toronto tonight

I'm gonna go on vacation.. until Jan 12. Whee! Shan't tell you where I'm going after toronto, it will be revealed when I feel like it. ha!

Meanwhile.. merry Christmas.. n a happy new year of course. Seems like I'm not having a white christmas even here cos it's not snowing. Boo! All the colleagues are like, whoa, u guys got it easy.. haha yeah they're the same ones who're constantly scaring us about the harsh winters here.

Have a good one with your friends and family, treasure them while they're still next to you! I miss mine lots. =)

Have you seen your squirrel today?

I didn't prepare lunch for today, and being the procrastinator I am, I dingdonged til 1.25 before rushing down to get my lunch from the cafeteria. It didn't occur to me that the cafe would be closed at 1.30, I was lucky to have 5 minutes to scrape up some salad [with lots of dressing of course] for my lunch.

On my way up, I looked out of the windows by the staircase. And saw a squirrel perched on a [bald] tree. It wasn't one of those huge trees you typically see squirrels scampering in, it was a tiny tree with thin branches, and the squirrel was at the tip of one of the branches, balancing easily while tending to a berry in his paws. His bushy tail pointed up as he happily nibbled, hardly noticing me staring at him through the glass.

I realized that squirrel sighting is enough to keep me happy through the day. =)

awesome stuff!

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Cos our dearest andrian and xiong sheng are going back to singapore to work their asses off, we had a going-away dinner for them at J Alexander Steakhouse. It was a good dinner, I marvelled at how the americans managed to dominate the conversations with their eloquence and witty dialog. feel really inadequate in such social situations where i can't come up with anything at all and start drifting off.

I wonder if it's difficult for them and if they have to keep generating jokes and conversation topics on purpose to keep us entertained, or whether it comes naturally to them? hehe. throughout the whole dinner, george quizzed us on american history/geography, himself, and asked andrian+xs for their speech to which they shyly avoided.. I wonder if they found it irritating that we were so quiet?

I ordered a prime rib [i had no idea what that is, i thot rib is like pai2 gu3 haha turned out it's just, steak.] and when the waitress Cindy asked me how i wanted it done, i went 'what do you recommend?' it's not like i don't know what i want/how to order, but i just felt like asking for an opinion.. but lynette looked very worried that i didn't know how to order the steak haha.

Later on when the steak looked really rare despite me ordering my medium, lynette felt responsible for helping me ask the waitress about it.. I didn't really care and when i tried it it tasted ok, so I said it was ok, but i have a feeling that the people at the table thought that i just said it was ok to avoid having to confront the waitress to get it cooked more. haha i dunno why i was thinking so much..

The steak wasn't as fantastic as i imagined it to be.. maybe we are supposed to eat it without sauce and all so as to taste the meat properly but i'd very much prefer it to have some sauce on it. The serving was humongous as usual.. I ate about half of it, packed it, and today (friday night) when I tried to finish it, i still couldn't finish all of it. Come to think of it, nxt time maybe I can divide into 3 portions.. haha then it'll be only $7 for each meal of quality steak. hurhur.

my very raw looking prime rib


haha messy hair. no time in the mornings to style lah. i wasn't even wearing my contacts.


Lets hope george never sees this.

After the meal, george wanted to get drinks at the bar. I had been eyeing the chocolate martini, and kev didn't mind staying for a beer as well so the 3 of us stayed back to have a drink.. i drank real slowly and got really red, as usual. luckily it was way too dark there to tell.. if not really very no image. luckily kev had handed his keys to sebast cos sebastian's stuff were in his car, and so kev drove me home..

with da boss! kevin thinks his hair doesn't look toot in this pic. haha.


chocolate martini =)

Thursday, December 14, 2006

In the morning before going to work, i couldn't find my wallet. So I kinda hoped that it would be in my car from the prev night. As I approached my car.. i noticed that my wallet was on the floor, right next to the door of the passenger seat. My my.. i had actually dropped it the night before.. thank god that no one saw/took it.. Argh i am so careless!

Speaking of careless, i actually sent weijie a check to pay him for seattle trip expenses.. and i took a lot of care to write out the amount correctly. Haha, first time writing check ok. So i was pretty surprised when he called me on my mobile a few days later.

'eh, i received your check'
'uh huh...' *realises something is wrong* 'oh shit i didn't sign did i'

my god i really suck. i wrote a check and didn't sign on it. so much for writing my first check. waste my postage summore. must be bad karma for always teasing liling. hehe. In the end i just paypaled it over.. that worked pretty smoothly.

Well.. cos my car contract was expiring soon, i went down to the airport to change my car with erwin and jingyang. I didn't wanna go alone cos i'm an idiot at choosing cars.. need some help! the lady at the counter was called jackie and she was really cute, kept playing with us haha. we tried to get ford mustang but well, no such luck haha. don't wanna get fired anyway. The cars she had were mostly sonatas, toyota corolla, well they have tonnes of ford tauruses [she called them granny car haha]. We even went out to walk around in the carpark to choose our cars.

to cut the long story short, she had a toyota solara [which i didnt know what it was at that point] and she went 'i have a toyota solara for the lady, and it's a very nice car. *looks at erwin and jy* you've been making the girl drive the taurus!'. Whee! Went over to look at it and woot! It was damn chio! Red 2 door toyota camry solara. Muahaha.. I didn't even ask for it.. really lucky lah.

erwin got a white pontiac g6 which has this really retro metal rimmed meters, complete with buttwarmers and some remote startup functions.. and jy after much research got a white pontiac grand prix.

There had to be some problem with the corporate credit card details for my reservation.. and we spent a loooong time standing there waiting for them to solve it.. wah meanwhile so kanchiong dunno whether can get the pretty car haha. luckily they managed to solve it after some phone calls.

when we got back to our apartment carpark, erwin and jy jumped at the chance to test drive my car.. haha.. we went for a spin while i happily sat in the backseat. I think 2 door is kinda stupid cos it's just so inconvenient. i think it's merely a marketing gimmick for silly pple like us to fall for. worst part is that it actually works.

presenting the awesome stuff which all my colleagues are drooling at..

Yeah, I don't know why i'm so lucky.. Loving it so much, and I actually feel excited to drive it. The dashboard very pretty right? the front actually looks like the camry 07 model. The steering wheel is oh so light and easy to maneuver, the brakes are actually responsive and the sound of the engine being revved is just damn cool. It's kinda scary how it can go so fast and yet you don't feel it inside. Too bad it's kinda wasted on me cos i drive like an old lady heehee.

oh, and it also has sirius satellite radio, meaning i have like ~100 channels to choose from! hiphop rnb 60s 70s 80s jazz classical news sports and much more! i never have to burn cds again. it is damn shiok to turn on the jazz music, and just cruise along. i rike. =) this morning, it occurred to me that this is probably the nicest car ill ever drive. unless i become a chauffeur or something, haha. i mean i don't foresee myself buying any luxurious car unless i get insanely rich by some unknown stroke of luck.. hee. that's pretty depressing but, i'll enjoy it while i can. hee!

Miscellaneous Rubbish.

hihihi! finally got my lazy ass down to blog again! Nothing much is gonna happen for a while, until my next trip which will definitely be a blast. Heehee. So, for now, just some miscellaneous rubbish ba.

I just finished The Devil Wears Prada yday. It's a total chick flick. There doesn't seem to be much of a storyline, I read for some time and realised that I was in the middle of the book, and nothing much had happened yet. But at least it was entertaining enough for me to read through the whole book easily. So much for trying to act literary, end up reading bimbotic novel again. I actually bought sophie's world some time back at the half price book store but i can't get past the first page. that's how brainless i need my books to be.

Have also been busy with this eeeevil website. I've associated anything that makes you fork out your credit card number to be evil. But this site is da bomb.. you know, it's amazing how some things can actually be free! I've already got my creative speakers for free [i paid $10, there's a mail in rebate of $10]. Can officially say that cos I've just received my check from creative of $10. And there's creative webcam for $5 after rebate, Kingston thumbdrive for $8 after rebate.. motorola bluetooth headset free after rebate!! [but i was too late for that :(] and other loads of free things after rebate. Siow one!

And and and Google Checkout. If you still haven't heard of it, they give $20 on any purchase of $50 or more at participating outlets. Crooazy!! It's free money.. Le sigh. Too bad i'm totally running low on cash already. =(

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Just a note: had MFC lessons this whole week, by George Shepherd. I loved the way they packaged the notes and cd in a little cardboard box, like some software product.

Ok, I bought these 'homemade noodles' and got ready to make wanton mee!! so essiting!

Healthy ok, with celery and dumplings [and some hastily-put-together sauce]! This is the closest i can get to wanton mee.. it was quite yummy! =)

Thursday, December 7, 2006

This week, my world turned white:

It looks like it was foggy but it's just loads of crazy snowing




I think it's really miserable to work in the snow. So so cold and lonely =(


More crazy snow at work

Left the car to go into Circuit City for 10min, when we came out.. there were ICICLES!!!!! That night, as we left work we noticed that the snow on the ground actually glistened. It actually looks like someone poured white glitter over the whole ground.. Or lots of white crystals on the ground. I've thought of snow as powder, but never did i imagine it to be so pretty and shiny!

Meanwhile, the office is already decorated for christmas. There's a christmas trees, poinsettias in every corner.. and even a teddy bear on one of the sofas hehe damn cute.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

And lots of snow meant that it is almost time to ski! I'd been checking the snow report at the ski resort, and they had been making snow whenever possible [if below 28F]. And finally they said that they would open this weekend!! After convincing fellow colleagues how fun skiing is, erwin, kevin and paw decided to go down on Saturday to get the season pass!

Woohoo! Haha there are 2 of them operated by the same people, Boston Mills and Brandywine. Only brandywine is open this week, but boston mills' office was open just for registrations. so i made them go to the boston mills place specially to make the pass so that we could play on sunday. scared got long queue what.. have to take photos summore. haha they later realised and decided that i was damn kiasu. bleah.

On the way to boston mills, we passed by a plot of land with lots of christmas wreaths.. we looked carefully and realised it was a cemetery. Cemeteries are like parks here. A very peaceful place to be at, unlike the smoky incensed filled ones we have in spore.

They even had christmas decorations. With all due respect, it's beautiful isn't it.

My pass! haha i luv how the camera elongates your face and makes u look thinner. coolness.

A colleague Steve invited us to a Christmas concert at his church this evening. It was named 'The Gospel, according to Scrooge'. It turned out to be a lot better than I expected, with beautiful costumes and lots of singing. Christmas songs are in my head now. [doesn't help that they're playing christmas songs in the supermarkets now! it's like how they play cny songs in supermarts nearing cny! haha]

The lighting effects were damn cool as well. There was a part where this ghost in chains guy came out, and they used those fluorescent lighting on him to make him look ghostly. And another where scrooge was looking at the grave, and suddenly the words 'scrooge' appeared on the tombstone! via laser or something, so high tech!! Also this scene where there was a lot of red light and smoke.. really eerie.

Pretty professional I should say.

They served pies from Baker's Square and drinks after the concert.. Had a nice time sitting around and chatting.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

And we went skiing!!

Well.. the slopes were nothing compared to whistler.. But what to do, Cleveland is supposed to be one of the flattest cities around! We reached in the morning at 10+ and surprisingly there weren't as many pple as i expected. Haha I guess i've been spoilt by whistler..

Well yup that's the highest point le. And those are already the black diamond slopes for the experts. looks pretty crappy but it's very daunting when you're up there. But we only attempted the green beginner (frosty, easy rider) and blue intermediate(outer limits) trails.. No black diamond for us yet. Sooo scary. And this is unlike whistler where no one really sees u when u fall cos it's so huge. The black diamond slopes are right in front of the entrance and EVERYONE will see u if u fall. Haha so must train up a bit first before attempting that.

ks and cy also decided to get the season pass cos it is a lot more wuhua.. comes with 2 lessons as well. and the church goers andrian, puji and sebast joined us later after lunch.

Kevin's (non) balancing act. Hurhur.

It was actually very hot on the slopes and at lunch time, I had to take off pawsieboy's thick timberland jacket, and my fat pants! I only wore one layer of thermal and a thin adidas jacket and felt fine, until later in the evening when i started freezing and decided to call it quits.

We had a greasy burger and fries lunch, and I felt so uncomfortable that I couldn't take a photo of it cos I'd kept my camera in the car. Haha I must be addicted or somethin. Oh oh, and I used my new Camelbak, partly sponsored by my love, google checkout. kept it under my jacket cos paiseh, as if i'm very pro.. but it's really useful for skiing. =) Next wk i'll put gatorade in it haha confirm damn shiok!

Later in the evening i observed that ALL the teens there were snowboarding instead of skiing. Haiyah. Maybe skiing is outdated already, for old people or something. Snowboarding is the in thing.. looks ten thousand times cooler as well. Maybe I should have gotten a snowboarding pass instead huh. Too bad snowboarding looks way too difficult. I'll definitely try it sooner or later.. but meanwhile let me practise on my skiing first!!

Well, it's already tuesday and my arms are still hurting from all that pulling in the snow.. which is cool.. skiing is training my muskles! woohoo!

Thanksskiing - Day 5 in Seattle

Monday, November 27, 2006

Time flies when you are having fun. HAHA purposely put cliche + corny sentence to start the entry. Well, it's already the last day of our trip. vincent and neisha's flight at 11+, weijie, elvin, mark's flight at 1+, danny, philip at 5+, liling and me at around 12midnight and 'miah's the day after. So vincent and neisha went off to microsoft while the rest of us went to Boeing Museum of Flight in the morning.

Started the day with fresh waffles.. thanks to econo lodge.. I love nice friendly people like that who dont care how many pple crash in their room haha. weijie even made friends with some family whose son was learning chinese in sch.. and not bad, he said 'bu4 ming2 bai2' to weijie even with the intonations. impressed.

There was tonnes of snow. I'd googled 'Does it snow in Seattle' prior to the trip and some bloke said not since er, a long time ago.. But this is the most snow I've ever seen in a city! my..

Can you imagine? So thick!

invasion of a snow paw! heehee.

Boeing Museum of flight

We spent so much time out there playing with the snow [or rather watching weijie, li ling and danny play in the snow] that we almost didn't wanna go in haha. We had much more fun out there than in the museum really. looking forward to mark's photos, which i'll download tonight. whee.

We finally got our butts in there. It was really irritating cos we got on a tour around the Boeing facilities.. but we weren't allowed electronics in there.. no phone, no camera.. where's the fun when you can't take photos man. seriously i think i've lost the ability to have fun without taking photos.. slowly i'll lose my photographic memory and my ability to describe pictures or something.. quite bad huh.

Anyway it was really boring lah. We first watched a video on how they assemble the plane [ok that was pretty cool cos they fast forwarded the whole process]. Then we took a bus in to the factory [which is supposed to be the world largest building in terms of volume but it didn't feel that big anyway]. We were only allowed to view from the 2nd floor so we could hardly see anything and the tour guide was q boring keep piling facts on us that i'm not interested in. i'm really bad at numbers.. all i can rem is.. 737 costs what, 120million usd? and 738 costs 200+million i think. anyone interested? heehee.

i also wanted to see if they used our company products in their assembly line.. im quite sure they have ties. too bad i couldn't see what controllers they used cos we were too far away =(

next we went to the exhibition hall where luckily we could take photos.. we hurriedly snapped lots of random photos before rushing off to the airport to send weijie, elvin n mark off.

The engine, most expensive part of the plane.



i love buttons but this is a bit too much eh



i want one of these!!! cute plane softtoys!

We dingdonged so much that weijie elvin n mark missed their flight. Haha.. they damn yaya.. so late le still not worried.. and elvin still wanted to go return the car himself. I happily forced danny to return the car instead.. he looked pretty reluctant to. bleah. well at least they managed to be reasonably early-ish late to still get another flight to san francisco.. and the lucky pigs managed to spend a few hours there.. so resourceful i cannot take it.

Kerry Park

So danny philip jeremiah liling and me squeezed into a super cute yellow chevy.. and off we went to Kerry Park. We were lucky to catch clear skies.. and the pretty setting sun.

'miah says seattle is the last state to see sunset. haha.. he's the only person i know who would actually care abt such things. nature and extreme sport-siow one.

Mount rainier is supposed to be right behind me.. dont see it though maybe wrong angle.



Somehow seattle looks prettier from far.


dying snowman! i was wondering where his hands came from when i saw..


haha.. the snow man creator(s) were pretty resourceful!


the cute cosy chevy.

next we tried to go to outback steak house for lunch/dinner, but they were only open at 4.30.. the seafood restaurant beside it was pretty expensive so we decided to go for a walk instead at a lake opposite the restaurants. 2nd example of prettiness in the middle of unexpected nowhere.

there was way too much gooseshit on the floor though. damn gross.

didn't get to eat this! as it was getting late we decided to go to a denny's diner near the airport instead.

the last sunset seen in the US.

I love Denny's for their ALL DAY BREAKFAST. All restaurants should have that it's damn cool. and refillable coffee. superbly enjoyed my Breakfast. Luckily 'miah offered to send danny and philip to the airport cos i eat damn slowly. later on he came back to join us.. we decided to go to Microsoft cos being ahem software engineers we really shld go there and check out how bill is doing.

unfortch, everything went downhill from here.. Really sad lah. WE wanted to check out microsoft and THEN finally go to liling's factory outlets haha. However we met up with a HUGE jam.. damn stupid lah. it was really massive, the cannot move kind. So we first gave up microsoft cos it closed at 7.. but after a while, we realised that we shouldn't even try to go to the outlets cos we may not even make it in time for our flights. So after a while, we stopped and turned back.

i don't know why there was a jam.. i guess it was a combination of the bad snow.. maybe seattlites dun get snow so they don't know howta drive in it? lots of cars in ditches and many abandoned cars on the road. also heard that there was a football match orsomething. maybe coupled with evryone going home from their thanksgiving holiday? it really sucked.

i was sitting in the front passenger seat and i realised what a lousy navigator i was. oops. ive always thot i had a good sense of direction, but its like i was carrying all the maps and then after a while we just got lost.. oops. i have too short an attention span lah i think. 'miah was amazingly patient. fwah if i was to drive in that sort of traffic and weather i would definitely be in a very foul/panicky mood and bitch at the navigator for being so useless. and he just calmly stopped by at a gas station and took over the map reading without suaning me.. haha. well, at least i was able to lead us back to the airport using the little alleys instead of the highway ok! i just need to FOCUS a bit more.. tsk think my brain spoil.

we finally got back to the airport safe and sound and early.. lots of pple were in foul moods there.. cos of the terrible traffic.. they missed their flight and all. quite a mess at the airport. luckily we were super early and could take our time. but we also spent like, 3-4 hours driving north and then south back to the airport.. poor 'miah must be damn tired.

so we sat around, had a nice cuppa latte and cheese cake at starbucks. while waiting for our turn to check in..

before we left we made him promise not to sleep in the car that night. so garang but its so dangerous lah! don't know where he ended up though.

after going in i fell prey to the books in the airport shop. i bought 'The Devil wears Prada'.. haha im halfway thru it already, very readable and chick flicky with no much story line. i'd like to watch the show tho cos li ling says she wears damn nice clothes in it!

so it was time to fly.. kinda funny that both li ling and i were flying to texas, but she was to dallas and me to houston. both our flights were delayed.. hers by 2.5 hours in the end, and mine was just for less than an hour. As i was waiting for the flight, i was wondering why these people kept approaching the attendants.. i mean, if it's delayed it's delayed right.. why ask this ask that. and i calmly boarded the plane later..

in fact, when i reached houston, i still calmly went to the washroom to wash my face [damn gross and oily, never bathe since morning leh] and then took the following boliao photos. haha. houston airport quite pretty. i couldn't really check my watch cos of the time difference.. and as i went up to one of the monitors to check, i realised that my plane was leaving in 5 minutes!!!

i am how retarded. it didnt even occur to me to check if i would miss my connecting flight.. so that must have been what those pple were doing. haiya think i was too tired to think. So i started running towards the gate but it was freaking far still gotta take stupid train to the terminal and all.

by the time i reached there, they had separated the gate from the plane.. and i saw 'Departed'. haha.. so stupid i still run like mad.. really shld have known. The lady at the counter just took a look at me and said nonchalantly 'oh they knew that you weren't gonna make it so they put u on a later flight.' AHHH so cheated if i had checked beforehand i cld have just walked slowly. and the stupidest thing was that my gate was right where i came from, so i had to drag my feet all the way back. damn shag lah! felt so depressed at that moment.

now that i think of how weijie and the rest could actually tour san fran in that short span of a few hours, i really peifu them. i was so tired i just slid into a chair and slept like a mad woman. damn no xing xiang! to think that i could have toured houston. haha. it totally didn't cross my mind. maybe next time. anyway whenever i woke up i saw smartly dressed, nicely made up pretty girls next to me.. ahh damn paiseh.

pretty ceiling art at the terminal


bush!


take some more photos lah! miss flight then you know.

a while before my flight, i was sooo hungry that i bought this. i wasn't sure if the flight provided meals.. i ate it on the plane.. damn good.

and finally.. all my souvenirs! seattle and vancouver fridge magnets, canadian beaver and i dunno how on earth i ended up with the EMP ernie ball pick in my bag. i really didn't take it on purpose!!

so.. In Conclusion [dreaded words in GP essay, gp tcher said never ever write them cos the examiner is not stupid and he knows it is a conclusion], it was a new experience for me, got to know lots of fantastic pple.. had lots and lots of fun and everyone was cooperative and did their research well and all. only i slack and just go and leech off their plans. hehe. pple like 'miah were really inspiring! so amazing to see new things evryweek. activated my wanderlust! although i just burnt my previous weekend snoring in bed. but they are pretty inspiring lah, hopefully can get to travel together again!