Friday, July 20, 2007 9:20 PM
I'm back from my trip. I always knew australia was big but now i know it's really big. I saw a lot of sheep, cows and dogs but no kangaroos or koalas. The countryside was really beautiful. It looks even better than postcards. We literally went on mountains and valleys. At one point we were more than 1 km above sea level. It was so funny, we stopped and my friend went to climb a tree. When he was inside i threw a rock and threw it into the tree and the snow fell off the leaves and onto him =)
Bathurst food is really nice. Awesome pasta and very nice baby squid. And the people are really friendly as well. We also went wine-tasting but the weather... haha it was really cold. At one point it was around -10 degrees. A few times police closed off the highways cos of snow, ice and accidents. We went to a certain racetrack (not going to say what cos it's not completely legal haha) On one straight i was powering down at 140km/h. 140 is alright but there was ice on the road so come to think of it, it was quite dangerous. But still fun! It was a v6 3.6L commodore which is almost twice as powerful as a camry. The acceleration was so nice!
On tuesday i went to buy an alarm clock in orange cos my phone was destroyed. Now i got to find a samsung place in sydney to try and get it repaired. So from now on my phone will be turned off. Contact me via email if you need to. I check it very often so it's as good. Speaking of emails, now i got 63 to clear in gmail and hotmail argh! Haven't checked unimail yet. Almost everyone went crazy on alcohol from morning till night. It's a miracle that no one had any road accidents with unfamiliar roads, ice, lack of sleep and too much beer.
On the academic side of the trip, we went round the city doing surveys and interviewing people. Today we had a recorded interview with the labour candidate for that area. I didn't know he was so big shot until i stepped into his office. Apparently he used to be an attorney-general and environment minister in government. When the recorder was still running, he turned to me and randomly asked, "Are you from malaysia?" haha.. close! but now we got to include that in the transcript when we type out every spoken word lol =) We met a number of business owners, the director of planning and development of the city council, social workers etc.. I learnt so much. It was such an enriching experience that i thank God for. Met a lot of new people over these few days. In my free time i started reading harry potter and the half-blood prince. So far i'm at chapter 14. 2/3 of the book to go. It's good to keep up to date before the last one comes out becuase once it's out, the final outcome will be on tv, internet and radio which will be such a spoiler. I wouldn't want to find out the story before i read it.
Even though my phone was smashed, glasses was broken, laptop couldn't get power, i had such an awesome trip that i won't complain. Through the places i went, the amazing people i meet, through the entire experience, i can't help but to thank God.