despite being up to sydney a few times, sneaking past visits to aforesaid Antiquate Aunt, i am still not very familiar with sydney's layout, nor, especially, how to get to her home.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....
i am guna cry. i miss 2 buses, greyhound is now closed for the day, so i can't buy last minute tickets.on top of all that, i will have to be vegetarian for the next 24 hours. not eating have never sound so good.i love my aunts don't get me wrong. i just have something against vegies.and typing at this ugly terminal.so while i am waiting for the next 2 hrs, and abt to sob to death, i am guna try and find myself some ibook gloves.yay... i am retarded...
dad seems to find himself funny.really. firstly he calls at 2 ams mostly now, coz he finds it funny i actually sleep early when i am here.next he only tells me my army of aunts are coming to australia AFTER they have already taken off. good job.and after i have told him i was going sydney, the trip that was YESTERDAY. for fucks sake! couldn't he at least have made the call when he sent them off so they could gimme a run down of what they are doing when they touch down so i could figure when to go up and visit? or at least make communication easier!!i mean he knows i didn't give Antique my new numbers coz i am scared of her, and he just finds it hilarious now i would be waking her up early tmr. good work dad, i really need to be on the war path of Antique at 7 am in the morning.he even suggested i tell her i dont have any phone lines at all. and that i used my housemate's mobile to receive calls from him. eh hello? i am guna be carting a mobile around if i am guna visit her right? she's not blind!?!?!and i need to clean my room otherwise i would hear more bitchings... oh god, dad could have given a better warning than 5 hours worth of it or something.he had the cheek to LAUGH at me "ner ner ner, enjoy!!"wow...and mum lied to them that i forbade her to come visit me and that i didnt want a casual job. hallo!?!?!?!? wei???? *knocks* wtf is wrong with her?? she wanted to come ALONE!! good work, so if she misses her connecting flight, her babble of broken chinese is not going to help.oh and if she comes during exams period, she would be only in the way than really helping ("eh, bring me out to some sight-seeing leh") because that's exactly when she wana come!and who's guna pay for it? neither dad nor her has the spare cash! wth.and if i ditch her at home, she's guna be whiny about it. ffs.2 am warning for a 7am arrival. real smooth dad, real smooth.and putting me on the warpath too, and laughing at me. -.- i feel so great.and when i mentioned the communications problem, he told me to just plant myself at paddy's, since antique brings people there when they visit, and then order lotsa food and ask her to pay when i see her.-.-he wants me to die. i swear. i might have to disappear back up to sydney for a few days them. good work.cya guys.i might not make it alive.
waking up at 7 am to rattling metal, drilling and basically more metal whoring made me wonder why i picked this room out of the 2, bath tub or not. it's directly over the garage, and if anything happens, like when the shutters got jammed the last time, i get waken up at all hours of the day 
.granted i slept at like 1 am, 6 hrs of sleep is more than enough. but when ur used to sleeping in abit, and so on, and u didn't plan on waking up early anyways, u had feel as shit as i am right now 
, where i still can't sleep coz they are doing something stupid to the shutters.and since i got too lazy to go pick up my ibook, they called again, and in good time too, like 9 am or something. naturally, i was still grouchy, and almost wanted to cancel the sales coz i was just being a grouch and, i do still have this pc after all, just write goddamn notes and come back and copy everything onto the pc then.ah, but i finally decided to grouch all the way to uni and pick it up and back. the guy was kinda silly though 
. he got the sticker stuck on the top part, so there was this sticky bit i had to buy nail polish remover to get rid of. he seemed nervous attending to me.me on the other hand, was looking out for kangaroos.i got it home, and by then i was fully proud of it. altho, my bank acct has been severely depleted by its very existence in my room now. STILL! i have now a functioning damn laptop.
my battered acer laptop laid beside it, looking all forlorn and lonely. amidst all that drilling and pounding, i actually felt sad. that laptop that had loyally served me for the past 2 odd years, was well and truly dead. well not really. it wud say hi for 2 mins and then bye.
but it was where i first did any real communication when i reached here, where i blogged on when i first hit the ground, where i cried a few times on when i broke up (tear spot wouldn't budge from the touchpad, goddamit.), where i played cs leagues on, various cs wars on, did my first uni assignments on and had mental breakdowns over.
and of course, where i first started l2 on.amidst all that massive abuse on what was seriously meant to be a lightly used equipment, it survived for quite a while, and now it's time to say farewell. perhaps its nerdy to deliver such a long eulogy to something as lifeless as a laptop. but since it was essentially my companion while i am away from home, my first real mate here since it connected me to all my mates back home, i believe it really deserves a little attention.when i bring u home the next time anariya, it wud be to try and get u fixed somehow and then pass u down to my sis, whom i believe wud use u lighter than me, thus perhaps fulfilling ur jobscope, rather than overreaching it.if ur dead even then, i still will miss you.========================================================================i believe i mentioned before, how i am overweight, perhaps even considered as obese, especially by singapore's standard. therefore, most people who sees me, assumes its coz i eat too much for my own good and often tells me to cut it down.generally speaking, i have always eaten the same. too little or too much, i have always had similar intake amounts of food.but anyways, rarely would u find someone bothering me to eat more or to eat up whatever was on my plate. usually people can't care less.what i don't get is, often when i visit the stores next door, regardless of which store but as long as its those old ladies, they have one thing in common.they had give me more food, go all motherly over me and warn me to clean up my plate. good lord! what's with them?!?!i am not even small size. i am just about the normal height for asians, sometimes taller, i am definitely not thin or stringy. so what's with all that?the woman attending to me especially, for today, was pottering and fussing all around me, wondering if i had enough food, giving me 3 fish pieces instead of 2, and 2 more bread pieces than what they normally give for soup.i ended up being too full within 2 mouthfuls of fish, after my soup.when i asked to pack things up though, she was like "remember to finish the vegies now honey.."
help....
well. i went up to sydney. apparently, people thought i went missing.. O.o guess i assumed rosie reads this blog too much 
. at any rate, when wadie finally picked me up from jolimont center, he didnt even realised i went to sydney and thought i did my shopping in jolimont center 
a bus terminal.
at any rate, i left for sydney early today, got on a greyhound bus at about 9....
and hit sydney at about 12.30 or so i think. or 12. 15 or something. didn't took any rewetting drops with me, so my lenses almost fell out of my eyes after i passed out in the bus for 3 hours with my ipod...
realised i didn't quite remember to get cash as well when i left, so had to withdraw from upstairs at central station...
when i came down, i saw this sign, pretty curious about it, what you mean by "inward parcels etc etc etc?" do parcels walk or something? o.o this just made me turned my head.
but not as bad as what was across the road. it was this church, which i shall not show nor name, which is totally locked up. i find it sad, that a church, the place where people come together to worship God, is locked at times. i am not saying it shud be perma open either. if ur worried about safety then just lock it up at night.
mayber i am just not used to locked up churches.
then i stride over to china town. at that time, which was also lunch break, cars and people were everywhere.... i was beginning to feel a tad stifled...
then i saw paddy's. woot!! asian food!!! decided to grab lunch first before i start shopping. don't wana pass out in the middle of great bargains.
a glimpse of paddy's pasar malam downstairs. multiple stalls selling all kinds of crap. the most interesting one though, was this lingerie stall. even had some s & m stuff. whips, leather brassiere/corset and g string, whips. and also, this nurse lingerie. but... old women buying!!! like in their 60s!!! i didn't dare to take photos.
funny bit was, i arrived at what seems like a good time. firstly, they are having stock take sales!!! every where were like, 30-70% sale ahaha.. i almost drooled 
. so unsightly 
secondly, apparently, Twins was also having their aussie autograph session too. this was what i saw at like... 12.30. according to posters, they were suppose to come in at like, 8.30 pm. turns out they were there at like 4 or something. by the time i left paddy's, the entire 1st floor was flooded with teens in their high school uniforms.
then again, they aren't the only ones. there were hong kong girls, who were obviously from uni, in well dressed heels and so on and boyfriends in tow.
what was memorable was how one of them started screaming and bashing her boyfriend up for taking bad photos of twins.
with her camera.
one of the securities, old man and all, with beer gut, started telling people near him to dance with him. then raise one arm up, baring his white armpit hair, and started boogeying slowly. swing that hip old man!! woohooo!!!! (eeww )
went up to eat anyways, twins or any stars for that matter, doesn't interest me.
asian food!!! i went to this stall called mclucksa... kinda misspelt laksa but i think he finds it... good feng shui!! that guy who looks like he owns it, seems to be singaporean too. he called fried radish cakes, "cai tao kueh". i almost cried when i heard those familiar words.
goddamn greasy food, makes me cry.
our "national food" according to a tourist, who saw it on a STB brochure. i feel so proud i am a... singahainanesEE?!?! bleah...
anyways, while i was eating, i was reading one of my trashy magazines that was screaming "angelina shatters brad" basically insisting that angelina has gone back to her first ex husband/boyfriend or something. these ladies who were like 2 tables away from me gave a gasp each.
woman 1" omg look! brad has broken up with angie!!"
woman 2" what!?!? why!??!" *looks at me*
me "uhm... she went back to her 1st ex husband... uh look" so i showed them the page.
they showed a disgusted face "she dumped brad for him!?!?! how awful!!"
woman 2 "well he can come to me anytime, i would always welcome him in my arms haha, even though he's american... but nothing matters in love.."
these ladies are like in their 50s or something.
good lord. lol....
so, ok, we need to use a toilet after getting hot and heavy with food right? this ah... doodling caught my eye.... something about "huajie guna die, pk" oh yer, the word pk got my eye... goddamn.. i game too much...
i started my massive shopping afterwards. which i must warn u, is going to be the cause of lack of photos. i was too busy juggling bags and finding directions and getting distracted by cutsie stuff, great new mobile phones, bags and coats, that i forgot about taking photos for a long time. besides, it also caused me to be unable to ah... go to better places :P
but my first stop was a tourist shop to find something to buy, if i feel like it. if anyone remembered, or if i actually wrote it at all, i bought 2 kangaroo scrotums from sydney airport earlier this year, coz it amused me so much that people had used it as a coin pouch.
apparently it's lucky!!
but this shop is a little too... ah...
nevermind.
so out of paddy's i go, by then i was drained from being swamped and pushed around by little boobies and wannabes... started thinking if i could just beg greyhound to let me go home early . yer i am a wuss.
i came by this high tech busker. he had so much batteries and other stuff to his left if you could see. he was taking so much time setting up that interested buggers already left.
then this tree came up in the middle of chinatown... probably a statue but i didn't dare touch it. gold stuff at the top...
and they named it gold water mouth... doesn't quite make sense does it!?!?
i walked around abit more, and found the building that had always been under construction, finally all up and spanking new. and named ernst and young. funny bit, when i walked in, my phone switched the area to "ernst and young center" or something like that. wowzer... own antenna?
but right outside that building was this.
i know budget hotels ain't meant to be like all posh and clean and so on. still, this looks... not ready to be slept in. somehow.
near it though, i found the shop i needed to find smoke and wadie a souveneir..
the place where cucumber dildos and giant blow up sex dolls might be sold.
sadly... they don't sell the designs i like . i should try melbourne next!!!
nearby was this pub, called 3 monkeys. it used to be the national australian bank or something like ages ago. and now its a national heritage building or something... under conservation.
inside is where the drunken trolls hehe. i heard its a pretty cool bar though. 
eventually i went home after buying all these, mostly from paddy's. jacket from giordano (fairly warm too!!! yay!! no more frostbites!!), shoes from platypus (pink!!) and bag from this tiny shop in a corner. i couldn't pretty much find the bag i want. they may have the designs, but not like, the material.
i don't know what's up with bags nowadays, all made with such coarse and rough materials. bags are meant to be huggable too, coz its the stuff we carry with us, happy or sad, our tear bag .
this is what i got for everyone else... hand made chocolate by australian or something. they are right at the corner of the ernst and young building, when u walk up from chinatown. excellent service, and great chocolate.
and mmmm lemon sherbet.
i am off to bed. it's been a tiring one, trying to avoid a stampede of teeny boppers and so on.
Dad and i have became closer in these 3 years that i have been away. we talk more and are alittle more open than we were before i left. i guess it can't be help, at times, when i am all alone, it seems only dad understands me. after all, these people here that i have met, i have just known for at most.. a few months. dad has knew me my entire life. we had our ups and downs, mostly because he believes in the rod discipline, the shouting-at-you-or-beat-you-up type of discipline. he was brought up that way too, so i guess, he probably thought it's the only way. the way he tells me, he simply believes it's too hard to make a child understand reasoning.he believes too, that a child of any parent is never too old to be chastised by his/her parent, even when the child is 100 yrs old and he's in the wrong, the parent is still allowed to cane him/her. the parent is always right.me on the other hand, is always clashing with these believes that he has. i feel reasoning has to be done, that if the parent is wrong, he shud admit that he's wrong, and apologise when necessary. no one is infallible after all, and rightly so. the human race is flawed, but beautifully flawed.dad just called to ask if i had gotten my money, and to spend it wisely. aside from that, he told my glasses are ready and just waiting to be collected by mum tomorrow. then he asked me how it is. after telling him i generally am done with school for now, and am considering going up sydney proper tomorrow, i put out my doubts about visiting my aunt. for one, her home is cold. so cold. and i am not talking about the weather. people don't communicate in there. it feels like a school, sans the warm atmosphere everyone has. there's a tv there, that is only alive at meals. i feel sad and scared when i'm there, coz it doesn't feel like a home.dad wondered if they had installed a tv card like i was suppose to on their various pc's. so into technology eh, dad?but he did mention, that that's not really a right way to live a home life too. that families should talk more, regardless of how good or bad the talks are. making an effort to reach out to the other human being is often what is necessary to keep relationships alive, to keep one's children and loved ones close to you.so despite my various bad memories of dad and how much i hated him back then, i still love my dad, coz we can actually talk. there's a normal father/daughter distance, but we talk, i consult him when i have a problem, when i am upset.in all his wisdom, he views everything as a lesson for the future. to be able to take things as they come. if it has already happened, you can't change it, but you can be wiser from it. that's what i have learnt from dad, a very precious lesson. an inability to let go can bog one down.then i asked him about blogosphere in singapore. hrm.if ur wondering why i did that, it's more i am curious. when i first started blogging all those years ago, i never knew many people even blogged online. i only knew my friend and a couple of her friend does. and me. so when i suddenly saw these flood of blogs from singapore, and how big it has become, i was just... curious. some of these people started at about the same time as i did.dad himself though, never even heard of it, despite the various news article put up all over lianhe zaobao, lianhe wanbao and Xin Ming Ri bao (or something like that.) until i asked him what's up with blogging tonight. so we had a long chat about it, about why i started, what people wrote on their blogs and so on.being the conservative him, he was worried that i put up too much personal issues on the web about myself. he didn't want me to get "exploited" (muahahahahaha!!!!) because he believes there are lotsa "spies" around who works for some insurgencies and blah blah blah and i might end up being a taliban suicide bomber some how... WELL...then, apparently, he claimed his friend wanted him to start a blog, and has been sending him his own blog links (omg 55 years old ah pek made a blog!?!?! wth!!!) hoping that dad had read it and make his own blog.dad of course feel vulnerable to the taliban...and he doesn't know what to send back or put on his blog anyways. so he suggested putting this up.
to be honest, a no-nosed, taped over mouth, pulled ears and removed eyes person... scares me.i wonder what's wrong with my dad now...i'm glad for my dad though, that he's moving along with technology now... so much that he wants me back so i can do html, email and other stuff for him that he may look good. -.-not that i am any good at it at all.thanks dad. your the best. i may have forgotten when's father's day and mother's day coz of our own practises (my parents don't like celebrations. so no birthdays, anniversaries and whatnots either. only chinese new year 
), but then again, ur still the best
