lavingroony: flowers that look like vulvas: genus Clitoria

Melbourne was nothing like.

I was expecting this:

I am very thankful that I did not have to see a single live kangaroo/koala/wallaby/whatever in my entire trip.

This is because of my wonderful tripmate Eng Hong who decided very cannily that she did not want to go visit farms/aquariums/wildlife reserves/anywhere boring and typically Australia.

(And also to whom the title is dedicated because she drove me nuts getting high over any romance/sex scenes on TV and proceeded to vibrate in excitement on my bed.)

Yes I realise this post is about 2 weeks late. Oops.

We therefore ran around the city area shopping/eating for one week. Actually, we were supposed to visit Luna Park/the observatory at the Botanic Gardens but both were closed for strange reasons so we wandered around instead at the beach/gardens respectively.

(Side note: I was trying to set the captions so you can see the camera/film when you mouseover, then decided nobody cares and I'm too lazy anyway.)

I managed to semi-restrain myself and brought only 5 cameras - my D90, F55, FE, Canon S90 and the Instax Mini.

To my utter shock, the camera I used the least was the D90. I didn't even take it out of the camera condom the entire trip. It's just too heavy and annoying to carry everywhere. I'm seriously considering using my last paycheck to upgrade it to a D7000.

I used the F55 a lot, and the FE, and ended up with about 4 rolls of film (2.5 from the FE, 0.5 from the F55) but have only developed 3 because I haven't been able to finish the last roll from the FE.

Actually, I think if I'd brought the D90 out to shoot along with the film cameras I'd have a lot more interesting photos, but also hell to pay for in my shoulder muscles. My right shoulder is just about wearing down to a horrible quivering achy mess right now.

The S90 was mainly to camwhore with. Yep.

@

Notes on Melbourne:

1. Melbournians have good hair. Every few streets or so you see someone with an awesome mohawk (not the crappy spiked-up-in-a-row types you get in Singapore) and someone with pink/orange/purple hair.

Sadly I didn't have the sense to chase after them and get photos because bleh coloured hair I see it every few weeks at whatever cosplay event I go to. I had no sense of urgency. Oops.

2. Melbournians have good music. This is my personal opinion which I suspect a lot of people disagree with.

3. Melbournians have good TV. Since shops close at 5.30 and there's basically nothing to do after that, we spent a lot of time bumming around in the hotel room watching good TV and bickering over the heater - I didn't bring a single pair of non-long pants and EH was freezing to death all the time.

I formulated the Technique Of Two Layers. (Of pants.) Basically, as long as you wear two layers of full-length pants, you will never feel cold. I tested this when we shimmied over to the sushi shop which closes at 11pm in slippers, proceeding to not feel cold at all.

I am not sure if this works with thin tops since I didn't have any to test it out.

4. Melbournians are extremely sweet and happy about everything. They don't say 'hi', they say 'how are you?'. When I went shopping and gave a bookstore cashier exact change, she went 'oh, perfect' at me. I am still slightly overwhelmed by their friendliness.

When we got there on the first day we were more or less braindead from the plane ride and all. Thankfully Akai got us from the airport to our hotel somehow. Also it was bloody cold because I hadn't discovered the Technique Of Two Layers yet. We sort of penguin-shuffled along the streets searching for food.

While we were there, there was some protest being staged at Federation Square. I am still not sure what exactly they were protesting but it was quite exciting and attended by random punks.

I wanted to go up to the one with the mohawk and scream because he was wearing a Talking Heads jacket but I couldn't remember the lyrics of any of their songs, I'm always too mesmerised by how pretty David Byrne looks in all the videos. D:

Also, Vesak Day passed. I was rather surprised to find that they actually (sort of) celebrate Vesak Day in Melbourne. They set up an altar and everything in Fed Sq. and had these cute Bodhi leaves on stalks for people to write wishes on.

Sunday was spent bumming around and going for the chocolate tour, which was awesomesauce. Also EH got very high on chocolate. I do not understand how this happens.

Basically the only things I bought from Melbourne were books, sweets, chocolate and alcohol.

The drinks were because a lot of people are going through insane and wanted some. I got 2x Cafe Boheme (it is so good) which came with a bottle of free Passionfruit Cocktail rubbishy thing, 1x Martell and 1x Bailey's (for Tenma).

Also I am extremely sad because I was going to get 2x Bailey's so I could get a free glass. The glass was so cute it's a cone-shaped thing which nests in a blobshaped holder! But they didn't seem to have that offer by the time I was on the way back. Sadface.

Each bottle was about 1.5kg (1 litre of drink plus heavy bottle) and I nearly died carrying them back.

We ate some good food and some sohungryIdon'tcare food. Melbourne is weird about jap, they keep serving sushi in giant long rolls with these little fish-shaped bottles of soya sauce.

It is the nastiest soya sauce I have ever tasted. If anyone asked me to guess what kind of soya sauce I suspect the Starbucks at Simei puts in their Caramel Frappes, it would be this annoying fish thing.

(Yes, I have a Simei-Starbucks-soya-sauce conspiracy theory. On Sunday I forgot about this - Melbourne has good coffee - and asked Tenma to treat me to an extra coffee frappe and proceeded to be reminded of the horror.)

Most atas food we had was at the airport at Cafe Vue. I love their decor. Wanted to take a photo of the mirror wall and everything but a bunch of people came in and got the long table so I couldn't camwhore over it.

Melbourne is also more animal-populated. There are random horse-drawn carriages everywhere, because of the novelty of some lame law that only horse-drawn carriages are allowed in Federation Square, and no cars. (This is a lie, I doubt the horses could fit into the Square anyway.)

Also sparrows. The entire city is overrun by seagulls and sparrows and pigeons and the occasional myna. I wasted quite a bit of film trying to take photos of the sparrows having a rave in Starbucks (and failed).

One thing I am totally annoyed about is how boring their Botanical Gardens are. It's basically a largeish plot of grass with some random trees and shit on it. Hello, look at Singapore's Garden, it's a giant playground with hills and spice gardens and pretty water features and people picnicking all over.

Their grass is prettier though. It's green. And nice to sit on. And less ants.