11th November
We woke up early in the morning for more sight-seeing, going to places that are accessible by the free CAT service (a free bus service that goes around the city), and Perth Mint was one of our short listed destinations. I guess most people will skip this place unless they have a lot of time in Perth, heehee... cos there's nothing much to see unless you're interested in making gold coins.

The Perth Mint
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Me and my mum outside Perth Mint, with statues of people digging gold during the gold rush.
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Family shot outside Perth Mint (we didn't go in but only took photos outside..=P)
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We traveled to the harbour which was near the sea and went up the Swan Bells. This was a landmark of Perth city built during the year of millenium.. facing the sea, the city and the roads. Therefore the view was fabulous up there, it served the same purpose as our Merlion tower in Sentosa. (We didn't realise that we can get the same view from King's Park then)

The Swan Bells
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This is the Swan Bells, prominent landmark of Perth City.
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Me and my sis with Perth City behind us.
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Me with the bells ringing behind
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In the evening, Hock Sui brought us to a shopping centre in the suburb for 'late night shopping'. In Perth (and many parts of Australia I think), most of the shops close at 5pm and the streets are usually deserted by 8pm. The only days when people can do their shopping in the evenings are on Thursday nights (in the suburbs) or Friday nights (in the city). Do you realised that we are usually doing 'late night shopping' for the whole of our life? The lack of nightlife in Perth is somehow quite daunting for youngsters like me, if I ever migrate.

This is also the first and only shopping centre that I've seen and been to in Perth. Most of the shops there are in rows along the streets and they don't 'group' so many shops into a single building like our Takashimaya, Jurong Point etc...

Was excited about the shopping trip initially, till I realised that the only things worth buying are foodstuff as the clothes there are similar to what we have here yet in bigger sizes and its more expensive there. Read this: I didn't buy any single piece of clothes when I was there.

Inside the shopping centre..
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It's kind of shocking, but we took photos inside the toilets as well! The restrooms for the ladies in Perth are somehow quite posh, especially at the train stations and big shopping centres. It's as big as a five-room flat with comfortable chairs, and so far I haven't been to any place with dirty toilets when I was there. All the toilets were kept really clean..

This is literally a 'restroom'. There's TV, microwave?? and sofa inside for you to rest your legs after shopping.
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Cute toilet bowl, one for the mum and the other is for the kid.
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Family shot taken inside the shopping centre, doesn't the christmas tree looks familiar? Christmas decorations is the same everywhere I guess..
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12th November- Day 5

It was the first sunny day since we arrived in Perth, no rain or strong wind and we didn't need to put on our jackets for once. I was glad! Even though our apartment was just acrossed King's Park (a prominent landmark of Perth city), we didn't make our trip there till this day. The weather was just nice for our stroll in the park, thus we spent most of the day just relaxing in there.

The best part was the wonderful view we discovered on top of the ridge, we could see the skyscrapers of the Perth City, cars on the various freeways (known as highways here) and the river.


Bird eye's view of the city area from King's park, it was wonderful!
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Look at the scenery!
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People playing and having picnics in the park, it was a weekday...wooo, laid-back and relaxed life unlike Sg.
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Bright and sunny, glad to have such good weather for our trip to the park.
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It's spring going into summer, nice flowers in the park!
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Fremantle's fish and chips had made its name, therefore nobody should leave the place without having to try it. There were quite a few restuarants famous for fish and chips, and we went to Cicerallo's, which was always crowded with people as the food there was cheap and nice. It's actually fast-food concept so food ordered were wrapped up in big pieces of paper (like mahjong paper) and they eat the chips with vinegar and salt. Being Singaporeans, we can't stomach the food without the chilli.. so we bought a few packets of sauce for 30cts each. Chilli sauce is an amenity that doesn't come for free in Perth, usually they charge a price if you request for it. That's when I realised how much I've grown used to having chilli in my life.

Us enjoying the famous fish n chips from Fremantle, and my face kena cut off thanks to the photographer- my sister!
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Nice fish n chips eaten halfway before we remembered about taking photographs
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--Note--
What you see below is the LAST 3 days of my trip in Perth, it's almost 6am and I must sleep soon!! Think the photos are enough to make the page load really slowly, will be back to upload the rest soon. Meanwhile, enjoy what you see here..heheee. =)

13th November- Day 6

It's weekend, and the sun was shining brightly. We traveled further away from the city area and went on a short road trip to the winnery and chocolate factory. There were several winneries in Perth and there were so many rows of grape vines growing in neat lines along the road leading to them.

Entrance to the winnery
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Family shot at the Houghton winnery
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Definitely worth visiting, as you can taste 10 different wines for free. =)
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Wine is cheap at Perth, so we were really looking forward to the trip to the winnery. We bought 4 bottles of white wine there, and each only costing less than S$15. If there's no quota of bringing them back to Sg, we would have bought more. What's even better, we get to taste all the different wines they sell in the winnery for free before buying. So if you really love drinking wine and often have nothing better to do, you can go drink the wine for free at the winnery whenever you want to. =)

Tasting of wine, mmmm...
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After buying your wine from the winnery, enjoy a picnic on the beautiful lawn outside.
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Next stop was a chocolate factory but it wasn't as big scale as the one Charlie visited, so we only stopped by for a short while. There's free chocolate as well, and of course we were delighted to get some of those too!


Chocolate factory!
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chocolates for free tasting.. freebies again!
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A scenic place near another winnery
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Stopping by to take photos next to the river
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It was a tiring day as we spent a lot of time traveling on the road (for our dedicated chauffeur especially), we sent Dad off at the airport (he went back 2 days before us) after the visit to the winnery and choco factory. We had a early dinner at a vietnamese restaurant at Northbridge, went for ice cream Gelato, took a walk around Northbridge area and went back to rest just as night was falling.


Gelato at Northbridge, sighboard of adult shop just nextdoor.
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14th November- Day 7 (Last day of fun!)

Hock Sui came to pick us up early to show us his training ground, and his home for the past months- the Jandakot Airport. Other than the Cessnas for the SIA trainees, there are rows and rows of small planes in the airfield for people taking their private flying license, the Australians can actually pick up flying as their hobby as young as 13 years old!

We went to the cafe which was just overlooking the runways to have our brunch, looking at the cute little airplanes taking off and making their landings. Got a lot more info about his job from this trip and finally able to visualise what he had been telling me all these months about his training.

SIA trainee pilots fly these planes
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All the planes waiting in line at the aviation field
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Beach babes alert!! Woah..one of the highlights of the day was a trip to the beach. After a week of rain, we experienced really good weather during our last few days at Perth, but really didn't expect the beach to be this crowded. It was really a very spectacular sight at Cottlesloe beach.. my jaws practically dropped open when I first saw the number of people there. If you think that Sunset Bay is happening, it can never be comparable to this.

The temperature was about 31 degrees, and kept on rising when we drove near. Becos... all the females are in bikinis, and there were hundreds of them sun-tanning, chatting with friends and they were even in their beach-wear when crossing the road or in the shops. It wasn't a nudist beach, just full of young people, but it was an eye-opener for me.


Spectacular sight
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Check out all the babes in bikini..
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We were really the only people in T-shirt and jeans, felt really out of place that we tore our eyes away and went off soon. Initially I thought of hitting the beach in Perth, but due to the excessive rain and the really strong wind on the first few days we were there, thought that it'll be quite impossible to do any sun-tanning. Really regretted that we were not ready for the waters, as I really had the strong urge to run into the big waves then. Sigh... Gold Coast another time maybe?

Busy drooling at the hunks and babes
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After the feast of the eyes, we went for a seafood marathon to have a feast for our stomachs. Since it's already our last day there, we wanted to try the fresh and cheap seafood in Perth, so Hock sui drove us all over the town to fulfil our mission.

First stop was at Fremantle again, but this time round we had salmon and lobster (yummy!) at Kaili's, a restuarant recommended by the lonely planet- guidebook for the travellers. Was too busy eating to take any photos. =P

Our second stop was to try out snow crab at a resturant, it's a exquisite breed of crab that has totally white shell if you've seen it before. We were already quite full but really wanted to have a taste of it, so we specially ordered one crab to share between the 4 of us. It was really gooooood, coated with fried salted egg and the meat was extremely fleshy. Usually the scrawny crab legs that we get here has only a bit of meat ( if you're lucky), but each of the legs of the snow crab was thicker than a human thumb and all filled up with meat!! We were quite sure that we couldn't get this in Sg, so keeping the Singaporean spirit in heart, we ordered another one to 'da pao' back home. The management of the restuarant was really amazed when we told them that we wanted to bring it back to Singapore. Heehee.. what you see below was the crab that we ate, costing AU$60.

Delicious snow crab that we had.. definitely a delicacy!
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The 4 of us having the seafood feast..
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We had chilli mussels again, our second time there and our last stop at Perth. It was already night time as we were quite full after the crab feast, so we went back to the apartment to watch the finals of the 'Australian Idols' before going out again. I must say that the two Australian finalists had really good vocals, our Sylvester and Taufik really no fight man.. =P


My mum and I while waiting for our chili mussels..
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Night shot of Perth City. Breathless!
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15th November- The last day

Finally boarded our plane "early in the morning" around 8.30am. On the way to the airport, I noticed that it was only slightly past 7am but the sun was already halfway up the sky, just like Singapore when it's 11am!! Of course, I really had a very wonderful trip in Perth, but was eager to be on my way home too, on SQ 224.

SQ224
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Arghh.. first blogger was down and lagging badly during publishing. And now it's the tagboard, my readers can't even complain that I'm missing in action (MIA-ing)!!

Bad bad tagboard...

Anyway, I've been a bad blogger too, cos a good one never keep his/her readers waiting. I shall face the wall and repent later. Haha, the fact is that I'm too into the holiday mood and I'm too lazy to start posting up photographs I've taken in Perth. Excuses, excuses.. Tsk tsk. I've taken about 500 photographs and I must get my butt off the couch to sort them out soon! =P

One last blog before I leave in exactly 12 hour’s time. If you have seen this entry and looking for updates, think you can come back a week later, thank you very much. =)

Happy Deepavali, Selamat Hari Raya Adilfitri to everyone in advance!

Heehee, I think my happy mood is getting infectious. A few days ago I actually went back to hall humming and singing after my last lesson in NIE for this semester, I faked fire-drill in an attempt to wake up the two sleepy-heads in my room (it was already 10.40am!) and then went to do my laundry early in the morning. Was just in such good mood (my roomie can verify this), I wonder why. But in fact after my exams was over on Sat, I felt kind of lost and there's a slight feeling of sadness. Believe me or not, this always happen after the exams. Hmm..so in a way, I’m really sadistic, I love to torture myself such that the only motivation for me on a normal weekday is catching “The Champions” at 9pm daily. Ha!

Anyway, I spent most of the weekend packing and shopping. Oh, how I love the suitcase! It’s the first time I’m really using one as all my previous trips overseas 'coincidentally' have something to do with 'cheonging' into either the mountains or the sea, so I would be mad if I carried a suitcase with me. Instead of stuffing my long sleeved t-shirts, mosquito coils, insect repellant and sleeping bag into my backpack, this time round I can gleefully select all my nice clothing and fold them neatly into the suitcase. =)

Last night, we had our ‘foursome’ monthly gathering again. But instead of going to the kopitiam at Boon Lay this time, we met up nearer to home at Civics centre in Woodlands (the northerners are more likely to know where), outside Macdonald’s. The place was supposed to be closed at 11pm, but we were lucky enough to sit there till 12.30am. And in the end we adjourned to a 24-hours kopitiam again, just opposite my place. Argghh, we had really down-graded to the ‘ah-peks’ standard, meeting at kopitiam(s) all around the island!

Oh yah, this time round our most wonderful driver wasn’t driving a mercs but her brother’s CRV, a jeep-liked vehicle. It was really comfy but on the way from Woodlands to my place, we met up with this major roadblock along Gambas Ave. We were totally ‘wow-ed’ by the number of traffic police motorbikes and police cars lining along the road, there were at least 10 of them! I didn’t dare to take out my digicam and take a few shots. And it was lucky that the only alcohol we’ve consumed was from Aileen’s rum and raisins chocolate. Of course, we were trying our best to look innocent when the car stopped. Unexpectedly, the police officer leaned in and said “Miss, can you please switch on your headlights?” It was only then that YZ realized that her headlights weren’t on all this time! Of all things.. *LOL* I really couldn’t stop myself from feeling amused. Luckily she doesn’t read my blog, if not she would refuse to give me a lift home on our next gathering. =P

Aiyah, there's nothing really unique about the blog tonight. Hopefully I'll have wonderful photos to share with everyone when I'm back! Ciao..

Take the 100 Acre Personality Quiz!

Beware, this is going to be super-duper long. Happy? Actually supposed to be posted up last night, but the stupid blogger server.. haiz, cannot make it!

Been quite sometime since I really feel like blogging, and it’s been almost one whole month before I’m having this urge!! *gasp* But anyway, all this while, many of my blogger friends had been frantically updating, except for me. Look at the links on my blog growing!!

Well, you really can’t blame me, not that I’m attributing my laziness to the reports and the exams (same old excuse!), sometimes it’s just not the right mood. I really didn’t do much the past month, excepting for clocking the hours I spent in front of the computer, I can’t even remember when the last time I went to town was. And, my life practically went like this: lessons in NIE, back in hall, lessons in NIE, back in hall, sometimes spicing up life with tuitions and driving lessons. How wonderful yah? I haven’t even been seeing my family much. I hope they still remember me.

The good news is that this dry spell is almost over! I think many of you readers are expecting more from me after this, but then.. blogging after exams will be very much reduced as I’m going to get myself whipped away to outer space half of the whole holidays. Yeah, the long deserved trips of mine!! I’m going to compensate by blogging a really long entry now, telling everyone about all my holiday plans. Wahahaahaha.. my friends from NTU/NUS are all going to be really jealous. Well well, I’ve already earned my degree.. so there! It’s a good reason for me to be having more fun while you guys are still struggling with your exams. =P

Next week, as what many of my close friends already knew, I’m flying to the land Down Under and going to be there for the whole week, till the long weekend is over. It’s been a trip that had been in plan, sigh.. I had been looking forward for it for a really long time, all thanks to the fact that we didn’t get a one week break this term. Surprisingly, I had been traveling overseas since I was 17, yet this is the first trip that I’m taking with my family members. It’s the first family tour for all of us, and a much laid back and relaxed one.

And of course, a very close friend of mine is currently stucked in Perth, so one of the objectives of going there is to pay him a visit as well. Time really flies (cliché, yah?); he left when I was still struggling with my Chinese Grammar module, and now the whole semester had already flown past, not without some stress and hard work. Woah.. it’s already been almost 5 months since we last seen each other, and there’s so much to catch up with. =) It’s funny that I only realized now, even though he was part of my life the past 2 years, the amount of space I had dedicated to him on my blog is actually very limited, maybe I’m not someone who really talk about my relationships in real life as well. Hmm.. I’m going to end here abruptly again. That’s all I was about to divulge.. haha.. =P

After the trip to Perth, the month of December is going to be very different for me as I’ll be in China (Yunnan) for 3 whole weeks doing YEP. It’s been in my agenda all the way since March till now. I’ve been really slack among the whole team of us, as I started teaching shortly after I joined them, and became really too busy for many many things. (Oh yah, have to mention thanks and thanks again to those who had bought t-shirts for my fund-raising!) It’s not the first time I’m going on a YEP project. The first one was exactly two years ago in Thailand, and I hope this is going to be a better trip! =) Will surely blog more about that when I’m back. It’s also the first time I’m missing Christmas celebration with my friends, as I will spending the day traveling on coach and train, in order to catch a plane back from Kumming on the 26th December. That is, if I’m coming back…hahaha…


Well well, it’s rather exciting, I’ll be overseas for 4 weeks in total!! But my pocket is going to be very empty as well, so don’t be too hopeful that I’ll bring back presents for everyone. Heehee.. For those who are working, too bad for you guys.. This is the only perk of being in education, I think. Teachers need to recharge themselves before facing the brats for one whole year again! This is probably my longest holiday before I’m out of job again. *wink* Well, all my hard-earned (think! listening to boring lectures and doing boring reports for months!) money for the past months are going to vanish faster than you can say 'Jay chou', but I think people should live to see the world, really. I think my mama going to be quite disgusted with me. Ha..

Oh yah, just realized that a lot of my classmates have blogs! Most of them blog in Chinese, hahaa.. probably inspired by a classmate of mine, who really has a good blog. =P Traffic in my blog is also getting higher after linking up with them, a delusion that I’m getting famous! Heehee, but I enjoy being deluded.

Okay, I’ve gotta end my blog here, I’m talking like I’ve finished all my exams. Just wanna update everyone before I leave, making sure that all of you will be jealous. =D

Some photos coming up next..

These are the female kayaking coaches of CSSC and friends. The photo is a bit ahem, unglam.. as we were standing outside the kopitiam that was across the road from the club.


And those are our male counterparts. Sorry, none of them really fits into the description of 'tall, dark and handsome'...

Standing among us is our beloved staff Erik was just gotten transferred to Kallang recently.  

Xiaowei requested to take a pic with me to put on my blog. Hahaha..your secret is out. Well, she looks far better than me as I was still recovering from my illnesses then and was suffering from a drastic drop of appetite. Check out that dark eye rings that I was wearing..argghhh.. (Don't have photoshop downloaded in my comp, too bad) 

This hand belongs to my roommate, I took the pic when she was preparing for her micro-teaching one night. She was scrambling around the room, and found some candles leftover from her anniversary celebration and attempted to use it as a demonstration. It turned out quite funny as we were all gathering around, giving out ideas to make that candle swing.  

Well, her experiment is supposed to be a demonstration about 'moment', as in the moment in physics term. How does a Chinese teacher live with a Physics teacher?? I think it's an agony for me, when she starts speaking in her 'physics' language, force..blah blah blah..newton's law..blah blah blah.. Boring!! Well well, physics teacher also feels bored and damn stressed up when dealing with her subject matter. I can see her bedtime coming whenever she starts doing her physics stuff.. muahahhahah