Hawaii Cruise & Others - April 2019

My dear brother and myself understands the importance of family gatherings so a cruise trip was planned, organised and paid for by my brother in mid 2018. It was close to 10 months wait before we took off on 13April 2019 from Perth to Honolulu.
Marina,s Year 11 school work was loaded with homework, assessments and the cruise was so much looking forward to though still with Biden worry of homework and assessment; her hand luggage contained her school textbook and notes and when there was time and energy she did put some effort into her work.
Cruise was a complete novelty experience and it was kind of exciting especially seeing all the posts on YouTube. We left Perth on 12 th April and arrived at Honolulu on 8.30 a, it was on the same date 12 th April, with a total of 18 flying hours . The taxi driver gave us the First impression of the gap between the rich and the poor in Waikiki. We checked in Hilton Village resort which was so large with 8 buildings. In no time we tucked into the famous American gigantic pancake stack at ihop. We then had a swim at the beach, which was so relaxing, Marina still could not believe the long awaited holiday finally came true - kind of unreal swimming in the Pacific Ocean, she said. We met with Jorming and Yuetyi on the cruise ship. We were all overjoyed with the amount of varieties of food offered by 7 complimentary dining places and of course there were a few that you had to pay but the price was very reasonable, take Tapanyaki as an example US29.50 per head.

Some videos/photos put together for this very amazingly 2019 Hawaii cruise holiday with my brother, sister in law and Marina.

https://youtu.be/aeig6SPPWaA 

Japan 2018

Overseas trip are just getting better and better. 10 night in Kyoto (京都), Osaka (大阪), Tokyo (東京) with a group of friends from Perth, my god mother's family from Hong Kong and New South Wales.  First time experience in staying at Airbnb.  Completely  spoiled at Arima Onsen for two nights.
The only unfortunate thing was I got a bad cough half way through but most importantly Marina did not get infected.
Photos : https://youtu.be/QFXczKG47aI

Bremar Bay 2018

Another great trip for Marina and her school friends who know each other since kindy.

http://bit.ly/2rP7tcz 

Sydney Trip July 2017

Thanks to Kenneth and Tammy showing around a few iconic places in Sydney. 
Marina noticed that Opera house is divided into three blocks of buildings.

Harbour bridge background

Having a lovely fish & chips and steak burger lunch along the

water front in Darling Harbour

The successfulness of TV show - Bondi Rescue and Bondi 

Beach prompted Marina to pay a visit to the Bondi Beach.

On the second day, Kenneth and Tammy drove us to Toronga Zoo - large zoo with so many animals to see. 

Toronga Zoo is an excellent spot to take shots of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge

A lovely dinner with Kenneth's family (Ashley and Lydia, and a couple of his friends (Allan & Sylvia)

My good friend (Elaine) from Tak Nga  not only treated us to a skiing trip, she accompanied us to visit Macquarie University Library. On the way to the University, there are many old houses along Redfern but apparently they cost a million or more. 

 

We also made a visit to University of Sydney, and Elaine works in Fisher Library. What a lovely campus. 

Marina enjoyed her favorite food- 小籠飽, 生煎飽 at 天同 in Eastwood

We ate out most of the nights - a lovely meal at the Hurricane 

Day time and night time of Darling Harbour

A visit to the Sea Aquarium 

Friendship meal in Sydney (Taste of Tuscany in Carlingford)

Marina loves animals especially dogs and it is so good to meet Patch in this trip.

Back  in Perth, Marina has got Daisy

Location guide on  shopping trolley where Perth has not had this yet.

Snowy Mountain Skiing Trip July 2017

In 2009, I received an email sent by my high school friend Elaine we had not met and communicated for a few decades. Since then we wanted to catch up. We finally caught up in July 2017.   I wrote an article to express the amazing God has been so kind to us.

Since 2009, Elaine promised to give Marina a skiing trip which I did not really think much of it. People living in Mediterranean climate do not have much interest in talking let alone going skiing and personally I hate cold weather. I always wonder how people live and survive in snowy countries. Do they have to leave home to attend school or work or they simply stay in home with heater on? How do business survive in cold snowing weather?

We were so glad for Elaine to encourage us to make the trip to Sydney and then from there joined a skiing tour to Canberra. The bus trip started off with lots of hiccups firstly people were late and secondly with heavy traffic jam, when we got to the snow gear hiring place, it was midnight. Entirely unheard of for Australian to work overtime.

We had to hire lots of gear starting from jacket, pants, waterproof snow shoes then thought it was time to move on, we did not realise that we also had to try on the skiing boots and also to have the ski boot fit onto the skis at the right distance. Finally  we had to get poles and its length needed to be in par with one's height. It was such a new experience to us. 

The next morning, while travelling to Smiggin Hole, the weather was fine with beautiful sunshine and I doubted if we could see snow at all. 

But when the bus started to drive up the mountain and when we saw a car coming down, we saw cars covered with snow, I said to Marina we had to take some photos with cars covered by snow. 

In less than half an hour we arrived at the carpark of Smiggin Hole and snow was everywhere. Both of us were happy and the excitement of taking photos with cars covered with snow had long gone because all cars were covered in snow. In a very short time, everything thing in front of our eyes were white and covered with snow. It was cold and everyone started to pull out gear from the coach and in no times, everyone disappeared. We were standing there and were not sure what to do. We found our way to the office to enquire about skiing lesson and realised we needed to book and only had private lessons left,  it was expensive but with such a long distance to travel from Perth to get here, it was sensible to learn how to ski properly as to enjoy the activity. 

The weather was still very clear with sun, looked at the blue sky at the background.

As there were two hours in between before we had our lessons,  we decided to try out skiing ourselves. Marina got on and managed to slide a bit from side to side. 

Seeing her success and then I decided to get into the ski boots and firstly it took a while to slide the boots into the ski. The drama has not started as yet, once I had both feet into the ski,  I realised I could not stand still, the snow ground was slippery that I kept on sliding backwards and eventually of course landed on the ground. Marina saw me not getting anywhere but on the ground waiting to get her to lift me up, she was quite frustrated as she was not sure what to do with me. 

By then all I wanted was to take our once a life time  photos of both of us having the skiing gear on.  Who knew that I could not ski by looking at the photos. 

Then we checked our time and we have got another one hour left, so we decided to take the bus to Perisher, the biggest snowing field in Southern Hemisphere where we took the chair lift up to the mountain to look at the views.There were so many people everywhere.

We also did not realise there were a number of queues and we almost queued up at the wrong line as there were two only allow skiiers with skiis to get onto. The weather was getting very harsh at this stage, the wind was strong so as the snow. Luckily we both took our scarves to cover our face as the incoming snow kept on hitting on our face . To take photos meant that I had to remove gloves and grabbed whole of the camera from my pocket. First time blessing to be able to see such a spectacular scene. Looking down and found skiiers everywher,  they must be having lots of fun.

I told myself each time if it was worth the risk to retrieve the camera out from my pocket to take photos. Everything started to get wet and slippery, I could easily drop the camera with my clumsy motion and that would mean I risked to lose all photos for the sake of taking these scenery that I had not seen and experienced before. Next I worried if the wetness and coldness would damage the camera or caused it to stop functioning. I am glad that the camera survived all these harsh conditions and were able to let me continue to view these scenery for many more years.  I got quite emotional to be able to be so close to the natural beauty. It is simply breathtaking. Ice accumulated around the chair lift supporting pole.

Marina was learning how to ski at Perisher

Arriving at Thredbo on the third day in the morning, ha ha, I felt safe and comfortable on this thingy called Toboggan.

  

Marina's greatest joy of able to make her first snow man, glad that her friend told her to bring carrot.

Marina managed to do a bit of skiing with her newly made friend - Jasmine

Summer Vacation 2017

Is there a time that I say I am not busy ???

This summer vacation would be one of the most busy one but it is also very enjoyable.

We had two trips to the Southern  part of Western Australia

1. The first one is with Kwong's family - Billy, Lisa and Rex from Hong Kong
We toured around Pemberton (staying at Karri Valley Resort - Walpole (Walpole Motel) - Denmark - Albany Lodge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV-nunZUU-g

2. We went with Francine and her twin girls (Ellie and Brooke) and stayed at Bremer Bay  for 5 nights and toured around Albany on the last day (Australian Day 2017) before heading back to Perth to find Daisy the dog had a cut on her neck when Stephanie tried to groom Daisy.

http://bit.ly/2jmnLVo

Even we are so busy, Marina is able to catch up with most of her friends in this summer, Alyssa (swimming at Cogee Beach and afternoon tea at her home) Olivia (sleepover), Aimee (playing electronic games at home), Danielle - go karting and Vicky- explore Perth city and Northbridge