argh stupid xanga. my blog entry disappeared so i'm typing it out again.

finished my exams a wk ago n i'm about to leave for geraldton in WA to do a 3 wk placement. i'm flying to perth on fri...spending a night there before taking a 6 hour bus ride up to geraldton on sat. i picked e wrong dates....the Red Bull Air Race is happening in perth that wkend and there'll be cool pilots doing cool aerial acrobatics and it's all free and fun and i won't get to watch it. dang. i would have stayed in perth an extra day to watch it budden i realised that supermarkets, and all shops for that matter, don't open on sundays in WA. UGH. wat the? so i've gotta go up to geraldton and go to the supermarket to get my groceries on sat.

i finish my placement on 8 dec, then i'll go back to perth the next day (my BDAY!!)...1st time celebrating my bday alone.. maybe i'll go stay in a 5 star hotel to make up for it. heh. then i'll join a backpacker tour and see the beautiful beaches and coastlines of south western WA...and go to margaret river and get drunk wine-tasting.

then i'll come back to melb....do my supplementary placement and spend christmas here...then fly back to sg before new year's eve. won't be spending too much time in sg...gotta be back in melb by 24/25 jan.

 ok i'm getting really lazy so i'll just put up some of my pics from my trip in april to sydney.

snowy river...near the border of victoria and new south wales

SNOW!!!! 1st time i've seen snow in my life...and it's exactly like i imagined it to be. white n soft. we didn't expect to see snow cos it was in april....middle of autumn...but erm...well..this IS the snowy mountains. i had my 1st snowfight and we went tobogganing also. damn fun. it was PRICELESS.

what would a trip to sydney be without a pic of the opera house.

hee. night view of the harbour bridge with my lousy cam. i did try to prolong the exposure time k.

me at the blue mountains!! the water does look kinda blue. hmm.

me on a tower next to the harbour bridge

tiny me at bondi

st mary's cathedral..i like this pic.

Melbourne to Sydney part II

ok here's day 2 of my trip to sydney in april. heh. i know it's going slow.

Day 2 21/4/06

Woke up bright and early and boy was it cold. Brrr. Went for breakfast…really refreshing. DIY breakfast…never experienced this before on a tour. So basically we had to prepare everything ourselves…not that there was much to do….just toast n jam n milk. Haha. Cool.

We were on the road again at 8am. It was still raining. Went to the Torra Bulga rainforest, and surprise surprise…there was rain! Stupid me didn’t put on a cap and nearly froze. Saw some ferns (big deal) and a tiny waterfall.

Then we went to a winery for lunch. Tasted 6-7 wines on an empty stomach and NEARLY got tipsy. Not a good idea. Had a weensy bowl of Cajun chicken salad n chips (the guide said we wouldn’t be left hungry…well…dunno bout that Joel)…but they served the best homemade bread ever. YUM.

Then we headed to the Ninety Mile Beach at Lakes Entrance. Beach wasnt exceptional…but waves were really big. Crazy Brit guy wanted to go for a swim in the freezing waters. Haha.

We then made our way to our accom for the night. On the way Joel played some really funny stuff from the Scared Weird Little Guys….singing comedians. Might buy some of their CDs.

Reached Ontos, an organic farm in the middle of nowhere. This place was awesome. There were no modern contraptions…no phone lines, no mobile reception, no -TV/radio…no nothing. They even had their own well and solar-powered thing for electricity. It was exactly the kind of place that I’d always wanted to go to.. somewhere far away from the city where I could be alone and do nothing. And there I was, and I totally didn’t expect to be there on this trip. The entire place was huge….plenty of walking tracks….i spent some time walking to the edges of the farm to look at sheep. They kep t staring at me. Hmm. And I must have stepped on lots of poo. Then I stood on the top of the hills at sunset, overlooking a big, deep valley for a long while.

Dinnertime. I half expected to eat some organic chicken cos there were so many chooks beside the lake but alas, it was a vegan place. Dinner was really yummy though…all organic food.

The skies were clear….and there were HUNDREDS of stars. AWESOME. Wish I could have taken a pic…but I’d never seen so many stars before in my life. Not even in Nepal. Like I could see the outline of the Milky Way. Unbelievable. I just stood there staring for ages…until my neck ached. And then I saw a SHOOTING STAR!!!! Never seen one before. Amazing stuff. Then Joel explained to me where the Southern Cross was…I didn’t quite get it. Oh well.

the topic of stupid first names often comes up in australia. just read a corker today...page full of the worst ever names u could ever give your child.

http://blogs.theage.com.au/allmenareliars/archives/2006/09/why_would_you_d_1.html

Nicole Ada Simcock-Daley and Ivan Itchianus are my favourites. and then there's Ben Dover and B. O'dor. and you'd really wonder why some parents would call their children Air Freshener and Zucchini...and Heavenly Hirani Tigerlily.

and of course i can't help but think of weirdo Anglo names Asian parents give their kids. like apparently a Taiwanese couple named their son Hi!Cookie (yep, exclamation mark included) cos they saw it on a biscuit tin. and i never really gave much thought to this, but english spellings of mandarin names can go horribly wrong. i know bout Kok Long and all the Kok combinations, but how bout Shi Ting. oh boy. and i can remember some of the ridiculous names in HK drama serials. like the writers would just name their characters anything they saw at random cos they think it'll look cool. the best was Nicam. like, seriously. wat kind of name is that. they'd probably start giving names like Teletext and Fast Forward and Dolby Digital.

and then in the Western world when people call you by your surnames or whatever vaguely pronouncable name they can find, it's hard to keep a straight face when your surname is Dong.

i got my $50 back from the bank!!! (read entry below for details). YAY. no more sleepless nights. hahaha. kiddin.

had to travel to sunbury today for work. it's like 37 km fr melbourne...not very far budden i got to see large paddocks, cows n sheep grazing along the way so it's kinda far out. it's nice to see large empty fields..i think it's very relaxing. the boys didn't win today but it was a close match for most of the time. had a bit of work to do in the last quarter...had some of the worst injuries for the year. n i had to deal with an annoying assistant coach who thinks he's the coach. got a corky myself too. haha. oh well.

back to more studying now. í'm getting pretty stressed up about my placement. thinking about it all the time. thank goodness i like what i'm doing though. phew.