The Young Messiah

I am very surprised that this movie is already out since I do not see it around. I only find that it is showing at Cathay and it seems that there is no more screening after this Wednesday. I decided to watch it today and only 5 people were in the cinema. Lol. I was worried that I might be the only one and they would cancel the screening.

The Young Messiah tells the story of the Holy Family's return from Egypt back to Nazareth after the death of King Herod who wanted to kill baby Jesus. Things do not really change as Herod's son hear about child Jesus' miracles and tasks his centurion to capture Jesus. In the Bible, there is only one story on Jesus' childhood which is when he was missing at the temple. It is quite a gamble to create a movie about Jesus when there is no mention about it in the Bible and the odd likely favours disappointment.

Let's not discuss the story as anything related to the Bible is definitely boring. Lol. Either it is boring because we are already familiar with the story or it is boring when it tells something completely out of the Bible. Let's talk about how it makes me feel about the movie. I think the movie is great as the story is quite believe-able. The 7 year-old Jesus is not aware of His being the Son of God and hence is confused with what he can do. We also get to see Jesus' cousin, James. We know that James is a holy person who became Bishop of Jerusalem eventually. Despite this, his depiction as a kid here is also believe-able. He is irritated, and perhaps somewhat jealous, with Jesus. But still, they will talk and play with each other. Boys will always be boys.

With young Jesus not realising his God-hood yet, I feel that the focus on the story is on Joseph and Mary. It is mostly about their struggle of raising up Jesus: they trust in God but sometimes things are getting too tough that they are worried that they are not strong enough to carry out what God wants them to do, challenges from people around them who may not fully believe in what happen to them so far or suspicious with Jesus' miracles, not able to answer Jesus' questions yet as he may still be too young to understand things which adults cannot even comprehend. In fact, the movie can be summarised as what Joseph says "How do we explain God to His own Son?".

Put me in their shoes and I think I can empathise what they were going through. It gives me a new perspective to the story of finding of Jesus in the temple. Joseph and Mary's worry may not simply like how parents feel when they lose their child in shopping mall but they are worried about Jesus' safety. Most importantly, it gives me a new perspective on the kind of faith that Joseph and Mary have. We may think that it must be cool to have the honour of taking care of God's only son etc but from what this movie is telling, it is something full of challenges, trials, and tribulations.

Despite showing Joseph and Mary's human struggles, the movie does not show them succumb to human's emotion. Mary never doubts, never complains, and never gets angry to God. What she feels is if she will be strong enough to carry out God's mission for her. Joseph does not have any spoken words recorded in the Bible so I was quite worried if the movie will somehow 'destroy' my impression with his words. Thank God, the movie is faithful to show him as the protector of the Holy Family and support both Mary and Jesus when bad things come.

The movie ends with Mary telling young Jesus on the story of the Annunciation and asking him not to manifest his power until the time has come. Fast forward to wedding at Cana and no wonder Jesus 'scolded' Mary and told her that his hour has not come yet. Haha.. Last time that was what Mary told him ma... Quite plausible right?

Despite all the negative reviews, I am glad and I feel blessed that I watched this. I don't watch this for entertainment purpose and I am not watching this to verify its accuracy (there is no verification needed in the first place as there is no written evidence of Jesus' childhood). However, I am glad that I feel recharged spiritually to see how the Holy Family could possibly struggle and yet remain holy and faithful. It definitely inspires me to press on to follow the Way of Life no matter how shitty life can be. For that, I like this even better than Risen that I watched last week.

Easter joy

Easter feels different this year. Since last year, I started to attend the 7am Easter Sunday mass and waking up that early is usually not a good day for me. Last year I came very close to the starting time and although I still could get a seat, it was pretty crowded for a Sunday morning. So this year I decided to come earlier. I was surprised that I woke up feeling very on this morning and I managed to leave house at 630am.

The joyful Easter is not only felt by me. I feel that the priest was more energetic and excited than usual that he even forgot to incense the bible before the Gospel. Lol. He did that after the Gospel reading ended. The altar boys, however, seemed to be still sleepy. One of them dropped the stick for splashing of the holy water and another one rang the bell at wrong timing. Another thing which surprised me was the choir whose members are quite young. I always associate Sunday 7am mass as a mass for old people as young people will stay in bed until late on Sundays. They sang loudly and with full of spirit and the energy was infectious. It made me consider of going for 7am mass now since the timing of Japanese lesson has changed too.

I always enjoy Christmas but I usually associate Easter with doom and gloom, particularly after Good Friday. Only today I realise that there are a lot of nice Easter and uplifting Easter songs. In fact, my perspective between the 2 events sort of changed right now. Christmas songs which are more upbeat and happy tend to be more secular and about holiday and Santa Claus while Christmas songs which are more religious tend to be more mellow. At Christmas, we are happy in anticipation of something i.e the birth of Jesus or the coming of Jesus. It is a different kind of happiness when compared to Easter when we are happy for something that has already happened i.e Christ is already risen.

Going back a bit to the Good Friday, I realised that usually there are 5 masses on Sundays, including 1 sunset mass on Saturdays. However, there are only 2-3 Good Friday services. Does the church expect 40-60% of regular Sunday mass goers not to attend Good Friday service? I felt so irritated that the church was so crowded and it made the whole atmosphere not conducive. Last year I came almost on the dot and I had to stand. So this year I came about 15 minutes earlier and there were only pockets of seats left. I know it is so petty to complain about these inconveniences when Jesus suffered and died on the cross. I was surprised that I felt more irritated this time by the people around me who had to stand as compared to last year when I was the one standing. Bleah.. Anyway I saw my friend's photo at another church where people were denied entry because the church was already too crowded. One of the comments mentioned something similar happened on the Maundy Thursday evening at another church. Seriously man!

Anyway, wishing everyone a very happy Easter and may this Easter spirit last :)

Samurai High School

Synopsis:

Mochizuki Kotaro is a cowardly 17 year old high school student who spends most of his time goofing around. One fateful day, on his way home from school, he came across a mysterious history library. The librarian lent him a history book about a samurai from Edo era who has the same name, Mochizuki Kotaro. Since then, when faced with danger, Kotaro will turn into a samurai. What does the samurai want by travelling 400 years into the future and meet his descendant?

My opinion:

I started watching this in November last year and just finished the last 2 episodes tonight. There are only 9 episodes in total. Lol. So yeah, that is how bad the drama is. I can even watch while playing online games on my phone or tablet.

I am expecting this to be a comedy but the supposed funny parts turn out lame instead of hilarious. It seems that the actors are overacting for the funny scenes and they just turn out not funny at all.

There is no plot at all. Each episode is completely unrelated and the 'conflict' presented in each episode is too trivial and the conflict resolution is always too abrupt and forced. There is no overarching plot to tie the series at all. Kotaro wants to find out what the samurai wants but everything that he does does not have any relevance to this particular purpose. Until the end, the samurai's purpose of 'getting' justice is also lame.

The relationships among the characters are bad. I have never watched a series with a school theme where the main character hardly interacts with the classmates. Kotaro's relationships with Nakamura and Ai are lukewarm at best and Mochizuki family dynamic from an episode to the next is like flipping a pancake. The teachers also do not provide any educational value or learning point to the audience also.

In short, the series has no purpose, no story, and no message to deliver.

The only credit I will give is to Haruma Miura (who plays Kotaro) and Yu Shirota (who plays Nakamura). Haruma Miura plays both lame and samurai Kotaro and it is amazing to see how he plays these 2 characters with completely opposite personality. He can be goofy, can be stern, can be scary, but one thing he cannot do well is to be emotional and tear-inducing. By the way he plays Eren in Attack on Titan movies and I think he is pretty bad as Eren. Lol. Yu Shirota surprised me by playing this wimpy character as usually he plays strong and serious characters like Tezuka (Prince of Tennis Live Action), Shinjo (Rookies), Kagurazaka (the first Hana Kimi). Even when he is being adamant during police interrogation, he still shouts in a wimpy manner instead of being manly type of shouting. So he is always being in his character.

My afterthoughts:

None. This is the first school themed movie that I find disappointing. No moral lessons, no friendship or family tear jerking moments, and nothing memorable. It is actually extremely disappointing because given the themes of samurai and school, they have a great potential to make a great series.

Gods of Egypt and Risen

I still have not gotten over the bitch and I decided to take MC for today and tomorrow. Hehe.. I think the dinner last night contributed to some stomach problems but honestly it was still bearable. It is just that I cannot be bothered about work anymore so I may as well use it as an excuse. So much for going for confession last week and the fact that it is Holy Week this week. Once a sinner, always a sinner.

Since Easter is coming, I decide to watch Risen. When I reached the cinema, I saw Gods of Egypt still showing. It was the one and only show so I decided to watch it first at 1215pm.

I come with an open mind as the reviews I read on this movie are polarising: some people hate it so much and some people think it is pretty good. I honestly don't understand why people hate it so much. From the synopsis alone, it is expected that the plot will be quite predictable of the usual good triumphs over evil and the gods-mortal interactions will not be faraway from a disbelieving mortal having to rely on the gods and the gods having second thoughts about mortals after being helped. So I don't expect much from the story but the CG really impressed me. They can do much more considering how rich Egyptian gods are with their histories so it is kinda wasted that the focus is mostly on Horus and Set (and perhaps Ra) and the rest of the gods are completely neglected. The story may not entirely make sense as Bek, who is just a human, is able to break into Set's vault or how Horus finally is able to defeat Set who has taken over the power of the other gods he has defeated. Anyway don't think too much and this will be one fun brainless entertaining movie to watch.

Timing was just nice and after Gods of Egypt, I watched Risen at 2.30pm. I was surprised to see the cinema hall was nearly full! Honestly it was unexpected because Risen has only very few screenings, whether it is at GV, Cathay, or Shaw, and considering the movie is less than a week old and Easter is coming, I thought this would be an unpopular movie.

The movie takes a unique angle from Easter story as the focus is not on Jesus and the disciples. A fictional Roman soldier, Clavius, is tasked by Pontius Pilate to oversee and prevent any unrest among the Jews from the crucifixion of Yeshua. Being a Roman, Clavius is impartial with the conflict between the Sanhendrin and Yeshua's follower. He becomes intrigued with the case seeing how the Sanhendrin is so interested in the matter to the point of forcing his 2 soldiers to tell lies regarding the actual happening on the Easter morning. He becomes more intrigued with Yeshua's followers after interrogating some of them. The turning point for Clavius is when he sees Yeshua in the upper room who then mysteriously disappears. This leads him to follow the disciples to Galilee where Yeshua promises to see them again. (By the way, I am glad that they use 'Yeshua' instead of 'Jesus' as it makes the movie feels more historical rather than being taken from the Bible straightaway).

Risen is not trying to be the usual biblical preachy type of movie. As a movie, it is quite boring and it does not help that Joseph Fiennes, who plays Clavius, is unexpressive at all. I can't tell whether he is angry, confused, or any other emotion because his face is always like that. I am quite excited to see Tom Felton (who plays Lucius and I wonder if it is deliberate since Draco's father in Harry Potter is Lucius) but his role is like completely redundant.

However, with Easter coming, I find this movie is very relevant. I imagine myself living in those era and I will feel completely lost like Clavius. From outsider's view, Jesus' followers really seem crazy: they are happy when Jesus was recently crucified and with the missing body, they are very sure that He is risen. Some even testified having seen and met Him after the crucifixion. So how do people end up following Jesus? It is all about personal calling and that what happens to Clavius. He does not come to believe because what Jesus' followers tell him. He comes to believe after seeing Jesus' face. At the start of the movie, it was quite shocking to see dead Yeshua with eyes bloodied and opened and Clavius looked at his face. However, this 'seeing' plays great importance subsequently when Clavius has a dream of this face and then seeing this face with his own eyes in the upper room.

Anyway I think it is great that to see how the movie is able to insert a fictional character into the Bible stories without actually doing any disrespect or changing what the Bible is trying to say. Of course we can only imagine what really happened to Jesus' followers on the first few days/weeks/moments after resurrection. But what Risen presents actually feels quite possible and believable.

The life of Jesus is indeed the greatest story ever told. Even when I already know certain things and no matter how many times I read/hear/see certain parts of the Bible, these parts are always touching and I always shed tears. The most touching part for me is the words from John 20:29 and I actually open my Bible to copy this sentence: "You believe because you see me, don't you? Happy are those who have not seen and believe". In the Bible, this sentence is said to Thomas. In the movie, the same line is mentioned to Clavius who still cannot fathom what is actually going on. Is it significant to me? Most definitely yes. When things don't go my way, I grumble, I complain, I feel that God is non-existent and things that line. It always makes me wonder how do people who are living in suffering can still hold unshakeable faith in Jesus. I still have long way to go.

Planning to quit

Post-holiday.. I thought I would feel refreshed and regain my enthusiasm. But when God plans otherwise, what can man say. I kena complained by a bitch after I 'gave' in. Haiz.. I should not have not given in and let the bitch suffer if I will get a complaint anyway. When you have multiple prescriptions with long durations and for the past 2 months have been collecting 2 months worth of benzodiazepine and opioid, I have the right to be suspicious and refuse.

Well having unreasonable assholes complain is to be expected but what ultimately really make cannot tahan is how the higher up simply gives in to these people. Here I am just doing my job, getting unfairly complained, and the unreasonable people still get what they want. This seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back and I am not only seriously thinking of leaving but seriously planning of leaving. In the past, I am only looking at lecturing at polytechnic as a potential next job. Now I am also considering teaching at secondary school or JC. That's my dream since my JC days anyway. Anyway I have 6 more months until my bond ends so I am praying for a miracle that somehow there is a chance for me to get a HQ job. Otherwise, I have to tidy up my CV since I have not been updating it since I graduated in 2011. Lol.

Thankfully I was away for a course on Thursday and Friday. My mental state was not optimal and very negative because of the bitch.What's the point of doing everything that I do when customers are like that and higher ups are also like that. I caught up with my friend from uni for dinner on Thursday. Finally!! We made an agreement to meet in 2014 and it was only materialised now haha.. I was too busy in 2015.

I am also feeling a bit stressed with my Japanese language as I missed the last 2 lessons when I was in Australia. Although I enjoy learning it and I want to learn it, I have to admit that I am starting to struggle. There are a lot of vocabs and grammars that I forgot. Bleah.. So yeah, I have the passion, I have the enjoyment, but in the end I still feel stressed. That is something for me to consider as I am looking for a new job. It may not be 100% stress-free but at least it will be better than my current state of hating my job. After the lesson today, I felt much better. Hehe.. Sensei is very encouraging: It is okay to forget, just look at the notes again to remember. Don't try to remember/memorise. We learn by forgetting and then relooking again for many rounds.

It is Palm Sunday today and I almost skipped mass again. Shame on me! I was planning to go to the newly renovated Sts Peter & Paul after my Japanese class but it took me longer than expected to eat so I could not make it to the 4.20pm mass. I was so lazy to go Holy Spirit, up to the point that I actually went home first, before remembering the Holy Door indulgence thing also mentions about receiving communion. I am such a sucker. Well, whether I get the indulgence or not, at least I am happy that I went for mass today.

Last but not least, my wait for Kinokuniya 20% sale since CNY is finally over and I finally bought Gundam Wing Frozen Tear Drop artbook. Yay!! I am so happy with this: 91 pages worth of illustrations and the only 5 pages of writing are actually epilogue of the manga. I don't follow the story (someone please translate the manga or make it into anime) but anything with Heero Yuy, I will collect :D

Zootopia

I applied leave until today as the initial plan was for my mum and sis to spend additional night in Singapore. They changed their plan but I am too lazy to work. Yep, call me an idiot for 'wasting' a leave day just to do nothing. I guess I am really sick of work as usually I will not take leave even when I take a late flight which arrive past midnight here.

I went to see my skin doctor and I was surprised when she said that everything seemed to be on track. Wow.. I thought my face worsened because of the weather in Australia. Well I am not gonna complain with a 6-month TCU and that will save me money.

When I saw the Door of Mercy thingy in St Mary's Cathedral last week, I was not too bothered about what the whole thing is all about. I guess I was just being a hypocrite because in the end I still wanted to go to confession just for the indulgence. Bleah.. Terrible me right? So yeah in the end I went to Risen Christ in the morning. I was surprised with the crowd!! I think it took me longer than usually when I go in the evening.

I want to watch Gods of Egypt and I am very surprised that it is already not showing in many cinemas. The movie is only about 2 weeks old leh!! I end up watching Zootopia and hell yeah, it is as great as what the reviews say. With the lack of singing, I don't really get a feeling that this is a Disney's movie. Lol.

As a word play from utopia, Zootopia represents a utopia for various species of animals to be living harmoniously together. This is possible as the animals have evolved enough to overcome their savage-ness. The main character is a rabbit who aims to be a police officer -a job considered not suitable for a rabbit because of its small size. Judy Hopps overcomes all obstacles to become the best cadet in her cohort and finally joins Zootopia police department. Hoping to be a police who makes a difference, Judy is disappointed to be assigned to trafifc duties. When an otter comes for help to look for her missing husband, Judy volunteers herself to solve the case so that she no longer does traffic duties. Seen as a sign of insubordination, Judy is given 48 hours to solve the case or else she has to quit her job. The missing animal case turns out to be just a small part from a large sinister plot for "prey" animals to get rid of the "predators" from Zootopia.

Zootopia is excellent and very well thought off. First thing that blows my mind is the design of the city to cater to a lot of animals: from the big, the small, the tall, the short, the fat, etc. They make the animals do human things like taking subways, going to work, going to restaurang, etc without being lame. The character designs and personalities are believable and like-able too.

However, what really sets apart Zootopia is the theme. I will not say the plot as the story is kinda straight forward but when you replace the animals with humans, the underlying theme of discrimination is really striking. Zootopia is like a metropolitan melting pot city where different species (think about races, nationalities, or religions if we are talking about humans) live together. However, outside Zootopia, there are still other places like Bunnyburrow where Judy comes from and from its name, only bunnies live there. Despite having overcome their savage-ness and the animals are not eating one another, discrimination (like bunnies should not be police officers) and biasness (like foxes cannot be honest) still exist. That perfectly reflects human society: we can live harmoniously on the surface but each of us still holds some prejudices to people who are not like us. And despite everything is peaceful, there will always be some jerks who go back to follow their animal instinct and create trouble.

Zootopia will not be as good without the humour as well. If you have a good laugh, admit that you are a racist. A lot of of the jokes are playing on the stereotypes of the different animals. So think of the animals in Zootopia as humans in real life and that means we are laughing at our racist jokes. However, there is one funny part which is not playing on this stereotyping. That is the part of the nudist club. Animals don't wear clothes. We are not bothered with naked or half-clothed cartoon characters. Therefore, I was surprised that I felt uncomfortable seeing the naked animals in the nudist club. Lol.. Of course the action they do are exaggerated and if you think of the animals here as humans, it is very uncomfortable. Haha..

Compared to the last few Disney's movies I watched such as Wreck-it Ralph, Frozen, or Big Hero 6, Zootopia is definite juggernaut with both the entertainment as well as moral values. It is worth watching, it is worth watching repeatedly, it is worth buying the soft toys BUT, in my honest opinion, it is not as memorable as Frozen. Why? Because Disney's movie does not feel Disney without songs and Zootopia only has 1 song :( I had a high expectations as Shakira sings the theme song but the song is nothing compared to let it go~~~~

Australia Trip Day 10: Airports

My Australia trip is officially over and I am typing this from Singapore :( Today I spent the whole day travelling from one airport to the next. I am glad that the flight from Melbourne to Darwin had in-flight entertainment. It allowed me to catch Star Wars: The Force Awakens which I missed. The movie is amazing and I kinda regret did not watch it in cinema. I am not into Star Wars franchise and yet I am still able to follow the movie. That's why I think it is very good and enjoyable. I continued with 3 episodes of Big Bang Theory which were available. My initial impression was that it was rather lame but after 10 minutes or so, I was giggling like crazy in the plane. I watched Adele's concert but after 2 songs, I fell asleep. Sorry, Adele! Haha...

There was a 4+ hours of layover at Darwin which was rather miserable but I survived. Lol. I got the chance to try Hungry Jack for lunch which was disappointing. I was expecting it to be similar to Burger King (since the menu also has Whopper which I believe to be Burger King's trademark) but it was quite rubbish. I had a bit of scare at the immigration as my passport was not scan-able. I was asked to wait at a corner while my passport was being photocopied inside the office. When it was returned to me, I was asked if there was any issue with the passport when I entered Australia. 

The flight back to Singapore was only half full and after take off, the stewardess went around to inform people to freely move around. I went to empty rows at the back to sleep although I was only sleeping on a seat and not lying on a row. I still want to take care of my image lol. That's why I still have the energy to type this now but I am so tired to unpack my things. I am also feeling down because the black shadows on my laptop screen is wider now as compared to last week before I left. I am going to run some dead pixel fix software tonight and see how it goes tomorrow morning.

I realised that I hardly took pictures without myself being in the picture. I think this is an indirect effect of doing photobooks. Because of the limited number of pages, I only choose the pictures with myself for printing. Thus I think that there is no need for me to take picture of objects or sceneries as I can google them online if I want. However, I did not foresee the other impact of not having pictures to post for my blog.

It is time to lose the 3kg gained in the past 10 days. No more holiday until I lose these 3kg .

Australia Trip Day 9: Melbourne

We went to Victoria Market in the morning as my mum wanted to get hams to bring back. It was an eye opener to see such a high class 'wet' market. I put apostrophe because the floor was not wet at all. Haha.. I almost bought $4 souvenir shirt but unfortunately the design I like had the pictures printed, rather than sewn, on the shirt. It won't last so I did not buy.

We spent the day with my cousin -from my dad's side- who is living in Melbourne. The only objective I have for the day is to get macadamia nuts which are packaged in a bottled container. My cousin who used to stay in Australia always gave that to my dad but I never found such packaging be it in Darwin, Sydney, and Melbourne thus far. I don't know why they are only available in the Chinatown. I got what I wanted so I am happy. Lol.

Melbourne's Southbank

We overate at a Japanese restaurant and then we walked to St Paul's Cathedral, Flinders Station and the river quay before taking the tram to the parliament house. From there, we walked all the way to her apartment. It was near to the pizza place where we had dinner 2 days ago and we went to a famous ice cream place. My uncle mentioned about the same place too but we were too full after the pizza to even think about the ice cream. Well, I have tried Mao Shan Wang durian ice cream in Singapore so I was not too impressed with the famous durian ice cream from that shop.

My cousin's apartment is making me jealous :( For the same price ($550k), I can only get a studio apartment in Singapore and the location will be far from city as well. My cousin's apartment is near the city and has 2 rooms :( My negativity and ungratefulness returned as I wanted to study in Australia for university but my parents did not want pay for me. I know that there is no point thinking about 'what ifs' but I just can't help it. We waited there until my uncle picked us up and we had one last trip around Melbourne. The various dormitories for Melbourne University look very Harry Potter-ish. It must be quite an experience living there as compared to dingy NUS dormitories. Haiz..

We had dinner at my uncle's place and we called it early day today. Gotta pack up now and officially my holiday is over. Sob sob...

Australia Trip Day 8: Mt Dandenong, Yarra Valley

I am really getting old. Despite having enough rest and waking up later than usual, I still feel very tired throughout the day. We left house at about 10am and had a nice trip to Mt Dandenong. At some parts the fog was so thick and after we made a stop, I would like to take a nice picture in the middle of the fog. My sister crossed the road before I asked her to do that and by the time we were done with the shopping, the sun was very bright and the fog was gone. Sianz...

My aunt planned for us to try Miss Marple's Tea Room. I believe that it is a famous place as people were already waiting outside before the opening hours. While waiting, we went to a nearby shop. There is this shop selling random souvenirs and the owner has a very cute dog. I wanted to take a picture with the dog but there was another customer. I did not dare to take play with the dog without the owner's nearby although the dog was very cute and friendly. I looked into its eyes and it looked back at me. When I tilted my head, it followed my tilting. Not even once it barked or what. Grrahh!!! Because of power failure, the eatery delayed its opening hours so we gave it a miss.

We went to the Sky High which has nice gardens around. The view to the city was covered by the fog though. Oh and crazy me suddenly felt like climbing a tree to take photos but there was no suitable tree to climb. Lol.

We then went to Yarra Valley Chocolaterie and the view outside was more interesting than the chocolates. Haha.. Upon entry, there were 3 gigantic bowls of chocolate chips with milk, dark, and white chocolate. Visitors can scoop them for free. Although I am not a fan of chocolate (except if they come as milk or ice cream), I have to admit that they made pretty great chocolates.The portion of the food we ordered for lunch was scary for Asians so we shared. Haha..

After that we went to Domaine Chandon winery. I was dreaming of taking photos with me squating in between the grape vines but tourists were not allowed to enter the vineyards T_T The sceneries around were even better than the chocolate factory but the ground was wet. So I could not lie down on the ground under a tree or something haha.. I did the wine tasting for $5 and that was for 6 different wines. I was almost knocked out after the 2nd one but the guy kept pouring into my glass although I was away from the bar so I kept coming back. Lol.. Anyway it was worth it for $5 because the amount poured was very generous. It was about a quarter glass for each wine. I was not so disappointed to get flushed just after 2 wines as the other Asians were also getting red pretty quickly.

We went to Chadstone Shopping Centre and I believe Marina Bay Sands had its concept stolen from here lol: long alleys with full glass ceilings. We visited the Chemist Warehouse and I decided to buy Nicorette gum here since it is OTC here and the price is only $10-ish.I am very curious to find out how the gum taste like so that I am not talking rubbish when I do my smoking cessation counselling.

We had dinner at one Asian restaurant which is famous among Indonesians in Melbourne and their number 1 dish is quail. I hate eating things with bones and I hate dirtying my fingers while eating. I forced myself to do both out of courtesy. Bleah.. I did not enjoy it but I still think the sauce is good. So for those who like to eat this kind of thing, I am pretty sure they will find it amazing.

That's all for today and tomorrow will be the last day before flying back to my normal mundane life.

Australia Trip Day 7: Melbourne

Our flight was at 11am but my mum and sister wanted to go shopping at Sydney Airport first. We went with the 830am shuttle bus and I felt honoured when the driver asked me to take the front seat. Lol. I would like to recommend Hiro Sushi at Sydney Airport which is reasonably priced, has wide range of fusion sushi, and most importantly tastes excellent. No comment for the flight except that I felt quite embarrassed to fall asleep and lean over to the guy next to me.

After the heat in Darwin and Sydney, the cool weather at Melbourne felt amazing. My uncle is very rich so his house is also super amazing. Haha.. I felt bad to my cousins as one of their rooms was given to us so they had to share rooms during our stay. Paiseh.. It was also embarrassing that my aunt prepared lunch for us. I don't know if normally she cooks or she specially cooks to welcome us. So I had to give face to eat more than what I usually eat.

The weather changed to drizzle when we went out to South Melbourne Market. We also drove past the beach but because of the rain, we did not stop to take photos. We went to the city to eat at DOC pizza which is an authentic Italian pizza place. I have been aiming to eat pizza right from the first day in Darwin and I finally get the chance. Each pizza comes in a big plate and sliced into 6. My uncle shared that usually the locals order 1 for 1 person. No way we would be able to eat like the locals and I ended up eating 7 slices. Hahaha...

That's all for today :) Melbourne has very similar feel to Europe with a lot of shop houses at the road side instead of shopping malls. I saw more locals too so it definitely feels more Australia than Sydney and because of that, I prefer Sydney. Lol...