Hello, I blog!

To sum up the whole load of things I miss from those two weeks of freedom in Perth, Australia:

1) Having one entire house to ourselves, and having the run of the place. Cleaning was a bitch considering the vast amount of space, and we had to clean the floor without a mop – but it was still fun, nonetheless. D threw a pail of water on the ground and soon after, we were slipping and sliding around on towels. Wheee.

2) Cooking together. I wasn’t much help because … I can’t cook as well as the others so I ended up washing dishes most of the time. I didn’t mind, though. Seeing clean dishes drying next to the sink actually gave me a lot of satisfaction, strange as it sounds.

3) Long drives along the Kwinana Freeway to and from Perth City from our place. Especially in the mornings and evenings because the view of the sunrise/sunsets were just to die for!

4) Stormy nights. The storms in Australia were nothing like Singapore’s. The wind would howl all night long, making me snuggle deeper into the blanket, with the sound of hailstones occasionally pelting our rooftop. I still wish I got to see a tornado, though.

5) D’s singing. Well, not his singing per se – but more like the fact that there will always be a noise-making machine in the vicinity when the house becomes too quiet.

(Click for the enlarged version.)

6) Grocery shopping in the local supermarkets, where we would gawk at the wide assortment of Tim Tam chocolate biscuits, and the fact that the prices of our favourite junk food were so much lower than that in Singapore.

7) Having to pile on layers and layers of clothing each time before we leave the house, and having to strip all those layers upon re-entering the house.

8) The cold weather. Singapore is effing hot, period.

9) Street malls. Meaning shopping-dedicated streets which are no-entry to cars and other motor vehicles. Wide pavements, pretty streetlamps with rows and rows of shops lining the street on both sides. There would occasionally be bands and other performance groups busking there which livens up the street-shopping atmosphere – proper performers – not those harmonica-yielding uncles and aunties we see in Singapore.

10) Looking out of the window during a drive around Perth City (and the suburbs) and never failing to spot something interesting.

11) Having instant pasta. Especially the microwavable nacho cheese pasta. Speaking of which, I still have two packets left over from the trip. Nom nom nom.

12) Meeting friendly Australians every single day. Well, almost. There were a handful of salespeople we encountered that had attitudes of raging buffaloes but the bulk of them were really affable. Not to mention how there were some really good-lookers around. Hrrmmm.

13) Packet milkshakes. Looks like an ordinary milk carton but packs a punch once you shake them really hard for at least a minute. The milk within thickens and froths. Yummy instant milkshake!

14) Picnics and barbecues. The barbecue pits provided at public areas are electric. Place yer food on the metal heating element, press a button and you’re ready to go. No need to grabble with messy (and dirty) charcoal and having to put up with black, sooty smoke. The Australians are an environmentally-friendly bunch!

15) Having two people screaming into my face every single darn morning to “wake up, already” … because they are morning people and I’m not. (I think I was the last to wake up every single day. Yikes.)

16) G’s aunt and her interesting use of language. She would mix both English and Mandarin together in a way where it sounds really jumbled up. I will especially remember the most CLASSIC example, when she was asking us to get into the car.

进去car里面!”

(And because ‘car’ sounds like another word in Mandarin, we were all wondering “she wants us to go WHERE?!“)

17) The slow-paced lifestyle. I went there and promptly forgot about everything that has been bugging me when I was in Singapore … like my health problems. And escaping from doctors for two weeks was a breath of fresh air.

18) Waking up to “Lucky I’m in love with my best friend. Lucky to have been where I have been” every morning – the song that was set as G’s phone alarm.

19) Us attempting to stargaze out in the dark in the dead of the night at 1 A.M. with a simple camera and tripod set-up. (ZOMG, Australia’s night sky is really full of stars!) Then, the sprinklers got activated by nobody knows what, which sent us scurrying and shrieking while initially thinking that it was a wild animal.

There are actually a lot more but my memory has somewhat faded considering the sheer amount of time that has elapsed since the trip until now.

Let’s stop at nineteen. It is a nice number.