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trip to OZtralia [part 1]
[[ Since it is seemingly impossible for me to upload the bloody pictures I took onto my entries, kindly refer to the link on the navigation bar to view them. ]]
Yes! I have finally gotten down to blog about the trip to Australia. Actually I had time to probably squeeze in an entry for the first few days, but I was too lazy or too engrossed with playing Kingdom Hearts 2. Oh, and on a random side note, Jasmine Tye made it to the top 12 for Singapore Idol! Yay! Haha, okay I better begin before the babbling continues.
Day 1
Would it even be appropriate to call it a whole day? Haha, met up earlier with some people at Delifrance. We more or less idled and wandered around the airport until it was finally time to board the plane. I can’t really remember the exact time that we went onto the plane, but I do know that we were actually asked to arrive two hours early. There was a damn bloody flight delay because the pilot claimed that the wind at Sydney was strong. Oo, yes I know it is unforeseen circumstances, but what a wonderful to start the trip. A forty minute delay mind you.
It was Mr. Lam’s birthday! Happy Birthday Mr. Lam! Benjamin was sent to get him a cake. Haha, when we were lighting the candle, I was wondering if the fire alarms would go off. Somehow I think the flame was too small, so we were saved from a drenching.
The flight was a long eight hours, at least for in my opinion. I know that the flight to other places will take longer, however eight hours was already enough to torture me. I cannot imagine how I survived the (was it) 13 hour flight to UK the other time. Thankfully I managed to carefully plan out my flight so that I only had to endure about two hours of pure stoning. I spent the first two to two and a half hours watching “Rumour Has It” whilst eating airplane food. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate airplane food? It makes me sick. Anyway, I spent the next hour in the toilet! Haha, here’s a secret people. If you have a long flight, spend at least an hour in the toilet. It has more leg space than those cheapo Economy seats and you can have fun playing with all the toiletries. Than it was about fours hours of sleep before I waited awhile more for the plane to land.
Day 2
We finally landed and I must say, their customs check in was scary. The way they checked for food items was as if the food items were bombs. Haha. The weather was a bit too cold for comfort, but after cladding on a jacket, it was livable.
Our first stop was the Sydney Fish Market. The delay in the flight made us miss the actual auctioning of the fish. Not that I was particularly dismayed or anything. However, we still had the time to wander around the place, looking at the raw seafood and listening to the women go on about the different types of fish etc. Boring in my opinion, the highlight of the whole visit was the part where we got to actually eat the seafood. Of course, the people were bloody cheapskates and we had to buy the food. The oysters were divine, or at least I thought so.
The next visit was to the Ecoliving Center near New South Wales. The tour was too long and the best part was that we were walking throughout the whole thing. I mean yes, its interesting to learn how they make use of their waste materials to fertilize their plants and to keep their soil moist etc. But come on, one to nearly two hours of farming tips?
The visit to the Ecoliving center was followed up by going down to the University of New South Wales. The talk, which I estimate to be half an hour, totally wiped out everyone, and I mean everyone. Even Miss Low and our annoying tour guide were nodding off. If you think that lessons in school are boring, you should have gone for the talk. Let’s put it this way, I have never slept in class before and the talk at UNSW put me to sleep instantaneously. The tour of the campus was surprisingly refreshing though. Just looking at their facilities makes me want to study there. Of course, I have to think about the practicality of studying there and if I weigh the pros and cons, I’d be better off staying in Singapore.
Aaron’s hotel wasn’t as shabby as I expected it to be, and Chinatown in Sydney is absolutely not what I picture it to be. There were two bunk beds and a queen size bed in the hotel. No prizes for guessing who got the queen size bed. Haha.
We had MysteriOz one which turned out to be a game of trying out the various types of auctions. My group, namely Rachel, Yvonne and I, won a twenty or ten dollar Swensons voucher. Which reminds me, Chia Yvonne, is the voucher with you?!
Our first day in Australia and we had Chinese food for dinner! Haha.
There was this talk by a former Victorian who had chosen to study in Sydney. For those who are interested, she is studying in UNSW and she is taking up some speech therapy course. Her subject combination in VJ was History, Literature, Economics and Mathematics. :)
Lights out was at eleven that day and we wrapped up everything by 8.30 to 9.00pm. So we were given some free time to wander by ourselves. Darling Harbour is beautiful. To somewhat quote someone, it’s like Singapore River done right. I went camera crazy there and attempted to take as many pictures as possible. However, my awesome camera limited what I could take. Here are a few photos to illustrate how we killed our free time there.
Day 3
I had my first poached something in my life and it turned out to be poached eggs. I heard of poached salmon before, wonder what I will taste like. The poached eggs were nice; it is like dry on the outside and wet on the inside. Yummy!
Another boring visit for the scrapbook, the talk at Sydney Inner West Migrant Center was not only mind-numbing, but we had to stand all the way through the whole talk which was nearly an hour. I felt compelled to ask questions every time Miss Low starts looking around because there seems to be this pressure to ask something lest she come lecture us the very same night about how we are not involved etc. It will probably just spoil the mood of the trip or something.
Lunch was surprise surprise, Chinese food again. Not very well organized I suppose. They should have save all the Chinese meals for the end of the trip when people start to really miss it, not when we can’t wait to get away from it. We had a bit of time for shopping and there was this mad rush to get stuff there because their merchandises were so cheap. I shan’t say how cheap though, because some of the souvenirs were bought from there. Haha.
Then we set of on a really long bus ride to the University of Western Australia Farm School. Again, it looked like a nice place to study, but I for one am not interested, especially since they are so involved with the animals there. Do you know that when we went in to see the deer, there was shit everywhere? And I mean literally everywhere!!! It was frightening to see so much shit. I have never come across so many faeces in my life before, at least not all at once. Anyway, the place was very science based too and I think I have more or less decided that I want to do something that borders more along humanities.
We traveled back to the hotel and walked to Mama’s kitchen some place (which I cannot remember the name of, it’s Mama something) for dinner. Finally something western, a big plate of bolognaise. Playing twenty one with the whole group wasn’t a good idea. It ended up to be quite draining and I think I gave up somewhere along the way. MysteriOz 2 was brief. We just had to take photos of things that made the street that we were at Italian or something.
I realized that I forgot to mention that we had A Trail of Words for both day 2 and 3. However, it is just uninteresting discussions about what happened in the day, like a recap if you will. So there’s no use blogging about them.
[ to be contd ]
farcical-rants - 12:37 am - Wednesday, June 14, 2006
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