Day 6 - Sanctuary! Shop! Real home food!

Let me brief on where we were going to go. First it was off to some animal sanctuary, then shopping at a mall and finally to Flinders where we sample some real wind chill but we were able to sample meal that was cooked like home. So it was all good.




Why another animal sanctuary you ask? Well, it seems we can't enough of kangaroos and evil winged spawn of satan. However, this sanctuary was the only one in Southern Australia that had a platypus. Amazingly even Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin's zoo) didn't have one. So that was cool. For those of you who don't read or don't have kids who like animals, platypus is a real freak of nature. It looks as if when God made the platypus, he was either drunk or high on some psychedelic drug.



It's animal that looks like a beaver but has a bill of a duck. It has webbed feet, lays eggs but is a mammal. Go figure! Lives in the water but breathes air. Needless to say we can't take flash photography else we may blind this poor creature. So we drove across the vast plain of the Australian outskirt for this baby! There was also an animal hospital which was really cool.






After that, in a thunderstorm we drove back to the city and stopped by a shopping mall. Notice I say "a" mall and "a" sanctuary as I can't remember the names. The mall was like any mall but since it's Australia, it was just bigger.

At night we drove to St. Kilda which was by the harbour and found a Malaysian restaurant that was run by a lady from Taman Megah! That is like 3 mins drive from home. So it's like eating at home. The food was a lot better than that we had the previous day. Mandy has fishball noodle soup, Mike had prawn mee, Melissa tried the Hokkien mee and I had beef noodle. It was not too bad but by Oz standard and after almost retching seeing another plate full of fries, it was near heaven.





I didn't take too many pics and I don't remember much happened this day except ducking as a large eagle vulture the size of a B-52 flew by and created a sandstorm at the sanctuary. I do remember watching a nurse treat a sick echidna and buying mini speakers for my daughter and using my iPhone to test it but instead of playing Def Leppard or Journey or even Bryan Adams, I used Westlife. The sales girls thought it was cute that I have songs my daughter likes on my phone. So alls well ends well.

Pls excuse me, N'Sync and Backstreet Boys are on MTV.

Iron Man - SLAM DUNK!

You would think that a sequel is boring as we have seen it. What could be new? I mean it's a guy in a tin can playing super hero. Come on! So he made the tin can fly with some absolutely impossible boosters to the boots and some torch light on the palm and some reading lights on his chest. That is supposed to be impressive?

OF COURSE IT IS!!

If you are not impressed, you are either not a guy or someone from the opposite sex. The weapons get cooler. The villain was just as impressive. Mickey Rouke was a very intimidating figure and I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley....heck I don't wanna meet him period! His whip thingy was kinda cool though the whole drone thing was kinda the same as the part 1. I won't mention too much for fear of revealing too much and spoil the fun for you.

Needless to say, Tony Stark has my dream life. Actually more of the success, company, cars, house and stuff. Not the playboy life (that was for the benefit of my wife) and I definitely want my kids. Other than that, that's the life I dream of. Robert Downey is an excellent Tony Stark and he is just growing up so nicely as an actor that he is fast becoming my top 10 favourites.

There was a little of everything and a lot of things BLOWING up! There was a little shyness in Tony Stark and some love sparks while we so Scarlett Johansson kick some serious ass. Also good ol' Tony gets a side kick. And the actor playing Rhody is much better this time around. I would definitely recommend this. It is a true guy movie and even the ladies will like how Tony Stark flaunts his charm. I must warn you that there are some technical stuff being explained which you may want to check on it's validity.

THAT WAS A TRICK STATEMENT! If you really did check, you are either a certified geek or just have WAAAYYYY too much time on your hands. My Chindian sentiment is "WHO CARES!". If the movie is this cool, you can live with some technical untruth. So, go and enjoy. Though if you have not seen the first part and don't know about comics, you may want to check up on Iron Man comics or Avengers or just Google it to get a crash course.

I will be at the hardware shop building a suit made out of aluminium tin cans.

Day 5 - Steam Choo-Choo and stomach homesickness

Our itinerary for the day was to ride Australia's only operating steam train called the Puffing Billy. My youngest nephew Sean is "CRAAAAZZZZYYYY" about trains especially "Thomas the Train". When I say crazy, it is not just with a capital "K" but it is like an obsession type crazy. Pretty much like how Hitler was with Russia or how Communist are with the colour grey or how women are with shoes and bags. You cannot get past a shop selling trains without him going nuts and dragging his mother nose first into those shops. Coupled with the fact that they spoil him, he will whine and fuss to a point where his voice will go up into decibels that only bats could hear. "Sean the bat whisperer", that's what they will call him.



Anyway, the morning came and we drove about an hour to a town called Belgrave where Puffing Billy was and Mr Train was just thrilled (once he stopped whining about NOT wanting to go on the train. Kids!). The train ride itself was very uneventful. The view was nice, lots of trees and farm houses. It was a slow ride with the train rocking side to side. The ride was about an hour and we stopped, stretched a bit and then came back on the train the same way.








On the way back, I fell asleep. There are only so much rocks and trees and woodland creatures one can take.



On the drive back we saw a restaurant that said KL Noodle and Rice. We weren't sure if KL meant Kuala Lumpur or Koolalinga Lentilwawaga or something aboriginal. But when we took a look at the menu, there was no doubt. They served all our hawker fare, nasi lemak, chicken rice, dry wanton mee, curry laksa, fried beef ginger kuey teow. They all tasted just horrid but at this point, after suffering chicken breast, The Lot burgers and fries coming out of our wazzoos for the last 5 days, it was just great for us.





That evening we drove back to the city and walked around Chinatown see what the fuss is all about and I can tell you, there isn't anything to fuss. It was about 2 weeks to Xmas and there were hardly any decorations. It was positively sad. We chose a bad day to come to the city because of the weather. Of all the days we were here, the weather was never above 25 degrees. Today it was 40 degrees. It was cooking!!




In the evening (which since it was summer in Melbourne, evenings at 6pm was as bright as sunrise), we took a walk to Victoria Market to check out the fuss here. It was worth every painful step we took, every painful ankle agony and thigh muscle torture (we have been walking all day mind you). It was a "kwai-loh" pasar malam (or night market in Malay). Actually with all the Asians in Melbourne it did look like one of our pasar malam. They had Indian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, German, Arabic food and these were those I had time to see. It was a very enjoyable time and even though there was a large crowd, it was nice not to be rushing from place to another.






We had a nice dinner of hawker fare and drove home in the hot, steaming night at Victoria Market. Thank God we are Malaysians.

Clash of the Titans - more like Crash of the Tits

If you remember the same movie back in the 80s (or was it 70s?), we had this same movie that tells the myth of our hero Perseus, son of Zeus, saving the lovely Andromeda from the Kraken. All this because her stupid mother, Queen Cassieopea (however the hell you spell it!) said that Andromeda was more beautiful than the goddess Aphrodite which in Greco days was the Giselle Bunchen of Gods only more temperamental and with a hell lot more boyfriends. The Greek myth mentions pissing off some sea nymphs which is really very minor low level celestial stuff but.....whatever!

Bottomline, she pissed off someone who controls the Kraken which happens to be a VERY bad ass monster or pissed off someone who knows someone who controls the Kraken. Some seem to think it some giant squid that if grilled will feed an entire country with calamari for decades and kill everyone from cholesterol poisoning or guilt from obesity.

So yadda, yadda, hero flies in saves the day and marries the girl. That is the story in the movies. In mythology, Perseus was avenging the death of his father and mistreatment of his mother. He was asked by the king to bring back the Gorgon named Medusa's head. Anyway, he got some help from the other Gods and Goddesses that gave him gifts like an invisibility cap, shiny armour, adamantium sickle (of course you need admantium to cut of a Gorgon's head. Can't use a kitchen knife).

So Perseus sails off to see the Fates, 3 old and ugly women who share and eye and a tooth. Godness only knows what the hell they want with one tooth. He steals their eye to blackmail them into telling him. With the location (had to live without a GPS) he flew on the back of Pegasus, a stallion with wings. Another gifts from the gods.

Now let me tell you a bit about good ol Medusa. She is one of 3 sisters who were cursed because the pissed off some goddess or god or some celestial beings. She now has a lower body of a giant serpent, hair of vipers and she is said to have tusks like a wild boars. Her ultimate weapon, one look into her eyes and you turn to stone!

So the old movie has these monster that looked like paper mache cutouts or made from plasticine. While the effects in this year's efforts is a lot more real, the cheezy story and acting continues. Worst of all is the illusion of 3D. If like me, you paid more to watch in 3D, you will have to cleanse your aura of "bad movie decisions". Go to the shower and set it to freeze and soak yourself there until your blood screams in protest!

There was hardly any 3D parts and if I watched it without my 3D glasses, I could have enjoyed it as if it was 2D. Sadly, the movie was really bad, lack of story flow, didn't really follow to the myth and throw in some real bad acting from the "Avatar" hero. Guess he didn't have an Avatar to act for him in this movie.

If you can afford to, go ahead and satisfy your curiosity but if you have other more pressing matters like watching dew form, then it's ok to miss.

Day4 - Philip Island

Have you ever been to a place for holiday and they tell you the tourist spots and you feel you have to go see each and every place mentioned in the tourist pamphlet, even if you knew if was not fun or something you want to see? I don't know what it is. Pure morbid curiosity or the guilt of not getting your money's worth or the fact that it will be fun and people will be laughing at you for year? There are not many forces that powerful as this urge.

The visit to Philip Island was one such place though I have to admit that the trip there and spending lunch at the seaside town of San Remo and also visiting a chocolate factory was the highlight. Philip Island also had a spectacular view of the ocean and is the famous home of the Little Penguins. They are the smallest penguins in the animal kingdom and they come home every night to the nest on Philip Island and this tourist attraction is called the Penguin Parade.



You can buy tickets where you will sit on a grand stand right in front of the ocean waiting for these little guys to come out of the freezing ocean and we were told not to make any noise. There was a couple of teenagers sitting in front of us that kept shushing the kids and I. I of course as a responsible parent got together with my kids and kept irritating them by making giggly and farty noises.

The chocolate factory (not "the" chocolate factory as in Willy Wonka's but just "a" factory) was a visit well worth AUD12. We had free chocolate to clog up the arteries of 10 rhinoceroses and we got to design our own chocolate. There was this contraption that collected chocolate liquid and then let is flow like a chocolate curtain in it's brown glory. I had dreams that I was under the flow with my mouth open and my entire internal systems shutting down voluntarily. What a way to go. There was a train model with the town done entirely in chocolate and a full choclate stature of David by Michaelangelo as well as machineries and other chocolate ingredients to show you how it's done.









There was also a koala's sanctuary but I have seen enough koala's from our last trip and the wild koalas on the Grampiens to care. Australia would not be complete without a visit to the farm to see how sheep dogs hustle sheeps, how "cowboys" "round up" sheep and calves and of course how to make billy tea. The put some tea leaves in a rusty can, add boiling water and ask you to swing the can 360 degrees with your arms straight. I doubt that's how it's done in the outbacks and this is just to see how stupid us tourist are (answer: pretty darn).







The penguins' show ended pretty late and in the end the parade was quite worth it. Just don't get the skybox or grandstand or whatever additional tickets they ask you to get. In the end, we are all mixed around anyway regardless of ticket price. Also we didn't take any photos of the penguins as we were told it would hurt their eyes or even scare them. Thousands of giant watching you go home, no problem. Flash! Oh my gawd!! Run for lives! We are so scared!!!!




So ends Day4 and Day5 is about shopping in the city....THANK GOD!