Girls' night out

Thursday night provided a much-needed chance to let our hair down; after a 17-week semester of solid studying, Jess had her last assessment in the afternoon, setting her free for three whole months of stress-free summer fun. In addition to this already joyous occasion, Sian handed in her thesis last week, marking the end of her Interior Architecture degree. Although luckily not experiencing it this year, I’m all too familiar with the dread associated with the build-up to exam season and understood that this was a very big deal and definitely cause for celebration! After rethinking her initial reaction of “get incredibly drunk as quickly as possible” in reply to me asking what she wanted to do when she was done, Jess decided that we should all go out for dinner in the city before getting intoxicated and dancing the night away.

After an intense day of dissecting and preparing spinal cord slices for next week’s experiments, I finished work a little early, rode home in the sunshine (an uncharacteristically cool 27 degrees in Perth at the moment) and got my things together for staying the night and Jess and Sian’s place. As the proud owner of a new dress and a gorgeous new pair of heels, I was very excited to be provided with an occasion to wear them! A very happy Jess rocked up to Queen Street at 4:30pm and, after a bit of hugging and jumping around, we drove over to Peppermint Grove via the bottle shop. Jess, Sian and I caught up over a few beers before getting dressed up and driving down to Cottesloe station to catch a train into the city. As it was an early dinner, I felt very overdressed in my heels sitting opposite all the bums on the train! It brings me great joy to say that my new shoes passed the endurance test; the fifteen minute walk through the station and out to the restaurant was an absolute breeze on those bad boys. There’s nothing worse than watching a girl totter around like Bambi.

In an absolutely crazy case of coincidence, who did we bump into on our way to the restaurant? Chloe and John, two of our Trebarwith friends from Cornwall who are travelling around Australia this year! (Trebarwith Strand is the beach I work at/my second home in case I don't mention it enough) I worked at the Port William with Chloe for a while and John has been a lifeguard down there for years; they’re both lovely and will be down in Dunsborough over Christmas. It was so good to see them, but it spun me out a bit seeing Cornish friends in WA! They were just on their way to dinner too, so we said goodbye as our stomachs were rumbling; I'll see them again when I finish work on 21st December.

The restaurant of choice was one I’d heard a lot of good things about and had been dying to try for some time. Taka’s Kitchen is a Japanese restaurant down Shafto (don’t laugh) Lane, a little pedestrian area off the beaten track. It’s brilliantly cheap, $7 for a main meal, and BYO booze, so we rocked up with wine from the bottle shop; my tipple of choice was a white from Margaret River, the huge wine region near Dunsborough, the taste of which sadly matched the bargain price. Rank. We met Ellen, one of the girls’ Dunsborough friends, and the four of us grabbed a tabled and ordered. It’s one of those places with long plastic benches and hideous décor, but the food was amazing! I had chicken Katsu, rice and Miso soup and it was all delicious. After the initial disappointment of my disgusting wine, Jess and I decided to abandon ship halfway through the bottle and started Jess’ sweet, pink sparkling wine instead, which was a vast improvement and went down very nicely.

Just after we finished eating, some more of the girls rocked up and decided to eat, so that gave us plenty of time to chat and guzzle more wine. Hayley (a Zimbabwean like Sian), Zara and Georgina were all lovely and it was really nice to meet some more chilled-out girls; from what the guys at work/from diving say, the majority of Perth girls are a bit vain and stuck-up, so this lot are diamonds in the rough for sure! They're studying physiotherapy to journalism and everything in between and have all either finished exams already or only got one to go. These next few weeks will be the one time that I'll find having a 9 to 5 more difficult than studying; that free time to chill out after finishing exams is my favourite! Sian and I got the munchies for something sweet, so nipped out to the convenience store on the corner for choccy bar supplies to sneak into the restaurant. Such ladies!

After we paid the bill, the other girls headed home to continue studying/get an early night, leaving the three of us to make our way to a cocktail bar. Passing through from Wesley Quarter (the nicer area of town where the restaurant is) to the city centre proved rather interesting; it wasn't long before we came across one of the aforementioned Perth girls passed out on/in a bin in full dress and heels while her friends tried to shield her exposed butt from onlookers. Classy... Our cocktail venue was The Aviary, an awesome rooftop bar kitted out with turf, trees and fairy lights. There was also air conditioning in the form of cool spray, which was very much appreciated in the humid night air. I had the best Mojito of my life; well worth $18! We were briefly joined by Jess' coursemate Raz and her boyfriend. Raz is from Jersey and, in the usual game of "it's a small world", I found out that her younger brother studies Sport Science at Bath and we have loads of mutual friends from uni! In other news, it turns out any fancy bar in the city is filled with creepy jerks in suits of an evening and we were batting off offers of drinks from them all night, but that didn't take away from our gossip and dancing session.

With the train station closed for some unholy reason, we hopped in a taxi and were tucked up in bed by midnight like good girls. My 6:30 alarm did not feel nice this morning, however, and I struggled through work with gritted teeth. My evening has consisted of catching up on Lost and feeding my hangover with fish and chips; there's a lot to do this weekend with it being my last with John and Vic, so I'm going to get an early night before addressing the fun of finding a bike and organising getting hold of a chest of drawers...