JMH #5 // Brownies, Paddy's, playgrounds, and more food

Before I start, I'm going to take the moment to say that my thoughts go out to the victims and families of the 15/12/14 #SydneySiege at Martin Place. In particular, to the two hostages who unfortunately lost their lives.

It was a very unfortunate event and none of the hostages were at fault -- they happened to decide to go to a particular cafe on a particular day at a particular time. It could have been anyone. It could have been anywhere. It could have been any time. But a twist of fate has left most of us safe whilst they were not.

Thanks to the police for their efforts and decisions; I'm sure they gave it their best efforts to protect the lives of the hostages. Thanks to most Australians for staying calm in the wake of these events and trying to minimise the panic (although this cannot be said for everyone, especially The Daily Telegraph's premature newspaper edition. Shaking my head so much. [SMH lol].

I was initially afraid that this would spark a lot of misguided racism, stereotyping, and Islamophobia. To an extent, this was true. But with strong backlash, what emerged was, rather, positive support and the global trend #Illridewithyou, and that is extraordinary. 

Let us hope this will be the last extremist attack for a long time to come. Best wishes on this day, the aftermath of the 15th of December's Martin Place Siege.

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On the 11th we were supposed to travel up to the Blue Mountains to go on a day hiking trip, but due to storms and rains, we decided against it.

Thus, we thought it'd be a nice day to stay at home and make brownies! (Because why not?)

So it happened. PT came over as well, since he was the master of brownies.

It was actually my first time making brownies.

Mmmm, looks good, tastes good.

It was a nice, small activity to start the day off, and then afterwards we headed out to the city.

By day 5, we'd all started to really feel the fatigue hitting home, especially HN and JH since they stayed up very early into the morning.

Knocked out instantly

We decided to head off to Paddy's Markets, which we initially planned on doing on Tuesday (before realising that they don't actually open on Tuesdays), where we just browsed around, made jokes, and bought chilli peas (which we had been desperately searching for during the last 5 days).

This guy has been there as long as I can remember

We had booked for dinner at Hurricane's Grill, and so once Paddy's closed, we went for an early dinner (also because our lunch had basically only consisted of brownies. Health/10, I know.)

This was the first time I'd had Hurricane's Grill as well, and I'm not going to lie, it was pretty good.

I really liked the sweet potato chips/wedges, actually. A lot more than I had expected. The ribs were very nice as well, but eating (essentially) purely meat for dinner kind of upset my stomach afterwards. The ribs tasted really great though, which also contributed to my stomach ache because I think I overate.

Full rack of pork ribs. Yum.

Since it was relatively early at that time, and then sun was still yet to set (I love this time of year), we decided to kill some more time at Darling Harbour.

There were a lot less children there today, which was good (especially for JH), and I was wearing pants this time (last time I dressed in a skirt) so I was able to finally conquer the tower and climb to the very top.

After all of this, we still weren't satisfied with our day, and so we all decided to head off to crazy wings and N2 (for the 3rd day in a row). This was largely decided upon because the boys were still not full (meanwhile, HN and myself were practically trying not to throw up our inflated stomachs)

However, by the time we arrived there, we weren't actually that hungry anymore, so we ended up only ordering two skewers of chicken wings.

Our order sheet looked so empty.

Also it's interesting to note that the Crazy Wings in Sydney aren't as spicy as the ones in Melbourne. I'm not joking; try them out if you get the chance. They are insane (as far as I remember. Though, I'm not one to offer first hand evidence, because I essentially can't eat any chilli)

We were pretty pooped out from it all -- it'd been a tiring and demanding 5 days so far. The days were numbered and coming to an end, and we wanted to stay longer, but our eyes were drooping, so we headed home. (once again, we stayed up late into the morning. Mostly HN and JH though.).