KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

Rei Pham is a dog cat. It's been one year since this fur ball stumbled into our life, and in that time she's showed some weird-ass cat behaviour. Though, if she were a dog this behaviour would be absolutely normal. 

First, she likes to play fetch. Her favourite toy changes but the game is the same as with doggos. She brings us a toy mouse or avocado plush or her current favourite felt ball, and drops it by our feet or on us if we're in bed, then looks at us meaningfully (I won't say pleadingly because she's a cat after all) until we notice and throw the toy for her.  She'll then  chase it down and bring it back to our feet. When she was younger, she'd drop it in our general vicinity, but she has since learned to drop it in arm's reach to speed up the game.

Rei also likes the catch variation of fetch. Catch is a fun time with a cat because they can jump so high and distort themselves into such weird and wonderful shapes before twisting and landing back on their feet. I would be worried about breaking a dog if I tried to get them to leap as high or far or awkwardly.

One dog trait that came out after she finished teething and got stronger teeth is she absolutely delights in chewing things to shreds. She does scratch like a regular cat, but her favourite activity is chewing cardboard and spitting it out. We discovered this when we got her a Kmart cardboard cat scratcher. She went to town on the cardboard chewing it until it was no more. She is half way through her second one now, with one more spare in storage along with another new cardboard toy design. 

Before Toombul flooded, I'd regularly stroll through the Kmart cat section to see what variation of cardboard toys they have. We've gotten her two cat towers and combined them into a mega-tower but she didn't tend to play with it unless we played with her. She did start to chew parts of the tower but I guess it's just not as satisfying as the dense cardboard of the scratcher. 

Boyfriend Pham likes to tease me about my life being miscellaneous. In high school I couldn't decide between arts and science so I did both. At uni, I couldn't decide what to specialise in and ended up doing a Bachelor of Creative Industries (Interdisciplinary). Do you know what the interdisciplinary really means? Miscellaneous.

Not surprising that after a lot of chopping and changing jobs, the one that's kept me around for years instead of months has been miscellaneous projects. Whatever the business needs done, I figure out a way to do it. When the business is growing and changing at warp speed I never get a chance to get bored. The trouble is, notebooks don't cut it when you're juggling over a dozen streams. I jump from one topic to another, sometimes something new every 30-60 minutes for a whole day, which means notes get lost in notebooks.

My solution? A planner. My planner isn't for planning though, it's for logging all the things I haven't gotten to yet... but organised in a way that makes it easier to find when I eventually have time. The ring-binder means the pages are not set in stone, and I can shuffle my notes around to group with other notes of the same stream. It's been a game-changer for me - no longer flicking through pages and pages (colour-coded so I knew which project or area it related to, of course, I'm not a complete noob) to find what I needed to reference. With the binder and its dividers, I can flick to the right spot instantly. 

I loved my A5 Kikki.K planner so much I got one for my team member so she too could enjoy the flexibility of a planner instead of a notebook. Once you're done with a page, you can file it or bin it. With a notebook I suppose you could do the same but the tendency is to keep carrying the deadweight with you until the notebook is filled. The 5 or 6 dividers that come by default with Kikki.K also did not cut it and I bought a 12-divider set. I've optimised my planner to keep track of the maze that is my professional life and I am damn proud of it.

I do realise I am so Mum Pham. She had a leather bound planner that she carried with her everywhere. She kept everything in it from recipes, medical history and her English studies through to our meal plans, key anniversaries and contact numbers. Even if mobile phones were a thing Mum Pham bothered with, she would always prefer pen and paper. And now I carry on her tradition of being obsessive about a planner. 

I have finally found an alternative to plastic loofah-style body sponges that doesn't shred my skin to pieces or leave feeling unclean. I've tried soap sacks that were soft and soggy, and some coconutty scrub things and none of it was for me. I went back to plastic loofahs but felt a pang of guilt whenever I thought of turtles mistaking them for jellyfish so I went on the hunt again.

Konjac sponges are weird at first. They're hard as a rock and you have to soak them in water to soften them. I have gotten into a routine of turning on my shower, and holding the sponge under the water while I wait for the water to warm a little. But once you get used to doing that, it's great. It works for liquid body wash but to reduce household plastic, I use mine with a bar of soap. It suds up nicely for a clean wash. Recommend to people who want to ditch plastic shower loofahs!

I'm rather enjoying this new(er) small earring trend. Big acrylic earrings seemed to be all the rage before that, and while I used to love me big, bright and wild earrings, these days I want smaller and easier to manage earrings. Especially since I've heard horror stories of people splitting their ear lobes getting big earrings caught on things. Yikes. 

Mainly my change in preference stems from laziness. I can't be bothered with fashion that isn't super-comfortable anymore.  I've long since farewelled heels because walking shouldn't be hard, playsuits because I don't want to get half-naked to pee, and rings because they get in the way of things or maybe I get in their way - it's hard to tell sometimes. 

I got these cute little dangle hoops from Fora Jewellery. They're nice and easy to wear, and silver and black go with any outfit.  I've culled my earring collection right back to these dangle hoops and two sets of studs in case I lose one of the studs, which I am prone to do. I should probably get a second pair of dangle hoops for the same reason. I am just not reliable with small, dainty items. 

My right ear piercing from February this year still hasn't completely healed - there's a recurring pimple at the back of the lobe. I've had a horrible, infected healing process but am still thinking of maybe getting more piercings for my next birthday. Dumb move? Perhaps. Will I still do it? Probably.

I've moved desks recently because work is expanding and taking over different buildings and I've now moved into the furthest building. In my role I run and participate in a lot of meetings. Meetings that are in the main building where I am not. For a little while I've given up my hot teas and coffees so I can awkwardly carry my laptop and organiser across two cark parks into the main building. But I find it's not a fun time without drinks in long or early morning meetings.

I remembered I have a KeepCup from when I used to get takeaway hot drinks. I fell out of the habit to save money to buy a mortgage debt, and my KeepCup has been sitting in storage for a few years. When I finally got to using it to carry a hot drink from building to building it spilled over my fingers and when I took a sip from the lid, I could taste the deteriorated plastic. Ew. So I went home and looked up spill-proof thermal cups because in addition to not spilling things on myself, I also wanted my new vessel to keep my drink hot. I sometimes get into the zone at work and two hours later my tea has gone cold.

The Google voted Frank Green the best spill proof lid and even better, their new ceramic range also keeps your drink hot for hours. I've yet to test this though because after a fun hour of mixing and matching all their many lid and base colours, and looking at their collabs with Disney and other fun designs, I settled for a mono-lilac colour and treated myself to having my name lasered on the cup with a love heart emoji. Cute. It arrived just in time for lockdown and quarantine and restrictions so I haven't actually used it in the office to take hot drinks to meetings between buildings without spilling liquid on myself. Yay!

I love the Frank Green design and am glad I invested money in a new, spill-proof, thermal cup. The only downside is the ceramic range is an awkward 10 ounce size. Coffee shops make 8 ounce and 12 ounce drinks - not sure why they landed on the 10oz. Perhaps so you'd get an 8oz and not overfill it? Odd. Besides the sizing, everything else about it is great! I didn't want the size up 'cause it's as tall as my Contigo Travel Mug that I use for water, which is a bit too big for a little tea or coffee. Highly recommend if you're tossing up between KeepCup and Frank Green - clumsy me will go Frank Green anyway with its screwed on lid and push button lid.

UPDATE: The Frank Green ceramic thermal range keeps your drink hot for hours. I've discovered the lid is easy to take apart to clean! But a little hard to put back together because so many components. I am quite pathetic at anything handy or practical though as Boyfriend Pham can attest to - I excel at the thinking puzzles in escape rooms, he excels at the physical puzzles - so I don't think most people would struggle to put Frank Green lids back together.

Not my kitchen, nor my dishrack. Work's so busy literally cannot get my act together to snap my own pic.  #retaillife

Boyfriend Pham are finally settling into our own home after 10 months. We've overcome the mortgage freak out everyone has when they first go into massive debt. And now we're starting to put some thought and money into how to make the house we love more liveable and comfortable day to day. 

Obviously, first we had to give Rei her outdoor cat enclosure. Then we've been working with Boyfriend Pham's friend on custom garage organising fit out, which I'll post once lockdown / restrictions end so he can come over and install it. And now we're ready for smaller upgrades while we save up to replace all three cracked toilets. 

One of my new favourite things is our Joseph Joseph dish rack. We had a $2 wire rack from Kmart that was functional but not super practical. We bought it when we stocked up our apartment with the main priority being cheap in case we broke up (we did move in together after only a few months of dating and we're both risk-averse). It served us well and it found a second home via Buy Nothing which is great!

Now we have a fancy, modular, adjustable dish rack. We have a cutlery holder - how novel! - that can be taken out of the rack to make more room. The whole rack can extend to double its size when you've done a big cook up, or it can be made smaller when you only have a few things to dry. My favourite feature - besides the rubberised spikes that mean nothing tips over, is the drain. It captures all drips and runs down a ramp into your sink so you can shuffle the dish rack off to the side of the sink to make more room and still have the water drip into the sink. Best purchase we've made for our kitchen so far, makes washing up less of a chore.

And yes, I realise how domesticated I've become. 

You know that feeling when you first download a new app and you're trying to puzzle out how it works? Or you’re a Mac user trying to navigate a Windows machine and vice versa? That confused feeling when tech illiterates can't get new technology working in their favour is how my immigrant parents felt when they fled home turf and wound up in wildly different countries to the community and culture they knew.

I was too small minded and inexperienced in my angsty teen years to respect my parents had risked their lives and left all they knew and loved behind. Instead, I found it frustrating my parents needed help navigating Australian society and that we were disadvantaged children of poor migrants, who didn't know how to make the system work in our favour.

Neither of my parents worked once we got to Australia. In Germany, Dad Pham was in the workforce until schizophrenia crippled his ability to hold down work, and Mum Pham was bullied out of a pharmacy by racist colleagues and customers. In Australia they went on the pension, and so didn't learn anything about the working environment to pass onto us kids.

It took my boss sitting me down and asking me what I wanted for myself a couple of years ago to make me actually think about career. I'd worked with him for years and he pointed out that I have exceptional achievement drive when it comes to my work, but zero achievement drive for myself personally. My immediate response was my parents are Buddhist, they raised us to appreciate what we have and to not want. Wanting things is a very Western culture thing. Though, I suppose, I live in Western society so I went away from that meeting and had a think about what I wanted for myself.

I've never had career development as a personal goal. My personal goals have always been things like being kind, finding positive ways to view life challenges or mundane things, learning from every experience. Career development is something I thought people with career paths did. You go to uni to study a thing, then you do the thing, and progress to more of the thing. I've been jumping all over the shop from high school math/science to creative uni studies to journalism then digital content then ecommerce then miscellaneous projects. 

I went back to my boss and told him I enjoy the project work I do, I am good at willing things to happen, and to develop my career I wanted to do what I do but for the whole company in a more official capacity. It took 18+ months to make it happen, but you are now reading the blog of a Project Management Office (PMO) Manager. Not too scrappy for a kid raised on Government handouts who went to a public school in low income area, where I got voted most likely to succeed which sounds positive until you learn parts of my peer group dropped out of high school and others had to be coaxed, pushed and prodded across the finish line.  

I am learning lots in my new role, and have lots more to learn, but it's exciting to have direction and focus. I wish I had personal career direction before my 30s but, hey, it's never too late to start. I'm proactively coaching the younger people in my life to be more progress driven, prepare themselves for growth and better opportunities - basically, teaching them how to work the system in their favour. I'm hoping anyone reading this will ask themselves what they want, and have a think about how to get there. If you want to talk it through, hit me up.

Dad Pham is forever saying how lucky we are to be living in Australia. He's damn right, we are. Little Sissy Pham and I visit dad once every week, and when I was a single lady with no boyfriend or cat and living 20 minutes away, it was easy peasy to spend all day with Dad and help out. I used to take him grocery shopping in the morning then spend the afternoon cooking a Phamly feast, then chill out until late. 

These days, I always take him grocery shopping in the morning and do his dishes, but lunch is potato chips from Big Brother Pham's pantry or 2-minute noodles from Dad's, then Dad kicks us out between 1.30pm to have a nap. Or if he doesn't kick us out, I head home around 2.30pm to do my own chores, and cook lunch for the week, prep our dinners, and do some work emails and set up my work week. Sundays are not fun days. Basically, Dad Pham needed more support than the half day once every week we are able to give him. 

The people in Dad's community recommended the Australian Government's My Aged Care support. One of their services is in-home care, which is ideal for Dad because he's nowhere near needing full-time care, but he's not doing so great on his own. He doesn't have energy to tidy up around the house and it's always a little messy. He doesn't have much appetite, doesn't cook regularly, tends to snack on junk food than have meals. General household and life chores are slipping.

My Aged Care has been a complete blessing. The government provides different tiers of funding depending on the level of care you need, which can be spent with any approved in-home care provider so we were able to select Sunnycare, a company that has Vietnamese-speaking workers. Ideal! Dad's English is also failing; he's starting to lose words in Vietnamese let alone English, his third language.

Dad's less lonely during the week as he has in-home care every couple of days, the house is generally tidier because they help clean the bathroom and kitchen, and organise his belongings - all the little things Dad has stopped doing regularly because he gets tired so quickly now. They also take Dad to the local shops when it's a cooking day to buy ingredients, which means Dad doesn't need to wait for me to come on Sundays to buy heavy grocery items he can't carry home on the bus.

Visit https://www.myagedcare.gov.au to see if they have anything suitable for you. While they do have some translators, if you can take time off work to attend the assessment with your loved one it means you'll get assessed sooner because they don't have to wait for a translator to be available. Worth the half day off I took to interpret for Dad Pham. 

The first batch I made, being a jerk who doesn't read instructions, I tossed the tablet in cold water and I suppose I could have waited a few hours for it to disintegrate but, being an impatient jerk, I put it in a glass jar and microwaved it so the water was warm enough to dissolve the tablet in minutes. It was a lot of fun watching the bubbles fizz up. You can purchase glass bottles with plastic pumps from them, but I am reusing my plastic pumps. I'll upgrade to glass in about 400 years when my plastic pump bottles start to crumble.

I wonder if they regret calling their business Tirtyl (pronounced 'turtle') because it's a pain in my butt to tell people about them verbally. It's much easier to write.

We made the right decision in installing an outdoor cat enclosure on our balcony so Rei could get natural sunlight when we're not home to leave our doors open. When I worked from home, Rei would follow the sun from our bedroom balcony door to our front door. She's squish up against the door ledge and it made me feel guilty that when I was in the office she only got morning sun in in our bedroom. 

Now that we have a cat enclosure, I barely ever see her during the day if I work from home. She'll come down a few times to check on me and each time I'd be boring work-mode at the desk so she'd go back upstairs. Basically, if I'm not sitting on the couch, my lap is useless to her.

Boyfriend Pham got a few quotes for cat enclosures and we ended up going with the most expensive quote because of the quality of their builds, and also the people seem like genuine cat lovers. Daniel, who came and did the installation, is indeed a cat lover. Once he finished the install, he stayed a while longer just to watch me coax Rei over the invisible line keeping her inside, and enjoy her new outdoor enclosure. There were cheaper, clunkier looking options, but being a townhouse, we wanted to have as little impact on the exterior as possible so body corporate would approve, and also so our house wouldn't look ugly. 

Happy Cat Enclosure installed Rei's little outdoor sanctuary on our balcony in a day. They were meticulous in securing the netting to the wall, ceiling and floor of our balcony. It's hours of detail work and the end result looks fabulous, and feels safe and secure. Rei has climbed the net and leaped from it daily and it holds fast. She spends hours each day lazing in the sun, watching the birds in the trees, climbing the netting when she sees a bug, eyeballing dogs and humans that walk past, meowing at us if we're down in the front yard, and overall just being a happy cat. 

My only regret about bringing Rei into nature is that she sometimes brings nature to us. The other day she brought giant grasshopper inside the house. It was so big we don't even know how it got inside the cat enclosure because its giant bug head looks bigger than the net spacing. I dread what bugs she'll drag in next, but ah well, it's all about happy cats right? Not so much an unhappy human screaming in the corner while Boyfriend Pham chases cat and grasshopper around the house. 

If you're considering a nice, minimalist cat enclosure I highly recommend the folks at Happy Cat Enclosure. Happy Cat Enclosures do all sorts of spaces either adding frames where needed or fixing to existing building structures like ours. They did a great job with our balcony, and recommended the glazier who installed a cat door for us too. Rei is a much happier cat now she can go outside inside.

Happy Cat Enclosures Brisbane

info@happycatenclosures.com.au

Do it! Your cat will love you for it, even though you'll see it less.

Fungal acne outbreak on my forehead in 2020. Alas, do not have a close-up pic.

I had a fungal acne outbreak last year - well, more accurately, malassezia folliculitis outbreak. At first, I thought it was my regular hormonal acne playing up due to pandemic stress. The small bumps were red and sore, then one day I used a chemical sunscreen that I've safely used before and my skin began raging and itching like crazy. I was so uncomfortable I struggled to sleep. 

That's when I went to the doctor and he gave me a round of antibiotics, and told me to ditch the chemical sunscreens and use a zinc-based sunscreen with minimal ingredients. This began my journey to overhaul and minimise my skincare products. This website has been my hero: https://folliculitisscout.com/ You can look up ingredients in skincare products and it will rank them for safety, potential irritants and things to look out for. 

It took nearly half a year to find products that weren't triggering, and soothed my skin. My new routine is a lot less complicated than before - no more serums, no eye creams, and no daily sunscreen (replaced with my UV blocking umbrella). 

I cleanse with Simple Gel face wash. I remove eye makeup with Bioderma micellar water. I moisturise with Innisfree Aloe Revital Soothing Gel. That's it. That's all my skincare products these days.

When I have beach day or go in the sun without my trusty umbrella, I use Ego SunSense Sensitive Visible Screen SPF 50+. It leaves a white cast on my skin, and also clogs my pores a bit so it's not for everyday wear. I haven't found a non-comedogenic zinc sunscreen to use daily yet. I don't feel the need to since I am not in the sun much, but if you have any recommendations, please hit a girl up.

During peak acne outbreak, I used BareMinerals powder foundation to cover up the splotchy red all over my face (thanks to Mecca in Indooroopilly for helping me find a safe foundation for my skin condition and for the colour-matching service). I don't wear foundation normally but if I did, I would definitely use BareMinerals. It's light and easy to wear, and great for sensitive skin.

The post-2020 need to shake things up that led me to colour my hair and poke more holes in my ears has left with delightful pressure blisters. It's been nearly 3 months since I pierced my ears and my body's still struggling to heal. There are warnings all over the internet that applying aspirin is not safe, but the internet also tells you to talk to your piercers. And you know what? Unicorn Piercing had a pamphlet specifically for pressure blisters that instructed me to apply Aspro Clear. 

Tigger Pham was my first time cat parenting. Back then, if you didn't know something you went on not knowing because you couldn't Google it up. I never knew she was a tortoise shell tabby, I just called her splotchy browns if I had to describe her. We also didn't have an online microchip register with dropdown options to describe your cat's colouring.

When we transferred ownership over, I went in to rename her from Ray to Rei and spent an hour googling the history of cat breeds to define what she was and her colouring. I've concluded with my Google degree in Cat breeds that Rei is a pale ginger classic tabby with her marble swirls.

Along with her name change, I needed to get a new name tag and number. Even though - or rather, because we're raising her as an indoor cat, she won't be street smart so we want a collar with our contact details to help get her home safe. You know how I found her collar, right? I googled it up.

Rei is a teeny tiny kitten so I wanted a collar that is sleek and minimalist. At first I wanted a plastic name tag to make it lightweight but then I stumbled across Saangoh's embossed leather design on Etsy. After hours of online shopping, I kept coming back to these custom leather collars because they removed the need for a name tag and had the safety release in case Rei got her collar caught on something and choked.

Saangoh's leather collars come in a huge range of colours for the band and the bells. For Rei's pale ginger colour, I chose the natural leather with a silver bell because I wanted something subtle and classy for my little lady. It looks gorgeous on her! So very glad I came across Saangoh's cat collars, they're such a simple, practical yet elegant design.

Never underestimate the power of a good date night. I have friends who are quietly going insane juggling family and work life. While they understand why their partners don't take them out on dates because the exhaustion of raising little humans and the logistics of getting a babysitter makes it extra hard; they can't help feeling frustrated. Part of me thinks: yeah, it's too hard basket to plan a date day or night. Part of me thinks: make a frikkin' effort to show someone you appreciate them. Part of me wonders if it's because their partners don't understand how much date nights may mean to their significant other. Quality time can be important and invaluable to a happy relationship. It doesn't need to be a regular thing, but it should probably be a sometimes, special occasion thing.

Boyfriend Pham and I don't have set date night - that's too much commitment for us. We have gym nights, basketball nights, girls nights, boys nights, niece nights... That's enough regular nights for one couple, don't you think? When we do have a day or night out together on weekends or after work, we make sure to appreciate the quality time. No phones, no social media numbing scrolls, no games. We focus on each other. It's easy to get bogged down in your day to day routines, and go through the motions of life without the e-motions that connected you in the first place. If we do start our own Phamly, I want to make sure we carve out time just for ourselves. Please hold me accountable when the time comes if I forget. I do have a habit of viewing the world how it should be and not how it is.

Guys and gals, if you haven't taken your partner out for a while... or ever, why don't you organise a date night? 

 

When I was a teen, Mum Pham took me to get my ears pierced at a pharmacy. They used one of those guns and my ears got terribly infected so I took out the earrings and let the holes close up. It's a shame - Mum was excited for me to wear these cute gold earrings she had from when she was little. I don't know where they are now. I guess she either pawned them or gave them away because I never saw them after that. When I was in my early 20s in Melbourne, I went to Off Ya Tree in the CBD and got my ears pierced with a needle. I bled for a couple of days but my ear holes eventually healed. It was so long ago, I can't remember whether I took forever to heal like I'm doing now.

15 years later, and those ear holes that used to be in the centre of my ear lobe now sat much further down than they did. I don't know whether ear cartilage keeps growing or if it's gravity playing its part (if anyone knows for sure, please shed some light because Dr. Google says it's both myth and fact that your ears and nose keep growing and I don't know what to believe). Either way, my ear lobes are bigger and longer and I didn't like how much empty lobe there was so I decided to get new ear holes.

I went to Unicorn Piercings at Toombul to get stabbed by an eccentric girl who used to work at Off Ya Tree (in Brisbane, not Melbourne). She distracted me with tales of her frozen dead pets and dreams of taxidermy and bone jewellery so I wasn't thinking about her poking holes in my body. I wish I'd thought to ask her if earlobes keep growing or if it's gravity dragging them down. Instead, I asked her why I bleed so much from my ear lobes because this time, again, I instantly started dripping blood. She theorised I had lots of capillaries in my earlobes because they're so "big and squishy."

It's been 6 weeks now and my ears still haven't completely healed. The bleeding stopped after a few weeks, but every now and then I still see a bit of blood in the puss or crusty mucus I clean off. I'm hoping my ear holes will finish healing in another month or so and I can start wearing the cute earrings I've started hoarding. And I hope they last me another 15 years before I feel the desire to poke two more holes in my lobes because they've gotten even longer. 

Since moving house I’ve been working to walk, and walking to work. Everyone thinks that’s great, but most of my friendship circle live in cooler climates where a 15-minute morning walk is not a stuffy, sweaty, burny form of self-torture. I suppose I could drive the 2 minutes to work, but because a colleague remarked that I probably wouldn’t keep up the walks during peak summer heat, I am of course going to keep walking all summer long to spite them.

I’ve been trying to find ways to make it work and a $32 UPF 50 umbrella is the best investment I’ve made towards proving my work colleague wrong. It not only blocks 98% of ultraviolet rays, it also provides shade with its blackout fabric and stops my skin from feeling like it’s burning under my SPF50+ sunscreens. Also, it looks bloody awesome with its silver top, black underside and rose gold frame. I love it.

I still arrive at work a sweaty mess because of the humidity, but I leave a folding fan on my desk to help evaporate the sweat. And I haven’t resorted to this yet, because peak summer heat hasn't hit, but a neighbour and colleague who also walks to work recommends getting an iced coffee to make it better. I will take him up on the icy drink, though mine will likely be iced water in my trusty insulated Contigo travel mug.

Wish me luck with keeping up the walks to work despite my colleague of little faith.

I spent the first day of 2021 visiting some of Boyfriend Pham's family. They moved just a couple hours outside Brisbane at the end of last year, so we went for an overnight stay on New Year's Day. It was Day 8 of my 11-day holiday, but felt like the first day I fully relaxed and enjoyed myself. Ecommerce life, hey?

We spent the day making and eating woodfired pizza, then got walked by their dog, before a night of playing board games all with lots of fun conversation. Seeing friends and hearing stories from outside my little Brisbane bubble is what I missed most from 2020. That, plus the amazing food at the now permanently closed Maria's Caribbean kitchen in Toowong - devastating. 

Being out of my house/Brisbane/regular surrounds let me properly chill out after being in high functioning mode for a lot of last year. It made me nostalgic for travel that we all took for granted, and planted the seed that I need to get out of my regular routine this year. Of course, it's easier said than done. As I write, a friend in Tassie and I were waiting for today's announcement as to whether Brisbane has been removed from Tasmania's naughty list so our Gold Coast getaway can go ahead as planned. And the update was that there'll be another update in 48-hours. But then the convention she was coming up for got canned so we cancelled our catch up. I still kept my annual leave days though, because I need the break.

Making travel plans is a bigger gamble than it used to be, but I'm going to jump at any opportunities that arise year. That, plus we have a $400 flight voucher that expires in October so we should probably use it. Unfortunately, everyone we're close with is a city-dweller and either their city is a hotspot, or their city thinks we're a hotspot. 

Boyfriend Pham and I started house hunting with 5 months left on our rental lease because all but one friend we know has had a horrible time finding a house. We thought we’d be looking for over a year like everyone else. Instead, it took us 2.5 months.

We didn’t know where to start at first. I had resigned to single life, and my single income could afford an apartment at best (or at worst, Dad’s granny flat once he passed). Boyfriend Pham had never even considered home ownership because he used to be part of Australia’s growing casual workforce and the income insecurities that come with some casual roles. Neither of us had considered buying a house. To make it trickier, we worked on opposite sides of Brisbane so any suburb would leave at least one of us with a bad commute. Neither of us grew up in Brisbane so didn't have a sentimental home suburb/area/region either.

So where did we start? With our budget to see what we could comfortably yet uncomfortably afford (we’re risk averse people who steer clear of any sort of debt). With our powers combined, we could (uncomfortably) afford:

• A house with some land very far north or south, and a horrible commute for one or both of us (this was before he changed jobs to a place near my work).
• A really old, run down house inner-city(ish) that would eat all our money in renovations.
• A decent sized townhouse with modest garage ‘cause most affordable townhouses near the city have a garage to house a city car, not a car and workshop.
• A large apartment with no garage space ‘cause modern apartments have car spaces, not lock-up garages.

Realestate.com.au price filters are handy, though their algorithm does sneak in options that are listed as ‘For sale’ without a price but will be $50K-$150K above your price range so watch out for that. If it looks too good to be true, then it is.

We tried to write a list of must-haves but we’re both very relaxed people so were flexible on nearly everything. Our mandatory items were quickly whittled down to:

1. Double garage Large single lock up garage ‘cause Boyfriend Pham is a car guy with lots of garage-filling crap that I call hoarding but he says 'will be useful one day.'
2. Three bedrooms so I could have a study that wasn’t the guest room.
3. Open plan kitchen/living with enough room for Boyfriend Pham’s desk so we could ‘hang out’ while doing our own thing. Very important.
4. Quiet(er) street - we lived on main roads the past 3 years and we wanted to be able to open our windows/doors.
5. No shared walls - added once we realised we didn’t want a house in the ‘burbs and started looking at townhouses.

Fortunately, picking a suburb became easier when Boyfriend Pham changed roles, and his new office is 7 whole minutes from my office. Eventually, we realised we didn’t want a house with land if it meant living in the ‘burbs. We opted for an inner-city townhouse instead.

My advice if you’re starting the house hunting journey is go to look at as many options and suburbs as possible. You’ll quickly find what you like and don’t like, and also decide what you’re willing or not willing to pay extra for. If you are buying in an area you've never been before then rent if you can. 6 month lease is plenty of time to get to know the area.