Welcome back to Life

I travelled a lot as a small kid, when my parents were still into the whole travelling-every-school-holiday thing; not that I even remember much about the trips I took as a small child. As I grew older, the holidays stopped and there came a period of more than 10 years where I never left the country until last year when the boo’s parents graciously brought me along on their trip to LA.

Before I started travelling as an adult, I always felt that I had no need for holidays and that Malaysia offered me everything that I could ever ask for. My memories of travelling as a child involved painful plane rides, spending all day outdoors and being bone tired at the end of the day and being unable to sleep in the hotel bed because I missed the comfort of home too much. Since going on my first trip as an adult last year, I found myself hooked on seeing new places and an unfortunate side effect that is apparently showing itself every time I come home.

Post-holiday syndrome is a thing. It’s even on wiki. Every time I get back from a holiday, or towards the end of the holiday, I feel slightly depressed and unwilling to come back to real life. I suppose most of it is because I hate my job and I’m definitely not looking forward to getting back into the whole humdrum routine that is my life. Sigh, it’s such a catch-22.

Anyway, whilst I’m editing my photos from the trip I thought I’d jot down some of my thoughts on Gold Coast:

1. GC is really sunny. I mentally smacked myself across the forehead for completely forgetting any sort of sunblock/sunscreen on my trip (how could I forget that Australia is where the hole in the ozone is???) and having to pay the consequences now. Other than having a horrendous tan on my face (rest of my body was all covered up) I am also flaking like a 20-year old paint job and have to apply dermatologist recommended moisturizer that is made for extremely extremely dry skin. =.=
   
   
2. Weather in GC is cold and extremely dry. However, locals wander around all day in vests, bikinis, shorts, flip flops like it’s summer while I’m freezing in my fluffy hoodie.
   
   
3. Everything closes early. By early I mean as early as 5pm or 6pm. Some restaurants are not equal to others, as in some restaurants do not open for dinner whilst others do. And make sure to check their website or Urbanspoon/Yelp first before going in case they close at 4pm or something. The receptionist at our apartment closes up at 5 sharp and leaves work at 5 sharp. Sort of reminds me of my job.
   
   
4. There’s nothing much to do in GC other than beaches, beaches and more beaches. But that’s the part I like about it. It’s so so so relaxing to just sit by the beach or just walk around barefoot, watch other people surf or pick some seashells.
   
   
5. All the seafood that you get in GC is fried. It’s really annoying because after the first few rounds of fish and chips you feel like if you see another serving of chips or fried fish you’ll hit the wall and it feels as though your throat is parched from all the fried food. Also, proper salad is hard to come by. I had a “seafood salad” at one of the seafood shops and 80% of it consisted of crab stick (not even real crab) and the remaining 20% were dingy pieces of celery.
   
   
6. Everything in Australia is really expensive. We were walking about at one of the outlet malls in GC and everything was so bloody expensive. One normal dress that wasn’t even branded cost about 60AUD. 60!! Food is also relatively expensive with every meal being about 15-25AUD per person. Even water and soft drinks are expensive. After conversion you basically hold your wallet to you real tight and studiously ignore all form of purchase.

I’m writing this now as I sit at my desk toiling away at what I’ve toiled at for the past year and telling myself that life goes on, and work is inevitable. Thinking of printing some motivational quotes/typography to stick up next to my desk to remind myself to keep going.