Saturday, December 13, 2008
hi:) this will probably be my last post from LA. I'm finally done with my finals. having 6 finals in 1 week is pretty exciting, i must say but I hope I don't have to face that situation in the future. I was too excited the entire of the day to feel nervous for the finals. Anyways, I'm flying out of LA tml 1.10pm 13 december, LA time! really excited about going home.. Plus, my sister is bringing home strawberriers from Japan and according to her the strawberries are really juicy and sweet. yummy!!:)
I guess I'll have to lose some of the weight that I've gain here as well..sigh. and to think my appetite is not even half as good as back home and I gain weight. at least I think I did. urgh.
I guess I'm glad that I came here for exchange because one only really become truly more independent when you are overseas, living alone. And when you are overseas, some how, it appears that you have a better idea of what you want. We always think the grass is greener at the other side. But too often, you realise that what you see on TV is the glamourous side of things and is probably only reflective of 10% of reality. It teaches you to be more appreciative of the many things that you have always taken for granted.
I'm not even sure if I will miss LA much. I definitely will miss the family friend here who has been bringing us around (for our last meal in LA, they brought us to this Italian family restaurant and the food and dessert is soooo good). Nothing much besides that I think. Probably the weather here, since I'm more afraid of the heat than the cold. But nothing else. At least I don't think so now. We'll see.
Anyways, can't wait to see everyone soon! Got to do the remaining of my packing!!! take care:)
cheers,
kx
rmb to sign off! sang at 1:49 PM
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
hihihi, feeling a bit delirious now. I had 3 back-to-back finals today and I didn't have time for lunch and the dinner at all the dining halls are soo horrible there wasn't much to eatso I'm a bit not in the right mind and surviving on adrenaline now.
It was exciting..going from one finals to another. The most incredulous thing happened in my last final. One of my professors, the one I always describe to be psychotic, came in late for the exam - he just has to be late every single time - and then he told us, 'the true/false segment of the final isn't ready yet (i.e. he hasn't finished setting the questions, let alone print it) so you all start doing the essays first'. And all of us were like, what? and we started laughing. Trust him to do the wierdest things. On the first day of class he came in to the classroom without bringing a non-permanent marker and he started drawing graphs and because there was a duster he used his saliva to clean it!!! the grossiest thing that I've ever seen and everyone was like looking at each other in shock.
Anyways, so 3 finals are done and I'm left with 3 more!!!! I'm going to start packing tonight!!! So exciting..I'm addicted to japanese songs now..strange. I've no clue what they are singing but the songs sound nice enough.
I've said it like a million times already and i'll say it again - I can't wait to go home!!! That's the only reason why I'm so excited about exams.. anyways, need to start my packing!! hope to see everyone soon before I re-bury myself under a pile of books and readings next semester:)
cheers,
kx
rmb to sign off! sang at 11:31 AM
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
hey,
yesterday was the time and day of the week when I had to practically lock my doors and hide in my room. Every monday nights, my floor government has a floor meeting. I attended one. And it was a complete waste of time. None of my suite mates attend the floor meeting as well. Plus, my bed time (after the daylight savings adjustment) coincides with the time of the floor meeting. So too bad. But it's really irritating how they will go from door to door, knock on each door, and shout 'floor meeting'. We will all make sure to not play any music and be really really quiet to prevent detection. Once, one of my suite mate forgot and was still blasting music when they came and the door knocker (yes, they actually have an official door knocker in the floor government) shouted, "i can hear your music. I know you are in there. Come out for floor meeting now."
It's really irritating. At times, I really feel as if I'm being persecuted, just like how the Jews were persecuted during WWII. And to think that I'm in the US, the supposedly most democratic country in the world and thus, I have the freedom to choose what I want to do. On my 4th day here, they had some early dinner gathering thing that I couldn't attend cos I was travelling with my friends around downtown LA. And because we couldn't attend the gathering we couldn't have dinner that day because they cancelled our right to swipe for dinner that day simply cos we didn't attend the gathering. And we were soo annoyed and we got more annoyed because we were hungry.
But luckily, not too long ago, we found the perfect way to deter these irritating people from knocking on our doors. Because there is another door separating the other rooms and the hallway leading to our rooms, we have been consistently closing that door and so all that we can hear is a muffled knock and a muffled 'floor meeting'. Goodness. But apparently the floor meetings' attendance isn't very good. Not surprising.
haha..end of my whining session. take care! and see everyone soon!
cheers,
kx
rmb to sign off! sang at 9:39 PM
Sunday, November 23, 2008
hello!! guess who! haha :)
kx! thanks for keeping the blog active with ur interesting entries from LA! :) i wanna be out of singapore too! sighs! staying too long in singapore and smu makes me so tired n drained :( nowadays i just feel so sluggish (with a very high level off inertia haha) and i cant wait to go exchange too! kx, do take more photos before u fly back in 4 weeks time! lets have steamboat at ur place again (if its convenient for u n ur family) so u can tell us more abt ur trip ya! :)
all the best for exams everyone! lets have gathering again after exams! (i think yimin is keen on organising haha thanks yimin!!)
love, jy
rmb to sign off! sang at 12:34 PM
Thursday, November 20, 2008
hey, I guess everyone is busy preparing for exams. So jiayou and good luck!! I just had my last midterm today! yay!:)
so what happened between the last time I wrote sth here and now? I went to Disneyland. And it was so so so fun. It's really a place that you will forget all your misery and just indulge in a day of fun. My favourite ride is this ride called Space Mountain and it was an exhilarating ride and there were times during the ride when I could feel myself moving against gravity. Another ride was based on Pirates of the Carribean - which wasn't exhilarating but very very enjoyable. We sat in this wooden boat and we cruised through replicas of the movie set and in one particular segment, we were 'caught' in crossfire. Had a really enjoyable time. We spent the entire day at Disneyland before we went to California Adventure Park, which is just beside Disneyland.
California Adventure Park is very similar to Disneyland in the sense that it was based on Disney animated movies. However, the focus is more on rides. There is this super huge rollercoaster - California Screaming - as the name suggests, its a super long and super exhilarating rollercoaster. Obviously I didn't go for it...I doubt my heart can take it. We took this 4D Toystory ride. It was soo fun. We had to sit on this revolving mini car-like thing and we brought to different segments where we had to shoot at the targets and accumulate points. It's very fun although my arm was hurting at the end.
Then, last saturday, my family friend brought us for dim sum!! yum yum. And they brought us to this place called Huntington Library, which used to be the private residence of this super rich railroads tycoon. Now that he has passed away, his estate is opened to the public. It was a huge place but a totally amazing place. There are a number of gardens within 1 single estate - A rose garden with lots of huge roses, a Japanese garden which is totally authentic Japanese - we felt we entered the set of the Memoirs of a Geisha - , a Shakespeare garden, a huge conservatory where they had a mini rainforest and a temperate rainforest and many others, a Desert garden, a Zen garden, a Chinese garden and a library housing many sculptures and famous paintings. It's a really amazing place! And to think that all these belongs to one person. Wow. For nice pictures, go to my facebook. Lazy to upload a few photos here! haha.
Going to another famous museum here this saturday - Getty Museum. And during the upcoming thanksgiving holiday we will be going to Universal Studios. really excited about that!:)
anyways, enough from me. Take care and jiayou! I'll see all of you soon! Really excited about going home! Less than 4 weeks now!!:)
cheers,
kx
rmb to sign off! sang at 10:20 AM
Friday, October 17, 2008
it's me. again. there's just so many funny things that happened this week. Just had dinner at one of the dining restaurants (where dinner is buffet style) and they served baked fish with thai sweet chilli sauce. really nice. relatively. And it was the first time I've had fish in the past 2 weeks or so. It's really really really hard to find fish here. And my friends and I realised why finding fish here is like digging for gold and diamond. But anyways, I had 3 plates of fish!! And my friends and I were soo happy that we finally could have decent fish that we went up to the dining people preparing the fish to say a big 'thank you' and they were obviously surprised and happy to get words of thanks from us.
Here's the funny bit. We were enjoying our fish so much it surprised us to see how many people were turned off by the sight of fish. So we started observing them and guessing which ones will pick up the plate of fish.
First, 3 people appeared - 2 whites and 1 asian. The asian saw the fish and took the plate immediately. The 2 white americans stopped in front of the plates of fish, stared at the plates for at least 25 seconds, looked up at the sign indicating the menu for today for another 25 seconds, lowered their heads to stare at the plates again. And then, they walked away.
After them, some other people appeared. At least 90% of the Asians took the plate of fish immediately and some, like us, went back for second and third helpings. Almost every single white or black or hispanic americans did not take the plate of fish. Most had this look of disgust on their faces when they saw the fish. As a result, the place serving the fish had the shortest queue in the entire dining hall. Actually, there wasn't a queue at all. The only white americans who took up the plate of fish were mainly older people.
The funniest thing was that for every single non-Asian American who stared at the fish, they had to stare at it for at least 25 seconds, raise their heads to read the sign for another at least 25 seconds and then lower their heads and stare at the plate of fish again for at least another 25 seconds. It was soo funny observing them. Apparently some of them didn't know what a fish was. There was this guy who was curious enough to ask what type of chicken it was!!! my friends and i were like doubling up with laughter. it was just so so funny.
And to think they are so health 'conscious' such that it's so hard to find full-cream milk. I can find 4 types of milk here - half-and-half, skim milk, fat free and 2% fat milk. And guess where the longest queue for food is? American comfort food like burgers and fries.
And then, about 30 minutes after we happily took our first plate of fish, the menu was changed and the fish was replaced with, guess what, chicken. And then, a queue started forming and people whom we saw walk away with disgust when they saw the fish went up to take a plate of chicken.
Now we know why it's so hard to find fish here. No wonder when I went to take my third piece of fish and I commented the dining people for serving such delicious fish, they gave me an extra huge piece with lots of gravy. The fish phenomenon is thus solved.
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Shall include something else incredible this professor of mine said during class. He is a professor for money and banking and he was explaining the value of paper money. Then, he helpfully told us why he doesn't pay taxes until the very last minute - he's hoping that he will fortunately die the next day and then he won't have to pay tax!! goodness...the entire class laughed in disbelief..
anyway, the weekends are fast approaching (esp for all of you in Singapore)..enjoy the weekend! and take care!!
cheers,
kaixian
Labels: Fishy phenomenon
rmb to sign off! sang at 10:42 AM
Thursday, October 16, 2008
i soo have to share this hilarious thing I overheard this morning. I was queuing for my breakfast this morning with my friend and I overheard this Asian-American girl comment to her friend, 'oh my god, that banana is yellow.' And her friend said, 'if you want, you can ask if you can get a browner banana.' And I was thinking - er...isn't a ripe banana supposed to be yellow?? Anyways, I was trying really hard not to laugh. Totally made my day.
have a great day!!
cheers,
kx
rmb to sign off! sang at 10:28 AM
