Looking back, my holiday past week wasn't exactly a blast, but its got its good times and bad times. I'm kind of tanned right now, lips are peeling like sheet, and the hands and legs are really dry. Suddenly it feels good to be in a humid weather, for once.
There's just no free wifi service in sydney. NONE. Internet cafes are expensive and they got a bad environment there. Feels kind of detached for awhile, and boy do i miss my keyboard and mouse.
Lots of things we did over there, me mummy grandma. Too many things to show and tell. I'll just post up my personal write out done in my mp3 player over 2 occasions.
Lots of words and unspelled checked. Be warned.
How should I call this?
Just to let everyone know, I'm currently typing this junk in my hotel room somewhere in this eastern Australian city. We had seen the city sights from the morning tours, and most of the notable buildings in the district.
At this point of time, I'm incredibly amazed at the word correction or the built in spell checker in my touch. If only the real keyboard at home was this zai. And not curiously, zai is not inside their dictionary.
We are going up blue mountains tomorrow by coach. They think its going to be pretty cold up there, with the strong winds and all, so i'm think I'm going to wear my super thick coat and underwear.
Its quite freezing right now by Singapore standards. The aircon is not on, the windows are not open and boy its cold, no need sweater those type of cold, just needs some pants on that's all. Best part is that, its not even the start of proper winter season. Cool la.
Its 730pm right now, which means its 530pm in sg right now, super sleepy and tires from all those sight seeing and relentless ranting of my grandma complaining how expensive the things are after converting back to her home currency.
Oh great captain cook (the raffles of Sydney or something), please spare me of this torture of my last holiday in the next couple of years.
Typed on another occasion...Another two day just went by. Not particularly tiring, but its one of those times, you feel nothing at all. Yay, saw the nice attractions then ok let's move on to the next one kind of thing. Something interesting to note Is that, for the first time in my life, I felt the power and use of a fire place.
The nights in Canberra are just damn cold. Wearing four layers was just not enough. As I type this, I'm on the coach from the capital back to harbour side Sydney. Two more hours to go on the motorway as they call it, not the usual expressway that we're used to call.
I got some really nice souvenir from some of the places I've went for everyone back at home. Honestly I think I just killed most of my savings for this trip. Haha, who cares? I've experienced some pretty nice breezes and temperatures here.
Speaking of temperatures, I look at the wild kangaroos along the road and really I wonder how they deal with the cold. I highly doubt their fur is thicker than my esprit jacket combined.
Its super early sunset at these parts of the world, 5 plus and the whole sky is black already. And our local time at home us like only three in the afternoon. And sadly to us Singaporean shopperholics, the shop closes early here, around seven evening. Their latest latest closing time for those late night shopping is at nine pm. At this point, I now know why hong kong was able to market and sell their shopping and eating city so well to tourist.
The tour guide mentioned some pretty interesting stuff along the way on the bus ride. Let me try to recall them.
The average income here is around 60,000 Australia dollars a year, that's around 7000 plus plus sing dollars a month. Anything below that will have a bit of a hard time to get by.
Those who cannot afford the city life style will need to move back to the inland countryside. Reasonable enough.
Cars here are quite cheap. With Singapore cars in existence or rather with the government in office, cars anywhere else would seem cheap. I digress.
People here cab start to learn to drive at 16 years if age. Three year provisional license after then another two years I think of putting your annoying letter L on your car before taking it off and owning a full license. Breaking the road law will impose a fine, quite a heavy one I may add, and 3 points off your license, out of the maximum original 12 points. With lost points, you need 3 years to get those points back per deduction.
We were introduced to six different Australia national songs, some quite well known such as waltzing Matilda and the rest, I have no damn idea. Well, the guide did explain word for word what the songs meant, and thinking back during secondary one, during some silly music festival contest in school, me and cb performed waltzing Matilda and got first among the other older students was quite amazing. I remembering practice singing it in the shower while I was still living near boon lay area, just behind the station. I think I still gave my purple music festival shirt from back then, that was around 7 years ago. I digress. Oh and I found it funny that the guide mentions his American father in law thought waltzing Matilda was being sung "let's sing together" for more than 29 years, cause when everyone was singing it, everyone was just drunk and happy and were just mumbling the words.
Another 159km to go. Just took 15 minutes to look outside my window at the stars. Its just so damn nice, that
I just realize how long I haven't been looking at the clear sky at night. As fat as i know, at home, its always cloudy. Here, just today we saw 3 rainbows within one hour. Slight showers and a blazing sun made it possible I guess.
You could really see lots of constellations here. But I can't find our favourite Orion in sight. I'm no astrologist, so yeah maybe they do not appear and say hi in this part if the world.
The bus is stopping for a quick toilet break, good for the ladies and grannies. My hands are still feeling cold at this period of time. The window panel beside me feels just like ice. Moving wind is just scarily cold.
Is there any country in the world with a steady temperature of 25 degrees Celsius? Cause that would be really nice. We spend too much energy keeping our bodies comfortable with air conditioning and heaters. Suddenly thinking about the fire place just made me feel stupid again.
At the national museum this afternoon, some other American students from some college approached me to ask about my hair. They are just a big younger than I am, and boy were they wild. I thought for awhile, hmm cultural differences? The other questions they asked me were equally daunting, where I from where j live what I think about their hair, what kind of contacts I am wearing why is gum banned in Singapore, what my MSN was, and whether they could come visit me back home in sg and loads more, all that within 2-3 minutes. I felt a bit insulted and wanted to tell them to aff off but granny was around and didn't want to leave a bad impression kids.
Great 80 more clicks to go. Hmm, I shan write a bit about my granny, my mother's mother. I know she's suffering from a serious mental illness called anxiety. We did tell her what she is going through, but no matter how her 4 daughters try to convince her to take things easy and just relax, the word anxiety or the teochew equal simply does not exist in her warped dictionary. I don't wanna whine too much about how I cannot stand the demanding and childish acts of hers. I think I will just state one example, the morning intercontinental breakfast at the hotel. Its a buffet and you're suppose not allowed to take extra food out of the eating premises. Well, she purposefully took 2 extra boxes of those cornflakes and put them on the table. When leaving for the tour, like a criminal, she looked around her table, made sure no one (except me) was looking at here and snugged then into her handbag. For awhile, I was shocked. I told her we'll get something to eat along the way, and there was no need steal. Her reasons was we paid well a good price to eat there, and we were just taking a share of the bargain (translating from mandarin) and the food us right fully ours. OK ... Then why check your surroundings just now? Before I could speak and ask, my mom gave the "shut up eat your food let it go" face. And so I did. The paymaster's always right.
To exact my mini revenge of irritant, when the tour guide was explaining how the first people got here from Britain due their convict acts, they get sent to the other side of earth to work off their conviction, I purposefully too translated it for her, emphasizing on parts like simple crimes like stealing bread in poor England because the people were so helpless. Well I guessed it pissed her off a bit but its all in the name if fun.
Oh gosh, I think I got mention before I get around 25% of her blood. Not good. There's loads more example i don't feel its too good to share. But yeah, for the count, loads more.
Just entered the leaking 2 lane under-sandstone tunnel back to Sydney city. 12 more clicks to go fast. The city view is nice at night, on a moving vehicle there's no way to really take good pictures of it.
Got this sudden urge to install some city building game, and play my Oblivion save game again. That's all for now.
