Australia Trip Day 2: Kakadu National Park

The heat was killing me.. the flies were so irriating.. the nice sceneries cannot be pictured with my face.. and the photos with my face cannot have nice sceneries. Today was so disappointing. Kakadu has nice reviews online so I cannot believe that the tour was so horrible. I checked Kakadu map to realise that Kakadu is a huge area. We had a 12-hour tour and to reach the nicer parts to get those beautiful pictures that we see online (Jim Jim Falls, Twin Falls, Gunlom), 12 hours are not sufficient. What we had was already the best that we could have in 12 hours. So yeah, going unprepared resulted in unreasonable expectations and unfair disappointment.

Kakadu National Park is really an eye opener for me and it is nothing like national parks in the tropics. I was expecting to enter a proper park and then to walk from one attraction point to the next. Kakadu National Park is damn huge that one attraction to the next is few kilometers away. Thus the tour was mostly sitting and sleeping on the bus. The scenery is nothing like I have ever seen before but it gets repetitive. The driver-cum-tour guide has plenty of interesting stories along the way but after 2 consecutive days of 4-hour sleep, I fell asleep for most of the time.

I love sceneries but Kakadu is too outback for my taste. The plants are unique and I have ner seen them in the tropics but they make bad sceneries. With wide variations of the weather, some areas may be off limits during different times as well. We visited a lot of places listed in the itinerary but they all almost looked the same. The nice photo taking opportunities are along the way in the middle of knowhere instead of at the attraction places. Of course going with a tour, those photos were just in my imagination.

The only object that is allowed to be photographed at Warradjan Aboriginal Cultural Centre. A place worth skipping if you ask me

The one I 'enjoyed' the most was the 1.5 hour cruise on Yellow Water Billabong. It was quite an experience to see a large bodies of water whose coverage change depending on how much rain that the area had. There were plenty of nice calendar pictures but because the boat was shaded, no way I could take a nice picture with myself in. I would just look black under the shade. I regretted not taking pictures after the cruise as I thought we would be back there after lunch. The tour guide moved the tour bus nearer to our lunch spot. Lunch was buffet of cold meats (bacons, salamis), potato salad, pasta salad, and coleslaw. I was happy enough with those.

Believe it or not, all these plants are on water surface

Calendar picture

We traveled to Nourlangie Rock after lunch. It looks magnificent from afar but we went to see the Aboriginal arts on the rock surface. Thus no way to be able to take a photo with the full majesty of the rock at the background. I saw the magnificent sight on the way there so the tour should have stopped first to take a photo there :( It will be interesting to be able to climb up and enjoy the scenery but given the heat and the insects, I was glad that we only had less than 1 hour there. The sightings of wallabies somewhat improved my foul mood because my sister could not take a nice pictures of me.

Not exactly the best view to see the majesty of Nourlangie Rock

The tour bus sent us back to the hotel but before that, we went to Cullen Bay to drop the people who were staying there. It fulfilled my curiosity of the area. It is not exactly what I picture the area to be but it is the elite region. Haha.. I am glad that I did not forgo Mindil Beach yesterday to come here when we were the roundabout and lost our direction.

The day ended completely ruined for me. I was so excited to get Kebab for dinner but the sauce burst from the bottom of the wrap even before I started eating and it dripped to my trousers. Fuck.. I hate food stains and I had to wash jeans in the middle of the night.

It has been a nice once-in-a-lifetime outback experience for me but this is not something that I will recommend. If you really want to go to Kakadu, make sure that you get to go the waterfalls and Gunlom. Otherwise it is totally not worth it.

Australia Trip Day 1: Darwin

I could have slept longer and saved on my cab fare since the flight was delayed for 1+ hours. Truthfully I thought the flight was kinda overwhelming. There was no inflight entertainment, one of the toilet was not working properly (continuously flushing), and the plane crew were chit chating very loudly at the back. I was expecting something more from Silkair.

Darwin is very hot, even when there are plenty of clouds in the sky. It is a small city and there are not many cars although the roads are big. It seems to be kinda quiet too. Despite not preparing anything, things were pretty smooth. The airport shuttle was just outside the terminal and less than half an hour later, I reached the hotel: Double Tree by Hilton. Hot chocolate cookies were provided as welcome gift but I still feel pissed that no free wifi simply because I did not book directly from Hilton website. The hotel was facing the Esplanade but I went to explore Mitchell St behind the hotel in search for water -drinking water of course.

With the limited map I had, I failed to locate the bus terminal. The whole street is basically the life of they city although a lot of the eateries were not open yet, perhaps waiting for dinner time. Mitchell Centre is a saviour with Coles supermarket which is open until 10pm. No worries for stocking of water. I walked to the end of the street to reach the Darwin Waterfront. There was no way to estimate the distance from the map so 15-20 minutes walk to reach there was reasonable. Honestly there is nothing fantastic here. The so called Wave Lagoon is a very shallow fake beach. The sea is walled to form a safe wave pool so photos taken are not exactly great either.

Next target was Mindil Beach. Based on the estimation of distance and timing from hotel to Darwin Waterfront, it would take at least 45 minutes. It was basically walking from the east end of the city to the west end. There is a bus terminal but I have no idea how bus system works here though I know which bus number to take. I was too shy to ask strangers too but anyway we had no coins.

We walked via Smith St Mall which had all the shops already closed. My mum and sister were struggling along the way. I offered them a taxi while we saw one but they said no since they thought I was referring to the beach opposite the hotel. At the junction between Cullen Bay and Mindil Beach, my sister took out GPS and it cost us 15 minutes. Bleah.. I still trust the old paper map and road directions.

Mindil Beach is an utter disappointment. I know the night market only opens on Thursday and Sunday but I did not expect that the beach would be completely deserted on other days. We reached past 7pm and the sun was already setting. To reach the beach, we were supposed to walk over a humped area and next to the passageway, there was a notice 'Do Not Enter'. After passing the third of such thing, I decided to walk over the passageway to realise that the notice was meant for the vegetations surrounding the passageway!! Those passageways are the correct paths to reach the beach.

I am so glad that there was a taxi at the Skycity and it only cost us $10 to Mitchell Centre. After all the walking, I could not imagine walking another half an hour to walk back. The taxi meter was quite scary though. It was literally 10 cents per second. The whole street was bustling with life at this time and I am not worried about dinner for the next 2 days. Hehe.. Anyway we had dinner at a Japanese restaurant at Mitchell Centre because I had not had rice for the whole day. The food was quite authentic but I am a bit sian because some soy sauce splashed onto my shirt. We went for grocery shopping before returning to hotel.

There was a shortcut from Mitchell St to the Esplanade and it is actually through the Double Tree by Hilton Esplanade. It is a hotel just next the one I am staying at. Well I did my research and I could not find major difference between the two so I decided to choose the one with higher rating. Bleah.. the other one is better because it is also nearer to the busier part of the Mitchell St.

Oh well.. another 4am day again tomorrow for another adventure tomorrow..

Going down and under

This is going to be a short post. I am going to Australia for holiday tomorrow. I have about 5 hours before I am going to airport and I am still in the midst of packing. Haha.. Holiday should be a happy occasion and therapeutic. But I think too much and plan so much about the details, sometimes even about things that I cannot control such as weather. At such frustrating moment then I will have the negativity about travelling. Sigh.. I have a long way to go to be a free & easy traveller.

I realise that I am used to be just following someone else during travelling and this time I try to plan things and find routes on my own. Bleah.. It is not something I enjoy and in the end, I just decided to be gungho.:just screenshot some maps from Google and print them. Over at the foreign land, I will just open my mouth to ask for directions and see how things will be. Anyway I am okay not to be to xiong and just sit down at a cafe lol.

Well I see how things will go. For now, I can only pray for safe flights, good weather, nice sceneries, great photos, and being safe + healthy + happy for the next 10 days.

A bit of luck

Sometimes people just need a little bit of luck or reward to turn things around. I was getting super bored playing Final Fantasy Record Keeper since the start of the year. I only played the events and skipped the main quests or daily grinding dungeons which means I only played 2-3x a week after the events were released. Things turned around at the latest FF XII. I was planning to used up my mithril and I got Vaan and Fran's unique weapons. Yay!! Since then I have been playing the main quests again and I have been spending time on it. I think once a gamer is forever a gamer. Once I am going full throttle with gaming, all the my other leisure activities take a back seat.

I am in the midst of doing my second photo book for my Japan trip and I have been procrastinating as I am still halfway through despite already started doing it since 2 weeks ago. This is only for a 40 page photo book. In comparison, it took me 2 weeks to complete the 80 page photo book for my Euro trip. I guess doing this for the second time kinda kills some of the excitement of using the software. The main problem, however, is I feel emo when I see my photos from Japan trip. Aaargh... the memory of the screwed up setting of my camera.. and the memory of my friend's bad photo taking skills. Sigh.. I really need and want to retake those pictures. I am aiming to finish this book before I am going to Australia next Friday but I don't know if I am able to.

Today I received a farewell/thank you gift from a student. That's my first ever and ironically, I am not even her preceptor o_0 I promise that I will never be a sucker for this kind of thing but I am not going to be a hypocrite to say that I don't feel happy to get such appreciation. Well, this kinda teaches me something: it is not a matter of what I do as a teacher but it is a matter of the student :) I am glad that my philosophy is right to do my best in teaching and not to expect anything in return. Because if my objective is to get a reciprocation from students, I think I will hate teaching by now.

Ok.. photobook now.. photobook...

Deadpool

There has been a lot of anticipation for Deadpool, right from the trailers a few months ago. The movie officially opened last week and thank goodness, it is a success and receives a lot of positive comments. Honestly, I am not really into Deadpool. I only know that he is somehow related to X-men, he is an anti-hero (rather than a superhero), and he is well known for his blabbering. It is the promotional material just before the Valentine's Day which won me over as I enjoy self-depreciating humour.

If you are like me and are looking for a superhero movie with plenty of humour, you will be somewhat disappointed. Deadpool feels more like a comedy with a superhero. For an R-18 movie, the superhero plot is surprisingly very childish. The movie is essentially telling about Deadpool's beginning and despite all the fights, Deadpool is simply looking for the guy who destroyed him to fix him. When he does not get what he wants, "bang!" there goes the bad guy.

With the rating, I am expecting a lot of gory spectacles in terms of the fighting and killing. I am more grossed out with the gore due to punching and kicking of the faces as the damage and blood is quite realistic. Those slow-mo bullet shots kinda downplay the level of goreness for the guns. Seeing decapacitated heads flying for the first time is quite disturbing but I am sort of too immune after that. I love realism and when you cut someone's head, blood will surely spurt from their neck like a fountain. Hmm.. it seems that the R-18 is not exactly for the violence.

So it is because of the sex? Well honestly, despite the boobs, butts, and the raunchy sex scenes, this is not a sex movie and the sex stuff is not that long/many. That means, the major reason for the rating will be with the number of times dicks, fucks, and shits being mentioned. I think these 3 words are really overused that there were things I missed because all I could hear were the dicks, fucks, and shits. I support the use of well-placed and well-intended curse words but this movie is really overusing them to the point that I feel that they just randomly include them as frequent as possible just to show that this movie is different from any other superhero movies.

In terms of the comedy, I think I had plenty of laughter. As I mentioned earlier, I like self-depreciating humour so I like the Green Lantern (movie failure) references. Those references to X-men will surely make you laugh too. However, there were moments when I felt bored and I thought that the movie was trying too hard to be funny. It is like there are 1001 jokes here so surely some will hit and some will miss. That explains why some people think that the movie is funny while others think that it is corny.

As a fan of both comedy and superhero genre, Deadpool mixes both genres well and I find it entertaining. However, I do think that the movie is over-rated by the fans and definitely it is not the best superhero movie out there. The action pales in comparison with other superhero movies, the plot is non-existent, and the humour may not be everyone's cup of tea. I maybe biased because my favourite superhero movie is still the first Avengers movie: great action scenes and humour that stems from well-timed sarcastic comments peppered here and there. But to remove any bias-ness, I always go back to the same one question if a movie is indeed that good: do I want to watch it for the second.. third.. fourth... times? Unfortunately, my answer for Deadpool is a no. 

WaT... the... T_T

I don't know if people are spending their angpaus or it is because of Valentine's Day but I noticed that the restaurant queues were long throughout the day. Flowers, balloons, gifts, romantic meals.. they are reminders that being single is an informed choice that I consciously make. I still can't imagine cracking my head to plan for these "sweet" things. Sigh.. Will I change? Or will I be able to find a girl who is not into these kinds of time wasting activities? Well, for now, I will enjoy Valentine's Day with the one who truly loves myself, no matter how moody, how fat, how irritating, and how (insert all negative adjectives that you can think of) I am: myself.

This morning I came across the news that WaT is disbanding. Aih... I don't know why I feel sad as I thought they were already disbanding since long time ago anyway. WaT has a special place during my university days and I actually have their albums and singles until 2008. In fact, I still use their song Ready Go! as my alarm tune in my K800i phone. After that, they seemed to disappear and I was not aware that they were on a hiatus. They came back in late 2015 only to announce that they are disbanding this year. I will definitely miss their music. Although their songs do not exactly have memorable tunes, they are pleasant to the ears and when listening to them, my mood becomes relaxed and happy.

The final single.. I have to admit that I find this so so only.

From my friend's facebook wall, I discovered about AKB48's latest single: Kimi wa Melody. I was pleasantly surprised to see old members again, especially Tomomi Itano on the first few second. What is going on with AKB48 nowadays?? Hmm.. apparently their latest single failed to hit 1 million sales on their first week and that was seen as a sign of dipping popularity. I guess the management finally realise that no way AKB48 will survive in the long run and at the rate they keep getting the old members back, it seems that they are getting desperate. The video for the latest single looks gorgeous: pretty girls, gorgeous kimonos, colourful display. What more can we ask for? The moment I read that the person behind this is the same one behind Heavy Rotation, I am not amazed with the amount of fanservice that will happen.

Very pretty MV.. if only the song is as catchy as Heavy Rotation..

And talking about Heavy Rotation, I just found out about the existence of the video below. He sings very well and surprisingly the song still sounds pretty nice when sung by a guy.

Home for CNY

Because in the end Air France completely ignored my email for ticket cancellation and refund, I ended up spending my first CNY home since 2002. People always ask me if I am celebrating and it is always very irritating to answer that I only want the angpaus. I dislike the visiting since I meet my closer relatives pretty frequently even without the need of any special occasions. The thought of going home this time was also more because my dad's birthday happened to fall on Sunday.

As it was in the past, my only impression of CNY is: it is tiring. It is even more tiring this time as I had to fly again at the end of the day. I feel so tired that I am only spending today resting at home. I intended on going to Thomson Plaza for the cash deposit machine but I was too tired and lazy for that. Bleah.. At least I am done with the unpacking.

Yesterday I had a nice surprise of an upgrade to Premium Economy for my flight back. Yaaay!! I guess that helped to reduce my irritation a little bit over my cancelled flight. I honestly do not see myself paying for Premium Economy as the only difference with normal economy are just: more comfortable seat, noise cancelling headphone, and 1 bottle of Evian. Since the headphone is attached to seat, I believe it is not sterilised until each passenger -unlike the lousy headphone that we usually get in Economy class. I can also live without the bottled water as I can always request it from the cart. So yeah, I don't know why someone will pay about 2x more just for the more comfortable seat. Well, I still enjoy the experience nonetheless. Hehe.. Oh ya, the food is also the same as the economy class. Lol..

I notice the promotion to Jakarta until 27 March so I believe Air France is no longer flying this route after that. I try both April and July and there is no flight to book. Sigh.. I will definitely miss it and I need to find another airline now. This CNY trip is actually the first time I experienced Air France flights which were relatively full. Too bad they only served French sandwiches for both the trips. In the past, I always got meals consisting of bread, salad, cake, etc.

For the first time, I also bought liquors from Duty Free Shop in the airport. I got the 'idea' because I thought it would take quite sometime to wait for the baggage from a full flight so I could spend sometime shopping. I bought a 200ml Baileys Irish Cream ($10) and a pack of 3 x 50ml Choya Umeshu ($12.80) which consists of 1 bottle of Extra Years, Extra Shisho, and Royal Honey. The cashier told me if I wanted to buy 5 more bottles before reaching the Duty Free limit. How I wish I can!! Haha.. I don't really enjoy drinking and I have noone to drink with. Otherwise I will buy the bigger bottles which are cheaper too. I was actually very interested in the Baileys Irish Cream Chocolate but it was only available as 1L bottle for $20 something. Well, let's enjoy them during the coming Valentine's Day with myself. Lol.

Meanwhile, wishing everyone for a great and prosperous year of the Fire Monkey.

Down.. and further down..

I am not a huge fan of travelling. Not only it sucks my money dry, I extremely hate it when I have to be the one doing the planning. Being perfectionist becomes a weakness as it is very stressful to consider so many factors. I settled the flight last week and while the prices had gone up as compared to when I checked them out in December, at least the timing remains. It was not very stressful. The hotel booking, however, is extremely more complicated. I have to consider price, room type, location, accessibility, presence of tour bus pick up, website to purchase from, any credit card promotion or discount, etc.

In the end, I focused on Agoda and Expedia. For the hotel at Darwin, there was no problem deciding as only Expedia had available rooms for booking. The headache was for the hotel in Sydney: same hotel and same search configuration but Agoda stated ok for room A but no for room B while Expedia stated the complete opposite. Agoda is nice to have free cancellation policy so I decided to book there first. However, when I realised that I could get 10% off at Expedia because of my credit card, I immediately called Expedia to clarify about the room. The service was superb as the customer service guy called the hotel directly and documented their conversation etc in the booking. So yeah, sorry Agoda, I had to cancel and buy from Expedia instead.

Nothing good lasts forever and it seems that AirFrance is going to end their Jakarta-Singapore destination soon. My holiday plan for Chinese New Year is completely ruined as the return flight on Tuesday is cancelled and I am put on Wednesday flight. I can't afford to return on Wednesday because of my work commitment. Sigh.. I booked for a Tuesday flight and they only informed me about this forced change in the e-ticket. It is partly my fault for not checking the e-ticket when I bought it in August last year. I mean who would expect that a flight that you just booked, paid, and everything went through is just cancelled like that. I called and contacted their facebook to hope for cancellation of my trip and full refund but was rejected. Enquiry through their website has not been responded also. Bleah.. I am utterly disappointed.

3 days later, I received another messages for changes to my April flights: they are both rescheduled to Garuda Indonesia flights. Win liao lo.. I think they will seriously close this route. Although the rescheduled timings become earlier and more favourable to me, I still prefer an enjoyable half-empty flights with AirFrance :( Very very disappointed.

Today is also the last day of one of my staff and my colleague. It is quite sad for me as she is the first staff whose OJT I undertook and she has been doing pretty well that at the end of all this, I can proudly say that I am proud with my trainee. She will be an air stewardess and I am happy (and jealous) that she finds a greener pasture. Sigh.. With more and more colleagues leaving, I realise how much I hate my job and the only thing that keeps me hanging on is the colleagues.

I thought my mood will improve this evening in anticipation of the arrival of my photobook. It becomes another frustrating experience as I received someone else's photobook!! I know something is bound to go wrong when I receive 2 different tracking numbers for 1 order. Sigh.. I feel bad for the other person and I wonder is s/he will ever receive his/her order. It is a photobook of a child's birthday party wor.. I am also concerned if my own pictures can also be sent to the wrong address and strangers will have my photos. Sigh..

Dumb fucking shit keeps happening to me.. No wonder my resting heart rate can be 101.

Another free USS trip

I just came back from another free trip to Universal Studios Singapore and I am so shagged! It is another free entry as an appreciation for my involvement in the APG in December. After a similar one for SEA Games, I was very reluctant to go again. Not only none of my friends were going, it was held on a Friday and it was only from 7pm to 12am. I used one of my friend's ticket to ask another friend and as it had always been raining in the afternoon for the past week, I told her that I would cancel the plan off if it was raining this afternoon.

Apparently it did rain but I told her that I would still go to Vivocity and if it was still raining, I would just eat dinner there. We ate at Fish & Co and there is a reason why the last time I ate there was many years ago when my friend was not even in Singapore yet. Haha.. It was raining when we started but it stopped when we were done so in the end we still went to USS. Yay!!

USS is ready for Chinese New Year although the CNY decoration is only at the Hollywood area (which is essentially the first area where public enters). It felt very quiet for a Friday evening and I realised that this time the whole USS was 'reserved' just for us as everyone was seen wearing the yellow wristband which was the entrance ticket. Whee :) That was unlike the previous appreciation event which was on a Saturday afternoon and USS was still open to the public. Unfortunately, my friend was not interested in the rides. If I went with people who like those things, they would be over the moon as all the rides were only 5-20 minutes queue long.

At the entrance, we took a picture with Woody Woodpecker and the girlfriend. The queue was like only 5 people. Lol. We then went for Shrek 4-D adventure which was a waste of time (boring, too much talk, and I found the 3D was too hurtful for the eyes). As we were going back, there was a Madagascar meet & greet. We had no idea who the characters are and we just took photo for the sake of getting photos. I think USS character meet & greet is like very poor thing as people are not interested to take pictures with them. We also saw Marilyn Monroe and Betty Boop and noone was queueing to take pictures with them. Ouch!

Sadly because USS was 'reserved' for us, a lot of eateries were not open and the whole area was quite dark in the evening. Not that I cared since my main reason for going is to take photo souvenir for team NILA. I wore a green shirt and the backdrop of the photo was also in green!! When I compared with the photo I had for SEA Games, I realised that I was actually wearing the same shirt so of course the same disaster was repeated: I blended in completely with the backdrop the photo turned out horrible. Haha.. This time I saw 2 of such photo booths so I had another try on the other photo booth and nothing could help my blending in. Lol.

I could not use the $20 voucher as we were already full from dinner. I did not regret eating Fish & Co as we were both so hungry earlier but I admit some of the food were very tempting T_T I just had an ice milo as the milkshake was already unavailable. Meh.. It was only past 9pm. I feel a bit emo because I cannot share the photos taken with the characters as my friend was also in the picture. Not that I am worried that people will think we are together but because I am afraid that her boyfriend in Korea will be jealous!! After all, he did not let her go for a holiday to Australia just with me.

But looking at the positive side, it was indeed a once-in-a-lifetime experience to visit USS as an 'VIP' as the whole place totally felt not crowded. Hehe..

The finale of my APG experiences :) Thank you for all the memories

Our Times

This is very late! I watched Our Times (我的少女時代 is the Mandarin title) in mid-December which was also already quite late. I had to shamefully admit that I watched this online through a link that a friend shared. I felt ripped off as the proclaimed HDRIP quality turned out to be an illegal recording in a cinema -complete with shadows of people going to the toilet. A week later another friend shared a link to the HD version. It is really HD but I do not want to re-watch it haha... I actually wanted to watch it in the cinema but between free stay at MBS vs watching this in cinema, the winner is pretty clear.

Our Times had a lot of hype, particularly for the reference to the 90s. I belong to the 90s generation too so I am quite interested to see what the hype is all about. People also compare this to You are the Apple of My Eye. That is not exactly appleaing (meant to be a pun :p) to me as the only thing I remember about that movie is that there are funny scenes and the last kiss. I totally cannot remember the plot which means the plot is completely forgettable.

I am pretty glad that I did not watch this in cinema. Honestly, I felt so bored for almost the whole movie. Our Times does not offer anything new or unique pertaining to the 90s settings or high school love stories between a delinquent, a shy girl, and the most popular student at school. Although it is quite expected that the bad boy will end up falling for the shy girl (and vice versa), it is quite cute that he does not have the guts to confess. This is only revealed near the end when the boy leaves for America and leave behind a cassette recording for the girl.

The last 10 minutes, however, make all the yawning for the earlier 2 hours worth it. The girl is big fan of Andy Lau. After the boy's confession and fast forward a few years later, it seems quite random that we leave the lovey dovey part and back to the girl fangirling again. It is funny to see her frustrated for not able to ever get a ticket for her idol's concert for the past many years. So it is a big nice surprise when Andy Lau really makes an appearance (as himself!!) in this movie. It becomes to an even bigger surprise that the whole Andy Lau thingy is actually a fulfillment of the boy's promise many years ago to have Andy Lau sing for the girl. So manly tears are shed at this point and the music also creates the appropriate tear-inducing atmosphere. The movie ends with an exchange of "Long time no see" and although that does not give any closure to their love story, it makes the ending memorable. I can particularly relate to how they feel as there was no internet and international phone call was so expensive in the 90s. When someone moved overseas, you could simply lost all contact. When you unexpectedly meet that someone now (especially if it is someone dear to you), you will definitely get the 'feel'.

Oh ya, I am not a fan of Jerry Yan but I have to admit that I like to see him here as the adult version of the bad boy. 

The soundtrack