East West Dim Sims
9:00am: Sundays always posess a special quality about it. A lazy morning breakfast or a weekly event that only happens on sundays. Today, Jie and Qi prepares to go for both. Preparations were made well before hand, from waking up earlier than usual; to calling Qi’s contacts to find out where to have a good nice dim sum breakfast. The eventual breakfast venue won hands done over the rest, since it was right in the city and in chinatown. Others were on the outskirts of the city and proved to be a formidable challenge because we had to wake up even earlier. Even today, Jie narrowly escapes the punishment for waking up late, by being pushed out of bed by a very formidable Qi.
10:00am: Dragon Boat Restaurant. We realised this was not the first time that we had come to this place to eat. The only difference was that today it was packed, and the last time it looked deserted. We found our seats and started ordering our dim sims from the push trolleys. And for the record, "dim sims" is not a typo error. The traditional cantonese cuisine is really called dim sims here, as what they had written on the signboards. We had dumplings of all sorts and other stuff.
10:45am: Since today was Sunday, it was also the perfect day to go exploring at Camberwell market. But as we found out later, it seemed like we explored more of the city’s transportation network and system than the market itself! Here’s how the story goes:
11:00am: Walks over to Melbourne Central
11:05am: Spends half an hour trying to find which is the correct platform to take the train
11:35am: Boards train to go Richmond to change to another train to Camberwell
11:50am: Stops at Richmond to board train towards Lilydale
12:20pm: Train stops at some godforsaken place. Informs us that we have to take the bus.
12:30pm: 3 buses go express to Lilydale, and 1 bus which stops at all train stops along the route. How friendly can they get? By the time we had come out of the train station, that 1 single bus which goes to Camberwell had already been full. And the other 3 buses were empty.
12:45pm: Waiting game ends, to be informed they have no idea when the next bus will come. But they said if we ran back fast enough to the train station, there might be a train coming to go Camberwell.
12:50pm: Runs to the train platform. No train. Platform conductor has no idea which train is coming and what time its coming. Some kids decide to walk to Camberwell instead.
1:00pm: Jie and Qi attempts to walk back to the bus waiting area.
1:05pm: Hears a train coming and runs back to the train platform. *pant pant pant*
1:15pm: Train goes off.
1:20pm: Train informs passengers that it terminates at another godforsaken place and they have to take the bus. *more curses and swears*
1:30pm: Luckily it managed to stop at Camberwell station before terminating its service.
1:35pm: Brisk walk to Camberwell Market.
1:40pm: *Ding dong ding dong* Camberwell Market is closing. So much for the most livable city in the world. Jie and Qi had just spent travelling 2 and a half hours to spend 5 minutes at the market which only opens on Sundays. *Jie pulls his hair*…..
1:50pm: We found a cafe called HushHush Cafe and decided to rest our feets. Qi’s iced coffee tasted like milk, while Jie’s lemonlime bitters tasted like sugar syrup. The only thing we had for comfort were each other, and a book of circle puzzles.
3:00pm: The journey back to the city was a wee bit smoother. Since we had already bought a whole day pass on the trams, we went to Ikea to have a look.
3:30pm: The first thing we did was to look for food. Found the Ikea cafeteria and were quite excited about their late lunch specials. We shared a plate of swedish meatballs and a baked herb salmon. We also realised all the Ikea stores around the world probably had the same colour scheme and the same look. If you have seen one, you would already know how the rest looks like. Even the taste of the food was the same in the Singapore and Shanghai branches.
4:30pm: The only thing we bought was a pack of screws. The use of it would be explained later. Haha. It had been a long day of travelling for both Jie and Qi. And so it was time to head back to 101 for a rest.
5:30pm: The screws were used to afix broken toiletries holders in the bathroom. For some reasons too difficult to explain, the handle for the toilet roll holder had come off. The screw had broken and needed to be replaced. Likewise, for another bunch of reasons too difficult to explain again, the towel handle had come loose. And so with a bunch screws in hand, Jie locked himself in the bathroom trying to fix the problem with the limited amount of tools that he had.
5:35pm: *Bi4 Guan1 Xiu1 Lian4*
6:00pm: Jie emerges happy from the bathroom. With extra screws leftover, Jie walks around 101 to find stuff to fix. All he could find for now was a broken chair that needed a good screw. *no pun intended* And all the while, Qi had been busy preparing dinner. The smell coming from the kitchen stove was much more invigorating than the one from the putty which was used to fix the toilet fittings.
6:30pm: *Dinner Dinner Dinner*!!! There was no time for anything else, except to eat eat eat!!!
7:30pm: After washing up, we watched a bit of tv, watched a bit of Full House and watched a bit of each other.
The night ended early for 2 tired pairs of feet. They said goodnight to each other, and set off for slumberland together….ZZZ
