On Tuesday, I didn’t have lunch with HG because I had a lunch date with my Aussie friend, Anthony. We met at the restaurant called ‘Little Singapore’ on Charlotte Street. The restaurant was packed. It was nice to catch up with old friend. Anthony is interested in using WordPress for his website, so he said he might need my help.

Before I left Scotland, I have some work about designing factsheet for the new products that I need to do for my client in Canada but I couldn’t finish it before I left. So I spent most of my time during the day to do it here.

On Saturday we went to North Stradbroke Island. We took the train to Cleveland. Then we walked from the station to the ferries terminal. We used Stradbroke Flyer – Gold cat to the island and then took the bus from Dunwich to Point Lookout. We walked around for about one hour. It was very hot that day. We then stopped for lunch at a restaurant called ‘Fishes’. I had salt and pepper calamari – Szechaun seasoned and flash fried calamari, fresh garden salad, orange and sesame dressing. It was fantastic. HG had Reef & Beef – as above with skewer of sea scallop, prawn, calamari, grilled in lemon pepper. The food here was very good but the order point was very poor. The girl who took our order seemed to have just a pretty face. After lunch we walked down to Frenchman’s beach. The beach was very clean and quiet. We didn’t really prepare to swim, so we just got our feet wet. Then we took the bus back to Dunwich and the ferry back to the main land. This time we took their courtesy bus back to Cleveland station. We got on the train and got off at Ormiston and walked to the park where they said you might see Koalas but we didn’t see any. Ormiston seems to be a nice and quiet town.

We got the train back to the city and went to Irish pub. HG ordered me half a pint of Tooheys and he had 2 pints of Guinness. Then we had Vietnamese noodles for dinner. It was not very nice.

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After lunch we walked across Goodwill bridge to City Botanic gardens. It’s not as big as the one in Edinburgh. It didn’t take us long to finish the whole garden. I think it was here where we started using the phrase ‘Is that it?’. For example, from the map it said there is a Hibiscus garden we went there and there were about 20 plants with about 2-3 flowers in total. It’s a bit disappointing. After that we decided to go check out the market at Brunswick Street near Chinatown but by the time we got there most of the stalls were packing up. So we went back to South Bank for dinner. We had dinner at Amici’s. It was very busy and we almost walked out because we waited quite a long before someone came to take our orders. We had pizza and it was just ok. We walked back home and checked on Google map later that we have done a crazy walk again. It was 17km in total today.

On Sunday, another late morning. We went to shopping at Coles supermarket at Queen Plaza. After took the shopping back to the apartment we decided to check out New Farm area. We would like to see the apartment which we would like to stay but they weren’t available. So we went to Chinatown for lunch and walked down Brunswick Street towards New Farm Park. We found the apartment and thought we would be equally happy here. There are quite a lot of shops around and it is not far from the park. We went down to New Farm Park Ferry Terminal to get Brisbane city cat. We bought off-peak day ticket. We went to Queensland University and back to Regetta in Toowong. We went to a liquor superstore and got some red wine, Gin and Whisky. We got the train from Toowong to Roma Street and walked through Roma Street Parklands back to the apartment. It was dark and I didn’t like it.

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Myer center is more like Central Department Store in Bangkok. We went to the kitchen and household department to look for oven gloves and potato peeler. Actually there is a potato peeler in the apartment but it’s all rusty. I afraid that HG would cut himself with it, so it would be better to get a new one. We stopped at the Mill Hotel for a glass of Pepsi and 2 pints on the way back to the apartment. We had beef and sausage casserole with rice for dinner. It was very good.

The next day, it’s Friday, I didn’t go out during the day again because I had some work to do. I met HG in front of Medicare office at 4:30pm. It went well this time we got the Medicare number. On the way back to the apartment, Queen Street mall was packed with people. It was mad and difficult to walk.

After lunch I walked along Ann Street down to Queen Street. I tried to find the city farmer’s market at Brisbane Square. I didn’t know where Brisbane square is exactly but I know roughly that it’s on Queen Street. I walked down to Queen Street mall and it was so crowded. I saw white long legged birds wandered around this area. At that time I didn’t know what kind of bird they are. There are a lot of people smoking here in Australia. Every time I stopped and sat on the bench to look at my map there would be someone stopped there and smoked which was annoying. After walking to the end of Queen Street I finally found the Farmer market. I had a look around but didn’t buy anything. Then I walked on to Victoria bridge to cross the river to South Bank Parklands. There was a street beach there. While I was taking more photos of white long-legged birds at the beach, there was two guys sat near the beach asking me if I wanted him to take my photo with the birds. I said no thanks, then he said if I wanted to take his photo instead. After that he introduced himself as Bob from Papua New Guinea and his friend named Bryan from Germany. Bob did most of the talking unlike Bryan. Bob told me that the white long-legged bird is called White Ibis. According to Brisbane city council ibis is protected under State Wildlife Legislations. After a small talk with Bob, I walked to Goodwill bridge, a bridge for bicycles and pedestrians, back to the other side of the river. I walked into QUT ground next to the city botanic garden to George Street and back to Queen Street. I had to walk quickly because I had to meet HG at Woolworth supermarket at 5:10pm and it was almost 5pm and I still have a lot of walking to get there. We did some shopping and walked back to the apartment. I checked on Google map later that night and found that I was walking about 10 km. My feet were sore and I was so tired. After having a shower I went to sleep in no time.

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The oldies came on Friday afternoon and decided to stay until I left which at the time we didn’t know when yet. Mum had her concert on Sunday night, so they had lunch on Sunday and left for the concert and came back around 11pm. After they left for the concert, I had a lot to do in the house, watered the garden, cleaned the house, washed the dishes, took the rubbish out, etc. I finished everything by the time the oldies came back.

In the morning, dad wanted to take Pepper out to play before I left so he wouldn’t see me gone. But the driver arrived just when he was going out, so Pepper saw me leaving but dad said he was ok in the football field and didn’t really care much about me leaving. It was such a relief.

It was raining all the way to the airport. It took about one and a half hour to get there. I managed to find the sky lounge alright. The flight was on time and the business class cabin was disserted. I watched some movies before they served the dinner. The food was good, I had roasted beef salad for starter, red curry prawn with rice for main course and cranberries tart for desert. After the meal the guy who sat next to me started talking. We talked most of the flight since. So I didn’t get any sleep on this flight.

We arrived in Dubai to the new terminal (Terminal 3), which is dedicated to Emirates flights only. It was chaotic. There are so many people. I needed to ask someone in order to find the business class lounge. I don’t like the lounge as much. I went to have a shower and had a glass of coca-cola and left to the gate. At the gate, the ground staff asked me a lot of questions when he was checking my passport. He asked where I live which I said Scotland and he asked why I go to Brisbane and I said for vacation. The he asked why I didn’t go to Thailand because it was closer to Brisbane, I said I’ll go back to Thailand later in the year. I started to have a feeling that he was a bit nosy. Then he let me go but came back again and asked to see my passport again. He looked at my face and the picture in my passport and asked how far from Scotland to Belfast. I said I don’t know because I have never been to Belfast. Then he asked where Belfast is, and I said Northern Ireland and he said correct and thanks me and let me go.

The plane from Dubai to Brisbane has lie flat beds and digital ICE. The screen was huge. I watched some movies and slept for 2-3 hours before the flight attendant came to wake me for the meal. I had stir-fried noodles with beef. It was too salty for me. I couldn’t finish it. Then I watched more movies and didn’t sleep until we landed at Singapore. We had to leave the plane for an hour. I went to the lounge and had another shower and a glass of water and raspberries crème brûlée. The guy who sat next to me from Dubai to Singapore, his brother is a pilot at Emirates, so he got an upgrade to First Class from Singapore to Brisbane. I watched movie and listened to music and played games on this flight. The food was good too. I had smoked prawn with salad for starter, salmon fillet with potatoes and pak choi for main course and assorted fruits for my desert.

I arrived in Brisbane very early morning on Wednesday. The immigration was quick and I didn’t wait that long for the luggage. My chauffer driver was waiting for me at the arrival area. It took me about 20 minutes from the airport to the apartment. The apartment looks alright, it’s clean, quiet and has every we need. We went to bed not long after I arrived because HG had to work the next day.

After a while I need to search for something else and again I got the same error and couldn’t click to any link of my searching results. I told my husband about it on MSN (we used MSN to communicate because he was upstairs and I was downstairs) about it and he gave me this emoticon stated that he had the same problem. He was a bit angry and thought it was my fault. I felt so guilty. He was thinking about scanning his PC and reformat. After that I kept trying with a lot of search keywords and finally I could get the results without the error flag. So I told my husband and he was cool about it. Later that day after dinner, he found the news about this incident on BBC. I think what Google was trying to do is good for the future search and hope it will be trustworthy, so I forgive you, Google!!!