A beautiful Coincidence

Imagine yourself to be living in a western country. Set the current season to winter, and the location to be on a famous street lind with Victorian style buildings on both sides. You're walking along the street alone. Groups of people are passing by every moment, rushing for work or window shopping. Suddenly, you noticed someone in the crowd... ... someone you know... ... and the 2 of you just stood there staring into each other's eyes...

Sounds romantic? Like a scene in Jap/Korean drama. Have you ever thought of how it feels like in that situation? Ever experienced it b4. Well, I've came across one such beautiful coincidence during my tour to Melbourne, Australia:

17/06/2005(Friday)
~8pm
Swanston Street, Melbourne
winter (~9 degrees)

It was the 3rd last day of my holiday in Melbourne. The time spent there was great. I've been to see the smallest penguines in the world, the 12 apostals (the geography stuff in our sec 3 text bk), London Bridge, Great Ocean Road, Aussie gold rush, wombats... ... Has been kinda lucky that day. In the afternoon at a wildlife park, an old ranger named Eric was rather impressed by my passion & knowledge about Australia's native wildlife. He sort a toured me round the park, and enriched me with ample wisdom of his homeland.

The activities were great but tiring as well. By evening, my dad was sleeping in the hotel rm. My mum and sis went off for their own shopping. I was watching TV for a while but wanted to spend this time overseas more meaningfully. It was around 7pm, and the sun had set for almost an hour. (Its early winter in the Southern Hemisphere, so daylight is about 2 hrs shorter) I'm bored, so I went to check out the area around my hotel. Melbourne's winter is extremely cold compared to other parts of Australia. Night tempreature is ~9 degrees only, with chilling Antartic winds blowing inland, constantly spiking our skins. I had to be in thick jacket, and frost bite is attacking my lips.

I started off around China Town, where basically the whole street is restaurants. The end of China Town was at Swanston Street, the most impt. street in Melbourne, where all the main offices and shopping arcades are located. I had the idea of buying some nice gifts for friends in S'pore, and to buy a deck of poker cards decorated with photos of Melbourne/Australia to add to my collection of cards. Since the best shops are along that street, I naturally wandered there to take a look.

Aussie stuffs are really ex. The prices of goods already exceed that of S'pore. With a strong currency, the same thing usually cost ~70% more than that in S'pore. Shopping there needs lotsa consideration. I went into some stores but din buy anything. After some time, I was basically strolling along the street, glancing at windows displays. It was friday nite. The streets were flooded with funky young boys, couples on hot dates, business men & women in suits returning home after work. And of cos, tourists like me.

I turned my head to face the traffic to catch a breath. A dozen Asians walked past b4 me. They did not capture much of my ateention, until I caught sight of a familiar figure among the group. She stopped, standing in the middle of the pathway & beamed rite into my eyes. Time seems to stop for a while at that particular moment. We were staring at each other, uninterupted by the hassle of the street. At 1st sight, my rusty mind was still guessing her identity. From her relatively small figure and facial features, she looks like a Pr Sch classmate of mine, who later went RV as well. B4 I said anything, she asked:"you're Li Ren rite?" From her giggly voice, I confirmed my guess. She's Yip Pei Wen Natalia. A gal from RV 4D'2000 and 2J'1998 if anyone of you happens to know who she is. She's also my classmate for 3 yrs in Pr Sch.

She's not my gal friend nor my ex, sis or anything closely related. We're just friends who hasn't seen each other for ~4 yrs. It was an exhilarating moment, to see someone you knew for so long after so many yrs not in contact and best of all in a foreign land... a land where streets are beautiful, gardens are everywhere, Victorian style buildings still stands & radiating a romantic aura. Like what she always do in Pr Sch, she was more or less jumped a few times on the spot when I recognised her, accompanied by her really high pitch laughter... We almost hug each other. Neither of us changed much over the yrs. She's still the small chabby gal I knew & her hairstyle was still the same, except the colour.

B4 I met her that day, I knew she was studying in Australia. I din know she was studying dentistry in Melbourne University. Neither will I expect to see her there. She introduced me to her group of friends in Australia, which was the group of Asians who went past b4 me. They are her course mates as well. Most of them came from S'pore & M'sia. A few are local chinese and 1 from Dubai. They had just finished their semester exams and were going to chill out. They invited me to come along, and I joined them for the nite.

The chill out culture there differs slightly from S'pore. Pubs are largely visited by the older generation and working adults. Clubbing is not really very common and not clustered together. Most pple spends the nite feasting or chatting away at cafes. Thats why by around 9pm only cafes, restaurants and pubs are still operating along the streets. (normally all these outlets will open till 2am, which is really late) I was brought to a chocolate bar, something seldom heard in S'pore. Beside the cafe is some sort of open air live KTV. Other than normal KTV equipments, 2 musician are there to play the music on the spot and pple can just pick up the mic to sing/dance b4 the public.

The cafe sells only chocolate related stuffs: chocolate drinks, chocolate cookies, chocolate cakes, biscuits, dipped fruits, milkshakes ...etc, everything chocolate. They even have chocolate alcohol.
I ordered a special kind of chocolate drink call "suckup". Its a cute egg size and shaped pot of fresh milk over a lighted tea candle, served with a dish of chocolate chips and another small jug of fresh milk. To enjoy the drink, melt the chocolate chips in the heated milk to create chocolate milk and then suck up with a straw. One can alter the concentration of the chocolate millk to his likings. Its very nice, and you'll want more after 1 pot.

I had a good chat with Natalia and her overseas friends. Old friends always have alot of things to talk about, & are esp. interested with each other's life between the time last met till the moment now. Other than that, its alot of old things to bring up, & whereabouts of the pple we both know. The contents of our conversation won't be of interest to you guys so I'll just skip that part. I also talked to her freinds. Since most of them are S'poreans/Malaysians, we're on the same frequency. Natalia also took a photo of the 2 of us at the cafe with her camera, as a memo for this rare & unexpected meet up. And as always, we exchance HP number.

The group of pple are all 2nd yr dentistry students from Melbourne University. Most of them are obviously bloody rich, but they do complain about the high living standards of Australia. (Many pple have a misconception that its cheap living in Australia as land is cheap. In reality, living standard there more than double S'pore's and it is only land thats cheap because land is so abundant over there.) This group of pple are really friendly, willing to share whatever they have to a stranger like me. I found out from them that 1/2 of Melbourne University's dentistry course (~70 students) are taken up by Asians. Reason being professions like dentist arn't really popular to westerners. Regardless of grades, they prefers courses to their interest like music & ecology, even though these course might be odd & doesn't really earn big bucks. According to these foreign students, Australians are friendly to pple but prefers keeping to themselves. In the Universities, Australian students dun really mix much with foreign students, even those from Europe & US, who are also considered outsiders.

We stayed at the cafe till ~12 midnight. I had a great time, bringing up all the past events with Natalia & sharing with her friends their life overseas. B4 we left the cafe, some of them brought roti prata from a "Singapore food shop" within that building. The prata & curry are packeted & flown in from S'pore. One look I can tell its not going to taste as good as local freshly made ones by these guys did bought alot.Thats how much they miss home & local food, no doubt Chinese/Indian/Indonesian/Jap/Thai food outlets flood the streets of Melbourne.

Natalia stayed in a rented appartment somewhere near my hotel, with another M'sian gal. Taking a tram ride for ~5 stops to my hotel cost A$1.90, so I walked backed with her and her room mate. (Melbourne's main public transport is tram, so the whole city is laid with tram tracks and overhead cables. Buses or coaches are mainly for long distances travel. Underground trains connects sub-urbs to the city, not like our MRT.) Along the way, the 2 gals also told me they basically cook most meals in their apartment to cut expenses. Markets around are full of local produce which are really plentiful and fresh, I've seen them. Spring & Autumn are fravourite seasons to the gals, when the land is beautiful & tempreature is just nice. Summer is a sleepy season when even flies can stay stuck to a spot for hrs. After staying in foreign land for 2 yrs, the gals really miss their homeland & long for the warmth of S'pore/M'sia... something locals dread about...

Ahhh... blog so long already. Well, thats about all I have to say for the beautiful coincidence. I met another guy the next day, during dinner. He's my NS bunk mate backpacking alone in Australia, who came to find me when I msg him and we discvered that both of us are in Melbourne at the same time. Not much of concidence but planned. No matter what, its delightful to see friends when out in foreign land. The sensation is hard to describe.