Friday, August 09, 2013

Australia Diaries: Chapter Melbourne


Life is all about senses. When you see, you hear, you taste, you feel, you talk, you move, you laugh, you cry,  you savor the passing time.. you are alive.

I came to Melbourne to meet my sister after six years. I didn't just meet her, i lived with her.

i saw her smile, i heard the love in her voice,  i tasted pampering, i felt the security of family, we talked about everything under the sun and the grey clouds of this amazing city, i moved on her instructions like i always do, i laughed with her, we cried too ... we missed our parents.

We lived with Sharad, Anu and Abhi. We had serious fights over music, intense planning for effectual site seeings, agony over missed exists in our road trips, pain on paying for outrageously costly car parking, celebration of home cooked meals, "smart-ass" comments and comebacks, precious morning chit-chat over breakfast, family dinners, avalanche of shopping, surprise at nature's beauty, gazillion coffees and teas, many trips around neighborhood and many more down the memory lane, worries over loved ones, a story to tell on everything, struggle to find enough layers to stay warm, understanding the relevance if "masterchef"....taste of a life-style ...

Abhi's persistence to feature in "reflections" and get his due credit as my trip planner and adviser who drove us around, teamed-up for site seeing, song gathering, sister's temper management and more..... showed his caring and careless side with equal effulgence.

In Melbourne, we saw "the great ocean" road, yaara road, eureka tower, st kilda beach, downtown, highpoint mall , albert park and much more.. but despite the glorious high-rise, beautiful greens, ravishing countryside, green ocean... for me the most beautiful reason and experience of this trip will be my sister....




Tuesday, August 06, 2013

Australia Diaries: A Picture ...

... says a thousand words . Few of my favorite words of this trip ..





Written in a public rest room somewhere on the Great Ocean Road. Its true, wisdom can be found anywhere.










Australia is lush and green. be it Tasmania, Melbourne countryside, drive through the rain forest to 12 Apostles or the green ocean. and just to add another shade to the "green envy" they even make the swimming pools green too ... at the Cataract Gorge, Tasmania
















At the Graffiti Park at Launceston, Tasmania. Idle kids and their unleashed imagination.










The tear glasses... notice the small buckets under the rims. ne of the most brilliant and funny things i ever saw. Found at Ballarat, the gold rush village.















A post box in country side Tasmania, an angel made from empty beer cans. Goes to say that alcohol can make mundane things look beautiful







I never thought i could see a penguin in the wild without visiting Antarctica, until we visited the St. Kilda Beach. It was so cold that the jackets and jeans felt permeable to the wind. Walking on the long wooden plank leading to the middle to ocean against very strong wind currents did not feel like a very smart idea until we went to the rocky habitat for the beautiful creatures and found this beautiful shiny, grey-blue penguin.