Archive for the 'Travel' Category
June 24 2008: Great Ocean Road, June 2008
Back from the country! And, when I say country, I do quite literally mean country. As a born and bred city girl, I tend to have heart palpitations every time I drive out of a city and find myself surrounded by nature, with cows (and other cattle) in paddocks alongside the state highway. All…that…fresh…air! It’s overwhelming to be able to step outside at night and realise that you can actually see the stars without smog and pollution shielding your view.
Needless to say then, I found myself intensely overwhelmed for the majority of the weekend. We were staying a little way out of Cobden, a tiny country town of less than 2000 residents (approximately in the middle of this map). We were half an hour from the Twelve Apostles, an hour from Warrnambool, and approximately three and a half hours from Melbourne. The area we were in is commonly known as the Great Ocean Road, a popular tourist route which winds its way through beautiful coastlines, startling cliff drops, amazingly canopied rainforests, and fertile farmland. It’s perfect for a weekend away, as it’s secluded, surrounded by beautiful scenery, and tourist attractions.
My stay with my girl friends was designed largely as a little pick-me-up post-examination period, with the additional benefit of being able to visit a part of my own state which I’d hadn’t had a chance to see before. That’s half the problem with living in a country like Australia - it’s so large and sparsely populated that one rarely gets the chance to see much outside of one’s immediate area.
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June 12 2008: Month-Long Break
I’m finding myself facing over a month of nothing but work (and one short weekend away) after having completed my last exam today. Finishing exams sounds more impressive than it actually is, considering that I had only two exams in the first place as my other subjects were marked with essays and other assessment pieces rather than exams, but allow me to indulge in an “YAY, NO MORE EXAMS!” type of euphoria.
In any case, I’m going to be working pretty much on a full-time basis over the next month (yay, dosh!). I haven’t got much else planned (more about that weekend away in two weeks!), but I figured I’d:
- Get started on some reading for my next unit of Chinese, so that I don’t spend hours hunched over Chinese texts with a bilingual dictionary in hand the night before an essay is due.
- Read more novels and non-fiction! I’ve really not been reading much over the past two months as I’ve been caught up in university work, so it’d be nice to immerse myself in the lives of others for awhile, whether imaginary or real.
- Catch up with all my different groups of friends. During term time, I really only see my university friends on a regular basis - other friends tend to placed on a back burner due to time constraints. Time to start scheduling myself in for dinners, coffees, a movie and some shopping…some one-on-one quality friend time!
- Start researching for a trip around China that I plan on taking at the end of this year, if all goes as planned and finances work out! Travelling around the perimeter of the entire country by crowded Chinese trains over the course of one month, reaching such farflung regions as Xinjiang and Haerbin.
- Job-hunting for next year. Like I said to Jem, my parents are adamant that I get a job once I graduate at the end of the year. I’m equally as adamant that I want to travel first. Thus, this results in my applying for jobs overseas as it combines both desires adequately.
Mmm, busy times ahead.
Filed under Life & Travel & Uni/Work with 5 Comments
June 10 2008: Sydney Trip (June 2008)
I’ve written a quick entry about my purchases while in Sydney, but thought that the trip itself deserved a bit more of a recap. Perhaps writing this will even inspire me to finally complete writing about my NZ trip which happened way back in February?
Saturday
Saturday night was originally the night that I had earmarked for attending Xuan’s eighteenth birthday celebrations, in a riot of colour and drunkenness in Sydney’s premier gay club district. Unfortunately, Xuan’s revelation a few days prior: “Hey Boobies…we’re going to be leaving at midnight because I have to take a taxi home with a friend”. Uh…what? Xuan you douchebag, I don’t get off the plane until 10pm, and won’t get into the city until 11pm, and you’re leaving at midnight? DOUCHEBAG!
So, I resigned myself to a night in. Safely ensconsed in my cousin’s high-rise bedsit in the heart of Sydney, I was slowly drifting to sleep when I got a call at about 1am. “BOOBIES! I’M STILL OUT AND DANCING, COME OUT!” Oh, thanks for the notice. >.< I didn’t end up going because: a) I was already half asleep; b) the others were already asleep; c) I couldn’t be arsed getting dressed and finding my way to Oxford Street; and d) I had wake up early the next day for a special event. Sorry Xuan, but no dice. Your birthday present (a.k.a. silicon cock sleeve with extra fun tidbits) is in the post!
Filed under Travel with 11 Comments