Sarma is an Ottoman Empire dish where leaves are stuffed with tasty fillings like mince and rice. The version I like best uses pickled cabbage for wrapping. There are all kinds of variations in Greece, Turkey, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Wikipedia says:

Minced meat (usually beef, pork, veal, or a combination thereof, but also lamb, goat, sausage and various bird meat such as duck and goose), rice, onions, and various spices, including salt, pepper and various local herbs are mixed together and then rolled into large plant leaves, which may be cabbage (fresh or pickled), chard, sorrel, vine leaf (fresh or pickled) or broadleaf plantain leaves.

Silverbeets have been in season so we decided to try out a vegetarian sarma of fresh silverbeet stuffed with rice, silverbeet, dill, onion, garlic and capsicum. It was tasty, healthy and colourful.

We had just finished a long meeting when the chairperson David invited us all to lunch. The seven of us went to a pub, ordered some drinks and got to know each other.

‘How’s inner city life?’ David asked.

‘Really good,’ I said. ‘I’m really enjoying being able to ride the Melbourne Bikes to work.’ I explained to the others on the table, ‘We moved into our new flat a few months ago.’

‘Does your husband ride to work as well?’ Theo asked.

‘Yes. He has his own bike and goes in the opposite direction.’

Theo held his hand up to stop me. ‘Do either of you have a car?’

‘No. No, we don’t have a car.’ I said.

‘Wait, wait… You don’t have a car? You walk and ride everywhere?’

‘Yes…’ I wasn’t sure where he was going. Theo looked a bit shocked.

‘You’re doing it!’ Theo said. ‘You’re doing that thing we all talk about but don’t actually believe! Living the life! Not having a car. Working near home!’

‘I don’t have a car either,’ Andrew piped in. ‘We sold it last month. I ride to work from Northcote. It’s faster than the car and public transport.’

Theo looked at us both in awe.

We have a lovely green communal space in the middle of our apartment complex. We’ve used it for BBQs, tennis and swimming. However, we can’t plant vegies in it the way our friends with backyards can.

We do have a little balcony. It’s a bit bigger than three square metres. A few weeks ago, Damjan and I went to Bunnings and bought two planters, planter hangers, herbs and potting mix.

I’m very happy with our balcony herb garden. It makes our balcony look home-like and alive. We’ve used the chives and thyme for omelettes, and oregano for sauces. The basil is doing really well so maybe we can turn that into pesto.

We finally bought a kettle. It’s a Russell Hobbs, which is meant to be the leading brand in the UK.

This warning made me chuckle.

In Cambridge and London, I had to regularly cook my kettles with lemon or vinegar to get rid of the build up of greyish white scale.

I’ve now escaped hard water. In Melbourne, our water is sweet, our soap lathers and the only particles that float in our cuppas are tea particles.

I know it’s summer because I get to eat steaks of mango! Mango is one of my four favourite foods.

Here is a mega mango that my mum and dad gave us. I tried to take a photo to give you a sense of scale but the best I could do was to put the mango next to a glass pig, which was a gift from Ian and Caroline’s wedding last year.

I had just enjoyed a dinner at Monash University in the middle suburbs of Melboure and expected to take a late night bus, then train, back into the city. I was very pleased when one of the guests offered to drive me home.

‘Actually, you can drive yourself home,’ David said. ‘You see, I have an electric car, which is part of the government’s pilot programme. As part of the deal, I’ve promised to get as many people as I can to have a go driving it.’

What luck! This would be my first time in an electric car.

An electric car has its own quirks. I drove the Mitsubishi i-Miev, which doesn’t have a key. Instead, you use a button to start the engine. The gears are similar to an automatic car, with the addition of a ‘brake regeneration’ gear. I used it in the Burnley Tunnel to slow down. Instead of braking with the pedal, I put in the brake gear and the car slows itself down quickly and captures the energy for the electric battery.

On the CityLink tollway, I felt a large freight truck pushing up towards me at 100 kilometres per hour.

‘You’re in the left lane.’ David said. ‘Why is it so close?’

‘He probably wants a closer look at the electric car,’ I said.

For one of our dinner parties, Damjan made a lamb roast. At the end of the evening, he stopped one of our helpful guests from cleaning out the oven tray.

‘Don’t throw out the juices,’ Damjan said. ‘That’s the best bit.’ He poured the oily liquid into a container, which then went into the fridge.

A few days later, we took the container out and lifted out the congealed disc of fat at the top.

This left us with two or three cups of beautifully lean and potent lamb stock for a risotto.
The risotto was bursting with flavour. We had a couple of kaffir lime leaves left over from a Thai pumpkin curry stew and we threw that in with zucchini and mushroom. So yummy.

This year, I am seconded into another company. Being seconded means that my own company has ‘loaned’ me out. My original company still pays me directly and my new company pays my home company for my time.

Since I started working, I have been on three secondments. The first time I was asked to go on secondment, I was unsure. The job sounded boring. My managers were keen that I accepted the role; there was no one available to do it.

I went to my mentor for advice. She said, ‘Always accept secondments. You end up learning a lot from them.’

It’s true. Every time I leave my home company, I meet new people, get new skills, and end up being able to tell people about my unique experiences.

My first stint was for a government agency in the UK. I researched and implemented approaches to dealing with the social aspects of sustainability in road projects.

My second secondment was for a rail project in outer suburban Melbourne. I managed environmental issues on a big and fast moving construction site. This was a terrifying and effective way to learn local legislation quickly and practice how to persuade construction workers to do things that slowed them down.

My current job is to find ways to fund low carbon and efficient energy, water and waste systems in a large inner Melbourne development. This is the first time I have worked as the ‘client’, commissioning engineers to do studies for a project.

Anyway, so this has been a long introduction to what I really want to talk about. At my new company, we use laptops instead of desktop computers. Rather than clicking into a docking station, the laptop hovers above the desk like this.

The laptop screen is 15.4 inches, which is probably the smallest I would want for an everyday computer monitor. Isn’t it a strange set up? I suppose it saves the money needed for a monitor and a docking station.

Last year, Damjan and others helped Megan and Brad establish their vegetable garden. I was in the UK so missed out on the day of labour. Of course, I was very happy to be around for the the follow up ‘vegie harvesting day’, especially as it was also a ‘cook up a vegie storm and serve it to friends day’.

Using plums already picked from one of their trees, Megan and Brad were going to bake a pie for dessert. However, Brad accidentally dropped the box of stewed plums and it splattered everywhere. To me, it looked exactly like blood.

My mum gave me a yellow banana-shaped box. It says ‘banana house’ on it.

I’m doing my best to avoid owning things and cluttering up our new apartment, so I thought maybe this banana house was one of those ‘over the top’ items, invented to solve a problem no one has.

But I gave it a go and now I like it. It is a regular vistor to my workplace.

I have just started working at a client’s office. I brought the banana house on the first day and word got around that I had this strange thing. People asked me about my ‘banana box’ when we met at meetings.

It’s necessary to choose bananas of the correct curvature. Occasionally, too, bananas can be too thick to fit in the case. Sarah at work asked me if I bring my case to the market and test out bananas before putting them into my shopping basket.

One week, we bought very large bananas. None of them would fit into the case so I had to cut the top third of one them in order to get an unsquashed banana to work.