Melbourne

It's my last hour in Australia and I'm sitting in the Qantas lounge drinking champagne courtesy of John and all his first class travels. :) I want to try to catch up on my blog, but I'm already so behind it's very doubtful. Last time, we left off at me and Tom in Melbourne.

So after John took off, I wandered around Melbourne by myself. Melbourne's such a cool city. It was my favorite of the three (Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney).


I went to Victoria Market, which wasn't that great compared to China since you know everything there is made in China but just costs more because it's in Australia. It's so hard to pay normal prices after paying Chinese prices.


Then I walked down Swanston Street, shopping and sightseeing, and at Federation Square, I caught the Circle Tram which goes around the perimeter of Melbourne city center. It's free! Isn't that nice?


Melbourne during the day.


Melbourne at night.

I caught a free art exhibition called Experimental Playground on Southbank, which was really good and made me miss Magda since I thought she'd really love it.

The next day, I did the Great Ocean Road tour. The Great Ocean Road is along the southern coast area near Melbourne. Some Australian guy saw the Pacific Coast Highway in Cali and wanted to building something similar in Australia, but because of World War I, he couldn't. But after WWI ended, they used this project to give Australian soldiers something to do when they got back. It's actually really different from the PCH. Most of the area is preserved as a national park and so not a lot of development in the area, so in ways it's a lot nicer than the PCH.

*So I started this entry about a month ago and never finished it because I had to board the plane and then I got back Stateside and kind of abandoned this blog, but I'll finish it up now. Sorry to all for being such a bad blogger, but hey, I kept you entertained for a year and I only made $4 so deal with me on this.

Here are some pictures from the Great Ocean Road tour. I went with a tour company that left really early in the morning. There was me, a Filipino couple, a girl from Singapore who barely said a word, a Canadian guy, and a Dutch guy. And a British lady joined us later.


The Great Ocean Road memorial and sign.


The one-handed portrait I now do so well.


Koalas in the wild. They're hard to spot because they camouflage in the trees and they're ALWAYS sleeping, but they are out there all over Australia in the wild. They really are as cute as they seem.


The Southern Ocean. The water out here is freezing and the waves are so incredibly powerful because it all comes from Antarctica. It's amazing, though. You really feel the strength of the ocean.


I'm on top of the world...or the bottom, really.


The tour takes a detour off the coast inland. Australia is really beautiful because it's so untouched. There are only 20 million people here in all this space, so nature is able to thrive.


Here I am in the rainforest.


Hiding in a tree. The trees just fall on one another and start growing together so you have these cool holes.


Save the rainforest! I'm a tree-hugger.


After the rainforest, we went to the Twelve Apostles, which is what they call these natural limestone stacks. I guess there were 12 of them, but over time, they've crumbled due to the waves. I only counted 8 standing and one crumbled one (which we named Judas).


It's crazy because the shore is just basically been created by these strong waves pounding on it. I guess it's like the Grand Canyon (never been, had many therapy sessions dedicated to that topic...) but it's the ocean shaping a continent. Makes you feel very, very small.




Here is a where I picked up my really annoying "Icky moss!" habit. My tour group kept running into this other Japanese tour group along the Great Ocean Road and we noticed they kept doing the peace sign and saying "Mickey Mouse!" So we started doing it too, but they corrected us and told us it's actually "Icky Moss" (I made up my own spelling) and it means "Here we go" in Japanese. So after that, we all started doing it, and I still refer to picture taking as "Icky Moss time."


Jesus and the Twelve Apostles. (Fellow tourist from my group.)


We also went further down to other limestone stacks and stuff. I don't really understand the whole science of it, but it's really amazing when you see these waves pounding on the rocks and seeing how years, decades, centuries and eons of this has created these crazy shapes.


Water pounding on rocks. It's too hard to capture on camera.




It's so loud and cold.

It's weird being back home writing this and remembering being there. It's weird, but I can still remember standing on those cliffs and hearing the waves pounding against the rocks and the mist of the ocean air being pelted at your face by the strong winds. It's one of those moments when you're just so in awe of nature and God and feel so small and insignificant. I've been home for a couple of weeks now and I still find it so strange that I'm sitting here in Fullerton, CA and all over the world, there are people I love and places I've been where life goes on as usual. How all these things are a part of me and I have left a piece of me (or in the case of Thailand, I've left clothes, shoes, books, and make-up) yet here I am back in the town I grew up in and it's business as usual. It's a feeling so difficult to actually put in words.

Anyhow, that was Melbourne.

Remember 9/11

It's weird because 9/11 isn't a holiday, but it's a day of significance that when you look at the date today, you know it's the anniversary of something important. But you can't really say "Happy 9/11!" or anything, so it's weird. Yeah...I don't know how to describe it, but I feel like I should post something today. I don't have the energy to post all my Australian adventures yet, because I've done a lot and been really busy the past week and UGH...it's gonna take forever. Anyhow, back to 9/11. It's been six years since our lives have been turned upside down. To go back to September 10, 2001...

Once again, I'm posting a link to the Iraq casualties website. We're at 3,774, ya'll. What's going on?
http://www.icasualties.org/oif/BY_DOD.aspx

And here are the names of the 705 soldiers who died in Afghanistan so far:
http://icasualties.org/oef/Afghanistan.aspx

And of course, the 2,996 victims of 9/11:
http://www.september11victims.com/september11victims/victims_list.htm

May they all rest in peace, and God bless America.

The Chaser's War on W

So I'm not the only famous American in Australia this week. W is also here for the APEC conference in Sydney. (Although he thinks he's in Austria.) And while he's only been here for a couple days, he's already made quite a splash. Today, in a public speech, he thanked the Australian Prime Minister for hosting the OPEC conference. (OPEC is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries...uhm...) and thanked the Austrian troops for their participation in the war.

Uhm...dude, you're in AUSTRALIA and the organization is called APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation). Yeah, it's been a proud day for me as an American in Australia.

In other news, there's a TV show on public television channel, ABC, out here called The Chaser's War on Everything that my friend John is a huge fan of. I personally hate this show because the love to take the piss at Americans. But this week's season premiere wasn't bad since it only made fun of W, and he's fair game. Anyhow, for next week's episode, the Chaser boys pulled a stunt in which they got through the APEC security posing as the Canadian motorcade driving in Osama Bin Laden to the APEC conference. After getting through two security check points, the Chasers were arrested and charged.



The thing is...Canada isn't even a member of APEC! And their badges were completely fake. The network's legal team cleared the stunt because they thought there were enough precautions (such as the Canadian flags and security badges that stated that they were fake) that would prevent the Chasers from actually getting through the security points.

The Australian police stated today that the Chasers were lucky they weren't shot by the snipers posted in the area. The Chasers replied that the police were lucky that they weren't actually Al Qaeda...

Here are some other Chaser's clips courtesy of Youtube:







Enjoy! More on the rest of my trip later...

Me and Tom in Melbourne

G'Day Mates! I'm in Australia. I've never actually ever thought I'd come Down Under, but I had to come visit my friend First Class John. John has made several appearances on expatriatejen.com in the past in Beijing, London, Praha and Wien. Here's a John recap:


In Beijing with Cai.


At London Heathrow on my birthday.


In Praha on the worst river cruise in history.


On a overnight train to Vienna.


In Wien.

John also arranged for his friend Tom to show me around Melbourne.


Does Tom look a little familiar? YES, it's JOHN! (Yeah, I know, all white people look alike.) John surprised me in Melbourne Friday night. He had a business meeting in Tansmania and he flew up to visit me...and he flew BUDGET! *GASP* First class John flew on a BUDGET AIRLINE FLIGHT! He's still quite traumatized from the experience. Apparently there was a stewardess sitting in a jump seat right in front of him during take-off which disturbed him (He didn't realize before that flight attendants board the plane with you. He thought they were angels from the sky that just appeared from behind some curtain after take-off.) and they didn't give him champagne (how are you supposed to fly without champagne?!).

So Tom and I had a great time in Melbourne. We had dinner on Southbank at Number 8 and then watched the crazy flame torches that are along the river by the casino.


At Number 8.


Every hour there's a flame show with small flames like this.


But sometimes it's huge flames like that! If Melbourne ever burns down, I now know why.

Then we went into the casino and I bet my first $5 Aussie dollars that John gave me (well, actually, the first $5 John gave me in Beijing are gone because it was in my purse when it was stolen in the East End, but John gave me another $5 last winter when we were travelling Europe) on roulette. I thought I'd hit the jackpot, buy some magazines, start censoring like mad, and become the next Rupert Murdoch, but no such luck.

The next day, John and I took the tram to St. Kilda where we had breakfast on Acland Street and then John went from shop to shop getting gluten-free cookies.


Me and John on the beach.


Me!

John and I took the tram back to the city center or the CBD (Central Business District) as Aussies call it. We went to Swanston Street to David Jones, walked around, and walked back over to Southbank so John could get his bag and head to the airport since he had to go back to Brisbane.

Thanks for showing me around town, Tom. I think I like you better than John. ;D But of course I don't, because John flew BUDGET just for me!