A sad couple of weeks - Part 3

Finally, the last installment of the post 'A sad couple of weeks'. And so, Emily had left for M'sia/Muar since like 2 weeks ago? Hadn't heard from her since, 'cept once in MSN. She's very good at MIA, I reckoned. Wanted to let her know of the chalet arrangements etc and yet she MIA.

Anyway, back to like eh... 2nd Dec 07, where the NYP students were finally going back to Singapore. Hmm..everything started when I went over to Kingsford to meet up with the students, Cat, and Weisheng for dinner on the 1st Dec. Kinda waited till like approximately 8.30pm that they finally confirm the dinner with me?! And by the time I reached the 'Pinangsia' restaurant, it was already closed. And by then, they have yet to reach as well. But, can't be help, as I later learnt that they (excluding Weisheng) had quite a rough day before that. So anyway, we went to another Chinese restaurant for our dinner, which was not that bad.

As usual, somehow I just hate the services of the Chinese restaurants, 'cept for a few of them. Talking about that, I find that the services of a Chinese restaurant in the city to be quite good - it's located in Circular Quay, somewhere near the MacDonald's. Prolly the Chinese restaurants in Chinatown and Kingsford are always flooded with customers e.g. visitors and Asian students respectively that they don't really give a damn to their services. 'There are always customers coming in to replace those who are not happy with us' might be their mentality! Argh... Those situated in the city might have more competition etc and thus services might be better? Sounds logical? hmm... bottom line, I don't like the services in Chinatown and that restaurant in Kingsford. Given a choice I'm not gonna go back again no matter how delicious their food are.

Ok ok.. diverted quite a bit when I talked about food. lol...so after dinner, I took Weisheng's bicycle and ride back home to borrow the weighing scale from JM while the others headed to the student's place in Parade Lodge to help them pack their stuffs. And it was this ride that I encountered a possible crime in action. Oh well, give me creeps every time I think about it. And to think that I had walked along that uni walkway in the middle of the night before, when I had no choice but to take buses that past by Kingsford. Anyway, passed the weighing scale to them... initially they clocked like ~30+ kg per person?! After much repacking, managed to scaled it down to 20+kg.. lol.. why? 'cos part of it is that, we will be helping them to take some of their stuffs back to Singapore when we're going back in Jan 08! LOL.. Anyway, Malcolm's stuffs were like 40kg and yet SIA allowed him to check it his luggage without additional charges as well.

And so, after they have finished with their packing, the whole group of us decided to head down to city, at like... 2+am in the morning?!! And why did we go to the city in such un-holy hours?! Simple - to play games in the arcade! 'Cos apparently, Weisheng has promised Li Qiu that he will catch a softtoy for her, after Malcolm successful 'captured' a stitch and pooh toy for Cat and Chu Ying respectively! LOL.. Weisheng was quite reluctant initially, but had to ultimately cave in to peer pressure! LOL... and so we went to the city. Boy, the city was like full of drunken ang mos etc... chaotic even though there are police vehicle around. prolly all the bars and clubs in the world are kinda like that. Oh well, and Weisheng invest money on Malcolm to get the toy for Li Qiu, claiming that Malcolm is the expert! lol.. I joined in the fun too, played a few times, and aided Malcolm in his quest for Li Qiu's pooh! lol.. finally, managed to get it! lol. We played a couple of more group games e.g. Daytona where all 7 of us were racing against each other... and don't know which bugger caused me my car to flip in the race and ended up out of the contest for the first placing! argh...

Anyway, after the last game, we realised that it was about 3.30am - time for our bus, else we will need to wait for another hour! And so, we practically speed walked and ran to the bus stop at Hyde Park! lol. Phew.. finally managed to board bus 373 to Coogee - just in time for to catch the sunrise in Coogee. We reached coogee at around 4am? and headed towards to the beach, and to the cliffs to catch the sunrise. And it was then that occur to me that the daylight hours in Sydney now is freaking long. The sky started to slowly lit up with tints of orange over the horizon at approximately 4.30am, and the sun rises at around 5.30am. Sun sets at around 8pm, which means that 14.5hours of daylight in a day! Now this is what you call summer! Anyway, the sunrise was stunning, 'cept for the clouds over at the horizon. There are always a few early birds that were kayaking as well - talk about premium seats to watch sunrise!

After the sunrise, we headed back to Kingsford from Coogee, on foot! argh.. too early for bus service! A long, tiring walk. Finally reached Parade Lodge, and took some stuffs to Cat's place as Cat inherited them since the students were leaving. Rested for a while till 9.30am, and subsequently went over to the students' place again as we realised that Charmaine could not make it to drive the students to the airport. As we reached Parade Lodge, we got a shock as the students were already preparing to leave on a taxi to the airport. As the taxi could only seats 4, Weisheng and me had to take bus 400 to the airport. It's quite alright for me, as I can take this opportunity to see how to get to the airport on my own, so that I know what to do, where to go where I'm gonna fetch Limin when she's here on the 9th Jan. Quite a long ride - I would say 30 min ride as the bus when through Eastgarden etc! argh... and finally we reached the Kingsford Smith International Airport!

At the airport - ... can see that the folks are pretty upset, but still putting on a front. Guess those students must be pretty confused as well - at one hand, they can finally return to the comforts of home, but on the other, they had fun and enjoyed themselves while they were here, as well as being independent etc. Everyone was still joyus during our brunch in the Airport (we had Oporto). However, things were rather different when we were at the departure gate. Guys being guys are quite immune and somehow look beyond such parting, I suppose. However for the gals, its quite a different matter. Tears were being held back for them, and at the very last moment - just before they enter the gate, I told Cat to give them a last hug. Somehow, this precipitated into tears as Cat were hugging Chu Ying and Thivyaa. oh well... only thing that can comfort her is that we're going to have a chalet on the 1st and 2nd Feb, and soon we'll all be back in Singapore to party again! LOL...

Phew... finally finally... finished my super duper long post.. Oh, for the rest of the photo, do check out my flickr collections.