Friday, August 21, 2009

away

three years (has it really been that long?!) ago, i spent 10 days in australia on the pretext of helping my cousin settle into a new environment and ended up having the time of my life.

ok fine, maybe not the time of my life, but it was still a pretty darn good 10 days.

no one i knew was around in melbourne at the time because it was summer and everyone was busy having nasi lemak and hokkien mee back home, so i went on day tours with my cousin and her family and went to woolworths every day to pick up one necessity or another that my aunt had forgotten to buy the day before.

some of you might not know this, but i was actually (conditionally) accepted into melbourne university back in 2005. the reason i didn't go in the end was that i couldn't send in my a-level results in time because singapore-cambridge a-level results are only released in march each year. my deputy principal did all she could to accelerate the process but it didn't happen. it wasn't a very happy period in my life.

when i went to melbourne that summer in 2006, it was a bittersweet experience. on one hand, i mourned the opportunity to live there and be part of the crazy huge foreign student population in the city. on the other, i was glad that i managed to visit melbourne anyway and get a glimpse of what could have been. i'm immensely grateful to my aunt and her family for bringing me there and letting me be part of their human convoy to send my cousin off.

i loved the place, with its vivid arts scene and quirky bohemian thing going on. the yarra river reminded me of singapore's waterfront, which was a favourite haunt of mine during junior college and is still on my "must go" list every time i head down for a break.

tomorrow, i'll be going to melbourne for a second time.

it won't be about woolworths and getting lost on the way to captain cook's house anymore. alot of my friends are now part of that crazy huge foreign student population that i wanted so badly to be with long ago, and i know exactly which museums (not bars, iamgoodgirl) i want to hit, which cafes i want to splurge hard-saved money on, and this:



is there anything more beautiful than vandalism that is art? if only our city council would do the same and commission street artists to fill kl with tourist-worthy art instead of those weak political messages on tnb power stations (although i have to say that the walls lining the monsoon drain gombak (gombak? or klang?) river at pasar seni are lookin' better by the day).

alright, i am off to fail an exam and pack for a cold, wet late winter in what is currently my favourite city in the world. favourite among whatever parts of the world i've been to la anyway.

see y'all when my cousin allows me to blog from her computer.

lishun at 6:40 AM

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