Sunday, November 27, 2005

Field trips

Over the past few weeks, Dan, Stef, Fred and I had gone on two field trips (before Fred had gone home, of course).

The first was to the
Art Gallery located in the city. We had gone for yumcha first before choosing to walk from Chinatown to the other end of the city to get there. We ended up walking something like 45 minutes. *Pant pant*Along the way, we saw a rather handsome looking church. So we stopped for pictures.
When we were nearly there, we saw a horse carriage cantering along. All of us very the suah ku, never saw such a thing before. So more picture taking.

Now the funny bit was there wasn't much of interest (to me at least) in the Art Gallery itself. Maybe I'm just not the artsy type of person. Don't know how to appreciate. The only thing I saw that held my attention for a while was inside a specially arranged chinese calligraphy exhibition. There was an exhibit of the exam script of a 清朝狀元. We stood there trying to decipher the first few lines for 15 minutes before moving on. Too chim.

The other place we went to (on another day) was
Palm Beach. Not the Singaporean seafood restaurant but an actual beach here in Sydney. North Sydney to be exact. We had to drive like 1.5 hours to get there. The actual distance wasn't that long, it was the traffic along the way that slowed us down considerably.
The beach itself was quite breathtaking and very different in character from the ones in the eastern suburbs, e.g. Bondi Beach or Coogee Beach. For one, the sand here is yellowish, a bit like those used for mixing cement but much finer. The sand we've been more used to seeing in beaches around our area of residence is a fine white.
And there certainly were fewer people at this beach.
A view of the other end of the beach.

Other than the beach itself, there wasn't much else to see in the general area, so we adjourned to a western Sydney suburb known as
Ashfield (another 1.5 hours drive back and westwards). They had told me it was known as 小上海 and were keen to check it out. So check it out we did.

It certainly lived up to its name. Most of the chinese I saw there spoke 上海話. And I can't understand a word of it. 上海話 is not like the dialects we often hear in Singapore where you can pick out a word here and there if you knew chinese. So I kept quiet and pretended to be a Shanghainese via my appearance.

There is also a main road running through
Ashfield flanked by whole stretches of 上海小吃 restaurants and the ubiquitous oriental supermarkets. We ended up having our dinner at one of these restaurants.

Their verdict on the food there?

還好。

124 days to go.

2 Comments:

Blogger Little Miss Drinkalot said...

Good god. Why did I have the impression you were female and married with child??? (Ok, perhaps you are married with child, but that's not the point.)

Pai sei..

Sun Nov 27, 06:08:00 pm 2005  
Blogger Acey Deucey said...

Mwa ha ha... Now that is funny.

And the least you could do was to NOT inform me about your misconception. :P

For the record, very male, very single and very childless. *Grin*

Sun Nov 27, 06:41:00 pm 2005  

Post a Comment

<< Home