I spent 1.5 days at Brisbane and 1.5 days at Gold coast. It was the Halloween day, which gave me an advantage when rented out the backpacker hostel.
Quick opinion
Brisbane: The city is not as crowded as sydney and melbourne, but much better than canberra. I would rate this city is number 3 (exclude Darwin and Perth that I have not visit before)
I visited Queensland University, which is I think the building was really beautiful. The design and architecture was so classic with the brown wood colour. Unfortunately, the location is quite far from the central city.
On the second half day, we visited gold coast and decided to cycling 10 km in return along the coast. The view was beautiful except one of our bicycle’s wheel was flattened. we were so panic at that time. Lucy, we got the replacement without further charge from the company.
Yeay, new year again. I did not manage to write this post exactly at new year day. A lot of things has happened but I wanna to tell about what was happened exactly during the countdown to the new year and the new year day.
First, I started to take a selling job again on the new year eve. The decision came up at a day exactly before the new year countdown. Initially, I just felt to lonely to have the normal celebration and waiting several hours just for wait the fireworks. After randomly perfomed a google search, I found the job advertisement from the same company that I have been worked last year. I text the owner, but no reply. The advertisement said to meet at Darling harbour at 7 pm, 2 hours from the time I saw that advertisement. I decided to go directly to the meet up point and everything went smoothly. I got the job and start the selling job. It was a good job since I have been doing the same thing before and make a fair amount of money. One thing I feel sorry by taking this job was finding Jazz was watching the new year eve alone. I might consider to cancel the job and watch the fireworks countdown with her having to know that she did not have anyone to accompany her.
And the next day, On the new year eve 1 January 2018, after only get 5 hours sleep, I went to wollongong with an old couples that met before. I met the husband at the early of 2017 when he post an advertisement about tutoring job for his granddaughter. It turned out that I did not tutor his kids at all but occasionally visited their house to fix some internet problem, tvpad, netflix subscriber and listening whatever story they want to tell me. I never imagine we will have quite close relationship. I learned a lot of live lesson from these couples
Strength and Resilience
The old lady was born in Indonesia. She has been married before but divorced. Then she travelled around the world, including malaysia, singapore and sydney. She has been deported three times from Australia. As a eldest child in her family, she bear a lot of burden from family and felt a little love. Finally, she met this Australia guy, get married and gainned Australian citizenship. It was a long and painful journey for her, I can tell.
Unconditioned Love
When the old lady get married to this Aussie guy, she already had two children from the previous marriage. She never had a child from this Aussie guy. It turns out that his grandchildren is not “real” grandchildren but come from the old lady’s previous marriage as well. However, this guy unconditionally accept her family. I can tell from the various conversation with this guy: every action, every money he spent is for the sake of happiness of his family without considering whether it is his real family or not. Once he married this old lady, he unconditionally accept everyone as his family and try to fulfill anything they need.
Realistic to face the problem.
They already prepared to pay the funeral company on their own ! Yes, they told me that it will be better to invest the funeral bill now as the bill will increase a lot in the future due to the inflation. When you already pay the funeral company, they will come to you right after you are died and do whatever it needed from the burial, cremation process, transportation, etc etc. Its really not an Asian culture though, but it certainly a good idea to follow with.
The temple was looks nice It was calming and bring a peace. It was the feeling that I used to had, the mahayana buddhism style temple. A good start of this year.
Coming Home 