Going on a Guilt Trip

I had initially not intended to blog our holiday but a couple of friends asked about our trip Down Under so I thought why not. Daddy and I were on a trip this past week, a guilt trip. We had a holiday together without the boys and the guilt started even before the holiday started. Calling the boys every night helped to ease the guilt, but also made it worse whenever Abang asked, "When are you coming back to my house?"

It turns out there were lots of things happening in Sydney while we were there. First, the cruise ship Queen Mary 2 docked at the harbour (or, in Aussie speak, "haa-buh") early in the week. The night I arrived, I took the train to the Circular Quay station at the haa-buh and it seemed like the whole population of Sydney was there too. They were there to see the fireworks display in conjunction with the cruise ship leaving.

In the meantime, the other cruise ship Queen Elizabeth 2 also docked at the haa-buh. It's not as big as the Queen Mary 2, but still very large and impressive.

The second day we were there we took one of those touristy harbour cruises with commentary explaining historical significance and various other interesting information. Unfortunately, we hardly heard any of the commentary. That's because we were swarmed by tourists from a nearby country (no names mentioned) and were so noisy and so annoying that it just spoilt the cruise.

I told my friend about this incident and she said, "Ah yes. Did you know there are 50 million tourists from that country travelling?"

"Ya, and all of them were on our boat that day," I replied. It really did feel like it.

Annoying tourists aside, there was another interesting event. The US Vice President, Mr Dick I-Shot-My-Hunting-Friend Cheney arrived in Sydney for 4 days. As you can imagine, security was very tight, roads were closed, helicopters hovered about. In fact, when Dick Nobody-Wants-To-Go-Hunting-With-Me-Anymore Cheney was whisked from the airport to his hotel, we could hear from our hotel room the sounds of very long (and obviously annoyed) car honking, a result of closed roads to allow his motorcade to go through.

The next morning, Dick Maybe-I-Should-Choose-A-Different-Hobby Cheney addressed a group of Americans and Australians at his hotel and even that posed a major logistics headache. We wanted to go around on the bus, but were told not to bother with the buses because of the expected traffic congestion. I guess it's like what happens in KL when we host NAM and OIC meetings.

Lest you think we didn't enjoy ourselves, we did. The weather was great (as you can see in the pictures) and even though the food portions there are generally big, we walked most of it off around the haa-buh, aquarium, opera house and near the hotel area. In fact, Daddy reckons he's dropped a few pounds from this holiday!

The best part of the trip was meeting up with old friends. We met up with a school friend of mine and her hubby, an ex-colleague and his family who migrated there about 10 years ago and another ex-colleague and his family. Always good to see old friends. (Not friends who are old, but longtime friends.)

When we came home, we realised there were a couple more friends in Sydney whom we forgot to get in touch with.

Never mind. Next time!