Categories: ship-of-fools, food, cinema, feast-days, other-churches
Date: 30 December 2006 00:55:15
After our Nativity services, I went along to St Francis of Assisi, Paddington for Midnight Mass. Preceding Mass was a half-hour of carols: O Little Town of Bethlehem, Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, Good King Wenceslas and the Australian carol The Three Drovers among them. The Mass began with Once in Royal David's City, ended with O Come All Ye Faithful, and was a joy and blessing to participate in. A true sense of joy at Christ's birth, with beautiful, beautiful music (choir and organ with strings (from The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra) and brass), a wonderful Mass setting, and a great number of people present to celebrate the birth of our Saviour. After the Mass I caught up with two friends who are in the choir, before heading home and having my head hit the pillow around 2:50am.
Boxing Day (December 26) lunch was spent over a friend's place for a bbq. It was the first time I had seen their new place, and a lovely place it is too -- with a huge, and I mean huge, backyard. I also caught up with a number of people from my church two churches ago -- I had not seen many of them for years! Oddly enough, some of them read this blog though -- Hello! It was great to see them again and catch up. It was then off to see The Queen (the movie, not HRH herself!), which I greatly enjoyed, though the subject matter did not interest me greatly: a wonderful cast of actors and very good writing made it a very enjoyable movie.
Thursday night was trivia -- we were coming third after rounds one and two, and then plummeted to last after the third and final round. But it was good fun nonetheless: I am greatly enjoying going to trivia.
Last night we had a Sydney Shipmeet over at Parramatta: a great night out. It was great to finally meet the wonderful Jan, who is as lovely as she comes across on her blog and her comments around the Wibsite. I also met a new (to meets) shipmate (MSHB), and it was great to catch up with all the other shipmates who I have had the pleasure of meeting before. We had lunch at a "Pan-Asian" restaurant [though Thai seemed to be the main source of inspiration], plumping for 4 of Banquet A and 4 of Banquet B [8 is a good number when the minimum banquet size is 4 -- you can have both!], before heading off for some coffee. A very, very pleasant night out.