{"id":156,"date":"2004-02-20T07:33:03","date_gmt":"2004-02-20T07:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.com\/?p=156"},"modified":"2004-02-20T07:33:03","modified_gmt":"2004-02-20T07:33:03","slug":"if_only","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=156","title":{"rendered":"If Only"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A friend of mine and her boyfriend have recently gone to Sydney to study for their PhDs. She arrived in Sydney last week and I received an email from her yesterday saying that she misses Singapore very much and that she feels like taking a flight back.<br \/>\nAnd here I am, hoping against hope, wishing so much that I could swap places with her!!! Like hello, I&#8217;m putting up my hand here, waving madly, but the teacher doesn&#8217;t see me.<br \/>\nWhile looking for permanent accommodation, she&#8217;s staying at North Sydney, and she describes overlooking the Sydney Harbour and the Opera House. Ah, certainly brings back fond memories! And she says she&#8217;s not sure if there&#8217;re cute guys or not, but maybe she&#8217;ll be able to find a hunk surfing along the coast. To that I say, the pool of men in Sydney is definitely better than in Singapore! There&#8217;s so much more eye-candy over there. Of course I was &#8220;eating&#8221; my heart out, enjoying the visual treat while I was there. ;p<br \/>\nShe says she has also gotten a nice tan from all the walking in the sun, though she finds the sun rays a tad too strong. For me, I loved the clear blue skies and sunshine! I really miss all the walking I used to do in Sydney. I really enjoyed walking everywhere &#8211; walking to and from Pymble station, the coastlines, the parks, around the city. Walking was such a pleasant activity and basically most times it was better to walk since public transport is so expensive and slow at times.<br \/>\nAnyway, I think she&#8217;s just suffering from the anxiety of being in a new place. She&#8217;ll adapt to the place soon enough and she&#8217;ll find that she&#8217;ll never want to leave!<br \/>\nI guess when I went last year I was lucky that I already had my uncle&#8217;s family there to help me settle in. I didn&#8217;t have to grapple with problems of settling in as everything was already there for me &#8211; lovely accommodation, phone and Internet connection, food was provided for etc. Plus it also helped that it was my 6th time in Sydney and I was familiar with the city already. I knew where places were and I knew how to navigate myself around the public transport system the moment I arrived.<br \/>\nStill, I&#8217;m up for a swap with her anytime if only reality permitted!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend of mine and her boyfriend have recently gone to Sydney to study for their PhDs. She arrived in Sydney last week and I received an email from her yesterday saying that she misses Singapore very much and that &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=156\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings-mullings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}