Alaskan Cruise Part I

Ok..finally got around to sorting the pictures from the trip :P

Anyway, flew in to Vancouver where we were set to board the cruise ship Infinity.  This monster carries about 2100 passengers with about 1000 crew thrown in to serve and pamper said passengers.  Normally, i hate travelling with time schedules and places to be at by ie. tours.  But transfer to the ship from the airport was really seamless.  After checking in our baggage in NY, the next time we saw it was in our room on the ship!  Excellent :)  No lugging/dragging our huge bags.  Prolly wouldn't fit the dignified look.  Imagine people struggling up the gangway with their bags.  All of us passengers were also subjected to the indignity of donning life jackets and mustering at rails on the decks where the life boats were held.  Seems like it is a compulsory drill.  The lifeboats were pretty tiny things that are supposed to, in a pinch, be able to carry 150 people.  Right, don't think it could have taken 100.  Oh wait, maybe the extra 50 comes from people trying to clamber up from the water or clinging to the rails.  

Pity the net access onboard was too expensive.  US$7.95 for 10 minutes or something like that....must be mad.   Spent a lot of time playing ping pong with my dad.  hehe...go on a cruise to play ping pong, may as well buy a table!  But suddenly we had such a big table to hit onto, smashes and returns just couldn't seem to go out :P 

The thing about this cruise is that the dinners are held at this gigantic classy dining hall with assigned tables complete with dedicated waiters and assistant waiters.  We had a Filipino guy Cyrel as waiter and a Macedonian, Tose.  The Cyrel fellow is a real prankster; managed to spill an empty goblet of rose wine on me.  Righto, gave me a darn shock.  Especially since i was in my sunday's best.  Yeah yeah, dinner jacket and all the jazz...which i really hate.  But no choice lah, jeans and collarless t-shirts banned from that restaurant.  Want to wear shorts and t-shirt;  go have sushi and pizza buffet :P   First couple of nights i went for the semi formal dinner thingie until i got sick of dressing up and settled for sushi and pizza :P  Man...food food food...the cruise was all about that for the first day as we made our way to Alaska.  My favourite place was the poolside area.  Oceanview Grill :)

0730 - 1000 Breakfast
1000 - 1200 Late Breakfast
1200 - 1400 Lunch               1200 - 1800 Ice Cream Parlour
1400 - 1630 Tea
1730 - 2200 Sushi
1730 - 0100 Pizza

All buffet of course :)

By the second night i was playing ping pong late into the night with these 17-19 year olds from NY. 


When we walked into the room, we were like, what the hell?! Where are the 4 beds! Ahhh....first time on a cruise lah, a bit suaku, didn't know the 4th bed was hidden in the friggin ceiling! Not that we spent a lot of time in the room anyway.  The service was incredible, guess the crew didn't have a lot else to do being stuck on the ship. They made the room twice a day and left chocies on each pillow every night.  Even carefully placed my sister's soft toy on a pillow for her.  

Took us a full day of sailing along the coastline to ge to Alaska and the glaciers.   So that was a full day of stuffing food in my face.  Terrible.  It's a wonder the ship didn't sink.


From afar. Thought it was going to start pouring but thankfully it didn't. 


Mind u this is summer, which is why the gaclier advances a little faster i guess. We managed to get to about 2 miles from the glacier's face. Might not look too big from here but it's supposed to be a fair bit taller than our ship. Wouldn't want to be caught in the wash of a calving!  


Calving: When fronts of the glacier collapses into the water. U know, those National Geographic nature show type things with huge chunks of ice falling off and into the water. 

The splash resulting from a bit of calving.  I saw a huge double calve at the right most edge of the glacier but could not catch it on film. Before reaching the glacier, we attended a powerpoint presentation about the area. Pretty cool stuff. As it turns out, icebergs have anything from 10% - 30% of their true size above water.  The variation is caused by impurities like rocks and dirt having been eroded and embedded in the advancing river of ice. Don't think we hit any really big chunks :P  

Seals! Kinda like me. Blubbery, mostly lying down and spending most of their lives on ice. Like mine has been for the last 7 - 8 months :) 

Ok, enough tinkering with the darn thing now that i've finally managed to get the pictures  into one entry like i wanted.  More about the trip tomorrow :)

Off for 10 Days

Later all, will bring back heaps of pics from Alask and Vancouver.

All good things...

Moniq: The banquet can't last forever
Me: But you don't wanna step into a buffet 10 minutes before closing time.
 
Just realized that my blogging activity is REALLY falling off :P  Last blog i had was about last saturday!
 
Anyway, family decided to have dim sum today, at this cavernous dim sum hall.  Usual stuff like hargao and siewmai, but we also had clams and for the first time since i came to NY, i had bubble tea!  Missed that so bad.  Main reason we went there to eat was cos i was meeting up with friends in Flushing again for another show but had no idea how to get there. 
 
As it turned out, it was an easy 5 minute bus ride to Flushing's town area where i met up with my friend Monique.  The area was more Chinese than anywhere in Singas!  As in you get all these people speaking in Mandarin, bookshops for Chinese books only and huge vcd/video shops with tons of Chinese serials.  Because we were early, we ended up in a bubble tea joint and i had my second for the day!  This time a 24 oz monster!  Man...didn't realize how much i missed that totally unhealthy drink.  Bubble tea sellers in Singas who are reeling from competition, just hang tight, i'll be back soon!
 
Finally met up with the rest of the bunch (Lei, Serena, Chia and Clarence).   Movie we saw was I, Robot which was pretty good.  Effects were nice and there were a couple of interesting turns.  Of course the storyline of AIs taking over the world have been pretty much flogged to death but still, worth watching.
 
Dammit, i keep gravitating back to food, but after the show, we decided on  Szechuan food.  Problem was, there were six of us and only one car!  Finally an advantage from being fat!  I got the front seat.  All good.  When ordering time came, it seemed like a few people had overestimated their propensity for spicy food and boy, did we sweat.  Serena's lips positively swelled up!  Clarence was sweating, i was sniffling and Moniq was trying to use her beer to put out the flames!  Dear friend Lei was also sweating buckets!  Only one who didn't look affected was Chia.
 
After dinner, hopped onto the trusty but stinky subway for home.  Even managed to drop off a few quarters to a one armed beggar (not bandit).  Kinda scary looking fella who stared hard at people who didn't wanna give him anything.  Some of the peeps on the train just stared back hard or totally ignored him.  Kinda sad.
 
Oh, thanks to Clarence for warning me just in time about a huge oil slick of puke at Grand Central Station.  Wouldn't do to step on that though it might have made my baddie shoe soles more tacky :P 
 
Post Sript:
Was tlaking to moniq online just now and i mentioned that it was a pity we all only started going out these few weeks when i've been here a whole 8 months.  That's when she brought up the chinese proverb about banquets not lasting forever.
 
Oh well, 10 more days here after my trip to Alaska :)  Will make those count.
 
 
 

The Glutton in Me

Is gluttony really a sin? If it were, put me down for it. Went out with a couple of friends on saturday. For some reason, we ended up in a supermarket and there were all these munchies. Ended up getting two humongous bags of Lay's BBQ chips, which i had no hope of finishing. Also, 2 boxes of chocolate chip with yogurt muesli bars. Well, at least the latter are semi healthy.


For dinner, we went to Penang Food in Flushing (a suburb in Queens) and we really over ordered. At first, the discussion was on whether we should order dishes or individual portions. 3 peeps ordering dishes; we couldn't possibly order too many dishes so decided that we would order individually. But when the time came, we decided to do both :)~~

We had:
3 roti pratas, which i still find weird having some latin guy cooking it instead of some greasy indian of malay guy

chendol :) Yes we can get good chendol here, even if it costs US$2

Yam basket thing, which was pretty good. Haven't had that here before.

1/2 Hainanese chook

A big platter of char kuey teow for me, friends had their own noodley things.

Suffice to say, we ended up leaving half our individual portions behind. It may sound like we made a weak effort but the portions here are pretty darn big. Meant to be enough for some of the giant ang mohs so i reckon we did pretty well.

Feeling almost drunk from food, we managed to stumble into a chinese supermarket. Where we got a package of gum. The kind that comes in packages of 4 ball bearing like pieaces in squarish boxes. Most of you reading this should know what i mean.

As long as i'm here, the US economy can only grow.

Uni Lunch Kakis

Meeting up with Meina reminded me even more of the great lunches we had in uni. Remember the seafood buffer we had at Hyatt last time? Chriz, do you still have the pictures that were taken during that lunch? Or the numerous times we went down Hampden Rd for teriyaki chicken? (I still think that dish is kinda gross when too much sauce is added) Or how about Cotts beach? The fish and chips, the burgers and ice cream :)

Anyway, it may look like those days have come and gone with several of us having left Perth. But i still look forward to doing it all over again. Maybe next year.

Picture courtesy of Rach, during her trip to Perth in June 04. Where i'm sure she had a great time despite the lousy weather :P



Rach and Chriz, my two lunch interlopers from uni days :)  

Excellent Friday

Rach and others who check in, sorry for the lack of updates :P Been running around a fair bit over the weekend.

Started on friday where i met up with meina and her two sisters then walked all over the place. I'll call it the cockeyed leading the blind :P. We were supposed to go to Times Square and instead i took them on a merry chase. Had to call my mom to find out the exact street and avenue! How embarassing! I've been here for a good 8 months already and been there at least 5 or 6 times!

All was good when we finally made it there :) Especially when we went into the giant Hershey's chocies shop.


Hershey's 


Yes, that's me smiling contentedly. Too good! 


Chocies serve a great purpose! Like decor!  

Ok...i can hear you say enough of the chocies! What about Times Square?!


Kinda looks like any downtown area huh? :P 

The picture doesn't do the place justice. There are heaps of playhouses, if that's the right term, for all the different musicals playing.

ANYWAY, after Times Square, we decided to go walk around in Central Park. It's kinda strange to see so much greenery surrounded by all these skyscrapers. I'll have to get a picture of that to show you what i mean. Also, i think all the walking gave one of meina's sisters blisters :P

All in all, we had a great time visiting a couple of NY's landmarks. But more important, i managed to catch up with one of my good friends from perth :)


Just noticed that the camera did some magic trick thing...check out the phase out where my left arm and her right arm gets all mixed up..weirdddddd 

Heady Days of Uni (Part 3)

Dunno about you guys, but i just HATE presenting! Reading straight off a sheet of paper word for word is hard enough, but having to remember stuff to say?!? My god.

Still remember the first prezzie i had to do in front of my class. It was an Org. Behaviour class with Ian Firns as lecturer. Anyway, after doing the Briggs-Myers test thing, i found myself to be the type that lives on short deadlines. IE. Last minute work only! Back to pressies. I had to present this lousy piece of work we did last minute and didn't even have time to practice once! Armed with a vague idea of what the 24 slides were about, i proceeded to wing it in front of a class of 25 working professionals. LOL

I was sweating so profusely, i could feel it all flowing down my face and the defining moment came when a drop fell of my chin and landed on my shoe! It all happened in slow motion...first i felt it leave my chin...so i saw the drop getting smaller as it fell...then finally landed on my right shoe with a splash...felt like i could even see the little droplets from the splash...like some Matrix'ish moment that got frozen in time. I'm sure everyone in the class saw that wonderful moment too. And it didn't help that one of them was constantly whispering to the person next to her, no doubt pointing out how nervous i was! Grrrr After that, i just clicked the mouse tickertape timer speed to finish the slides :P

By the time it was all over, my shirt had changed from a light blue to a dark sweaty blue, despite the cold cold air con. i also never felt as relieved before. Anyway, classmates were all good and i got a nice round of applause and words of encouragement. Didn't remember any of that till i stumbled back into the safety of my room at home :P

All You Can Eat

Finally recovered enough to write about the sushi binge i had last night.

Got a call at 3 something in the arvo to join some baddie people for sushi buffet at this place called Yuka. Suffice to say that it was some 22 streets and 3 avenues away in the grid that is NYC. By the time i got there, there were already 9 other hungry souls and i was the last one.

This is the first sushi buffet thing i have ever been to cos i was never really a big fan of sushi. Anyway, how it works here is you write down a number next to the type of sushi and hand the slip to the waitress. So the slip would have heaps of stuff on it like Eel, Salmon, Tuna, Crab Roll etc etc. The first order we gave to the waitress totalled about 130 pieces of sushi...imagine that...130...13 pieces each person. Amazingly, that disappeared within 5 minutes of appearing. Partly because we were hungry but also there was a standing record to be challenged! LOL...the last time the bunch was there, the baddie coach, Chibing had 45 pieces! Anyway, i thought that was an impossibility until i started eating....by the end of the night, i had downed 42 and had five big glasses of water....erks...wasn't so much bloated but sick of it already. However, a new record was set by the previous holder, 54 this time..sick sick sick!

Then no more than 3 hours ago, i watched this hot dog eating competition with the famous Japanese chap that could eat 50 hotdogs, bun and sausie, in 12 minutes :P That's his record anyway. Wasn't so much impressed by him but this Asian lady who also took part. Weighing in at a gargantuan 98lbs, she can do 25 hotdoggies in the said 12 minutes. Shudder....now to try and top that! After i've downloaded the sushi of course.

Sun's Up!

My sleeping habits are just totally scroooood now. At first it was Diablo 2 that kept me up but i gradually got sick of the game but yet i haven't gone back to regular sleeping hours. Instead, i'm stuck in the rut of going to bed at 9 in the morning and waking at around 2 or 3 in the arvo! Mom's given up nagging me to sleep of course. haha

Sure it sounds kinda mad but there are positives out of it. I'll certainly be adjusted to Singas' timing when i get back AND, i get to see the sunrise from my room window :)


Time Check 5:15am 


Took this one on a different day :) Two days ago to be exact, prolly around 6:45. 

Dohhhh

It's full blown summer over here now...been like that for a few weeks actually. Anyway, now that it's warm enough, the beautiful people are appearing in force. Bronze skinned chicks aplenty. None prettier than the one i saw sitting outside the gym near my house today.

Let's see...

Was coming back from the SQ office just a few streets away when i walked past the gym near my house and was semi accosted by this old gym rat looking fellow. He was selling gym memberships and his assistant/sympathiser/supporter was this chick cuddling a little dog sitting on the steps. LOL, "isn't this dog cute? you can play with it if you sign up gym!" Right. How about we lose the dog and i get to jog with the chick! hahaha...oh well

Was very very tempted to go grab my camera from home and run down for a picture but thought better of it. Afterall, i was flustered enough to tell the guy the reason why i couldn't join the gym was cos i was flying in 2 days. Which was so obviously untrue. Even more obviously untrue because i actually had the poseur action of looking at my watch to check the date to make sure it was TWO days before flying.

DUHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhh

Primary School

I can feel my interesting in blogging waning slowly but surely. Seems like i've run out of things to talk about. Oh well, *dig* *dig* *dig*, into the past...this entry is more for me than for you guys :P

I went to Anglo Chinese Junior School for my primary level education. And boy, were those good times!

Nothing really interesting happened in pr 1 and 2, apart from catching tadpoles and letting them swim around on the groove at the edge of our plastic desks. You know the grooves where we're supposed to put our pencils. Oh oh, also had a colleciton of red ants that were put in a jar :) Things got really interesting when the jar fell off my desk and smashed on the hard stone floor. lol....those things could sure bite and that landed me in the discipline mistress's office. I still remember her name, Mrs Retnam, not the last time i was to run into her :P Still remember trembling in fright after having heard all the horror stories about her having a giant cane. Also remember a certain Mr Jaffa, a malay art teacher for my primary two class. He used to whack people over the head with those thick, 1m long rulers that were meant as aids for drawing lines on the blackboards! It's a wonder none of us suffered brain damage, or maybe that's why i'm like that. Wait, don't think i got whacked. Surely this isn't allowed nowadays :P

Only thing i remember about primary three is firing a staple bullet straight into my chinese teacher. LOL. And she went "ouch" pretty loudly and i was in so much shock at having missed my friend and hit her, my face must have spelt GUILT and she walked right up to me and yanked me off to face the feared Mrs Retnam. Encounter number two resulted in me standing in a corner of her office for a couple of hours till it was time to go home i believe :P

It was in primary four that the real fun began. At primary school age, we must all have taken the schoolbus and had raucous times in there. But i reckon my bus was THE bus to be in. It all started when this primary 6 kid, Zhihao, chucked an empty pencil lead holder out the window and hit a motorcyclist on the helmet! Sure it could have resulted in an accident, but we were all mischievious 10 year olds, so it was just plain amusing :) Fortunately, pencil lead holders were a little difficult to come by (read expensive!). So we settled for plastacine! hahahahhaa....70 cents a tube...a tube would last a conservative thrower a week! We plucked little balls and threw them out the window at passing cars, pedestrians, postboxes, anything man. Especially other primary school kids and their maids who waited by the side of the road for their school buses :P The real excitement would come from getting the little balls to stick to car side windows when we stopped at traffic lights and pretend that we had nothing to do with it when the drivers noticed.

After having plastered, literally, heaps of people. We finally took it a step too far. At that time, they came out with those Zap It! water pistols that could fire water 20 odd feet. Someone came up with the brilliant idea of putting in so called disappearing ink to shoot at pedestrians. We should have known better but we started firing it at this bunch of SCGS Primary School girls whom we drove past everyday. Until one fine day, the bus was stopped by the police! Talk about terrified. This is where me and a few others did something that was totally wrong. We were primary 5 kids at that time and kinda like the ringleaders and a little more outspoken. So we pinned the water pistol spraying thing squarely on this poor primary 3 kid! Sure we did not fire "disappearing" ink at the girls but used water, but we still copped out. Terrible.

I'm sure the policeman asked "who has been shooting water pistols?" not "Who has been shooting disappearing ink?". If i'm not wrong, the poor kid that we "ratted" on paid for it with a few strokes.

PSLE year came soon enough and there really wasn't anymore time to muck around. That was the only time i worked hard. Came out with an aggregate of 243, A*s in English and Math, A's in Science and Chinese (this was as good as it ever got for Chinese).

ok ok...go back to your not so boring work...if u even got this far :)