Hil's Trip to the USA. (Part 1)

You know, for a person like me who has hardly been out of the Asia Pacific region, this trip to NYC was quite an eye-opener. And enjoyable. We did all the tourist-y stuff (only tourists will buy those 5 for $10 I LOVE NY shirts, I think. Just like how only tourists buy those "Singapore is a FINE city" shirts.), but I think we did a fair amount of "local" things. Like taking the sub and living in a studio apartment.

Anyway, the photos that follow are, obviously, not everything that I took. I had a 1GB SD card, and 3 spares - 1 512MB and 2 128MBs. I took about 550 pictures and those below are only 20 of the 550 that I took of NY, Orlando and Boston. Someday, I'll thumb through the 550 shots, pick about 300 and dump them on Webshots. Keep watching Webshots then. :D The photos that follow are clickables - click to see the full picture. It's a new function of Photobucket that I wanted to try, haha.

Okay, so let's start this. This is going to be more semi photo journaling because I realized that no one bothers to read long descriptions of the Avery Fisher Hall nor have a particular interest in how long the sub takes to get us to Queens from Manhattan.

View from out of the airplane window. We took the non-stop flight to Newark on the A330-500. I tell you, this flight rocks. I'm so glad we took this instead of the Singapore-Frankfurt-Kennedy one. And Kennedy airport was so damned far from where we were staying, which proved to be a problem when we lugged 8 luggages to Kennedy for our flight to Orlando. The flight was great. I watched Pirates! Pirates 1, I'm embarassed to say. I never watched it prior to that day. I started watching Pirates 2 but never got around to finishing it. I can't remember what else I watched. A bit of Project Runway and Friends, I think.

The plane also has this nifty snack bar at the back of the plane where you can request for cup noodles. Weirdly enough, cup noodles tastes exceptionally good on the plane. LOL.

So we arrived at Newark at around 5PM, and it was PITCH DARK outside. It looked more like 2AM than 5PM. It was freezing cold (for us in retrospect anyway). And then we took the shuttle to the studio apartment we rented.

This is what we got at the apartment:

That stairs is wicked. And it's so nice! I was walking up and down in. It's so.... spiral-y. Ha. Cheap thrills. There was a balcony upstairs where I took this:

That looks like some generic impression of NYC.

For the next 2 days (aka the days in NYC before we went to Orlando), we took bus tours. God, I never want to sit on a NYC tour bus ever again. Sitting on the top (which is open-air) freezes you to the seat. I'm surprised I actually got shots taken on the bus. I couldn't feel my fingers.

Anyway, so we took the tour. Somehow as compared to the time we went to LA in 2004, NYC seems to have more TV shows related things here. Like this:

The ever unglam Path of Shame those Apprentices take in 'The Apprentice'. Gosh, the Trump Towers (there are multiple ones all over Manhattan) look like... I don't know what. It's just a big black piece of glass.

Anyway, more sightseeing:

The ever-famous fire escapes in NYC. Those fire escapes that the romantic lead will climb up and stand outside his lover's window and declare his love.

In case it's not really visible, it says "Residences starting at $10 million." And this is for a normal apartment. Only on 5th Ave, honestly.

Yup. Banana Republic. The one they used for Project Runway where they had to do up the glass showcases themselves. :D

An abstract shot of the Empire State Building.

More generic fire escapes. Funnily enough, I couldn't find the fire escape for our apartment. My dream was to climb down one. Especially the ladder from the ground level to the 2nd level. The ones that you have to pull down. ;)

Bus took us around to Chinatown. It was seriously, freakishly cheena. I mean, duh, it's Chinatown, but I didn't expect it to be so cheena, especially in a Western country. I don't even think Chinatown here is as cheena.

OMG! Hahaha. I have NO idea what that is.

Yup. Let's go to the Abric Warehouse for cloth.

More driving and we arrived at the Brooklyn Bridge. What a beauty.

Welcome to Times Square! Times Square's billboard ads are so big and flashy! :D It's generally a very tourist spot I think. There are nice shops. My uncle's neighbour told me that a few ten thousand people gather there to watch a ball drop on New Years. Yippee.

YEAH. Parsons School of Design. Project Runway! :D

Random ad I found while on the bus.

The ever famous MACY'S! Which I never got to go into. Meh. Macy's is ZOMFGBBQWTF huge. The bus went past it and it was like "Macy's. Macy's. Macy's. Macy's. Macy's. Macy's. OHFINALLYTHEEND." Haha.

Yup. This is how you park your cars in NYC. This is why people take the sub. It costs like $9 to park your car for HALF AN HOUR.

My sister and I at the pier.

Radio City Music Hall. :D

So this is a basic summary of what we did on the first 3 days of NYC. We also went to watch Spamalot, as I've mentioned. I'm listening to the cast CD now and it's effing hilarious. It's more of a music-based musical than a dancey sort of thing. Everything is transmitted through the lyrics, which is really sweet. And their lyrics are so silly, but you can't help loving them. Haha.

All for one
One for all
All for one
And one for all

Some for some
None for none
Slightly less for people we don't like
And a little bit more for me.

They just took the 3 muskerteers' slogan to a whole new level, LOL.

So that's Part I for you.

Part Deux.

Okay, so I've been sitting on my butt these past few days. I reckon I need to get this whole trip thing done by tomorrow because I suffer from semi-STML and things tend to float away from my mind within a week. So... Yeah.

Again, the photos are clickables. Click to expand to the full-sized image (Or as full as photobucket can go, at least.)

Okay. So after spending 3 days in NYC, Monday morning we took a flight to Orlando from JFK. The name Delta causes enough groans. Flight there wasn't that delayed (thankfully), but the flight back was terrible. More on that later.

Anyway, for our stay in Orlando, we stayed at Homewood Suites by Hilton. I swear it is the nicest place in Orlando! The hotel is gorgeous, it's situated right on International Drive and we were so near to so many restaurants (and gift shops. Haha.). Okay anyway, so Orlando is famous for 1) Disneyworld; 2) Universal Studios. And we went to both so that's cute.

First. Disneyworld. It was, sadly, quite a disappointment. First day, we went to Animal Kingdom.

Expedition Everest was very nicely done up (as with all other Disney rides), but the ride itself was... hm. Not as scary as I expected it to be. The pre-ride (aka the time you spend in the queue) was nice though. They had a mini mueseum (with research on the Yeti); a backpackers' lounge (complete with fake canned food, mess tins, hiking boots that sort of thing.). I liked that a lot. Made the queue time seem shorter than it was, haha.

We also went to watch the Finding Nemo Musical. LOVED it. Dory is as ditzy and funny as ever. Yup, it was just very enjoyable to watch.

We went to sit the rapids too. LOL which is quite a crazy thing to do considering that the temperature was about 15deg C. But it was fun, bahaha. We came out after the ride to meet Mom and there was a cast member named talking to her. And then we told them that we just sat the rapids and he asked my mom "How do you say 'crazy' in Chinese?" Bahaha.

After spending a coupla' hours in Animal Kingdom we went over to Disney-MGM (See, this was how boring Animal Kingdom was.).

I can't really remember what we did in Disney-MGM. Oh, we went to sit the Hollywood Tower of Terror. Bee's favourite. :D Like I mentioned previously, the pre-drop was quite wicked. The Twilight Zone and all. I used to love that show but now thinking of it makes me queasy. But it was funny because the cast members had to pretend to be bellboys/girls and then one cast member couldn't hold back her laughter and so she sounded something like this:

*stern expression* Welcome to the Hollywood Tower Hot- HAHAHAHEEHEEHAHAHA.

:D The ride was cool though. When we sat it, the sun was setting already. So when we reached the 13th floor, the elevator door opens and you can see the whole park for a split second before it closes and you drop. And for that second when I glanced out of the doors the sunset was gorgeous. But alas, before I could catch another glimpse the doors closed and we dropped. So... Yeah.

We also went to watch Beauty and the Beast: The Musical.

Pre-show, again, was wicked. 4 guys dressed as technicians came out and started doing acapella. The first guy came out and did mike checks, and then he started scatting. It was amazing. And then the rest came out after and all. I took a video of it but I haven't had time to upload it. ^^ The musical itself was awesome. Chip off the Broadway. Only thing was that they had to truncate the story (if not it'll be like watching the Broadway show itself), and Disney has this tendency to truncate the stories at weird places, so if you didn't watch the movie before you would have no idea what is going on. Having said that though, probably every kid has watched Beauty and the Beast so... that wouldn't prove to be a problem.

We started to walk over to the animation studios to watch the whole "How Animation is done" thing again, because we loved it so much in Disneyland. Hahaha. The one where the cast member talks to "Mushu", who's on a TV screen. It's really cool to watch.

Anyway, before we reached there, we met the cutest things ever.

Gotta love the ever-helpful brooms. :D

And I forgot to take a picture of the Sorcerer's Hat when I first entered the park so I had to make-do with this:

Anyway, we walked over to the Animation studios:

I love that picture of Mulan.

After the Animation thing, we took a walk around their 'Animation museum', and there were a few displays on the new Pixar-Disney movie Meet the Robinsons.

And they had a few paintings:

Night fell and we headed over to Fantasmic. Because we weren't there early enough (people arrive there 90 minutes early), the place was jammed packed with people. But there was a VERYNICE cast member who managed to help us get really good seats. :D Some pictures:

Gotta love Mickey. :D

It was freezing cold that night and we still had to take a frigging bus back to Epcot Centre so that we could take the shuttle back to our hotel. It was so ZOMFGWTFBBQ cold you wouldn't believe it. My auntie tried to keep warm by buying a hot chocolate from a vending machine. 2 funny things happened.

1) My auntie tried to put a Singapore $1 coin into the machine. And when it kept popping out, she went "What?"

2) The vending machine ran out of chocolate so we ended up paying US$1 for a cup of hot water. Which still looked brown, so that was a bit disturing.

So that was how we spent 1 Disney day.

Next day. We went to Epcot.

Okay, I know a lot of people I talked to loved Epcot, but I seriously thought it was bad. The only ride we sat was Mission: Space and I nearly wanted to puke after that. Guess I can never be an astronaut.

Anyway, as we were leaving the park to go to Downtown Disney (which is WAY bigger than the Disneyland counterpart. So much bigger than I ever imagined.), we got lost (amazingly.) and we chanced upon some very cute seagulls:

...Mine?

Anyway, managed to take some random photographs. Orlando has very nice flowers:

Hopped on the bus that would take us to Downtown Disney (See, this is how BIG Disneyworld is.). And I saw the most beautiful advertisement the bus could ever have!

Bahahaha. What would you expect from me.

Anyway, we arrived at the Marketplace.

Basically, DTD has 3 segments to it: Marketplace, Pleasure Island (with all the clubs and whatnot), and West Side (aka Place Where La Nouba Is).

At the Marketplace, we met more friendly broom-men:

We had lunch at Rainforest Cafe (we seem to go to one everytime we're in USA. I don't know why.) For some twisted reason, the waitress thought we couldn't speak English (apart from my mother), because as we passed the menus back to her she told my mom "Could you help me tell them I said thanks?" LOL. And she thought my grandaunt was male. Uhm.

Anyway, by the time we finished our "lunch", it was 5:10PM. And cow, La Nouba starts at 6. And they have a pre-show at 5:30 so I was so scared that we would miss that. Curse DTD for being so huge. We took 20 minutes to walk from the Marketplace to the West Side. While walking, the sun was setting and that was sweet:

I've seen pictures of the La Nouba theatre on Tribune before, but being there myself, watching it live was DA BOMB. I almost screamed when I saw the theatre.

Thankfully we weren't late though. I still had time to rush into the store to get the programme and the Corteo CD! :DDDDDDDD

Anyway, I've reviewed La Nouba in my entry I wrote when I was there, so I'm not going to repeat that part.

Okay, that's the end of part deux.

Part Trois. (I hope I got this correct, HAHAHA.)

So, as the photos went, my last photo for part II was a picture of the La Nouba theatre. So I shall continue.

Anyway, after La Nouba, we had two choices for getting back to Homewood Suites - 1) Take a bus back to Epcot and take the free shuttle back to the hotel. 2) Pay Kassim $25 to pick us up from West Side and back to our hotel. And we took Kassim, because it was freezing cold (for us, anyway) and we couldn't stand another night of waiting at the Epcot carpark while trying to keep warm over a small cup of hot water which costed US$1 (see Part II).

Kassim. Kassim is so amazingly amusing. Basically, on top of being our "driver", he helped us get tickets for Disneyworld and Universal. You know, like in the underhand, sneaky sort of way. For cheaper tickets and all that. -nudge nudge- It's quite funny because there are security checks at the entrances (Fingerprinting! Unbelievable.), and all the tickets we had were... well. Signed with a not-so Chinese name. A Sikh name, in fact. Bahaha, too funny. My name was (something something) Kaur for Disneyworld. HAHAHAHA.

Anyway, back to the story. Kassim was late so we waited at the Disney Store opposite La Nouba.

Haha look! Have a drink out of Mickey's ass!

Anyway, in the van, Kassim told us that he got us tickets for Universal the next day. But we didn't want to go to theme parks 3 days in a row, and that put him in a bit of a situation because some of the tickets expired the next day. Hahaha. But anyway, he said so himself - no worries. And I present you a quotable quote:

Kassim: How old is the youngest one?
My mom: She's turning 12.
Kassim: ... Pish. You're not turning 12, you're 9 years old. And you get a cheaper ticket.
Sister: ?!?!
My mom: Yes, of course.

Cheating the system, hahaha.

Anyway, we went to the factory outlet the next day. Orlando Premium Outlets or something like that. Okay, so talking about shopping wouldn't make a very nice entry so I'm going to skip that. All I'm going to say is that I got very nice shirts and blouses! I'm a happy girl.

Basically, to get around International Drive (Or I-Drive), we took this trolley thingy that fetched us pretty much where ever we wanted to go. So while we waited for the trolley after shopping, I managed to get this shot:

Ahh, I love that shot. I'm going to print a full sized shot of it and frame it up or something.

Okay, next day. Universal! Thanks to Kassim we got those sneaky tickets again. This time, I wasn't a Kaur. I was an angmoh by the name of Janet Thomas. And my brother was Arnold Thomas. And they signed on the ticket so we had to practice forging their signatures. HAHAHA.

First off, Islands of Adventure. This park is the theme park side of Universal. We were there early enough so the queues were really short.

So my sibs have this obsession over water rides. And it was surprisingly warm in Orlando that day (80F I think.), so the water ride was still okay. I actually stayed really dry throughout the whole ride. Until the end.

You know how those water rides have these water guns that people can pay a quarter to squirt water at you?

Yeah, we got that. Except that it wasn't a squirt. It was a FRIGGING SUPERSOAKER EQUIVALENT BLAST OF WATER.

So this is how we ended up looking to my grandaunt:

...Not funny.

Anyway, I don't have photos for these, but after that ride. We went to sit another water ride. The Jurassic Park one. Since I was wet already, it doesn't really matter how I got soaked after that.

Funnily enough, my mom and auntie decided to "be brave" and so they went to sit this Pterodactyl Tours ride. It's just basically an elevated ride around the park, and you swing minimally. And after they came down they couldn't stop freaking out. "I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO FALL AND DIE. OHMYGAWD. SO SCARY." And it's nothing compared to what we sat next.

DUELLING DRAGONS. This ride IS SO COOL.

My brother and I sat it twice - once on each track. My sister sat it thee times - 2 on the blue and 1 on the red. Okay, so I chickened out the first time they went to the blue. But after that the excitement got the better of me so I went to sit red with them. And then after that, I wanted to sit blue. My brother was feeling a little queasy so he left and I sat blue with my sister. It's my first time sitting on inverted coasters and I LOVE IT. All the adrenaline rush and all the endless screaming.

As we were leaving, we saw the Incredible Hulk (the ride, not the character.), and my sister wanted to ride it but the queue was like, 2 hours long. I didn't manage to get a good shot of it though.

After Islands of Adventure, we made our way to the actual Universal Studios.

You know, I thought the trees look pretty... Los Angeles. Hahaha. Oh and for the Universal logo, it spins around. So I was standing there like a doofus for 15 seconds while waiting for it to come around. How stupid is that.

I didn't really enjoy Universal Studios. But anyway, I managed to get some nice shots. Haha, I made my grandaunt pose for this.

What'cher look at, punk?

And my brother, being annoying as usual.

And the oh-so nice flowers only found in Orlando:

There was this show featuring animal actors. But they all ran around so fast during the show that all I got was this:

When we went back to Homewood (courtesy of Kassim, again, haha!), we suddenly realized that we missed Chinese food, a LOT, so we got this!

Generic Chinese takeout boxes. I even have 2 at home now. You know, I still fail to understand why angmohs think we store takeout food in cartons like that, because we don't.

Next day was a tweedledee shopping day again. Time again for nice nature pictures:

And we realized that we still missed Chinese food so we went to eat dimsum!

It was terrible though. :(

Continued on to our shopping place (Prime Outlets), and whilst walking, I got some pictures:

... I forgot what this place was called. It was a shopping centre-like thing.

Tada! I-Drive! I-Drive is horrendously long. There are like 40 trolley stops on it. And a trolley stop is probably equivalent to a bus-stop, so... that's how long it is.

Next day was our last full day in Orlando before we headed back to Manhattan (AND BOSTON.

We played miniature golf at Pirate's Cove for a while before it started to rain. So we took a break for lunch and ate at Ponderosa's. Our waitress was this really old lady and she told us so many stories. There was one about her friend, who was 82, and a week before she died, she was still very active, cleaning the house, exercising etc. So sad. :(

After lunch, we went back to our golfing game. Golf is not fun. Miniature golfing is though! Haha. There's so much terrain and water and decorations. And my sister's ball kept falling into the water. Teehee.

There were some ducks around and my sister fed them.

That's me trying to play golf.

That's how the whole Pirate's Cove looks like.

... And this is how miniature golf is played, Sasa's style. Bahaha.

I even tried bowling the ball into the hole because I was so annoyed at how the ball didn't go where I wanted it to. Amazingly enough, I got a hole-in-one when I went golf-bowling. Hahahaha.

Okay, that's about enough for Part III.

Part IV

Okay, so the end of part III was when we were heading back to cold, cold NYC from Orlando. I was so sad that we had to leave warm. sunny Orlando.

On our way back to JFK, our flight got delayed. Ugh. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's flight delays. I never had to deal with flight delays prior to this holiday, so I guess I'm considered lucky already. Anyway, we went back to our apartment block, but this time we got shifted to the apartment downstairs. It was a studio apartment, as in, it's just one big room. Hence the name studio.

Next day, we went to Chinatown to meet my uncle there. Had lunch at this Malaysian restaurant, which was deelish. And then there was this chinese supermarket next to where we ate so my grandaunt had a fun time buying a lot of things while we waited outside. I thought this was pretty funny:

Is an ambulette a mini-ambulance?

That night was the lighting of the Christmas tree at Rockafeller Centre (remember Home Alone 2? Yeah.), and we lived a decent distance from Rockafeller Centre so my mom decided to take a walk there. My camera decided to die on me right at the moment we reached Rockafeller so... Yeah. But I got this shot at least.

All the decorations were unbelievably gorgeous.

Ah, next day. We decided that we should go to Central Park. So we had to walk to another subway station (I'm not even going to try and explain how complicated the subway is.) and I chanced upon this:

Subway:

And then a bit more walking and tada! Central Park! Central Park is ZOMFGWTFBBQ HUGE. I think we took an hour to walk from the West Side to the South, where Central Park was. Anyway, there's not much blogging about Central Park, because it's more eye candy in the form of pictures.

That's only a few of the 50 pictures I took at Central Park, I think. It was way too gorgeous.

Anyway, we did a whole load of walking and we finally arrived at Central Park Zoo. Firstly, it does not remotely look like anything in Madagascar. Not even close. And there weren't children running around. Neither were there lions, zebras and giraffes. It was a very small and quaint zoo actually.

There was a little kid's petting zoo next to Central Park Zoo. There were pigs, llamas, pigeons and somethings I can't remember.

As we were leaving, we saw this building covered in... uhm. Moss? Leaves?

Yup. After Central Park, we walked over to 5th Avenue (I think), and we just happened to be at the place where the smaller FAO Schwartz was. And...

Mac store! It's underground, actually. I went to take a look at it. It was so cool. They had so many things on display for multiple people to try them. :]

Oh, you know how I said I couldn't meet Wilbur? I lied. I met Wilbur:

Hahaha. Well, it's true! I met Wilbur. Just not Wilbur Chen. Sadly. :(

At night, my auntie and I went to Avery Fisher Hall to watch the New York Phil play! WHOOLALAAA. Lorin Maazel! xD And Leon Fleisher is a friggin genius. He played the whole concerto only with his left hand. Was it Hindemith? Ah, I'm too lazy to take my programme out.

Somehow, Avery Fisher just has this grand-ness to it that the Esplanade can't copy.

After the concert, my auntie and I were walking back and I saw this:

I realized that I should have bought it there because it's so friggin expensive here. Die, HMV.

Next day was BOSTON DAY, YO. Boston, MA! Mom and I had to wake up at 5AM because 1) She booked the flight from JFK, which is like, the furthest airport from our apartment; and 2) She wanted to take the sub there.

Our flight there was delayed because of heavy winds and rain and all that, but we reached there just in time for the Berklee tour and information sessions. We even got to catch a small recital by this Latin Jazz Emsemble. It was way cool.

The first signs of Berklee I saw. This is the 150 Mass. Ave building, I think.

The Uchida Building. We had a small tour around the Uchida building. It was so cool. Every floor belonged to a different instrument. This one's the guitar floor:

They have a Berklee store where I got a book and a shirt (haha.):

One more building (forgot what it's called), where we sat in for the Latin Jazz recital:

The whole tour and information sessions and whatnot took a coupla hours. Between that, we met Gerald kor-kor and had lunch at this Japanese ramen restaurant. And he was telling us all about campus life, haha. Sweet.

You know how clam chowder is always branded as "New England Clam Chowder"? New England isn't in UK; it refers to the group of states in the Northeast part of USA. Like Massachusetts. So no trip to Boston isn't complete with clam chowder! Hahaha. I admit, I'm a clam chowder freak.

My mom figured that since we were done early, we could go to the airport and try to get an earlier flight back. Cow, on the way back, I saw this screen that said all the flights back to JFK were delayed or cancelled. I was so freaked because if we couldn't get a flight back, we'd be staying overnight at the airport. We reached the airport around 4 - 5, I think. And we had to wait, and wait and wait until 10:30PM to get a flight. It was so nerve-wracking. And the worse part was that we weren't guaranteed seats - we were still on waiting list - so even when air traffic control said that they could fly, it didn't necessarily mean that we would be on the flight. Thankfully though, we were. I don't know what I'd do if I had to stay at Logan airport.

When we reached JFK, we had to take the airtrain (a bit like the skytrain in Changi airport, haha). And it goes in a loop and we were very confused about it, so we actually looped the whoke JFK airport about 3 times. How shitass retarded is that. We wasted 30 minutes looping JFK International Airport. Which was why when we reached our apartment, it was almost 1AM, although our flight touched down at 11PM.

Yup, next day was our last day. We just did a bit of shopping, met mt uncle again, and all his neighbours etc. Went for a really superb Chinese lunch in Queens. I was so stuffed.

Flight back was quite uneventful. I was watching Pirates 2 but I never got to complete it (I need that DVD!), but I watched Wallace and Gromit. Gromit is so cute. xD The flight back felt so much faster than on the way there, for some weird reason. Even my grandaunt (who loves travelling but hates flying) was like "Huh? We're home already?" Haha.

Yup, so... that's the end of Part IV. And the end of my whole trip. I love USA so much, but I think I still enjoyed the Cali/Hawaii trip more than this trip. Or not, I don't know. It's really comparing apples and oranges. NYC was so nice, as was Boston and Orlando.

600 photos; 3 cities; 3 states; 1 country; memories forever. <3

8:09 a.m. on 2006-12-05

happy birthday!//

Couldn't get time on the computer yesterday (boy that sounded weird), so here it is.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAWNNIE!

:DD

9:38 p.m. on 2006-11-26

funerale.//

I just remembered a really funny convo I had with my mom back in NY about Princeton.

Mom: (talking to my aunt) Yeah, her friend's in Princeton.
Aunt: Ohhh! Princeton U! Ivy League!
Mom: Yeah. So cool right. Eh, is Wilbur in Princeton U?
Me: No. He's my age! Why would he be in university?
Mom: Oh okay. Then where is he? Princeton something right.
Me: Princeton... High.
Mom: ...oh.
Aunt: Is it affliated to Princeton U?
Me: NO.
Mom: Cheh.

Princeton the franchise. Hah.

9:10 p.m. on 2006-11-24

fox and the hound.//

DISNEYWORLD y'all!

Okay, so Disneyworld didn't really live up to the initial hype we had. One the first day we went to Animal Kingdom and Disney-MGM. We went to sit Expedition Everest! OOOOHLALA it's rocks man! :DDD We would have gone again, just that the queue was horrendously long and we didn't have the time. We went to sit the rapids too. In the winter. Yeahhh. We were wet and cold. After which we went to watch the Finding Nemo musical! Hahah so cute.

Hopped over the Disney-MGM in the afternoon and we sat the Tower of Terror, the one that Bee enjoyed so much. The pre-drop was so freaking though. The Twilight Zone and whatnot. And they drop and lift you up multiple times, which I was so not expecting. And then at the top when the doors open for a split second, the sun was shining in our eyes before the doors closed and we immediately dropped 13 storeys. Coool.

We wanted to take the Aerosmith coaster but the queue, again, was way too long. So we went to watch the Beauty and the Beast musical, which was good too. Pre-show was this acapella group, apparently named Four for a Dollar, who were so, so, so, so, so good! The funniest part was that they were dressed as cast members and the 1st singer came out and did "mike checks" at first. And then he started scatting and then all of them appeared. Way enjoyable.

Yesterday. We went to Epcot. Man, I didn't like it. We went to sit Mission: Space, and we nearly wanted to puke after that. Later in the afternoon we went over to Downtown Disney for a really late lunch, before half-walking-running to the West Side (20 minutes away) for...

LA NOUBA.

Laaaaaa Nouba! Row D, Seats 1-6, Section 103. Firstly, the theatre is much smaller than I expected it to be. The clowns came out for the pre-show with a few oversized blocks, and they had quite a lot of fun with it. Typical pre-show stuff, like how they direct the audience from the curtain up to stage, insisting that the seats are on stage; Messing with people's hair - Balto gave an old man a mohawk. Pre-show announcements were HILARIOUS. Brackets are the sound effects behind the voice.

For this show, smoke effects will be used. (*coughCOUGHcoughCOUGHCOUGH) But they are harmless to your health. In case of an emergency (AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!), please proceed to your nearest exit, which are (footsteps) here, (footsteps panning the theatre), here (footsteps) and here. (PANTpantPANT) Now, ladies and gentlement, sit back, relax and enjoy... LA NOUBA.

And then the parade began. What Benoit Jutras says is true. The parade IS magical. The music perfectly the way you remember it on the DVD. All of the characters hop out of the curtain, dance around, Rokardy did some handstands. Your typical Parade. : D

There were only 3 Les Cons! :( It looked so incomplete. I was deeply affected throughout the whole show.

Cleaning Lady comes out. So there's a new cleaning lady since the DVD. Funniest part was that she's small and petite and pretty, so the later frog scene didn't really work very well, because the whole seducing part was weird, because she's so pretty. Hahah.

German Wheel was same-same. I personally liked it a lot. I like the German Wheel!

High Wire. I was craning my neck to see them and there were a lot of things going on onstage itself, so I didn't really focus on them all the time. Meka King sounded good on this.

Diabolos. ZOMFGBBQ the diabolo girls are PUNY. They must be like, half my height. They don't look older than 10. Hearing the whirling of the diabolos was really cool. It's a nice sound. Thing about them is that they don't have that much stage presence I guess. Their smiles were kind of fake. But their juggling is FREAKY. It's a notch faster than the DVD. The trick nearing the end where the green diabolo gets thrown and then the girl runs to stand on the other girl was scary. The girl on top lost her balance and fell. But she tried again the second time and she did it! She was quite shaken after that though. She looked like she was going to cry. :( Poor thing.

Cycles. New people, new tricks. Whooolala. Marcos is SO CUTE. And the one where Lance goes into the audience, he cycled past my grandaunt so she was so entertained. : D And Marcos went realllly close to the edge of the stage and a woman in row C screamed. HAHAH. You can hear the squeaking of the bikes from Row D so that was fun too.

Aerial Cradle. I was watching it from an angle, so that kinda sucked. I was blocked by the sides of the door sometimes. Meh. But it was nice. I like Aerial Cradle.

Silks. I was never a big fan of silks. But Yuri is really good. And when he flies, it's above Row D and you feel the wind go past you and THAT was nice. As usual, I like the falls, the really fast ones. I didn't like Meka's voice in this. She was kind of... soft. But Reve Rouge was decent enough.

Balancing on Chairs. Teehee the Les Cons are retarded, as always. I think I was in a half-trance listening to Ralph-Daniel's voice; I was paying much attention to the act. Oops.

Flying Trapeze was SO MUCH better than the DVD. But still, I'm not a fan of Flying Trapeze.

Power Track. When I heard the beginning of Urban I was SO SO SO SO SO SO depressed. :( The act seemed longer than the DVD though, that was a good thing. The Les Cons didn't do the 3 man tower thing though, the Fast Trackers did. The first time though, the girl fell. And then another girl appeared at the end of the track. Like whoa, I wasn't expecting that. They managed to do it the 2nd time though. Trampoline was awesome! My grandaunt remembers it the most from the DVD and it was so funny because at the part where they were going to jump into the building, she told my sister "DON'T BLINK!" Hahah. I have found a new CdS fan. Yeah. I liked Trampoline, especially the part where they "juggle" on the buildings.

Ending. The "wedding". Hahah the faux-Benoit Glazer. I could clearly see him in the steel tower.

Clown acts were the same as the DVD.

Music. Firstly, I'm not a big fan of Ralph's voice. His tone isn't as... round as Isabeau. And Isabeau's voice is higher and (dare I say it) sweeter. Not that he's a bad singer, he's technically secure. But I still think Isabeau's better. xD Meka King was enjoyable. I really wanted to listen to Sisaundra but she's on maternity leave so. Hm. She was good. She didn't push as much at the end of Reve Rouge like Sisaundra did on the DVD. That was the part that I would go totally insane, but her ending was totally different. Like a fade-off thing, while Sisaundra's was a 'BOOM'. But nevertheless, she has a very nice voice.

Music was good. There were some parts where you can clearly tell that they're stalling the music for the acts and it was quite professionally done. The funniest thing that happened was during some act (I forgot which one), everyone started clapping to the music. And the best part came when the music was slowing down and no one realizes that the music was slowing down. So everyone was clapping off-beat and it was so funny because after that people tried to get on-beat again, but I guess they don't really have a sense of rhythm. Hahaha!

Okay so that's my La Nouba review for you.

Quiqui! I got us the planners! They are horrendously ugly (somewhat.), but anyway, I got them. And the Corteo CD! : D

Happy Thanksgiving y'all.

8:38 p.m. on 2006-11-23

always look on the bright side of life.//

'Sup all. I'm in Orlando now! The weather's good, very much warmer than NYC, thank goodness. I'm not cut out for temperatures lower that 15 deg C.

Prison Break is going to show in about an hour's time. HAH I love my Prison Break.

This sucks but on Nov 23rd, Macy's is going to have a Thanksgiving Parade where they walk down from Central Park to Broadway (i.e where our apartment is), but we're obviously not in NYC now, and will not be on the 23rd. Meh. And Lucas is going to be there! Triple meh. But oh well.

I didn't manage to go to Macy's yesterday. But I did go to Times Square for a walk at 10 at night. We walked into this gigantic CD/DVD store and I went ballistic. I finally, FINALLY found the Hilary Hahn Paganini/Spohr CD. I actually asked for 'Cats Don't Dance' DVD and the guy said that they were sold out. Ohmygawd people in this day and age still buy CDD! That goes to show how kickass cool that lovely show is. The funniest (and almost the most insulting) thing I saw was in the DVDs section, under Musicals, was - you probably guessed it - HSM. Gosh. And I saw Cirque DVDs tooooo! But obviously I didn't buy them. : D

I like how I see things here that we're never even heard of back in Singapore.

We're apparently going Universal Studios tomorrow. And then Disney World on Wednesday, before going to watch LN at night. Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Okay, out.

6:55 p.m. on 2006-11-21

diva's lament.//

Yo from New York!

This place, is lovely lovely lovely GORGEOUS. You can get anywhere from everywhere by walking. I don't think I've ever walked so much in a day before. We're renting this apartment situated next to a - get this - Japanese restaurant! Well, 3 actually. 3 restaurants. And we're a street away from the grocer's, and 10 minutes away from Rockafeller Centre and Times Square and Central Park. This place freaking rocks. And I'm 15 minutes away from Carnegie Hall.

Times Square is INSANE. There's a Hershey's store which sells, obviously, anything and everything Hershey's. And they sell Reese's Buttercups toooooo! To quote a fellow shopper in the store, this is what heaven smells like.

The weather is freezing cold. Then again, anything below 20deg for me is considered freezing. But it's about 50 Fahrenheit here, which is about 10 Celsius. And it drops lower in the night - probably to about 4 Celsius. Brrr.

I'm not going to Princeton to meet Wilbur, because the schedules simply don't coincide. :( Wilbur! We shall meet you in JB soon okay. : D

We took a bus tour of the city yesterday. A 4 hour bus tour. And then we went to Queens to visit my uncle, whom I've never met prior to yesterday. And then on the way back, the funniest thing happened to us. Us as in my sibs and I. Our first adventure in the Big Apple.

We took the sub back from Queens and then my mom asked us to get off at the station where our apartment was the closest to, so that we could go back first while she got our Spamalot tickets. So we got off at 55th St, 7th Avenue.

And then us, being all sleepy-eyed and blur. We walked to 54th Street. I thought our address was 53rd St, between 8th and Broadway. My brother thought it was 57th St, between 8th and Broadway. Anyway, the apartment address is like 55th St, between 8th and Broadway.

So anyway, I said that we should walk to the correct avenue first, because the streets are easier to identify. So we started walking supposedly towards 8th Avenue. Walk, walk, walk. Avenues are longer than streets. You take 1 minute to walk from street to street, and I think about 5 minutes from avenue to avenue. Anyway, so we walked for 5 minutes. And then we ended up at 6th Avenue. Uh-oh.

So we walked back to 7th, then to 8th, but not to Broadway, where our apartment was closest to. So we couldn't actually see our apartment from 8th Avenue. Walking along 8th Ave, we walked to 57th Street. Wrong. Walked across to Broadway Ave. Walked down to 55th St. FINALLY, we got back.

And the best part was, 3 minutes after we entered the apartment, my mom came back.

Spamalot was hilarious funny. The cast is really small, about 20 people I think, as with the theatre and stage, but nevertheless it's really good. And political, hahahah. They did quite a bit of spoofs from various sources. Like there was one scene very reminicent of Phantom of the Opera. The scene in the sewer with the boat and everything. Hahaha. And there's a song in the musical titled 'Diva's Lament', and immediately I thought 'Oh my God. DIDO.' Hahaha. Not a very pleasant thing to think about, me thinks.

Anyway, we're going out now to take a Brooklyn tour. And then we're going to MACY'S. I better be able to get some good stuff there.

We're flying down to Orlando tomorrow where I'll have a definite internet connection so till then. We're tapping into someone's now. Haha. Miss you guys.

Oh and Germ/Wog/Dollah/BFF/Ah Soh/whoever, I want to see photos from Prom! <33

10:34 a.m. on 2006-11-19