Last Sunday (not the one just passed, but the one before that) I was in Perth for the weekend. Perth is a city on the other side of Australia and takes a good five hours to travel to. Yes, Australia is huge and sparse.

Heirisson Island

On Saturday I met up with my friend Kim, but on Sunday I had the day to myself. I woke up a little early (about 8:30am) and decided to go for a run and check it Heirisson Island, a small island less than a mile away from where I was staying. There is a main road that goes through the island so I just followed the bike/pedestrian path. I was keen to see the island because one half of it has kangaroos. It even had a special gate to keep the kangaroos in, but I didn’t see any kangaroos. I only followed the main path and didn’t go wandering, but for a really small island you could walk across in twenty minutes, I was hoping to at least see one.

I went to the other side of the island, on the other side of the main road, but that side didn’t have kangaroos. It was smaller than the kangaroo side and had a carpark, picnic area and playground equipment. I was disappointed but I got some good views of the city on water and all that. And there were duckies. I love duckies. 🦆

I went to the gym in my apartment, which I had done periodically during my stay. The gym was really tiny, smaller than my current bedroom at home. It had one treadmill, an elliptical, a bike, some weights on a rack and one big machine that you had to completely configure yourself. I wasn’t bothered to really configure anything so I just lifted weights.

Tuck Shop Cafe

I was super duper hungry after that, and I usually work out before breakfast, but I downed my protein shake and then went to Northbridge to grab brunch at a cafe. The cafe was called Tuck Shop Cafe and I ordered asparagus, spinach, grated cheese and a poached egg on toast. It was super delicious. Definitely one of the best brunches I’ve had. 😄 I could have eaten another one if I wasn’t so full. It was that yummy. And as I always do, I topped it off with a soy chai latte. 😎

Kings Park

I walked a fair way to catch a bus down to Kings Park, a giant park area. I spent a couple of hours exploring. The sunny weather was really pleasant. I ended up getting sunburn on my shoulders though. 😅 I walked around some of the gardens, a cool walkway bridge, and a DNA-inspired tower. I captured some good views. I felt inspired to write some poetry, and although I didn’t, I guess I really experienced the feeling of inspiration so I know what to do next time I’m in touch with nature. It’s true what they say about getting outside to be inspired.

Vegan smoothie

I caught a bus back to Northbridge and decided to check out Little Bird Cafe. I wanted to go there one morning for brunch but I’m glad I made the choice of going to Tuck Shop Cafe that morning because that meal would have been pretty hard to beat. I was, however, interested in Little Bird Cafe’s vegan coco frappes so I got one of those. It was dairy-free with no processed sugar, and I chose the ‘cacao kapow’, which was made from cacao, almond milk, dates and cinnamon. Yum. It really filled me up.

The Nostalgia Box

After that I walked to The Nostalgia Box, a video game museum. It sounded awesome when I found out about it, because the thought of retro games was super interesting. The Nostalgia Box was pretty small, and less impressive than I thought, but I learned quite a bit about the history of video games. I looked at all the old gaming consoles, watched some of the very odd advertisements, and they even had a gaming section where you could play some old games, so I played a few while I was there.

Ramen at Nao Japanese

I had an early dinner at Nao Japanese, famous for their ramen. You can choose exactly how you like your ramen, so I chose a sesame based seafood one. I walked in just when they were taking their last customers. On the Sunday they closed at 5pm and I just didn’t have time or was too full the other nights, so I was determined to try their ramen. It was really very good. I enjoyed it. I don’t eat tonkotsu ramen since I’m pescetarian, so I was glad that they had the option of miso or sesame based. :D

A funny story to end

I called it a night after that – I went back to my apartment and packed my suitcase, and took a nap. My flight back to Sydney was at 11pm and since I would lose some sleep due to the short overnight flight, I thought the nap was a good idea. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb mode because I really wanted to nap. So I just set an alarm for fifty minutes later.

My mum had been trying to contact me while I was sleeping. I was having a deep sleep and when I woke to my alarm I turned it off and saw some panicked messages from Brandon. Errrm. He told me that mum was worried and to answer my phone. I was confused, but I quickly messaged him that I had been asleep. It was then that I noticed my mum had sent me a lot of messages too (she had a question about the vacuum cleaner), and had tried to call me a few times. I called her up and told her I had been sleeping and she was very relieved. She told me that when she sent her messages, they kept coming up with Read receipts and yet, no reply came. I was confused because I had been sleeping this whole time and there was no way I could have read any of her messages, and all my other devices were shut off too.

After a quick test, we found out that my phone had buggered up and was reading my mum’s messages to me automatically before I had even opened them. It wasn’t happening with anyone else’s message threads. After restarting my phone everything was OK. But it was so strange, Brandon had even messaged Nick (keep in mind he’s just at home doing his thing, and I’m all the way over in Perth) to ask if he knew where I went. I had told Nick I was going to take a nap, but all in all, it was quite funny that my mum was in such a panic. And also really silly of my phone to do that. 🐽