5 years and onward. 旅

Wao, this blog is almost 5 years old *clap clap clap*. Blogs are definitely becoming less and less popular in the age of social medias. But I like reading blogs. I started a blog just so that I could babble rant jabber. 5 years later I am still babbling ranting jabbering. (Grow up, woman.) I should continue doing that. (Just for my own satisfaction lah.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Irrelevant Breaking News~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today I learn about: Capitalising and Punctuating Inside Parentheses
http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000123.htm
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Two weeks ago went on a trip with sista, cousin sista and mate Sony a6000. Bringing my mate on a trip is the best way to test it. Travelling is like taking drugs. Expensive, delusory. (You are freeeeee, chase your dreams! Don't bother the whole world.) Final semester at uni is about to start, I just need to use a little bit of imagination and am already terrified by the imagined workload and stress. I wish time will pass faster, but not too fast please (*smack*). I feel that I am too old for uni, but heck I am still in uni. Am I the last one among my batch?!


12th July: Chokolait!
They have the  b.e.s.t  chocolate drinks eveeer. Tried it the first time in 2009, couldn't forget it since. Tried it again in 2012, the taste still surprised me (too good). At that time I told myself I'd bring my sis there one day. So, in 2014 we went there together. Damn how can it still be so good? Not a big chocolate lover, but I will pay for that iced chocolate any day. Here is their chocolate mud cake, very rich but not sweet which is very good. Err no pictures of my iced chocolate.

13th July: Wine - Koala - Penguins   
The trip was rather spontaneous. A day before, we contacted the travel agency (澳东旅社) from a pamphlet my cousin took from the tourist centre. Our tour guide, Darren, has been living in Australia for more than 30 years. (He was a former Malaysian, so we felt quite 亲切). We got 'V.I.P' treatment 'cause only 3 of us booked on the trip and we travelled in a nice big car.

Err no pictures of penguins 'cause no photography allowed on Phillip Island.

14th July: An intoxicating journey 
Wine, wine, wine, wine. On the second wine tasting I was already feeling dizzy fuzzy. Too much for me who normally don't drink. The tour offers really great value as the itinerary includes 4 wineries, Yarra Valley Dairy for cheese tasting, 1 brewery and 1 chocolaterie. Link: Wine Tasting Tours

15th July:  Alice Springs  
To the Northern Territory! More than 5 years in Australia and I have only been to Melbourne 
(a total of 4 times wth), sad.

Resident kitty at the hostel. It is fat.

I booked for an 8-person female dorm but the hostel upgraded our room to a 3-person bedroom. Thank you. Booked the room together with The Rock Tour, it only costed us $16.5 per person for one night. Great value. The room reminded me of father's kampung with its colourful paints and pitched ceiling. Link: Alice Lodge


16th July:  Kings Canyon
Three-day camping trip in the outback with The Rock Tour. Memory: Hot afternoons, frigging cold nights, many stars, very blue sky, loads of rocks, big rocks, small rocks, frigging huuuge rocks, very steep climbs, interesting aboriginal stories.

Three-hour walking trip.

After shooting mainly with the Sony 35mm f/1.8 prime lens, the drop in photo quality was obvious as I changed the lens to the 16-50mm kit lens, the only other lens that I had which was more suitable for landscape. (No $ = no pic quality. Want to get the 10-18mm if I win lottery.) Somehow, camera was unable to capture the wow that I felt during the trip. The scenary was splendid, but pictures came out flat.

Sleeping with campfire crackling near your ears and under millions of stars. How romantic could it get? Only one price to pay: body temperature. In the middle of the freezing cold winter night you could hear all sorts of noise from the bush including dingos' howling. Damn scary wei, I actually woke up with eyes wide opened and then buried my head deep in the sleeping bag+swag.

17th July:  Kata Tjuta - Uluru
 

Guide-said-1-hour-but-turned-out-to-be-more-than-3 hours walking trip.

 
Valley of the Winds "Kata Tjuta is sacred to Anangu men.
Our people have always shown respect when visiting this special place.
They would camp a short distance away and walk in quietly.
They would not swim in the waterholes. Women entered this area as well to collect food and water but always behaved appropriately.

It is the same now. It is the same for you.
Hold in your heart the knowledge that this is a special place.
Walk quietly, tread lightly. Stay on the track.
Enjoy this place as it is."

Sweep panorama of a6000 is really handy but under bad light conditions it often fails. I wish a manual option is available. This photo has to be brightened up a lot.

From 6:38PM to 6:42PM. Uluru changed colours in 4 minutes.

Our camping site this night had toilets and showers close by. (A bliss I tell you.) Slept in a tent as we would like to escape the cold, but still as cold as ever. Some people slept outside with the campfire and they said it was warmer than the previous night. Ops.


18th July:  Uluru - Sydney

Sunrise at 7:50AM.

Magical sunrise. After that we did a two-hour walk around the base of Uluru. Wind was strong. After two days of walking, legs and toes started to feel the pain. All I could think of was "A-r-e  w-e  t-h-e-r-e  y-e e e-t?" (Donkey's tone) Good shoes are really important for camping tour. At 10:30AM we got dropped off at Ayers Rock Airport and boarded the flight to Sydney at 2:00PM.


*Heard the bad news from our travel companions on this day. Couldn't believe this could happen to us again. We could only wonder why and what's wrong? Sincerely hope that the country and the rest of the world could be more peaceful for the second half of this year.

Talking-bad time

Due to the bad investment I made recently (Read: Airasia flight), I am suddenly feeling the urge to earn money. Money out out out, no money in, me quite upset. Though technically, I am not working yet, but that feeling when the $ in your saving account keeps on reducing, no one likes it, urrrgh.

Airasia I hate you arrghghghgh. The price fluctuation goes like this: 999 -> 1099 -> 999 -> 849 -> 749 -> 849 -> 999 -> 1099 -> fluctuates between 999 & 1099 --> 1249 -> 1099 -> 999 regardless of how many seats left. The best price seems to be offered around 6pm to 10pm. I am so free to observe this trend right? Holiday, what to do. After observing for a month then I got nervous due to the fact that there weren't many seats left for the flight I wanted, so when it was 1249 I just thought I should buy it, who knows if it would go up again. Oh yeaaah. The next day it dropped to 1099 then today it is 999. It is the apps that I installed, keeps on showing me the best price of the day (自找气受之 apps). It makes me feel bad because for the price I paid, that price under today's condition, is entitled to get complimentary seat selection and baggage allowance. I got nothing loh. Hard to not be frustrated. If only I waited for 1 more day. Ooouh, investments need patience (lesson learnt).

Like what every body says, budget airlines, you either love them or hate them (This sentence should be filed as an idiom in the Modern World Dictionary, authored by the Internet). The only really good experience with budget airline I experienced is the Singaporean Scoot. I was late for check-in for a flight from Sydney to Singapore, late for a few minutes. I was running with my luggage as the check-in counter for Scoot was the farthest away from where I entered the departure hall. The mistake was totally on me, being late (Part of me wanted to blame the bus to the airport which stopped at e-v-e-r-y single bus stop and somehow at each station freaking a lot of people had to go down and go up the bus). But still I was very lucky. The counter was closed but there were still 1 or 2 staffs there, I basically ran there with my luggage and a very sad face. The guy said he couldn't check me in, but he could check whether he could move me to tomorrow's flight. He checked for only a few minutes and said, yeah, I have moved you to tomorrow's flight, please don't be late again. Woaaah. Thank you so very much, I will never be late ever again (for every other flight onward).

If this was Airasia, this would not be the outcome. I was very surprised, because I wasn't charged any money. Just, maybe I got lucky because Scoot was really new that time. They only started their operation for a few weeks. Since I missed the flight that day, I also missed my connecting flight (Read: Airasia flight) from Singapore to KL. Of course I could not do anything about that, if it is Airasia, you are better off buying a new ticket than attempting to change the flight date. Good news is, I managed to get $5 tax back (can get a cup of coffee, slurp).

Frustration needs to be vented heh, in this case it is not like I could blame anyone except myself. But still, due to the recent event in which Airasia canceled my sis's and cousin's flight due to 'commercial reasons', I am starting to have a bad feeling regarding this airline (My Korean friend, whenever she heard of Airasia, just shook her head and said, 'never again'.)

In the future, I really wish for more competitors in this industry.