I’m forever curious to who’s reading my xanga and constantly checking out the footprints function. I already know who my regular followers are-mostly other xangans who religiously log on to read every single posts. They are also my toughest critic- and it’s always a constant battle with them: either I don’t blog enough or blog too much. I also get a lot of “random” people who don’t have xanga accounts reading my blog too -I’d love to know who you are too.. just so I can say hi!

The most random thing that happened tonight was when I had a chat with someone who on my list of “regular followers” (basically this person has been logging on average every 2nd day reading my blog) who had no idea what the heck I was talking about. Apparently it was a year since they had even used their account.

Of course, whoever’s been using this account, doesn’t seem to have done anything BAD that we can see, other than read xangas (they haven’t changed the password, or posted comments or even blogs for that matter)

But it begs the question…

 

who was really logging onto

I_Luv_Cocacola

 

to read my blog? whoever you are… Hi…. 

 

 

 

 

I’ve never been to Hanoi (although I have visited Vietnam on 3 other occasions- ’95,’97,’99) so it was a first for me and partner.

I was very excited(well not really) that we were going.. the excitement died the moment we had to board a Jetstar flight. Nothing wrong with Jetstar per se, just the flying aspects puts me off.  We could have taken a bus (but it would have been a long and slow journey) or a train but we figured with time constraints and cheap airfares- flying was the best/worst option for us.

Jetstar’s model works well in a country like Vietnam where people like to rip each other off and expect you to pay for every single thing. I’m not saying Jetstar is a rip off, but their model of “pay for every single service such as food/drinks on board” works well because nothing is “FREE” in Vietnam. The airfares from Saigon to Hanoi were actually cheaper than Air Vietnam (which is the country’s national carrier) but then again it’s a fully serviced flight. Considering I don’t eat or drink on flights anyway-it doesn’t matter, we just need the cheapest airfare. Considering Jetstar is owned by Qantas and they have an extremely good record- safety wise, personally i’d rather be flying Jetstar than Air Vietnam ANYDAY of the week.

You’d be surprised at how many locals actually take the Jetstar flight to Hanoi- it was a full flight of locals really although the airfare is equivalent to some people’s yearly wages, let’s not forget there are a LOT of extremely rich people. No kidding. When we were in Hanoi, my partner saw a few Maybach’s (expensive high end luxury cars) that are usually garaged here in Australia, in fact he’s never seen one in Australia to begin with.

But you also can pick out the one’s who have never travelled on a plane before because:

1.They have to be advised to buckle up and shown how to do it. 

2. Everybody actually pays attention to the safety demonstration

3. The stewardess has to ask several times for people not to try to open the doors whilst flying (actually this was mentioned to a bunch of fobs sitting in the emergency seat whilst being explained of what they must do in an event of an emergency… someone asked “so u want us to open it now?” *facepalm*…. and the lady was like “no, only in an emergency” and the guy kept asking “like now”… in the end he sat somewhere else…)

4. everybody is rubbing the asian oil the moment the flight starts. Asian oil (you know that Eucalyptus smelling thing) DOES not work for travel sickness. Don’t know what it is with Vietnamese people and the ointment.. but they use it for everything. It’s healing powers are not that widespread.. and frankly that stuff makes people like me (who get travel sickness) actually get travel sickness. Because that ointment smells BAD and in a confined space like a plane.. it makes it worse because it gets through to the vents and stuff….

 

Needless to say we arrived safely without the doors opening on us… and without me throwing up (ahh the greatness of modern medicine).

It took us 30minutes to get to Hanoi city from the airport.. and it felt like the most boringest drive because all you have to see is this:

Yes that’s right.. just acres and acres of farmland. Unlike Saigon where from the moment you leave the airport, you’re already in a densely populated city with buildings all around. Hanoi  actually starts off with pastures of rice paddies. It’s beautiful to look at but after awhile it… like I said- it gets boring, for me anyway. And that’s the difference with Saigon and Hanoi really, I mean Saigon doesn’t have spare land, and if there is, it’s either developed, being developed or lived in with hoards of people, there isn’t spare land for rice paddies because LAND is precious commodity down south(well not that we could see anyway).  However Hanoi is very different.. to us, it felt more like a manufacturing city than a business centre.. and you can tell (passing large factories tells you that it is.. LOL)

As we had booked ourselves into a “day tour” which actually was part of a larger tour thing that was booked online (by us)… we got to explore a LOT of the city… except i didn’t enjoy it one bit.. mainly because it was 42 degrees and I was lugging around a 8kg backpack in the heat. We got to see a lot of temples:

One of them being a temple which happened to Hanoi’s first university, I unfortunately forgot the name of this one and I can’t be bothered googling it either. The picture above was these turtle things that apparently if you rubbed it’s head-you’d get good luck and do pretty well on your exams. I’m not sure if this is true. All i can tell a student is that if you don’t study, you ain’t going to get the marks your parents want. And if you’re Vietnamese, your parents are expecting nothing less than 100%, anything less you’re ass is going to be best friends with the famous feather duster. So you can rub the turtles head all you like but if you don’t study, feather duster will be your best friend…without a doubt. Needless to say, they cordon off the area so that students don’t go touching these statues because it gets pretty crazy during exam periods.. and if too many people touch these statues eventually they would wear out/get damaged.

I was a bit sceptical about being told all of this.. until I actually saw it on TV (whilst we where in Vung Tau-down south) and the hoards of students going to the same place that we had visited and going nuts over trying to touch these things and being chased off by security guards. LOL

Another note about the tours you do in Hanoi- try to get one where they’re not going to show you half a dozen temples/pagoda’s. Once you see one, you’ve seen them all. I don’t know what it is with tour operators and temple/pagodas.. but they pack so many in, on one day it almost becomes ridiculous… and boring too

One of the apparent highlights of our tour… well it wasn’t a highlight, it was something different. Was our trip to Ho Chi Minh’s masoleum. For those who don’t know Ho Chi Minh was the leader of the communist party during the Vietnam war…(for those wanting a history background-use wikipedia)… anyway his body (because he’s since died now) is now being held here.

There was a ridiculously LONG line to get in.. however being foreigners you get to cut into the line (yeah, bastards!) and bypass the locals that have been there for hours. Word of warning- you need to be dressed properly. I wasn’t and neither were the other girls in my group, apparently short sleave tops and shorts above the knees is disrespectful. I ended up spending $10 bucks buying “scarves” to wrap around my legs and to cover my shoulders”. Yes what a smart way of making a buck. In fact these scarves probably wouldn’t have costed me $2 bucks in the market… but hey… you gotta do what you gotta do.

We weren’t allowed to take photos of the body, and it’s something we wouldn’t have done anyway. The guards protecting the body didn’t even smile and they didn’t look friendly. Nobody was allowed to take photos and we didn’t want to take our chances by doing so. All I can say is that the body looks a tad creepy. Almost real-like but not. They’ve somehow managed to “keep the body” as is.. EWWW… I kept thinking to myself “what Ho Chi Minh woke up right now”… I’d think I’d run a mile..

 

And right next to the masoleum is the old residence of Mr. Ho Chi Minh and the old government house. Apparently he lived very plainly (you know the whole communist regiment of living simply?)

I think it was about here where I cracked the shits with my partner who took forever to take stupid ugly photos of God knows what and we were falling behind our tour group.. Yes, I know I’m using them but… i wish i took them because it’s MY camera and considering I’m the one who’s going to be using them in blogs, it’s best that I know the order of these crappy photos…and at least i can blame myself for my tactless skills… anyway enough bitching.

We also went to the Museum of Etymology which really was POINTLESS. For those who don’t know what Etymology- basically an understanding of human history and where we came from etc. You’d think it’s just about the Vietnamese but it’s not. It had everything and anything from African/Aboriginal people etc. And I was like “what does this have to do with anything?”

Funny moment: My partner mis-heard/misunderstood the tour guide when he said “Ety-mo-lo-gy” which sounded in fairness as “air-conditioning”. and my partner was excited to go to see a museum of airconditioners (come on.. it was 42 degress and he was hoping for some relief).. so when we got there he was like “wtf??? wheres all the air con”

At the end of our tour we got to go on some Cyclo’s. Which apparently is a dying breed now. There used to be lots around but the locals don’t use them because it’s a poor form of transport considering you could ride a motorcycle yourself or ride a bike, or better yet catch a cab (it’s not that expensive)… However tourists people (such as myself and my partner find this absolutely fun). We got taken around the streets of Hanoi which is pretty cool. A lot of the streets are named after the products that are sold there, for example “sunglasses street” and “rice street”- take a guess of what gets sold there.

These are the some of the places we passed… After about 10minutes in to the  cyclo tour, you get pretty bored very quickly and then at times freaked out as the cyclo has to somehow navigate through busy traffic with psychotic taxi drivers. Seriously, westerners make fun of us Asian drivers and say that we can’t drive? Hello-go to Asia… you’ll see elite crazy driving, some crazy stuff even the best drivers cant do. LOL

The one thing that did annoy me about the cyclo’s was that they DEMANDED a tip even after they had already been paid by the tour company. I don’t mind giving money considering it’s my own choice but to be told that i HAVE to give money makes me angry. I had some lovely harsh words with these cyclo men… considering they held the tour guide almost to ransom because they decided on their own accord to up their fee and the poor guy was like “look, this is what my company has given me to pay you, i’m not authorised to pay more” and so there was somewhat a mexican standoff- tour guide unable to pay more- cyclo guys not willing to take customers until they got more. Eventually the tour guide was able to get the OKAY from his company which meant the cyclo’s were able to take us. And you think I didn’t let these guys know it? I sure did. They were so embarassed they said not to bother and left.

 

The best thing about Hanoi was it’s night market. At night the city looked even better than it did during the day (actually I wasn’t paying much attention during the day but apparently where we were staying was the OLD quarter which happens to old buildings built…well u know a long time ago)

 

The first night there we walked a couple of blocks up from our hotel room and found the night market (which only operates fri-sat-sun) and found ourselves among hundreds of locals. The night market is a long ass strip of stalls selling anything from sunglasses to bras. You know you’re on a good thing when it’s full of locals and everything is CHEAP. the atmosphere is dynamic… but unfortunately for us, we didn’t manage to make it anymore than the 1/3 mark because even at night, Hanoi is riducously hot. We did try the market again on our final night there (we ended up 2 nights in Hanoi only- 1st day there then we went on tour, came back from tour and spent the last night there) and as it was a tad cooler, we were able to  explore the market a lot more.

We found the shopping to be a lot better than Saigon because we were less ripped off. Seriously in Saigon for the same pair of fake sunnies, they were trying to charge us $100 starting point, the cheapest we could get them was $15. In Hanoi, we were buying the same pairs for $2.50. Oh man, thinking of how much we got ripped off in Saigon still makes my blood boil… ARGHZ

We also found that we liked Hanoi a lot more than we did Saigon and regretted that our stay there was so brief. We would have loved the opportunity to explore the city a lot more. Perhaps not take a tour of any kind but roam the streets ourselves. There are some distinct differences between the two cities other than one being in the north and the other being in the south:

• the accents are a lot different, still speaking Vietnamese but man did I have to try to pay attention to their accents. So freakin hard to understand
• the market people don’t negotiate much because the prices are already rock bottom. Don’t even try Ben Thanh market, everything is over priced.
• their are a lot more hatches driving around, in Saigon there are a lot more 7-seater vans as taxi’s
• the lifestyle pace is a lot slower in Hanoi, people aren’t rushing around trying to do things.. and this shows not just in people but in buildings. There is a lot of Hanoi that is very much un-touched whereas Saigon is developing it’s entire city to look like something along the lines of Hong Kong/Osaka.
• the rich people aren’t so much in your face as it is in Saigon. Everybody in Saigon is literally flaunting their stuff whether it’s clothes, jewellery, technology or cars.

 

One of my most favourite memories of Hanoi was on our trip back from HaLong Bay getting into Hanoi… it had started raining (and when it rains, the city floods) and it was crazy windy. On the tour bus everybody was commenting on how this person in a pink raincoat was struggling to keep their motorcycle on the road and that the rain/wind was pushing them backwards. One of the guys on the bus said “poor girl, she needs some help, really tough outside”… and as we drove past, it was actually a MAN who was struggling. We laughed at how sexist we were assuming that it was a lady just because of the pink raincoat and the fact that only girls would be blown away by the wind/rain. LOL

All in all, I would have to say is- if you’re going to Vietnam, make a stopover to Hanoi… it is worth the visit, because we’re surely going back!

my dream one day is to work for the F1 or one of the F1 teams. I’m not sure how exactly I go about achieving this dream because I don’t have an engineering degree… or anything..(me and every male on this planet who loves F1)

I’m just a crazy fangirl who loves watching it every time it’s on.

If i can’t achieve this dream, then i’d be saving up to a point where I could afford to take a year off to follow the F1 team around the world and holiday at the same time.

 

It’s a good thing my partner is a fanatic too and he loves the idea of the holiday except it’s something we’d have to do in our retirement which means I’d be 60 before I’d retire…

I was about to say 40 more years but then I remembered that I am no longer 20 but 28… so 32 more years.. that’s a freakin long time to realize a dream.

 

what a nightmare

We live in a strange strange world…. 

In the western world, women cannot get enough of tanning ourselves to death (literally). Some sun is good for you, baking your body for hours is NOT. Hello Skin cancer!

In the asian world, women don’t want the sun (there’s plenty of it), they want to be white. So these women go out of their way to buy “whitening cream” and cover themselves up. The extremeity of their coverups was even noted by my partner whilst in Vietnam. He was like ‘you can’t even see their eyes?!!?!?’. Every part of the body was covered so that NO part of the body was facing the sun. Now to do this in the hot humidity that is Asia is crazy.

And there I was… in Vietnam- pale as… wearing t-shirts and shorts trying to get my “tan” on so that it looked like I travelled far and abroad to an exotic country whilst the locals were like “she da crazy” and having loads of people tell me to cover up because being brown is ugly.

-_-”

 

Needless to say, i came back with a tan… but now it’s gone

Out of curiosity (due to the Methodist Ladies College drama where the Board of Directors have sacked their principal for owing them large sums of money) I looked up the school’s website.

Turns out, you need to apply 2 years ahead of time (minimum I think too) before you’re kid can go to this exclusive ALL gir’s school and that includes if in case you decide to send your child from PREP (at 5 years old), the enrolment process would have started at age 3.

Apparently as it’s a very prestigious school with an excellent curriculum the waiting list gets ridicuosly stupid as the child gets older.

And even though I don’t have kids, I feel like I’m starting to panic!?!??! 

what if i want to send my child to this school and she misses out? OMG i would have been a failed parent… and at what point do I start the enrolment process? 

 

I did look at the fees, $14,000 starting point for even preppies.. and it gets to like $23K for year 12 kids. why would anyone pay that kind of money??? i don’t know for the following reasons:

1. because they got lots of money and don’t know what to do with it (we’re not in this category)

2. because they want the very best for their daughters (it’s a bit pointless from year prep-2.. i mean what are they really learning anyway?)

3. because there’s an awesome pool of business connections in a school like this, the big CEO’s/directors/business mogul send their kids to these schools and it’s another way in (golf membership costs just as much just so u can rub shoulders with the finest.. here at least ur daughter gets an education)

I can already hear my partner saying “she’s going to a public school or no school at all” after i tell him what the fees are

 

LOL

 

 

One of my pet hates:

 

“I’ll be home around 7.30pm… because I’ll be leaving at 7″ and then I get told about some apparent “scheduled meeting” with a classmate.

Then 7.30pm comes, do I see your ass through the front door? Of course not!

7.45pm comes around and I make that phone call and I get told “I’m just about to leave now… we went over time… sorry”

sorry? sorry?!!?!??!

what the fuck? You had 45 fucken minutes to do something about it. You have a mobile phone that has a clock, You wear a watch for crying out loud. You could have called, You could have emailed or You could have texted. What is the point of carrying a mobile phone if You don’t even use it? Our phones are ladden with so much technology to COMMUNICATE to others in such circumstances as this.

 A simple text to say “hey, going to be later than i thought. will call u when i finish” would have been fine. Because then people like me don’t have to wait around and/or don’t have to worry about someone like YOU

It’s so simple yet for SOME people it’s like the hardest fucken thing in the worldfor you to do. And then YOU wonder why someone like me gets so frustrated and angry… because it’s NOT the first time or the last time either.Even when I say on the phone “i dont think u’d be home by 7.30, more like 8.30″ and YOU  think i’m being rude or being over dramatic. AM I? I know too well that 7.30pm is NEVER EVER going to happen because history tells me that you couldn’t be on time even if your life depended on it.

And then when I’m angry, I get a text that says:

“So what do you want me to do?”

what I want you to do is to stop giving a timeframe to which you, for unknown reasons, JUST CANNOT ADHERE TO. You set the time, you set an expectation. I’ve told you a million times not to do this but you do. It’s the most fucked up worst habit there is and fucken annoying. 

I hate it when people are late, it shows tardiness and it shows lack of respect. I’m sure if you were to say to your bosses, colleagues, clients “i’ll be there at 7.30pm” then it will be 7.30pm. No in fact, you  would be there at 7pm. Yet when it comes to me and anything to do socially, the tardiness sets in. 

 

FRANKLY THIS ISN’T JUST GOOD ENOUGH. If some fucken swanky CEO can have YOUR attention and making sure you’re going to be on time. Then what difference am i? other than my Job title doesn’t say I’m a CEO or that I’m a client? It shouldn’t make a damned difference.

No one else should except this lack of respect or tardiness, so why the frying frack am i going to continue to put up with this rubbish behaviour.

seriously… just not good enough.

 

if you are dumb enough to set a time, for crying out loud.. be on time.. and if you can’t

 

CALL o TEXT.

how hard is that?

 

 

 

My mum was telling me the other day how a fellow worker was really racists. She proclaimed that she was “Aussie” because she happened to be white skinned, blue eyed blonde hair person whereas my mum is Asian.Which apparently makes my mum or all of us- not Australians which is complete and utter rubbish considering my mum has an Australian Citizenship which makes her an Aussie like anyone else. Sure she wasn’t born her but who cares?And she gives my mum and other asians a hard time for being a different colour to her…

My mum’s response was to this lady was “what’s you background? Australian’s aren’t all white people, you would have had to come from somewhere originally unless you’re Aboriginal”

and the idiot’s response was that once upon a time someone came from Austria but because she was born here it makes her dinky di Aussie. Oh dear Lordy… and you know how my mum responded to this? “If you’re dinky-di Aussie, how come you work in a factory with other migrants. We all work here because our English isn’t very good or don’t have the ability to have further education. My daughter, my nieces, my nephews and their friends are all Australian born and none of them work in a factory because they are educated”

 

Dumbass lady has since stopped giving my mum crap about “being non Australian” or anyone else for that matter.

 

 

I lost 2kgs!!!!!

 

I figured that staying at home for the entire month would mean I’d be pigging out (which I have) and by the time I have to wear my work clothes again it would be a struggle.

Of course the swimming has helped heaps!!! I’d definately stick to the swimming and start picking up some water aerobic classes during the weeknights as well because I’m addicted.

I hate running around outside but i do love the swimming pool.

I’ve given myself a week off (to allow myself some time to enjoy my last week) and then I’d get back to the swimming business again.

I say find a sport or a form of exercise you like because it makes it easier for you to stick to it.

That’s the winning formula i think

 

 

 

Starting next week, i’ll end up having to catch a train and a tram to work.I’ll drive in for the first day of week just to see how things are (just in case I do need my car) but I doubt I will for the first month.I’m not exactly enthuastic about catching public transport but considering work is in the city, it’s something I’m going to have to do until I know what I’m doing and can assign my own appointments and go to client sites instead.

 

The ticketing system in Melbourne has changed to this wretched thing called the “MyKi” system which is bit of a joke. To setup an account/get a card costs $6.00 but you can’t even use it yet and it has to be “topped” up. Seriously this stupid piece of crap costed taxpayers (which I am one) over a billion dollars and was late in delivery yet I still have to pay for this useless piece of crap? Seriously we keep electing stupid people to make decisions for us.

W T F is going on?

 

Then I have to sit in a crowded train with other people who don’t want to be there but have no choice either all going to the same destination… all because traffic to the city is a joke and the costs of parking is astronomically expensive. You have to be a billionaire to afford some of the ludicrous prices they charge.

 

I don’t know why the ticketing system had to be upgraded, considering the old one was working pretty fine. Or why the government had to reinvent the wheel with a new system instead of using half a dozen systems that are already in place worldwide (hence why it went over budget and delayed) when really the money could have been better spent on more trains/buses/trams and better ones too.

Oh… i can already forsee some interesting blogs coming out of my train trips to work for the next couple of weeks…

 

stay tuned

 

 

So we spent the last half hour looking for a mobile phone, worried that it may have been potentially been left behind in my bf’s car (which currently is parked at a train station) and all of the horrid thoughts such as :

OMG someone is going to smash the car window for a shitty Samsung Galaxy 1 phone and then smash the car up once they realize it’s such a shit phone.

We looked everywhere in the house, in between seats etc etc…

and then tried to contact the bf wondering which train station he had parked at and potentially spending the next 6hrs minding his car just so that no one would smash it (provided it hadn’t already been smashed)…

And then my dad found his phone in his car (which he had left behind)…

 

all that searching and stressing for NOTHING