December

a month of lights, carols and feasts; 

time to make amends and tie loose ends; finish off what we've started 

and hope that it was a great year well spent for everybodyyy. :)  

What's December without the usual recollections and new year resolutions, etc etc. Hahaha anyhow the final month passed by promptly with le mum and me spending more than half of it in China, Australia and New Zealand respectively. It's of tedious work to recall every place I visited, what's more I'm not gonna make this look like a travel blog neither. Lemme just keep everything short and sweet, or you can refer it as an excuse for being lazy. 

Huizhou; 

Pretty much becoming like a yearly tradition, we stopped by the city my bro is in before fly off else where for a short reunion. After not seeing him for 10 months which felt really long, it surprised me a little to feel a warm sense of familiarity when I see him. Guess something stays gold forever indeed. :') Though I pitied him for being scolded by our mum for failing english the entire time, there's not much I could do to save him. While years back when I first saw him it din't leave me much impact considering I was very young too, this time for the few days we were together I wished badly that we were living together. Just how different life could be for two individuals from the same womb, well. Let's not peg to predicaments that's powerless for us to change anyway. And it's not to say that we glued to each other the entire time but, I guess I enjoy the presence of a sibling around in the family. Hmph thus I will have kids in the house next time, not one but two, and three if your ahbu here gets a decent job to support y'all. ( HAHAHA MAY I KEEP THIS BLOG TILL SOMEDAY I CAN SHOW THIS TO MY KIDOS YAY. ) Right that's about it.     

New Zealand; 

That's where we were bought to after 10 hours of flight; an island country just like Singapore, much bigger of cause. As I'm trying my best to summarize everything into four pictures below. 

The North island cities we visited is full of farm animals lepaking sparsely around wide mass of grassland along the sides of the highway. ( for the country is well known for having more sheeps than humans, which was pretty true for at least what I've seen there. ) We landed in Auckland, a city port like what you might see at Keppel bay, but with much, much more private yacht and jets docking by the port. It is pretty common for the residence there to own a yacht and set out to the sea during weekends. Popped by a local farm for some feeding session while stepping on their shits all over the grassland; brought to a Maori village and was very much mesmerized by the pretty volcanic views up there. To sum up, Nz is a city with abundant fresh air, green grass, farm animals, berries and kiwi, yoghurt and milk. The world's last unpolluted paradise indeed. :) 

Australia;

                     
As the picture speaks by itself; Australia was all about sea, beach, koala bears and kangaroos. Two interesting facts I learnt was that kangaroo means "idk" in a indigenous language while koala means "not thirsty". While you are overseas, is really hard to relate Singapore to a country by itself because the land is so compacted, an hour drive away is the longest you need to get anywhere. While overseas, I took a total of 8 flights to get by across cities, spent hours on coach on the highway, dazing the days away. Personally I enjoyed Cairns the most, famous for the Great barrier reef, the paradise for adventurous folks who yearns for some bungee jump, jungle swing or skydive. For the weaker hearts; a fascinating underwater walk, or hopping into the helicopter for a bird's eye view of the beautiful island. How perfect. Though the weather fluctuates a lot and it gets hotter as we move further up to the northern cities we start to strip ourselves layer by layer.  



Not to forget that I went to one of the famous world heritage site; the Sydney opera house. As renowned and fabulous it may sounds, it's pretty much just the way you simply see it in the photo. Many times things loses their charm when we finally get to see it with our naked eyes. I guess the way Australians see it is pretty much like us seeing the Esplanades everyday. Hahahaha anyhow I then become one of the annual 8.2 million visitors that goes over to see her beauty.

What's travel without interactions?
I always felt that a trip is more of less wasted when you are going with a tour, for it's been so commercialised in recent years all they did is you drop you off at places, snap a few photos, take hours of bus ride to the next place. Not forgetting to dump you into their tourists-customized souvenirs shops, specialist shops, hoping that you would shop till you drop so that they would earn commission from the transactions within. Leaving the dark sides of tourism industries aside, I'm glad I managed to pick up quick chats with the locals along the way, starting from Steve on the left who brought me to see a water dragon; a friendly man whose family runs the coach service but instead of chilling in the office, he enjoys driving the tourists around because in his words," I don't like to sit behind the walls, I like to talk to tourists form all over the worlds." And the Aboriginal man Awal,  a descendent of the indigenous Australians, who answered all my question bubbles with their daily life apart from entertaining tourist like me. I remember asking him "so do you wore like this, like grass skirts there too?" after he told me he've been to Hongkong, now come to think of it I'm such a retard, of cause he wore normal clothes, what on earth was I even thinking. Apart from locals, I also had some conversations with the other tourists in the group, though it's really of minimal since most are retirees. Except this m'am who stays in Los Angeles with her daughter's family, she is really damn awesome with all the so called hipsters thoughts and in fact, she is clearing her bucket list of visiting 100 countries before she die. I guess these are the folks I would remember after the trip, not the volcanos, not the cows and sheeps, but people that I talked to, that i learnt something from them. And I'm glad we met under this enormous sky.

With that, it sums up my trip and I will leave resolutions and shits to some other day, I'm far too tired for it. Before I end of, Australia sounds really ideal for migration and I would probably consider, in the later stage of my life of cause. As of now, realistically speaking, I shall buck up and mug harder. Hahah lemme reflect on my Sem 1 results some other time, till then.