syd aq: "do not enter. if the fall does not kill you, the crocodile will."
Monday, January 17, 2005
Friday, January 14, 2005
what have i done?!
i don't know...you know how my memory is...i feel like i've been in australia for months. how long has it been? somebody help me...oh my, it's been 5 days. is it bad that i can't remember what i've done?
it's harder to make posts about australia because there aren't as many things to observe...it's not really like canada at all (don't believe you when they tell you it's like canada), but there really aren't that many differences that are worth noting. the weather is hot, the trees are exotic, and the (captive) animals are wonky, but apart from that, it's almost...boring. except that it isn't at all. sydney is very ...cosmopolitan. i hear that word time and time again. i'm actually not really sure what it means, but i think that they've ingrained it in my mind and it's the only word i can think of. google defines it as "found worldwide". well...sydney isn't really found worldwide so i'm still in the dark.
pro: there are always things for tourists to do (many harbours to visit, shops (millions) to shop, food places to eat food, activities, festivals, zoos, etc etc etc.)
con: there are always things to do...if you're a tourist. I think that after a while i'm going to run out of things...and these are the kinds of things that, once you've seen them, you probably won't go back.
pro: the weather is great
con: the weather is sometimes too great (my dad is a lobster from a day at the beach)
pro: there are lots of ethnic foods
con: a lot of the ethnic groups seem segregated (but maybe i'm wrong, maybe those groups are i see are just tourists..a very real possibility.)
pro: there are lots of artsy things going on
con: the artsy things often cost a gabillion dollars.
and the list continues...later.
so i've gone to sydney harbour (opera house and bridge), darling harbour (uhh..boats and touristy stuff), sydney aquarium (no pufferfish!), taronga zoo (emus), botanical gardens (plants...duh), random walk around sydney (with tom), the rocks (where they used to keep prisoners and is now a shopping place...surprise surprise), bondi beach (waves and oceans rock) a million shops (where i haven't bought much...except for a toy emu.), uhhh...oh, and i've eaten LOTS of seafood. probably because there is a lot of sea around here.
does anyone have any questions?
perhaps you would like to hear some of the lingo. i will post the words and you guys can guess what they mean. this will be fun
mobile, jumper, lift, Mackers, snags, skivvies, sunnies..can't think of anymore more...but i assure you, there are more.
okay, so i'm doing pretty well...i walk every day, and i take...PUBLIC TRANSPORT. *gasp* so, basically my legs are tired and my shoes are sticky.
i miss you guys!
it's harder to make posts about australia because there aren't as many things to observe...it's not really like canada at all (don't believe you when they tell you it's like canada), but there really aren't that many differences that are worth noting. the weather is hot, the trees are exotic, and the (captive) animals are wonky, but apart from that, it's almost...boring. except that it isn't at all. sydney is very ...cosmopolitan. i hear that word time and time again. i'm actually not really sure what it means, but i think that they've ingrained it in my mind and it's the only word i can think of. google defines it as "found worldwide". well...sydney isn't really found worldwide so i'm still in the dark.
pro: there are always things for tourists to do (many harbours to visit, shops (millions) to shop, food places to eat food, activities, festivals, zoos, etc etc etc.)
con: there are always things to do...if you're a tourist. I think that after a while i'm going to run out of things...and these are the kinds of things that, once you've seen them, you probably won't go back.
pro: the weather is great
con: the weather is sometimes too great (my dad is a lobster from a day at the beach)
pro: there are lots of ethnic foods
con: a lot of the ethnic groups seem segregated (but maybe i'm wrong, maybe those groups are i see are just tourists..a very real possibility.)
pro: there are lots of artsy things going on
con: the artsy things often cost a gabillion dollars.
and the list continues...later.
so i've gone to sydney harbour (opera house and bridge), darling harbour (uhh..boats and touristy stuff), sydney aquarium (no pufferfish!), taronga zoo (emus), botanical gardens (plants...duh), random walk around sydney (with tom), the rocks (where they used to keep prisoners and is now a shopping place...surprise surprise), bondi beach (waves and oceans rock) a million shops (where i haven't bought much...except for a toy emu.), uhhh...oh, and i've eaten LOTS of seafood. probably because there is a lot of sea around here.
does anyone have any questions?
perhaps you would like to hear some of the lingo. i will post the words and you guys can guess what they mean. this will be fun
mobile, jumper, lift, Mackers, snags, skivvies, sunnies..can't think of anymore more...but i assure you, there are more.
okay, so i'm doing pretty well...i walk every day, and i take...PUBLIC TRANSPORT. *gasp* so, basically my legs are tired and my shoes are sticky.
i miss you guys!
Monday, January 10, 2005
mish mash
shoot...lost all that i just wrote...too lazy to write it again...so
1. in australia
2. went to a night safari in singapore...very cool
3. summary of singapore: eat, sleep, work, shop. good place to visit, but the fast paced structured lifestyle doesn't work with my way of living.
4. in australia.
5. the place is beautiful, but i haven't got to meet the people...only my family. my cousins (two guys, 17 and 19, and one girl, 23) seem cool, we chatter earlier, but i think we're really different people...their lifestyle is also super different...much more school oriented. everyone in my family who is in my generation have (or currently are) going to school for stuff like medecine, computers, or pharmaceuticals. except for one cousin here, jonathan, who is doing music (he wants to be a piano performer and go to juilliard after uni...and i think he probably will..), so that's pretty sweet...he's really good. in singapore they couldn't really understand why i wanted to take marine bio...i don't think it's a "real" degree in their eyes. when i told my cousin that i may do a master's degree, he said, "oh yes, you can do a business degree". i gave up.
night.
p.s. for those who keep asking, my uog. email still works. keep 'em coming. and for those that didn't leave an address while i was in singapore...too bad, you're not getting that extra postcard!
1. in australia
2. went to a night safari in singapore...very cool
3. summary of singapore: eat, sleep, work, shop. good place to visit, but the fast paced structured lifestyle doesn't work with my way of living.
4. in australia.
5. the place is beautiful, but i haven't got to meet the people...only my family. my cousins (two guys, 17 and 19, and one girl, 23) seem cool, we chatter earlier, but i think we're really different people...their lifestyle is also super different...much more school oriented. everyone in my family who is in my generation have (or currently are) going to school for stuff like medecine, computers, or pharmaceuticals. except for one cousin here, jonathan, who is doing music (he wants to be a piano performer and go to juilliard after uni...and i think he probably will..), so that's pretty sweet...he's really good. in singapore they couldn't really understand why i wanted to take marine bio...i don't think it's a "real" degree in their eyes. when i told my cousin that i may do a master's degree, he said, "oh yes, you can do a business degree". i gave up.
night.
p.s. for those who keep asking, my uog. email still works. keep 'em coming. and for those that didn't leave an address while i was in singapore...too bad, you're not getting that extra postcard!
Saturday, January 08, 2005
technical problems
does anyone know how to use Hello! (the picture program)...more specifically, how to change the post date so that the pictures don't just randomly stick themselves into the middle of my posts (since it automatically assumes i'm still in American time or something stupid like that). also, i have been posting answers to people's responses...is that taking too much time for people to go over?? any ideas?
OOOOH...there are colours! new fun coloured posts to come!! flying to australia tonight, so there may be a lull in posts...
until then...
OOOOH...there are colours! new fun coloured posts to come!! flying to australia tonight, so there may be a lull in posts...
until then...
new news to me...
miranda, vick, boudy, maggie...
heard about your house...can i do anything to help? i know it's quite useless, me being a million miles away, but maybe i can send a funny picture to brighten up the walls or fax a kiwi or something? i hear they're quite compact.
miss you guys, and remember, if you need anything...kiwi (the bird, not the fruit... cause faxing the fruit would just be plain messy).
heard about your house...can i do anything to help? i know it's quite useless, me being a million miles away, but maybe i can send a funny picture to brighten up the walls or fax a kiwi or something? i hear they're quite compact.
miss you guys, and remember, if you need anything...kiwi (the bird, not the fruit... cause faxing the fruit would just be plain messy).
no posts on the 6th because...
i was sick! yes ladies and gentlemen, despite all your wonderful advice i STILL got sick...in fact, i got the exact same thing my dad did, which leads me to believe that he gave it to me (or so i like to tell him). no worries though...i just couldn't sleep for a night, but the next day i slept for 17 hours straight! and today i was a normal functioning person. who went shopping.
i'm still amazed with the dependency singaporeans have on technology. they use text messaging here like we use...i dunno...something that we use without thinking...our heart (never been so good at the similes...someone wanna help me out)? anyways, my point is that .. what was my point? ah yes...this morning i was listening to the radio (playing the oh so popular bsb song "i want it that way"...and if you don't know what bsb stands for, then you're a much better person than i am) and the DJs were having a chat about a hospital visit one of them made. while in the hospital the doctor suddenly had to leave on an emergency, so he was told to go resched with the nurse. so, he went downstairs and spoke with the nurse and rescheduled. and then...(here is the amazing part)...the other DJ said "why didn't you just SMS [text message] the nurse and resched.?" and he was serious. dead serious. and no one else in the car (who was singaporean) seemed to think that was weird. what the hell? does anyone else find that kinda sad? he was in the same freakin' building. oh, and you get SPAM on your phone...i got a voice message on my phone (my family makes me carry it around...and people insist on calling at the most inoppurtune times....as soon as i wake up, at meals, in the changeroom, whilst talking to the president of singapore...okay, maybe not the latter, but i'm sure if i had the oppurtunity to talk to the president, they would call at that moment in time)...oh yes, the voice message. as soon as i noticed and asked how to get it, my cousin tells me not to bother because it's prob just spam. what is this world coming to? does that happen in canada yet? cell phones are evil. (oh yeah, i thought of another thing...someone told me that their phone plan is for 100 hours a month, and it's not uncommon to go over the limit. i wonder if that long is spent talking face to face with real people too. if i calculate 9 hours of sleep a night, 5 hours for eating in a day, 2 hours for showering and getting ready (all presumably not talking to someone), 2 hours of travelling alone (as many singaporeans seem to do), plus working alone and miscellaneous errands (let's say 5 hours), then we're left with 80 hours a month...and since 100 of those hours are used to talk on the cell phone, then we're actually at minus 20 hours to have a real conversation. okay, i'll give you some overlap with talking during work or eating, or sleeping, if you're so inclined, but you've got to admit, the logic is flawless....absolutely flawless.)
anyways, today was shopping. for dinner my dad and i met up with an old friend. we used to live with him, and then he lived with us, and then he left us and came back to singapore. and we haven't really seen or talked to him since (this was 11 years ago). regardless, it was great to see him again, i still remember him (impressive, since i can barely remember what i did today...i actually have to jot things down as i do them or i forget). the dinner was also wonderful...good seafood..the only complaint was when they asked me if i wanted emu. i emphatically said, "no." oh, and shark fin soup...which i used to love, until i saw videos of how they kill the sharks. which is why i now avoid any of those documentaries on how they kill other animals and those about KFC chickens and whatnot...ignorance is bliss they say.
oh shoot...it's two AM and i've gone on and on again. guess i better post those pictures i promised, eh?
i'm still amazed with the dependency singaporeans have on technology. they use text messaging here like we use...i dunno...something that we use without thinking...our heart (never been so good at the similes...someone wanna help me out)? anyways, my point is that .. what was my point? ah yes...this morning i was listening to the radio (playing the oh so popular bsb song "i want it that way"...and if you don't know what bsb stands for, then you're a much better person than i am) and the DJs were having a chat about a hospital visit one of them made. while in the hospital the doctor suddenly had to leave on an emergency, so he was told to go resched with the nurse. so, he went downstairs and spoke with the nurse and rescheduled. and then...(here is the amazing part)...the other DJ said "why didn't you just SMS [text message] the nurse and resched.?" and he was serious. dead serious. and no one else in the car (who was singaporean) seemed to think that was weird. what the hell? does anyone else find that kinda sad? he was in the same freakin' building. oh, and you get SPAM on your phone...i got a voice message on my phone (my family makes me carry it around...and people insist on calling at the most inoppurtune times....as soon as i wake up, at meals, in the changeroom, whilst talking to the president of singapore...okay, maybe not the latter, but i'm sure if i had the oppurtunity to talk to the president, they would call at that moment in time)...oh yes, the voice message. as soon as i noticed and asked how to get it, my cousin tells me not to bother because it's prob just spam. what is this world coming to? does that happen in canada yet? cell phones are evil. (oh yeah, i thought of another thing...someone told me that their phone plan is for 100 hours a month, and it's not uncommon to go over the limit. i wonder if that long is spent talking face to face with real people too. if i calculate 9 hours of sleep a night, 5 hours for eating in a day, 2 hours for showering and getting ready (all presumably not talking to someone), 2 hours of travelling alone (as many singaporeans seem to do), plus working alone and miscellaneous errands (let's say 5 hours), then we're left with 80 hours a month...and since 100 of those hours are used to talk on the cell phone, then we're actually at minus 20 hours to have a real conversation. okay, i'll give you some overlap with talking during work or eating, or sleeping, if you're so inclined, but you've got to admit, the logic is flawless....absolutely flawless.)
anyways, today was shopping. for dinner my dad and i met up with an old friend. we used to live with him, and then he lived with us, and then he left us and came back to singapore. and we haven't really seen or talked to him since (this was 11 years ago). regardless, it was great to see him again, i still remember him (impressive, since i can barely remember what i did today...i actually have to jot things down as i do them or i forget). the dinner was also wonderful...good seafood..the only complaint was when they asked me if i wanted emu. i emphatically said, "no." oh, and shark fin soup...which i used to love, until i saw videos of how they kill the sharks. which is why i now avoid any of those documentaries on how they kill other animals and those about KFC chickens and whatnot...ignorance is bliss they say.
oh shoot...it's two AM and i've gone on and on again. guess i better post those pictures i promised, eh?
Friday, January 07, 2005
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