It’s a good few months since I’ve gone back to Queensland. It felt like ages, and the main cause of delay was the delay in completion of my unit at Teneriffe. I wanted to go up there since September, which is the original date when the off-the-plan unit was suppose to be completed. Instead, it didn’t settle ’till December! So, the long wait is over, and I’ve taken a good 5 days visit to Queensland. The difference? Darren is coming also..
Like the last trip, the first few days were all business. The first 2 days were spent chasing paperwork, and lots of running around. But, eventually work was done and I had finally settled my property. This is the most expensive property I’ve purchased to date, but looks the nicest. It lived up to my expectations, so I was quite happy.
The rest of the days were spent going out to catch up with friends. I managed to catch up with Phung at her uncle’s restaurant. She seems to be doing alright, and plans to work with her brother at his newly purchased fish-and-chips shop. She’s certainly gone skinnier. That night, I managed to organise for Kevin, Jack, Noni, Berto, JB and Patrick to have dinner at Melissa’s new restaurant out at Kelvin Grove (near QUT). Melissa is definitely doing very well for herself these days, now owning both a hair salon and a noodle bar. The noodle bar looks quite ‘high-end’, although as JB says, Pad-Thai didn’t taste like Pad-Thai at all. It’s a brand new restaurant, and probably takes time to work out. Otherwise, it was certainly a damn fun night. Lots of laughs, and stories. All of us managed a game of pool at Fat Louise after dinner. The boys and myself even managed to fit in ‘extra’ entertainment afterwards. Did not make it home until early hours in the morning.
The next day, it was diving up at Mooloolaba. It was suppose to be a wreck dive on the HMAS Brisbane. But, it turned out to be only available early in the morning. So, we had to settle for a reef dive. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did with diving in Sydney, which is a bit disappointing. The reefs were actually quite dead by comparison. I really hope The Great Barrier Reef (which is further out) isn’t like this. It was a bit discouraging to hear from the divemaster that I won’t see much more than what I saw already. The only highlight of the day was that, I use soooo little air I had 100 bar left after a 45 minutes dive!
Then I caught up with Elaine. She was suppose to organise a day trip for me & Darren, but backed out because of stomache pain. It’s a bit worrying seeing her like this, as she has been complaining about a lot of pain in her stocmache due to some ‘stone’ developing in her kidneys?? I don’t know the full details, but she certainly does not sound too healthy at all. We did at least have a chance to catch up for dinner.
The following day, I haven’t got much planned. But remembered Saskia was back from Japan. She’s my uni study-mate while I did my Masters of IT in QUT. She’s had a fantastic 2 years working for Shiseido. I gave her a call, and I met up with her along with JB & Darren. At first, it was dinner at Jachin’s new restaurant (everyone seems to be opening restaurants!!) out at Capalaba. It was a long drive, and my expectations of it were quite high. The food itself were quite nice, and I had all the classics that I had in Philippines like Pancit Palabok. It really was more about visiting Jachin than the food. He definitely looks like he’s doing well for himself.
On the last day, it was dinner with my parents at the newly opened Yahoo restaurant in Sunnybank Hills. These days, my sisters are so busy, it was rare that we managed to get everyone together for dinner. John (my sister’s fiance), is as usual, puts on his happy talkative nature, while Moi (Roselind’s boyfriend), a little quieter, had a lot of share that night too. We even all paid John and Helen’s new place, which is currently being renovated at the moment. Not to end the night yet, I even visited Charlie back in Toowong.
This trip has been a busy but quite a fun one. Almost forgot to mention Rocky, my dog! Looks the same, but definitely not as ‘fast’ and active as he used to be. My family have not been taking him out for walks as much as they used to. But I did have a good bit of fun and chasing around with him one night.
Oh well.. hopefully I’ll be back again soon. I definitely wanna come back to Brisbane some day. As much as I complained about the place as a youth, I’ve certainly grown to like the place a lot more now than I used to.
