Melbourne: Shop till I drop!
The trip to Melbourne was very short. I arrived on 26th afternoon and left 30th early morning. Yet it was such a cool trip - things I did, people I conversed with.
Huy picked me up from the airport and showed me around the city centre a bit. The city was full with cars - boxing day, you are either shopping or watching cricket in the stadium. I heard you need to fight to buy good bargains. I don't want to pay to fight with people. ;-(
Well...as much as a shopperholic I am, I started my 'fight' on the 2nd day in Chadstone which is claimed to be the Fashion Empire! It is one stop that I get to access all the brands in Australia. Actually not those smaller brands you can find in arcades in the city but still good enough! After 3 hours of shopping, I already had 5 bags in my hands plus headache. I guess after Adelaide, I am not used to waking in such crowds any more. Everything is on big sales, so size 6, 8, 10 or even 12 are usually sold out already. Once again, I felt the frustration of shopping in Netherlands. Yet I cannot understand how countries full of big tall women, smaller sizes are always the 1st got sold out! ;-( Anyways, I get to save money in this way.
Oxfam shop in the city centre was on 20% off as well. I wish my good intention isn't discounted. I bought several gifts for friends.
The secrete Santa game back in the office is indeed a pain in the arse. Each of us are assigned to buy gifts for one of our teammates and we'll give all the gifts during the team day once we are all back in Rotterdam. I finally found this dude a lovely thing he'll mostly like in Oxfam shop. But before that, I bought a couple of other gifts that he hopefully will like. What a waste of money! I hate this game now! ;-(
Arcades in the city center is unbeatable. I walked around them back and forth, again and again, over and over. I just loved those cute little boutiques and the feeling of arcades. That was how I spent the entire day on 28th. Thus I didn't manage to take a look at Chapel street, let alone Bridge street. Guess this means I need to come back to Melbourne at least one more time! ;-)
I found this chocolate cafe called Kokoblack feels like fairytale. Hm...probably, instead of opening a reading cafe, I should open a chocolate cafe in Shanghai. On the next day, I tried to convince Darren (LCP Monash) that chocolate is actually good for health that he shouldn't stop eating them. Mum told me that chocolate can prevent me from getting heart attack - I don't need more reasons to love chocolate, hehehe...
29th evening, Huy took his cousin and me to the stadium to watch the soccer match between Melbourne and Perth. Darren and his friend came as well. I loved his passion for Melbourne Victory FC though they weren't too impressive. They got to control the ball 80% of the time but the game ended up with 2 to 2. The game wasn't too exciting but it was very exciting to watch soccer game in a stadium. Plus Darren's shouting and cursing from time to time were quite amusing! He has bright orange hair, quite long as well. So he somehow looks like a lion, but definitely a cute one. ;-) I heard from Huy that he dressed up as a father Christmas (imagine it is summer here) and drove around to deliver gifts to his LC members. How lovely is that!
Recent alumni or current @ers in Melbourne sound like characters. I didn't get to see all of them. Those I met were interesting enough, like Luke Reid. I enjoyed my stay, especially the room Huy prepared for me - first time I got a room and a quee size bed for myself in this 3 months! I had some good rest.
Adelaide - a lovely christmas
I got to spend a good 8 days at Flic's house. Her family will always be my 1st choice to spend Christmas with. In a way, it is my 'extended' family now. Hehe...
So far, I had the best time in Adelaide. It is always up to who I am spending time with. And every place has its own charm. The 'charm' of Adelaide is being small. Everything is so close by - from airport, to beaches; from winery to wildparks. 8 days is not too long or too short for Adelaide. Thus my stay was very eventful.
Dinner with Flic's school friends, where and when I got the first Christmas gift. It was just a box of chocolate - but also I shouldn't expect people who even didn't know me to give me anything else. So it was still a lovely gift. Her friends are very lady like - who said people from Melbourne are the most uptight?
Wine testing in Jocob's Creek, not that I tasted several dozens of different red and white wines, I guess as small as I am, it is not too difficult to get drunk. I almost fell over during the winery tour. Also the lady guiding us around was talking like Shakespear which made me very dizzy.
Tom Gara took me and Flic to this wildpark called Urimbirra. Urimbirra doesn't have a large amount of animals in terms of species and number. But it is so interactive that I got to feed kangaroos and pad koalas. I loved kangaroo because it tickles a bit when they were eating the food in my hand. Koalas were not too impressive. They are basically lazy bastards who sleep 20 hours a day and wake up for some food. But they are very cute especially the little tounges they have while grabbing leaves to eat. In some other occasions, you don't expect any interaction with Australian wild animals, e.g. crocodiles. Watching them being fed with chicken and fish is exciting enough for me already.
Alumni reunion, Christmas Day in the church of England, driving along the hills, swimming at the beach where Tom grew up...All have been interesting experiences for me.
Gift giving is such a sweet idea. You care more when you are giving a gift - you always need to think about what people want. The chinese sensibility of giving money should die out! ;-)
Now I already started to miss Flic, her parents, her brother, her house, Jason but never her cat!
The experience is God's gift ;-)
I wish Hyde Park can be bigger then I will feel detached to this busy city while in the middle of the city - Sydney. I was trying to get evenly tanned but obviously I couldn’t strip to my underwear and lie on the grass. There were 2 couples getting married. Girls always have this complex about wedding dresses. So do I. Though I am only 23 and single. When my best friend - Lynn told me she finally decided to get married in May next year, I was very jealous.
She is bored with her life because her parents arrange everything for her apart from marriage. Soon she will get married and she is not particularly excited about it because they will have dated for 4 years till then. She has a very controversial point - it is indifferent to get married after dating for so long. Being a lot less experienced in this area, marriage for me is a life promise instead of something indifferent.
I clearly know that my life is very ‘exciting’ largely because there is no certainty. I am scared of the fact that nothing is ensured also not sure if I can handle an arranged life. The other day I was thinking, if I go back to China still single next summer, my aunts or even my parents will start to arrange an active ‘social’ life for me. It is gonna be hilarious and ridiculous. 2 persons’ energies can easily be centralized once the ‘single kid policy’ is in place.
Um…I’ve already been here for 2 weeks. Australia is such a ‘no worries’ country. People here are very friendly - shop assistants always chat with customers or at least they’ll ask ‘how are you?’. I was actually expecting a ‘good day!’ as how my mornings started in Rotterdam when Tom Gara walked into the office. ;-) Australia is famous for its natural resources - I can see it by the size of its prawns. Yum!!! It is also truly multi cultural that I don’t feel like a foreigner at all. It feels like different people can find their own pillows. And different ethnical groups do feel they are all Aussie thought they don’t all mix with each other. Australia is such a wonderful country that I feel it is too comfortable to live at such a young age.
I am really happy I get to spend a month here especially a summer Christmas. I am always glad to learn about a country by staying there. Meanwhile, it has always been a rush - same thing with a couple of other countries I stayed for 1 month+ or even The Netherlands. Recently, a more scary feeling came to me - how much do I know about my own country China? VK’s mum made a very crucial point when he was asked - are you escaping something? Am I?
This past week I was staying at Tilly’s. It is a big, clean and very well decorated house located very close to Mosman beach. Tilly’s parents are very lovely. Meanwhile, they are very opinionated about world issues. (See this is where Tilly and Arthur from.) When Tilly’s mum knew that I came from China, she said ‘Oh, you must have been the lucky one! Isn’t it? You kill all the baby girls in China.’ Hm…we do have a very big gender imbalance now - 1 million single Chinese men at the marriage age. One evening, I was given the chance to cook a Chinese dinner for the family and we always had interesting conversations about different bits of the world we are very much concerned about. I really think being an AP director is God’s gift for me. The venture includes all sorts of people I meet at all different places as well as all different things I got to do related or not related to AIESEC. They all made my experience so diverse, exciting and unique.
A lovely weekend in Sydney
I have been here for a week already. Time does fly! I start to like the city because it is clean and beautiful. Life is simple and easy. I work in the office - quite efficient. And I read or talk to the MCs after working hours. I am only having Asian food here because it is even better than Asian food in Asia because the very fresh ingredients. The prawns here are huge - I’ve taken pictures. ;-)
I got to spend a weekend chilling in the city without any AIESEC conversation - this is great!
I walked around on my own on Saturday. It is indeed a great thing to spend some time just with myself. I went to Darling Harbour, China Town, Opera House and Hyde Park. Pretty much everything a tourist should see. And of course, I did shopping. It is summer here though Australia is claimed to be 2 seasons behind when it comes to fashion. But I truly believe that Australia can lead the fashion 2 seasons ahead especially summer fashion. ;-) And I did find it quite behind in terms of fashion and quite expensive - again, this might be I came from Asia.
Saturday evening, we went out for drinks. I need to show my ID card everywhere and what I had with me was the Dutch residence card. A Chinese girl living in The Netherlands, sounds dodgy enough! Those security guards didn’t seem believe that it was a real residence card. They might haven’t seen it anyways. It was good fun get to drink a lot of different cocktails again - something I didn’t get to do when I was in Asia. ;p Something I always get to do when I was in China or Holland.
On Sunday, Penny took me to the fish market where you can buy everything fresh and cooked and quite cheap as well. I think we spend around 50 dollars for heaps of seafood - prawns, sashimi, chips and drinks. Meanwhile, the fish market is quite chaotic which I always like but stinky. ;-)
This coming week will be steering team meeting with AIESEC Australia’s long-term planning team. I am glad that life gets back to the country visit pace. I am also very excited to see the membership. I start to feel this trip is indeed worth it because I get quite a lot of insights of this organization. As judgmental as I always am, I need to ‘HOLD ON’ and observe a bit more before I piss people off. ;p
Malaysia, Truly Asia!!!
This post is for Anisha particularly. She put a comment on my previous post that how come I never said anything about Malaysia. ;-) As opinionated as I am, it is rare that I don’t have comments on a place I’ve been to.
Malaysia is my favorite country in Asia.
One of the reasons that I love Asia is because it is still developing, not that easy to live or walk around. Malaysia is kinda in between. It is quite developed in terms of infrastructure. I believe majority of the residents are middle class. Meanwhile, as a fast developing Asian country, it has its own chaos - cars, traffic jam, rush hours in the mornings, busy city centres, food courts, etc. What I loved the most is the foodcourts downstairs the MC office. Food there is cheap, delicious and of a big variety to be chosen from. I also love Asia Café among all the places I’ve hanged out together with the MC and the recent MC alumni. I really loved the ‘yum cha’ Anisha and Huilin took me in the afternoons.
Since I speak English and Mandarin, so do most of the Chinese Malaysians, it was easy for me to go around. KLCC is indeed an impressive place to be - of course I mean the shopping area particularly. I love shopping so much that I feel I am really hopeless. My suitcase is current 23kg and I am still shopping a lot in Australia. I can hardly close my suitcase with my big ‘topshop’ coat on top of all my clothes in it. I actually have left something to be taken to The Netherlands for some of the AP MCPs at IPM 06. ;-) Thanks God that it is in The Netherlands.
What I miss the most is the laughters of Anisha, caring of Huilin and sweetness of Swee Li. I cannot remember ‘Charlie’ much since Ren Qiang only appears in the evenings and rushes back right after the MC meetings. It was good meeting Bonnie (he is now famous across the network after all his facilitation experiences at AP conferences and IC 05), Stephanie (I wish you all the best running for the Thai MC 06/07) as well as Shooks! I hope I get to see all of them in next March - May when I am in Asia again. I’ll definitely fly to Malaysia then Philippines from Holland.
What was the most impressive was attending the dinner hosted by UNICEF and Standard Chartered Bank. I am so proud of AIESEC Malaysia doing HIV/AIDS initiatives with such a broad reach. I can almost say that the biggest influence Standard Chartered bank got to make on HIV/AIDS initiative is through AIESEC Malaysia’s reach to the countries get involved in the ambassador program as well as the universities in Malaysia. It is indeed one of the most relevant and powerful experiences young individuals should get to go through.
So I’ll definitely go to Malaysia again in March. And what I will be doing is shopping and lying on the beach. So Anisha, you should take me there! ;-) Miss you guys!
