Really hate the initial 1 or 2 weeks of settling in when one moves(or visits) to a new place...jet lag making you sluggish and you lose sense of time - when actually you don't have time and have loads to set in the new place! While the mind puts you in a deep slumber, the alarm clock goes off and you realize that its not the start of a long night but another hazy day! Really cant understand how people manage travelling jobs - certainly not my cup of tea!(talking about tea - cups of hot steaming cardamom tea has certainly helped in keeping my eye-lids up most of the time! ;-) )
Brisbane is picturesque..in fact it reminded me of Canada (out of whatever little I have traveled - I cant really categorize myself as an avid traveler -specially out of my country) to a small extent. Till now, nothing can beat Ottawa - though its been very long since I visited that place but its imprint is fresh and ink still shining bright! This is my first visit to the southern hemisphere - the sun being responsible for this divide..Sometimes think that it will be different to watch Christmas in summers!!! I haven't seen any movie that has showed hot and sunny Christmas day...I have always watched snow flakes flowing in the air while people celebrate Christmas by the fireplace! It will be fun to watch people sweating on the Christmas eve!! :-)
Its a picturesque small city...quiet and clean - these are the first things I noticed - of course coming from Bangalore where noise is just an inseparable part of your back(?)ground. Transit to Bangalore was not less adventurous - the taxi(to the airport) driver absolutely refusing to put any extra luggage in the front seat. Of course it goes without saying that we tried to exploit close to the 40 kgs per head luggage allowance provided by Singapore airlines. Anyway, after that was sorted and we finally reached the Blore airport - wrong to say its in Blore - its an horrible 2 hrs away from the city center! We, like law abiding citizens wanted to declare my newly possessed Galaxy Tab - when to our dismay we noticed that the customs desk was vacant with a sign to call a particular number. So the wait started and good 30 mins later the custom official arrived. So that ate into our time saved for dinner. So finally we departed from Blore without dinner, with good hope that the dinner in the airlines would be palatable and filling - and in fact we were not disappointed. So it was all movies and food in between moments of sleep! Full 11 hrs of movies - which was indeed a treat - don't really remember when I last watched a movie on TV without worrying about the daily chores or for that matter pending office work!! Anyway, the highlight of the plane journey was the butterfly garden in Singapore airport - truly amazing and one of its kind. So while we crossed different time zones and finally entered Australia. The first thing I had to do was give away my home made ghee-smeared besan laddoos as unpacked eatables were not allowed inside the Australian borders! So after an emotional adieu, we finally hailed a taxi(not to mention all the taxis we have hailed here till now had drivers migrated from Punjab - there are 3 lakh surds in Australia!)
One excellent thing about this city is its public transport - Trans-link, the road-rail that runs through the city and also the places around. Perfectly managed and convenient - you couldn't ask for better. It makes the city more welcoming - you just need to take your go-card (that's the ticket) and you could just go anywhere. I think by the time, if and ever, Blore gets such a transport system - I would be in my ninetees :-) But yes there's hope - hope also because of the events(related to Jan Lokpal) happening in India lately - that requires an entirely different blog - so I will leave it at this point. But, yes hope is there - that we will soon catch a speeding train to development - just that we need to build the tracks !!
Early days in Brisbane had been wet - with day long drizzles and winds - a few sunshine hours here and there when we could just sneak out to the beautiful Roma street parkland just opposite our apartment - and see the unique flora and fauna. What with the bottle ridge trees and ponytail palms, ducks flapping their wings and blue headed fairy-wrens(smaller version of sparrows) dancing around in between the rows of herb garden and spring-flower beds! Its surely a treat to the eyes right in the middle of the central business district! More later....
Brisbane is picturesque..in fact it reminded me of Canada (out of whatever little I have traveled - I cant really categorize myself as an avid traveler -specially out of my country) to a small extent. Till now, nothing can beat Ottawa - though its been very long since I visited that place but its imprint is fresh and ink still shining bright! This is my first visit to the southern hemisphere - the sun being responsible for this divide..Sometimes think that it will be different to watch Christmas in summers!!! I haven't seen any movie that has showed hot and sunny Christmas day...I have always watched snow flakes flowing in the air while people celebrate Christmas by the fireplace! It will be fun to watch people sweating on the Christmas eve!! :-)
Its a picturesque small city...quiet and clean - these are the first things I noticed - of course coming from Bangalore where noise is just an inseparable part of your back(?)ground. Transit to Bangalore was not less adventurous - the taxi(to the airport) driver absolutely refusing to put any extra luggage in the front seat. Of course it goes without saying that we tried to exploit close to the 40 kgs per head luggage allowance provided by Singapore airlines. Anyway, after that was sorted and we finally reached the Blore airport - wrong to say its in Blore - its an horrible 2 hrs away from the city center! We, like law abiding citizens wanted to declare my newly possessed Galaxy Tab - when to our dismay we noticed that the customs desk was vacant with a sign to call a particular number. So the wait started and good 30 mins later the custom official arrived. So that ate into our time saved for dinner. So finally we departed from Blore without dinner, with good hope that the dinner in the airlines would be palatable and filling - and in fact we were not disappointed. So it was all movies and food in between moments of sleep! Full 11 hrs of movies - which was indeed a treat - don't really remember when I last watched a movie on TV without worrying about the daily chores or for that matter pending office work!! Anyway, the highlight of the plane journey was the butterfly garden in Singapore airport - truly amazing and one of its kind. So while we crossed different time zones and finally entered Australia. The first thing I had to do was give away my home made ghee-smeared besan laddoos as unpacked eatables were not allowed inside the Australian borders! So after an emotional adieu, we finally hailed a taxi(not to mention all the taxis we have hailed here till now had drivers migrated from Punjab - there are 3 lakh surds in Australia!)
One excellent thing about this city is its public transport - Trans-link, the road-rail that runs through the city and also the places around. Perfectly managed and convenient - you couldn't ask for better. It makes the city more welcoming - you just need to take your go-card (that's the ticket) and you could just go anywhere. I think by the time, if and ever, Blore gets such a transport system - I would be in my ninetees :-) But yes there's hope - hope also because of the events(related to Jan Lokpal) happening in India lately - that requires an entirely different blog - so I will leave it at this point. But, yes hope is there - that we will soon catch a speeding train to development - just that we need to build the tracks !!
Early days in Brisbane had been wet - with day long drizzles and winds - a few sunshine hours here and there when we could just sneak out to the beautiful Roma street parkland just opposite our apartment - and see the unique flora and fauna. What with the bottle ridge trees and ponytail palms, ducks flapping their wings and blue headed fairy-wrens(smaller version of sparrows) dancing around in between the rows of herb garden and spring-flower beds! Its surely a treat to the eyes right in the middle of the central business district! More later....
3 comments:
Brisbane looks lovely, do you have an Ottawa blog post? :-)
Nope I dont have...we didnt have blogging sites at that time :-)
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