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19 Dec 2007

gold coast weekend

By Rudy

wednesday – spent the morning at brisbane’s DFO. drove up to mt coot-tha for its scenic view of the city. finished the rest of the day doing stuff online: facebook, stock market, etc. so by the time we left wired’s place it was already late in the afternoon.  drove down to surfer’s paradise to check into our budget beach apartment. no sofa bed this time, so i had to sleep on the floor. >_<

thursday – took a nice drive inland through mt tamborine, then down south to o’reilly’s for it’s nature retreat. we didn’t stay long at tamborine, since it’s very similar to kuranda and i’ve been there before and the rest of the family wasn’t too keen on staying too long.

our drive to o’reilly’s was long and treacherous, with most of the way up restricted to one-way streets. takumi would’ve loved the mountain road though. we arrived around 3pm, and hung around till 4. nice breathtaking views, and the tree-top walk was not bad. i climbed some vertical ladders up two decks to get a better view, and feel the gusts of winds pounding at me. the big annoying fly totally didn’t help the experience.

drive down was a lot easier, seeing how we had to backtrack the way we came. it was also late so there were less cars coming from the opposite direction. at night we just jalan2 in surfer’s paradise.

friday –  my sis and i went back to movie world! superman’s escape once again! and lethal weapon too, which was open this time! managed to get ayin to get on the scooby doo coaster, which i truly didn’t recall it being so scary. (sorry, ayin). saw the police academy stunt show, and the parade, again. was picked on a lot this time: the pre-show cop at the  stunt show split me and ayin apart, and i had to sneak past him to get back to ayin (with a squirtful of water in my back). then at the bonnie and clyde show i was the getaway driver. ^_^; mom was supposed to go for a mudcrab fishing tour, but it didn’t happen so she went the following day.

saturday – wet & wild world! water slides galore~! it was great fun. too many slides to name, but i particularly enjoyed the black hole, the sidewinder, and the mammoth. managed to get my shoulders sunburnt too. @_@ mom got her mudcrab cruise too, but she wasn’t too happy with it; would’ve rather went deep sea fishing instead.

at night, we went for 2x 18 holes of mini golf. ^_^

sunday – packed up, checked out. went shopping at pacific fair, finished up our 3rd round of mini golf. long queue at check in, even 2hrs before flight, and barely managed to finish up our drinkable liquids. 9 hours later, back in msia~! yay~!

tadaima~!

01 Dec 2007

oz again

By Rudy

konbanwa, anata~

our trip to Sydney started a lil miserably. the 8-hour AirAsia flight to Coolangatta was unbearable. nothing to do, nothing to read, and i couldn’t even sleep because the seats couldn’t recline much and it didn’t have good head support so my neck was constantly aching.

we then had a day to kill before we fly from Gold Coast to Sydney the same night, so we threw our luggage into a locker and took the local bus down to Surfer’s Paradise. i was originally thinking of going north towards Coolangatta to check out the retiree town, but mom wanted to have a preview of the range of accommodation available to prepare for our own stay this 11th. the bus took about an hour to get to the end of Cavill Ave, and we took our time looking at all the different places.

yes, i’ve seen it all! altho now a McDonalds has recently popped up, and i now know the locations of some of the smaller attractions, like Infinity. still, generally it’s the same old Surfer’s Paradise i came to know of in August. and due to my lack of sleep/rest, i was grumpy and snappy all day. the only thing interesting that happened today was when the coast guard cleared the surf when a snake appeared.

but despite that, tis still interesting to see how Surfer’s Paradise is like in the summer. the warm sun together with gentle cool breezes was a lot nicer on the skin than in winter. the place is teeming with ‘schoolies’, kids out for fun after school’s over. tis a major booty fest, but while my eyes wandered occasionally, my thoughts stayed focus on you.

after having nothing else to do, we took the bus back to the airport. we had plenty of time before check-in, so we took another nap at the terminal. as soon as the counters opened, i was there right up front with our luggage. then we had another 2 hours to spare before our departure, so we just loitered around having tea, reading books off the shelves, and playing Boulder Dash on the phone.

it was just about time to board when they announced that our flight was delayed due to a technical problem. turned out that the plane ran into a bird on the way in. things looked bleak when they announced that the service might be cancelled (we didn’t get my mom any travel insurance), but we were lucky when they managed to get a replacement plane from Melbourne. so we departed about 1 1/2 hours later than expected, but surprisingly arrived in Sydney according to the earlier schedule.

but anyways, Ayin’s friend couldn’t pick us up, so we just took a cab to UNSW. once you see the face of a loved one, all the weariness just washes away. am now all nice and clean after the 24-hour journey, and here on my sister’s notebook sharing our experiences with you. this looks to be my only avenue of communication, as the phones are low on battery and we’re without a charger (thought i could use my sister’s Nokia 6300 one, but it has a different jack >_<). oh well…

am missing you dearly. tis just strange not having you close by.