Thursday, July 15, 2004
Where the sun rises in the north and sets in the south
I've safely arrived in Melbourne after a terrible plane flight. The meals were served three hours apart - around 10 for dinner and 130 in the morn for breakfast. The shrimp salad was unbearably bland and salty all at once and the main course was overcooked fish with flavourless rice. Qantas honestly is not the best airline to take.My apartment in Arrow's so so small! Actually I'm not really complaining because after hearing what my friend who entered Trinity earlier this year has said, I was prepared for anything less than satisfactory. The worst thing here's the view. There's this patch of wasteland right in front of our building with scraggly grass and caked up sand. Beyond that's redbrick buildings with graffitied walls and even smoke issuing out from a factory's chimney. The whole picture's pretty bleak and 18th century English working class city, I'd imagine.
The weather outside's cold and very dry. Towards the evening the wind starts to blow relentlessly against your face and you can feel your rows of teeth hitting each other nervously.
Shopping's a chore honestly. There're lots of budget supermarkets with great deals. Today I bought pillows, a brush (apparently I forgot to bring my favourite pink one), Dynamo and some three-plug hardware thingy. Shops close early here. In Singapore 9pm's a decent pack-up time; but here where the days are short, 6pm's a stretch. So this means no opening a bank account, purchasing of mobile phone and endless shopping for me.
Am I homesick yet? A little, though I know it'll get more intense with the passing of days. Here I feel immature and un-streetwise. The gears here click with different sounds. I am bereft of the comforts I have back home - homecooked meals, my whirling green office chair, a snug comforter and cups and cups of plain water. Oh and to add on to the inconveniences I'm now facing - the plug adaptor I bought doesn’t work properly. I think they got the plastic moulded wrongly or something. Gosh and it was the only one I bought.
From Singapore to Oz the plane cruises for under 7 hours but the emotional turbulence I've to face seems to go on forever.
lux at 6:21 pm