I found a flower, it’s in my shoe and it is mine

Last night I was so tired that I laboriously spent twenty minutes trying to write a blog post on my phone, which was v difficult because i kept micro-sleeping, then waking up to discover that the sentence I'd typed was complete gibberish. Sadly, after all that effort, I wrote a post about my tiredness that was almost coherent....and then sent it to the wrong email address, so it didn't post here. Stupid.

But I had a delightful weekend in Sydney, thanks for asking! My flight to the other side of the world was uneventful - I barely slept, though, which is why I'm so wrecked. I did, however, read both the second and third books in NK Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy - she is the first person ever to win three Hugo awards (for best sci-fi novel), three years in a row, for the three books in a trilogy. And I totally get the hype. I absolutely loved the first book, which I read 3+ years ago, but hadn't read the rest of it because I wasn't sure I was ready to be emotionally devastated and I feared that that was where it was headed. As it turned out, I finished the series at the bar in the hotel while tears silently streamed down my face and fell on the table...but it wasn't quite as brutally sad as I'd anticipated, and I thought both the writing and the story were totally incredible.

So, that was most of the trip. I did spend a few hours walking around yesterday - I am staying in Darling Harbour, and I walked around the botanical garden, saw the opera house from a distance, etc. Last night I had dinner with my team at Anason, which is Turkish (and wonderful); we then went to a tiki bar because we had to, and the cocktails were good enough that I wished I could ignore my self-imposed professionalism and have another. But professionalism and sleep-deprivation won out, so I came home and was in bed by ten.

This morning was slow and lazy - I was awake for two hours in the middle of the night, so I slept in. I then spent an hour talking to my parents while drinking tea in the bar; after our conversation was over, I had lunch there while doing some writing/journaling.

That was pretty much the theme of the day - I should have done tourist stuff, but I was tired and wanted to get real stuff done. So I walked down Barangaroo Wharf, grabbed a coffee and watched the water, and then had a glass of wine while writing for another hour or two. Then I came back to the hotel, did a bit of work, related for a bit, and headed back to Barangaroo for a team dinner. Ten of us went to Malaya, which is Malaysian food, and it was shockingly fantastic - the flavors were fantastic, and the group was fun, so it was all a win.

But now I really need to sleep (and hope I stay asleep) - goodnight!