Hawaii (Five-0) 2016 and a few other things

Greetings and welcome back to a seemingly estranged blog.

Well, estranged no more.

Hopefully.

During this slight (forgive the understatedness - newest addition to the Oxford dictionary in two thousand and never) hiatus from the world of blogging, I realised that I really don't do much with my time off anymore, and reading through my old posts brought about a certain nostalgia. Basically, I miss reading about past Michelle's adventures and unless I've put effort into cementing memories, they basically fade into nothingness. Basically, my memory has declined significantly over the last 12-18 months and it's pretty scary to think just how bad I am at remembering things - especially important things. Basically, I don't think I really need any excuses.

Basically, I'm getting old.

I miss writing. I miss putting my brain through a little mental torture trying to write something cohesive that was a somewhat accurate description of my life events.

Korea Part 4: Back to the Start

I've been delaying this post forever. I don't know why. One of my New Year's Resolutions was to always finish what I started, but I guess I didn't stipulate any sort of time restrictions for that. Totally de rien. Still on track.

We didn't have much time the second time around in Korea - 3 days including flight time. Basically, a full day with jetlag and delayed flights either side. This time, we visited the Namdaemun markets. It reminded me a little of Hongdae! Except it didn't have a Hello Kitty Cafe, but I mean, one in a trip is enough for me. Meow.

Needless to say, I scouted for the nearest skincare shop and rushed in.

Namdaemun is just huge. I thought it was going to be a couple of streets, but a good half hour later, my assumption was proved wrong, along with my excellent directional skills. Luckily, my actually good backtracking abilities kicked in and I was able to find the entrance.

It's weird, huh? I can never find my way, but I'll always be able to find my way back.

USA Part 7: Hollywood/UCLA/The Grove

This post marks the conclusion of my travels to the US of A. I can't believe it. I swear that yesterday it was the 14th of December and I was packing for this humungous trip, with naivety of course. Tres naive. I'd never experienced such a Winter before and I had no expectations at all, so I rocked up at Incheon International Airport with a single sweater and literally paper-thin harem pants. The most rookie error I have ever made.

Currently, I have been in the most chilled state of being, ever. Listening to this baby has never been so therapeutic. Give it a listen and tell me that it doesn't drift you towards total serenity. I dare you. The combination of beat, electric guitar with the ever-so-subtle hint of synth, mmmmm. The best.

Living isn't easy when you've been free, and it's taken away. I will lay my head down, 'til some sense has been found. Perfection.

Hollywood, as you would expect, was totally different to Chinatown and Downtown LA. Like, I'm not talking about apples and oranges. I'm talking about Hello Kitty and lettuce. You could probably draw some point of commonality between the two, but you get the comparison.

USA Part 6: Miami

Lately, I've been tapping into the Asian side of me. It remained hidden for quite some time because we are the minority where I study. I've been listening to #TBT music this entire holidays. It was probably somewhat fuelled by my trip to Korea. Man, Korea is an inspiring place. You just want to forget that you speak English and dive into the indulgent cheap, yet amazingly high quality holiday you deserve. I don't know how to say it in Korean, but just think of any compliment and it'll be fitting. I promise.

Before I proceed, I think I should pay my respects. Too many young lives have been taken away. The future of our world resides in these people, and I cannot empathise enough with those who have lost loved ones recently. I think the word I'd use to describe this feeling is numbing. The inertia is incredible; overwhelming. Lost for words. Stuck in the past. Immense disbelief. It's unfathomable unless you've gone through loss yourself. Once is terrible enough, but.. I couldn't even believe that it had happened twice to me. It's almost been a year. Still numbing. Still in disbelief. Denial. For the sake of everybody around you, I truly wish that you are in peace.

It's hard to transition from melancholy back to reality.

I guess it's worth a shot.

If you haven't noticed already, I changed my layout a little. I decided that there was just too much text and scrolling, so I'm now in the process of truncating what you can see on the home page. I also redid the icon! I think it looks a lot neater, because I remembered that I could change the size of the image through HTML, instead of doing it the hard way and resizing it manually. Of course I'd find the hard way. Of course.

Off topic. Sorry.

Miami. The land where Winter is still surf weather. This is, of course, a stark comparison to the negative, frozen body-causing Seoul Winter. It's beautiful. I don't know what else there is to say about it. Honestly, we were only here for 3 days.

Actually, we drove to Miami from Fort Lauderdale, straight after disembarking the ship. It was a hectic process and I was exhausted. I think we all were. A break was severely required, so we drove to Hollywood in Florida. I'd never heard of it, but it had a beautiful beach with an even lovelier broadwalk.

USA Part 5: Oasis of the Seas

It's that time of night again. You know, the time when I really should be sleeping but posting is ever so tempting.

I hope you're not getting sick of reading about my travels.

It's getting a little.. redundant, having to write about everything. I guess it would help if I weren't going out so often to see people, leaving things like this to the late hours of the night, or the early hours of the morning; whichever you prefer.

It may seem clear that my mother was a little ambitious whilst planning this trip. She had good intentions. I haven't been overseas since I visited Vietnam, Singapore and Cambodia at the end of 2009/beginning of 2010. To me, that's quite a while, considering I do travel frequently.

Oasis of the Seas is a cruise ship owned by a line called Royal Caribbean. It's roughly twice the size of the Titanic - 100 000 tonnes. An accurate description? Think opulence. Think luxury. Think.. big.

Opulence. I like that word - mot juste.

My family and I took a cruise around the Caribbean Islands. Fitting, no?

I want to introduce you to this baby. Never have I been on a ship so big. Well, obviously.. it's the biggest ship in the world. Duh, Michelle.

USA Part 4: Orlando

I'm finally home. Actually, I came home 2 days ago but no matter, I have been resting and recovering (biggest joke of my life, I think I've spent about 100% of my time looking for the best makeup brushes I can buy). I had a doctor's appointment today and I bleached my hair again with Sandra and Alice whilst talking about our life stories. It was refreshing to see people outside of my family because I was stuck with them and only them for 6 weeks. Tell me about it.

Florida was the place we stayed the longest. It was a really nice change away from the biting Seoul Winter and the milder West Coast chills. Despite raining the first and last days of our trip, the rest was magnifique. However, I must inform you all that I currently never want to go to another theme park for the rest of my life. It's something you must do in your life though - visiting at least one of the Disney theme parks around the world. Actually, rethinking it through, it would be rather nice to visit Disneyland in Paris. Although, I think I like the idea of it rather than the idea of it.

Anyway, topic calls.

We were in Orlando for 9 days. Those were possibly the 9 most tiring days of my entire life.

So the theme parks we went to were:

• Universal Studios
• We were supposed to go to Sea World but then mum got sick so we stayed home and went to Downtown Disney instead
• Kennedy Space Centre
• Epcot Centre
• Disney's Hollywood Studios
• Animal Kingdom
• Magic Kingdom

My favourite was definitely Epcot Centre. I'm pretty much in love with their International Village. Tres magnifique! Little Japan. Seriously. Get on that.

Just a few words of warning: there are a lot of photos. Prepare to exhaust that scroll. Dat. Scroll.

USA Part 3: Santa Monica

I've been up since 2am this morning, because my body is too stupid to realise that I'm not in the US anymore.

It's now 6:40 in the morning and I've spent the past 4 hours looking at and comparing different makeup products. I've grown an obsession over the past week or so and the cravings aren't satisfied. It doesn't help that almost all of the products that I want don't actually ship to Australia, so I've conducted a little research of other sites to try to combat that problem. It also doesn't help that I'm in Korea right now, and have been surrounded by a plethora of makeup and skincare shops. I just want everything. I can't help it, I swear!

I'm too tired to think, and my neurons have just about exhausted their action potentials thinking up a list of things to buy. Just when I thought I'd broken the bank with clothes in the US, here comes another department to rob me even more! I say that in the most positive light possible. Seriously.

I mean, what? Back to business. Now, where were we? Oh yes.

Santa Monica. A beautiful city.

Disclaimer: Once again with my amazing geography, I thought SM was in LA. I mean, it's right next to it. An honest mistake that many people make, so I guess it's one of my more.. acceptable misunderstandings. With a cherry on top? Absolutely.

Whilst downtown Los Angeles is a relative ghost town, Santa Monica boasts absolute opulence, lively and endless crowds, beautiful apartments, all complete with a pier of its own on the beachfront. C'est une belle ville!

To be perfectly honest though, the majority of my memory from this place escapes me. It's clear enough so that I can accompany my current opinions with photos in order to prompt myself. I'll let the pictures talk. Memories change. Pixels don't.

USA Part 2: Las Vegas/Grand Canyon

Let me update you for 2 seconds. I send my most excited but exhausting greetings from Miami. Apologies for the lack of posting. I'm sure many of you know that I've been cruising.

(Now I mean this in a literal sense, as in sailing upon the seven seas, although it also makes sense in the mighty holiday spirit of absolute, sheer bliss while in the midst of relaxation and basically doing nothing.)

It has come to my attention that I like to post photos. Perhaps too many photos. Perhaps this is just an excuse to cut down on uploading time and basically effort because I have many more a post to.. post. Regardless, I hold true to my word (you may notice that I never set a time limit on myself).

So, first up after LA was Las Vegas. Just to fill you in on my extremely poor geography, I had no idea that Las Vegas was in Nevada. I thought it was in California. Like, honestly, I didn't even know San Francisco was in California. I'd heard of "NorCal" and "SoCal" from my friends, but I just thought it was a divide, like East or West Germany.

Wow. I must sound really, really blonde right now. That's honestly me. My geography is just.. atrocious. Especially that of the US. There's just too many states.. but I think I've figured out a few things. Like how Florida and California are NOT on the same sides of the country. New York is NOT in the middle of the country. Just a few things. I guess it's not hard to learn, but US geography just never struck any interest during high school, or ever.

.. It's never too late to start, right?

In case you were wondering, the answer is yes. The question is, of course, whether the road trip to Las Vegas is just like in the movies.

USA Part 1: Los Angeles

So I'm now on the other side of the country, on the East Coast, in Orlando, Florida! It's not much of a "sunshine state" at present. More of a """"""""""""sunshine""""""""""""" state if "ya nom tom b0ut". Okay. I'll stop with the failed slang. I probably don't own the right to be typing in Americanisms yet.

One day. One day.

Anyway, after about a week, I'm happy to be.. I don't even remember what I was saying. I tend to get caught up whenever I'm blogging. Ignore that. Now, the only places I really visited in LA were Chinatown, Downtown LA and Little Tokyo - Chinatown because that's where I was staying, and Little Tokyo because.. well, it's Little Tokyo. 'Nuff said. Oh yeah, we also visited Olvero Street, which was pretty awesome.

The old Chinatown is an almost-ghost town. Words of advice? If you don't believe me, go there and I guarantee you'll be out of there in less than an hour. Apparently there's a new Chinatown in Alhambra, but we didn't go there. Time was too tight, but we have another 3 days in LA on the way back while we're staying in Hollywood.

The old Chinatown is really.. isolated. Shops aren't very busy to begin with, and everything shuts at about 5pm. Total culture shock. The other things I wasn't so used to:

• Exclusion of tax with prices
• Tipping people (you get used to it really quickly..)
• J-walking is totally illegal and no one does it and police actually care about j-walking
• Driving on the right side of the road (well this is the same in Korea but still)
• Drivers sitting on the left side of the car

Ahh well. It just takes time, I guess. Anyway, have some photos of Chinatown.

Korea Part 3: Gyeongbokgung/Hongdae

Greetings from LA! Apologies for the late post. I've been jetlagged and genuinely just exhausted. I'm still completely used to Australian time, so I fell asleep at 6am this morning local time which is about right.. midnight in Australia. Gahh, it sucks. ANYWAY, I should be complaining about LA in other posts. I hate being so behind and wanting to be up to date. Oh well. My fault completely.

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, LET US GET ON WITH THE SHOW.

It was a beautiful day. We were originally going to take a palace/temple tour but lol.. to be honest I don't mind visiting landmarks and monuments, but personally, if I've seen one palace, I've seen them all. Not the biggest history fanatic - all Asian palace/temples look somewhat similar. Sure, the architecture is beautiful but like everything else, I get sick of too much of it. I'm so thankful dad decided to just visit the biggest palace - Gyeongbokgung. God only knows how you pronounce it, but somehow we convinced the taxi driver that we knew what we were talking about. A+ for effort?

It was actually really grand. I'm glad we went. Despite the biting negative whatever temperature, it was a beautiful day. I still can't believe how cold it is. I said that I'm a temperature tolerant person!

We were fortunate enough to see the change over of the guard protecting the palace. I'm 100% sure that this is now just a tourist attraction, but it probably has something symbolic in there too.

-hours later-

I'm still jetlagged. It's literally like 5am in the morning and I haven't slept since I woke up at 2:30. I've had literally about 2 hours of sleep tonight and I'm actually dying. On a side note, I absolutely hate the internet here. Part of the reason this post is delayed is because the photos wouldn't upload. Like.. they did, and then the connection cut out.. and then along the way the photos disappeared from the uploaded list and blahblahblah just.. yeah no.

Korea Part 2: DMZ/Insadong

Korea has such a rich heritage and ongoing culture. Anyone who says otherwise is either totally ignorant or knows absolutely nothing (yes, I know they mean the same thing). I spent the morning and half of yesterday afternoon exploring that other side. My parents and I went on a tour to the DMZ (demilitarised zone).

My day started with a nice, 6:30am wake up call. Not. I'm totally not a morning person! :( We pretty much had to be out of the door at 7:30 and the tour started at 8:30. Our tour guide's name was Hayley. She was lovely and her English was pretty good, but she was quiet so I fell asleep for a good hour on the bus trip up north.

I forgot to mention that it was pretty much -10 degrees in the morning. Not fun. I was literally struggling to walk until it started to warm up ("warm" is a very relative term) a few degrees. The sun was so helpful, but I guess it's a double-edged sword. When the sky is totally clear, it's going to be absolutely freezing. No clouds means no heat trapping! I won't lie, I don't really know exactly where we went. I know we went to visit the Peace Bell and the station between South and North Korea, and also the very border between South and North Korea. Like, you could actually see North Korea from the lookout zone. We also visited an infiltration tunnel discovered about 20 years ago, which was an attempt to attack Seoul. It was so fascinating! Anyway, enough text, let's see some photos!

Myeong-dong: iPhone version

I took some more photos with my phone rather than the camera. I hope you're not all too overwhelmed with the number of photos I'm posting. Anyway, more is more, que?

Korea Part 1: Myeong-Dong

To this day, there has been so much hype about Korea. Korea this, Korea that. Korea is great! I love Korea! I was told on many, many occasions that shopping and food in Korea is second to none. The price is not even an obstacle.

Rightfully, rightfully so.

It's beautiful. The people are friendly, and to my surprise, I'm not having nearly as much trouble getting around as I anticipated. I knew that I had a lot to expect when I came here, but I honestly didn't expect this. I was sick the day before and thought that my days here would be miserable.

Boy, I was wrong.

The only real hang-up I have about here is the cold. It is so, so cold! Seriously. Anyway, enough of my bickering, and more recounting! Mum was still feeling pretty sick, so dad and I spent the day at Myeong-Dong. I didn't think we were staying so close to town. By taxi, it takes literally about 5 minutes (unless there's peak-hour traffic, which I fortunately experienced today..) to get there from our hotel. The concierge guy (I don't really know the technical term) is extremely helpful! His English is pretty great (just comparing it to my Korean, which is restricted to "anyeong ha seo" and "sarang hae yo"- not even sure about the spelling #yolo) and he showed us exactly how to get everywhere!

I only really wanted to see a cat cafe, but we ended spending the entire day in the complex. The first thing we saw was Zara. Right next to it was H&M in Noon Square shopping centre. The quality of Zara clothes is actually really good. I saw literally about 10 things that I wanted, and almost cried trying to restrict myself. I'll get things on the way back. I promised myself that much.

Brisbane to Seoul

A great, big hello to you all from Seoul!

It's been a gruelling however-many hours. From only being able to fall asleep at 2:30am, to having my mum shake me awake 3 hours later.. not good. I told myself that I'd sleep the entire way to Seoul, but that didn't happen either.

I could dedicate this entire post to my passionate distaste for crying babies on the plane, but that would be pointless. Long story short, I don't like children. However, ignoring that essential factor, the flight wasn't terrible. I was so exhausted that I just crashed, only to be woken up by some baby shaking their rattle. The food was actually pretty amazing for plane food, and I managed to watch quite a lot on the way there.

Firstly, I watched Total Recall (with Colin Farrel and Jessica Biel). It wasn't as great as I was hoping, but then it wasn't too bad either. I don't know what I didn't really like about it - it just didn't.. hit the spot, I guess. It didn't hit home and maybe it was a tad on the unrealistic side. I'm surprised though. Usually I like surreal movies. Oh well.. I'll blame it on my fatigue. I also watched an episode of Friends, Two and a Half Men and something else. My memory is terrible. I also started watching Vampire Diaries on my laptop but the battery died pretty quickly. With 90 minutes to go, I switched back and watched Celeste and Jesse forever. Not sure how I felt about that movie. Didn't watch the ending.

Road trip

George, Danny, Dylan and I went for a road trip. It took literally the entire day and most of the night as well. It was actually such a strug getting up in the morning because I went to sleep at around 2:30 this morning after committing to spend most of my limited savings on ASOS and UrbanOutfitters for Winter/Summer clothes.

FAR OUT, I'M SUCH AN IMPULSIVE SPENDER. I REALLY NEED TO EFFING CONTROL MYSELF.

Anyway, that aside, I was supposed to meet Dylan at his house at like 10am but I only woke up 10 minutes before that and I had to get ready. Literally impossible. Instead, half an hour after, they drove over to my house to pick me up. How sweet. :D We picked up George and his mum fed us amazingly just like most other Asian mums. UGH SO MUCH FOOD, I FEEL SO BAD LMAO.

I found out we were driving up to Mt Glorious. I suppose it's near Maleny/just north of QLD. Just kidding LMAO I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IT IS, I have the most terrible sense of direction imaginable. We arrived at about.. 1ish I think to the Mt Glorious Restaurant. It was beautiful! Beautifully pricey, too. I had a honey roasted chicken filo with like.. mango-ey, slightly curry sauce. It was.. nice, but the chicken was a little overcooked, and overall, definitely not worth the $29.65 I paid for it.

A walk away from home

I meant to post about this an entire week ago but I just haven't had the time/effort. Sorry about that. Well, I'll get this over and done with so I can go ahead and play tf2 with my homegurlz. My parents and I drove up to Maleny last Tuesday to go see one of mum's oldest friends, Ludmila. She's the most adorable old lady you've ever met. She's Russian and used to work with mum as a translator. You wouldn't picture her as being technologically able, but she types faster than any other old person I've ever met.

It took around an hour to get to Maleny and straight after, we went to a restaurant overlooking the Glasshouse Mountains which was absolutely breathtaking. It was Christmas in July and there were 3 functions being held at the same time so we were only able to get one of the booth tables. Didn't make any difference to the food though and in some ways, it was probably better where we were sitting because it was really, really bright outside.

Argh, hate how blogspot kills the quality of the photos a fair bit, but then again I'm really not bothered uploading EVERYTHINGGGGG onto Flickr.

Dad looks keen as a bean to eat his food. It was beautiful. I had a steak but for some reason I didn't take a photo of it. Sad. After we ate, we went outside to take photos of the landscape which was just breathtaking.

Jacket/blazer from suitcase rummage, bag from UrbanOutfitters (not in stock anymore but can be ordered from Alphabet Bags), shirt from FCUK

Stupid wind made it really hard to take photos but yeah. There were a few good landscapes but again, couldn't be bothered uploading.

There were cows! It was really hard to take a good shot and this was the best I could do because of the really distinct shadows, so the background is a little overexposed. Sorry.

The outside of the restaurant. Couldn't quite remember what it's called BUT OH WELL. There aren't too many restaurants up that way so if you're ever near Maleny, I really recommend this place. Afterwards, we stopped by to the lookout ... I think it was McArthur's Lookout? Something along those lines, but oh my god, the houses were stunning. I'm pretty sure it's a rich street, considering that they're all overlooking the mountains. They would be a great investment - no flooding, beautiful views, quiet at night, but out of Brisbane so yeah, not really looking to live there anytime soon, unless I choose to work rurally.

We went back to Ludmila's house afterwards. Stupid reception was horrible. Facebook wouldn't even load properly! If it had good reception it would have said "3G" on the reception bar up the top. Stupid woop woop reception. I decided to take photos of the house since I don't go there very often.

Maleny is beautiful. Just breathtaking.

I love it there, except the roads are confusing as fuck and it would be a real pain in the ass driving there.

Sanctuary coving it up

There's been nothing exciting in my life, so I suppose this was a little wake up call. I went to Sanctuary Cove down the Gold Coast for the weekend. Mum was supposed to come along but she's in Vietnam for the funeral so obviously not.

The place was beautiful. We stayed at the Hyatt there. Can't remember the full name of it but it was something along the lines of Sanctuary Cove Hyatt Resort blahblahblah.

Irrelevant.

Anyway, I took a few photos. I didn't upload all of them to Flickr, but the original quality is, of course, much higher than whatever the downsized crap is on here.

You can view the rest of them here. They should be the newest ones up, pretty sure.

My bad. Hyatt Regency, Sanctuary Cove. It took really long to take this shot because it was in the shade and the shadow was in a really obvious spot so exposure took so long to find.

I would have taken photos of the food but it was awkward enough taking them with my phone.

It was seriously beautiful.

Best waffles I've ever had in my entire life. And moving right on to the outside.

We had dinner at an artificial beach. Not practical to take photos at night but yeah.

I HATE BIRDS.

Children under 14 must be accompanied by an adult in swimwear. And then there were these awesome buggies. My god.

HOW AWESOME IS IT

And to top it off, I love bokkeh

Needs more but meh.

And last one.

And there we have it. Michelle's weekend at Sanctuary Cove in a nutshell.