Wandering in a City

So I chucked a Ferris Bueller and went exploring Sydney. Living the suburban life, I don't know the city all that well.

In one very long sentence to recap everything, this is what happened:
We arrived at St James around 10 to see St. Mary's Cathedral, but there was a mass so we walked around until we found the longest walkway in the Southern Hemisphere hidden underground, and after we got bored of running up and down, we tried to walk to Darling Harbour, but we ended up at Museum Park so we caught the train instead, then when we reached Darling Harbour we caught a Ferry to Manly and watched these street performers and walked a bit along the beach, but there were blue bottles all over the sand so then we caught the ferry back the Darling Harbour, then caught the train back to St James to see the Cathedral again, then went to Newtown to admire the shops and street art.

The video got cut because some poor man was waiting to use the walkway for its actual purpose.

So I've heard about Sydney's secret underground tunnels before but I never really bothered researching about them until recently. The Australian Railway Historical Society used to give tours of the tunnels but they've stopped- probably due to fear of terrorism. It's basically impossible to get there, especially since they've added surveillance cameras, unless you're game enough to join the Cave Clan and run down live tracks or somehow gain access to the keys which unlock the green doors. 

Nevertheless they're still interesting and there are still plenty of pictures online of them.

"St James has several abandoned tunnels, one of which has flooded and produced an underground lake... The two disused tunnels lead off both to the north and south of St. James station, in between the two tunnels currently in use. The platform of St. James Station is in fact two separate island platforms, with a space between them for the tunnel tracks; but this space has been covered over with a false floor, giving the appearance of a single platform."

source: http://www.sydneyarchitecture.com/cbd/cbd2-010.htm
more pics of underground thing http://urbantwilight.net/

~13~

~PLACE~ TRAVEL~ VIDEOS~ MUSICIANS~ NOVELS~ MOVIES~

~NEW YEARS RESOLUTION~

1. Read more. Watch more. Listen more.

2. Find new outside school activity.

3. Learn to keep track of where my money goes

4. Remain calm during study periods

5. Remain neat during study periods

6. Follow the 'If it takes less than 1 minute to clean up, then clean it up' rule

7. Be sun smart

8. Create something weekly

9. Sleep early, wake up early

10. Find more exciting places. Beaches in particular.

11. Learn to make meals other than snacks and breakfast

12. Practice to play the piano more consistently

13. Learn to drive

Musical Interlude

Pretty in Pink

Suddenly wanting something that's milkshake pink.

Walking in a Debussy Composition

Popcorn in the microwave, waves rolling in and Coldplay songs on a roadtrip- possibly the best combination of sounds in human history. If I had to sum up my stay at Treachery Beach (4hr drive from Sydney), I would have to use that combination of sounds.

Paul, Don, Victor, Me, Jack, Ashley, Hao, Shevaun and Ryan

At first I thought I'd be more rejected than the first slice of bread because I didn't really know anyone there, except maybe my family friend Victor, but everyone was extremely nice, and talented too! Most of them were really smart; one from North Sydney Girls HS, another from Baulkham Hills HS, one's a pharmacist, one with an ATAR score of 98.something... dammit, what is self esteem? There was this one time when I was having a small talk with Victor's mum. She asked me what grade I was up to in piano, and after I told her that I was in Grade 8, she seemed really surprised and impressed. I felt pretty good, but then nek minnut, turns out her other son Ryan is musical genius who can play music by ear and is doing his AMus at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

I've never met anyone so passionate about music before though. He's not even in Year 8 at school and he's already writing Romantic compositions of his own. He somewhat motivated me yet at the same time made me feel bad considering that I don't even remember the name of the pieces I play.

Life felt good there though!  The food tasted great there, and pretty fancy considering that we were basically camping; one of the families who went with us owned a restaurant. All I needed to do was play card games, go to the beach, eat food, read and nap.

It was raining on the day that I arrived, but we went to the beach anyway. It was actually warmer in the sea than in the rain. There was just water in every direction and we had the whole beach to ourselves too. I just felt like I was in the middle of a big big cloud.

On the second day we went to a different beach. There weren't as many waves, so I assumed that it'll be boring, but it was actually more fun. There were rocks beneath and you could sometimes see some fish and jellyfish. I don't normally swim far off the coast, but because there weren't any large waves and I was surrounded mostly by really strong swimmers, I got to swim out to areas where my feet couldn't even touch the ground. We had a bit of a splash here and there, but the water fight soon quickly turned into a seaweed fight, and the next thing I know that happened was me being picked up at least 25 times that day and being thrashed into the water. They even thrashed me into this giant mess of seaweed and it felt disgusting! For gods sake, I couldn't even lie down on the beach for 30 secs without being dragged by Victor by the leg and having someone else stick seaweed down my boardies, HAHA :(

We played a pretty foul trick on this 6 year old named Tintin though. You wouldn't exactly call him a bright kid, so we buried a dead pigeon and told him to dig in that area because there was a 'treasure' underneath it to see if he would actually believe us. It was disgusting! Even when you could see the bird, he continued to dig in that area. Either he didn't care or he actually didn't realise that it was a bird. We had to tell him to stop at least three times before he stopped digging.

When we weren't at the beach, we would play card games. Everyone who lost in a game of Thirteen had to drink a cup of milk. I had to stop after losing two rounds. I didn't want to need to go to the toilet in the middle of the night, especially since you had to go on a 5 minute trek down the bush just to reach the toilets. Most of the time we played Mafia though. You really get to figure out how people react in that game. Some people's faces are like an opened book! I can't really lie too well, but I can keep a straight face.

The only problem i have with playing Mafia is that when you close your eyes, it's very easy for people to shove popcorn down your shirt.

Anyways, the highlight of my trip would've been walking on the sand dunes. To get there, we had to walk through this bush and we saw a family of dingoes, which was pretty scary because Tintin kept screaming 'DINGOOOO!' and waving his umbrella around.  At one point we had to walk through these arches of trees. It was very maze-like and reminded me of Alice in Wonderland.

 I felt like I was walking in a National Geographic issue. I didn't get to take a good picture though, because my camera ran out of batteries (talk about good timing.) It felt amazing just running down the foredune and onto the beach. Everything was so pictureque. The sand was so smooth that I literally felt guilty for walking on it and ruining it with my footsteps! It was at dusk, and the beach looked really delicate and misty in the distance. It made me feel a mix of wonder, fear and peace which sounds pretty crazy.The beach very much reminded me of 'La cathedrale engloutie.' I can see why environmentalists want to keep beaches untouched.

Somewhere in my Memory

Hello Aloha Ciao Salut, I'm back! It's summer break again and today's Christmas, and although there was crappy weather today and I'm feeling rather nostalgic while thinking about my Christmases during my childhood while the Home Alone soundtrack is playing in the background, I've enjoyed my holidays so far. I'm extremely tired though. I went to join the carols at my church and went to the Midnight Mass, and stayed up until three reading The Great Gatsby and texting Simon about bikes and fairy floss machines and other stuff.

Christmas has always been my favourite celebration of the year, mainly because I get to spend time with people who actually matter. I met up with a couple of my primary school friends the other day and a few other people I haven't seen in about half a year. We snuck out of the party for a bit to go to the park though- 'we' as in John, Simba and Peter. It felt good just kicking off my heels and going all-out on the swings.

The next day I hung out with mah girliez / the rampers. Don't laugh at how much we complement the stereotypical group of teenage girls, but we spent a large proportion of the day watching the Notebook. I couldn't cry at the end of the movie though, even though half of my group was crying. All I could think of was what Harley had said at the final scene of The Notebook the first time I watched it- 'Are they gonna do it now?'

I wish the day would've lasted longer though. I haven't had that much fun in a while. It was such a carefree day! Did whatever we wanted when we wanted, ate what we wanted (for me, that was 5 slices of pepperoni pizza, carrot sticks and dips, choc-chip cookies, cupcakes, sweet chilli chips...yum...), and literally spending half an hour laughing at the effects on photobucket.

Actually, on the 2nd thought, we did stress out quite a bit, but that was only because we accidentally got some pink nail polish on Esha's carpet. It was fun and funny trying to clean it up with baking powder and nail polish remover anyway. It almost worked!

I spent the whole of Christmas with my family on both sides. Felt quite bad for my cousin. He had a pimple on his nose, so we kept calling him Rudolph. I still can't believe my 5th grade cousin is taller than me though. And she's taller than my cousin who already graduated high school (Yeah that's you Rosa.) After she told me that she only grows taller and not fatter, I told her- 'Someday, May. Someday...' Her face was priceless heheh.

And yes, I'm experimenting with photo filters because a) my sister took the big fat black camera so I need to disguise how terrible the quality of the photos really are but b) even if I did have the big fat black camera, I would still be experimenting with photo filters because I always set the camera to 'auto' anyway and c) I just got an Iphone and I was really excited to use instagram, but then I found out that Facebook bought Instagram so I was like 'nehh'.

So as mentioned before, I'm starting to read again! After reading The Great Gatsby, I'm thinking of either reading Animal Farm, A Thousand Splendid Suns, We Need To Talk About Kevin or possibly The Fault In Our Stars again. That book is so good that you've GOT to read it a 2nd time. Thank God Katherine got me the pre-ordered signed version of it.

I've also been watching a lot of movies lately. I really like the ones I've watched recently- The Fight Club, Sixteen Candles, Donnie Darko and the Perks of Being a Wall Flower. If anyone knows any really good movies / books to watch/ read, please let me know. That'll be great :)

Musical Interlude