This year’s Marathon Staycation has been… a thing. This was the first year that the Running Show was staged at Olympic Park. Apparently, I was not the only person who wasn’t particularly thrilled with the change of location (if the tea spilled by several Uber drivers was anything to go by). Yeah. It cost me 2 Ubers to collect my race bib and make it back to the city in time to get to my dinner reservation. The race itself wasn’t too bad. Considering how there were 10,000+ entrants in the Mini Marathon 2026, I had no objections to the starting times being staggered. It also meant that I could show up to the assembly area much later than the Elite Runners and the Group A starters. Even though I had originally envisioned myself slow jogging for half the route, I ended up power walking for the entire 5km, and…
I have what can best be described as an ambivalent relationship with cooking. I’m not wholly opposed to it, nor am I that person that loves spending every moment of their spare time either looking up new recipes to try and eventually trying those recipes. I will look up new recipes when the mood strikes and, only after doing my due diligence, will I even think about buying the ingredients to try it. If it works out, then it gets added to my meal prep plan. Having said that, when it comes to day-to-day meals, I don’t want to spend too much time in the kitchen to create something that tastes ‘fresh off the stove’. This has led me to what I’ve heard described as the ‘ingredient prep’ style of meal prep, where, instead of prepping whole meals or meal components in advance, you prep ingredients and just use what’s…
It’s no secret that I love a good fine dining experience. Whether I’m treating myself to my monthly fine dining experience or going all out during my birthday week in Melbourne, sitting down to that beautiful plate of food has never lost its appeal. After more than a decade of getting to know Sydney and Melbourne’s food scenes, I feel like there’s always something new to discover – not to mention a few old favourites that deserve another visit. My birthday week has become the perfect excuse to explore Melbourne’s dining scene, while the rest of the year is all about making the most of what’s on offer in Sydney. I don’t necessarily feel the need to try every new opening or every hatted restaurant. Sometimes a restaurant stays on my radar for years before I finally make it there. Other times I find myself thinking about a particular dish…
One of the perks of being a developer for over a decade is hindsight. I can look back and say things like: And then there’s a fourth category:”Why did nobody tell me this?” These are the lessons I wish someone had shared with me when I was new to web development. Google Will Become Your Programming Sidekick Contrary to popular belief, developers do not know everything. In fact, a surprisingly large portion of software development involves staring at an error message, sighing dramatically, and consulting Google. Whether it’s a runtime error triggering the dreaded Yellow Screen of Death, a mysterious build failure that worked perfectly five minutes ago, or a debate about whether a HashSet or a List is the better choice, chances are that someone else has already run into the same problem. Learning how to search effectively is a skill in its own right. Knowing what keywords to…
No matter how old I get, nothing completes a meal quite like nuoc cham. Drizzling a little over each spoonful of rice just hits right. I only started making my own nuoc cham (or nuoc mam as my late mum referred to it) in the last year. I’ve cycled through several recipes and my most recent attempt used Khanh Ong’s recipe, which he featured on his Instagram. Acceptance Criteria According to Khanh, the ideal nuoc cham should be a balance of sweet, sour, salty (and spicy if you’re that way inclined). What Went Well Khanh’s instructions were easy to follow. The end result hit the sweet and salty marks pretty well. What Could’ve Been Better The resulting nuoc cham was a tad more sour than I would’ve liked. Possibly due to juicier than average lemons. And the spice. I definitely put much more chilli paste than I should have. I…
In a perfect world, we would have the time, energy and resources to indulge in every single hobby that takes our fancy. But we do not live in a perfect world. We have work. We have lives to live. And we also have a limited amount of mental bandwidth to dispense with. Some of our hobbies stay with us throughout our lives. Others gradually fall by the wayside as new interests, responsibilities and priorities take their place. Every now and then, though, something prompts us to revisit them. For me, that prompt has been facing the prospect of re-entering the job market and the need to have something that keeps me grounded when the job hunt inevitably gets underway. Some of these have been sitting patiently in the background for years. Others are more recent additions to the “I should really get back to that” pile. Either way, these are…
If you’d like to see the original list, you can find it here: 26 Things To Do In 2026. This year’s Things To Do list was a part-continuation, part re-attempt of last year’s list. I felt cautiously optimistic when I drew up this year’s list because I had chosen what I felt were more attainable goals. It’s only halfway through 2026 and so much has happened, from rebuilding my savings to the very real possibility of re-entering the job market. Looking back over the list, I’ve realised that some goals were more important than I expected, while others have quietly evolved into something completely different. It’s as good a time as any to take a few minutes to revisit that list and see how things are going. What Went Well 8. Check the fridge/cabinets/etc before going grocery shopping. And stick to a shopping list. This one was definitely more of…
I think that it goes without saying that my holy grail cardigan pattern is PetiteKnit’s April Cardigan. I’ve made so many of them that I’ve had to put a few of them into storage for the time being. Even though most of my outerwear knits have been cardigans, I’m not entirely opposed to trying the odd sweater pattern. Over the years, I’ve become very particular about sweater patterns, favouring those with a v-neck. Yet, for all of the sweater patterns that I’ve pulled up, there haven’t been too many that were simple (a la PetiteKnits) and featured a v-neck. Then it occurred to me: why not try modifying a pattern I know and love? The April Cardigan already ticked most of the boxes. I knew the fit suited me, I liked the construction, and I’d knitted enough of them to feel comfortable making adjustments. Converting it into a sweater seemed…
Crochet and software development don’t seem like natural companions. If you had told junior-developer me that crochet would eventually influence how I approach software development, I probably would have scoffed. At first glance, the two have very little in common. One involves yarn and hooks. The other involves code and pull requests. Yet the longer I’ve spent doing both, the more I’ve realised that many of the habits that make me a better crocheter have also made me a better developer. Don’t Rush One of the first lessons crochet taught me was that speed and progress are not necessarily the same thing. If I rush through a row or round, there’s a good chance that I’ll miss a stitch somewhere along the way. The mistake might not be immediately obvious, but several rows later I’ll find myself wondering why the piece no longer looks quite right. Software development has a…
Life was never meant to have a template. This much I do know now. When I sat down to write this post, I had reached a point in my life (both the professional and personal) where a rebuild of sorts seemed well overdue. Life had gotten comfortable. Predictable, even. On weekdays, I’d wake up, turn on my work laptop and get to coding. At the end of the day, I turn off my laptop, fix dinner and do my nighttime routine. On weekends and days off, I’d do my morning routine before either heading into the city for a day out (if it was a Saturday) or getting the life admin tasks sorted (if it was a Sunday). Even a workday had its own steady rhythm. Mondays were when most of the meetings were scheduled. With a few later in the week if needed. Daily stand up meetings were a…