Here in Australia Easter is a pretty big thing. Workers have a super long weekend while us university students enjoy a week long holiday that started on Thursday (13/04) till the following Wednesday (19/04). Effectively its not really a break as both of us have loads of assignments on hand and some are due the friday after the break. So it was more of a "catch up" week for us. Assignments Assignments Assignments...
Well, all work and no play does make Jack a dull boy so we decided to give ourselves a well deserve rest since our friend, Jocelyn and her family invited us to join them in Bright (The Alpine Region).
This will be our 2nd time heading there but we are still pretty excited since it is Autumn and the trees will be in a splendour of colours. An amazing sight to behold for us who only have Summer all year round in SG.
We arrived around 7pm that evening and proceed to have a simple dinner of chicken stew which Serena had prepared and frozen before the trip. Pipping hot chicken stew and dinner rolls on a cold autumn night makes you feel all warm and good inside.
Next morning (Sat) we woke up to a meal of toasts, bacon, scrambled eggs and coffee for breaky and proceed to the Bright town centre for their monthly market (3rd Saturday). We bought some nuts, a cheap fleece blanket and some sweet amazingly fresh boysenberry conserve (jam). Its so nice to be able to have fresh jams compared to the ones you buy from the Supermart.
 Market Scene in Bright Town Centre |
 Look at the wonderful colors |
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 A Musical Easter Bunny |
 Serena like this shot of a tree in the Bright Resort where we were staying |
In the late afternoon we went on a Chestnut “hunting” trip. Its chestnut season now and we were eager to buy or pick some, but first we had to spot how the tree looks like. We found some but it was in a private property but manage to pick a few as some branches were creeping over the fence (yeah typical Singaporeans). On our way back to our resort, we pass by a farm that had chestnuts and other nuts for sale and bought a 1kg pack of medium size ones. In front of the store were 2 huge chestnut trees with an enormous amount of chestnuts on the ground around it. Of cos as typical ‘sua ku’ (mountain tortoise) Singaporeans we took some photos :P since we don’t come across it back home. Then we realise that along the road there were a few chestnut tree that were just outside the farm’s fence. Guess what? We went and picked about 5-6kg of chestnuts haha talk about being greedy. So I would say the A$7 spent on that 1kg of chestnut from the farm was pretty worth it after all, as we manage to pick so much more. You can imagine the grin on our faces.
 Pessimon tree in one of the farms |
 Is there a pot of gold over the mountain? |
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 The chestnut tree in front of the store |
 Look at the number of chestnuts! |
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 Huge big chestnuts. Too bad we can't pick these as it belongs to the store. |
 Chestnut in its outer spiky shell |
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 Chestnuts bursting out of its shell |
 Picking FREE chestnuts |
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 Our bountiful harvest |
 Fresh and Big |
Sunday started bright and early for both of us and we wanted to go for a morning walk but decided to take the racing bicycle, that Jocelyn had brought along, for a ride around and also to the town to get the day’s newspaper. A wonderful Easter morning turned REALLY BAD when Serena fell while she was trying out the bike. She fell sideways and hit her head on the ground. The impact must have been really great as she suffered 2 broken tooth, swollen lips, and wounds on her chin, elbow and knee. Blood was flowing from her mouth and knee and I was really shocked. I helped her up and to the resort and she seem alright while I was cleaning her wounds but all of a sudden she burst out crying. She kept telling me she couldn’t remember what happen to her but I brush it aside as I thought she was just in shock. Then when she told me she do not know where we are at and what we were doing there, only then did I realise it is serious and we quickly brought her to the Bright hospital.
A nurse quickly attended to her and did a check on her situation and inform us that Serena has a concussion. However she assured us that she is fine and she will update the doctor (who is in another town) on Serena’s condition and he will decide if he will need to attend to her. I got even more worried when Serena started to not remember more and more things (where we were, what she was doing, what year it was etc.) but the nurse kept reassuring me that she is fine and that it’s normal for a patient who just had a head injury to have a short memory lapse and she will recover from it in 4-5 hrs. Still I couldn’t stop worrying as Serena kept repeating the same questions that she had ask me earlier. At about 3pm the nurse did a final check on her condition and said she was alright to leave but if she has a persistent sharp headache, I need to call them immediately. Serena rested back at the resort and her memory was slowly returning. She was able to have her dinner of porridge and even learnt how to play various card games from the girls.
Next morning Serena was feeling much better but she still could not remember the what had happen on that Sunday morning. Her headache was on and off and she was still feeling pain in her gums area above her 2 broken tooth. Good thing was we manage to make an appointment with the dentist on Tuesday and had her tooth fixed. No nerve expose so the tooth is still alive and it was a pretty fast reconstruction of her tooth. The whole procedure lasted about 45mins and cost us A$345. The money ain’t important so long as Serena’s tooth was fixed and she wasn’t going to feel any more pain and also her condition and health is fine. I do Thank God that Serena is fine right now and that the situation was not worse. I am grateful that over here in Australia, it is compulsory to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle and I feel that we should adopt the same rule back in SG especially since there are so many cyclists in ECP during the weekends. This first hand experience does make me not take things for granted even with a simple task like riding a bicycle.
The nasty incident aside, we did manage to take a few photos on monday morning.You can view more photos here
 Yellow Brown hues of Autumn |
 A view from the slopes |
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 Serena looking much better |
 Tree lined roads leading out of Bright |