11 may night -- the night reality TV came true Pt 1

ok i have been delaying writing this for the longest time and i decided if i dun hurry up finish blogging aust, i will have europe and china coming up and this will slowly fade away in my memories.

this is because this night was so eventful with so many things happening, plus no photos at all, it is gonna be pretty hard trying to dig up my memories of everything including timelines and all that i shd be rather drained of energy by the time i'm done with this.

ok so basically, when i planned gold coast, i planned for all of us to be staying in an apartment complete with kitchen and all, like our own little home for 4 days. so i wanted to like try cooking in aust, making our own dinner. and then at the same time i thought, why not merge this idea with another? to thank wayne we could invite him over and cook dinner for him. and this way my good friends in singapore could meet my good friend in aust and vice versa and have a nice enjoyable night. perfect idea right?

NOT.

the night turned out to be entirely nightmarish. problems after problems cropped, making this feel like reality tv (like masterchef or something) come true, 10 times magnified, given the enormous number of screwups and obstacles we had that night.

before starting on the nightmarish night, we eventually decided to invite nathan too , because it was zhujun's last night on the coast so she could see him one last time as well. and well that's probably like problem 0, because nathan eats like a cow. lol.

so now, to start from the start,

4:45 pm--we were at dreamworld, and we left at about this time. we were to split up, me and zj to collect our luggage from aunt suvy's place, and the other 3 to head straight to surfers to start buying groceries first (we prepared a list for them already). i had all the bus timings checked out and in the google spreadsheet beforehand, so that we wouldn't reach aunt suvy's house too late. but:

PROBLEM 1: we did not have excel spreadsheet in hard copy on us, so no bus timings to guide us, ended up taking a later bus.

and

PROBLEM 2: the only key to the apartment was with me. (we asked for 2 keys, but they only handed us one that morning cos i think room service held the other, and they said they would leave the other key for us in the apartment.) so if the 3 of them finished buying groceries, they could not go back to the apartment until i got there.

5:50--we reached the bus stop that was nearest to our place finally. nearest to our place, but still super far. it was already dark then, and the darkness seemed like it was pressing down on us..giving a greater sense of urgency. we were like walking super super quickly to achieve reaching the house at 6pm, but it was a really long distance away..

well, one thing we discovered on our way home, was that in the 2 weeks we were gone, a proper footpath was created from the bus stop to our house! in the past, we had to walk along the road, or on a dirt path. well at least we got to walk on it for one time. ha.

6:10--finally, after lots of super rapid briskwalking and panting and breathlessness, we got to the house. when we got there, we discovered

PROBLEM 3: that uncle gary wasn't home yet! ta-dah. and we needed him to be home, because aunt suvy needed his car to fetch us to surfers. and she was asking us to stay for dinner and all, and asking us to eat bobochacha that she'd made.. and we felt too paiseh to decline..and she even called uncle gary to come back immediately after we explained our time-pressed situation to her..and we felt rather bad about that..

she was like aiyoh..why must cook..don't cook lah just order pizza...and seriously right that moment i was like thinking maybe that is really a better option, the only problem being that our friends were already grocery shopping, and that kinda burst my 'perfect idea' bubble. we had to pack all our remaining barang, and also pack some condiments in plastic bags.. because it wouldn't be economical to buy whole bottles of seasonings and condiments to cook for that one night. so we had like oyster sauce, sugar, dark soy sauce, salt, pepper, u name it in plastic bags and containers. we were pretty much done by 6:40, but uncle gary wasn't back yet. so i sent a sms to wayne and told him the situation.

6:50 pm. Uncle gary arrived..and we were finally set to leave. last goodbyes to linnett and uncle gary (aunty suvy was sending us), and we were on our way. i recieved a call from weibin then. they were done with grocery shopping at woolies, but we were a good half hour away from surfers still so they would have to rot at the supermarket. and then came

PROBLEM 4: there wasn't any fish that i wanted, and there were only barrumundi left, which were really expensive.

PROBLEM 5: they didn't know which mushrooms to buy, and even tho i tried describing it to them, they didn't get it, or perhaps there wasn't that type of mushrooms there.

both of them were my dishes and i was like oh crap. so in the end the conclusion was that everyone head back to the apartment first, and zj would start cooking first, while i go down to the supermarket myself to buy the remaining stuff.