bintang di langit

reading guide:

normal - account after the journey
italiced - in malay or dialogues

PART 1

it was 6.15 am. time to wake up. needs to be at the central before 7.40, and that translates into 7am outta-the-house-and-board the 20 minutes bus. still very groggy, had less than 6 hours of night sleep for three days in a row. nak buat camana, the usual dah habis periksa complex. but anyway. woke up and pack the backpack (err) for the day trip. am very nervous indeed, for few reasons.

1) never been out of sydney in the 4 months i got here. will be very unfamiliar of the routes and transport system, i'm very sure of that.

2) i'm the 'planner' for the trip. did all the research. that means, anything goes wrong (read: sesat atau bosan), its all on me.

3) i lack sense, especially those common ones. my mum would be happy to attest on that! and also, my track record of execution of plan aint so pretty. even RS dont trust me.. hehehe.

anyway. some flashbacks. was searching online for some cool places in new south wales to be visited; those we will be able to go to and come back on the same day. being the obsessed planner that i am; my list got very long indeed. but finally stumbled upon Wollongong's Tourism site, and the foot powered City Tour got me sold.it sounds good. a map with places to go, specifically saying its all accessible on foot and plus, it ain't so far.

my initial plan was, of course, ambitious. Wollongong's in the south coast of nsw, and is divided into three parts; north, city (center) and south. since the city walk was just around the city and was said to take bout 2-3 hours, i planned on further for the Nan Tien Temple (largest Buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere) in the south, and perhaps, another hour down to Kiama to see the famous Kiama Blowhole. RS suggested visiting the University of Wollongong, so that was included in the plan as well.

armed with the print-out map of the city walk dotted with 26 places of interest, we set out. plus i had the train times written at the back, together with trains & directions to the north and south parts.

reached the bus stop around 7.05...and i think i did my first blunder. haha. baru kluar rumah. i forgot to check the bus times from kingsford to city, and plus, its weekend!! somehow i thought there'd be bus every five minutes or something. thats true on weekdays, but weekends..i'm not so sure. err. checked the timetable and the next would be the 7.15 bus...and that gives us 5 minutes to get on board the hourly train scheduled at 7.40. alamak.

but somehow, miracleously, few minutes later a bus got there. yippie! i think the bus that should've been there few minutes ago was late. and thats not so common in sydney, see. so we board, and got to the central with ample time before the train boards. got my ticket at the machine, but RS' change is too big so we'd have to obtain the other ticket manually. cuak. camane nak pronounce Wollongong dah ?!!!!!!!! another keforgot-an untuk mengcheck, how to pronounce the name.

decided upon wol-lon-gong. i'm confused whether its wol-lo-ngong of the former. who knows...i mean..quay is 'key' , Bulli is 'Bull-eye' .. u get the drift. went to the counter praying hard the man would not ask me to repeat my non-australian english, or worse, like they did at the pharmacy few months ago, ask me to write it down like i cant speak any coherent english. but alas! he understood dengan muka selambanya tanpa ragu-ragu and i'm beaming with pride ~! la la la la...!

next. going to the platform. err. agak lost. which one? the central's sprawled with them. RS:"ni baru kat sydney..." .haha. i got bit nervous there. but thanks to the-guy-who-invented-signboards, we managed to find Platform 14 and board the InterCity train. Yay!

TO BE CONTINUED..

pictures are here