Sydney Italian, Writer's, Jazz,....and Film Festival:)

Above: I wandered past this at the Strand Arcade.....i loved the Chinese-style cheongsam lady poster and the entire Chinese style look (the poster as the backdrop n fan w red lantern) of the window decor and thus took some photos of these...

I went to the Sydney Italian, Writer's, Sydney Jazz and Blues, as well as the 55th Sydney Film Festival in the past month or so...Sydney being one of the world's pre-eminent and cosmopolitan cities, hosts a myriad of festivals throughout the year...

Here's the updates of the events: :)

Coffee/Cocoa with Blueberry Cheese Cake with cream AND ice-cream at a cafe in Newtown...

cos one person wanted just the cheesecake by itself, whilst i wanted with cream and another person wanted with ice-cream, we ended up with the above;)

1) The Sydney Italian Festival:

I went to the Sydney Italian Fiesta with my housemates back in late May and superbly and immensely enjoyed our time there....there was plenty of great food, great music, and great atmosphere with flags fluttering around overhead us...There was even a wonderful little joyful skit at the end....later, we had a quaint nice dinner on Stanley Street at this warm intimate restaurant which served delicious food, with a price tag that was...but the lighting and atmosphere was great i think...good place for friends to have a nice little dinner as well as for romantic couples..:)

2) The Sydney Writer's Festival: I went to this writer's speech and book-signing event at Ultimo Community Library for Jan Wong's 'Red China Blues'. She is a Canadian-Chinese author from Montreal whom was at the Sydney Writer's Fest to promote her new book 'Beijing Confidential'....I enjoyed her talk greatly as she reminiscined on her time in Beijing as a starry-eyed Maoist in the early 1970s when she travelled to Beijing and was one of only two foreigners to study at the prestigious Peking University...

I promptly bought her first autobiography 'Red China Blues' after the session and had her autograph it for me...my very first book autographed by the author on the first page!!:) It was a great read too!!

3) The Sydney Jazz and Blues Festival, Darling Harbour:

This is the annual Jazz and Blues Festival in Sydney and i went this yr, but it was not particularly fantastic...or maybe i expected too much, though it could have been the dreary weather as it was raining quite heavily that day...but nevertheless a good experience...

4) The Sydney Film Festival:

This is the 55th anniversary of the Sydney Film Festival. I applied and became an official volunteer of the Film Festival given my interest in films and i thought it would look good on my resume having been an official international film festival volunteer. It was a good experience, counting ballots for voting forms, ushering people, answering patron enquiries, and having access to the cinema hall where your usual cinema-goers would not have access to....also met the director of 'Tokyo Sonata' a Japanese film and 'Up the Yangtze' by Canadian-Chinese director Yung Chang..went to a director's talk and got to see Yung Chang up close....i even asked him a couple of questions if i rem correctly!:):)

We volunteers also received complimentary tickets for the closing night film 'Persepolis' which is an animated motion picture on the life of a 9 yr old Iranian girl during and the immediate aftermath of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Below: An old-time favourite feature of my blog-Food Pix!!!!:):)

Above: Miso Tofu with Rice and Nichigo Press, the Australian Japanese Newspaper, which i try to read to keep up my Nihongo level (despite making no progress since i've never found the time to actually get down to it!!) at a japanese restaurant somewhere in the city...

Below: Sashimi Don, Raw Fish on Rice with Miso Soup at Ramenkan, Haymarket.....