Leading the wild into the ways of the man…
Hello, I’ve arrived in Melbourne yesterday or the day before, I
really can’t gather my scattered thoughts right now, The outdoor doof
was very cold. More about that later, got back yesterday and slept for
more than 24 hours (what a waste) to recover from my non sleep in the
day before I left and the non sleep in the plane. Anyway, I’m going off
now, I’ll do a day by day run through when I reach home, it will be
sporadic posts like this until I get back. Later!
It has come to my attention that Vivien, my classmate from high school,
has set up a blog. You can visit her
here [blogspot.com]
and someone should tell her that she doesn’t need to do 100 push ups after
just eating 4 cookies. Heh. =D
Anyway, I had a one hour break today and decided to pop into the campus
bookshop with my film developing slip to see if it has been processed. I
was told to check in on Thursday and the price lists states that APS film
takes 6 working days to develop. Well, guess what? They were erring on the
side of caution, because it was already done today! Woo hoo.
The pictures didn’t turn all out well. There were only a couple of
good ones in the bunch. I was pretty impressed with the girth of the
photos though. I took most of them in the panoramic setting so they turned
out really long. It seems that APS film can be developed either in C
(normal size), H (sized like a 16:9 television) or P (panoramic). APS
seems to be a pretty interesting film format. I’ve heard about it before,
but didn’t really know the specifics. If you’re interested, have a read
through the summary of the format
here [kodak.com].
Well, developing APS film wasn’t as expensive as I thought, but it’s not
cheap either. The processing costs for the 25 exposure roll cost me A$21.50. That comes with 2 index
prints and a Kodak Picture CD though. Added to the cost of the disposable
camera (A$25), that comes to nearly A$50. Tsk tsk…sounds slightly disturbing,
because I’m used to taking pictures with a digicam. Anyway, here are the
pictures from Mt Buller on the day my digicam had a near death experience.
A panoramic shot of me at the bottom of Blue Bullet 1 quad chairlift. This
picture was scanned from the prints.
Carving up the slopes. This picture is taken from the Kodak Picture CD.
The quality of the images in the CD is really bad, you can get much higher
resolutions by scanning in the pictures manually instead of getting a
Picture CD.
This is the friendly manager of YHA in Mt Buller.
Ripping the blue Summit run.
A really grainy shot of the village from the chairlift. A lot of the
pictures turned out badly because there was condensation on the lens of
the camera, and I didn’t realize it. Furthermore, a third of the pictures
have been slightly obstructed by my gloves. The viewfinder of disposables
are not exactly the most accurate things, because I could have sworn that
I see the glove in the viewfinder.
Read Mount Buller Part I.
I just arrived back in Melbourne an hour ago, hurting all over. Heh. It
was a very good weekend, I got a lot of runs in and it was snowing every
day too.
It’s snowing!
I actually only skied 2 out of the 3 days I was there, because I
only arrived at 1:30 pm on the first day and couldn’t justify paying for a
full day lift ticket. I just walked around the village and slopes during
the first day because I could only check into YHA at 5 pm.
This is where I stayed.
I skied the second day and boarded on the third.
Skiing down Bourke Street.
It was pretty punishing
because I was really out of shape. Loved it though. =D I did a couple of
runs down Bourke Street (a green run) on the first day and then went down
the blue Shakey Knees run. I didn’t know it was a blue run until I was
halfway down, and thought…hey, this is pretty steep. I was enjoying
myself so much, I went into an aggressive alpine crouch to pick up speed
(woo hoo adrenaline rush) and wiped out towards the end in an effort to
avoid a stopped skier. Very nice run, but a bit embarrassing on the lift
up. It was a T-bar lift and I unconsciously sat down on the T-bar and
tipped it (I was riding alone) while it was going up an incline. Bourke
Street seems rather anti-climatic after that.
View from Blue Bullet 1 quad chair lift.
I did catch the Quiksilver
GP at night but couldn’t take any photos because it seems that my digicam
does not like snow. I put it into my pants while skiing and forgot to do
up the zip, and as a result, snow got into the pocket and got the digicam
wet. It won’t even start up after that, but after a day of drying out, it
can be started up and the view pictures function is still working and I
can still copy out the pictures, but some buttons seem to be disabled. Doh!
I should have done up my pants zipper but I must have forgotten after
taking it out to snap some photos. (Update – I just tried starting up
my digicam and everything works now. Damn, the Nikon 885 is one tough
motherfucker.)
Blue Bullet 1 chair lift area.
Anyway, I got a disposable film camera on the second
day before I went boarding. Oh, one funny thing happened today. I went up
to the blue Summit run even though I’m not that good at boarding. I went
for a regular aligned board even though I’m a goofy on a skateboard. I was
carving up the slopes of the summit when the fog rolled in and I
accidentally went down a wrong run. I saw a black diamond flash past and
stopped near the Howqua black run. I had the choice of taking the Kofler’s
T-bar which goes up a steep incline (I do not like heights), taking a long
trek back up the blue Chute run or try to carve black Hawqua. If you’re
not familiar with the color codes, greens are easy runs, blues are for
intermediates and blacks are for experts only. I’ll rather go down black
diamond Hawqua
than take the T-bar up the steep Chute incline coz it will only take one look
down for me to piss my pants. Heh. The end of Hawqua wasn’t really hard
actually, but there are several hazards, including one steep turn that
only has netting between you and a drop down the slopes. I didn’t do too
good though, coz the powdery snow was pretty hard to navigate with my
board. I accidentally did a hard toe edge brake and started losing my
balance. I had the presence of mind to do an ollie to compensate for the
drift but ended up carving my toe edge straight into the power and I must
have flipped 5 meters and ended up face first in the snow. Oh boy…I
couldn’t stand up for a full minute. Heh. I had the wind knocked out of me
and I felt like I cracked a rib. That’s a nasty way to fall, I
reckon…falling ass first is okay, that’s not painful, but going face
first is pretty horrible. Anyway, that’s it for today. I have to wake up
at 7 am tomorrow for my ITPM group meeting. Stay tuned for Part II
tomorrow. I still have a bunch of pictures that’s not up from the
disposable film camera. I’m going to get it developed tomorrow.
Enjoying the fire in the main village.
Read Mount Buller Part II.
I went out at 8 am this morning to get some breakfast with Diana. Picked up Daniel too and headed off to Sugarbun to get something to eat, partly because it’s air-conditioned and partly because we haven’t eaten there in a while.
Me and Diana
Hung around there for an hour before Ah Chan joined us. We had to leave at 10 am though, to meet up with Yi Ching and Justina to go to Sarikei. We went to the city bus terminal to catch the bus, but the buses leaves in 2 hour intervals and we just missed the 10 am bus. We decided to take the express boat to Paradom and catch a bus from there. The bus fare from Paradom to Sarikei is RM 5.40, the most I’ve paid for a bus ticket in Sibu. Heh.
Me and Daniel
An hour later, we were in Sarikei and got some lunch while waiting for Jonas to pick us up.
Lunch at Sarikei
Obligatory picture with Sarikei signboard to show I was there
The pineapple replica in Sarikei town
After lunch, we walked to the tallest building in Sarikei (some government building) because it was air-conditioned. It was really hot today. We walked to Courts Mammoth after that to pretend to try the couches there. Another thinly veiled attempt to enjoy their air-conditioned premises, of course. I saw this interestingly named coffee shop besides Courts Mammoth. It’s named Ma Li Cafe which cracked me up.
Ma Li
If you speak Foochow, the words “ma li” will no doubt elicit chuckles. For those of you who don’t, it sounds like a mild profanity in Foochow. After that, we walked to SMB St Anthony (a high school), who seems to produce several individuals of high caliber.
St Anthony High School
Jonas picked us up from St Anthony’s and we headed to get some ABC special to cool down and headed off to Ngiu Kee to get a large bottle of cold mineral water.
Eating ABC special (an iced dessert)
We went to this new park in Sarikei after that, it’s called the Water Tower Park, if I’m not mistaken. The main feature is an old water tower.
Water Tower Park
The Water Tower
Jonas dropped us off at the government building again after that and we got visitor’s passes to go to the top floor. The top floor is the 10th floor (what did you expect?) and there is nothing much there, except a good view of the river and some exceptionally cool air conditioning.
View of the river with ferry in dock
A friend of Justina’s picked us up after that and took us to Sebangkoi, a nature reserve about 30 minutes away from Sarikei town. Took heaps of pics there and Yi Ching had cramps and was trailing us all through the reserve. =D
Bridge over a waterfall
Rapids
Arrrggghhhhh…the croc got me!!!!!!!!!!!
We headed to Daniel’s uncle’s orchard after that, where I was promptly bitten 1000 times by 1000 mosquitoes.
The orchard
Managed to walk though most of the orchard, which contains ‘landmines’ in the form of holes (some going down as far as 1 feet) which are covered by shrubbery.
Landmine
Tr navigation. I also managed to drive this mini tractor thing, which has no gas pedal, but only a lever to move faster. The gear shift is in between the legs too, and the tractor jittered all the time, which makes an interesting experience.
Mini tractor
We drove Daniel’s uncle’s car to Jakar (har har…sounds like penis in Malay) to get something to eat. Headed back to the orchard after that and hi uncle drove us back to Sibu at around 8:15 pm. Interesting day, but I managed to get mild heat stroke from the obscene heat. Poor Yi Ching was struck by heat stroke too, we’re both sensitive that way. Now where did I put my Poh Chi Kit pills?
From left: Huai Bin (me), Yi Ching, Justina, Daniel
I have finally arrived in Sibu at 10:10 am today. I couldn’t take the
Sunday flight out coz the fog grounded all of the incoming planes, which
were routed to Sydney. After a 2 hour wait, the airport cancelled all
remaining flights and put us up at the
Rydges with dinner and breakfast
vouchers and a cabcharge coupon (lets you get on a cab for free). The
hotel is in corner Exhibition St. and Lt. Bourke Street. Right in the
middle of the city…I would have thought they will put us up at the
Hilton opposite the airport. Heh. Rydges is not a bad hotel nevertheless,
I think its a layby hotel for cabin crew coz there are heaps of them
walking around. I got a suite with a king sized bed all to myself. Not bad
at all, although I would have preferred to fly out on Sunday. Well, there
were two flights out of Melbourne on Monday, the 3 pm and the 11:50 pm.
The MAS people said they will try their best to put us on one of those two
flights. I didn’t get to go on the 3pm coz I have a connecting flight that
couldn’t be made with the 3pm, so they assigned me to the 11:50 pm one. Oh
well. I didn’t do much though, just slept through the night and woke up at
9:30 am to line up at the MAS counter and grabbed some breakfast after
that. I slept most of the afternoon as well. Heh. MAS paid for two nights
at the hotel, but I had to check out at 9 pm to catch my flight back. The
flight was overbooked so good thing I was there earlier. Anyway, I
couldn’t get the pics up coz I don’t have image editing software at my
home computer. Will pick up a warez CD of Photoshop on my way back later.
Feeling tired now…nearly had an accident just now too. Those damn brakes
need to be changed.
