Sometimes...

I forget why I lug my big bag with my camera gears in it and run around.

Ever since I've graduated, I found myself being caught up in life until I've forgotten why I started doing some things in the first place. Photography is one of them:


But looking at these photos, and all the photos I've taken previously, I am reminded why I fell in love with photography in the first place. It's the stories that the photos paint, the emotions that the photos bring out, and the beauty in each and every one of them that makes me personally attached to them.

Of course, ultimately, I want to travel and go to beautiful places, to places with interesting culture, be it metropolitan city, be it secluded rural village, be it a no-man's land and capture the sceneries and cultures in their purest form. To do that, I'll need to become better and better in photography. It's my dream, and from today onwards, I pledge to devote and commit myself to this dream,
because why limit ourselves when sky's the limit?

And here I share my dreams with you fellow readers... if you see the panel on the right, you'll find currently it's filled with 2 different locations in the world. In due time you'll see the list getting longer and longer, and one by one, I WILL go to these places and experience them in their entirety, and bring them back to you through my photographs. This, my friend, is my promise to you. Until then... I'll see you again. =)

Like all good things, the trip in Australia had to come to an end too.

Naturally, we just couldn't let it go without making the final bang - we just had to go to Melbourne city one last time before departing from Melbourne to go back to Malaysia.

Once we touched down in Melbourne from Sydney in late afternoon, we took a bus into Melbourne city with our luggages and dropped our luggages in Pinky's room. Pinky had to meet her friends so we went for dinner ourselves:

Pho

Spring roll

Elaine's seal of approval™

After dinner we walked around in the city and immersed ourselves in the night city scenery.

And there was fire show at Crown Casino!!


Feel the heat!

Well, some warmth in the winter always welcomed. Once the fire show ended we went to a local bar and watched live performance:

Elaine and Pinky

After the tiring but satisfying trip to the city, we hurried back to the airport:
and then made our way back to Malaysia.

So guys, when's our next trip? =P

Sydney 2

Among the things we can't miss in Sydney, we were told, is Bondi Beach. And among the things in Bondi Beach that we can't miss, we were told, is a small restaurant called Hurricane.

Good food + potentially lots of pretty girls in skimpy clothing, do we really need any other reason to go there?

And so we set off!

Once again, we were told that the whole journey(from Richard's place to Bondi Beach) would take approximately 3 hours to walk. What we weren't told was that the time estimation was based on Australian walking pace... which was FAR slower than the walking pace in Singapore. Anticipating that it would take THAT long to reach Bondi Beach, we stopped a while to rest.

Apart from 1 girl who seem to have a knack to camwhore.

After about 1 hour plus since we started our journey, we made the second pit stop. Then some wireless flash goodness kicked in:

Emo

MORE Emo

When 2 people emo, the emo doubles

With about 2 more hours to go before we could reach Bondi Beach(or so we thought), we decided that time was running out and took cab right away to city. Here in comes a shock: cab fare was crazy expensive in Sydney and the meter jumps like literally every 5 seconds!! We were eye-ing the meter nervously whenever the cab stopped at a traffic light, using all our might to will the traffic lights to turn green.

It took forever to reach city and after we hopped off the cab, we went to Paddy's Market! It's similar to Victoria Market in the sense that it offered a wide variety of things ranging from food to souvenirs.

Glasses too!

We then went to another side of the city and got another view of both Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Needless to say, mischief always prevailed:

After that we met up with Richard and Adam for dinner. Now remember just now I talked about Bondi Beach being 3 hours walk away from Richard's place? Turned out we were just about half an hour away from it when we were at the second pit stop!! HALF AN HOUR!! I demand my Hurricane and scantily dressed beach girls!!RAWR!!

*cough* Anywayyyy, for dinner, we went to Lowenbrau.

First there was pork knuckle.

Then there were beers.

Finally there was fun.

Alas, all the good times had to end - that night was our final night in Sydney, and as much as we loved it, we couldn't get enough of it. This would not be the last time, Sydney. ;)

Sydney

The last series of our trip in Australia!!
Due to the lengthen time we spent in Tasmania, we ended up with only 2 days in Sydney. 2 days... 2 DAYS!! Not enough, definitely not enough in hindsight.

Moving on, we flew from Launceston to Sydney in the afternoon. A kid was making such a ruckus in the plane that all of us felt like just going up to the kid and slap him for being such a nuisance. That's one full hour of ruckus being made by the kid and it really irritated all of us because we badly needed to nap.

After arriving in the airport, we took a taxi to Richard's place. Then Richard brought us for some light snacks before we went out together to meet Adam for dinner.

Japanese food for dinner!!The restaurant was operated by Japanese and the food was authentic Japanese. Loved their ramen!

Boys spotted: Adam, Yi Wang, Richard and Dee

Full and happy, we went out for a walk at Darling Harbour before we watched our first ever musical broadway performance(well, about half of us actually since Yi Wang and Yen Ping have watched some Disney musical before).

Wicked the Musical.

Wicked told the story from the witch's point of view in Wizard of Oz, giving background to all the other characters and most importantly, why the witch did what she did. It was a brand new experience for me and I enjoyed EVERY single minute of it. The songs were flawless, Glinda was played to perfection (albeit her high pitched voice got a bit annoying at some point) and Elphaba had the most powerful voice among the cast. I would, without a single doubt, watch it again if given the chance. ;)

The next morning, we went to the Sydney Fish Market for some of the freshest and juiciest seafood we've ever tasted:


After that my stomach felt a bit funny but fortunately nothing major in the end. Must've been the amount of raw food that I ingested.

We explored the city and after a fair bit of walking, we went to Lindt to try their chocolate cakes and drinks:

Hot weather + Ice cold drinks = Bliss

Good stuffs!! Price even better!! Then again, it's supposed to be higher end chocolate product outlet, so price was naturally on the higher side. No complaints though, the stuffs were good.

We then did the touristy things:

Sydney Opera House

Harbour Bridge

And a little bit of not-so-touristy things too! =P

Dinner was at Pancake on the Rocks.

Very, very, VERY sinful

Yi Wang with his overly exaggerated hand gestures knocked over a plate that the waitress was holding when she was serving us, thus delaying the arrival of the heavenly sinful chocolate pancake. Obviously we didn't let him forget about it for the following few days. =D

Finally we watched a light show and called it a night:

Tasmania - Launceston

Oh lord... I still have yet to finish blogging about the trip to Australia. Time to get the Tasmania portion done and then there'll only be Sydney left!

Alright, so on the 4th day morning we left Bicheno, the Super Dead Town™, and drove to Launceston - the other bigger town in Tasmania. We spent almost the entire morning and half of the afternoon driving before arriving in Launceston.

On the whole, in Tasmania, we generally see older buildings being maintained and used as shop lots, unlike Melbourne and Sydney.


What's interesting was that they have these road side cafe layout that gave out a quaint and relaxing feel, rather than our usual mamak-overly-casual style that we could usually find in Malaysia:
If not for the freezing condition I wouldn't mind sitting there and get a cup of coffee.

We went into the Old Umbrella Shop and saw the evolution of umbrella since its inception:

By the time we came out and explored the town a bit more, dusk came and we were greeted with this magnificent sight:

Such pretty colours, makes me appreciate dusk even more than ever.

The next day we went to Sheffield, the mural town. Back in the 1980s, Sheffield was facing a rural decline and the local community were desperate bring the town back to life again. They then decided to embark on a project to paint murals around the town as a form of attraction to people visiting. The first mural being commissioned was one painted by Gustav Weindorfer:

The first ever mural!!

It's interesting to see all these murals on virtually every wall in the town, and all of them were nicely done too.

And not all the murals were on the wall too!

Us being us, we fooled around as usual:

And we don't limit ourselves to murals on the wall.

Our next destination:

Let's just say that we felt extremely cheated by the word 'longest'. We were half expecting the chairlift to bring us to the top of a hill, what happened instead was we were brought to a platform on the same level on the other side and we had to climb the hill ourselves.

Regardless, we always SMILE for the camera. =D

Legs dangling in the air.

The recently graduated ones.

We cooked dinner for the night!!


Dinner for the night - well done steak, coleslaw, mushroom soup and apple... a satisfying meal. =)