A long story.

So be forewarned :).

The first and second halves of a single day could not have been more different! Having only had one meagre croissant since morning, by 3 my stomach was playing a full band, so that was priority one. Thereafter I set off first on a cursory tour around the few blocks around my hotel, smack in the middle of downtown Perth. In the rush of the morning I was forced into an uneasy familiarity with it, now with tons of time and no deadlines, I chose to lazy by the traffic lights when they were red, watching the fairly mind-boggling mix of people milling around busily in streets I'd found almost completely empty at 9 last night! Perth is a really pretty city, with lots of old-style architecture mixed with tall skyscrapers, big wide roads. And more importantly, big wide sidewalks :).

bow and arrow :)

Feeling surprisingly at home with the streets thanks to a map I'd been given in the morning which turned out amazingly accurate, I headed for King's Park. On the map it's almost half the size of the entire city! It's situated on a hill pretty much on one side of the city, and the panoramic view of the Swan river with the city sprawled around it is totaly awesome :).The long walk finally got me back to the state I was in yesterday, pretty much ecstatic :D. Despite scares of worsening weather conditions and an hour-long delay, we finally managed to get on the choppers and get off at Barrow Island! With all the clouds and rains it seemed to have become a lot greener :). Anyway, that's where I saw kangaroos!! As the small fixed-wing swung onto the runway to take off there was a huge roar! Someone had spotted two tiny kangaroos watching the takeoff with grave expressions :D. Got no pics sadly, with the extended stay here, something might just turn up!
Watched the wide river turn from blue to deep purple and finally an inky black while I kept walking down the narrow paths with dense bushland on one side and the river on the other. Finally I settled down in front of the eternal flame that burns before the monument to WW I soldiers. It was nice, dunno quite why. Very quiet, didn't notice the all too familiar ckickets :). I guess it was just nice to be able to sit down and relax, without having to continually adjust, anticipating a pitch this way or a roll that way. To be able to watch a flame without having to worry about a possible fire drill :D.
The walk back was really slow! The city lights were just too beautiful, I didn't want to disappear into their midst. The incessant traffic on the freeway seemed to melt into one S of bright white headlamps and another of winking red taillamps. And this time I made sure I made my way back over the 'bow and arrow' bridge :D.Anyway, make my way back to the city I did! Thankful that this was a place I could come back to. I wasn't flying away in a plane, not sailing off on a ship, I'm staying right here for another 10 days!

A surprise was in store for me! It was dark, but the malls, squares, streets were live and kicking with loads of people out on a Friday evening! Rather unusually for me, I decided to go looking. There was even some shows in the mall.. an exhibition of a rather vague looking martial-dance sort of thing accompanied by the kind of primitive drums you'd expect to see on Nat Geo, and another of 'how loud can I scream' by a bunch of really enthusiastic young orators :D.

The totally best part of the evening was of course getting my new black-silver 60 Gig iPod >:). I figured since I'm going to be moving around a lot, and given the complete absense of company, there couldn't possibly be a better time! And now since I've gotten back to my room and opened the box I'm scared to touch it for fear of leaving my horrible, horrible fingerprints all over the back :P. I also got myself milk and cereals :D. Thanks mainly to the fact that I completely hate eating out alone, it's been McD's and Subway's take-outs for me till now :(. And the milk has already come in handy given that I had an early dinner.Of all the things in the day though, this image I found the most familiar! For those who know, I'm telling you, it's so totally like the bridge at Ram's place in Andheri!!

Feeling: touristy!
Listening to : John Mayer - Back to you

More Perth pics here.