Today is the day that we are going home. Since our flight to KL is after midnight, we would be 'homeless' for about 15 hours after we checked out from Central Sky Lounge in the morning. We left our luggage with the hotel front desk. Sky Bus's shuttle has been pre-arranged by the hotel to pick us up at 9:30 pm.
At 9 am, we crossed the street in front of our hotel to Queen Victoria Market. This place was irresistible with all kinds of colourful ingredients that I could not recall their names. There were hundreds of variants for a single product. For instance, the cheese stall had hundreds of different kind of cheese, nicely stacked up and hanging from the ceiling of the stalls. The smoked meat stalls had many different types of bacon, sausages, salami and many others. The seafood and poultry section was incredibly clean and tidy. You hardly find any blood trace on the butchers white uniform. I can imagine how much passion these people had in their job to keep themselves in such an extraordinary order. Tremendous. This was already my 3rd visit to this market and it always impresses me like my first time.
We then hopped on the free tourist shuttle to go to our next destination, the Botanic Garden. We stopped by at the Shrine of Remembrance to take some pictures. Mix feelings started to creep in. I was eager and excited to go home. We had left our cozy nest empty for a month by now. Was there any burglary? Did the leaking pipe in my bathroom behave as I had hoped? I hope things were all in perfect order as we did not receive any emergency phone calls from our neighbours. Also, when would we be back in this city again? The longing for a long vacation had forced us to challenge Asia's working culture and our smaller currency this time. When can we have the courage again? When is the next moment in life that we will dare to throw away a down payment for a house just for a trip? You hold nothing concrete in the end, just beautiful memories. Well, different people value things differently in life.
After exploring the world class Botanic Garden, we walked to Swanston Street to meet Estee for lunch. Since today is Wesak Day, I ordered Tofu Don while watching both of them enjoying their irresistible Salmon Don. Well, never mind. I have made it a point to eat vegetarian food on Wesak day ever since I ate pork knuckle over a lunch appointment with a client in Nurnberg, Germany on Wesak Day, a few years ago. I know that Buddha doesn't mind, but I insist.
After lunch, Estee went back to work and we, the 'homeless' couple continued to loiter in the city. We walked, and walked. After many cups of tea, a few cones of ice-cream, a few pieces of cookies, there was really nothing that could attract your attention anymore. Face the truth, we needed to settle down badly.
At last, here we are, settling down at the Federation Square. It had been very hard indeed for us to be homeless.
Melbourne Federation Square
28 May 2010
4:00 PM
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