Go Kart@AP, Laundry, Rio Grande

Hi everybody~

It’s pretty lucky that I'm able to blog now cuz my room mate beside me is going bonkers trying to get herself online. Lucky me… please spread my luck around…

Wildwood, New Jersey. Before continuing my story here, I'm going to show you all my dear house mates:

This photo is taken aboard the Lewes ferry to Delaware on 14^th May. It’s our first ever group photo taken by a kind African Amercian who happened to pass by us while we’re trying to set the camera timer.
1^st row (from left): Jiayi, Xue Mao, 2^nd row: Jean, Wei Xuan, Jia Ling, Hui Jing, Iris, Si Ling (aka Da Jie), 3^rd row: Yitsun, Eileen, Zoe, Si Jia, Ye Yan, Hui Jun, Jing Wei (aka Da Ge), 4^th row: Wong Hui

There are the people who have grown to bond well with each other, and sharing the woes and joy together when they’re all far away from home.

Having introduced my house mates officially, I'm going to introduce my house~! hahaha Yes! The house that I live in right now is called “Surf Sounds”. Here I am sitting in front of it.

I visited my friend who is living 2 houses down Magnolia Street in “Mag House 1” and I really have to count myself lucky to check into my house.

Back to work, last week while I was doing cleaning in the pier, my gang of friends got into some little trouble. We were called to Adventure Pier to test out the Go Kart, and this made us all excited and happy to go. But after we got there, we were made to wait for at least 20minutes in the extremely cold weather. The ride operation training was in progress but the ‘testers’, us, were given no instructions but to sit in the cars and devastated by the unmerciful cold wind. Thus, until our maximum endurance, we got out and went to a nearby shelter. And we realized that that place is actually a ride, and that is the maze~ it’s unlock and we, being human being and thus curious, went on to explore it. It’s too deep that we were engrossed in the maze that we started to enjoy it. Laughing loudly and giggling like crazy girls, we went on and on and finally we achieved what the maze wants – we were trapped and couldn’t find the exit. Okay, so we continue the fun exploration until a male voice penetrated the walls into our ears. It’s the supervisor of the Go Kart. Gosh. He caught us playing the maze and he said that he’s going to report to the admission’s manager!!! Oh no!!! I was like so sad and depressed, as if I'm going to be black listed… hai~ anyway, after that guided exit by that guy outta the maze, we waited for another while before the Go Kart is ready to be tested. I can’t deny that it’s real-ly and shiok to hop on a fast moving vehicle (50 miles per hour) and in total control of it~ hahaha! It is really great~!!! But, unluckily, as I had said, it’s a test run, and true enough, I had done my noble job well by discovering my car to be malfunctioning. I was moving well on the track when suddenly my car just died on me, the engine just went dead. The staff got’em restarted, and after a while, it died again~ repeatedly and repeatedly, the staff finally got me out of the car, and pushed that vehicle aside. And there I was, standing by the track watching my chingus having great fun and whoozing pass me. Sob sob...

Yistun (Singapore), Lavinia, Vivian (China), Me and Por (Thailand)

Got back home, and it’s time to go to the laundry. We couldn’t really wash our clothes in our house cuz we dun have a washing machine and place to dry our clothes. So that’s our first trip to the laudry and my room mate and I were pretty excited. Leaving aside the discussion of a disgusted encounter with a disgusting guy (*hint* he’s on the WAT programme and working in Morey’s too) on our way there, I shall show you some pics of our experience there.

A few ladies were laughing at us while we were taking these pictures. Going to the laundry shop is part and parcel in an American’s life. But being Singaporeans like us, such trip is interesting~ it’s my first time seeing a dryer and also 1^st time using washing machine to wash my own clothes~

The next day, my room mate and I went to Rio Grande!!! It’s the word of mouth of an economical Chinese buffet restaurant that sucked us there. It’s a pretty short bus journey there, around 15 minutes of bus ride. The Cheng’s Buffet was indeed very delicious. Here’s a picture of my first round.

Yummy yummy yummy! I'm already planning for my next buffet trip back there. Hehehe after that, we went to walk around in that city and we’d found a very interesting shop, well at least to me. It’s called Petsmart, and true enough, it’s a supermarket for pets!!!! When I say supermarket, I mean really super market, meaning that it’s really BIG. So that Petsmart is sooo cool~~ and there were fishes, reptiles and cats in it. I went to look for stuff for Xiaohei, Cyrus and Cyrene, but not to any avail. Those stuff there, we have’em in Singapore. Here am I in the ‘Small Pet’ section.

Ookay, I think I shall stop here for now. I went to Philadelphia on Monday and it was an intriguing experience. I’ll talk about it soon…

Delaware; Cleaning; Panda

hello everybody~

for the past few days, my house's wireless was very terrible and i was unable to go online... luckily, it has turned better and i can put up many more goodies for my family, frens and love ones~

okay, so i shall start from the 11th of may, which is also the official first day of work at morey's piers. this is the meal before we set off to work...

instant noodles with omelet and ham

and this is how i look when i'm fully dressed in my uniform; in front of morey's teacups

okay so first day of work actualli comprised of training in the afternoon and then actual aided working at the amusement park. my job is to sell tickets from a ticket booth in the park. it's pretty much an easy job. the computer system is quite easy to understand and operate. but sometimes, when guest have some complicated combinations of the types of packages of tickets, it really screws me up...

i had made quite a few friends on the first day of work. there are many thais students there and ya, they made up the bulk of my new friends~ others are from china, malaysia, puerto rico etc... not forgetting my housemates, 14 of them all Singaporeans. we've become great friends and we depend on each other in times of need, sharing care and concern, and looking out for each other.

okay, this is another meal that me and my partner had cooked. i find it quite successful cuz it taste not bad with the addition of milk~ it's brocolli with chicken pieces, and we added in milk to make some sauce... and most imptly, we made porridge~!!! it's the first time in america that we made food out of rice~ whahahha

after working till sunday, monday was my off day and my housemates and i went to Rohoboth Beach, Delaware for some factory outlet shopping. it's a long long way there, and we had to do 'The Long March' in several parts. here it goes: from magnolia avenue long walk to wildwood bus terminal; bus ride to north cape may; long march to lewes ferry terminal; ferry ride to lewes, delaware, taxi to tanger outlets at rohoboth beach.
when i say 'walk' it means that it's really walking for long distances. non-stop and at fast pace... whenever the walking gets tough, i'll tell myself that these steps will kill the pizzas, and then i'll feel much better...

interesting things happen when travel in large group. the 16 people managed to squeeze into 2 cabs and travel for about less than 10mins. hahahaha we, asians, are smaller in size, relatively. hahah the taxi was like packed sardine and it's never going to happen in singapore~

delaware's tanger outlets weren't of much difference from the outlets at atlantic city. most of them are similar. i bought a big bag of goodies, all at good bargains. hahaha the most amazing thing is that i bought a t-shirt at 50cents when it was placed under the $5 shelf. hahaha i'd saved $4.50. same to a tommy sweater which its price tag marks $14+ and i only paid $7 at the counter~ hahha

the entire day is super tiring. tanger outlets is split into 3 parts, and between the first and second outlets, we have to walk for a very very very very long distance. we were walking on highway for some parts... terrible experience.... back to wildwood, we were too tiring. i headed to bed without bathing and brushing my teeth... i'm working the next day...

so the work started... it's cleaning time for the weekdays cuz during pre-season, morey's piers is open only on fri, sat and sun... and the cleaning is like slack job~~~ the rides are already cleaned and the piers were already opened to the public. so the rides are already in good condition~ the cleaning job is getting too free and slacky that it becomes tiring... besides feeling sleepy all the time, we still have to watch out for spies who were sent out to spy on us, same as we spy on them. hahaha here's some pictures of me cleaning the rides.

my admission chingus: Yitsun from Singapore (furthest left), Por from Thailand (left) and Vivian from China.

so on wednesday, the 2nd day of cleaning, we decided to award ourselves by saving us from cooking and to have a chinese meal at a chinese eatery. we went to this nearby shop called Panda and was surprise that the shop only has 2 tables for dine-in customers. it's bit weird cuz the staffs were standing just right in front of us while we were eating. The food wasn't re-ally nice, just plainly acceptable. we had fried chicken and curry chicken with onion rice.

it's a cold day...

see how dark is the sky? morey's pple said that there'll be a storm that night...

Settling Down...

hello everybody~

okay~ i'm going to continue my story in wildwood from the Sam's pizza. we haven really started work so before things get really busy, i'll show u all some pictures of the life that i'm leading over here....

firstly, lemme tell u guys my address over here. if u all wanna send me anything (hehe) please send to this address...

Morey's Piers

Attention: Associate Resources

3501 Boardwalk

Wildwood, NJ 08260

USA

this is, obviously, not where i'm living, but the morey's piers' people will hand the mail to me when i'm working. i'm living on east magnolia avenue, in a house called 'Surf Sounds'. the house is pretty typical and ordinary, and the room that i'm living in looks so:

my neighbourhood

there are aout 16 Singaporean students living in this house and the owners (2) live in the first story. there are toilets on both the 2nd and 3rd floors and there's a kitchen at the 3rd floor. everyone of us are cooking our own meals, some share their money and food, but yistun and i are cooking for just ourselves. it's really fun to experience cooking meals for ourselves everyday, not only i can determine what to eat in every meals, but the process is also veyr interesting and fun~! okay, so here's the cooking scene:

USA-manufactured instant noodles with cheese+sliced french beans+ sausage omelet

beside the cooking process, the grocery shopping is also very fun~ we have 3 supermarket in our vicinity and they are pretty big by themselves. the bigger one is Superfresh. it sells fresh food ranging from beautiful creme cakes to donuts, veg and fruits to meat. but to us, budget spenders, it's really hard to curb our desire to buy all those yummy foods...

it's getting pretty misty these few days... though it's not feeling very cold, the mist tends to 'make' things look cold.... look at these pics.

just finished morey's orientation and had collected our uniform, id card and stuff. what a bag.

Atlantic City Shopping Trip

it's so brave of Yistun and I to go on the trip all by ourselves. first of all, we have to figure out the path to walk to the bus terminal, buy the ticket, ride on an-hour bus journey to AC, and then get around the whole around, all by ourselves~

on board NJ transit no. 552 to Atlantic City

we manage to do of the above and we had a great time there. the shops are great but some factory outlets are still having their prices too high... anyway, i really have to mention this: i got myself a pair of ladies sandals!~ well, my close chingus would noe that i have difficulty in doing that in singapore, but in US, it's not too much of a problem~! hahaha

at the shoe store with many shoes... that place is also my hope for footwear. hahaha

we can officially announced that we had combed and shopped the whole atlantic city outlet walk. and what's more interesting is that i have my first Popeye meal in united states~!!!! remember that during departure, my chingus were heading to popeye's at changi after i get into the customs~? hahaha here's my first ever chance to taste the popeye's chicken, and the conclusion is that it tasted great~!!! though bit ex (US$5.33 for 2-piece meal), it's still quite worth it.

at popeye

okay so here comes the most interesting part of the whole day: xiao-ling

after finishing shopping in the atlantic city, yitsun and i went on to walk in the outskirts and realized that the atmosphere, the structure and the demography is totally in contrast with AC. it's full of less well kept shops and is almost full of blacks. the people there were like so scary... anyway, we became vigilant and quickly find ways to exit that scary place. but along the way, there were 2 blacks walking in our opposite direction. and when they were near, they starting to tease us and called us 'xiao-ling'. what the hell?~?!?!? we were like dun-give-a damn about it and continue with our fast-paced walking. and that 2 idiots also went off... (before i how then how to make marsh potatoes) they're really morons and think that every chinese girl is called 'xiao-ling', they're simply mediocre, shallow, stupid and simple-minded. why dun they read more books, watch more tvs and get themselves educated instead of being a bum on the streets and at the same time being proud of it??? hai~ waste earth's energy and oxygen...

anyway, leaving that funny yet reflective incident aside, these are the photos for today's trip...

at aeropostale

My departure

hello all~!!!!
but before talking about my departure, lemme talk about my farewell dinner on the 4th. dear brother took the family to the new shopping at clark quay, called the central. it's a realli new place and almost 70% of the mall is still not open for business. so bro brought is into this Japanese restaurant called waraku and it has a stunning view of the river as well

as the pubs along it. the bells can be clearly seen from our seat and the (i dunno what's that ride called) ball ride was just at our right side. dined there, though the temperature and decibel there were a bit high, i still think that that dinner was superb, cuz it's my brother's way of showing his care and love to our family.

here are the pics!!!

okay, so the big day came. it's 5th of May and i'm leaving my country, my family, my love, my friends and my hamster to lead a totally self-dependent life in a totally far and foreign country. i'll have to use my own thinkings and wisdom to stay clear of troubles, and survive through the entire summer. and i had a great start, cuz my chingus and family were there at the airport to give me the last and strongest boost of encouragement.

the moment that me and yitsun had to walk away from our family and friends, and towards the entry point, it was like so sad and scary feeling - the very moment that signified the detachment and marks the start of another amazing yet unpredictable journey.

so me and yitsun started out our new journey... through the custom and the immigration.... on board the plane.... processing the admin procedures... checking into hotel... it's simply too much to write about everything, but everything is just too amazing and unbelievable...

China Airlines is great: food is above average, service is average, captain is superb and leg space is acceptable, on flight entertainment is not bad. i'd watched curse of the golden flower and it's quite good... hahaha in the rest of the trip, i'd watched Letters from Iwo Jima and Blood Diamond. Music there was great too. got gary's superman album and tank's latest music too. there are games too, but i couldn never win the computer... makes me so depressed. i thought my chinese chess is quite good. sob sob...

In taiwan

it was night time when we reached taiwan. the hotel was above our expectation and we were given a 4-bed bedroom. room was quite big and facilities were not bad either. here's a low quality video done by myself after a bath.

After the buffet breakfast, we took a walk in the tao yuan city. we saw a railway track cutting through the neighoubouhood and we've never been so close to these track that we can step on them and hang around the area. we drank bubble tea and it was quite different from singapore's. the bubble tea lady would ask us whether to put ice or not, and she also shaked the bubble tea in the iron bottle ware. we also saw some guys standing at road corners, beside a big property advertisement board, and shaking a red colour rod. it's so weird and comical as you see them at almost every road corners. they're advertising/selling/attraction attention to their advertisements. quite a exotic and impractical way to do marketing, even though it's quite interesting... we also saw many bin lang si shi along the roads. they're like wearing skimpily and sitting in a glass-front shop with many bright neon light. i saw one who only wears a black bra for her top... LCK, u love these girls right??!! hahaha

okay, so after that, we went to the airport and do the check in for the flight to New York via anchorage. and, we did an interesting thing which shall not be disclosed. hahaha so, the flight was delayed a bit and there was even announcement asking for volunteer to give up seats and take the next flight at a compensation of 200 sing bucks. thus we went shopping in the airport for a while, and, haha-ly, we ended up late for the boarding and was quite paiseh when all the passengers looked at us when we boarded hastily. hahah

okay okay, the long flight is really torturing... i endure and endure... ahh there's a taiwanese guy beside me and he was like a bit lonely. hahah we started chatting for a little bit and he was quite curious about Singaporean working in overseas and speaking in different tongues. hahaha he said that we're so young and have to work in US, that's because he dun understand the WAT program thingy. anyway, cuz me and yitsun spoke chinese, english, japanese, cantonese and hokkien, that guy may be realli curious about that..koreans, japanese

delayed flight to new york. but i'll just talk bout the transfer point at anchorage. it's a real cool place where i guess the scenery can only be seen from TV or national geographic mag. before landing, and as advised by min xiu, we could see the ice mountains, so beautiful~ they're like dark chocolate ice cream with lots of sugar icing sprinkled on top. the ice looks so smooth and thick... then after the landing, we couldn't walk out of the airport but we just look around. the scenery is simply, breath-taking, but i guess they're just for viewing, nobody is really going to go into the ice mountains and stay for holiday or so...

so the flight to new york is slightly shorter... and upon arrival,we witness the busy air traffic in JFK airport. we got together with a gang of WAT morey's piers Singaporean and we stayed a night at the airport... took the MTA railway to port authority bus terminal and the train was like a bit scary... with the floor full of rubbish and newspapers, graffiti everywhere and the very unequal racial proportion of the commuters, realli scare us a lot... then, we went to this big bus terminal and took a 5hr bus to wildwood, new jersey, my home for the next 2 months. before heading off, we took a walk in Manhattan and we could feel the difference so much... firstly, people there walk at a much faster pace... and the pavements are crowded. i'll talk more about that after i have done my traveling at the end of the working period.

the weather is cold like hell~ it is 8 degree celcius and the wind is breath-taking too. every blow of the wind send me pains and shivers... so we've reached wildwood and we were picked up to morey's apartments. the houses are great... nice and american style. though a big small, the facilities are still okay... got to the super market and gotten some food. we made our own spaghetti last night...

we woke up late the next day and didn't have time for breakfast. so we arrive at the amusement park empty stomach.... this is the first time we're seeing Morey's Piers and also the beach and ocean. we walked along the boardwalk to get there, n it's cold....

and then we have pizza at Sam's Pizza. the pizzas they have are very simple with just a single type of flavour such as cheese or pepperoni or sausage. not like singapore where we have so many taste dissolve into one. and most importantly, the pizza here is huge!!! it's enormous!!! here's me eating that huge pizza, i know i look evil in the pic wahahhah

okay it took me ages to get this blog written, i also dunno what to include and exclude cuz there're too many things happening here. i think for the next entry, i'll talk lesser...

many pic to be updated later...