Saturday, March 17, 2007
Overdued entries

14th February 2007

We landed in Melbourne and the plane came to halt at the bay. The seat belt sign went off and everyone got out of their seats trying to get their luggage out of the overhead compartments. Then the pilot announced “Ladies and Gentlemen, the plane is still 2 feet short of the bay. Please take a seat for your own safety. We do not want anything to happen at this late stage of the flight.” I literally went “HUH?!” I’ve never heard of such a thing before and till now I still can’t believe it. 2 feet short of the bay?! It was hilarious. I couldn’t help laughing out loud. After which the plane moved that 2 feet forward and we didn’t even felt the plane move. My my, that was a nice start to my time in Aussieland though.

I packed only 2 stuffed toys but I ended up with 5. Little Tigger from dear Cody, Stitch from my lovely Cuzzies and a little Giraffe bolster from Ah-ta dear. Thank you all so much! They will come in really handy in making my new room comfy. And so I had more things to declare at the Australia customs. It was a thrill to rush through customs, throwing out everything that has to be declared and then packing them all back in, and then look for the domestic terminal to check-in for my next flight. Turned out, there was still quite a bit of time before the next plane departed and we had to wait. During transit, I saw this angmoh guy (not sure if he’s Australian, I still can’t differentiate.) with braided hair and piercings. He looked normally weird until he did something abnormally weird. You know that plastic ring on your plastic coke bottles that helps seal the cap? He took that out, put it in his mouth and started chewing on it like it was betel leaf. I couldn’t understand what I saw, I was truly taken aback. Talk about culture shock.

Touch down in Tasmania. I’m finally in the down under of the down under. Tassy is beautiful. They don’t have concrete jungles but they’ve got concrete mountains. You can see houses on every slope of the mountains. It’s not really very happening out here but maybe because all I’ve seen of Tasmania is the route from the airport to Sandy Bay and all about Sandy Bay. That’s all. It is the first day and I didn’t sleep well at all on those flights. I’m tired. Too tired to be excited even. I guess I can see why people have said that Tassy is a boring place but I really like the tranquility. It’s small and pretty quiet around here. At least it’s definitely something different from what I’m familiar with back home. Here, at every turn, I either see a mountain or the river. It’s definitely a place where I can put my heart and soul on my studies because there ain’t many distractions. A good thing. But it may also mean that I would want to get out of Tassy and travel more, which well, will not be a good thing.

Ah. Now with regards to the guy stories. There were already so many eye candies at Changi airport itself. I was thinking to myself “oh no! how do I keep my eyes on the books?” Even the air stewards who were all I think middle-aged men or even a little towards the old side, have this charm about them. But when I got to the Tassy side, there weren’t really any left so I’m guessing they must have all ended up in Melbourne. Sigh.


17th February 2007

Took a trip down to Salamanca Square today for the Salamanca market which is held on every Saturday. I’ve never seen so many people in a single place in Tasmania before. It was not so much a flea market. I think it was more targeted at the tourists, which means higher prices. I have not shopped at all since I landed in Tassy and now even Salamanca market proves no hope for my shopping. There are little treasures to be found there though if you look hard enough.

After leaving Salamanca Market, we headed up to North of Hobart. We stopped by Glenorchy and New Norfolk before heading up to the Mount Field National Park to immerse ourselves in nature. Russell Falls was beautiful. Then we walked through the Tall Trees trail and found ourselves going in a circle instead of reaching Horseshoe Falls. So we took another route and headed to Lady Barron Falls instead. It was a long walk in through the forests, took us about half an hour to reach the waterfall and another half an hour to walk back out. I thought Russell Falls was better actually but it wasn’t such a waste of time. The experience was amazing. It’s hard to indulge in nature like that back home. This definitely beats our Tree Top Walk at MacRitchie. There were supposed to be a lot of wildlife in there and even platypuses but I didn’t manage to spot anything. Maybe because we kept moving on and did not stay in a single place quite long enough to observe anything. It’s okay. I’ll probably have a lot more time in the future to do wildlife observations.

On our way back, we stopped by the Salmon Ponds, which breeds salmon and trout. Lovely looking fishes [Rainbow Trout especially]. We tried feeding them but they were probably already overfed so not many actually came up for the food. After feeding the salmon, we went into the café and fed ourselves with none other than the salmon. Not only are they good to look at, they are good to eat as well. Frsh from the pond... mmm.

After filling up our constantly grumbling tummies, we headed back to Hobart. Did our daily grocery shopping at Woolsworth. Tonight, reunion dinner would only be the 3 of us eating instant noodles with eggs, chicken and lettuce. It was refreshing and the soup was delicious. Something very different from the bread and fries that we have been having for the past few days. Simple yet simply yummy.

A walk to Wrest Point to burn all the fats accumulated from the past few days. Today’s night sky is clear and the stars are out. A magnificent blanket of stars.


20th February 2007

Who said there’s nothing interesting in Tasmania? We’ve got the Cadbury factory! I initially thought it was nothing when my Mum said she wanted to go. What can be so great about seeing machineries from a window mixing and producing chocolates? Boy was I wrong about it.

The experience was amazing! I felt like I was Charlie in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. The sweet cocoa aroma filled the entire factory and just a single whiff of it brings you into an entirely different place. It brings you to this childhood fantasy land where you dream of yourself swimming in chocolate pools and everything else is made out of candy. In the factory, you’re just surrounded by chocolates, chocolates and more chocolates. It was no watching through windows over there. There is a guided tour around to see all the different machineries that processes the chocolates and we get to see what we eat being made from cocoa. The mixing of chocolates, white, milk and dark, the coating of Turkish Delights, the drizzling of dark chocolate over the caramel vanilla chocolates, the packing of it into boxes, the sending of the chocolates to the despatch area. We also get to see the chocolates in very close proximity and at certain points we were so close we have to fold our arms, keep our hands in the pocket or behind our backs because it was simply too tempting to just reach out and grab a piece. Oh do you know that the cocoa for Cadbury chocolates are actually processed in Singapore before being sent here for it to be made into our boxes, bars and blocks of chocolates? I’ve never seen so much chocolate in my entire life and we got to see all the different flavours that are not available in our Singapore market. The most incredible thing that we got to see has to be the 10kg block of Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate. It has 1000 squares and will probably take ages to finish. By the time you finish the entire block, I bet you’ll be more than 10kg heavier.

All we did was look at chocolates, smell chocolates and indulge on some free Cadbury chocolates the whole time. I never thought the experience of being in a chocolate factory could be this wonderful. I almost wanted to give up the zoo and start applying for a job at the Cadbury factory instead. I am never quite a chocolate person actually but things are going to change. [Actually, the Godiva chocs that Serene bought me already made me wanna change my mind about chocs. They were wonderfully yummylicious. Too bad I wasn’t able to bring them with me to Tassy and had to gobble the entire box down at the airport. So Serene, you’re partly responsible for my weight gain. Hmph! =) Thank you for the chocs my dear sis.]


4th March 2007

First week of school is over just like that. Tassy is small and their population is smaller so you tend to meet a lot of people who are from elsewhere. I have met people from all over the world and the experience is phenomenal. Somehow I don’t feel like I’m in Aussieland, I feel more like I’m in the centre of the world where everyone from all over congregate.

I have moved in to my apartment on campus. Actually, it’s been about a week since I’m here. Once you enter the apartment, you’d be in the kitchen and as you walk ahead, it’ll be the living room and the balcony. That’s the centre of the apartment which from now on will be known as the common area. On the left are 3 bedrooms, one of which is mine, the other belongs to a Tassy girl from Lauceston and the last one is currently still empty. On the right side of the common area are the boys’ rooms, 2 Tassy guys and an Englishman. I’ve got all the smart people living with me, a future doctor, pharmacist, lawyer and psychologist. They are nice people who clean up after themselves and help out around the house. So that’s okay. We don’t really interact much though and very seldom would all 5 of us be in the common area at the same time. Even 3 at any one time would be rare. But that’s fine by me. When you’re out with people, you are pretty much ‘forced’ to socialize, smile, and get into the where-are-you-from-what-are-you-doing conversation even when you really don’t want to. So when you’re back at home, you really just want to be alone and in your own thoughts.

Anyway, have I mentioned that my apartment is simply lovely? It’s a new student accommodation and the furnishings and all are still very clean and nice. And I love the cool earthly colours of it. I think my room here is much nicer and neater than my room back home. It’s so spacious even when it’s more equipped. Oh and I got myself a printer which costs only AUD$59 and the ink cartridge is made in Singapore! The printing cost here is horrendously expensive. We need to pay 11cents for a copy. Well, can’t quite blame them though, the people here are trying to save the natural environment. They are trying to go paperless and don’t encourage printing and stuff. At least I think they make more sense than some people trying to introduce EFS and saying that it saves paper when it’s really just using more paper. It definitely isn’t saving manpower and time either.

Yesterday, we had a Singapore society BBQ and I was elected to be Head of Public Relations. I can’t say if I’m happy or unhappy about it. I actually have other plans of getting myself involved in things I’ve never got the chance to do in Singapore like bushwalking or white water rafting. Being linked back to Singapore and doing Singaporean things was definitely not at the top of my list. I do appreciate the fact that there is a Singapore society and the things that they do for us to help us settle in and settle down though. At least we’ve got something familiar we can turn to when we’re feeling out of place. However, I was not expecting to get involved in it at this level. Being a member was more than enough for me because I didn’t want to commit too much to it so that I can have time for other things. But since I’m in it already, I should just see how it goes from here and maybe I’ll learn a few useful things from it. Gaining experience with Public Relations should be a good thing. At the same time, I’m still going to be involved in other stuffs. I’ve signed up for fencing and I can’t wait to start learning the sport!