May
For the Australian visa application, I got the all-clear by May 2, then I pressed Submit, and I got the authorization from Immi to have my biometrics taken at an authorized agent. There was only one in Singapore, VFS Global at Cecil Street. So I also filed for a booking to get my biometrics taken there (with fees of course) by early morning. I did aim for prioritization and to avoid using any of my leave days – so I chose an early morning hour, 8am. I was able to complete the process there within 20 minutes with barely anyone lined up. By the time I finished, there were around 20 people outside the doors. Whew, dodged a bullet there.
After an hour or two of completing that, I got my approved Australian visa. I had a destination with the proper authorizations in place and no blockers left, I started to plan it out. Flights be first to clear. That one right away as ticket prices be increasing each day I delay the booking.
During flight planning, I decided to tack on an extra destination to my trip. I got eleven days. Seven is quite long for one country already. I mean, my two Japan trips were 7 days long each and I had to shuffle between three cities. So my plan became 4 nights at Sydney, 3 nights at Melbourne and 3 nights in Bali. Bali is in Indonesia. I decided on it because the SG-Sydney routes were quite long. And I don’t want to go back to work in SG in July with jet lag. I can shake off jet lag at a Bali beach, ain’t that nice. Bali-SG routes were short like Bangkok’s so it is manageable as well. And I can add Indonesia to my visited list.
So I decided where to go, now to finalize the flights. I compared extensively as to which flights constituted the best times and the cheapest deals – direct flights were preferred but any layover ones should be at most 2 hours only – and I ended up with two of the three flights I named in the original flight itinerary. Flight to Sydney was deceptively long only because of the time zone differential, but all in all it’s around 8 hours. A third of a day. That one concerned me if I was to leave Melbourne for Singapore at night, that would make me a tired old man at work the next day. So the Bali part should take care of that. Just a two-hour-plus flight to Singapore. Four flights in total in 11 days – SIN-SYD, SYD-MEL, MEL-DPS and DPS-SIN. No biggie. SYD-MEL is negligible anyway.
I booked them via the Trip app. I had coupons to use, they were above-average in the better bundle offers I combed through online, and accountability matters to me. There were cheaper offers online but I am extremely wary of those. I had friends who got burned by these unscrupulous bastards, so I’d rather pay extra for accountability rather than gamble on cheap and potentially get cheapened out. Trip’s a reputable flight arrangement company anyway so I trusted their offers.
Then I planned my itinerary. Sydney, Melbourne, Bali.
Fortunately, my planned time for Australia was within the first few weeks of their winter season, so I got a colder climate to contend. I don’t have to worry about sweating buckets like I did in Bangkok. And additional options opened up as well. So I identified the things I want to do and see in there first before I start scanning for the things to book. And those are:
- Snow stuff
- Sightseeing stuff
- Beach stuff
- Arts stuff
- Zoo stuff
Ah man, lots of stuff to potentially do. I used a spare notebook and using online search, I pulled up a list of all the best attractions Sydney and Melbourne had to offer. Once I had the list, all I had to do was connect the dots, put then into tiers, and narrow them down to an actual itinerary.
Immediate thing I crossed off the stuff to-do list was “sightseeing”. The most famous daytrip out of Sydney CBD was a trip up the Blue Mountains in Katoomba. That one I had at the very top of my itinerary tier list. So I planned for that first.
Immediately I looked at Klook, Agoda and Trip for bundles involving a day trip to Katoomba and Blue Mountains. However, all of the viable and agreeable ones were both 1) upwards of SGD130, and 2) includes stops at places I deemed subpar or places that might “pull” time away from the actual highlight places.
To expand, my Blue Mountains research has yielded that people prefer to go to two places – Echo Point (the one with the “Three Sisters” rock formations) and Scenic World (the one with lots of rides at high places). After those, some tours has either a lunch stop or an after-lunch stop at nearby Leura Village. So for me, I’d like to go to those main two spots, and Leura can be optional. But the tours I’ve seen were not far off from the experience I had in the Ayutthaya tour – go to place, maybe around 30-40 minutes per stop, then shuffle off to the next one. Some tours skipped Scenic World or Echo Point, and some of them had a lot of stops at nearby smaller sights. I had an unshakeable feeling that while those tours with Scenic World in them allotted 90 minutes, I felt they would hurry up the experience. I’ve researched that place and its attractions, and I felt that it’s a place to enjoy for at least 2 hours or so. I’ve seen YouTubers that did the trip, and some of them got delayed a bit because some elderly tourmates overestimated their times and held up their tour guide. And many of the tours had these stops that I felt bad about because I’d be theoretically paying for attractions that I have absolutely do not see as that much attractive. But fortunately, I have options.
Thankfully, Sydney has a robust and wide public train network. And that wide train network extends to as far as Katoomba, so that meant I can take a train from Central Station to Katoomba, and back to Sydney CBD from there. But I was still leery, so I dug deeper and checked if I can do a tour by myself. And I found a “hop-on, hop-off” bus tour company that did a loop around all the notable spots, including Echo Point, Scenic World, and Leura. They offered a 2-for-1 deal that includes a reusable day ticket to ride their bus as well as a Scenic World ticket. Cost is around 85-90SGD, so I liked the look of it.
So when I mapped it out, I can take a 5am train from Central Station to Katoomba, have a decent unrushed hour of breakfast near the Katoomba station, hop on a bus to Echo Point, then another bus later to Scenic World, and then take the bus that will take me to the village and train station at Leura. Leisurely time that can be adjusted at will, no rush going from one place to the other, and I can enjoy Echo Point and Scenic World for longer. Why not? And I gained some confidence for long-distanced travel options last month, so I was more into the idea. So I booked the HOHO bus trip package I found earlier via Trip. Ten SG dollars cheaper than the other ones I found online.
But that new and shortened itinerary meant I could get back to Sydney CBD for much earlier. So I appended one extra action at the end that I found from the Blue Mountain tours I’ve seen online – a ferry ride from Parramatta Wharf to Circular Quay. I just have to take the train from Leura to Parramatta, then walk towards the wharf. But only if I finish everything at Katoomba by 2pm or so.
So with that finalized, I solved one issue… and made another issue. I booked a Sydney lodging via Agoda back in April when I was filling up my visa application, and it was in Bondi. Initially, I had fancied myself with a beachside rental. Leave hotel, -boom- beach out front waiting for me to take a swim. However, it was in Bondi, which is not in the Sydney CBD area. To access the CBD, I had to take a bus from Bondi to there. I still had the booking at a generous rate, so I kept it for awhile until I get the next few days of my stay sorted.
So, second day is to be largely taken up by Blue Mountain. Third day, I crossed off the “arts” stuff by booking an early-morning inside tour of the Sydney Opera House. The “souvenirs” part will be a quick perusal around The Rocks near the Opera House, then an afternoon at the Paddy’s Market and nearby areas like Darling Harbour. Chill day, as I assume the Blue Mountain touring might be taxing and I didn’t want the succeeding day to be another full-on activity again (something I learned in Thailand).
Third day planning is where I had my first “man maybe someday but not for now” thing. I wanted to cross of the “beach” stuff, and Sydney has two beaches of note – Bondi Beach, which is famous with tourists, and Manly Beach, which is preferred by locals. I also wanted to do Taronga Zoo. That was partly the reason I was more for doing the Blue Mountains tour by myself – most of the paid tours were stopping by Sydney Zoo for a quickie (40 or less), and I did not want to pay for a zoo visit for that short of a time. And most of the zoo reviews I read for Sydney had heartily recommended Taronga Zoo. I was also looking at what beach amenities and rentables were there at Bondi and Manly, and inevitably Manly has more of what I wanted when it came to beaches. And it looked nice. The plus side of Manly being a “local’s beach” meant that likely the food there will be more locally tuned than Bondi. So as much as it pained me, I had to let go of that sweet Bondi rental. I cancelled that one and booked myself a more travel-friendly hotel right beside Central Station. Much cheaper than the one in Bondi, and made my trip plans much more easier to navigate around. Bondi, definitely I’ll come next time. I booked Taronga Zoo tickets online for 2pm – definitely a generous time allowance for a morning beach jaunt. I can have a leisurely lunch at Manly after a dip, and travel to Taronga Zoo afterwards. So it’ll be a beach, a zoo, then a museum if time willing. I will drop by Australian Museum as my last afternoon jaunt, if everything else goes well and quicker than I estimate.
For some smaller venues, I booked a ticket to go up the Sydney Tower Eye at arrival day. If my generous estimates were right, I should be in my hotel in Sydney by 2pm that day, so I will certainly have ample time in the afternoon for one attraction. Some items I have put on my list for “maybe if I have extra time at night” kind of thing. Night markets, late-night open eats, those are the ones you check your personal temp for “maybe one more” and go/skip depending on mood anyway.
Fourth day was the travel from Sydney to Melbourne. It’s a domestic flight, so just a short hour’s jaunt, like from Singapore to KL. If my estimates are also right, I could arrive at my rented unit in Melbourne by 3pm. I booked a ticket to go up the Melbourne Skydeck as well for that day.
However… I was mighty undecided on the two full days I get in Melbourne. That one I might decide in the later weeks, because when I realized that I booked myself a wintertime vacation, I had to rip certain plans out. I came from a place where’s there only two seasons – summer and rain. The closest I got to cold winter temperatures was a freak hailstorm and an extra-chilly Tokyo night in October 2017. And maybe Baguio, but that one varies from person to person.
But the Bali one, that had to get something. I am to arrive at the airport there at 8pm, so no room for extra things to do. I booked my airport pick-up to ensure I get to the hotel within decent time. Probably I’ll order my dinner from Grab.
For my stuff, I had to start shopping. I took advantage of the cockamamie “5.5” sale by the various outlets – Shopee and Lazada – and I ordered:
- Earplugs – these should help me at least withstand the long flights. Pop these bad boys in the ear.
- A large backpack from “Mark Ryden” – this one is from a luggage company whose provenance I am still unsure of. But their products are top-notch given their relatively affordable price, IMO. I have bought two bags from them before, and both were sturdy pieces that performed exceedingly well. This time, I bought a bag to replace my worn-out travel backpack from American Tourister. The “Mark Ryden” bag I chose was an expandable travel backpack with a range of 20L to 38L capacity given the expansion options. Should be good enough to fit in a change of clothes at the airport.
- Sunscreen – I bought SPF110 sunscreen lotions from Banana Boat. Almost all the travel videos and blogs I’ve read and watched about it had them on recommendation, and as I also will be going to Manly Beach, I bought some.
- ASICS Gel-Pulse 15 shoes – Slightly related to travel. I have two other Gel-Pulse shoes, but the first one (a GP 13) is well worn-out (I plan to only use it for one more 10K run later this year then I will retire it), the second one (a GP 14) I regularly use in my workday shoe rotation. I do need one more shoe to keep things, so I bought that one. Decent discount I got as well, so I got it much cheaper than if I went to an actual physical ASICS store. And it’ll be the shoes I use in the Australia-Indonesia trip.
The other ones, I plan to buy from Decathlon later this month.
When it came to work, I was set to retake the Sitecore XM Cloud certification exam for developers. I put some extra stank on it this time. I found this website made by Gabe Streza as a mock XM Cloud dev certification practice exam as close to the real thing, and I kept at it daily until most of the basic concepts got drilled in nicely.
I took the exam on a Friday afternoon again, and this time… I passed. Within the mark, so I just made fewer mistakes than last time. Yay! However, the subsequent email proved to be a cold bath.
The title I got was for “Sitecore XM Cloud Developer Certification (2023)”. When I took and failed the exam (and rebooked) in April, the “(2023)” part wasn’t there yet. So that meant, in between our April booking and my May exam, Sitecore released a new XM Cloud dev certification course for 2025. No wonder they offered discounts (lol). So apparently, I am among the very last ones to take the 2023 version.
Man… if only we delayed rebooking for a few weeks, we could’ve gotten the 2025 one. I don’t know if that would’ve ended well for me. I studied test questions taken from the 2023 edition, so I am not sure if the 2025 one would’ve been a drastic change. But again, I’ll just pray some client sees Sitecore as a viable option and I’ll get the assignment (very likely).
The certificate wasn’t there also – it was issued by Sitecore via Credly, and it’s quite a hassle. I had to sign up for an account to claim it. No option to download a PDF. I shared the Credly public link to my HR, and they all asked “where’s the certificate” and I had to explain that there wasn’t any. And this is a problem with the Western mindset that “we’ll adopt this technology and everyone else has to adapt by it, surely they can”, without caring for processes and other cultures/customs foreign to them.
Oh well.
Also, last rant. Beware of the “AI” snake oil, friends. Every company nowadays are too eager to slap the AI tag to their products and services. What used to be smart algorithms or finely-tuned processes are now being touted as “AI-powered”. The experts called it “AI washing”. I’ve seen it a lot the past year.
So be very critical of a product that starts touting AI before its own specs, or if overeager assistants at the computer shops keep using AI as like a selling point to a crappy OEM product. Chances are, it’s masking horseshit. It’s up to you to sniff it out.
Briathrail // Albert 2MNG 
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