101th Post

Whee, I just realised that the previous post on Room Service was my 100th Post. Haha 100 posts for 6 months! Which is 16 posts per month which is 4 posts per week. Huh I got blog so often meh siow.

Friday, November 17, 2006

So after the Cleveland Orchestra thing, we embarked on our 2nd-act-arty-trip to the Cleveland Art Museum to check out the Barcelona exhibit. It was Festive Friday and it was free for us, so it was a great way to check things out.

Upon registration we were given tags to wear, and we signed up for a guided tour an hour later. Then we walked around to check out the exhibits by Miro, Gaudi, Picasso, and Dali. Me being a history-archi-art-idiot didn't exactly get what was going on. But the exhibit was still very engaging, with little tidbits of information next to each art piece.

The timing was pretty perfect, since the tour did not allow us to read each caption properly, we already had about 1 hour to check out the pieces before the tour. The tour was cool, the tour guide explained the history behind barcelona and how it drove the art scene.

I enjoyed Miro's colourful paintings, and I've always been intrigued by Dali's surrealist nonsense. I learnt that Picasso had a blue and a rose period reflected in his paintings. But what I brought home with me from this trip was Gaudi's architecture.. Not that I've even travelled much at all, but I've never seen anything like this before. I love it! It's so totally quirky, nonsensical and lumpy but still beautiful. Once I set my eyes on his buildings, I knew I had to go to Barcelona. Well, someday. Soon enough I hope.

Gaudi's Casa Batllo


On our way there, squeezed 4 pple in the back to save on parking.


We stopped by East Coast Frozen Custard on the way back. Have always wanted to stop there but never really crossed my mine to go there deliberately.


My Caramel Turtle Pecan Cherry Custard! can't remember the flavour of the custard itself but basically it tasted like icecream lah. Don't know why it's always so crowded.

Room Service

Wow. It's already the end of November. Almost reaching the half way mark. Scary how a year can just fly pass. Just got back from my Seattle Vancouver thankskiing trip, it was a BLAST. Lemme clear some boliao posts before I go on to write about the trip.

Know what, the housekeeper always comes at the worst time.. when my room is at the peak of messiness [ok, actually she comes once a fortnight so i suppose it takes 2 weeks for my room to reach maximum messiness.] And it's so so embarrassing! I feel really bad cos the mess is like my own problem but she's so damn nice and always cleans up so nicely after me. You know, it's like your room gets messier by the day but u don't really have the time to stop and clean it, though u nag at urself evryday, and you KNOW that you will eventually clean it really nicely. Then the next day you come back from work and see everything damn clean. It just feels horrible to think that someone did YOUR work for you.

And yesterday was no exception. After reaching home from the airport at 5pm on Tuesday, I showered and slept promptly til the next day. And in order to retrieve my hairdryer from my luggage, my stuff were strewn all over the floor before I rushed out for work. And guess what? when I came home, everything was all nice and clean. =( Of all days she had to pick the day when my room was so horrendously gross. [Actually, she comes every 2 weeks on wednesday haha but I really didn't have the time to clean up b4 she came.]

As evidence of how much work she does, I shall put the after photos. She even put little white $1.99 containers around to store my junk. MY! I'm gonna leave the 'before' photos to your imagination. They're way too gross to be taken. Just imagine that you can't see the floor, that's how bad it is. Come to think of it, you know when you read those teenage fiction books and they mention how the kids' rooms are so strewn with clothes u can't see the floor? Maybe it's a flaw in their room design. Maybe they have way too little storage space, it's just an open spacious room with little cupboards/hooks to stow away stuff you normally use.

Haha, it is still pretty messy where all my junk is but it is already VERY MUCH NEATER than b4. She kinda pushed all my stuff to the side at least. This was my room 2 weeks back.

Ignore my bags of candy and check out how she organized my stuff into cute little white boxes.

Even the toiletries in the bathroom were neatly arranged! Yeah, I am freaking spoilt.

happy thanksgiving!

You know, everyone is in such a holiday mood today! The only pple left in the office that is. Hehee it kinda reminds me of the days before chinese new year where u just go to work but no one really is working. So the next 2 days are gonna be holidays for the employees. Sweet.

Ok, i'm gonna leave office!! Will be in seattle + vancouver from 23rd to 28th. Woohoo!

Seeya in Seattle! =)

3 times 3 times 3 goes

I found this in abercrombie and fitch. It's on sale summore. Cute right? 27 and orange! how coincidental can it get? But I haven't bought it cos.. firstly it doesn't say a&f anywhere on the outside so a bit bohua. and i can't see myself wearing it to maf or something and not feel paiseh. haha, wearing orange is silly enuf, but with 27 across the front? But nonetheless, i will consider it.. I think it's quite nice leh, even though toad insists its not orange. whatever.

the cleveland orchestra

Today is a super special day! It's the bday of 2 very important ladies in my life.. my mummy and dot! [2 separate pple lah!] I've been such a kok and it's not even 19th in spore anymore and I forgot to call. Oops. I'm sorr its late but, Happy Birthday Mummy and Happy Birthday Bestie!

Hmm. It's been a while. It's already November. Kinda scary how time flies isn't it. If you're wondering how I've been doing, yes I've been very fine indeed thank you very much. This weekend has been very relaxed, and I really appreciate having some time to unwind and just do nothing. Especially since I've been working doubly hard the previous week at work to clock more hours so that I can take off for my thanksskiing trip this wednesday!

You know, I'm starting to get headache at work.. Somewhere around noon, it starts. It's not like a real headache, but my head just feels kinda numb. I guess staring at tiny code all week isn't gonna do you too much good. Btw, I've gotten more used to the diluted coffee here. It's just not shiok at all but, oh well, I'm still a coffee person.

Anyway, other than training magiPaw, yday I slept the whole day til 8pm, woke up and started watching Queen's Classroom, courtesy of puji the ahem, pirate. Watched 9.5 episodes at a go, and only finished up the remaining 1.5 episodes today. haha. It's pretty interesting show, the kids are damn damn cute. I really LURVE her and her!! These picts in wiki hardly do them any justice. They look way too mature here. They are so super cute and innocent in the show. If they were my kids i'd just die from kawaii overdose. especially shida mirai's 'teehee' and cute pose. And fukuda mayuko is damn cool! she reminds me of the male lead in the qi2 ling2 wang2 manga. Super poised and cool and pretty. Ok i shall stop gushing over little kids. it is so not me right. =(

Monday, November 6, 2006

Greeting the week with a Laksa! This is my 2nd attempt and it's way better than the first. I realised it's cos of the coconut milk i used. The first time it was more like coconut juice [they all say coconut milk so i dunno] and I thought it would be correct since I bought it from an INDIAN shop ok. Too bad that one was really diluted! This time I bought one which had a picture of curry on it. HAHA. CONFIRM correct. And it really was a lot thicker than the first. Good stuff. I just need laksa leaves to complete the picture. Too bad no one knows what's the english name for laksa leaves. Do they exist purely for laksa? I have no idea.

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Just a normal day at work. I found a tube of Strawberry mentos in the office bookshop, so I thought I'd share my happiness with you guys. My lifelong search for pure strawberry mentos is over.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Andrian, kev and me went down to great lakes mall on thursday after work to check out erm, stuff. I bought a couple of hollister pants [19.90 each!] that I can wear to work! [have been wearing jeans to work. haha] although they aren't too formal, but that's the whole point, at least they are pants. I feel like buying more so that I can wear them in spore as well. hmm.

Anyway the point is, on thursday morning yl drove me to work cos she's learning howta drive. And since i went shopping w andrian, kev and me took andrian's car that night, leaving ours in the office. So we decided to meet up earlier the next morning so that andrian could pick us up. I told yl what time we were meeting and went to sleep.

Hmm the next morning, yl woke up late, she forgot about meeting earlier. So I offered to go down to ofc w andrian and kev [and zhangxi] first and bring back my car to fetch her. cos I didn't want andrian and kev to wait.

Haha, you must be wondering wat this story is about right. so long and draggy. i dun care i just wanna write it down to remind myself. so we reached office. and i approached my car. realised that i couldn't open the boot with the key to put my bag in. A bit panic already. Then tried to unlock the door. Cannot. I peered inside and my worst fears were realised.. The lights were left on the previous day. It's stupid of me but it didn't occur to me to open the door with my key manually hahaha. I just thought I cldn't open the door at all. HAHA. Oh well even if i opened it i wldn't be able to start the car right. anyway i think thats a really stupid design, having to switch ur lights on/off manually.

So.. I went up to office to borrow a car to go back and fetch her. Andrian lent me his mercury keys. haha his super high tech car, got seat warmer one damn cool. So I went back to fetch her. She was sleeping in the lobby so I got out of the car, went into the lobby to get her. well, so she apologised for making me come back for her.

She didn't seem to realise that it wasn't my car i was driving, so i brought up the subject..

'oh i'm driving andrian's car.'
*silence*
'oh, cos my car no battery from yesterday.'
*silence*
'oh, yesterday the lights were not switched off.'

i looked at her and she gave a smirk. i suppose it's supposed to be a guilty grin kind of thing. i don't know what kind of reaction that is.

'er, u mean u knew the lights weren't off?'
'no.. i didn't know.'

'Ok, it's gonna be damn mafan and i'll have to spend time calling hertz to come down to jumpstart and all that.'
*silence*

So anyway, i was damn lazy to call hertz. I seriously HATE doing such admin stuff. luckily kevin told me that george mentioned that the security at our office actually has a jumpstart kit! cool. He mentioned that need another car to jumpstart.. So I was pretty worried that there was no space for another car to jumpstart my car cos my car was sandwiched between other cars.

Turned out that the jumpstart kit is damn high tech, it can jumpstart the car by itself!

The nice security guy gave me instructions on how to use it. I was a bit paranoid really, and I almost couldn't find the battery haha. It's different from singapore cars leh, for spore cars the battery is white and obviously a battery with caps u can open to put the battery water in and stuff right. Here the battery is totally black without any words saying BATTERY on it! I just found the only part with a + and - and prayed hard it was the battery and that my car wouldn't blow up or something.

I learnt how to jumpstart a car!

Saturday, November 11, 2006

We decided to act artyfarty and attend a Cleveland Orchestra concert. Haha.. actually it was cos there was a $5 ticket for some family event! So we jumped at the chance. Cleveland Orchestra is some say, the best orchestra in US!! It's definitely one of the Big 5. So we were really really lucky to be able to attend it for $5 on November 11, 11am. Hee. So it's actually some event called 'Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra'.

The first part was with a Children's Choir. They only practised like, 5 x 2hours before the event! Well I have to admit I was disappointed with that section cos when they sang, I couldn't hear the orchestra at all. And I didn't know what they were singing so it was kinda boring. OHH, and to add to that, there were babies HOWLING in the concert. haiyoh, like fish market. I was really disgusted that this baby was making soo much noise during the first introduction, and yet the parent did not bring him out. He just brought him to the back of the hall [where i was seated damnit] where the baby continued howling. Damn irritating.

Well yeah so there were loads of little kids, and at least we managed to take photos haha many were doing it with flash. Even though I don't think it's normally allowed according to the website.

The 2nd part of the orchestra was the Young Person's Guide. It was pretty good for newcomers like us cos they introduced the woodwind instruments, brass, percussion, strings one by one, and played each of them in succession. There was also a narrator introducing it. I liked it. I realised that actually many of these concerts have stories behind them, and they don't merely play the music. For example there's one coming up in December where they will project many planets on a screen behind the orchestra. Sooomething like that, pretty cool.

I went earlier to retrieve our tickets. In front of Severance Hall! I was quite worried about dressing appropriately cos it's Severance Hall, leh. Orchestra leh. but i guess cos it was an afternoon event + family event so some pple were dressed in jeans and all and it was quite ok. I actually took some time to think about what to wear. Haha.. Settled for flowy girly + gek seh shirt. Just didn't wanna wear jeans, even though yes i know that's not formal at all. At least 2 pple complimented my skirt, sathya and some stranger in toilet in cracker barrel. hahaha.

Inside.. very grand!

Even the vents were flower shaped, damn pretty.

A pity we could only see the strings, leading my untrained ear to think that they were playing most of the sound.

It's pretty cool to play the harp huh. Learnt that there are 40+ foot pedals [how to control?!]

Cool retro lift mechanism. It actually works!

She had to help us with it cos I have no idea how it works.

Haha, cute anot. Make them sit there cos we wanted to save parking costs. keke. Ford escape! Can fit many many peepur!

Drove by this interesting building in the CASE university business school compound.

We took this many times haha think ameek was sick of it but she just entertained me

We had dinner at Cracker Barrel. EVERYone loved it. Thanks to george who introed us to it!

I had to force myself not to order the lemon pepper grilled trout which I had the last time. I really should have stuck with that. The steak was just so-so. I lurve the carrots though. best carrots i ever had, damn sweet and cinnamonish.

Ohohoh and I bought this burtbee's starters kit at the Cracker Barrel Shop! Damn cute lah got beeswax lipbalm, hand salve, lemon butter cuticle creme [smells damn good and lemony], milk & honey body lotion, orange essence facial cleanser, coconut foot creme, wild lettuce toner [haha smells funny though], wild lettuce complexion soap, garden carrot complexion soap, lemon poppy seed facial cleanser and citrus facial scrub! good buy anot? and comes in a cute little package! roommate also bought one.. haha great minds.

And some gummies to end the day. Sweet.

Pittsburgh day trip

Saturday, November 4, 2006

We woke up early in the morning for our trip down to our neighbouring state, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh is only about 2.5 hours' drive away from where we are, so we went down to zou zou.

Warning: lots of cam whoring ahead, skip next few photos if you cannot take it..

Haha, hope I didn't scare you too much. Please don't run away! I was bored on the journey there la..

South Side

This is a little neighbourhood which has lots of quaint little shops, pubs and cafes. It was pretty dead in the morning when we reached, but at night we saw lots of pub crawlers around. There were many shops selling really interesting things like wigs, and vintage fashion. That's another word for old old stuff.

After dropping zhang xi at his friend's place, we actually came here by accident, cos the google maps address for the Cathedral of Learning was screwed up and brought us here. So we decided to have lunch + toilet break here anyway.

We stopped by Quizno's for brunch. I love subway really and there are tv ads saying that Quizno is a lot more meaty, they use real meat blahblahblah and you should take the Quizno challenge somethingsomething.. Haha so I thought we should try it out. JY was laughing at me for falling for marketing gimmicks. Well, apparently only one of the subs were more meaty [the one advertised].. the rest were pretty normal. I actually like subway for the veg, so even if it's less meat I still support my subway. I found the lil trays very cool though, they were Q shaped and the little tail at the bottom served as the handle [or so i thought]. That's my bourbon chicken sub.

Next we were off to find the Cathedral of Learning. Some sights along the way..

Old and new.

Allegheny County Soldiers Memorial

Cathedral Of Learning

We finally reached the Cathedral of Learning. This is part of University of Pittsburgh, and it's really beautiful! There are 26 Nationality Classrooms in the 1st and 3rd floors, each decorated according to different nationalities.

I wonder why they call themselves Pitt. Doesn't exactly sound very glamourous. We paid for an hour's parking and wandered in..

My first thought was, so harry potter! My.. I was so amazed at how it's actually being used for studying! People are sitting around and reading.. You know, it's so hard to imagine that this beautiful cathedral is used daily for something as mundane as lectures and tutorials. Or sitting around to study. I even got a shock when I saw someone using a laptop. Haha I know it's absolutely normal but I half expect the place to have no electricity and technology.. and for people to use candlelights and magic wands.. Maybe fly around on broomsticks. heehee. you know what I mean? Damn cool place to study lah.

See? people are ACTUALLY STUDYING!

They even have cool chairs for you to pose with. haa.

It's like a castle! This is on the 3rd floor where the free and open classrooms are. There's a charge of what, $3 to get an audio guide and keys to all the classrooms but we were kinda blur and didn't get that. Turned out that we could only access the few classrooms on the 3rd floor and not all of them.

The first classroom we went to..

The Ukrainian Room

Can't help noticing that the door is shaped like a coffin. =p

Israel Heritage Classroom

Love the cool blackboards and how they placed chalk and dusters so that we could play around with them.

A replica of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

This door is like a bar of chocolate! i'm becoming like my roommate who associates everything with chocs. =p

Kinda spooky actually.

This lonely classbench reminds me of the class benches at the top floor of EA block in NUS Engin. haha. Just about 2000 times prettier.

African Heritage Classroom

boooring.

Early American Room

Too bad it was locked.. Didn't look like there was much in there anyway.

The Indian Room

Ameek must have felt right at home here.

Wait.. and what's this? The first thing that came to my head was an asylum.. look at the padded doors!

Turned out that it is an LT!! Wah damn cool to have lectures here. There was a large painting on the right wall.

The Armenian Classroom

The Japanese Room

This place totally reminded me of lingxin and his japanese architecture craze.

I thought this was a really gross way of learning human anatomy.

Spot the difference. I think puji copy me ah..

The Austrian Room.

This is definitely the prettiest room we went to. Sparkly chandeliers with shiny red silk chairs, complete with ceiling art.. How to study in a room like that?

I really very fat hor.

On the way out of the place..

Retro sign on the revolving door

Ain't it majestic?

A garden opposite the cathedral where we parked our car.

diplodocus wearing a scarf

You know, the dinosaur led me to assume that the building behind it was the Museum of Natural History. On closer inspection I saw names like Dvorak on the walls.. wait a minute..

It's actually the Carnegie Music Hall. ha.ha.

There wasn't really much to see, so we hopped back into the car and drove around..

Turned out the Museum of Natural History was right next to the Carnegie Music Hall. I think it's supposed to be famous for its dino collection? Anyways, we didn't go in. and it had a freaking ugly fish outside it. There was also a freaking ugly elephant on its side, won't bother putting it up.

On the way to the science center.

Heinz Field. Home of the Pittsburgh Steelers.. not exactly clevelanders' friends.

The field was right beside the Carnegie Science Center. We were planning to pay to go in, but there was this learning exhibit at the lobby, which was pretty fun and we spent some time there.. Ended up not paying a cent for some fun!

The following wall is made of some material which can absorb/emit light [sooomething like that]! What happens is you can pose against it while a light shines on you for a while, then when the light goes off you run away and you'll see your shadow remaining on the wall!

Not only the adorable kids had lots of fun with it.. we also had a ball of a time making silly shadows and running away.. hahah!!

Infra red camera.. thats me and puji.

We were happily snapping pictures at this when we saw lil cartoon characters dropping down the screen.. Didn't realise what it was until jy found out that we were supposed to 'catch' the characters! Had a fun time dancing about trying to catch the falling characters with our heads, limbs.. And looking like complete idiots as usual.

A group of kids later ran up, upon seeing how much fun we were having. They started dancing around as well, but haha they didn't realise that it was a mixed reality game.. and were just dancing about. Oh well.. I think they really should have used a better screen, and put some instructions there. It would have been a lot more fun!

There you go. Carnegie Science Center. Us cheapos happily left the place after playing around with the free (i think) exhibits. Next we walked along the river to take loads and loads of photos. Free and entertaining activity. i like.

The photographer not bad, even carry handbag for the model.

Very indian pose by the river. Can imagine ameek washing her long long hair in the river? Heehee.

Ok, this time i'm not just acting cute with the 'ok sign'. You know, I try to link with wikipedia and all that, in the hopes that you guys can learn a little bit about the places that I go to. Well the interesting thing about pittsburgh, is that it's where 3 rivers meet!! At exactly the point behind us. That's why the pose.. THREE rivers, the Ohio, Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers.

wtf is jy doing

Behind me, the Monongahela inclines. Basically it's a lil carriage that takes you up to the top of Mount Washington. [which isn't really much of a mountain huh.]

We passed by Station Square on our way to the Duquesne Incline [just another incline which is supposed to be better]. Station Square kinda reminds me of Clarke Quay, nice place to chill out at night, even has Hooters.

bottom of the Monongahela incline.

The silly address we had was that of the top of the Duquesne incline. HOW SMART. Which means we didn't even have to take it, but oh ok we decided to try for the sake of it since we came all the way here.

Breathtaking view of Downtown Pittsburgh. The area around the fountain is Point State Park, which we couldn't access cos of expensive parking in the area.

That's Heinz Field and Carnegie Science Center, where we were moments ago.

powerful zoom!

The Duquesne Incline

eeyer, smile until so ugly

Yup, we decided to take it down, and back up. Kinda defeats the purpose but what the heck.

Anyway, the whole Mount WAshington thing really reminds me of Hongkong's Victoria's Peak! Nice restaurants on the top.. and the inclines. Well at least the inclines were more comfortable and NOT slanted.. and doesn't make u go backwards on the way down. hahaha.

Like cable cars, it's kinda scary to actually look at the track. Cos then you realise how old it is and you start to scrutinise the wooden bars for signs of mould and you also realise that all that's holding the whole carriage of passengers is one cable... *shudder* let's just say I was pretty relieved when we reached the bottom. And the top on the return trip.

This statue was a few blocks away from the duquesne incline. You know, it's kinda familiar, I thought I'd seen it somewhere before.. dunno leh. Maybe i've been seeing too many statues lately.

The sun setting, and it was only 4+. It's a pretty sucky time to go on tours cos the days are so short and you don't get your money's worth.

Haha.. puji asked jy not to sit [i dunno why], resulting in this uncomfortable half squat pose.

Next it was time to go source for dinner! Restaurants on Mount WAshington were pretty expensive, but the view was superb and it's damn romantic! We went downtown in search of cheap food.

We decided on a very original and creative choice of..

Mac Dee! My quarter pounder with cheese sucked big time. It tasted like a $1 hamburger. Boo.

Running out of places to go to, we went back up on Mount Washington after dinner. Haha.. time to test out his camera's nightshot capabilities.

sorry puji, your camera is damn good cool but your photoshop skills cannot make it! We look like zombies lah.

Outside PNC park.

Next we drove around aimlessly with the advice of GPS, to south side again, strip district [i think. nothing much there] and PNC park, which we realised is a baseball stadium..

Well, Pittsburgh was definitely the most fun day trip I've taken. It's so much more happening a city than Cleveland. Then again, every city is more happening than Cleveland. We had a good laugh at puji's jokes and secret [wink wink] on the way back.

And before I go back to maplestory [jipangu map! daaaamn cute!] I shall leave you with this pretty paranomic picture of Pittsburgh.. Enjoy!