25 Sep 2011 - Brisbane and Gold Coast Trip Summary

I finally completed our recent Brisbane and Gold Coast trip video today. If you have been following my blog, you would know that after every trip, I would create a video featuring Jerlene and Javier. In the past, Jerlene had been the main star performing some dances in the video. However, this time round, Jerlene was too shy to dance and she became a coach for another rising star, Javier. Watch this video and you'll understand what I mean......... Enjoy!

22 Sep 2011 - Daddy KO....

I'm feeling very unwell today and doctor gave me 2 days MC without question. My throat was killing me and was coughing my lung out. Sigh....looked like this time it's going to take quite a while before I can recover. From today onwards, I will have to try my best to keep a distance from my two angels and refrained from sharing food with them.

Mommy told Jerlene daddy was sick so cannot sleep to near me. So guess what, she used a bolster to separate herself and me......haha........ Hope I can recover soon.

21 Sep 2011 - HFMD counts going up

The latest number of kids contracted HFMD in Jerlene's childcare centre had gone up to 15 today. There were not many kids at the centre when we reached. I guessed many parents wanted to play safe and get alternative avenue to take care of their kids instead of sending them to the centre. I did think of that as well but sad to say, I myself had fell sick. So if Jerlene was to stayed at home with me, she had the same risk as well. Keeping my fingers crossed though.

18 Sep 2011 - Any position, Anytime, Anywhere

Javier had an extraordinary "talent" that amazed us all. When he's really tired, he can really sleep in any position. Today, he was playing from morning till about 4pm. Suddenly, it was silence so we sensed that something was not quite right. We quickly went out of our room to see what Javier was doing. Below was what we saw.

Tracy said that he saw Javier in this position earlier but thought he was just pretending to be angry because he got a scolding from me. However, on closer look, then we realized that he had actually fell asleep.......on the floor mat. And what a position....... It seemed like he knew he cannot sleep on the floor, so he made sure that his entire body must be on something. As the floor mat was pretty dirty, I quickly carried him to his room and he continued to sleep. :-)

15 Sep 2011 - HFMD outbreak in childcare

Jerlene was well this morning and went back to childcare. However, I understand from a notice in the centre that there were quite a number of HFMD cases recently. The current count was 5 and a few unconfirmed cases. Jerlene had already got it twice in the past, so hopefully she's immuned to most of the virus variants now. Will have to monitor her closely for the next few weeks.

14 Sep 2011 - After Javier, now it's Jerlene...

Javier had recovered from his fever few days back but sad to say, Jerlene felt feverish today. As such, I took leave today to take care of her as the childcare will probably not take her in since she had fever. After breakfast, I quickly brought her to a doctor to get some medicine. She also complained about stomach pain but not sure if it's real. By evening, her temperature dropped to normal level so it's a relief.

8 Sep 2011 - Javier having fever

Two days after coming back from Brisbane, Javier fell sick today. In fact, I observed that something was not quite right last evening because he slept a lot but ate very little. He seemed to have lose his appetite and very sleepy. Immediately after work today, I brought him to a clinic to get some medicine. Hopefully he'll be ok soon.

6 Sep 2011 - Day 9: DIrect Factory Outlet (DFO) and flying home

We checked out of our apartment early this morning. After loading all our luggages into the van, I went back to our apartment to take some pictures.

Below is bedroom 1 which has a big PES area attached outside of the room.

This is the second bedroom.

There is another PES outside of the living room. Btw, we were staying at the ground floor (but is raised) of the apartment. This was good for us so that we did not have to climb up the stairs, especially when we bought a lot of things. And also we had two seniors and 2 kids........

The kitchen is open concept with no partition from the living room.

Same as the apartment we stayed in Gold Coast, there is only one common bathroom in this apartment unit.

As we still got about 2 hours before we need to return our van, we went to do some last minute shopping at a mall called Direct Factory Outlet (DFO), which is near to both the car rental company as well as the airport.

We had our early lunch at the mall. 2 hours is definitely not enough to shop in this mall. After we returned our van, the car rental staff drove us to the airport using the same van so that we do not have to move our luggages from one van to the other.

During the flight, both Jerlene and Javier did not sleep at all. They were either watching kids show or play games on KrisWorld.

We took a cab home from the airport and by the time we reached home, it was about 10pm. Javier was sound asleep on the way home and he slept till the next morning. Jerlene could not sleep because she's excited about her animal toys which I bought for her in Brisbane. When we were at Brisbane, I told her that she can only play with it when we were back home. So now she cannot wait to play with it. I promised her to let her play after I bathed her. As it was quite late already, we did not play for too long. It's good to be home after a tiring but nice trip. :-)

5 Sep 2011 - Day 8 (Part 2): Santos City of Lights

After we had our noodle dinner in our apartment, Tracy and myself decided to go watch the Santos City of Lights, a daily event during this 3 weeks of Brisbane Festival. We failed to watch it from Mount Coot-tha and Kangaroo Point. So on this last night of the trip, we were not going to take any more chances. So we drove to Southbank, which is a designated vantage point for this laser and light show.

As we could not find any parking lot along the roadside, we had to park at Southbank basement carpark. It was expensive (AUD15).

As we were not very sure which is the best point to look at the show, we went to the spot where there were the most photographers. Soon the music started to play. Spotlight from everywhere started to shine into the sky. There were spotlight and laser light coming from the skyscraper's roof, the bridges as well as from the boat on Brisbane river.

The show was superbly choreographed where the light "danced" with the background music. This is the first time I had watched such a show. Nice........

After the show, we walked back to our car and on the way, we took some photos of Southbank, which looks completely different from 12 years back.

5 Sep 2011 - Day 8 (Part 1): Underwater World, Sunshine Coast

Today will be our last full day of the trip. And our destination is Sunshine Coast. Initially the road trip was quite smooth. However, before we drove into Bruce Highway, we heard from the radio that there was a nasty accident along Bruce Highway towards Sunshine Coast.

And true enough, 20 mins later, we were hit with a massive jam that stretched more than 5km.

The jam caused us at least half an hour delay to our destination. Anyway, it's good to reach Underwater World finally.

The first section is a touch pool where we had chance to feel some sea creatures such as sea star, sea cucumber, sea urchin etc.

Then we moved to the next section which is a tunnel through the oceanarium. We had a close encounter with all sorts of sharks, rays and other fishes. There were even several divers cleaning the tunnel.

At 1pm, we arrived at the Seal Island where there was a Seal Show.

Following are some other creatures that we saw in Underwater World.

Before we left this place, there was a kid's corner where both Jerlene and Javier had some fun.

We had our late lunch at the cafe right outside of Underwater World. Javier really hated wearing shoes and he ran around the place bare footed. He's like a Kampong kid.

From Underwater World, we decided to go visit the Big Pineapple. When we reached there, we were puzzled why the carpark was closed. Then I parked by the roadside and went in to check it out. To my surprise, the whole place was deserted. When I went back to check on the internet, then we realized that Big Pineapple was temporarily closed down and there was a change in owner.

Using our GPS, we thought of going to Super Bee but we cannot locate it. And once again, from the internet, we found that they had moved out of Sunshine Coast. Fortunately we had already bought some honey from the Super Bee branch at Currumbin.

We then drove back to Brisbane city but before that, we did some suburb shopping at Chermside.

4 Sep 2011 - Day 7 (Part 3): Mount Coot-tha (Day and Night)

As we wanted to have a day and night view from Mount Coot-tha, we shopped in Indooroopillys till about 4pm before driving up. At the foot of Mount Coot-tha, there is the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium. Beside it is an observatory.

Across the carpark lies the Botanical Gardens at Mount Coot-tha. This botanical garden is so much better than the one in the city. This garden is divided into different zones, each with its unique plants collection.

First we came to a Cactus House with many different types of cactus.

Other areas include Lagoon and Bamboo Grove, Exotic and Australian Rainforest, Temperate Garden, Japanese Garden, Bonsai House and Herb Garden.





We walked till about 5pm and off we went to Mount Coot-tha summit. We reached the summit just before the sky turned dark. We had a spectacular view of Brisbane city from the summit.

As the surrounding got darker, the temperature also started dropping. So the best way to enjoy such cool weather was to have a cup of hot Mocha in the Cafe. Very soon, the entire place was under darkness and we had a superb night view of Brisbane city.

Starting today, as part of the Brisbane Festival, there is an event called Santos City of Lights at Southbank area. This is the first laser light show of its kind in Australia. This extraordinary spectrum of lights and lasers will radiate from the roof tops, the river and bridges and is set against dramatic musical scores. However, we could only see a few spot lights shining around. Guess we could only have a better view at the designated vantage point in Southbank.

After we got back to our apartment, Tracy and I decided to try to view the laser light show at the vantage point where we watched the fireworks yesterday. However once again, we could not see much except for the few spot light shining from the rooftop.

We will try it again tomorrow but at the designated vantage point along the river at Southbank.