food at Assembly in Regent's Place, we visited the wonderful Stitch Bar at 61 York Street (if you don't know the address you'll walk straight past it!), which has a menu of single malts as well as cocktails!  The plan had been to do some whisky tasting, but we ended up going for cocktails instead, making for a very merry evening!

Saturday started as I'd like all my weekends to start... with Brunch at Bills.  That would be Bill Granger, Sydney chef extraordinaire and publisher of numerous cookbooks, one of which my mum brought me when I returned from Oz 10 years ago... Sydney Food!  We visited his Woollahra restaurant (my favourite suburb for brunch... think Dulwich Village, if you know London) and sat in a rather shady (and windy!) courtyard.  The service was impeccable, in a friendly Aussie fashion and when someone left a table in the sunny corner just before our food arrived, they happily cleared the table for us, put our meals on it then came to move all the rest of our stuff across!  I had the Sweetcorn Fritters which were delicious, with a light chilli kick in the tail.  They feature in Sydney Food, so I now know what they taste like and should be able to cook them at home, although why would you when the alternative is to enjoy them at Bills!!  Katy went for the sweet option with the Ricotta hotcakes, banana and honeycomb butter which she reckoned was fabulous, so that's on the list for next time I visit!  To be honest, I don't think you’d find anything on the menu that wasn't fantastic, so I’ll just have to keep coming back until I've tried it all!!  By the time we left, it felt like we were regulars and part of the big Bills family from the treatment we received from all the staff.  We'll definitely be back!!

From Bills it was straight off to the Pyrmont Food & Wine Festival.  Food and wine seems to be the theme for autumn over here... I have since seen both Manly and Coogee advertise their Food & Wine festivals, so presumably we can expect one in every suburb over the next few weeks!!  There was some great artwork on display from local artists on our way across the park to the wine area.  We got to vote for our favourite and both agreed No. 129 by Ann Cahill - a black and white view of the Opera House with red umbrellas in the foreground - was by far the best.  It was only just over $100 and I would have bought it had someone not beaten me to it!  However, I've since found her website and she does do commissions, so I think that is one for when I've got my own place and all my stuff has been shipped over.

There were probably about 20-30 wineries at the festival - pretty good going as there are only about 40 in the Mudgee region altogether.  You purchased tasting tickets - the cheapest package was $20 for 5 tastings and included a free tasting glass.  Some stalls gave you a taste of one wine for a ticket, whilst others allowed you to taste all the wines on the stall for your one ticket!  Katy and I shared each of our tastings, so that meant overall we got to try wine from 10 different wineries!  Some of the highlights were the two sparkling chilled Merlots (an alternative to white wine in the summer) and my personal favourite, a beautifully peachy flavoured Chardonnay from the Farmer's Daughter winery.  We both got a voucher entitling us to a free bottle of wine if we visit a particular cellar door by 21st June, so we're now considering a weekend trip to Mudgee!!

Along with the wine, there were also cookery demonstrations and we got to see a great patisserie chef creating amazingly smooth dark chocolate ganache chocolates rolled in popping candy.  We got a sample afterwards and they tasted amazing... so much so that we went on the hunt for some additional samples and ended up with 3 little boxes of 3 chocs each!!  We then collected a couple more wine samples and retired to chairs on the grass in front of the live band that was playing some great Saturday afternoon music... a perfect way to relax in the warm autumn sunshine!

Sunday evening saw me heading to the Victoria Room in Darlinghurst for my first meet-up with the Sydney French Language group.  I was a little apprehensive as to whether my language skills would be up to conversing all evening, especially as my recent trips to France have only required me to ask for things in shops and cafes... not particularly useful for a night of conversation!  However, I arrived in the beautiful location to find a bunch of very friendly people and once I got my ear attuned to the language, found it was quite useful to practice understanding what other people were saying, which has always been one of my main problems!  Sunday night at the Victoria Room is performance night, where they have a range of performers providing the entertainment.  We saw the highly talented Annique Azure, a jazz chanteuse who sang, played the flute and the sax and was accompanied by a brilliant accordion player, who also played the piano!  In addition, we were entertained by a trapeze artiste, a theatrical pole dancer and a hula hoop girl!  It was a brilliant evening and the location was spectacular, so I shall definitely be organising a night out here with some of my friends one Sunday!

Monday turned into a mix of business and pleasure.  First I had a lovely lunch with a friend in trendy Surry Hills where we got some delicious Asian food and chilled out.  Then in the afternoon it was into my Westpac branch to discuss mortgages!  Any accounts opened in London apparently have their branch as the main George Street one in Sydney which is an amazing Victorian building and looks just like the bank in Mary Poppins with the old teller booths running down the centre of the foyer!  Unfortunately they're no longer used and most of your day-to-day banking is done in the more modern part of the building, but it's great when you're going in for a meeting which does take place in the old part!

Australian banks run more like our retail banking used to in the UK 20-30 years ago.  Standard maximum mortgages loan up to 80% of the property value.  You can loan more (up to 95%), but this requires you take out mortgage insurance which protects the bank from negative equity should you default and they repossess.  I was pleasantly surprised by the salary ratio they were willing to loan (6.5 times gross salary) as they base their calculations on affordability of repayments and I obviously have no other debt obligations in my new county having just moved here.  In addition, standard mortgages run for 30 years and can run to age 75, so I can still manage to get a full-length mortgage!  Projections of repayments were also a pleasant surprise... for the money it costs to rent, you can buy a $500k property and pay the same on your mortgage as you were paying in rent.  The tough bit is the upfront costs - 5% deposit, stamp duty and mortgage insurance (approx. $18k on a $500k loan).  If you are classified as a first time buyer (not had any interest in an Australian property within the last 2 years) and can source a brand new home or substantially renovated one (ie. a completely gutted property that's been redesigned) that costs less than $650k then you can get a First Home Owners Grant (FHOG).  This gives you $15k towards the cost of the property and a stamp duty exemption (property to $550k) /concession (property between $550k-$650k), which substantially reduces your initial costs.  However, finding brand new places in central Sydney is a tough call!  I also need to investigate the offering from the Commonwealth Bank because they are advertising that you can add your mortgage insurance to your loan, which would then leave you with just the deposit and legal fees to pay upfront and brings the ownership timescale much closer.

With the business done, it was off to choir... my last rehearsal for the time being.  Oliver was on fine form having completed the Sydney Half Marathon the day before within the time limit he'd set himself!  After choir drinks were a smaller affair this week, but Katy and I were asked if we were interested in doing some singing in a very small group with one each of the basses and tenors.  The answer was a resounding yes, as long as we can accommodate me by rehearsing at weekends, which is apparently fine!  So, my life definitely remains in Sydney and Canberra is the place I commute to on a weekly basis.  I can live with that!

The remainder of the week saw me heading out to explore different areas of Sydney, mainly by ferry as I love being out on the water.  I had a lovely day over at Mosman on the north shore, exploring their wealth of boutiques and finding some fantastic shoes, although not willing to pay the $320 price tag for them!  I also came across a lovely shop selling local and fresh produce with an in-house bakery producing some amazing sweet treats, with a cafe at the back of the store!  I couldn't resist a coffee stop and had an amazing pastry which was like a sweet biscuit taco filled with chocolate ganache!  Wow!  OK, so it was a bit sickly by the time I got to the end, but definitely worth it!!

Thursday evening was sad saying goodbye to my other choir... I can't believe I've only been going for 4 weeks as they all feel like old friends!  Ronelle gave me a big hug and said to come back and sing with them any time I'm back in Sydney on a Thursday evening, which was really lovely.  I'd taken Becky along to try them out and she really enjoyed herself, so I feel like I've done something useful in replacing myself with a soprano, which they're currently a bit short of!

So from now on I'll only have weekends to enjoy Sydney.  It doesn't sound like much time, but I can take a suburb each weekend and explore it in detail.  Now I know I'm staying here, there's no hurry... I have the rest of my life to explore this beautiful city I am fortunate enough to live in!