Australian Open 2012: An unforgettable trip

The Australian Open is never my first choice among all the Grand Slam tournaments. I've dreamed about attending the French Open first but after visited the Australian Open recently, I think I'm more than lucky being able to visit one of the most tennis-loving cities in the world. The Australian Open is indeed the Happy Slam.

I was there at the tournament for only one day due to a packed itinerary. I bought the ground passes online way earlier to avoid queuing up and paying more. Made the right choice! I saw long queues at Flinders St. over the weekend before the tournament kicked off as well as the tournament site on event day.

The venue is easily accessible by train and tram. I stopped at Richmond station and walked towards a very familiar building - the Hisense Arena. It's a tennis fan's dream to attend a Grand Slam tournament and I'm glad I have achieved mine.

I've attended ATP 250 tournaments so to compare to the Australian Open, this is like 50 times bigger. I was amazed by the passionate fans from all walks of life walking down from the train and trams walking towards the entrance. Some were wearing their favourite flags and AO caps, and some would proudly carry their Australian Open tote bags.

Australian Open trademark true blue

Checking in with the barcode system was smooth despite thousands of people already queuing up earlier than me. The first thing that caught my eyes was the trademark Australian Open True Blue at the Grand Slam Oval, a multi-faceted entertainment precinct is located. I quickly queued up for body painting - I've got myself Vamos Rafa on both of my arms. I’m not sure if any of the body painters had MFA degrees, but they were doing a fantastic job!

An Australian fan got his body painted

As my trip here was restricted to only one day, I didn't intend to watch any matches. I've planned to court hop and find out what were the facilities offered.

I met up with a former colleague at the Malaysian Open last year. David Steed who worked on the IBM statistics and he gave me some tips on who were training on that day. Court 16 and 17 are top players usually training ground so if you’re at the Australian Open, you’ll probably hang out a lot here.

Stanislas Wawrinka vs Benoit Paire in the first round

There are plenty of food, beer and sun here! Surprisingly people don’t use umbrella here although it was so freaking hot. I was at Stanislas Wawrinka’s first round match and I only managed to sit through the first game!

Do check out some of the pictures I took at the tournament. The sponsors’ presence never fail to amaze me – that’s why I took many of their pictures.

At Garden Square

Heineken beer garden

Places where you can get your food and drinks

Lacoste Clubhouse and Kia

Nestle Drumstick Walk on Water 

 Rolex

Inside Lacoste Clubhouse 

Inside Hisense Arena

Janko Tipsarevic walks with style

 Marcos Baghdatis

Philipp Kohlschreiber during the first round match against Juan Monaco

Michael Llodra at the Autograph Island

Rafael Nadal 

Kim Clijsters

Juan Monaco

 Roger Federer

Maria Sharapova

Ivan Ljubicic

 Novak Djokovic the eventual champ

 Kei Nishikori

(All images belong to HCFoo's Tennis Blog)

To go or not to go Indonesia...

... that is no longer a question.

I've cancelled my 4 days leave this morning. Supposed I'll be going to Solo/Yogjakarta this coming Monday together with my Sis. But after much persuasion from my parents and most importantly my Sis who is extremely worried about the situation in Indonesia after a series of earthquakes, we decided to call it off. Each of us just loss less than RM200 on the airport tax as the AirAsia flight tickets we purchased is zero ringgit.

Although Bengkulu, in the Sumatra Island is quite a distance away from central Java, I've decided not to take the risk due to last year's huge earthquake in Yogjakarta, which caused 5,782 deaths and almost 37,000 people injured. Earthquake is unpredictable disaster. The recent quakes might trigger quakes or tsunami in nearby places since they are located on the same platonic plate.

Well, seems like my dream to see the magnificent Borobudur in morning sunrise has to be put on hold

3-month job contract

Today is my first day going back to normal working hours due to a 3-month job contract.

It's been more than two years working on my own, alone. Sometimes I do miss working with a group of colleagues, going lunch together, chit-chatting during working hours, etc.

And today it feels a little bit weird because I have to wake up early in the morning and beating through the jam. In fact I couldn't sleep last night thinking how today will be.

So here I am today, blogging through my lunch hour. The staff here are nice but sad thing is the admin people never do a proper orientation or at least introduce me to the staff. Perhaps it's because I'm a contractor here.

Hopefully during this 3 months, I'll save up enough money and start travelling in September to Yogyakarta and Bangkok. I've already booked air tickets and accommodation to take a tour to Borobodur and Prambanan. After that I'm planning to watch tennis games at Bangkok Open by the end of September because Rafael Nadal is playing along with Andy Roddick, Marcos Baghdatis and many other professional players.

researching for Yogyakarta

Currently I'm doing some research on places to go in Yogyakarta. My Sis managed to get a couple of tickets from AirAsia when they offered them for free recently.

I won't be sharing too much about it yet. I just want to talk about an impressive website called YogYes.com which is very user friendly for those who's visiting Yogyakarta.

I managed to book a room at the Manohara Hotel through the website. I'm glad that their reply was very prompt. The Manohara Hotel is the only hotel located inside the Borobudur Archaelogical Park and it is a great place to experience the fresh air and sun rise.