First foreign experience Sydney

I am now so excited that I can’t help but feel excited all night because I just received a long-awaited email.

Some time ago, I participated in the APAC HPC-AI Competition and won the second place, but unfortunately lost to Nanyang Technological University. The organizers of the competition invited us to Sydney, Australia to attend the award ceremony and conference, and exempted us from the membership fee. The school will also reimburse our air tickets and accommodation. This means that my first trip abroad is coming!

Sydney is located in Oceania east of China, so there is a three-hour time difference between us. After adjusting the time, I started my half-day flight journey.

Although it is February now, Sydney, located in the southern hemisphere, is in summer due to the direct sunlight. This is also my first time to visit a country in the southern hemisphere. As soon as I got off the plane, a heat wave hit me. The weather was very hot and sunny. But the people on the street were dressed very fashionably. English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, all kinds of languages flowed into my ears. Sydney is indeed an international metropolis.

We took the subway to the hotel. Australia still uses paper tickets with electromagnetic induction cores to travel, which is both convenient and commemorative.

Australia’s public transportation is very well built, the environment is great, the air conditioning is cool, and people on the subway will talk to each other enthusiastically, even if they are strangers. On the Chinese subway, however, everyone just looks down at their phones.

I really like the streets of Sydney, which are full of technology and art, and there are many beautiful murals on the walls. I think this adds extraordinary creativity to the city’s architecture.

The people of Australia are just like their weather, very enthusiastic and talkative. People on the street are all in good shape and almost no one looks down at their phones. Everyone enjoys life in the real world and interacting with people around them. They also sit together and chat with family and friends. This sense of relaxation is enviable.

There is also McDonald’s here, but the taste is very different from that in China, it doesn’t even seem like the same brand. When ordering, the calorie count is marked on each portion of food. It seems that most Australians pay attention to body management.

It is worth mentioning the food in Sydney. I really can’t stand overly greasy fried chicken, so most of the time I choose to go to a Japanese restaurant to eat udon noodles. Although the price is about 50CNY per serving, it is already one of the cheapest foods in the local area, and it is very delicious.

In the afternoon, I visited Sydney’s must-see attraction: the Sydney Opera House. It is indeed a very unique building, like a pearl suspended on an island. Many people take wedding photos here. This romantic building is indeed a holy place worth visiting.

For dinner, I spent over 200 CNY on a steak, which was delicious. Unfortunately, the high price prevented me from eating it again.

Sydney at night is full of romance, with songs floating around in music restaurants and lights on high-rise buildings, which is extremely beautiful. The resident singers in the bars here are very talented, and their songs, from folk songs to rock, are very beautiful.

At the bar, we met two gentlemen from Western Australia, their voices were very special, we talked a lot about Chinese culture and interesting things about Australia. The people here are very friendly.

This trip to Sydney has indeed left me with an indelible impression. As Australia’s most economically developed city, I like it very much, whether it is its clean streets, hospitable people or its romantic and creative cultural atmosphere.

DylanLiu's blog

First foreign experience Sydney