Sunday, May 21, 2006
Eastern buffet lunch
tuesday was a free day for us to rest (finally!)... and so with our new found (and made) NUS and NTU friends, we all decided to go salvage some chinese food which they recommended. it was about a 10 min walk from our place... that sells chinese buffet food for about US$5 each only!
being extremely deprived of chinese food... we chiong-ed at the presence of them! we were all sick of burgers, fries, coke etc... we miss rice, nooodles, veggie, chicken, fish, prawns... all cooked in the chinese way.
our food..! looks yummy?
my table of people...
a group picture outside the restaurant.
overall, the food was pretty good.. with quite a variety and able to satisfy our desires! but i thought it was too salty though. the company was good too and i would say it's quite worth it for the price la.. though i didn't manage to eat much that day. heh it's amazing how the rest always have so many lobangs for food!
night time was interesting. we were all resting in our rooms when suddenly.. the fire alarm sounded! it was super sharp and irritating la the sound.. and we all came out of our rooms wondering what to do(to run or not to??). finally, we were told to get out of the hotel and assemble outside. we grabbed our valuables.. including passport, wallet, money, laptop and camera!
we thought it might be a drill or something... but we did smell something burnt near our room... so anyhow, the FIREMEN came!! haha.
posing with the fire engine and our valuables.
it was quite a scare cuz apparently something happened at the employees room.. (probably microwave or what?) and the room was just directly under mine! we were so scared that it might trigger the fire sprinklers and end up getting ALL our stuff WET. or that it would explode and all our stuff would be gone!
but thankfully, everything cleared within like 30 mins and we were all up and back in our rooms again. :) cool night.
YuAn® spun on 2:02 AM.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
NUS and NTU peeps
the weekend was spent clocking 10.5h and 10h of work each on saturday and sunday. it's total sian la and there's no pictures whatsoever to post and talk about. however, we did manage to finally start mingling with the rest of the NTU and NUS peeps. it was good because apparently they seem to think that SMU people are "snobbish" and "rich" most of the time, which is so untrue for us. or at least for me. anyway, NUS people seem to turn out to be the largest group of people.. like as always... it used to be all SMU people when we came first.. but after they all came, we became a minority with 11 out of 44 so far... which is like 1/4 only lor when there are only 3 schools. oh sighs. that's normal i guess.anyway, we got to know that better and had fun doing sai gang on monday. we went back to rebel yell to pick up trash and screws. we spent the whole day there... but no cute angmoh today. haha. but... guess what?? in our process of picking up trash.. we managed to pick up alot of coins... $$!!! they were those that were stuck in the soil la.. when we needed to pick up all the screws.
lady luck was shining on me that day and somehow, i managed to pick up more than US$2 during the time before lunch.. inclusive of a 1 buck note which i saw on the floor. haha.
me posing with all the money we found just before lunch.
we all look damn sian at work.
anyhow, the picking up of money thing sorta had some kinda motivation for us at work.. or at least for me. it also helped to build a rapport between the rest of us.. i guess? at least there was something to work towards to... at the end of the day, we picked up quite a bit of money.. probably between US$5-US$10? haven't count yet... but many of them were badly eroded and defaced that i don't think they can be used.
after sai gang... a group of us went to cici's pizza that was nearby for dinner. it's a pizza buffet for only US$3.99!! quite worth it i must say.. even cheaper than pizza hut buffet lor! and the food's not bad too.
AAHHHH... i'm eating!
the 4 of us outside the restaurant.
the first group photo with the NUS and NTU peeps.. there'll be more to come! heh. :)
overall, the NUS/NTU peeps are all pretty fun and nice beings. i'm glad we are all having fun.. after all, all of us are singaporeans away on a foreign land.. so should all unite! hahaha. i enjoy their company... though i must say the whole big group's really huge! ;)
YuAn® spun on 10:57 AM.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Trip to Short Pump
short pump's a shopping mall that's a 10 min drive away from our hotel. it's inaccessible by bus and so we had to take a cab down that costs about US$20.we went to the food court there for lunch.. we heard there's this stall called sakura japan that sells good asian food.
our asian food! it's something that cai fan like that... except there's a bit of japanese taste inside. anyway their portion's huge so we shared two to one... it doesn't look too fantastic but the food's good! :)
in the middle of all the short pump shops.
in front of victoria's secrets...! their lingerie is nice... but expensive.wal mart was nearby and we decided to go walk walk there. i've always been reading about wal-mart in textbooks but i've never had the chance to visit it yet! this is my first trip to... WAL MART!!
wow... WAL MART!!!
posing inside wal mart with our haagen daz ice-cream that costs about US$2++...! cheap!
the wal mart trolley...! after that, we walked to the cinema and wanted to watch MI-3. the ticket costs US$6.50 before we went wal mart.. after we were done and went back, it costs US$8.50 because it was after 6pm already.
we felt that it was too expensive and so didn't watch in the end.
posing a THREE infront of the cinema.
short palm directory.
we walked about a bit but the prices of the stuff there were slightly steep. we didn't buy anything cuz we knew that factory outlets could provide us with much better deals. anyway, we didn't manage to finish walking the whole area cuz their malls are like built horizontally across the lands but not upwards like our normal shopping mall. so it's pretty tiring to walk from one place to another cuz they are like... FAR.
anyhow, we da bao-ed a cheesecake from this shop called the cheesecake factory. it costs like about US$7 but it's really GOOD. heavenly man.
our oreo cheesecake!
YuAn® spun on 10:52 AM.
Friday, May 12, 2006
Sai gang day 3
the next day we had to wake up to go to work and do sai gang again. the car was due to be returned at 9am. so we headed to fill the tank at the petrol station first before returning it.
the petrol stations are all self service.. so we had to pump the petrol ourselves. which was really quite weird cuz they always had people to do that for us in singapore. we were pretty clueless at it though.
we filled US$20 worth of petrol!after returning the car, we went to paramount for work. today, we were assigned to go clean up this ride called rebel yell. it's a wooden roller coaster ride that goes both backward and forward.
because the whole track of the coaster's made of wood, it needed maintenance consistently as the screws rust easily. when the people do all these, they unscrew the rusty screws, dump them on the ground, and then screw it the new ones. this ended up in the grounds (that's soil-based) being filled with ALOT OF SCREWS. and i mean alot. you can spend forever picking them up. anyhow, we were told to basically just pick up the trash below the tracks.. and also some of the screws.
picking up all the disgusting trash.. with our hands (but with gloves of cuz). eww.
posing in front of the ride... rebel yell!
we had to clean the trains after that... it was so filthy! the paper towels that we used all turned black! yikes.
posing with our washing equipment... haha! err.. the charlie's angels??
the supervisor who's in charge of this ride. he's a really nice and friendly guy. damn slack la. he's one of the nicest... (and cutest) i've seen among the people i've worked there with so far. and he's only 20!
after work, we headed to aunt sarah's pancake house for some pancakes. it's just this restaurant that's opposite our hotel (beside wendys).
their menu's so colourful!! nice~!
their chocolate chip pancake that we bought... it's very nice!!! and filling! :) i don't mind going back again. hehe.
YuAn® spun on 11:25 AM.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Williamsburg day~!
today was a free day and we decided to go williamsburg's factory outlets for some cheap and good shopping! heh. the place is not within richmond and is a 45 mins drive away. if we were to take a cab or transportation of that sort, it would be like US$50 per head which is total madness. taking bus there is extremely long and inconvenient as it's considered an interstate bus journey. it's not much cheaper either.Hence... we finally decided on renting a car to drive there!
the car that we rented.. we went to this shop called enterprise that is just opposite our hotel
ah cui is the only one who's above 21... (you need to be at least 21 to rent a car in US), so she was the one who headed the wheel! i was helping her with the directions.
their speedometer is in terms of miles, not kilometres.a short video of our way there... it took us about 1.5 hours to drive there after missing some exits and going some wrong ways.. lala...
finally we reached the place in one piece!
i tried my hand at the wheel when we drove out to lunch! haha... first time driving on the left side. cool!
posing outside the nike store.
and Guess.
the sun was setting and we decided to make our way back because their expressways don't have street lights. it's purely based on the beam lights of cars which is like pretty scary i thought since all the roads in singapore are brightly lit.
we went to krispy kreme for their well known doughnuts! it was simply... YUMMY!!! FANTASTIC!!!
posing for a picture while eating.
their original glazed doughnuts... taste the best when it's hot. it tastes like macdonald's hotcakes! very nice!!!
we went back to the hotel after filling our stomachs... posing with all our branded bargains! woahoo. :)all in all, it was a pretty fulfilling trip. we finally got to do some really decent shopping. like cheap and good stuff. i bought a gap top for like US$5 only and a nike jacket for US$7. the stuff are much cheaper and better (i think) than those in their shopping malls. i guess it must have been pretty daring for 4 girls to drive there... haha but there's always a first time for everything! ;) left hand drive was fun.. though weird. and a tad dangerous at that, considering that we were all used to right hand drive. however, with the help of each other and being a little more extra careful at all times, i'm glad everything turned out fine and it was a great day.
will be back. see you again, williamsburg!
YuAn® spun on 10:30 AM.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Carey town day
there wasn't work today and so we decided to go walk walk at carey town. it's this place downtown that is like one whole long street of shops la.
taking a photo infront of the "cary court" sign.
along the streets of carey town.
outside byrd theatre. it's this own theatre there that sells movie tickets for US$1.99 only.. but it only shows a few shows that are not as new and the timings are like in the evenings with only one timing for each show.
one of the interesting things i found in the shops...
this shop selling toilet paper that has bush's face on it. haha.
anyway, there wasn't much for us to buy there... the things weren't like cheap nor did it sell stuff that we wanted. so in the end... we walked down the street and spent the most amount of time in a particular shop. our most favourite shopping place in US. haha.. guess what?? ... the shopping mart!! we went to ukrops!
and i just couldn't resist taking these! look at the amount of flavours they have! i melt and drool over them everytime i go to the mart... especially at the price!! US$3.19 on offer!! YUMMY YUM YUM!!
anyway, i just simply LOVE shopping at their marts. i seriously never fail to be amazed at the amount of stuff they have... like wow. it's so much more compared to those in singapore.. beats giant and carrefour hands down man.
so many kinds of lays chips...!!! and their sizes are HUGE!
oh my god.. just look at their campbell soups lor.
i'm quite a fan of baking... and look at these...!! so many different types of stuff to bake lor!!
and the amount of variety of their cakes to bake for betty crockes!! you'll never ever find a shelf like that in ntuc or cold storage man. like never. i wanna buy them all home to bake!!
and the amount of types/brands of frozen pizzas that they have...!! the sizes are huge...! you'll never see such prices and varieties in singapore man. i repeat, never.
haha okay, that's about it for now. i'll take more pictures of their marts again next time. i admit i'm a big fan of US marts.. they never fail to fascinate me. haha.
YuAn® spun on 11:53 AM.