before i go on any futher, i must add, this blog and the accompanying flickr will have no full on picts on this trip. i don't know how my rellies would take to having their picts on webspace, and knowing them and their super "i am scared of everything" attitude, i rather not put things up to be on the safe side. i can put up the random pictures if u really want... such as planes and bungee jumps, basically safe pictures. having 1 anonymous looking little bugger is one thing.
showing the entire brood might cause some problems. so in order to ensure i survive my entire life, i guess i am guna have to take some precautions here. oh wells. if anything, just know that my baby cousins are so cute!!!
well on with it. upon arriving into sydney, i enquire on how to get to pennant hills, where my aunt lives nearby, and i was told to get on platform 18. perhaps i was tired, or was purely stupid, which i generally am every once in a while.
but it was the wrong platform.
and i was told by a station master,
what bullshit.
2 hours down the road or so, i found myself at pendle hills, a goodly 45 degrees off the course, which also means about another 2 hours ride back to strathfield or something to get to change trains to pennant hill.
and also an hour of ranting and raving from aunt right into my face.
aside from that, i have to handle the lies my mum has been feeding them as well, about how our family is poor coz of me, that i ain't intending to work here casual and lotsa other stuff. my other aunts generally discuss it nicely with me, coz they know my mum doesnt tell the truth all the time, which makes it harder to help her. they don't know what's going on with her coz we don't live near them, malaysia, singapore, damn far at times.
2nd aunt on the other hand, is right HERE in australia, which means, she doesn't even interact at all for years, other than thru the phone. so she doesn't know truths from lies. so she takes everything at face value.
trying to shut her up, and telling her to face it, those were lies, was a bit difficult. not to mention that she always consider herself as a foreigner to aussie, even though she has lived here for the last 20 years on a pr status or something... so her kids could easily look for jobs more than i can, as an international student.
she should go stuff it.
anyways, she with her special agenda for them as tourists, made us all go to bed early. she's also a nurse in practise too, so maybe that's why she's so touchy about food, health, sleeping hours and so on too. not that her husband, the DOCTOR actually bothered about it. in the last few years, it seems that he had withered into a stick figure. and sleeps later than me, i swear.
BUT, despite all that healthy eating bullshit, she got my aunts to buy some chocolate stuff from malaysia, so she said. and all those tapoica chips!! omg.... they were like... BAGS of them.
when i peeped into her master bedroom's toilet later on, i found 10 BAGS OF CHIPS, CHOCOLATE, SNACK SNACKS SNACKSSSSS.... all in those green coles bags... like uhm.. wow... HEALTHY GODDAMIT!!! i thought i was bad, this is insane!!
we were supposed to be up and off at 8.30 am,according to her agenda, but u know kids, its really hard to be on time, thus by the time we really set out, it was like 10.30 am. the kids were cold at 15 degrees or something, all whining and fussing away. most of them were never put into a dry country before, much less a dry and cold one. so they were all being lapped on with lotsa lotion, lip balms, thousands of coats and sweaters and whatever else.
sad story: they brought those roller shoes, with the wheels at the heels. so the dad had to remove the wheels to ensure they dont zoom into cars. but those werent exactly good for people who are scared of the cold... so....
we ended up in darling harbour, despite being lost for a bit since my sydney aunt doesnt dare drive, and she's really bad at directions. worse off than what people had expect from female drivers. and she had lived there for like 10 years already.
her agenda for us though were mostly stuff that she is familiar with, and she visits often. so for her, there's nothing new, and we walked so fast thru everything, it was hard for the real tourists to take pictures and enjoy themselves.
she was pratically running thru everything.
we did have a fair bit of playing around and photo taking and so on, despite her protests, and it was all good. but the children, being on their first trip overseas that's cold and stuff, got hungry and tired fast. it was also a pretty long trip if u think about how we practically walked everywhere.
for my aunts who have travelled often, it was nothing, but a piece of cake. especially for the sydney aunt, she lives here, walking around in australia gets easier as you get used to it.
not the kids.
so by like 3 pm they started whining and were squatting everywhere like, as my 7th aunt, their mom puts it, drug addicts.
but before that, we had lunch at the food court i was in earlier, when i went by myself. i can generally take in western serving sizes now. but my aunts couldnt. so we had like 5 meals or so, where everyone shared, and were still bursting full. then 7th uncle went and bought more food to try out (kebabs can look deceivingly tiny) and everyone just shoved stuff they couldnt finish my way.
and they blame me for being fat.
so, while the women did their massive tourist shopping (buying all those cheap china made tourist products at like 3 for 10 bux and so on) and cheap fruits (1 dollar for a bushel of apples) and giggling like little girls when they got their "bargain" goods, the man and kids and me just stood at a side watching.
i found the s and m shop again btw, and this time took a pict.
the kids went wild looking at the kangaroo and kookabura soft toys. oh and the possum lover. of all the kids who got their soft toys, 3 went kookabura coz it made those silly battery operated sounds that i used to hate. coz they wake me up when i hug them. the youngest girl went for the possum right from the start.
when we went past the pet stall though, she did the funniest thing. she tried to make her possum toy talk to the wabbits and guinea pigs. -.-
when they started whining, though i know my aunts probably disliked me for it, i started carrying the kids. i mean, i was a kid once, i could understand how tiring it is. ur still adjusting to the goddamn weather, and here u have to walk the fark out. i didnt carry them much coz i was tired myself, and 2nd aunt insisted that they wouldnt be returning to the car so i had to carry my baggage around with me in preparation to taking off back to canberra (i was actually looking forward to it. i love being with my aunts, but 2nd aunt was beginning to make it unbearable.).
laptop weighs as much as the youngest girl.
i must say, i regret not spending that much time with them. but with such little preparations on both sides, i couldn't have been with them much anyways. while they are going to see the snow today, i would have to stay home because they have no car space to bring me along. being in a huge family can be fun at times, all the teasings, the whinings, the arguments and so on.
i like how my aunts banter to and fro and joke with each other. and how everyone just fits in coz ur family.
i havent seen my cousins since the oldest one was 3. she's now 10. so imagine. hehe. well this lot of them anyways, so it was great knowing them all over again, though the youngest one had problems remembering my name -.-. till i left, she was still calling me liyi, yili or yin ni... ffs lol. lihuan isnt so hard to remember is it?!!?!?
back home now, my feet are swollen, my muscles hurt, both from carrying kids and from walking. i am glad i went up and meet them though, coz i don't know when i can meet them next when they aren't busy and all.
and watching how loving my 7th uncle and aunt is makes it all so worth it, lol. searching for each other making sure each other ain't lost. joking about wearing green hats and so on so its not hard to find him in a crowd. muahaha....
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