Singapore was hoooot – but this was very conducive to me staying in the shopping mall and attempting not to shop. Su offered me the choice of “strenuous day” or “relaxing day” on my first day in Singapore. This was the result of “relaxing day”:
So very lucky I didn’t choose strenuous day, huh? I also had an overwhelming sense of deja vu for 3 days in a row, as we walked through the same shopping mall each day… to get an ice cream sandwich:

I did however, make it to Raffles Hotel to have a Singapore sling, so that’s one off the list for ‘trying the local alcoholic specialty’.

I arrived in London on Friday at 6am in the morning. Luckily for me, lots of sleep in the plane meant that I wasn’t jetlagged. However, standing in the line at immigration for 1+ hours was definitely trying at that time in the morning! I managed to make it to my friend’s place, and promptly had a nap.

We flew out to Munich on the Friday evening.. so much flying for one day. We stayed in this cute little hotel called the “Art Hotel Munich”. Each of the doors to the rooms had interesting abstract art painted on them, and there were paintings throughout the hallways. Very cool! The breakfast they provided was also top-notch – cold cuts, bread rolls, coffee and nutella up the wazoo. It’s very important to have a filling breakfast before heading to Oktoberfest (:

We got up in the wee hours of the morning to get to oktoberfest at 7:30am. That’s right – AM. The beer halls don’t open till 10am, however, by 8am there was already a large crowd. Picking a beer hall is an art form – it will dictate the sort of crowd you will have. We expressly avoided the Hofbrau hall as it’s full of bogan Aussies :P Paulaner was a much safer option – it’s where the locals go.

The beer isn’t served till 12 noon – following the tapping of the keg. This is done with much fanfare – a whole procession of people come in and a band plays and they say lots of things in German.. and suddenly, there’s beer (: We stayed there for most of the first day, and after a 3 steins (litres) of beer, I was feeling pretty toasty.

The next day, I opted to give my liver a short respite and didn’t head to the beer halls straight away. Instead, I talked a few ppl (which ended up being everyone) to head to Munich town centre to have a look. We manasged to get to Marienplatz in time to see the glockenspiel thing at noon… that was pretty cool. We also headed to the Ratskeller – according to my friends this is a pretty famous restaurant in Munich. I couldn’t resist trying the Lowenbrau  oktoberfest bier:

We headed back to the beer halls after lunch and found tables outside. My friends taught me to play the drinking game “Kings”… this was a bad bad bad idea – I completely lost count of how much beer I drank after two games. Later on, we headed inside the beer hall… they had music going and for the second day in a row, I found myself dancing on the tables – drinking beer and shotting jager. This was not a good idea, seeing as I hadn’t fully recovered from the previous day. And so, for the third time in my life – I threw up thanks to excessive alcohol intake. But hey, if you’re going to throw up due to excessive drinking – oktoberfest is the place to do it.

And if I hadn’t gone outside, we wouldn’t have seen this awesome sign:

And that’s what they were serving – cow in a bun (;

Looking back, I’m surprised that there wasn’t more fanfare considering it was the 200th year of oktoberfest. (Blind dumb luck on my part for picking this year to go :P). I did meet a german girl around my age and she was heaps surprised that I had travelled all the way from Australia to attend oktoberfest as it is “normal” for them. Getting back to London, we spent a day recovering. I can honestly say that after 6+ litres of beer over the weekend, I am well and truly sick of beer (for now).

I haven’t planned any of my time in London, so it’s been a bit of a mish mash trying to decide what to do. I decided to go to Wimbledon on Tuesday as it’s fairly close to get to from my friend’s place. I did a tour of the grounds and checked out the museum and now know a lot more about tennis than I ever intended to. I’ve also finally worked out the bus/tube/train connections after hopping on the wrong bus on the first day.

Fiji sunset

This is probably my favourite photo from the trip. I took this on our second night in Fiji, whilst we were having dinner.

Overall, I had a great time in Fiji. It was a really different sort of holiday for me as I’m used to being on the go, having places to be and sights to see. This was like, you get to the resort and there’s nothing to do. Well, not nothing – there’s obviously activities and such, but no one’s forcing you and it’s not like you have to do anything. This would have been fine, except I’m the sort of person that can’t sit still for 5 mins and when there’s no TV or internet it can prove to be really trying. I spent most nights reading (I finished “Neuromancer” by William Gibson and “Gene of Isis” by Traci Harding) and we also borrowed Scrabble one night although my brain was too mushed to be any good. I’m glad I brought my eee pc as “Man vs. Wild” provided some much needed entertainment. It’s currently my favourite show and I keep raving about it.

Anyways, the days were usually spent swimming, snorkelling or kayakking. I’d never been snorkelling before so that was a great experience for me. I love not having to come up for air and we saw lots of fish, sea cucumbers and even a blue starfish! I would love to go snorkelling again as I have my own gear now and it’s pretty easy. I also enjoyed kayakking although it nearly killed my arms. My friend accidentally let my kayak drift out to the middle of the cove (!!!) while I was grabbing an oar so we paddled her kayak out to mine, and then I had to paddle against the current to get back to shore. That’s right… against the current, and the current was damn strong! My arms ached so much the next day, but I went kayakking again anyways. Might as well make the most of it right?

I am glad I only went for five days though. I think any longer and I would’ve just gone stir crazy. I’m not sure if I’d go back for another holiday. I can see the appeal of just lazing about in your bure or going to the beach for days, but I like seeing sights and learning about cultures and stuff. All I learnt in Fiji is “Fiji time!” and “Bula!” LOL. Nah, I think it’s that, after five days, no matter how great the beach is I do want to do something else.

Anyways, this was only meant to be a quick post to say that I’m going houseboating today :D Well, actually… I’m going to the cricket first (my Christmas present to Mike) and then we’ll be going houseboating. But Manda, Travis, Mr Pal and Kirsten will be getting there about mid-day. We’ll only be there for 4 days, but with Big Day Out on Thursday and everything I won’t be home till Friday afternoon. Hopefully with lots of photos.

Then there’s things like, the number of people. It makes sense that going to a touristy area that you’d see heaps of people, but to be honest, you never get those sorts of numbers in Sydney. The only time I ever experience such crowds is at the Easter Show. A lot of services are much more easily available as well, and they’re very accomodating of tourists. So speaking English is fine and you never feel too out of depth. The only real time it’s a hinderance not to speak the local language is when you’re in the hotel room flicking through the TV channels to find something to watch and the only channels you can understand are CNN and Eurosport. It is kind of funny to watch things you already know in another language though. I managed to catch The O.C., Con Air, Cold Case and something else I’ve now forgotten in foreign languages and was thoroughly amused.

Of course, my first day back to work was met with delays on my train line due to some overhead wiring problem or something. And I was standing at the platform thinking ‘Now I know I really am home’. Then, last night I was woken up at 3:20am because a moth was flying erratically around my room. Idiot. I couldn’t catch it so I opened my door and turned on the light outside. I hope it’s flown out and died.

Anyways, just wanted to say, hope everyone takes care and I’m missing you all already. For those I promised to e-mail, be sure to check your inboxes… I’ll mail whenever I get the chance… or my urge to go on the ‘net becomes too much. Send me lots of mail :P Want to hear all about you guys as well.

Take care, and see you all in six weeks.
:D :D

I did end up making it to Vinci’s 21st. But that’s something I wouldn’t have missed unless I was in hospital on my death bed or something. It was pretty good – saw quite a few people that I hadn’t seen in a while and got to see what they’ve been up to. It was quite fun, she had some games and stuff that everyone had to participate in. And the whole masquerade ball thing was good anyways. I left early, but still got to hear all the speeches. Speeches at 21st’s are usually quite amusing – considering there’s always different groups of people and you get an interesting glimpse into how someone you know is perceived by other people. Lots of fun in all.

I pretty much slept all of Sunday. Had to wake up at 11am because Ray came to pick up a book, but I went back to bed at 12 and then slept till like 6:30pm. I sort of woke up rather disorientated (disoriented?) because it was dark outside and you know when you’ve sort of put your body clock off-kilter… it was like that. I had something to eat, put away some stuff and then went back to bed LOL. I think the rest did help heaps though. I’m still a bit sick now but the sore throat seems to be gone and mainly the stuffy nose is persisting. It’s screwing with my asthma though and I really don’t like that.

Other than that, I haven’t been up to much at all. Work is work. New guy’s started, he seems alright. I bought a webcam for my computer last week. It seems to be working pretty well. The only people I know with webcams are Su and Pal, who are overseas, but it’s a very novel way of communicating. It’s also kind of weird because I sort of forget that it’s on and I’ll be doing things and suddenly think ‘Crap! They saw that!’. Still, it’s pretty fun.

Besides that, just packing a few things for Eurotrip ’06. I am a bit worried what with all the talk of terrorist plots in the UK and all the extra security precautions required to get in and out of the country. Plus the whole not allowed to bring hand luggage thing. But I’ve bought my tickets and I’m intent on going so even being blown out of the sky shouldn’t hinder me. There’s no point really worrying about it unless it actually does happen anyways I guess. I am certainly aware that I need to be really alert and on the ball while I’m by myself but it should be ok. My torch arrived on Friday, so that’s one less thing to worry about. I wanted to bring a compass, but maybe I should trade that in for a GPS system LOL. Still deciding whether or not it’s worth bringing my PSP on the trip. I can load photos and stuff onto it though, and that’d certainly be awesome. It’d make it much easier to transport the photos, but then I need to bring a USB cable and that as well. Too much to consider.

I get it, I really do. I’m lucky that all I need to think about for planning the trip is when I want to go. I can get time off work, or just quit my job if need be and I have saved the money so I could leave now if I wanted. And I get that that’s not the case for everyone. And it’s difficult to get parents to agree and it’s difficult to budget and it’s difficult to work it into your general life plan. That’s fine. But when you’re trying to plan, it’s a bloody headache.

So what does that mean? Well, I was going to travel alone. But mum said that going to Europe in late Oct/early Nov is not a good idea because it’s gets pretty cold. And I don’t like the cold. Plus it gets dark early so won’t have as much time to see stuff. That’s a valid argument really. Which means I should travel in September, before going to Hong Kong for my aunt’s thing. FINE. That’s fine. Except Animania is on the 30th Sept/1st Oct. o_O

Well, I pretty much got that choice taken away from me anyways. My parents were keen on going to Central Europe (Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, etc.) but they can only travel in September. So I can either, go in Oct, by myself for 24 days in freezing cold and darkness. Or I can go in Sept in ‘relative’ warmth and have some companions for at least half the trip. Cos they’re not interested in France, Germany or Italy. What kind of loser travels by themself? Me. That’s who. So it looks like I’ll be going on a 12 day tour of Western Europe by myself and then a 13 day tour of Central Europe with my parents before flying to HK for about 5 days. This is all fine and dandy except it means I miss Animania.

This was going to be my last Animania, as I’ll be working full-time next year and I really doubt I’ll have the time or the energy to do it again. Even more so, band is meant to be playing and I don’t really want to miss that opportunity. And this is why not doing what’s best for yourself gets you into trouble. If I was to go in Oct by myself I probably wouldn’t enjoy it so much. Fuck. I don’t know. Sometimes it’s better to have no choice. What’s really shitting me is that all this time spent planning and re-planning is really upsetting me and it’s distracting me from studying. Maybe I’ll just fail Comp Eng and not go anywhere at all.

Actually, that brings me to another thing. I had a hard time deciding whether or not to start in July. I was given the option to start mid-year, as I’ll have finished university by then. But I was also rather hesitant to do so. I’ve spent most of my life biting off more than I can chew and after 11 years of school and 5 and a half years of uni, I’m ready to take a break. I’ve got my heart set on going to Europe sometime in September. I don’t have time to plan it right now, but dad’s picked up a few brochures for me so that should be good. I think I’ll just hold off my ‘career’ for six months and take this time to myself. It’ll give me a chance to maybe figure out what other stuff I want to do with my life once uni is over. Of course, I can’t really think about that until uni is actually over. And that requires me to pass my last two subjects.

So anyways, I plan on going away in September, probably on a Contiki tour or something similar. I’ve talked to a few people and some are interested in going but that’s dependent on circumstances. So I’m gonna put it out there (to my limited readership) and say – if you’re free in September, have a few grand to spare and would like to see Europe then I WANT YOU. Well, I want you to come with me :P Even better if you’ve got the time now to compare all the packages LOL. But if not, then I’m happy to do that part once I’ve finished thesis. And no, I’m not fussed if you’re a guy or a girl… as long as you’re not gonna try dodgy things in the hotel room. If you’re interested then contact me sometime within the next month so I can look into which places to visit, I think the tours go to different cities. Oh, and I refuse to go on those camping tours even if they are cheaper.