Dear diary

Here is my holiday review.

17th of November
I took a transit plane to Sydney, Australia.
The first flight to Singapore was just fine.
Unfortunately, when we reached the Changi International Airport at 11 at night,
we were told that the plane had been delayed to 2am.
And we were so tired. It's difficult to sleep in the airport. But we tried to.
At 2am at last the plane was ready.
We were excited to board on A380, which is the current largest airbus in the whole wide world.
Haha, actually it's just like any other ordinary airplanes, just double-decked, and extremely huge.
So the excitement is gone and we all fell asleep as we were too sleepy.
Our front seats were all vacant, so we occupied another 4 seats that made our territory grew one time bigger.
3.30am the stewardess woke us up with the wafting smell of food which tempted all the hungry stomaches.
We had satay chicken wrap. It's something like kebab, tastes good, but the portion was too big for a supper.
Then we slept until morning, we reached Sydney.

The second day we spent in Sydney was completely exhausting.
After a whole night of tiring flight trip, we straight away go on with a full day city sightseeing trip.
Is the city trip fun?
Frankly, it's not.
We only have 15 minutes photo shoot time for the Sydney Opera House, the boat quay and Sydney Harbour Bridge.
That means we don't have time to go in to visit. :(
We got to know the brief origin of the white Australians from Mr Guide, Richard Tan.
The Britain came to a place call The Rocks in Australia long long ago, they left their prisoners in Australia to do some work.
Therefore, the white Australians are the descendants of some British prisoners.
We reached the Missus Macquarie's Chair very soon.
What's that?
There's a tale like this: Mrs Macquarie was once the wife of a governor, Mr Macquarie. He used to travel a lot.
His wife would wait for his return every time he sailed on the chair by the sea.
How's the chair like?
I'm not so sure, we walked through a beautiful park with picturesque view of the water and landmarks of Sydney.
And every moment we walked pass through a bench we would question: is that the legendary chair?
After a few minutes we found a huge rock, with words crafted on it.
And our Mr Guide said Tadaa this is it.
We were like: Sweat =.="
OK whatever. Anyway my bro and I get to witness the magnificence of the Australian Navy Base. Jumbo ships. Cool.
It's the end of our city trip and headed to another city.

Wollongong, the 3rd largest city of New South Wales.
The word is picked up from some aborigine language, it means "the sound of the waves". Quite a nice name.
It's a long journey to Wollongong, 4 hours oh dear.
But the drive was OK, as the Grand Pacific Drive was well built.
It's already late, we went to a local hotel, Chifley.
I shared a room with my mom.
It was a pleasant new hotel, bedroom and bathroom both spacious and clean.
We took a hot bath, bounced onto bed, and zzzZZZzzZZZZ till the next morning.

The sun rises very early in Australia.
As we were following tour, we had to wake up very early too, 6-7 every morning.
We were woken up unwillingly almost every morning by the annoying morning call by our so called responsible Mr Guide.
Morning Australia, the morning breeze was freezing, though the sun was blazing bright in the sky.
Our breakfast was Australian and simple. Tomatoes, potatoes, eggs and bacons. That's their style.
After our breakfast, we went to the jetty.
We hopped onto the boat and set sailed to the sea!
We were finding dolphins. :)
The captain was hunky and friendly, the co-captain, who is a young lady, tall and white, was a real western beauty with a mesmerizing smile.
On the boat there were Korean visitors besides people from our tour group.
They were so fascinated when our captain said "kamsahamnida" or "anyeong". ==
The dolphins appeared when we were in the middle of the sea.
They jumped up the the surface of the water to breath.
From our boat captain's information, the dolphins travel with their family. The female dolphins travelled with their juveniles.
The boat got so close to the dolphins that we could see them within 2 metres.
But the dolphins didn't jump high, it was just their fins showing out from water.
And unfortunately, there wasn't any whales travelling around the Wollongong sea, so we couldn't spectate their awesomeness.
The boat was in a high speed and the wind was so strong that we all trembled.
The lunch was fish and chips. Cheap, fried yet tasty.
After lunch we got back to Sydney.

Hello again, Sydney.
The first destination was Jim Wild's oyster farm.
We had a brief explanation from passionate Mr Jim about how oysters were processed.
The poor oysters got caught.
The poor oysters were marinated live.
Then the poor oyster were opened in a world-record-breaking speed of Mr Jim's.
He showed us his trophies. He was the glorious winner of consecutive oyster opening competitions.
At last it was the oyster tasting time!
The oysters which were just dead last minute were served on our tables, raw and fresh.
We squeezed some lemon juice on them and munched on them.
Hmm, taste good. But, again, poor oysters. Who ask them to be so delicious LOL
We saw a sign board telling that Mr Jim was selling his oyster farm.
We were curious, why is passionate Jim determined to sell his beloved oyster farm?
Well, he had 4 daughters, no son, no successor, no future for his farm.
Perhaps selling it is the best idea to solve the problem. What a pity, aww.
We had a couple of photo shoot with Mr Jim. And time to say goodbye.
Next, it's wine and cheese tasting time.
We passed though hilly vineyards and came to a cottage.
There was a simple wedding ceremony going on there.
The kids were playing merrily around. They were so funny in their noob looks.
Into the cottage, the adults were served with fine wine.
As for kids under 18, it was strictly restricted to drink wine. So we were served with fine orange juice. hmmph
The cheese was honestly not good. I used to like cheese, but not this bitter one.
The food craving time ended and we spent our night in Sydney, Ibis Hotel, an unpleasant squeezy one.
We wandered around before our sleeping time.
To our wonder, after 5pm most of the shops were closed and there were rarely any Australians walking around.
There were instead Korean/Chinese shops and restaurants open, and Korean/Chinese hanging out at night.
The Koreans/Chinese were dominating, Australia has a lot of them.
They live their lives there by doing restaurant, groceries, boutique business.
You can see them in every single corner.
I always thought that Australia is a "angmoh" people country.
But now the Koreans and Chinese migrate there in a large population.
It doesn't feel like Australia when you walk outside at night.

As I had promised Simon a postcard from Australia previously, I searched for it high and low in many shops.
But in this high technology era, postcards are considered outdated. THEY ARE SO RARE NOW.
Every time I got into a shop and asked "Postcards?", the fellow shopkeepers shook their heads and gave me a look which seemed like "Postcards? The last century antique?!"
Yea, e-mails will do, are you from the last century, still postcards?
Haih, what to do? I promised Simon!
At last I found it in a stationery shop, opened by a Malaysian.
He was a pleasant man. But still, no discounts for same nationality. :/
He claimed that in Australia, being an employee is easier than an employer.
For employees, less work, more pay. For employers, more work, less pay.
There are more priorities for employees in Australia, eg. short working time but high wedges.
So he had to run his shop himself.
Well, that's not a bad thing after all.

To be continued. Kindly be patient.

Dear diary

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

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