New York Trip (part3)

Firstly, happy belated birthday to myself! shall blog about my birthday on the next entry. I must finish about new York.

Fifth Avenue and Shake Shack

Jason said it was the best burger he has tasted in his entire life. And trust me, he is the most eligible person to be the critic, based on his volume of food intake. He probably ate as much as I would have eaten in 40 years out of his 24 years of living. But it’s BEEF burger. So I can just watch them go slurping away with the juicy burger, while I ate my pathetic bird dog (chicken hot dog bun) which was not worth my time writing on it.

photo courtesy of Jasper

Chinatown

Even strong ang moh brands have to give in and have Chinese characters at this heavily cheena place! We had dinner at the famous Shanghai 绿波廊, new York branch!

This is how the New York branch looks.

This was the authentic one that I went in 2007!

This is the New York 蟹粉小笼包

上海的好吃多了！

Frankly, the food was nowhere near the one I’ve eaten at Shanghai.

But this Chinatown ice cream factory was REALLY GOOD. They had exotic flavours like lychee and coconut. It’s like eating snow with a sweet coconut taste to it.

Along Chinatown

Woodbury Premium Outlet

Situated at New Jersey, we shopped from late morning till night, and I only combed 40% of the outlets. Those that I didn’t comb are available at North Georgia, so my pocket will burn another time.

Photos courtesy of Jason and Chubs, cos I’ve got no hands/time/mood to whip out my camera. My shopping tap spoiled again and I couldn’t fix it. Actually half of my purchases are not for myself. This is a true confession of a shopaholic.

I shall not go ranting about my purchases. It’ll only pain my heart and probably my mum’s and jieying’s as well. You can see them in my photos when I wear them!

The Last Day of missed flight

  We visited the Empire State Building on the last day. 

Photo credit to Lyn (finally) for the group photo and Chubs for the giant-wrecking-havoc-on-the-street photo. I am the Godzilla in this picture! All monsters/heroes love to be near the empire state building!

The flight back was exciting. It was the first time my group of friends got separated and 4 of them didn’t make it to the flight on time! Security check at New York airport.. you know…

The 3 girls and Wenyi, got to skip school the next day. Blessing in disguise!

Well, but the flight was GOOD. the scenery was Oh.Am.Gee NICE!

Try capturing a crescent moon coexisting with a sunset, against a nice gradient, in a single picture, miles above the ground!

New York Chapter Finally ENDED!

New York Trip (part2)

Times Square

This is one place I’ll never forget. Too cool! It’s the vibrancy, messiness, energy that made this place so unique at night.

We saw David Blaine performing some street magic! Too many people, couldn’t really see what he’s up to. Someone even shouted, “Come on David! Do some magic! Fly! Cos I don’t believe!” David Blaine looked kinda pissed.

Time to unleash the childish sides of us. Toys R Us!

Spidey!!

Lego King Kong and Empire State Building

 We see at least 4 of such cars in Times Square.

This Batman is black.

Broadway musical – Phantom of the Opera

This is one of the best thing that happened during this trip. My virgin musical is actually the famous Phantom of the Opera, in the famous Broadway of New York. Omg, this Broadway experience is FANTASTIC! It sets a benchmark so high for my subsequent musicals, I guess it will be quite a while before any musical can surpass this. Probably Les Miserable's, if it ever comes to Singapore.

The queuing process. We queued for 2 hours in the cold, shivering like mad just to make sure we’re FIRST in the queue so that we could get cheap tickets. Haha, even though we’re first, we don’t feel the kick cos people here do not have queuing as one of their favourite pastimes. Each ticket costs $65, a little steep, but worth every cent.

Still in the Phantom mood.

Wall Street

The Wall Street Charging Bull.

My newly acquired picture frame of a rainy Times Square!!

 

Statue of Liberty

No, not this. This is a fake one. No, this is a real one. Real as in real human. Haha, but this irritating person kept wanting us to take picture with him. But I just wanna take photo of him just to piss him off.

So this is the real one. But from the place where I took this picture, we’re 3 hours ferry ride away from the statue. That’s how FAR we were. So this was the biggest i can zoom. Looks kinda cool anyway huh?

With the Brooklyn Bridge as the background. Spot the helicopter above my head!

That day was as happy as the day at Ang Kor Wat because I managed to take some rare photos! Some of my favourite bird shots.

This can be used to teach toddlers to count.

And this is one of my favourite shots in U.S thus far

New York Trip (part 1)

I’m the last to blog about New York City! What can I say, it’s one of the most beautiful cities I’ve been to! It’s really a damn cool place, so many movie settings just come to LIFE! When I look at the skyscrapers I thought I saw Spiderman swinging from building to buildings. When I saw statue of Liberty I thought Cloverfield is chopping off the head. When I saw Brooklyn Bridge I thought of Fantastic Four doing the bridge rescue. I though of transformers fighting Godzilla. I saw the princess from Enchanted singing at Central Park. I saw Hiro Nakamura shouting YADA at Times Square… And the list goes on and on..!

As we’re poor student, we travelled by Greyhound coach, which was a 20 hour journey. If I were 200 pounds (might be at the rate I’m eating), I would say it’s a tough journey, but given that Asians are relatively smaller in size, all of us were pretty comfortable! In fact it was better than the seats on economy class!

I mean this kinda sunset just makes the long journey worthwhile!

Just a side note, if you have some chance to stay at Hotel Pennsylvania, avoid the counter that sells tickets. That bitchy guy is a bloody con man who sells overpriced musical and bus tickets.

On the Streets

One of the most iconic symbolic element that makes New York feel so right is the New York Taxi.

We had a lot of pizzas. And a lot of Macs.

  All these cute mascots are there for photo and money taking.

Mr Obama and his unapproved advertisement.

@ Fashion Street

 

Subway 

The infamous Subway of New York is really crazy. It looks more complicating than the expressways in Singapore. Survive this and you can travel in any cities by trains.

Central Park

The adventure started at Central Park! The entire park looked really cool in winter! This is the park where Enchanted was filmed at.

Haha, I caught this squirrel butting at my camera.

You see people doing their music…

Really pleasant and nice sceneries even in this winter. Photo credit to Wan Ting, the swivel camera owner.

fountain

on the rock

in an underground tunnel

in front of the bridge

a frozen lake

the G11 powerful swivel screen that allows perfect self shots.

How can you not love Central Park?!

Dinner @ Rai Rai Ken

This place is supposedly the best Ramen in town. Pretty decent, but not very very superb. Nice ambience actually. Feels like stepping into an authentic ramen shop in Japan.

Dessert @ 16 Handles

This frozen yoghurt shop cafe is unique! Reminds me of Island Creamery back home. A lot of exotic flavours like Margarita, cheese pie and peanut butter! Price of yoghurt is determined by the weight of your cup, so you can fill your cup with as many variety as you want, your only limiting factor is your wallet! So typical Asians like us will be calculative by not adding toppings like fruits, and spam chocolate rice and peanuts! Hahaha.

it’s all about food

I haven’t blogged about my exciting New York trip! Ok, let me talk about the past week before I go back to my Wal-Mart case analysis which I’ve been working on for the past 3 days. Argh, work 15 min, sleep 5 hours.. I’m eating and sleeping more than I was in Singapore.

I finally satisfied my craving for Dim Sum on Saturday! We were out on this foggy morning and the scenery is so damn chio, like Genting!

My new Tommy Hilfiger jacket that I got at the Woodbury Outlet when I was at New York!

Watch out, I eat buildings!

We finally travelled on a bus! We’ve been on planes, car, trains, taxis, school buses and feet, but not public buses until that day! 

Canton House, awarded the best dim sum or chinese restaurant in Atlanta!

The food was decent and more like for comfort to tame the craving. Because my Swee Choon and Geylang’s one is way better than this! But still, one of the most shuang meals to date ever since I stepped into America.

We went to Lenox Square next to do some shopping. FCUK was going at 50% and one tee shirt was ridiculously 15 USD! I grabbed 2! and I got a checkered shirt from Buffalo David Bitton.

America is full of different kinds of variation of M&Ms, unlike Singapore! I got this from Wal-Mart!

Stylo milo packaging! I know, I got cheated by marketing strategy again. Sigh.. But it’s ok, cos even though

they look like rocks..

they taste damn freaking good! After you eat this, you’ll know the true meaning of “melts in your mouth”. As they are mint chocolates, they leave a cooling tingling sensation in your mouth. These ‘rocks’ truly rock.

Speaking about tasting good..

I’ve finally done my first ever dish in the kitchen! It’s microwaved cheese omelette with bacon and ham! It’s damn easy to make and taste awesome! Best thing about it is not much cleaning up to be done!

Nancy aka LayHui and I also made potato topped with sour cream, bacon bits and shredded ham! We also had bagels with Philadelphia spread and sausages and yoghurt with apple cubes! That’s the menu for our brunch. Fillingly yummy!

Kinda fattening, but since it’s for 2 meals, acceptable! Sigh, ever since I come here, my appetite has evolved into insatiable hunger. It’s really quite scary.

So, I’m unlocking the iron chef in me. More experiments coming from the kitchen! Can you smell…? Cos the noob is cooking! haha

schooling experience

Ok, for the benefits of my new readers or people who don’t know me but happened to chance upon my humble blog, I’m actually here for a student exchange programme at Georgia Tech. I’m here to study, not holiday!

Reason for this clarification? A friend was asking me online, why I suddenly go US for holiday during school semester. And my blog and facebook pictures are like full of fun, totally no hint of studying haha. Ok, my bad, my bad…

So this post is dedicated to my schooling experience so far. It’s been 2 weeks, I went school for 3 days each! Now you understand why I’m still on a heavy holiday mood. Last week we ponned the last day of school to go New York, and this week 3 days due to King Martin Luther holiday. I’m taking 6 modules here, and I haven’t seen the overloading of work, yet. It should come soon and trust me, you will be the first to know as this place is a well known bitching avenue.

About communication

I’ve been indulging in my little Asian world with like few ang moh friends. It’s kinda hard talking to them, I can’t speak fast, as they would have problem understanding our fast but weird accent. I can fake some accent, but Lay Hui aka Nancy is beside me and it’s weird to let a friend hear you speak that way. Some more I converse to her in Mandarin all the time! I tried this:

Me (with more slang than usual): Erm, I was wondering if you know of any online platforms, like forum sort of stuff where Georgia Tech students actually go there and sell their textbooks?

Ang Moh girl (typical hollywood chick flick style): Oh, erm, I’m not really sure about such online platforms exclusively~ for students down here, erm, (I don’t know), but, (you know), I always got my books from like amazon.com or half.com, (that sort of stuff?), i actually got my book for 2 bucks! (shrugs shoulders, tilt head, smiles)

Me (turns to Nancy my Singaporean friend): I think we should go there and see see lor.. walao, like damn cheap la!

Me (with slang again): Well, that’s great information you’ve gotten us! thank you so much… blah blah blah

How can a person speak English differently? I guess only Singaporeans can do that, lol.

About classes

For some modules, I find it amazing that the entire class doesn’t know that the demand curve shifts to the right when it’s due to non-price related factors. I knew that in J1 and I was like one of the worst students in my class!

For modules like Strategic Management, the class was really participative and the Singaporean golden mouth just wouldn’t open even though I know many of the answers haha.

I’m still quite apprehensive about LCC module, which was the AB214 equivalent in nbs. Speaking in front of a class of Americans with accent you only hear in movies will be happening to me really soon.

About CCA

I just went for a chior practice last Wed as I didn’t wanna stop singing during this long 5months and I thought it’s a good way of getting me into vocal practising and English music at the same time. OMG, reading off the score and singing immediately is what almost everyone can do. I’m merely depending on my lip syncing skills and following the notes of the louder guy beside me. And he sings really well, American Idol style.

I wanna join a club man. If not my life here is very sad. Only looking forward to shopping and travelling trips during the weekends. Just missed a SIFE meeting, intending to go down next week, hopefully there’s something I can do there!

Looks like I need more than a head of red hair to blend in! haha.

Chinatown, Underground, Homely meals!

I’m like way behind in recording my exchange here la! haha..

Chinatown in Atlanta was quite pathetic. Korean town was way cooler. But they serve really good Chinese food there! Portions anywhere outside Singapore are HUGE! i remember food in Shanghai were cheap and came in large portions. Here in US too. So you can expect Chinatown in US to serve REALLY BIG portion of food. It’s like buffet in a bowl.

check out the fat you tiao!

The train system here is called MARTA. We got cheated by a black ‘teacher’ (you will know why later) into buying his tickets which are fake. So basically we got stuck in the station as the cards were invalid. Lucky it’s only $2 for this lesson.

 

Atlanta Underground

It was quite a cool place. sort of like City Link back in Singapore.

 

As we are poor students over here, eating out is too xiong for us. Luckily we have decent chefs here! So the home cooked dinners saved us a lot of money, but it doesn’t compromise on the satisfaction! haha.

 

Our biggest chef! Cooking is really her forte cos she takes normal looking pictures only when holding a pan.

Wan Ting, the chilli chopper.

It’s Jason’s birthday!

Some pork that looks like chicken

Some chicken that looks like pork

Nancy cannot take photo cos she’s wearing spects. Look, Ning’er closed her eyes while using a knife.

Yum Seng!

The road trips, the shopping, the snow!

We had a mini road trip on 6th Jan to do some shopping! Oops, I wasn’t clear, major grocery shopping. We rented a 7 seater car which was obscenely spacious and fun.

Jason, our chauffeur driver!

She was replaced by me after that as the vehicle commander, wahaha. And the 70 bucks GPS was damn worth it! 

Our family car for the day! I felt excited for Jason when he did his first LEFT U-turn.You’ll never get to do that in Singapore.

With all the hippest American music blasting along the way, some moments felt as though we’re in those road trips featured in Hollywood movies! Ha, but it’s just a small ride trip probably from Pasir Ris to Orchard kinda distance.

We went Korean Town, where we can buy a lot of Asian stuff at Super H Mart.

And they served REALLY GOOD Korean food.

the famous Passerby A.

Playing with apples

We even visited the Walmart Supercenter!

I love this bus! Looks exactly like the MAGIC SCHOOL!

I’ve always loved foreign supermarkets, they are full of interesting surprises. 

Like discovering the Ben and Jerry’s price. And seeing the flavours only available in America.

Or seeing some cool flavours, like HOT chocolate ICE cream. Paradoxical eh?

You find ice cream tubs bigger than your head.

And red bull so small that my camera lens cap can be a coaster.

And you find interesting packaging everywhere!

Driving back at dusk was really good!

Because it was so damn chio. 

But we’re not quite done with the car yet! Drove up to some inaccessible but very authentic American restaurant called Fat Matt’s to have dinner. This place reminded me of Billy Bombers. And there’s live band!

But that place was FULL HOUSE that evening. Argh. What luck. So we packed our food and went back home to eat.. But the food was sinfully good!

Check out the fat piece of meat!  

Everyone’s still happy with their food!

Orientation day (known as Faset in Georgia Tech) was pretty fun. On subject registration day we actually experienced snowfall for the first time since we were here! According to the locals, snowing in Atlanta is exceptionally rare! We’re definitely a lucky batch! It’s the first time some of my friends and I see snow, and naturally we got damn excited over the drizzle! It’s quite sua ku looking on our part. None of the locals really bothered with it haha.

With our advisor Bryan.  

And i think it’s my first time again seeing a squirrel from such proximity. I don’t see them hanging around before the snow! They must have come out to play, just like us hahaha.

And nothing beats having warm home cooked dinner in a snowy winter night!

And nothing beats waking up early next morning to this kind of window view!

  Woohoo!

Snow on swing at Wan Ting’s window!

You just feel like shouting Merry Christmas!! 

Btw, check out our family slippers series.

Since there’s no school due to snow (now how cool is that), we’ve decided to get a car and travel out again! On the way, the snowy scenery and amazing buildings were simply fabulous.

Snow flakes on the windscreen!

  What a nice castle!

This reminded me of Mustafa Centre.

I love this building a lot! It’s called Silhouette!

HUGE Borders.

A word of caution from our experience that day. Do be extra cautious when travelling by car during snowy days or days after snow. The refrozen snow became ice on the road and the car was constantly trying its luck to skate with tyres. The brakes will not work on ice and if you’re travelling down a slope, you should pray there’s no car because if there is, there’s nothing you can do but pray that you’ve bought full coverage for the car insurance. Avoid roads that are less travelled on and keep to the main roads.

We shopped quite a bit. Actually, I shopped quite a lot! I guess my best buy was a pair of Tommy Hilfiger sneakers for 20 usd! Kio tio! So far i bought a lot of boxers, that pair of sneakers, H&M jeans, a beanie, a scarf, 2 tees, and I can’t wait to go New York this coming weekend!

This post is getting so long, but I’ve got 4 more hours before school. Ok, shall end this post with a final update on Firehouse Subs. They sell really cool subs with cool theme, cool range of hot sauces and the coolest soda dispenser I’ve seen!

 

The soda dispenser is woohoo! 103 different flavours.

Hot sauce from a scale of 1 to 10! 10 being the hottest!!

Yup, that’s all for now! Next up, the Chinatown visit and Atlanta Underground!