2004 QLD holiday

2004 has been a very turbulent year for me, and every week my life is filled with works, meetings and thoughts. I think it is important never to forget how lucky I am – count towards my blessing from the people I love and people who love me. Without their supports, I would never reconstruct life completely at the time I lost my direction.

Holiday is always a good escape from normal day in day out life, and a great time to take a second thought of current life state. This QLD trip I entirely relax myself by cutting off all the connection from the electronic world – no mobile, internet, TV and newspaper; also things from Melbourne were disconnected. My world was only embraced with sunshine, beach and theme parks in the northern Australian sunshine state in the past one week. Despite tired as expected, fresh ideas and a new life have been generated and are waiting for me to embark on. My nerves are unbuckled after a whole year of tightening.

There are some linguistic matters come up after the trip. As I went with five other Malaysians, both of my English and Mandarin accents change to sound like theirs. I was mistaken twice by others for being a Malaysian in Brisbane. I can not identify whether it is self-conscious or the fact, that I feel like I can easily adopt to new things, not just in languages. The other communication problem was I could not clearly express myself in mandarin, that my companions talked to me in mandarin while I responded in Cantonese. It was funny to see how two linguistically different language were exchanging information between Sino-Chinese from different part of the world.

Day 1: Witness the busiest street nightlife in Australia
Ginnie and me arrived in Gold Coast at around 8pm. After check-in, we and other four Perth mates headed towards Surfers’ city straight away. The main streets in Surfers Paradise were surprisingly busy, even though it was already 10pm at night. Schoolies were cramming around to celebrate the end of 12-year’s of education. Drunken young kids went passed by one after another. I knew Gold Coast was now in the most busiest time of the year.

Day 2: A fabulous animal performance - Seaworld
The first theme park in our schedule was Seaworld. My comment for this theme park is: 不可不来, 也不可再来. As I had been to Hong Kong Ocean park, the attraction of this theme park became less appealing. The highlight was the “Shark Bay”, where we could see different shark species swam in the limpid water. On top of that, the sea animals’ performance were hilarious, and they were far more professional than the Hong Kong one.

Day 3: A Sunday market visit and Swim in Surfers
We headed uptown for a Sunday market in Gold Coast. Not much different from Victoria market in Melbourne, except for my feeling of being a tourist. Two hours were spent strolled around the market in a Sunday relaxation mode.

The big activities for today was to taste the world class beach against those high rise building in Surfers. Bumping forth and back in the aquamarine water, I wished I could come to swim in Gold Coast every month, as what my boss does.
Gold Coast is said to have the best coastal line in the world with sleeky sand and fantastic sunshine. It is the best place to get skin cancer (kaka). The most important for us were handsome guys and perfect ladies could be found everywhere around you. They were too young for us, yet view and admire was still a good thing to waste time in holiday.

In the main street of Surfers Paradise, girls that are wearing bikini and walk among publics are seen as ordinary. That is the view you can not see in any other Australian cities. I like the atmosphere of carelessness and the smell of salty water.

Day 4: Hollywood on the Gold Coast - Movie world
This is the theme park where I met with those Warner Brothers’ animated cartoon characters. Hugging with bug bunny, queuing under sizzling sunshine for batman, taking photos against fairy buildings, plus much much more brought back my long-lose childish attitudes.

Scooby-doo ride is a not-to-be-missed machine rides in Gold Coast. Yes, I mean it. Highly recommended by my friend, we had been waiting in a queue for half an hour to take on board of the spooky coaster. No surprised in the first bit of the ride with faked doggy heads stuff, yet after our ride went into an elevator, the spooky journey started. Being lifted up to the top, we entered a world with infusive laser beams. The scariest bit was that the coaster suddenly accelerated BACKWARDS! We deeply dropped down to a certain level, and then the coaster rolled down through the fantasised world with fast speed. Gosh! I had not prepared myself for such a spine-chilling ride, however, this ride was the best of all in machine rides in QLD. I am sure there would not be any objection to this assertion.
We went to Jupiter Corner (a casino in Gold Cost) at night to see a musical show called “Mid-night Magic”. It was OK only; at least it did not worth for the price I paid. However, I was fancied with its stage design and the way backdrop it used. The knowledge I learnt from CTG was now applicable here, hehe.

Day 5: A day for chill out – Dream World
The weather that day could melt down everything. We did not take much scary machine rides as most of us were not feeling well under such a hot weather.

The tower of terror was the scariest one; we thought so before we took on board. It was a machine car which could reach speed 170 in just 7sec, and its track stretched up to height 30 meters. Despite of the acceleration loudness, the ride was not scared at all. It was too far for us to have a sensation reaction.

Roller coaster was the second scariest one I rode on. Believed it or not, I did not have the gut to ride on roller coaster until I was 19! And this was my second time on roller coaster. From outside I thought: it was not very high. And the 360-degree roller was hided behind the winding tracks. Until I sat in the coaster and climbed upwards, I knew I was cheated! “Shit! I saw two 360-degree rollers in the front.” Two girls yelled. And the height I climbed up to was unbelievable high up. No way back, the coaster had to go on. I was shanked up by the time my feet reached back to ground, yet it was a great experience.

Water log ride could not scare us at all after we took those scary rides. The highlight was we all got wet after riding, from top to toe as well as from out to in. “全湿了!” was our comment.

Giant drop and the Claw was ignored, as I knew I did not want to 拿苦来辛. Apart from that, I am scared to take off.