Day 146 - Last Day in Australia

Flowers along the Sidewalk

August 31st, 2015

Sleeping in is difficult with sunlight in your face. 11am, and I’m up, knowing I won’t be able to sleep much tonight. Lame.

I highly recommend cooking or doing chores while listening to an audiobook you find interesting. Lately I’ve been working through What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars. I make pancakes, coffee, and clean up some dishes from the day before. There's still lots of ice cream taking up space in his freezer - it goes with Belgian waffles, why not pancakes? Can’t be much worse than maple-flavoured high fructose corn syrup. Top it off with some green onion chinese pancake thing that Luke made, and we’re ready to go!

I need to stop at the bank because I realize I haven’t looked into getting my money out of the country. Wire transfer require specific numbers, branches, and all those annoying details. Not sure what route I'm going to take.

Shimou and the flower I picked

The Objectives of today: Put a Lock on the Heart fence, Bank, Grocery, New Cafe, though not in that order.

Google has been wrong a couple times. It seems Google and Melbourne aren’t very good friends. Not only does it get the opening times and locations of things wrong sometimes, but also has absolutely none of the public transit data. If you choose directions for a location using public transit, it says there aren't any. Advice seems to be to use the Public Transit Victoria app until they fix that problem.

As opposed to what Google said, the branch of my bank was actually just an ATM, leading us to walk 20 minutes to the nearest one. Cash me out, I’m spent. Literally, I took out all my cash because it seemed like the easiest way to deal with it. I guess I’m now committing to walking around with close to a grand in cash. Well, I’ve never been mugged before, what are the chances now?

Cafe Figjam

Shimou buys a permanent marker from the post office, and we check out a new cafe, called Figjam cafe. I like it. The staff was friendly, they had a good selection of desserts, AND they actually had a bathroom. My standards for cafes has gone down in some ways. We test the marker to find it’s broken, leading to waiting in line for 20 minutes for a 2-second-resolution. Should have just barged to the front. Too Canadian.

The Lock

On to the grocery store! Shimou’s funny sometimes. 

“Want fruit?” She asks

“Uh, not really. We’re leaving in like, 12 hours”

“We should get fruit. What kind?”

“Passionfruit,” I suggest, “or Avocado” She balks at the suggestion of avocado as fruit, but if it’s not a fruit, what is it? Another time she asked if I wanted fruit, pressured me into agreeing to have fruit, then told me to go get it. I had to laugh.

It’s still bizarre to me that all squash is simply called “pumpkin.” My fascination with pumpkin always makes me disappointed that it’s just normal squash. Give me real pumpkins! Not Butternut Pumpkin!

The walk back felt much shorter than the walk there, even with the groceries. We bought some candies that I have only seen here, which I intend to show my friends back home. We make it to the lock heart fence, write something on one side each, then lock it and head off.

LtR: Leo, Luke, Sunny, Me, Shimou

Back home, I do some work while the all the hosts are busy in the kitchen. Luke is Leo’s assistant, while Sunny made her own dishes. We tie up loose ends, and make sure everything is ready for the next morning.

At the farewell dinner, we had food of mostly Chinese origin - One was Korean, Cheese Corn. All very good! Leo tells us that we can’t leave the table until it’s all gone. I’m starving, but not hungry enough to eat all 5 of these dishes, plus rice. I agree, noting that they don’t say where I can’t leave from. I decide that it’s the house, and that I will finish it later if they’re serious.

It seems that they eat shrimp/prawn by just biting it and eating the shell. I follow their lead, which isn’t nearly as appetizing as deshelling it, but not bad. I can't help but remember how Shimou thinks it’s weird that I eat the skin on kiwis.*

Gotta stay Beautiful

I relieve some stress by relieving my bags of some contents - excess clothing, mostly underwear and socks. The damn weight limit can be difficult when you packed as stupidly as I had. I packed to the weight limit on my way here, not thinking that it would mean having to throw out things I brought in exchange for whatever I picked up along the way. I recommend packing at least 5kg lighter than the requirement.

We settle accounts of how much money was owed to whom, agree to meet again in Beijing, and hang out until 2am, talking after I edit a couple buffer posts for the trip. I had planned to sleep around midnight, but that definitely wasn’t happening. Instead we were both awake until at least 2 or 3.

Editing Music: Ladies and Gentlemen by Hot Hot Heat

*The fruit, not the people or birds.