It has been some time since my last post and a whole heap has changed in my life. Late in November 2014 I made a move to Perth in Western Australia and started a new job at a new Architecture firm. The work is similar to my previous work (commercial type architecture) so the change wasn’t such a shock.
So far I am still trying to find my place at this new place and still getting to know my new city, but things have been going smoothly so far.
In terms of dining (for free of course) there are a few differences (both positive and negative) from my previous job.
Christmas Lunch:
The annual Christmas lunch has always been an event to look forward to back in Auckland and so I had high hopes for my first Christmas lunch at my new job in Perth. Unlike my previous job we didn’t have a day of activities and drinking before the main event, we started the day cleaning our desks. For me this was a short activity as I had only been there for a couple of weeks. However, for some of my colleagues it was more like a episode of Hoarders, complete with tears when throwing away accumulated drawings that probably had never seen the light of day in months. After the uneventful morning of cleaning we made our way into North Bridge (on the edge of the city) to a restaurant called Baby Mammoth, there we started drinking. There was a good range of local beers, such as Little Creatures (which is half decent) as well as Peroni and Asahi to choose from. The wine list included wines from Margaret River (the local vineyard area in WA - think Napa Valley but Australian) and hilariously a Sauvignon Blanc from Villa Maria. I had flown to the far side of Australia to drink wine grown fifteen minutes from my old home.
After a load of speeches about where the company is going we delved straight into lunch. We had preordered our meals about a week ago, but most of us had already forgotten what we had chosen. I had a starter of a duck terrine, followed by pork belly. And to my dismay there was no dessert course, instead someone came around with lindt chocolates...disappointing. The entree was pretty good and full of flavour, but you could tell that the restaurant really struggled with getting the mains out. My pork belly was not crispy, so I felt like I was eating a whole heap of pork fat, I still ate it of course (as I didn’t want to get drunk with an empty stomach).
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| The 'Soft' Pork Belly |
After lunch we went to a bar/micro brewery around the corner where I made the switch from wine to beer. The whole event was good as I got to talk to people I hadn’t talked to in the office yet. However, a few days later I got photos from my old colleagues back in Auckland from their Christmas Party where they took the ferry to Waiheke Island and did wine tasting and archery! They even took cardboard cutouts of my face so they could tag me on their facebook photos.
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| Cheesecake! |
Birthdays here:
One big difference here is how they celebrate birthdays. Back in Auckland, we use to bake our own cake and bring it in on our birthday, here once a month the company shouts cake to everyone in the office to celebrate the birthdays of that month. The birthday people get their own special cupcake and everyone else gets to choose from an assortment of different cakes. The cakes are pretty decent and there’s way more than enough to go around (it’s no longer the mad rush to the lunch room to make sure you don’t miss out).
Futurenet Breakfast:
The company that I work for sponsors this networking event called ‘Futurenet’. Every month they hold a breakfast and invite someone inspirational to speak. You go there to ‘network’. When an email was sent out asking if anyone was interested in going to the March breakfast I replied (free breakfast, why not). The speaker was the CEO of Sea Shepherds in Australia. He was pretty inspirational on how he got there in a short amount of time, but lets face it, I was there for the food.
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| One of my colleagues enjoying her breakfast |
When we got there there was an assortment of mini croissants, muesli/yoghurt combos and brioches to start off with. Naturally I went for the pastries. After some juice, pastries and a cup of tea, the Sea Shepherds guy was about to start his speech, so we all took our seats and were served our warm breakfast course. This was scrambled eggs with bacon and toasted sourdough bread. It was pretty good (the eggs had a hint of truffle oil in them), but I found the eggs were a little too sloppy for me.
Overall, the move to Australia has been quite good and I hope I can get into the swing of going to catered events here. I hope WA doesn’t disappoint me with their canapes.
