Nonsensical Notebook: Sunday 31/3 and Monday 1/4, Melb

WOOO HOOOO I'm in Melbourne for my mid semester break! Just a short trip. 31/3 Sunday to 5/4 Friday. Already feel as if I'm out of time!!

On Sunday morning, I woke up at 4.30am (freakin early right?) to pack some last minute stuff (toiletries, etc.) and caught the 5.50am train to Central and then to the airport. Checked in at 6.45am and boarded Tiger Airways 8.15am.

I HATE the service on Tiger Airways Australia.The head air stewardess (I assume she's the head because she was the only one wearing an extra black jacket and she addressed the passengers on the intercom) on TT343 did not want to help me lift my cabin bag into the overhead compartment. When I asked for help, this is what she said.

"Are you pregnant?

"Uhm, no.."

"Then do it yourself. If it's too heavy, then you shouldn't have packed so much."

Bitch. It was under the maximum weight.

Anyway, I dozed for half the two hour flight and made friends with the Iran girl, who was also a UQ student, sitting next to me on the second half. When the plane landed, it was drizzling and windy and we had to cross the tarmac into the terminal. I waited for her to claim her luggage and we caught the Skybus together to Southern Cross, Melbourne City, where we split and Jun Jie met me.

We reached his residence in Clayton around 3.30pm. It takes about 45mins to travel from the city to his house. By the time we made plans of places to visit, it was already close to 4.30pm and was kinda useless to go down to the city since everything would either be close, or would close early since it was Easter.

So this is how I spent the rest of the afternoon:

In the evening, we went out for dinner and had Japanese food. It wasn't specially for me. The boys have no food at home. All they had was milk and cereal. The reason being most of them work part time in restaurants and they have no time to buy groceries and cook, and/or they have a meal f.o.c. on days they work.

Sim had promised to go down with me to the City the next morning, Monday, so that I would at least have company the first time I went down, but as it turned out, all the boys couldn't wake up. I went down alone! (with the help of the directions JunJie gave me the night before. I'm soooo glad I kept bugging him about it).

When I was in the city, I met up with Khairul, who was a colleague from Flying Colours Tuition Centre, and he showed me around! So nice of him.

Started the day with Nandos for brunch and then went into the State Library. I don't get it. So little books in libraries nowadays....

(Can you see the difference between in quality between my phone and camera?? Time to buy a new camera....)

There were lots of old books on display. And they also showed the transition of comics, etc. There were some books that were pretty large. About a meter's width across an open book by 60cm. This one caught my eye.

After the library, we walked over to the Melbourne Museum. I LOVE it! It was much larger than we had expected it to be so we only managed to explore half the place.

The dinosaur bones display was under the glass and I didn't see it until I was over it. My arms automatically went up, and my knees bent themselves, in response to the falling sensation. Even Khairul had his arms half out to catch me. HAHA he also only noticed it about the same time I did.

These South East Asian pythons are a long way from home. They're six and a half meters long!

Football fish

Fish that emit light to attract prey:

Lots and lots of bugs and beetles and spiders.

Never thought about it before. Shall try to use the correct terms at the correct time now.

GAHHH spiders live so long??

Technology is so advanced in the Melbourne Museum. Everything is so interactive.

This animal section of the museum has no labels or displays. Like the screen you see at the bottom picture, they have stand-alone screens around the centre of the room where you can move and point them at any of the animals displayed, and select them to read the information. Any at all! Unfortunately (or fortunately), it doesn't work on people walking around the room.

Ran out of energy, so needed refueling. Took the tram to QV and ate at Chocolateria San Churro. Had Strawberry Bizcocho; moist chocolate cake topped with strawberries, vanilla custard, melted milk chocolate and nuts.MMMMmmm!

Instead of going back to the museum, we decided that we needed to see other parts of the city, so we walked over one of the bridges across Yarra River to the South Bank.