Crawling Pt. II

Then again, he stealthily embraces his power to stay living in this savage atmosphere. It ain’t his first time that he has to pass throu’ this shit. But he stops just to find out what he missed so far. It is his friend, the fragrance of emptiness. Hunting him with no stop. It’s so fierce to face by himself. The air that he breathes is so black. He can’t reach it. He still tries until that moment finally arrives. And there it is, the moment of freedom.

Melbourne/Hobart Trip

Hi people, this is a very late post on my short holiday down south last January. A lot has been happening lately and I hardly have the time to post up stuff on my blog these days. So what I'm going to do is to summarize my activities over the past 2 months.

So when my exams ended, I stayed at home pretty much the whole month of December. I did not manage to work much at the pool due to my injured elbow from the fall of my bike in November. But it was a good rest nevertheless. And after my hike up Mt Kosciuszko, I went to Sydney for a couple of days and spent my New Year's Day there with a friend and her friends who all happen to be South Americans. So it was a good time listening to them conversing in Spanish. I didn't manage to go to the harbor to enjoy the spectacular fireworks display because of the few million people crowding the area. But I still want to do that one day. Hopefully.

Queen Victoria Market. A lot of cheap fresh produces are sold there. Fruits there are half or one third the price of the ones being sold in Canberra.

Fresh oysters. 12 for $11.

And a couple of days after that I went down to Melbourne to get a haircut from a friend and also to stock up on Malaysian food. Melbourne has so much more Malaysian food compared to Canberra. And they're so much cheaper too. For example, if I were to buy a plate of Char Kuey Teow here in Canberra, it will cost me about AUD $15. But over there in Melbourne, I can easily get a plate for maybe AUD $8 or so.

I ordered a Nasi Lemak Sotong over there and didn't really like it at all. Maybe I ordered the wrong type of nasi lemak, but I'll never visit this shop again.

This shop on the other hand, is one of the better and cheaper ones in Melbourne in my opinion. Had beef ball noodles, kuey teow soup and not sure what else over there. The food's pretty good and the price very reasonable. But do not try their cendol. It's bad.

Had pasta at an Italian place somewhere outside the city. This whole bowl of noodles only cost like AUD $13 or $14. Enough to feed 3 people. (Still had my long hair then)

I also did a bit of sightseeing down there in Melbourne when I visited the Crown Casino and loss AUD $20 gambling and went up Mt Dandenong which is somewhere on the east side of Melbourne city. The view from up there was pretty cool. And the best thing was that it was easily accessible by public transport.

Crown Casino

The view up Mt Dandenong. I can actually see the city's skyscrapers in the far distance.

Tried the so called 'best pie' in Melbourne. Wasn't too bad.

A very pretty looking cottage.

After Melbourne, I decided to drop by Hobart, Tasmania for a couple of nights just because I managed to grab a couple of cheap flight tickets. It only cost me AUD $45 for a return ticket to Hobart from Melbourne. So I thought, why not?

Hobart is a pretty quiet city. And I would think that Hobart has actually less things to do compared to Canberra. And people say Canberra's boring. Wait till they see Hobart. And unfortunately for me, when I was down in Hobart, the weather wasn't really that favorable. It rained pretty much every day and the weather was very foggy. Because of that, I didn't manage to see too much of Mt Wellington which is just a 20 minute drive from Hobart city which supposedly offers a very spectacular view of Hobart city and the ocean. But I still managed to get up there courtesy of my old high school friend's friend who had a car. Very fun times up there with them.

A very downcast day.

And the roads there in Hobart are REALLY hilly! Very good for jogging and exercising.

Seafood; fish, scallops, squid and chips.

But I did managed to do a couple of other things including a visit to a wildlife park to pat koalas, feed kangaroos and having a look at a couple of Tasmanian Devils and other wildlife, a short visit to Wrest Point Casino to get free hot chocolate, a tour around a beer brewery with a session of beer tasting, a trip to the Cadbury Factory where (unfortunately once again) they stopped organizing actual factory tours due to hygienic reasons and a short lunch cruise. The weather in Hobart was pretty cooling and a little chilly at night but it was all good because I'm from Canberra and the weather in Canberra's much colder. Even as I type this out, the weather outside is just about 16 degrees and it's only 8.30pm and it is still meant to be summer. The minimum temperature is going to be single digits in the coming week as autumn approaches.

Bonorong Wildlife Centre

A koala bear up close.

A kangaroo and her joey.

Me feeding the kangaroo. They have buckets of kangaroo food along the track. So you can just grab a handful and offer it to the kangaroos.

Cascade brewery. One of the oldest brewery in Australia I think.

Tasting the beer. Entry to the brewery includes 3 free cups of any beer of your choice.

Cadbury Factory

Each visitor will get a free bar of Cadbury chocolate upon entering the factory.

Because we can't tour the factory, the whole process was explained to us in a room.

They also had tasting of the raw products used in the making of the chocolate.

Overall, Hobart's a nice place to go and chill. Prices of things in general are slightly more expensive than Melbourne but still cheaper than Canberra (some are more expensive). I would love to have another trip back down there and visit the other parts of Tasmania. Maybe a road trip around Tasmania would be a good idea.

The view from the halfway point up Mt Wellington

The road up the mountain. The trees were really really green.

A couple of random shots of gardens

Salamanca Square

Wrest Point Casino, the tallest building there in Sandy Bay, a short 20 minutes walk from Hobart. Also one of the few buildings that are still open after 5pm.

A random duck crossing sign.

The University of Tasmania...

...and this is the kind of view they get everyday

Look at how big the portion of my steak was. It was huge!

Right after my 1 week holiday stint in both Melbourne and Hobart, I had my 3 week vacation program with KPMG Canberra. Got thrown into a team that was working on an external audit at a client's place which was pretty cool. Did a bit of other stuff as well while I was there. The people in the firm were all really friendly and nice. The pay was also pretty sweet. For my 3 week program, I got paid AUD $24 an hour and worked 7.5 hours a day for 5 days a week. So that three week stint pretty much got me about AUD $2700. Not bad huh?

But sadly, on the last day of the program, everyone else was offered a job offer except me. This is because they were all Australian citizens and I was the only international student on a student visa. And because KPMG Canberra's work consists of mainly government related contracts, I would need citizenship status in order to get security clearances for the various departments that I might need to work in. So that means I will have to start applying elsewhere.

I'm currently about to start Week 4 of classes tomorrow. So far, it's going pretty alright. Assignments are starting to pile up and I'm going to be even busier the next couple of weeks. I want to try to get as much work done as soon as possible because I won't be here in Canberra during my 1 week mid semester break in Week 8. I've already purchased my flight tickets to Adelaide and will be there for 4 nights from the 29th of March. The tickets weren't too expensive. It COULD be cheaper. Altogether I spent about AUD $150 for a return ticket to Adelaide. I have to stopover in Melbourne first though because TigerAirways (a budget airline) do not offer direct flights from Canberra to Adelaide. They use to do that but I think they terminated that line due to the lack of passengers. There are other flights flying directly from Canberra to Adelaide but they are pretty expensive starting from AUD $150 to over $300 one way.

So Adelaide should be quite fun. I might just head to the Gold Coast and Brisbane after my exams in June. Have to see if any of my friends are up for it.

I guess that's pretty much it for now. I'll probably update my blog again next month if I have the time or if anything interesting happens to me.

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Crawling Pt. I

In a morning of a glory, a boy is learnin’ to soar. Thou’ he knows well that it is nonsense to do. B’cause there is an element missing. Dat it even ain’t his failure. He finds the truth. He ain’t got wings to help him leaving his land. It’s gettin’ worse when he is pushed away by the miscellaneous powers. It is land dat suffers his breath. There is no comparison for what the situation holds him down. It seems like the place where he stands on is a quicksand. He somehow gazes at nowhere even he has vision. It is obviously deed for him dat he gets totally fatigued…

Once again, he tries. Technically he tries.

But it is out of his capability to stand on his ground. But still he tries until he runs out his breath. Until his blood stops running thru’ his vein.

The Real Living Mutants

When I was a kid, I had my own fantasy. Just like the other kids, it was a fantasy which is really unrealistic yet fun. I always dreamt of being a mutant, just like X-Men. Having sharp claws, reading others’ mind, and other stuffs that I really adored is my mere hope though it sounds kinda weird. But hey, I was a kid :p

In X-Men itself, the mutant becomes minor group where they have to survive within the situation that push them in the corner of society (human one). They indeed are divided into two sides. One becomes the protagonist. Those who become protagonist are Mr.X, Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, etc. And the other who is bad guy alliance. They are Magneto, Mystique, etc (well, I ain’t a bad guys fan so I am just able to mention two). I did have a fantasy which I had one of those powers to kick ass people that I hate.

Well actually this fantasy still remains until now even though I have “2” for my fore age number. But the difference is the though between what this movie projects as fiction one and what its relation with the real minor group in America (well, then i was thinking that it doesn't only happen in America, but i just want to specify it).

As I mention above that this movie tells about distinguished people who have special ability that doesn’t exist in normal humans. That is what I mean with the message of this movie as fiction one. Since we know that so far, there are no scientists saying that these creatures (mutants) exist. It is just a movie to amuse public. Therefore, it entertains those who somewhat love fiction (such as me).

However beyond the message telling that it is fiction movie, I believe that there is something behind that, something that could be the image of America (since it comes from America). Let us see what this movie displays about mutants as minority. I see that it could be the common issue with the “real” minority in America. Yes, we’re talking about Blacks, Chicanos, gay, and their friends. If we look back in history, we will find out that there were movements acted by those communities. There were Malcolm X, Virginia Wolff, and Milk. Those are people who wanted to stand up on their own ground and stated that though they weren’t as much as the majority groups but still they have rights to pursue their dream. This could be in the same way with the explicit issues in X-Men.

In X-Men, we could see the movement from mutants though it is in diplomatic way or even in radical one. I say diplomatic since there are mutants such as Jean Grey and Mr. X who try to set their community in the same level with human’s. In X-Men I, we see the scene where Jean was having a forum with human debating and negotiating about mutant’s rights. We could see as well in X-Men III which there is Beast as Mutant Ministry. It shows us that these mutants want to have the same rights with human and delete the strata of society in a way to avoid war and victims. And as we know that the women movement had similarities point with this one, there were some American female writers who tried to break the women discrimination at that time. They wrote to speak what they couldn’t express. In the other hand, we also have mutants who want to dominate and hold the supreme in a radical way. Of course they are the antagonist ones. They do whatever it takes in order to put their society above human being. They lost a fight to pursue what they’ve dreamt of.

However, I couldn’t stop thinking of what really happens in our society. What should be spoken is sometimes forbidden. There might be an opinion that there will be brighter day for everybody. But I just don’t find that shiny and promising path for those minority groups. Hopefully it is about the time to wait that moment. A moment to make a move.