Easter Weekend (Fri - Mon)

Friday: Went to the shops with the intention of getting Tor something and getting me some food, but everywhere was shut, so bummed around in the sunshine and in my room all day. Was nice to not do anything as a one-off.

Saturday: Went to King's Park for the first time - it's a half hour walk away up an impressive roadside hill, but that makes my sandwich at the top all the more deserved. I wandered around and took photos - it's absolutely huge, with massive trees only 50 years old and memorials to fallen soldiers and regiments liberally strewn about the park's vast expanses. Thing is, it doesn't look that big as you walk around it (the bit I was in anyway) as it's kind of split into sections by clumps of trees and has lots of pathways to follow for walks. And it's busy on nice days. I passed at least 3 weddings at various stages of completion!

Wedding 1 preparations

The bride of Wedding 2, celebrating in style. Classy bird.

This tree is huge. Like, massive huge.

Pretty pathway

Pretty view from one balcony of the park

Queen Vic! Woo.

Big memorial

Zen man is Zen

Eternal flame memorial - very nice. The other side reads "A moment of silent contemplation is all that is asked"

Ha.

See how big this tree is? I mean, really, it's just silly.

The road into the park

Another memorial

Having gotten knackered from wandering about so much, I sat down for a bit, had a drink, enjoyed the weather and came back. I looked for a present for Tor on the way back, but it's so hard to find something *right*!

This evening, the group fancied an outing to the casino. This turned out to be a 40 min walk away (my legs ached after today), but it was good fun, and I came out with a win ($5 up, woo! Yeah! Screw the system, man!). It was nice as we all came out either even or in the plus. One of the girls won $66. My winnings were second best. A lad won a dollar. The other girl won $0.60, and the last chap broke even. Not bad!

Finished the night by writing some character bits for the book. Lovely.

Sunday: Having enjoyed the ambiance of King's Park so much yesterday, I decided that I wanted to go back, but this time armed with a towel and sun lotion.

As you can imagine, not much more to report from the day. I figured out what to get Tor though, among other musings, which was nice.

In the evening, I finished Monkey Island! Huzzah! Only taken me...years. Literally years. Good lord.

More writing ensued before bed.

Monday: Went shopping for food and Tor's present in the morning, had lunch, watched Game of Thrones Season 3, Episode 1. Happy days. They changed a few minor bits from the book, and I'm not sure how they'll play out over the rest of the series, but it won't have too big an impact as all the key events still happened. And I'm further convinced of my theories from reading the books about the "The Dragon has three heads". There's a reason certain speeches are kept word-for-word from the books!
Got to speak to parents and family on Skype for mum's birthday and Easter (yay, the bunny didn't forget me!), but I have no chocolate with me. Will rectify this tomorrow.

I played a bit of Mark of the Ninja to round off the night (awesome game!)

NB: I have been doing some OSCE 2 revision across all these days intermittently, but not huge amounts. Just acting through examinations by myself with notes on the laptop, and pointers to myself about what I can do for similar retake stations based on what I know I'm rubbish at and what mistakes I may have made. Naturally, it's a bit tricky for the stations where I don't know what went wrong until I get feedback (comms skills and ethics!) Also MDD is tricky as I don't have any notes for it out here. Will have to rely on friends in Sydney and revision back home. Should be fine though - stations have to stay roughly the same.