MEGA UPDATE

Heya guys!sorry for the very very belated update. I was tied up with several things and numerous tests/assignments etc. And the worst thing about this blog is that you can't set the entry date to a date other than the one you posted the entry so everything is going to come in one chunk. I'll give date intervals to aid your reading process though!!=PP

FEBRUARY

Can’t really remember much about it except that on vday, Kelvin (this Singaporean guy) rented a mini van and drove 7 of us to Raleigh, a nearby city, for dinner at a smoke house. The ambience was really nice and there were obviously a great number of couples celebrating V-day. We had pork ribs, seafood, wine and very nice desserts. Yumyum! Raleigh wasn’t very good to explore at night. It’s just a more populated, bigger city than Durham (where Duke is in) and the buildings are still, disappointingly not more than 5 stories high. So for the second time in my life, I got roses for V-day from the house council, chocolate strawberries from Shawn ah-pek plus a pendant and card from..,haha don’t tell you.

MARCH

It was a real busy month for me. We had midterms, then spring break, room picks then some BOLIAO stuff.

Midterms:enuff said. As usual, doing dismally for Econ and did decently for Public Policy.
Springbreak…Princeton and NYC
Somehow I couldn’t believe that YQ agreed to go with me. He had already been to NYC last Dec yet he was keen to visit the city again. When I asked him, he said something about watching more Broadway shows, exploring new places and going to Princeton. OK whatever, I got a military-trained body guard cum tourist guide throughout my trip.
The 10h greyhound bus ride was really tiring. We spent the whole time sleeping zzzzz. Then we reached Philadelphia. Didn’t really get to see much of the city though, just saw a lot of red brick…not a pretty city indeed. From a subway station we took the metro to New Jersey and transferred to the NJ Transit to Princeton.

Day One:

At the train station

Hanjiang was waiting for us at the dinky station. It was great seeing her again after more than half a year. We then had a mini tour of the college campus. Hanjiang’s dorm is really nice and new. She shares a suite with 3 other people. Princeton’s campus architecture is gothic-similar to that of Duke’s. It’s probably that Duke copied off Princeton hehehe.

Princeton Residence Halls - Do these look like Duke's Main Quad on West?

We strolled down Eating Club Street, a street full of guess what? Eating clubs! They are houses where upperclassmen become members and have their meals there. During lunch at the dining hall (which was pretty decent), we got to meet Hanjiang’s Romanian friend Ana. Ana then took us to see a belly dance. Apparently YQ dozed off during the dance and I was trying hard not to doze off. It was interesting but I guess we were tired out from traveling. Later that night, we met up with Eric and strolled around Nassau St to this Taiwanese place to get dinner (thanks for the treat Hoonie!) and then ate in the commons area in Hanjiang’s dorm. Oh yah, that night was the Duke vs UNC basketball game. Duke won!!yay! Benches were burnt…The bad part was that I fell asleep during the game.=(
That night I slept on the comfy couch in Hanjiang’s suite and YQ surprisingly chose to sleep in the TV room down in the basement. Ee yer…like homeless person. Hanjiang and Eric kept having to check on him to make sure that he hadn’t suffocated in his sleep.

Day Two:
YQ and I set off early for NYC! Aiyah we’re actually never early for anything cuz YQ has a tendency to oversleep and take ages to bathe!
It was a pretty slack day actually. We took a bus down to UN building. It was a Sunday but we got lucky! The flags outside the UN building were all up (usually they’re taken down during wkends) because this company was shooting a movie inside the building. We had a tour of the UN building by a guide who was an exotic mix of Tanzanian and Swedish (hmmm her eyes are blue!).

In front of UN headquarters

I got a glimpse of Times Square in the day. It’s an equivalent of Orchard Road, except the posters are more vivid and bigger and the lights are brighter (at night). There’s this really unique building that looks like a handphone. Yay, I saw buildings more than 3 stories high…what a relief!
Then we went to satisfy YQ’s desire to see the Air and Space Museum. It’s pretty cool actually cuz the museum is in a retired Naval Aircraft Carrier (can’t remember the name, it’s a humongous ship). There were, as usual, various aircraft in the ship and on the deck of the ship. Since I harboured a similar fascination for aircraft and the like, I didn’t really mind spending nearly 3 h there. We even queued for half an hour to see the inside of a submarine. Eeks, I’d never wanna live on a submarine. There is such a big space-constraint issue that the hallways are narrow and each room is like a cubicle.

on RSS Intrepid

It was 4pm and we still had about 2.5h so we made our way to the Empire State Building. Wah, the queue is forever so long. It took us 30 min to queue for tickets and a subsequent 30 min to get up the lift onto the 80th floor then the 84th floor. The scenery was breathtaking though, and it was worth our while queuing for so long cuz we saw the sunset! Brrrrr…it was very cold with the wind beating relentlessly upon my face. I spent most of my time hopping around trying to generate body heat while YQ, oblivious to the cold, was taking shots of in various directions of the skyline of NYC.

NYC from Empire State Building

After Empire State, we rushed down to 52nd Street to get our Broadway tickets for Hairspray but it wasn’t showing on Sundays so we watched “Little Shop of Horrors” at the theatre opposite. It’s about this guy who keeps a carnivorous plant that has an affinity to blood. It eventually swallows his employer, his girlfriend and himself. The problem is that the show was done in a very humourous manner and I found myself laughing at the most gory scenes of the plant chewing the man up. I must admit, the plant is very cute and it moves, thanks to the brilliant puppeteers. YQ found the show disturbing…he said that it was bizarre and conveyed a hidden message.Hmmm? Swee San doesn’t really think so deep into these stuff one. Funny then laugh lor, think so much for what. HAHA

Little Shop of Horrors

I dunno how I could stand not eating dinner till 10pm. We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant on times square called Ollies. It served pretty decent Wanton Mee and Char Siew Rice. Yummy! Penny (fellow Dukie HK person) called. She was visiting her bf in Manhattan Sch of Music and we arranged to meet up with her at Columbia the next day.

Down Times Square

Oh yar…let me complain about the NY subway system. Yes, it’s extensive but it’s so dirty/smelly. The homeless often live there and the subway system is over a hundred years old. Why can’t they spend a bit of money to restore it?

Day Three:
Ugh!Woke up super early at 7am.=( Then took the usual 1h train ride to NYC.
We first dropped by the Natural History Museum. It kinda reminded me of the one in Washington DC…relatively similar exhibits except that this museum does not house the Hope Diamond (eyes light up). YQ and I spent most of our time looking at the gems and the astronomy exhibits. I found the latter exhibit rather boring. It’s not that I’m not interested in astronomy. Although it was creatively presented in terms of a spiral downward path where one step equals 100million years, I seriously felt like sleeping while walking down the steps. We also stopped by the Dinosaur exhibits, something that the Washington DC museum didn’t have.

Swee San and Trex

Then we met up for lunch with Penny and her bf at a café outside Columbia University. We had a great time chatting about college life and comparing life in NY with life in Durham. Her bf was so nice as to give us a treat. I really felt so bad you know. We got a glimpse of Manhattan School of Music. It’s really small- just one building. After all it’s a music school and not many students are enrolled in it.
Columbia University: It’s a relatively small campus but hey, almost every building is nine stories high. So if you cut each building into 3 the campus might just be the same size as Duke. It’s a nice place to visit and I would definitely consider going to Columbia University for my summer school. Why not school in a place with NYC at my doorstep?

In front of U of Columbia

That night, we dropped by Little Italy and Chinatown. We had dinner in Chinatown….one of those roast pork, roast duck places again. Where’s the char kway teow? I also bought some nice tidbits from a grocery store. Everything seems to be cheap in Chinatown…

Day Four:
We visited Brooklyn Bridge. It’s this immense structure that’s built in the 19th century across a river to link Brooklyn to NYC. YQ, being an engineer, was extremely fascinated by the structure of the bridge. I could almost see into his mind that was calculating the stress and strain on each hinge of the bridge. The bridge was pretty cool actually because the pedestrian walkway is above the road for vehicles. We had a good glimpse of the central area of NY and Southern Seaport in the day.

Brooklyn bridge

As I desperately needed the toilet, I had to go into this ancient skyscraper building and subject myself to ID and bag checks. The nearest toilet was on the THIRD floor. OMG… I didn’t know they never renovated the inside of their old buildings. This building is apparently the building for public services or something. Got office for Plumbing, waterworks etc. The floor was still mosaic floor and the inside of the 3rd floor was extremely dark and a bit sketchy.-_-

Ground zero

We passed ground zero. It’s just this flat piece of land now where construction was going on. Some old buildings nearby had obviously been affected and were being restored. We also looked at exhibits for the future WTC + its memorial in One, Financial Center (my dream workplace). Very poignant, very grand. One, Financial Center was in stark contrast to the poverty and dirtyness of the subway system.Sigh.

NY Stock Exchange

YAYYyyyyyyyy!!!! We visited Wall Street….my future workplace! I really wanna work there but just for a short while. This place has a severe lack of trees and all other form of greenery. It’s just a concrete jungle. Now I know why people get so stressed and commit suicide.

Down Wall St

Subsequently, we ventured to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal to catch a ferry ride to Staten Island that would take us past the Statue of Liberty. Too bad the island where the statue was on was closed if not I’d have taken the ferry there instead. Finally saw the statue…it’s green…didn’t know that!

Statue of Liberty

Rush rush rushed back to Times Square, 52nd Street to get our names in the lottery for Hairspray (the Broadway show) at 3.30pm. Then we sat down at Starbucks to while away our time till 4.30pm. I was lucky manz, my name was called 2nd and we were given two tickets at severely discounted prices. We then went to stroll around Times Square. However, YQ suddenly couldn’t find his bag at Toys R Us and was relieved to find it in Starbucks. He made me walk 14 Streets just to retrieve it…Owwwww my legs! Because of this, we didn’t really have much time and sorta rushed our dinner again at Ollies.

Toys R Us Ferris Wheel

Hairspray was very good. I didn’t even know that the girl acting as a 14 year old kid was actually 24. Everything was so well co-ordinated and they made a lot of fun of romance in the show. The story was about how this plump girl becomes a star on TV and finds new love.
At 10pm, I requested that YQ bring me to Rockerfeller Center. It had a nice iceskating rink there. If only I had skates. We also walked down Diamond district (obviously closed at this hour) and 5th Ave, with its really exclusive stores.

Rockerfeller Square


Day Five:
This time we started the day ultra early by waking up at 530am…*yawnz*
We visited the Metropolitan Museum. It was huge so we only had time to see the Egyptian, Medieval Battle (yes YQ’s idea), Musical instruments and Modern art exhibits. I really liked the musical instruments exhibits because they had so many harpsichords on display. If only I could touch them! Obviously, YQ was very into the armor and the various guns that were displayed. We were wondering why there were some rifles that were longer than he was tall. HAHA. At the Modern Art exhibit, we saw this artist sketching one of the displays. We also got to see a lot of impressionistic and modernistic art. An art piece can be anything actually, as long as there is some meaning behind it. I mean, there were some paintings that were just differently coloured squares and circles. Oh well… blame me for not being able to appreciate art!

Outside Metropolitan Museum


Then we ventured to Central Park. It’s such a huge park and there are more squirrels than trees. From the top of the castle, I saw most of the park and I think it’s a really nice recreational place.

View of Central Park from castle

Serendipity Café was our next stop. It was where the actors shot Serendipity. This place has an extremely unique ambience because the décor consists of antique stuff (not those old eerie antiques but old stuff that people might throw away even if it looked decent). It’s famous for its frozen hot chocolate that both YQ and I agree that we could make it by ourselves with an iceblender. Too bad there has been a patent filed on it! Lunch was expensive but well worth the ambience.
That night, we dropped by NYU (ugly city university), where YQ happily bought a school flag for his growing collection. Before that, we spent an obscene amount of time at Strand (bookstore with 8 miles long of books) because there were books outside that were going for $1. Both of us were suckers for good deals and pounced immediately. Heard that YQ saw Jiayu inside Strand. What a coincidence…and the world must be very small. Then YQ patiently accompanied me into this store full of ladies clothes and promptly started pointing out stuff that he thought looked nice. Errrmmmm… he likes those frilly skirts that look office-wearish. I do appreciate his patience though in walking with me all around the shop. Even my Dad wouldn’t have bothered!
Later, we dropped by Greenwich village (not much) and Soho. Soho is full of art museum and exclusive fashion stores. Somehow YQ and I couldn’t see eye to eye about fashion. I thought this dress on display was rather lau pok (old fashioned) but he thought that it was NICE. NICE?!!! Then we walked to Tribeca but there was nothing special to see about the architecture.
Rushed back to Penn Station to catch our train back to Princeton. Had pathetic dinner of salad on the train because there was no other time to eat.
Since we didn’t see Hanjiang in the dorm, we decided to go to Mary Dodge building by ourselves for free tea and cookies. Apparently Hanjiang and Ana were waiting for us in Hanjiang’s room so they were really surprised to see us having tea! They were like “Trust you both to beat us to it! Shanghai ren (personal joke)!” It was really funny. I played the piano though I must say I’m really out of touch with it.
We also, last minutely booked tickets for our Chinatown bus ride to Boston. It only cost $20 per person for a round trip.

Day Six:
Bloody NJ transit train was LATE! We missed the 830am bus to Boston but the shopowner was so nice as to change our ticket to the 930am bus. We had breakfast at a bakery and I got to buy lots of nice buns and sesame balls.
The bus ride was real long (4h). Too bad we didn’t get seats together and the ride seemed to take eternity. On arriving at Boston, two groggy people (we) got out and slowly found our way to the T (metro) station.

@ MIT

We headed on to MIT, then Harvard. MIT campus is quite ugly but the main building is really grand and has this dome shaped roof.

Outside the gates of Harvard


The Harvard campus is pretty and the college town has really good shopping.
At Boston Commons (sth like the city centre) there was a protest. The crowds had formed two sides, one against and one pro homosexuality. It was real amusing hearing them chant against each other.
Protest outside the Boston Commons

There was also this guy holding a sign saying Adam and Eve, not Adam and STEVE. OK we’ve got your point!

Adam and Eve not....

What I liked most about the trip was the Boston trail. It’s this historical trail that leads you to all the historic sites of Boston. The really special thing about it is the route of the trail is marked out by a red line on the pavement so you won’t lose your way. I wished we had more time to explore Boston! I felt bad to have slowed YQ down because my ankle pain acted up and we only did half of the trail. The stupid bus was late by an hour. We stood in the cold wind like idiots and that got YQ very worked up. He scolded the person in charge but not like it made any difference.
Luckily, we made it back on time to catch the last dinky back to Princeton. What a relief! It was the most tiring day although we spent most of it sleeping on the bus!

Day Seven:
I wanted to have breakfast with Hoon but somehow my handphone alarm clock was put on snooze by goodness knows who! So, YQ and I toured Princeton and took photographs of the place. It was a nice day for photo-taking. This day was also Hoon’s last day of exams. She, Ana and Eric had arranged to come with us to NYC for the night but Ana couldn’t make it=(.

Swee San under the Princeton Arch



Graduation Gates of Princeton: Don't walk thru them before graduation or you may never graduate!


We set off pretty late at 3pm. Promptly missed the dinky because the queue for tickets was too long…UGH! I was holding a bag of food that had YQ’s granola bars and bananas inside that I dropped when I started my futile run for the dinky and YQ actually went back to pick them up. HAHA.
After checking into our hotel, we went to check out Manhattan Mall and Macy’s. Macy’s is pure nine stories of shopping and is the biggest shopping centre in the world! I didn’t know that! Then we rushed over to Century 21 where YQ somehow managed to get 6 pairs of Nike socks at discounted prices although the shop was closing and people were being chased out.
The four of us went to Chinatown for dinner at this place called Da Wang. The food was good but the service sucked so badly. To make matters worse, nobody except YQ spoke Cantonese and we had severe communication problems. As a result, we left a miserly tip. Well, that’s still better than in DC where we didn’t leave a tip at all

Note the cute giraffe by Toys R Us
!

We returned to Times Square to walk around and take photos. Eric was carrying his bag underneath his coat and it looked like he had a hunchback. These 6 black guys found it amusing and one kept bumping into him to check out whether the hunchback was real. That got him extremely pissed off.
Somehow we (except eric) got tricked into getting our portraits sketched by roadside Chinese artists. They really marked down their prices for us but their artwork wasn’t of good quality. That is, it didn’t look like any of us! Then there was this very pretty Jap lady who wanted her picture drawn but they charged her at standard rate, which was US$80! We only paid $20 and were grumbling a whole lot.

Look at the 3 sketches

Back in the hotel room, Eric made jokes about Yq’s portrait. It really looked like a communist revolutionary. Being a good sport, YQ made fun of himself by wedging his portrait between two wall lamps such that it looked like those portraits that you kneel in front of. OMG. SO FUNNY. We laughed non stop the whole night, even during the bluff game when eric still continued his jokes about “our lie shi XYQ”.

Likeliness of YQ to his sketch as communist martyr?

Hanjiang didn’t think that her portrait reflected her likeness so she proceeded to erase it and change the parts she didn’t think looked like her! In the end, she was unable to sketch the mouth and so her portrait is currently mouthless. Haiyah, YQ’s portrait is still the funniest on earth.
After a whole night of hysterical laughing, we fell asleep at 3am.

Last Day:
We made our way back to Philadelphia and took the Greyhound back to Durham. Back to ulu lifestyle @ Duke! Nevertheless, this trip was immensely enjoyable and I wouldn’t know what I’d do without my trusty bodyguard-tourguide.=P

Roompicks: March 26th.
Pat and I managed to get a nice spacious room in the WEL. It’s the nicest dorm for upperclassmen. Roompicks were chaotic though cuz they didn’t strike off the rooms that were taken immediately and we had to list out all the rooms that we thought were good for us. We were fussy though, didn’t want rooms near alcoves or opposite the toilet (bang bang toilet door).

BOLIAO (wuliao) stuff: March 31st
WAHAHA... That was my more free periods cuz the Econ test was over. I got really bored and gave YQ a manicure-buffed his nails and painted them with transparent but glossy nail polish (to add to the gay effect). I was tempted to do this as nails were obscenely long because he lost his nail clipper. Sheesh, after that he looked metrosexual and that is extremely not right on him! Luckily YQ doesn't seem to mind, he was in fact amused by the whole manicure incident. Haha, he didn't even know what "manicure" and "pedicure" meant before that. And during the whole process, he was like "oh I like that feeling, itchy itchy one, actually quite nice hor" and after each nails was buffed he admire it and see if he could find his reflection in his nails. Right after the whole process, he cut off the long part of his nails =( but the glossy part is still there! He also told me that he wished he never had any daughters, then he would never have to put up with their girlish nonsense! SUCH PEOPLE! Anyway this isn't the first time he got his nails painted. The first time, he was sleeping in Kim's and Ym's room so they painted his nails. The second time, I painted his toenails glossy pink while he was watching a basketball match and he still strolled around campus in his sandals. EEEEKKKKKKKSSSSSSSSSSS!