Wandering Home.

I, like many of you, suffer from a beautiful condition called wanderlust.

Having said that, I am fortunate to have won a geographical lottery. I can savor glorious locally made produce,  enjoy french champagne while watching a beautiful sunset on a mountain, and scale riverside cliffs without going more than half an hour from my home.

That, is the beauty of Brisbane.

For those of you who feel you have to head south to Sydney or Melbournetown to get the best of the land down under, I say you underestimate what Queensland’s capital has to offer.

So regardless of whether you’re a local, or stopping by from interstate or overseas, here is a quick run-down of the best this city has to offer.

In a 24 hours.

Natventure: En route

So the trip to worlds has begun, but not the fun bit. Actually doesn’t feel real yet, not helped by the epic plane ride that comes with competing over the other side of the world. Its not as small as people lead you to believe.

MALAYSIA DIARIES. Episode 2: A Chinese Wedding.

Its my first day here in the house and already there’s been comments on my excessive sleeping. They ain’t seen nothing yet. Personally I am quite impressed with my slothing abilities, and if anything, others should be inspired by the example I am setting. Today we headed to the wedding of my friends boyfriends friends friends friends friends friends. Jokes, they’re close. We headed out into the suburbs of KL to the Brides residence, where the groom && his peeps have to pass a series of tests && get past the bridesmaids && the father of the bride.  In the end the guy gets the girl, happy happy joy joy, lots of food for everyone. Their initial offering was a giant roast pig, glistening in its deliciousness. My friend and I watched on as the boys ate weird stuff, danced to ‘sexy and I know it’, promised the Bride the world, and emptied their pockets for the Father of the Bride. In turn, I was being watched with varying degrees of judgment for being the only uninvited overdressed white girl at the house. Apparently that’s what you get for being a blonde western chick in the suburbs. Once you say hi, everyone is perfectly warm and welcoming, strangers walking down the street continue to judge though. In all honesty I’m not that used to having judgment rained down on me, quite often I find that I’m the one passing judgment which really suits me perfectly fine. Randoms throwing chat to each other about you in languages you don’t understand is also pretty interesting. But I maintain that they were just conversing about how awesome I am.

There are several things about a Chinese Wedding I like the sound of. Not only do I enjoy the idea of scoring mass bribes from the groomsmen (although in all honesty I think the Dad just kept the money…which would sit pretty well with my step-dad, mum would just return the money. bless), but I also love that the groom and his entourage bring with them an epic delicious entire roast pig. Like an actual whole pig. It had the most delicious crackling//skin ever. *drools*. I was also pretty stoked to experience my first “home cooked meal”. Even though my every move was being watched and judged as the other guests tried to figure out why I was there, I was provided with food, chrysanthemum tea (awesomely good), pig, food, tea, food, tea..and so on.

On the way home I spotted yet another baby wedged between its parents on the back of a motorcycle…yet to get a pic…but I will. Apparently several families can’t afford cars && their only mode of transport is motorcycles, which is fair enough, but god so dangerous. Especially since no-one wears more than a helmet. It kinda made me feel lucky to live in a country where we have a minimum wage and a government that gives some assistance, even if the cost of living and god forbid parking in Australia is ridonk.

After another mall trip and a cat nap (I told you I sleep a lot), it was time again to fix my face and head to…you guessed it…another mall. Malaysia is all about shopping, and which mall is bigger and better and shinier than the others, so each one is a different adventure and trying not to get lost is a challenge. My friends were heading to the wedding dinner, so I headed to play at KLCC until the afterparty.

Once again I played the role of overdressed white girl as I explored the infamous mall located at the bottom of the beautiful twin towers. I discovered many things, such as paid restrooms (not that much better…but drier…and they do give you free towelettes). I observed that Malaysian malls have plenty of food && classy clothing stores, but hardly any newsagents, drug stores, and dirt cheap ‘cut the labels off’ clother like Ice && Supre. I eventually did find a Chemist, and yes I’m about to go into information overload, but for whatever reason, there are next to no tampons and aisle after aisle of lady pads and even full brief nappy type things. As someone who doesn’t live in the middle ages, and values comfort and lack of tell tale scent, I don’t understand this. Please explain.

Oh and for a country where everyone speaks English, I may or may not have had some difficulty ordering food. Apparently “Bottle of water” sounds an awful lot like “bolognaise”, and so I was stuck with more meals than I wanted to eat while in public. I tried to explain this to the cashier…but to no avail. We regressed into using hand signals and I eventually ended up having to talk to the manager//supervisor cause she had no clue what was going on. He did throw in a waffle, so in the end. WIN.

10 pm finally arrived, shops closed, and I power walked back to the dinner and avoided eye contact with EVERYONE. Dinner wasn’t quite finished, but there was a spare table so I managed to score a last minute  dessert invite. Apparently its Chinese tradition to ‘out cheers’ each other by making as much noise as humanly possible when its your tables turn to congratulate the happy couple. Another tradition. Scotch. Lots and lots of scotch.  Affectionally referred to as Chinese tea. I have never seen so much Johnny green in my life, and especially not being skulled rather than savoured. I also learnt how to say “yo mamma” in chinese. A;; in all…good night.

MALAYSIA DIARIES. Episode 1 : The Adventure Begins

The last few weeks have been boring. Completely mundane and exhausting. I apologise to everyone for anything and everything I have force written in the past few weeks cause I guarantee it was relatively terrible. Entirely because I’ve been feeling pretty terrible. The only interesting stuff has been breaking through walls and break downs at training (which to anyone outside of the cheer realm essentially has no meaning) and that guy that crapped the floor in the change rooms at work (which although I wasn’t there for, I sure laughed at A LOT when I heard about it). Apparently all work, no sleep and no play turn Natalie into an emotionally volatile mess…and are a substantial contributing factor to my recent epic face plants and head stacks. A human mess that sweats as much as it cries, rarely has time to eat and or sleep, has semi-formed and yet melodramatic actual human feelings about things, and packs in && breaks down every 2 days. Cyborg Nat worked and trained and worked and trained until she could do no more, and so, she jumped on a plane and flew to Malaysia.

Observation 1: Plane sleep does not equal real sleep.

Upon learning that my flight would take 8 hours my first thought was SLEEP. I had fond memories of the plane ride home from NZ last year when I continues to fall asleep during Megamind && took me the whole trip to watch it in its entirety. The seat reclined, mamma donated her in flight meals, and life was sweet. On my KL flight, I was fortunate enough to get the non-reclining seat && so I looked on with intense jealousy at my fellow passengers who were able to recline at an angle greater than 90 degrees, and as such, sleep without dribbling all over themselves. Of course my travel pillow was not really any help, yes it was smooshy and amazing, but it pushed my head even further forward and substantially increased the saliva flow, causing me to continually wake up mid-dribble and hope that no-one had seen me. On the upside, my constant awakening led me to not find myself in an epic pool of my own saliva, which is something that happens far too often when I crash out.

Eventually we landed in Malaysia. All in all the flight wasn’t too bad, no babies, semi-attractive man meat littered throughout the plane && no salmonella from the interestingly unfresh looking airline food. My first thought “OMG THEY HAVE GIANT MENTOS TUBES HERE!!!!!!”, swiftly followed by “Damn there’s a lot of palm trees here.” I jumped in the cab and took my first looks at this land where palm trees outnumber people, indicators are fast becoming obsolete, unnecessary seat belt use if riding behind shotgun, babies on motorbikes, reversing sensors, and FOOD. Oh so much food; Western food, Asian food, desserts, fast food restaurants, coffee shops. EVERYTHINGG!!!. And all oh so inexpensive. Naturally my first question was “If there’s so much food && its all so beautifully priced, why is everyone so skinny??” Apparently the heat and humidity mean that everyone sweats out all the calories that they consume. I maintain that there MUST be something in the water cause I come from Queensland where it is hot && humid as a mother and we have enormously fat and sweaty people all over the place. Maybe if they turned off the aircon in KFry, Mickey Dees, and the Queen street food court Australia wouldn’t be the fattest nation anymore. Or.. undeterred by the heat, fatties would continue gorging on junk and we would become the fattest and the stankiest nation as all the skinny decent smelling people would GTFO. Not that I’m really in a position to judge the fatties considering my plans for the week include a healthy routine of sleeping, eating, and more sleeping, followed by a potential shock on the scales when I get home.

Who am I kidding, I’ve earnt my right to pass judgement on those who don’t love themselves enough to take care of their bodies, and as such, learn from their example and NEVER treat myself like junk.

So after a half day of eating, shopping, exploring and being introduced to new friends who are so kind as to show me around and let me crash under their roof thanks to my dear cheer friend, I crashed….and hard.