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Weekend in Sydney

Tuesday, 21 October, 2003

On Saturday Ben and I drove to Sydney and had yum cha with my father and other associated relatives. I was glad because Ben decided to come with me; originally I was going to go alone to yum cha and then he would catch the train up later. I convinced him at the last minute to come with me and we listened to Pearl Jam on the Idol all the way up (“Idol”=MP3 player; Ben calls it that). My cousin, his wife and their 3-month-old baby daughter were there. It was nice meeting my new cousin in the flesh! In the afternoon Ben and I went to Officeworks to do newsletter/Supporter's Dinner-related activities and we ran into our old senior minister from St. Michael's. I like unexpected meetings with people in strange contexts! It was good to hear about the things that were happening with him at his new church. We said goodbye and visited Matthew Salvetti at home. His father, who is really into cooking, insisted on giving us some of his home-made Chinese barbecue pork to take home. He wanted us to stay for dinner so he could cook something extravagant but I had promised my mother and Peter that we would have dinner with them. Peter made a delicious salad of baby spinach, halved cherry tomatoes and I can't remember what else, as well as grilling a few lamb chops and sausages. It was very yummy. Afterwards, we sat around and had an interesting conversation about the Anglican church, homosexuality, the authority of Scripture and how to read the Bible. They didn't agree with what we said but they did listen to us. We crashed at the Beilharzs that night and went to church at Gymea the next morning. Stuart interviewed us and I sang “I saw the Lord (Isaiah 6)” by Matthew Salvetti and even managed to do a decent job of it which is a wonder considering it was 9:30 in the morning. We dropped in on Dave and Lara after church to see their new baby girl (three weeks old!) Then we had a barbecue lunch at the Beilharzs (yum!). I rehearsed a bit with Lizz for her 6th grade flute exam but there were so many pieces that we quit halfway through (yuck!) I spent the afternoon lazing around and reading before we went off to visit people from our old church and attend the 7 o'clock service. Again we got interviewed and we did that song. It was nice catching up with people from our old church. Some said some very encouraging things to me. We didn't stick around too long because Ben was tired and he still had to work on The Page when we got back. But we did buy a copy of New Creation, a book that Gymea Anglican has just put out which is a collection of the articles that appeared on the back of the monthly prayer bulletin from 1996 to 2000. I've been slowly reading through it and marvelling at how God works in the lives of his people. This made me think more about the ministry of writing but that's something I should blog about another time ...
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Karen, I got a buzz when you wrote “yum cha”... you are the first non-Malaysian I’ve ever heard to use the word in an English-speaking context. (Hmmm, does any of that make sense?) We twenty-somethings over here go out to “yum cha” all the time. Not that we always drink tea; it’s a term that has come to mean “hang out and chat” smile

Belated birthday wishes to Ben!

Yum cha has become increasingly popular in Sydney; it is normal to go into a Chinese restaurant and find most of the people there are not Asian.

Unfortunately the influence has not yet spread to Wollongong (ie. you can’t get yum cha in Wollongong AT ALL!!!) so we have been educating the southern crowd by bringing them north every now and then.

I like yum cha and I’m not Asian. I can highly recommend it.

Mmm Yum Cha.  Always so full after yum cha!
Looking forward to seeing you Sat pm Karen - probably won’t stay over.
Hugs,
George

Posted by George on 22 October, 2003 6:44 PM


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