Exploration around the city

Have been busy with course transfers, bank, accommodation settling down these few days.

At last we managed to arrange some weekend activities!!

Bondi Beach is the first beach I'd been to since arriving this slow paced city. No doubt it is an extremely beautiful beach. So huge and the water is so clear. Everything's just perfect. Except for the weather forecast was not too reliable, and I did not bring my swimming costume from Malaysia. 

Nevertheless, I enjoyed myself. It has been awhile since I made a sand castle with my friends. Those were the days.

The next afternoon, me and my housemates went to the Sydney Fish Market. It is a famous place for seafood, cheap and fresh, that's what we heard from people around. It took us about 25 minutes to walk there, plus some time looking at the map....haha. And there were a lot of people, definitely a lot of seafood too. But erm, it's not cheap actually. We still reward ourselves with a Seafood Platter, well, some good food before school starts...haha. And it was tremendously tasty!!! I love Calamari Rings the most! Owh, and I also bought a packet of Teriyaki Salmon for lunch the next day.

After Fish Market, we headed to the Casino. Well, it's nothing special to be honest, after I've been to Macau's casinos several times. Owh ya, and they don't serve free drinks!

That night, we went to see the Mardi Gras Parade. It is the largest annual parade they have in Sydney. People have been queuing up around the streets since noon to witness it. We went there pretty late, hence, we didn't really get to see the moving parade, instead we just went around the place they queue up. It was a crazy night, and well, I think perhaps I'll watch the parade online, Youtube maybe. Haha.

And we took a long rest on Sunday. Almost all day staying at home, even for meals.

To be honest, I can't wait to go back to study, and see what studying is like in Sydney!!

Updates in a glance

I think I HAVE grown fat~

I guess I have not been good in the past few months. It has been ages again since I updated my blog. I have promised to kinda tell stories about everything after I finish my final exams in HKUST, but it didn’t happen. And since then, I have been to Chongqing, Wuhan (just for a night), back to Hong Kong, done some winter courses, back to Malaysia, had my reunion “lunch”, boarded the cheap airflight to Changi Airport, and arrived in Brisbane for a few hours, and then Sydney Australia.

Well it has been a long long time.

(Haha, actually, I had this time because I don’t have internet access at the moment~~haha~)

This is the extremely beautiful campus of Sydney Uni

After being here for 8 days, I would say I really did not have a good start. Well firstly, coming from a HOT country, I would definitely not want to go to another place which is also HOT for the period I would be there. Yea, it has been sultry hot for the past week except for the first day I arrived where it rained cats and dogs. HOT-34 degree Celsius-sweat-sun burn….and what else. At some moments, I do feel stupid leaving Hong Kong with the weather at an average of 8-12 degree Celcius everyday? Haha.

I have yet to find anything that I would say is CHEAP here.

$$$EXPENSIVE$$$

This is so much like a No-Money-Don’t-Come-Continent. It’s not that I have not been here (Aus) before….but, you will just feel that our currency is so much undervalued after seeing the price of EVERYTHING over here. And yea, it definitely feels even worse when you know you’re goinna stay here for a semester. All meals on average AU$7-10 and bottled drinks (500ml) are at AU$2, well you should know that I am most sensitive about the prices of FOOD. Haha. Other than that, transportation cost kills you. To travel for like a less than 1km ride, it costs AU$1.60 by bus. For trains, most return day journey tickets cost about AU$4 for a 30 minutes ride. For raw food and fruits? Definitely expensive. AU$1.60 (I’m not sure whether it’s even 300gms) for a few pieces of vege, AU$4.50 for a kilo of red apples? Owh ya, the definitely not to be missed ONE…TELEPHONE COSTS!-it will cost you AU$0.20 per minute, but there is this CONNECTION FEE (they call it flagfall) of AU$0.25 once the line is connected. So imagine this, even if it goes to voice mail for 1 sec, you’ll still have to pay $0.45 for it!!!

It got so much harder for me to settle down here as compared to Hong Kong. Although there are probably the same amount of Asians and non-Asian students here, but I felt like I was the minority, and things are seriously out of my comfortable zone. You can definitely see a lot of stores operated by Chinese and there’s even a Chinatown near where I stay, but the atmosphere is definitely different.  Even a stick of HK curry fish balls costs you AU$3!! (That is HKD21—in Hong Kong, it’s around HKD per stick!) – whoops, I am back to “FOOD” again.

Well, overall, I don’t feel that I am settled down yet after so many days. It’s not that Aussies are not accommodating, but it’s the style people do things here and in Hong Kong is so different. I guess efficiency explains it all.

Am I experiencing a culture shock? Maybe. Haha….but I will definitely take this as a good experience of getting to know how can people actually survive in “such” a place….hmm.

More updates coming up.