< Lala's Australian Adventures - Part 1 >
My last few posts here before I go back to my original blog... Wanted to do this long ago, but was too lazy. I finally have got the time to post this! While on my week-long Australia trip, I basically had this journal in the form of my foolscap pad. Now that I'm flipping through it... OMG, it's like... 20 pages long! I can type the entire thing out till my fingers ache I guess. ARGH, but I still want to post this, 'cause I'll most likely throw away the foolscap pad soon.
Will have to do this in a few parts though...
And I've decorated this whole online diary version with pictures too! Hehe.
Read if you're interested... it was really a wonderful and memorable trip.
LALA'S AUSTRALIAN ADVENTURES
where she spent most of her time chasing inflatable kangaroos, socceroos, watching tv and some other things.
Will have to do this in a few parts though...
And I've decorated this whole online diary version with pictures too! Hehe.
Read if you're interested... it was really a wonderful and memorable trip.
LALA'S AUSTRALIAN ADVENTURES
where she spent most of her time chasing inflatable kangaroos, socceroos, watching tv and some other things.
13 June 2006 (Tuesday)
1125PM:
Hello. I'm writing this on a foolscap pad on the plane right now. We're expected to reach Brisbane at around 4am, and meanwhile I just don't know what to do. I just managed to catch the movie 'Aquamarine' on the plane. They're quite a few decent & recent movies available on the plane's entertainment system (SIA ROCKS!). Oh by the way, I just got my 1st souvenir! My brother grabbed a copy of today's Australian papers before entering the plane... the front page was all about the Aussies' victory against Japan.
(my first piece of souvenir!)
Speaking of the Socceroos, there were these free Xbox 360 Fifa soccer games at the departure area (Changi Airport rules!) and I thrashed my brother with the Socceroos. I won his England 2-1 (conceding first), and once I got the hang of it, I whipped both his Ukraine and Spain 5-1. He got quite frustrated but my Harry just couldn't stop scoring....
(at changi airport where they had this World Cup entertainment corner. They show repeat telecasts there too.)
Haha. Kk, I'll go and see what I can entertain myself with now. Mummy is falling asleep while Daniel is still playing the games. I think I better go to the toilet before Mummy blocks my way onto the aisle when she sleeps. Ok, they're turning off the lights, but I doubt I can sleep on a plane.
14 June 2006 (Wednesday)
545AM (Brisbane time - Brisbane is 2 hours ahead of S'pore):
Oh man. My head is throbbing right now from the lack of sleep. We should be descending anytime now. In the past few hours, I watched another movie "Failure To Launch" before trying to get some rest. Didn't exactly sleep, but tried resting my eyes. My brother's laughter while watching some cartoon did irritate me and interrupted my rest though.
Then I watched some football videos, one of which showed Xabi. Interviews with him and his brother, & some footages from our CL homecoming. Seeing that reminded me of how Yishi, back in the LFC forum, would have wanted to see this. It's also the first time I was seeing Mikel say anything. The way he described how he watched the CL final made him sound like a Liverpool player. It was weird how he kept referring to Liverpool as "we".
Then there was this top goals of WC 2002, and you wouldn't believe whose goal was 1st! Salif Diao v Denmark.
Lol.
423PM:
Right now I'm in my hotel room. My brother and I are sharing a room simply because I can't stand my parents' snoring. Just woke up from a much needed nap and we should be meeting up with my elder brother and sis-in-law sometime later in the evening. They are coming in from Sydney this evening. My elder brother's not too much of a football fan, but I'll ask him if the atmosphere in Sydney is different from here. To be frank, if I didn't know better, there doesn't seem to be any much indication that people here know about the WC at all! I'll put that down mainly due to how Gold Coast is more of a tourist area. While we were coming in from the airport, it was just like a main highway with a few houses after every few miles, so I can't really expect football-crazy people jumping around down the streets. I saw on the TV that the city streets in Melbourne and Sydney were quite a different scene. So far, the few indications that this lot of people here know the WC exists is a single signboard down the highway telling us the time and date of the Brazil clash, our Malaysian-born driver telling us how the matches are telecasted live on all tvs here, the Aussie papers having the socceroos on the front pages, a few shops selling WC-related stuff.
The search for my inflatable kangaroo is proving to be rather difficult. But you know what? I actually saw the exact same one I wanted in a shop! It was hanging up there from the ceiling, but when I asked the salesgirl, she said they were still trying to get stocks in, and that one hanging up there was the only one they had and they couldn't get it down. How unlucky can I be?!
At least, I have gotten my 2nd piece of souvenir already. Another newspaper! Hahaha. At the airport, I saw this copy having a pic of some Aussie players training. Harry was smiling so widely with Timmy behind him. There was actually another one with an even bigger picture, but I bought this one 'cause it seemed to have more articles about the Socceroos in it.
(2nd piece of sourvenir!)
15 June 2006 (Thursday)
552PM:
It's only 5.52pm now, but it looks as though it's 9+pm. The sun sets around 4.30pm here, so it's quite spooky to see how short the day lasts. Today we went to Movie World, and I certainly enjoyed myself more this time than when I came here in 1998. At least this time, I dared to take more rides, and was no longer afraid to take pictures with the cartoon characters. Oh, and we saw Rooney! Ya, of course, and Colleen too. In fact, the first thing we did there was to watch this Shrek 4-D movie. How is it 4-D? Well, not only did we get to watch a 3-D movie, it was also something like a simulator ride + you can actually get water sprayed at you & we actually felt something tingly on our legs (goodness knows what was that) when there were supposedly spiders "thrown" at us (from the screen). It was definitely the most interesting ride/show of all. (Oh bloody hell, my nose is bleeding right now. Don't know why. Note: My nose continued bleeding every now and then till I reached home. No idea why.)
(my brother and I with wayne and colleen)
Anyway, I'm still pretty much a scaredy cat, so I didn't take any of the 2 rollercoasters there. But I pretty much took all the other rides there. The scariest one we took was the Scooby-Doo spooky coaster. That was hell man. The driver tricked us when he said we must take that ride! It was bloody scary because we were always caught by surprise with the way the car moved! It wasn't exactly due to the dark, because I could still see the tracks ahead of us. But you see... it wasn't always about the tracks ahead of you. Once, our car suddenly stopped in front of this wall or curtain. Initially I thought we were going through the barrier, so I was kinda scared when the car actually moved... upward. As in, vertically upward like a lift. Then I thought they were going to drop us back down, but you know what? The car suddenly moved... BACKWARDS! And yah, there was a sudden drop as it went backwards too. I'm glad I made it out alive.
(rollercoaster "superman escapes" - scary, of course I didn't take!/scooby-doo spooky coaster - some people say this is worse than the rollercoasters though)
The rest of the rides & shows were okay. Pretty fun and all.
Well, rewinding back to yesterday... After dinner we went back to our hotel rooms, and I basically just spent the time watching TV. Yeah, football. The matches start later here, so I only watched the first half of the Spain v Ukraine match. You know, around that time, that was when we saw more ads relating to the Socceroos. There was one Nike one I particularly liked. It showed a man in the stands yelling at Bresciano who was kicking a ball on the pitch.
The man was shouting at Bresciano, "How will you beat Brazil, Bresciano? You won't! You don't even know what does Joga Bonito mean!"
Bresciano then asked Aloisi to pass him the ball, before volleying it high into the stands to knock that man down.
Then these words appeared on the screen:
"History is against us"
"Stuff history"
Then the Nike slogan Joga Bonito and all appeared. The end.
(note: actually you know what, I realised later this was just one of the series of Nike "stuff history" ads in Australia. Some of the ads can be found on Youtube. See here:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search=socceroos+nike&search_type=search_videos)
That was pretty cool huh? First time I ever saw that ad. Oh, and they also show the Pringles ad that has Cisse and Stevie here. Oh oh, and yeah, there was this trailer about this Johnny Warren documentary (no idea who's he) and for some reason, they played YNWA as the background music for that trailer. When that came on, initially I thought it was my handphone ringing.
My brother and sis-in-law only came at around 11+ yesterday. Their flight was delayed and they came to our hotel just to inform us on the plans after Friday. He also told me about how there were many South Koreans beating their drums down the Sydney streets when they won their match against Togo. Crazy people, I saw they had fireworks in S. Korea! They're really mad about their national football huh? My brother also said they caught the Australia v Japan match at a pub there. They had placed a bet on a Japan win, so when the Japs scored, they were trying not to show their glee, but when the Aussies scored, the men there went absolutely crazy.
Hmm... guess there's more of a football atmosphere in Sydney than here! Of course, I'm sure there're people watching the matches at the pubs here, but still Sydney sounds more fun... Okok, I'm not complaining...
16 June 2006 (Friday)
644AM:
I think Mikey's dead. I saw the 2nd half of the England v T&T match & Rooney came on for Crouch. Wasn't Crouchy supposed to be Rooney's replacement? Hmm... instead Crouchy later went on to be the first England player to score at this year's WC. I'm happy for Crouchy, but the plan was for Mikey and Crouchy to kick Rooney out of the lineup! Crouchy has done his job, but not Mikey... Sigh. I've been getting updates from HH via sms on my fantasy team progress. Seems like someone has just overtaken me into 3rd place. Well, the fact that I had Mikey as captain last night wouldn't help either, though Stevie did score for me. I'm quite proud both England goals were from Liverpool players! Actually, when Rooney came on and both Carra and Mikey went off, I suddenly wanted T&T to win, so people would blame it on Eriksson's changes. Guess it didn't work though!
Oh yeah, a little bit more about TV...
Yesterday I watched the last episode of this reality TV show called "Nerds FC". Ok, apparently this show is about gathering some nerds who've never kicked a ball before to form a football team. Yesterday they played their biggest match against A-league team Melbourne Victory. They lost 12-2, but it was actually a great result! I sort of thought Victory was already giving them chances, but they got a real kick from scoring their first goals. Well, actually the 2nd was an own goal. On the Wednesday episode, I saw they lost to this ladies team 6-0, and that was a great result too, 'cause apparently they used to lose by a bigger margin.
Yesterday I also watched the Johnny Warren documentary. Ok, he's sort of like an ambassador for football in Australia. He was an ex-socceroo, and his lifelong mission was trying to promote the sport in Australia. Sadly, he died of lung cancer in 2004. He seemed like a man who really had the passion for football, and I saw this part where he started this 'Captain Socceroo' TV show. It was quite cute! Haha! Had a cute song too. And Mark Viduka was talking about how he used to rush back from school to watch the show. Haha! And they were showing Warren's birthday wishes from various famous people, and there was a brief video of Harry there too! He was wearing a Leeds jersey though.
I had to see so many glimpses of Harry and his ugly two-ponytail when they showed the highlights of the Australia v Uruguay match last year. You know, there was a tribute to the late Warren at the start of the match, and it seemed like they were playing our YNWA anthem to the tribute too! I guess it was appropriate, but still they stole our song! I'm proud they stole it though.
Well, I don't know why I'm not seeing more of Harry on TV here. I've seen Timmy pop up numerous times, staring out of the TV screen and saying, "I'm Tim Cahill and you're watching the World Cup on SBS." (SBS is the TV channel here that's showing the WC matches) Aloisi does that too. Well, maybe Harry's too famous and too busy to do such stuff.
Ok, we should be going for breakfast soon, then it's off to Dreamland! Bloody hell. I'm going to take more heart-stopping rides!
1125PM:
Hello. I'm writing this on a foolscap pad on the plane right now. We're expected to reach Brisbane at around 4am, and meanwhile I just don't know what to do. I just managed to catch the movie 'Aquamarine' on the plane. They're quite a few decent & recent movies available on the plane's entertainment system (SIA ROCKS!). Oh by the way, I just got my 1st souvenir! My brother grabbed a copy of today's Australian papers before entering the plane... the front page was all about the Aussies' victory against Japan.
(my first piece of souvenir!)
Speaking of the Socceroos, there were these free Xbox 360 Fifa soccer games at the departure area (Changi Airport rules!) and I thrashed my brother with the Socceroos. I won his England 2-1 (conceding first), and once I got the hang of it, I whipped both his Ukraine and Spain 5-1. He got quite frustrated but my Harry just couldn't stop scoring....
(at changi airport where they had this World Cup entertainment corner. They show repeat telecasts there too.)
Haha. Kk, I'll go and see what I can entertain myself with now. Mummy is falling asleep while Daniel is still playing the games. I think I better go to the toilet before Mummy blocks my way onto the aisle when she sleeps. Ok, they're turning off the lights, but I doubt I can sleep on a plane.
14 June 2006 (Wednesday)
545AM (Brisbane time - Brisbane is 2 hours ahead of S'pore):
Oh man. My head is throbbing right now from the lack of sleep. We should be descending anytime now. In the past few hours, I watched another movie "Failure To Launch" before trying to get some rest. Didn't exactly sleep, but tried resting my eyes. My brother's laughter while watching some cartoon did irritate me and interrupted my rest though.
Then I watched some football videos, one of which showed Xabi. Interviews with him and his brother, & some footages from our CL homecoming. Seeing that reminded me of how Yishi, back in the LFC forum, would have wanted to see this. It's also the first time I was seeing Mikel say anything. The way he described how he watched the CL final made him sound like a Liverpool player. It was weird how he kept referring to Liverpool as "we".
Then there was this top goals of WC 2002, and you wouldn't believe whose goal was 1st! Salif Diao v Denmark.
Lol.
423PM:
Right now I'm in my hotel room. My brother and I are sharing a room simply because I can't stand my parents' snoring. Just woke up from a much needed nap and we should be meeting up with my elder brother and sis-in-law sometime later in the evening. They are coming in from Sydney this evening. My elder brother's not too much of a football fan, but I'll ask him if the atmosphere in Sydney is different from here. To be frank, if I didn't know better, there doesn't seem to be any much indication that people here know about the WC at all! I'll put that down mainly due to how Gold Coast is more of a tourist area. While we were coming in from the airport, it was just like a main highway with a few houses after every few miles, so I can't really expect football-crazy people jumping around down the streets. I saw on the TV that the city streets in Melbourne and Sydney were quite a different scene. So far, the few indications that this lot of people here know the WC exists is a single signboard down the highway telling us the time and date of the Brazil clash, our Malaysian-born driver telling us how the matches are telecasted live on all tvs here, the Aussie papers having the socceroos on the front pages, a few shops selling WC-related stuff.
The search for my inflatable kangaroo is proving to be rather difficult. But you know what? I actually saw the exact same one I wanted in a shop! It was hanging up there from the ceiling, but when I asked the salesgirl, she said they were still trying to get stocks in, and that one hanging up there was the only one they had and they couldn't get it down. How unlucky can I be?!
At least, I have gotten my 2nd piece of souvenir already. Another newspaper! Hahaha. At the airport, I saw this copy having a pic of some Aussie players training. Harry was smiling so widely with Timmy behind him. There was actually another one with an even bigger picture, but I bought this one 'cause it seemed to have more articles about the Socceroos in it.
(2nd piece of sourvenir!)
15 June 2006 (Thursday)
552PM:
It's only 5.52pm now, but it looks as though it's 9+pm. The sun sets around 4.30pm here, so it's quite spooky to see how short the day lasts. Today we went to Movie World, and I certainly enjoyed myself more this time than when I came here in 1998. At least this time, I dared to take more rides, and was no longer afraid to take pictures with the cartoon characters. Oh, and we saw Rooney! Ya, of course, and Colleen too. In fact, the first thing we did there was to watch this Shrek 4-D movie. How is it 4-D? Well, not only did we get to watch a 3-D movie, it was also something like a simulator ride + you can actually get water sprayed at you & we actually felt something tingly on our legs (goodness knows what was that) when there were supposedly spiders "thrown" at us (from the screen). It was definitely the most interesting ride/show of all. (Oh bloody hell, my nose is bleeding right now. Don't know why. Note: My nose continued bleeding every now and then till I reached home. No idea why.)
(my brother and I with wayne and colleen)
Anyway, I'm still pretty much a scaredy cat, so I didn't take any of the 2 rollercoasters there. But I pretty much took all the other rides there. The scariest one we took was the Scooby-Doo spooky coaster. That was hell man. The driver tricked us when he said we must take that ride! It was bloody scary because we were always caught by surprise with the way the car moved! It wasn't exactly due to the dark, because I could still see the tracks ahead of us. But you see... it wasn't always about the tracks ahead of you. Once, our car suddenly stopped in front of this wall or curtain. Initially I thought we were going through the barrier, so I was kinda scared when the car actually moved... upward. As in, vertically upward like a lift. Then I thought they were going to drop us back down, but you know what? The car suddenly moved... BACKWARDS! And yah, there was a sudden drop as it went backwards too. I'm glad I made it out alive.
(rollercoaster "superman escapes" - scary, of course I didn't take!/scooby-doo spooky coaster - some people say this is worse than the rollercoasters though)
The rest of the rides & shows were okay. Pretty fun and all.
Well, rewinding back to yesterday... After dinner we went back to our hotel rooms, and I basically just spent the time watching TV. Yeah, football. The matches start later here, so I only watched the first half of the Spain v Ukraine match. You know, around that time, that was when we saw more ads relating to the Socceroos. There was one Nike one I particularly liked. It showed a man in the stands yelling at Bresciano who was kicking a ball on the pitch.
The man was shouting at Bresciano, "How will you beat Brazil, Bresciano? You won't! You don't even know what does Joga Bonito mean!"
Bresciano then asked Aloisi to pass him the ball, before volleying it high into the stands to knock that man down.
Then these words appeared on the screen:
"History is against us"
"Stuff history"
Then the Nike slogan Joga Bonito and all appeared. The end.
(note: actually you know what, I realised later this was just one of the series of Nike "stuff history" ads in Australia. Some of the ads can be found on Youtube. See here:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search=socceroos+nike&search_type=search_videos)
That was pretty cool huh? First time I ever saw that ad. Oh, and they also show the Pringles ad that has Cisse and Stevie here. Oh oh, and yeah, there was this trailer about this Johnny Warren documentary (no idea who's he) and for some reason, they played YNWA as the background music for that trailer. When that came on, initially I thought it was my handphone ringing.
My brother and sis-in-law only came at around 11+ yesterday. Their flight was delayed and they came to our hotel just to inform us on the plans after Friday. He also told me about how there were many South Koreans beating their drums down the Sydney streets when they won their match against Togo. Crazy people, I saw they had fireworks in S. Korea! They're really mad about their national football huh? My brother also said they caught the Australia v Japan match at a pub there. They had placed a bet on a Japan win, so when the Japs scored, they were trying not to show their glee, but when the Aussies scored, the men there went absolutely crazy.
Hmm... guess there's more of a football atmosphere in Sydney than here! Of course, I'm sure there're people watching the matches at the pubs here, but still Sydney sounds more fun... Okok, I'm not complaining...
16 June 2006 (Friday)
644AM:
I think Mikey's dead. I saw the 2nd half of the England v T&T match & Rooney came on for Crouch. Wasn't Crouchy supposed to be Rooney's replacement? Hmm... instead Crouchy later went on to be the first England player to score at this year's WC. I'm happy for Crouchy, but the plan was for Mikey and Crouchy to kick Rooney out of the lineup! Crouchy has done his job, but not Mikey... Sigh. I've been getting updates from HH via sms on my fantasy team progress. Seems like someone has just overtaken me into 3rd place. Well, the fact that I had Mikey as captain last night wouldn't help either, though Stevie did score for me. I'm quite proud both England goals were from Liverpool players! Actually, when Rooney came on and both Carra and Mikey went off, I suddenly wanted T&T to win, so people would blame it on Eriksson's changes. Guess it didn't work though!
Oh yeah, a little bit more about TV...
Yesterday I watched the last episode of this reality TV show called "Nerds FC". Ok, apparently this show is about gathering some nerds who've never kicked a ball before to form a football team. Yesterday they played their biggest match against A-league team Melbourne Victory. They lost 12-2, but it was actually a great result! I sort of thought Victory was already giving them chances, but they got a real kick from scoring their first goals. Well, actually the 2nd was an own goal. On the Wednesday episode, I saw they lost to this ladies team 6-0, and that was a great result too, 'cause apparently they used to lose by a bigger margin.
Yesterday I also watched the Johnny Warren documentary. Ok, he's sort of like an ambassador for football in Australia. He was an ex-socceroo, and his lifelong mission was trying to promote the sport in Australia. Sadly, he died of lung cancer in 2004. He seemed like a man who really had the passion for football, and I saw this part where he started this 'Captain Socceroo' TV show. It was quite cute! Haha! Had a cute song too. And Mark Viduka was talking about how he used to rush back from school to watch the show. Haha! And they were showing Warren's birthday wishes from various famous people, and there was a brief video of Harry there too! He was wearing a Leeds jersey though.
I had to see so many glimpses of Harry and his ugly two-ponytail when they showed the highlights of the Australia v Uruguay match last year. You know, there was a tribute to the late Warren at the start of the match, and it seemed like they were playing our YNWA anthem to the tribute too! I guess it was appropriate, but still they stole our song! I'm proud they stole it though.
Well, I don't know why I'm not seeing more of Harry on TV here. I've seen Timmy pop up numerous times, staring out of the TV screen and saying, "I'm Tim Cahill and you're watching the World Cup on SBS." (SBS is the TV channel here that's showing the WC matches) Aloisi does that too. Well, maybe Harry's too famous and too busy to do such stuff.
Ok, we should be going for breakfast soon, then it's off to Dreamland! Bloody hell. I'm going to take more heart-stopping rides!
posted by lala at 2:50 PM
1 Comments:
wow! you took a picture with Wayne Rooney and Colleen? omgzz!! haha just kidding :D
Post a Comment
<< Home