Sydney

Can't believe I actually forgot to do this.

Just over 2 months ago, I visited Sydney to attend the Backyard Academy brought by Notforsalecampaign.org. It is a conference about human trafficking. So I flew to Sydney and went into the Italian district of the city known as Leichardt. It is a beautiful place, very peaceful and spacious, quite unlike downtown.





It's just gorgeous when the sun rises.





I did mention that it is an Italian district and so Italian delis are common and so are pasta restaurants. Much of their bread have ricotta cheese, spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, artichokes, anchovies, parma ham, etc. And they aren't very expensive. So I spent my days eating a lot of Italian sandwiches and breads. I lost some weight by the way.



I had a day free before I flew home and I took the liberty to visit the city.





The Sydney Opera House was packed. It wasn't only a tourist attraction but also a nice hangout for the locals. Quite a bit of Australia's population are Asians too. So it is common to see a Malaysian, Vietnamese or Hong Konger, or some dude from China in town.



And there it is the iconic Habour Bridge against the evening sun. I really appreciated the sun. You would too if you're in the middle of winter.

Oh, did I tell you those pictures were taken with my iPhone? My camera wasn't with me when I went.

Perth

I officially miss Perth because I'm perspiring at nothing and breathing in steam. It was a good change of climate, even more so because we just went through one of the coldest winters in years. Fortunately but sadly for me, there wasn't a hail storm to look at. Anyway, apart from pigging out and shopping, the best times were exploring sights with Daniel and Ernest. After all the trip was to live with them for 10 days.









That's UWA, which is the University of Western Australia. The campus looks stunning. The first thing I thought after walking through a good portion of it was that it qualifies as a good filming location. They even have ducks swimming in a pond outside the cafe and a place for peacocks to dwell! Coincidentally, as we were checking out the peacocks, one of them decided to woo a hen and began strutting his stuff.







I decided to take a walk around the neighbourhood too. Since the house we were staying in is near the Swan river, we walked down in time to catch the sunset. We met this lady down the street who was also from Singapore. She had migrated decades back and now lives with her son. She was pruning her lemon tree and clearing dead leaves around her rose bushes. The best part was, she kept a vegetable and herb garden in her back yet and also have a coop full of chickens.







We went to Bell Rapids which is about an hour's drive up north east. This is where Swan river starts. This is also where crazy people do white water rafting. The water was quite shallow on the day we went. Usually on days following heavy rainfall, the current is crazy.







Kings Park is THE place to be in Perth. It's like Fort Canning, Mount Faber, Botanic Gardens, Bishan Park put together, except still better. We went there for a luxurious breakfast one morning and set in the park by the pond to absorb the sun and crisp air.







Fremantle is one of THE places to be in Perth, at least for me. Geographically, its the place where Swan river goes into the Indian Ocean. Fremantle is famous for its markets and museums cos it's a heritage site, and of course seafood. Kailis was where we had thefreshestseafoodiveevereateninmylife.

Some of the other good things we did was visiting Subiaco church. It was a great blessing to be there. Also the wine tasting was awesome and not to mention chasing kangaroos.