7/20/1014-7/23/2014

At 5am on Sunday we left for Lombok, Indonesia. We flew Silk air and got entrance to the Virgin Gold lounge which was pretty cool. The flight was very nice. We had nice blankets and pillows and some of the best airplane food that I have ever tasted. I got vanilla pancakes with peaches. We landed in Lombok and had to haggle to get a taxi. I'm very happy Damien was there because I probably would have made a mess of it. We had a 2.5 hour drive up to Senaru, a village at the base of Mt. Rinjani where we were staying. The car was hot, the roads were windy, the driving was questionable so I spent an hour with my head in an aloha bag, then I threw up, then I spent the rest of the ride trying to keep my stomach calm. I hear that we passed some very beautiful places but I missed many of them. When we finally got to the hotel, the driver changed the price and charged us an extra $10. We had lunch at the hotel that I picked at for a while. Then we went to find someone to take us up the mountain. I was confident that we could do it solo but Damien decided to be more reasonable, so we found a guide and porters. We chose green Rinjani, they are a little bit pricy but a great value. After we had organised the hike we had a few hours before dinner so we went to find the waterfalls. We were stopped on the path by someone charging entrance fees so we turned around and found a path around him. The waterfall was beautiful and very refreshing it splashed at least 15 feet into the air. We had dinner with the trekking company and discussed the details of the hike. The noodles they gave us were delicious, little did we know that we would be seeing many more of them.
Mt. Rinjani Day 1: We woke up around 6:30 to pack and eat breakfast before pus bus left at 7am that went to Sembalum a village on the east side of Rinjani(a volcano). We walked for a few hours, then stopped to plant a tree.
We walked a bit further and stopped for lunch. Then I sped ahead and left the guide trailing behind as we reached our camping spot for the night at around 3pm, way before the porters were ready for us. Dinner was absolutely delicious and the views were amazing.

Mt. Rinjani Day 2: We work up at 3am to make the summit by sunrise. It was quite steep and on fine  volcanic ash which slipped under your feet.  Damien found the climb very hard, I found it much easier but when I tried to push myself I got a bit light headed so I kept an even pace.

Once we were at the top he did much better than me. He got all the pictures while I huddled under a space blanket.


The sunrise was amazing and we stayed for a bit before sliding down the hill. You couldn't quite bum slide but it was nice to slide down. Hiking poles made it feel just like skiing. Back at camp we had second breakfast before continuing to crater lake. The trek down was steep and rocky. We made it to the lake and had a relaxing swim in the water which was around 10degrees C.

 When we got out of the water the weather turned cold and I was back under the space blanket as we ate lunch. After lunch we went to the sulphur springs they were a perfect 38 degrees C. We happily stayed for an hour and a half before climbing back up to the top of the crater rim where we camped for the night.
 The day was only 11.5km of hiking but it was definitely tough. At camp we had  dinner, watched the sunset and were asleep by 8pm.
Mt. Rinjani Day 3: They told us that we needed to be on the road by 7am. We were ready by 7:30. luckily we go fast and don't require much rest. I was zipping down the mountain enjoying myself jumping over rocks and zooming around corners. At one point I let the others get a bit ahead of me while I took off an extra layer, knowing that I would catch up quickly. As I was sprinting to catch up I tripped on a root and hurt my shoulder. I thought about calling out for help but I realised that it wasn't too serious and that I was also the best qualified to manage it so I took a minute to collect myself and continued on my way. I whined about my shoulder the rest of the trip but realistically it is healing well and I should be back to normal by next week.


We had a one stop for biscuits and 1 stop for lunch but were back in Senaru by 12pm.

We collect all of our belongings and headed in a SUV out to the harbour where we took a ferry to Gili Trawangon. 

7/18/2014-7/19/2014

Singapore! A two day whirlwind tour. I got in at 9am. I headed to the hotel and had a coffee in the lobby bar, called Tuxedo. It was lovely. Damien met me there and we went around the city. We started at Maxwell market 
where we had smoothies, duck, and chicken rice for lunch.

Then we headed over to see Clarke Quay, parliament house, a WWII memorial, and the merlion. That's a combination mermaid and lion which is the symbol of singapore.

Next we went Altitude bar at the top of 1 Raffles place. It's a very tall building where you can see the whole city.
We found an ally way bar in the train station. It was very discrete it was simply a panel that said "push". There was an American bartender who had a selection of spirits from micro-distillaries in the US. I was amazed at the number of American brands and stores I saw in Singapore. It is definitely more than is Australia. We took a stroll to look for dinner and settled on a tapas restaurant. It was quite delicious. After that we walk around Clarke quay a bit more and stopped at Shots. A bar that only sells shots. We each had a Milo one. Pretty much chocolate milk.
Day 2 in singapore we started in little India where we got pastries. We were going to explore a bit more but it was raining and I was being a princess about my hair. So we went to Orchard road the huge street of shopping centres. There are so many! and every shopping centre is about 5 floors. Many of the luxury brands had multiple stores but there was some variety as well. Then we went down to the wedding venue to meet Damien's friends. It was a very nice hotel and we looked like bums. Once they finished pictures we went back to the grooms house to get ready. 1 hour later I was looking beautiful. My hair had puffed a bit and I didn't have and hair products so I tried to iron it. It worked great for my hair, not so much for my shoulder(which I burned). We left our bags and went to Pan Pacific to say Hi to 2 more friends before the wedding. With 5 minutes to spare we quickly walked to Mandarin Oriental where the wedding was taking place. In the rush Damien lost his phone, so I went back and found it while he went in. I miss the first half of the ceremony but it was quite quick and then on to food. There was a 9 course dinner. I was allergic to 8 of the courses so they made me a special menu which was fantastic. Even the vegetarian fish was delicious. The wedding was absolutely beautiful complete with 5 dresses on the bride and a fake cake. No kidding the cake was plastic. Also the dresses were: white to get ready, white for the ceremony, red for reception, blue for dessert, and white for the after party. Once the after party ended Damien and I went back the the groom's house to go swimming and collect our bags, before heading to the airport for our 6am flight to Lombok.

7/17/2014

I had the morning off of class so I was up at 7am. I finished a bit more business work, then I packed, then I went to class. In class today I gave a presentation on types of dry needling. At lunch I trudged through the rain to get my police check. This afternoon we had a long tedious tutorial on evaluating clinical guidelines. This evening I went climbing and out for ramen. Then home to finish packing and now I'm in line waiting to check in for my flight to Singapore. My flight leaves at midnight and I get there at 9am with a quick stop in Kuala Lumpur. I'll see how I do this week with updates. Either way I promise pictures when I return.

7/16/2014

Busy busy day. I working on business homework, went to class, worked on homework, went to work, worked on homework, the power went out, I got grumpy, I summarised 1 more article and went to bed

7/15/2014

Class started at 11am today. I had so many good intentions of doing work before class. I was going to sumarise articles and prepare for the case study. But instead I slept in. Class today was long and uneventful. This evening I relaxed my hair. It's suppose to keep my hair strait for 6 weeks. It didn't work completely. My hair is still quite curly, but it is much easier to straighten. After I had straight hair I got to work on my pile of assignments for this week. 

7/9/2014-7/14/2014

Class and footy and working for the under 14's on the weekend. I feel like I always have an excuse for getting behind on my blog. This time it was a visit from America. My friend Dave from biology at Penn State was here with his girl friend last week. They stayed with me and explored Melbourne during the day and hung out at night. It was lovely, unfortunately I was quite tired by the time I went to bed and didn't blog. I did take them out for Thai but other than that they pretty much explored on their own with a few suggestions from me. They are now off to Sydney and then to Cairns. 

Other than that I had a pretty quiet week. Except that Damien officially moved back to Melbourne on Saturday. He came over for dinner last night, I made kale and ricotta ravioli from scratch. Mmmm. But he eats more than me so there were no leftovers. Now he's off to Asia for a month. I'm going to join him in Singapore for a wedding Saturday. Then we're diving before I head back to class. 

Today I went to class. We ended early so Kat and I took the long train ride to pick up my dive equipment. They said that it is very well maintained. We got back to the city and joined Melissa and Donna for dinner at Spudbar. Spudbar is a baked potato restrurant. They serve loaded baked potatoes of all varieties. I have a Hawaiian which was a sweet potato with pineapple, cabbage, tomatoes, cheese, and beets. It was amazing. After dinner the 4 of us went to a Chinese tea ceremony. It was fantastic. I will have to go back. After tea, Kat and I floated home on the train carrying 2 bikes, 2 backpacks, tea, a tea set, and all my dive equipment. We took up so much space!

7/8/2014

I have a friend and his girl friend over from the US for the next 3 days. They are just hanging out and chilling. I met them at my place before class. Class was long and painful. We have small group learning tasks to complete somehow our group is 14 people. Because they strangely had us select groups of 7 and then combined those? Don't ask me why? So 14 people trying to run a simulation that should be run by 1. Thrilling. After class I took my friends out to dinner. We just went to yim yam because I wanted Thai. It was delicious as ever. We chilled for a bit and then I organised class work for tomorrow, read J. M. Lee's the dark crystal  ( http://www.darkcrystal.com/authorquest.php )writing contest submission and went to bed. 

7/7/2014

First day of my last semester of Physio! Fun! Well not really. It was a bunch of boring stuff about how I need to work this semester and can't be slacking off. I also need to work with people that I don't like and there are prises that I won't get. Yay :/. On the bright side I have an official graduation date of December 20th at 11am. 

This evening I did hot yoga. It felt good for a change. I almost did a double session but opted for dinner instead.

7/6/2014

Footy with the kids today. It was a bit warmer but still took up my entire day. The under 14's got smashed but the under 16's won 150 to7 so I guess it was even. I don't know how that took up my entire day but somehow it did. Probably since it's so cold that I'm in bed by 7pm just to stay warm

7/5/2014

I was gonna have a productive day. I went to work at 6am. We had a 9am game in Burwood which is 20km away. We had a bad day for injuries. We had 2 sprained ankles, a torn calf, and a burst blood vessel in a hand. We also lost by 1 goal.  By the time I got home it was 1:30. It took me 8 hours to clean up my house mostly because I was lazy and kept getting distracted. Good thing I'm back to class Monday so I can get over this massive lazy spell.

7/4/2014

Happy 4th of July!
Now that I have finished suits I had a much more productive day. I cleaned and did laundry and homework. I went for a run, straightened my hair and went rock climbing. It was great fun. We climbed for 2 hours and then got Pho for dinner. mmmm yummy. Last day of holidays. sigh

7/1-3/2014

I'm on holiday from school and I'm taking a mental holiday as well. 

Tuesday: I hiked up Mt. Dandanong. I took the 1.5 train ride out and walked 14km up. It was foggy and rainy so I couldn't see anything. I took the quicker more scenic way down. I got back in time to have dinner with a friend. We watched Prada to Nada. It's alright for a chick flick. Then I went home and watched a bunch more Suits.

Wednesday: I was trying to get some chores done and it went poorly. I was looking to buy a tent but couldn't find one that I like. I also tried to get my dive equipment serviced but found that I had to go much further away to find someone to service my brand. I got to work early but had to stay till almost 9. So home late and more suits while trying to figure out my diving plans.

Thursday: Today I actually got my dive equipment serviced. The shop is not very far from bike route so I tried to bike home. It was so windy that I worked my butt off for an hour and then gave up and took the train back. This evening I had seminar on physiotherapy for musicians. It was really interesting and we had 5 professional musician demonstrators.