I see you've played knify spoony before...

G'day mate! How's everyone doing? It's 9:40 pm June 25/09 local time here at Perth, Australia...and a full 12 hours difference from back at home. Our flight left Heathrow, in London at noon on the 24th of June and arrived 13 hours later at Kuala Lumpur International airport. From there, my aunt Monica, Uncle Meng, my mom and myself (I'm going to start using names of my aunt and uncles cause its going to get confusing) had a two hour layover and boarded a plane from there to Perth for an additional five hours. So I obviously arrived safely here in Australia with minimal terrorist intervention. Which is always good. The plane flew over Afganistan...which scared the shit out of me....cause any moment a surface to air missle could come flying and take the whole plane down. Scary shit...no jokes.

**Quick recap...my family in England is my aunt Monica and Uncle Meng and my cousins Lennard and Julian. I will introduce the others when the time comes.

Surprisingly, the 18 hours in the air wasn't as bad as I thought since my uncle ended up scoring us some sweet business class seats on the airplane. Ok...well not quite business class, but we were at the front of the plane...you might even say, a first class economy class? Anyways, there was enough room for us to stretch our legs out, so we didn't feel cramped. Also, we had our own personal LCD screens built right into the arms of the chairs with movies and TV on demand. I ended up watching about three movies and sleeping/eating the rest of the way.

The food on the airline was decent...again much better than I was expecting. For dinner on our first flight from London, they served a choice of either beef stew with potato wedges or a chicken with fried rice dish. I opted for the latter as it was a little more traditional on Malaysia Airlines. For a late night snack (I can't remember exactly what time), they served an assortment of cheese and crackers with fruit salad and some weird banana bread loaf thing that tasted like sand. Finally for "breakfast", they served either a choice of omelette with sausage or a traditonal Malaysian dish which I chose called Nasi Lemak: rice with a shrimp sambal curry, hard boiled egg and green beans. Sounds gross probably, but it was delicious and very authentic.

We arrived in Perth at 3:00 pm local time (again Perth and Malaysia share the same time zone) and were picked up by my aunt Judy, and driven back to their house. Perth is on the far coast of West Australia...about a five hour flight from Sydney (I was not aware of that distance prior to asking my aunt today). I really wanted to visit Sydney, but due to time restrictions I'll have to wait for another time...

Upon arriving at my aunt's house, I met my cousin Heidi, which I haven't seen in a while (last time I saw her was when her family came to Belleville when I was 12 I think). She is the same age as me, I'm older by three days, so it's pretty cool since she's one of the ONLY cousins (out of many) that is the same age as me. Anyways, we caught up which was really nice then my uncle Seng came home with my other cousin Gabby (who's in grade 8). We ate a quick dinner and everyone went out to the local mall except me, Heidi and Gabby who stayed at home and chatted.

It's really nice to see family, and connect with them so well after so many years apart. Unlike a lot of people I know, I don't have the luxury of having family close by. The closest relatives I have is another cousin from my dad's side of the family who lives in Chicago and then my dad's sister who lives in Vancouver. So big family reunions like this happen once in a blue moon (the last time was 14 years ago in Malaysia when I was 7 years old), and when they do, I love every moment of it!

Tomorrow, my auntie Judy is planning a big barbeque...Australian style with kangaroo burgers lol! I'm excited to try it as it's a huge thing down here. I forgot to mention, my aunt's backyard is home to several wild kangaroos...so if I get a chance I'm going to hunt them with my boomerang and throwing sticks. Just kidding...but seriously.

Enjoy reading, post comments, drop me a line on facebook...send me a text if you can figure out the country codes and dialing procedures for messed up numbers (I have a new number here in Australia: 04 04 169 570 and again, don't ask me how to use it lol). I love hearing from you guys...especially when I'm over 10,000km away from home.

Hooroo mate!

Simon

p.s. excuse the spelling, grammar and other nonsense as I'm too lazy to proofread. Does anyone even do that?