2008-01-10 - 5:31 p.m.
hello!
this should be a quick entry cos i haven't unpacked. and i am itchy and sleepy.
i was looking through me and liping's photos (henceforth known as L cos i am slothful and do not feel like typing or moving much) and felt vvvvv lazy to post anything up. so i think i will be blogging very little about my trip unless i miraculously feel diligent.
we started off in tokyo and are now eternally traumatized by suitcases. i had a 27kg suitcase, not including my carry-on and my laptop which means i was lugging around more than half of my weight from the airport onto the narita express (some bullet train that gets you from the suburby airport to the heart of tokyo), and then a couple of miles (two? three?) from the nearest subway station to our residence (shinagawa cosmopolis, i think). i cannot even begin to describe how traumatizing it was... anyway it scarred both of us eternally and we refused to carry our luggages to vegas and newyork.
okay the question is - why didn't we take a cab? we were scared by my friend's estimate of 200 bucks for a cab ride to our place.... in the end it turned out to be like 20-30 bucks which was definitely reasonable for the pain that we went through. how did we find out? we took a cab to the station on our last day. and because the cab ride was (thought to be) so expensive, we took a gazillion pictures on the cab.
this is one of them hahaha.
i wish i could show you a picture of shibuya/shinjuku/harajuku but i'm lazy to scour through our pictures.
okay here's one of me being let loose into shibuya! everything's expensive though but japanese people are so well-dressed that you wouldn't know that dressing well is SO expensive. so paradoxical huh. shopping in america was affordable and there were so many low-cost options but americans tend to dress sloppier. so is this a case of consumerism passing its peak? i remember a quote from the joy luck club which was quite cryptic. something about how the american way offers too many choices and basically mindfucks people... okay i am such a dork. this is shibuya!
here is a cute picture of L at a crepe store which are all over harajuku. my crepe was strawberry cheese. superrrrr yummy.
we then headed on a plane (we took 11 flights the entire trip) to LA, where we took another plane to San Francisco.
that's us on the golden gate bridge. it was freezing but the view was nice. and you could see alcatrez from the bridge. it looked really lonesome to me though, enshrouded in mist. it's the stuff of morose poetry i guess.
highlight of the trip - we watched our first NBA game and it had the Lakers!! and we saw Kobe Bryant who is basically the unstopppppabbble danger. okay i shouldn't make fun of Britney but i just realized that she is pretty much an unstoppable danger to herself too. errrrr okay anyway it was an extremely exciting game from the third quarter onwards, and both sides were fighting point-by-point.
okay i don't know much about basketball but it was fun to watch and it was soo exciting when the golden state warriors kicked some lakers ass. cos the GSW were on home ground, the crowd went wilddddddd. the guys were saying that that was the first time GSW beat the lakers in 11 years so obviously, we were the lucky charms hahaha. but basketball games are cute. they're extremely spontaneous, they have cheerleaders wearing very skimpy stuff even though it's freeeezing, they have funnny and retarded games for audiences to participate in and they have marriage proposals too. yeppp.
us turning into fairweather goldenstatewarrior fans. haha. okay to be fair, it was just me and L, the boys are pretty hardcore... okay maybe it was just me cos i only knew Kobe at the beginning.
we went snowboarding at Lake Tahoe too. and froze our assesss off. i know i'll keep saying it's freezing but it was and i can't get used to the heat here. am sitting right in front of a fan. it was extremely fun but super duper exhausting. our instructor, CJ who has exactly one day of experience more than the rest of us hahahah saved me from breaking my neck an infinite number of times. i will post up a picture of his chick-magnet convertible sometime.
geeze i'm really becoming a boring blogger. errr anyway pictured above is the snowboarding bunch. CJ our instuctor, me, L, sunny and jay stiller. we call jay stiller jay stiller because he looks like an indian version of ben stiller. hahah it was so hilarious being around him cos he is so grandfatherly and retarded at the same time. his face went PURPLE while we were snowboarding and guys being guys, didn't even notice until we (the girls) met up with them. so we were like: JAY!! why is your face purple?!??!?! and the guys are like: oh yea, we didn't notice huh... yea it's really purple. and there's no mirror so Jay has to live with knowing that his face is purple.
this is one of those old school trains that we took at fisherman's wharf.. which resulted in my being late to meet elise cos the train broke down and a tractor came to push it up. haha. we had a bunch of kids on the train and they were all cheering when the tractor thing came. SO CUTE.
okay we went to stay with jo in berkeley. and her room was so neat it was unbelievable. check it out.
nope it's not a store-room, it's the place which jo inhabits! hahahahaha. i was obviously very pleased by the condition of her neat room. there were moments when we stood there staring at each other cos there was no space to move hurhur.
we also did laundry and decided to camwhore a bit.
check out my urban outfitters tights!! vvvvvv cute. LOOOVE. we are big fans of urban outfitters. think me and L checked out every store we found. me being a huge dork bought a book at one of the stores too. and the title is geek love but it is a spoooky book about a freak circus. i was so scared while reading it i decided to ship it home hahahah. so that it will no longer inhabit space in my luggage. yep i am a genius.
we also went to the largest forever 21 ever in pasadena with queenie. errr here i am brooding over what to purchase.
okay i don't have much to say about LA even though we went to universal studios and disneyland. i don't want to bore you with too many touristy photos except that disneyland had insanely long queues (like 2/3 hours at every ride) and had the most incredible churros in the world. universal had many fun characters walking around and we went there with yangfeng and sunny so that was quite fun too. for christmas, we spent it smoking shisha at a turkish place and eating kebabs. was so hungry i devoured like the entire plate of chicken and lamb and beef hahah.
i am getting bored of my own entry so i'm going to accelerate. okay then we went to vegas which was one hell of a party... it is truly the party place of the world. we went to the original pure where paris and nicky hilton party. someone said that they were there the same night which we were but i was too smashed to know. i am permanently off champagne.
here is one of the hot waitresses at the bank @ bellagio. las vegas is populated by beautiful people... and all the waitresses at the bank and pure were like sizzzzzling hot. big boobs, amazing ass... just pure sexiness even though i have to say it was a bit in your face. and it got stale after a while but all the waitresses were nice to me. this particular one in the photo cooed to me "you're such a pretty sweeeeetie" and told me i have the cutest dress so i <3 her even though her boobs are 20x of mine. yess i was the most wholesomelooking thing in vegas next to L haha.
oh she was holding a bottle of champagne with one of those fire sparklers on the other end.
we kidnapped an old lady and made her take photos with us. hahaha
r and i at pure. a relatively sedate picture.
this is us at the bellagio where i bravely wore no tights for the only time during the trip. and froze my ass off. my mom says my ass got smaller, i think it seriously froze and diminished. errr oh yea this is also the pout which i used for my stupidfacepose throughout the trip. it is indeed stupid, non?
we watched three shows in vegas and obviously, the beyonce was the BEST for me. we also watched cirque du soleil (which was homo-erotic and strange with a french obsession with snails?) and ultimate fighters' club. i think. UFC, with chuck liddell. errr we were kinda bored. the beyonce show was INSANE though and i am sooo happy i watched it especially since yesterday's papers just wrote that she is skipping SG for her concert again. beyonce is an incredddible performer, she sings like her lungs are the only organ in her body. her musical range is insane!!!! okay her hair was bad though, it was very diana-ross but nothing i say can do her performing justice. she did songs from her destiny child's days, and she did newer stuff like upgrade you and ahhhhhhhhh what can i say. life is good when you have watched beyonce in concert!! hahaha. okay i've also seen christina aguilera live, and i have to say that beyonce is without a doubt, a vocal powerhouse. christina is amazing too, but i think people often forget how powerful beyonce's voice is. and her amazing vocal range. the boys wouldn't stop dissing her ginormous thighs though. RAWR.
okay so how fun was new year's eve in vegas?
we got all dressed up and went for some atas, boring ball-shit.
hahah i think that picture is funny. it's like nobody wants to take the photo.
L went crazzyyy from boredom hahah.
the fun part was wayy after that. we went crazy from beer-binging, and there was mooolah to be earned for defeating your oponents. yup so the trick is to suck like crazy... and i was very bad at it. i lost to every opponent i met hahahahah. but i didn't KO! our host was crazyy though, he got 300 bottles of beer for the bunch of us haha. talk about revelry.
party people!
and L also took the cutest picture of ed ever during the party. hahah. i think the picture is adorableee.
okay i really loved vegas cos it's basically like a combination of the things i like to do - party and eat. we basically partied like crazy, slept and then ordered shitload of room service haha.
but i also love newyork because there's so much culture and it's just bustling with life and things to do. and i think newyorkers, contrary to what everyone says, are really friendly. okay we went into the creepy parts.. like we zoomed into the heart of harlme after dark and it was really creepy but other than newyork was just so fascinating and full of life. i am definitely going back there. and i definitely wanna check out broadway and look at the museums again.
okay this painting made my day.
people were queueing to stare at it so when it came to my turn, i made sure i stared at it for ever. it totalllllly made my US$500 bucks to newyork worth it. wow, i can't even begin to describe how awesome the museums were. all the AEP people are going to hate me but it's like i saw all the paintings we saw and admired in class in person. you can check out each and every brushstroke, it just felt so inspiring. i felt vvvvv inspired to go back to painting after visiting the museums.
we went to the metropolitan museum of art where there was a KICKASS egyptian exhibition with mummy tombs and stuff. this huge exhibit was quite gorgeous though, and the security guard insisted on taking a photo for me. hahah turned out not too good tho.
but that's what i like about america. people are super friendly and spontaneous and just generally curious in a nice way. i didn't meet any spooky people except the occasional leery "ni hao ma" and this guy whom i thought was really nice and kind cos he pushed open this crazyheavy door i was struggling with but then he smiled and said "nice ass" and i felt vvv compelled to run away. okay other than that, everyone was ultra friendly and the sales people were so nice. when i was in SoHo in some shop, they started playing Paula DeAnda's Easy and I was bouncing a bit, and this salesman was next to me. i think he was gay, but he noticed me bouncing and he was like "girlfriend, you like this too? MAN i love it!" and he started like jigging with me in the middle of the shop hahahahah.
we also went in search of the world's best cupcakes at the famous magnolia bakery, immortalized in sex and the city. yummmm. they are SEXXXXXXX in the city mannn.
i wish we bought more but L was on the verge of puking cos we ate so much shizz that day. we also went to peanut butter & co, one of elvis' favourite places apparently and i had the elvis! which was good. peanut butter and jelly and bananas yumyum. newyork has greattt food.
we took a ferry to see the statue of liberty.. which was not that awesome. okay maybe we were not close enough. the view was pretty nice tho.
i'm too lazy to scour for pictures from newyork because newyork really deserves its own blog posts, so i will leave you with a really paranomic view of the manhattan sky from brooklyn bridge at sunset.
this picture is going to make me miss new york every time i see it.
