Seeing the Sea Life

So yeah part of my assessment was to go to places that ran programs for children so I picked the aquarium as one of the places to go to. Actually was somewhat voted by my company - Mikey, as he hadn't been to the Melbourne Aquarium before. Shocking right? By the way didn't know when it happened but apparently it's known as Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium. Didn't know when that started. So we both had something to do there. I was to get some info for my assessment and Mikey wanted to do some sketching.

Turned up early as possible but the line was still out the door. We could of got tickets online for a small discount but we were able to grab some vouchers from Fed Square which gave much more a saving but we had to buy it at the front door so was worth the wait. Walking in they took photo of us which was weird because they didn't tell us what it was for.

 

Originally when I thought of going to the aquarium I thought it would be the same thing but it wasn't. They have quite a few new things including the star attraction ... the "Mega Croc". Didn't think they had the croc from the movies and found just a large crocodile. That wasn't as very exciting but they had other exhibitions that were great.






It was good day to act like kids. You know those little domes for kids to go into to look ... yes we did that. They were so small with head bumping and lying on backs to get through the little tunnels. Mikey stamped his sketchbook with little stamps that the kids can get for their kids guide booklets. On our second trip in Mikey got a booklet. Yes we went in another time. He failed at stamping his book ... he pressed it through 2 layers of the booklet which filled the next space :P. But it was all fun mucking around.

With all the new random things it was pretty good. We saw the shark feeding and penguin feeding. Spent almost 5 hours there. It was worth going back because we figured out how to get these fish to spit at a sinker we found on the side of the pond. It was weird because they set up these fake flies on fishing lines and they were too far and small for the fish to see. Also all the kids would just swing the rods on hinge and wouldn't hold them still for the fish to concentrate to spit. 

It was a great day at the aquarium. You can find more photos from the day at my Facebook Photos.

Side Quest

Surprise I'm still alive. Lol yeah well just haven't blogged in awhile. Was just bored for along while so just watched a lot of television.

Anyways this weekend had a church camp at Mount Evelyn. Really close campsite just out near Lilydale. Quick drive up. Was a bit frustrated though because Chinese group did a botch job of organizing and just push the responsibility to the English group at the last minute. Being in the AV coordinator I had to throw together random stuff together from the English equipment which is lacking because the budgets all done by the Councillors and they are all Chinese group people. So now I'm going to have to tell them off for not giving us a budget ... again.
It wasn't all bad. First night getting there we just messed around with games and running around. Sleep was pretty terrible though. One of my roomies kept rolling on the top bunk and the beds had those tough covers that make those scrunchy sounds. So everyone else in the room went to the next room and family guy and wait for the noisy roomy to go sleep. We watched a few episodes and came back to find he was completely awake. So he kept me up some more. He apparently couldn't sleep so got up a few times which kept me up even more. To make it was by the time it was five he went and took a shower which could be heard within two rooms. So guess desperately tired isn't the best way to start a camp.

This was a church camp so didn't expect to have to much mucking around fun but it was still good to hear messages from a reverend who was effected by the fires. The day events were decent but the timetable was pretty mucked up. The night was was the fun time. Played a bit of mafia. If you don't know mafia it takes too long to explain so just assume secrecy and citizen versus mafia with a few special characters. First game as usual I was dead in the second round because no one trusts me and what's worse was I was killed by both the mafia and the vigilante. Second game I actually survived to the end where we had the usual who won because people were falling asleep and not sure who pointed to who or killed who. So we decided to change to playing spoons. If you don't know the game it's basically making four of a kind by quickly passing around cards and then grabbing a spoon from the middle. Everyone grabs one after anyone completes their hand and whoever misses out gets a penalty. Whoever gets three does a dare. That was the fun part. It got pretty competitive and a girl even broke a nail doing it. Went through three pretty cool dares and surprisingly I wasn't the person doing them. Got one of the dares on video so that was pretty funny. Got told off for laughing to loud but that's expected of me. Pretty tired from all that so slept a bit better.
Next day was basically like another church day but we were already there. Summary for the camp was a bit sleep provoking because all these Chinese ladies wanted to share and translator didn't get time to translate before all the Chinese people would cheer for some unknown reason to me.

Overall camp wasn't a complete disaster. Had its moment.

Moon Lit Night

Haven't written a blog entry in awhile. I've been playing games so figures but I did end up finishing three games in the last week. Just replaying some parts of the games but pretty bored. Thought I'd do some posting because there's a red moon out at this time from the bushfire smoke. Not that it's out of some dread feeling but just thought it was a change to the usual so I thought I might as well do a little change by writing in my blog XD. The bushfire's getting pretty close so hopefully everyone's safe.

Anyhow I'm going to go through a bit of my week so bear with me.

Last Saturday I had a brood of hatchlings from last last Monday's 'mother' huntsman. I probably would of left them alone if they hadn't built a tangle of webs which I walked into after waking up. Yes baby huntsmans make webs to catch prey not like adult huntsmans. Firstly I didn't realize there was a infestation until later in the day when I continued to have solitary spiders crawling around. There was about thirty plus around my window area where the mother had come in and about a dozen where my light fixture was. Tried a few ways to kill them but was unsuccessful. In the end it came to bug spray. Pretty much killed them all. Also gave me a nice high XD.

Sunday was a bit disappointing seeing how it was like the quad birthday time so we should of had some sort of celebration lunch or something ... Maybe there was something after I left but oh well.

Monday I had to meet with Centrelink person about Working for the Dole so that was a hassle and just means I'm so much a bum now that they're soon going to force me to work.

Tuesday had a friend come over and play games so that wasn't boring. Didn't stay long though. So got pretty bored after.

Wednesday was more of a weird thing happen other than an actual event. It's always weird when people get off at a intersection with me and I wonder where they are going. It's like are they going home, to work, or just shopping. But most of the time they always going off in different directions. Anyways was going to a meeting at church, got off the tram, and four other people also came off. The surprising thing was all five of us made our way in the same direction and side of the road. None of us were going to the same place because it was a residential area and everyone was walking in a single line. So five separate destinations. I was curious to see who was going to break the line first. Unfortunately up the road was my church. So I was first to break off. Dang.

That's probably the last weird thing that happened during my week. Anyways Happy Valentines Day to all of yous. Even if you don't believe in corporate holidays. You know who I'm talking about.

The Controversial Holiday

I was thinking of just blabbing about mX's excessive articles on blogs and the physical and mental damage of smoking but its the first day of the Australia/Chinese New Year long holiday so I thought I'd write something about this event.

Box Hill decided to pull all the stops this year. They blocked off a section of Whitehorse Road for more stands and even set up an amusement park in a carpark at the back of Centro. I didn't get to Box Hill till the evening but the sun was still out because of summer so it was still alright to move around. However it was still crowded and if that didn't make it hard to move from one stand to another there were lots of prams and strollers ramming into the back of my heels. One parent even continuously ram me and seemed to have no idea what he was actually doing with his stroller. There were lots of kids and at these events that meant lots of balloons. Every time you look up you could see a lost balloon floating away and hear the crying of a child.
The stands were the usual. Lots of food stands that are overpriced for Asian food that I've probably had at home but I guess it's the convenience of having them all in one place. I had some food using my money sparingly but ended up buying a double beef and cheese from Maccas instead XD. There were also the usual Asian Christian, Asian DVDs, Lion Dancing, and the Arts and Craft stands. There were a few different ones like ice cream vans, NAB booth, Toy vans, and some Whitehorse council runner with the name Blake I think. Didn't go into the amusement park section because I assumed it would involve me losing a lot of money. I was glad to see that they finally put bins every ten metres apart around Box Hill just for this event. They filled up pretty quickly but if they only have the regular bins then we'd be in trouble.

Round the middle of that paragraph I was interrupted to go see Underworld: Rise of the Lycans which turned out to be pretty good. Still lately been interrupted a lot so my blogs get pushed further and further back.

But actually came back to Box Hill at midnight for dinner and found it still lively with a healthy dose of crowd still left. Some stands were closed and others opened to take their place but the night seemed to be wrapping up for most people. There were still some lion dancing and drumming which were loud enough to bug some people in the Box Hill residential area. The next morning it was like nothing happened XD.

And for some reason I am burnt again. I did go to the beach but it was partly cloudy and I had a shirt on the whole time. Thankfully this time wasn't as bad as last time. SOMEONE said it would be impossible to burn with the weather we had yesterday ... damn you ><. Wah didn't even get my point out because writing up this blog over and over. Australian holidays means people having days off and everything is closed. Chinese holidays means shop open to take in more customers who have the time to shop and eat. So how's a day that's both an Australian and Chinese holiday meant to work?