Updates from Canberra

Hello everyone! I'm in Canberra right now. It's winter time, and the air's pretty cold. It was insanely windy yesterday, as a matter of fact, so much so that cycling against the wind is like cycling upslope, and cycling against the wind and upslope is pretty much impossible. I think this picture will explain the wind speed:





Of course the wind and cold is a very nice change from Singapore's humid and hot weather (especially the super-oven weather just before I left), but yesterday it was so cold and windy that my face was quite numb throughout. Heh, looks like it's gotta be some time before I get used to the weather. Oh, and the wind was so strong that the lake's water kept slashing over the bank - something you won't see everyday:








And Canberra is really beautiful. From the National Capital Exhibition, which is a small museum explaining Canberra's urban planning, the city was planned from scratch in the early 1900s, with the city centre, the Parliament House and some defence centre at the three points of a triangle. The whole city is planned by taking the terrain into account; the Parliament House, for example, is built into a hill.





On the smaller scale, the city is clean. Very clean. I can hardly see any litter on the street - definitely cleaner than Singapore - and I seldom see cleaners or sweepers. There aren't so many dustbins around either. This says a lot about the differences in attitudes between the two societies. And the people here are very friendly, so much so that anyone can easily be role models for Singapore's GEMS project.








I went to ANU to settle some administrative stuff as well, and took a couple of shots. Here's a beautiful stretch of road that runs right through the university.





The city is very cyclist-friendly as well. It is typical for cyclists to travel in the roads, and on bigger roads there are even bicycle lanes. It is also very easy to find bike poles for bicycles. In fact, in the Union Court of ANU (the Yusof Ishak Hall equivalent of NUS), there are rows of these "parking lots" for bicycles.

And a big thanks goes to Weiling, Yao's good friend who's visiting her for a couple of weeks, for bringing me around the area near the lake, as Yao herself had a report discussion.






(You can see our bikes in this photo.)








I had a nice time going around ANU and the lake, and the National Museum of Australia (though this ended pretty quickly as both of us are not the museum-type) and the National Capital Exhibition mentioned above. We had our lunch near the lake, and our sandwiches attracted two flocks of birds, one of which sounded like R2D2. Anyway, the end result is that half of our lunch went to feeding the birds, which are actually not aggressive as one might've imagined (unlike crows in Singapore, which in similar situations would've attacked us and picked off our food; even birds in Singapore has the Singaporean kiasu mentality). The birds here are totally not afraid of humans, and it was very hilarious when we were feeding them, as they were "surfing" stationary above and around us hoping to catch the pieces of bread we threw to them:





Canberra's much better than Singapore in my opinion, and is more to my liking - quiet, slower-paced life. If there are drawbacks to staying in Canberra, it would be the high cost of living (one meal can easily cost up to A$10). Also, efficiency is not as high as back in Singapore. But I think I'd still like it here.

Going back all the way till before I reach Canberra, something interesting happened at the Sydney International Airport, where I was supposed to do my domestic transfer. Due to heavy thunderstorms, the plane from Singapore to Sydney could not land, which resulted in nearly an hour's delay. As a result, I missed my second flight to Canberra. Of course, the Qantas people fixed another flight for me, but as the airport was so huge that transiting between terminals require buses, and because there was a thunderstorm, there were many people and the buses were slow, and I arrived at the domestic transfer terminal just minutes before the departure time of the new flight - too late to board the plane in normal circumstances. However, due to the thunderstorm, that flight was delayed by about 90 minutes, so I didn't miss the flight in the end! If I did, it would have caused lots of confusion as the luggage was already checked-in with that plane.

Well, that's all for now. I'll try to post updates as I go along, but no confirmation of that as it is not easy (or cheap) to get Internet connection.