Today is not as sunny as yesterday. In fact, it is cloudy at the moment. I am watching tv at the moment and every channel I switch to, it is almost always advertisement. Like UK, the advertisement in the afternoon is always about sales, loans, discounts and of course, easter sales as it is good friday this week and easter Monday next week. Some advertisement that we don’t normally see UK is about whispbar roof racks at cracksandracks.com. I think it’s because of the weather here where the materials used to built the houses here are different from UK. In fact, it’s very similar to Malaysia except that the houses here are a lot bigger.

The weather in Melbourne is kind of temperamental. It can be hot in a moment and chilly next. Like now, it’s quite windy. It’s quite hard to decide what to wear for the day. In addition, they rely on the national weather forecast for the day’s weather. As we have missed the opportunity of visiting the Werribee open range zoo today, we have decided to go there tomorrow instead. Should be an exciting day tomorrow before leaving for Sydney!

Haha… My previous blog post wasn’t really relevant to its title. Well, at the time of typing that blog post, Mee and I were actually at Perth’s airport, waiting to fly to Melbourne. Nevertheless, we are in Melbourne now. Unfortunately, I am not feeling too well since yesterday. I am at Mee’s friend’s home now while both of them went to Melbourne city. I am actually a lot better now and I do hope that I will be fully recovered today. We were supposed to go to Werribee open range zoo today but I was too tired. I guess the tireness was also because we went on a Great Ocean Road tour yesterday. It was a full day tour from 0800 to 1930. There were a lot of stops and we had to get on and off the bus very frequently. Also, the weather was really hot but we felt cold when the wind blew. Hot and cold don’t work well for me I suppose.

Mee’s friend suggested that I go and see a doctor this morning but then again, we will probably be send to buy medicine from pharmacy instead which Mee and I had already done yesterday. If I don’t get better, I might have to visit the hospital! The idea of seeing the wards and hospital carts doesn’t sound very good at all!

By the way, Mee and I paid about AUD87.50 per person online for the Great Ocean Road tour. However, when I looked at the company brochure, it will cost AUD160 per person to book at the visitor centre. That’s almost 50 percent more than what we paid.

It’s been a great few days in Perth. Yesterday, our friend dropped us off in Perth’s Chinatown after picking up her daughter. We then went around Chinatown on our own before heading towards Perth city. In Chinatown, we ate lunch twice; once at a Hong Kong BBQ restaurant and once at Penang House Restaurant. Mee was quite disappointed when she found out that the Penang House Restaurant no longer sell assam laksa. After lunch, we walked to Perth city with is just south of Chinatown. In fact, Perth’s Chinatown is not on the map, it’s just happened to have a lot of chinese shops around the area.

At Perth city, we took the advantage of the free CAT buses to take us around. There are three CAT buses lines which covered most of the tourist areas, if not all. Honestly, Perth city is quite small. On a good day, it should take just half a day to cover all the tourist areas. We were a bit unlucky as it rained intermittently throughout the day.

Our final stop was the Perth mint. It’s a place where they process golds and silvers into gold bars,
personalized coins and the likes. We didn’t join the tour as we thought it would be quite similar to the one that we went to in Amsterdam.

One of my colleagues is on paternity leave this week. His wife gave birth to a baby last weekend and the baby came three weeks early. However, I was told that the baby weighs around 7 pounds which is good news as it meant that the baby is not underweight. Anyway, as usual, we did some collection. I think most of the monies have been used to buy vouchers instead. We thought about sourcing silver bars but they are either too expensive or too many types to choose from. However, with the vouchers, he can use them to buy anything that he deems suitable.

When he comes in next week, he will be in for a surprise and on the other hand, I believe that there will be a lot of works waiting for him in his mailbox. I myself have a couple of things to talk to him about. Considering that I will be on holiday starting from half day on Wednesday until the third week of April, I do hope that we can both find a suitable time to sit down and go through the stuffs.

It’s like summer at the moment. It’s so hot in the afternoon that we had to switch the air conditioning unit. My hands are like heated gloves and they keep perspiring. I have to constantly keep them dry just so I can type comfortably on my mac. However, it’s more important to keep my mac clean. I wonder what will be the weather like next week. Hopefully, it will be as good as this week and then we will have a nice flight to Australia. By the way, did I mention that it was foggy in the morning?

Fog forms when the difference between temperature and dew point is generally less than 2.5 °C or 4 °F – Wikipedia

I have never experience that many fog days since I came here about 4 years ago. Well, that also gives me a chance to use the tail fog light. I am surprised that not many cars were using their tail fog light as the visibility was low. Or maybe they just didn’t know how to switch it on, or didn’t even know that their cars have tail fog lights. In case you don’t know, tail fog light is the one that shows constant bright red light and it’s even brighter than brake lights.

Top Gear is one of my favourite tv programmes. Sometimes, I don’t even mind watch an episode from years ago. I just find it quite hilarious seeing the three of them presenting the show. At one stage, I even downloaded their first series of Top Gear. The very first episode of Top Gear, there were only about 20 – 30 live audiences. The audience just got more and more towards the end of the series. In fact, some say that the waiting list is now 3 – 5 years just to get in to see the show live! If you have something to criticise about the show, think again.

Actually, I kind of like the first series because most of the cars presented were affordable and they gave the kind of review where most normal people would appreciate. A few series later, it’s all about super car and occasionally normal consumer car. I wouldn’t blame them and to be honest, it’s a tv programme and it’s showing the cars that aren’t affordable to most people. After all, why would I want to see my car on the show when I am already driving one? Not unless it’s a super car, I think.

One very special person on the show is The Stig, who always wear scorpion helmets. He is the one who drives the super cars on the show on a designated track and they then place the lap time on a board to determine the fastest road car at the end of the series. It is claimed that The Stig can drive around the track and record a consistent lap time. I just thought that over time, The Stig should be able to improve his lap time and at the end of the series, he would be recording a faster lap time compared to the beginning of the series.

Fifth gear came and like Top Gear, it started with normal consumer cars and later on, went into super cars too. However, I kind of prefer the way Top Gear presenting a car show. No doubt they all know how to drive but not everyone can present in an interesting way. I don’t think I have ever watched an episode of Fifth Gear from start to finish.