2009

Even though this has been dead for quite some time, I can't break tradition just yet hehehe. Hey what would the new year be without one of my typically long and super vague posts? It's an awesome way to enter into the new year!!! Or at least that's what I keep telling myself when those doctors are around my little white room where I can't hurt myself...

Anyways yes since the move to Twitter, this has been ultra dead. Hey it kinda just happened plus you can tweet quicker there than here...Oh well lol. But considering that for the past few years I've always made a yearly super vague post, I figured why should that stop? So here it is :)

In line with tradition, it'll be vague and I'll think about it if I want to make it super vague.

This year has been the first where I've embraced the changes that have happened and have liked them. Where I had to make adjustments I've never had to like them because I was so engrossed in actually staying on two feet. This time, the change that has happened has been rather different compared to the past few years. They're more complicated than ever but they've been some of the more enjoyable changes over the past year.

Last year I talked about change, adjustments, friends, risks, shocks of close friends and routines in some vague sense. This year has been about those adjustments/changes, the risks, routines, the light at the end of the tunnel and socialisation.

For once this year I'll try to keep it shorter than normal breaking some traditions but still keeping the main part in tact.

Last year the changes and adjustments were talked about in some vague sense and how I wasn't as shocked as before and how I had to adjust to survive the new chapter that I had taken. These changes and adjustments have had an impact on my life this year in a much bigger way than expected where I went through an entire cycle to understand what I have to go through and what could possibly come up.

It's been a learning curve with other unexpected changes as well and how things can change in an instant. It's not uncommon for everyone to experience it but when things do change in an instant it normally shocks you quite a bit. These changes haven't had as big of an impact as the expected changes.

The changes and adjustments are a result of risks that I took last year. So far I think these risks have paid off but when some expected change occurs in the near future, I may need to take a few more risks and see where the dice lands.

With the changes and adjustments, a routine was also born for the first time. It's something that's been really uncommon to me as I'm used to having something come up at the last moment that I'm happy to deal with but this change has been a pleasant surprise. I'm trying to get more of a routine going but it's been a great start.

The light at the end of the tunnel is near but also oh so far away. I can see it and almost grasp it but I'm just not there yet. I'm just hoping that this light will help me in many other ways possible but it's something I look forward to in the near future.

Part of the light at the end of the tunnel relates to socialisation patterns that have cropped up over the past year. Catching up with friends is always a hard task when you don't see much of them or when you don't have time but to notice that there's always certain people who do certain things is something I wasn't aware of until this year. It's really strange but it also forms part of a routine. The question at the end of the day is whether you like that routine or not. During the past year, that question has been answered in many different ways that have changed or adjusted the perception of others but for me hasn't shocked me. The patterns some people have is something I need to keep learning to avoid being blindsided.

The year ahead represents a year of a no nonsense attitude. It's something to notice that it's time that this happened for many people and covers all the topics I've mentioned and many more. I've always said it's always dangerous to put a time frame on something but there's also a point where enough is enough.

This is separate from forgiveness where time cannot comprehend its true meaning (Ok even for me that's way too vague. I'll explain this one. What I mean is forgiveness knows no boundaries). Forgiveness is something that we all need which is why it knows no boundaries.

Wow it really was shorter this year hehehe. Anyways I hope that you have a great, happy and safe new year and I hope to see most of you in 2010 :)

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Now playing: Kaskade - Angel On My Shoulder (EDX's Belo Horizonte At Night Remix)
via FoxyTunes

Viva la Vida

"Awesome" does not describe it. Fantasticly awesome doesn't cover it. Awesome x 1,000 doesn't cover it lol. I think you get the picture hehehe. I heard people saying it was better than X&Y tour. I, obviously, didn't go so I have nothing to compare it to. But from what I saw...brillant :) It was sooooooo good :) I'm quite suriprised I can still talk relatively alright lol.

Will try and steal pics from people to show everyone. Oh yeah I still need to upload my US pics too...that'll come soon hahaha.

So how's your December.....

I promised a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge post for December and well, here it is :) It's a little late but meh you know how it is :) Now I'm not one to normally just talk about all random stuff but I'll try to post most things that I remember about what happened lol.

As you can tell from some of my previous posts I'm a big fan of just posting the huge events and stuff like that. Well for most of the month of December I went on a little trip to the big US of A. Decided that I needed some time off so just went with a friend of mine and we both flew over to the US of A.

LA

When I first landed I was like "Whoa I'm in LA...I'M IN LA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" So yeah as you can tell I was excited but also in disbelief that it was actually happening. Explored Hollywood on the first night I was there and I have to say it's really disappointing. Hollywood's really disappointing. What you see in the movies is pretty fake lol. I was able to walk and see most of Hollywood's stuff (The stars on the walkway, the Chinese Theatre with the cement handprints of some famous celebs, Roosevelt Hotel and the Hollywood sign) within an hour or so because all of the stuff I just mentioned above is about a few blocks away from each other. You'd only need about an hour or two to see it and do it properly.

So after that first night, which was pretty disappointing to know that we've all been conned, my travel buddy and I headed to Disneyland. Now the way we were going to Disneyland was that we were going to catch public transport to the Greyhound stop then from Greyhound we'd just walk it to Disneyland. My travel buddy and I decided if we woke up really early (i.e. 5am) we should be able to make the first Greyhound there and get the maximum amount of time possible at Disneyland.

Now the first of our problems started with public transport. We were told to catch a particular route to the Greyhound stop and we caught that bus. However when we asked the driver whether it was going to the stop we needed to the driver was like "Oh you should be catching a different route there" This is after about 6 blocks/1 km downhill of where we first got on. So we had to walk 6 blocks back to our original stop to catch the proper bus to the Greyhound stop and surprise surprise we missed the Greyhound bus we were going to catch.

The problem was we just missed it (7:30ish am) and the next bus didn't leave till 10 am. Ok fine we had no choice in the matter so we caught the next bus. When we got to the Greyhound stop near Disneyland the map showed that it was only around the corner. Even the Greyhound lady was saying it was only around a corner. Now it turns out that "around the corner" meant an hour walk up and down hill to get to Disney's car park...not even ticketing. It took us an hour to walk "around the block" just to get to a car park...

When we got into Disneyland it was midday. Fun start huh? When we got in there though it was good. Very fantasy land as expected and there were quite a few things to do. We didn't go on that many rides because my travel buddy really wanted to do the tacky things there like take a picture with Mickey and stuff like that. So we went on this gondola ride and took a train ride around one of the Disney parks. It's pretty much what you'd expect in a theme park and it did live up to expectations. It's one of those places where you need a few days to visit the place. We only had 1 day and I can assure you it's not enough...and this is the tiny Disneyland that we're talking about. The bigger one needs like a week or something like that to visit and one of my friends did go to the bigger one (more about that a little later).

So after running ourselves mad from the screwed plans and the walking that was done during that time, we decided to take it a little easier and went around to Sunset Blvd to see what the fuss was all about. We got to this place called the Sunset Mall or something like that and we walked one length of the "mall" and we were like "Is this it? Are we on the right track?" To this day I'm still not sure we did all of Sunset but what I can say is if that Sunset Mall was the only shopping there...it's really disappointing. We shopped around there for a little bit and bought a few things here and there then we headed off from that disappointing part of the trip.

After Sunset we headed over to the Walt Disney Concert Hall and it looks like one massive tin piece of art. It's really weird at first but then you start to appreciate how they've built it and all of that. It's really a fantastic building and it's something that you should see if you get the chance. After the Concert Hall our next destination was Bunker Hill, which is roughly 400m away from the Concert Hall. Bunker Hill is famous for having a building in the shape of a ship. As I mentioned, it's about 400m away from the Concert Hall but even though it's only 400m away, my travel buddy and I spent an hour and half searching for it and we could not find a building in the shape of a ship. I don't know how that worked but that's what happened.

After that disappointing part we split for this next part of the trip. I headed over to a basketball game whilst my travel buddy did something else. The game that was I saw was goooooooood :) One of the huge things that I had to do was to see a basketball game and like many sports the atmosphere is so much different watching it there compared to watching it on TV. It's completely different. Well worth it though :)

The next day my travel buddy and another person from the hostel we were staying in traveled over to Universal Studios to see what's there. The first thing we did was some haunted house type of thing where you're in an absolutely dark room and you seriously cannot see anything in front of you and they have real actors in there who pop out of nowhere to scare you. The thing I hate most about it was that you couldn't see anything. The actors couldn't touch you anyways so it was alright it was scary only because you couldn't see what was in front of your for quite a bit of it. It wasn't that bad all up.

Headed over and did the studio tour just to see how movies were made then met up with a friend of mine. This friend, her boyfriend and a mutual friend of theirs came in a little later and yah we spent the rest of the day with them :) It was a pretty good day doing that, the Simpsons ride, the Mummy ride, looking at how they do sfx, looking at the Shrek 4D show and the Waterworld show. Later on was the "oh dear" type of thing.

The friend from the hostel left us and went back to the hostel so the 5 of us went to dinner. At dinner a friend of my friend rocked up and took us around. He dropped my travel buddy off at the hostel and the rest of us headed over to Hollywood. My friend, her boyfriend and their mutual friend hadn't seen it yet because that day was their first day in LA. So we went around Hollywood and got to spend time with my friend, her boyfriend and their mutual friend a little more.

The part where it gets bad was when we were trying to find parking so that those 3 could explore Hollywood. The guy that was driving found this car park close by to all the tourist stuff and entered into the car park through the wrong entrance (Entered through the left lane, which is right for us but obviously not over there). So after realising he entered the wrong way he backed out, went over the middle island and into the right lane. When we headed down the right way there was this weird noise.

We stopped the car and had a look at the front of the car. The front right bumper was literally dangling from the car. Now on most cars it's still pretty screwed but the car that we were in was a BMW convertible. So we screwed up the bumper of a BMW convertible. Always fun lol...After we found parking we looked around Hollywood which didn't take too long but it was fun :)

Oh yes this friend of mine that I met up at Universal is the friend I talked about earlier on about me knowing a friend who went to the bigger Disneyland park. She, her boyfriend and that mutual friend headed over to the Florida park for a week and she told me it was huge and they really needed all those days. Of course before that happened they ruined a bumper of a BMW convertible lol.

After that, I had to leave because it was my last day in LA and my travel buddy and I had to go over to the Greyhound to catch the bus to Vegas. But before I get to that part I gotta tell you about some of the random things that we saw in LA.

* Cleaners - Now most of us here are really conservative when it comes to water and we're all about how we can preserve water. In LA, we saw a cleaner using what was an electric pump water broom of some sort. It was a stainless steel broom shaped cleaner and where the bristles are on a broom, on that cleaning thing it was water coming out of it and the whole thing was linked to an electric pump, which was obviously responsible for gushing out all that water. What was worse was the cleaner spent about 2 minutes trying to clean this one corner and the water couldn't get the leaves out from this corner. So eventually the cleaner bent down and physically removed them. My friend and I were like "All that water...you could've used a broom to clean that easy..." They are so bad with environmental concerns and their energy consumption.

* Mexican labour - Seriously all of the Macca's that we went into we saw so many Mexicans working there it's not funny. Like now we understand how they make so much money - hire cheap labour.

* Street Signs - You know how the crossing signs when it turns green there's a noise to let you know that you can cross and you can see the green man? In LA there's no noise. It's so disabled unfriendly seriously. We were both going "So how do the blind know when to cross?" It was irritating because you actually had to look at the sign all the time to know when to cross. But one good thing about it that we don't have here is when it's flashing and about to stop, it gives you a countdown to tell you how long you have left to cross. Definitely useful.

* Ketchup Packaging - This is weird to talk about but they put mustard and "strawberry jelly" in ketchup/tomato sauce squeezable packaging. Not the bottles but the little packets you can get from the fast food outlets. Everything's very squeezable over there...

* Maccas eggs - Now I thought that the scrambled eggs over here weren't great at all...until I went over there. Their scrambled eggs are the most plastic thing you've ever seen. You could see the mould they were put in. The eggs themselves looked like they still had a plastic layer on top of the eggs. It was so bad it's not funny. Do not ever try the maccas scrambled eggs. It's baaaaaad...

* Biscuits - Over here they're like cookies but slightly different. Over there they're like English muffins but fattier, oily and flakier. They taste good for fatty food but yeah very different...

* Ice cream - You expect that for a place like LA they would have some pretty decent ice cream and they'd be alright. Now the taste of them is pretty good and they have a standard but for a place like LA...they seriously need to figure out how to make them better. They're so soft that they totally melt within 15 minutes...in the winter...

* Bus drivers/buses - It's actually a pretty simple idea but it's really effective. Over here the drivers expect you to know where you're going and some rare ones will tell you where to go and stuff like that. Over there most of their drivers are really nice and guide you around where you need to head. On top of that most buses in LA have at least 1 TV screen. Over here we sort of do on the newer buses but they don't really do much. It also doesn't help when most of our fleet is the older buses without any TV's at all. Over there yes it's a time wasting device but it also gives you a little GPS map just to see where the bus is at the moment and announces each stop once (Unlike the damn trains over here before they introduced the updated version of it...). Simple but effective.

I'll leave this for now and I'll come back in a little while.



Vegas



As I said earlier took the bus down to Vegas for our next stop in our tour. We stayed at the Bellagio (If you've seen Ocean's 11, it's the hotel that they rob with the fountains) which is really nice and definitely recommend to stay there and if I was to go back to Vegas I'd stay there again. The thing was the bed was really, really soft and so were the seats there and what happened was (Yes this is the first day/night in Vegas) sitting on all those soft stuff and sitting in stupid positions (I was leaning forward because I was stupid and my feet weren't touching the ground) inflamed an old injury. I developed back spasms after doing all of that.

Now Vegas is a night city. Everything happens in the night apart from the gambling. Because of my back I was virtually ruled out of doing anything in Vegas. I couldn't do a thing because of my back. My friend was more pissed that I was because I couldn't do anything with them. It was pretty bad so yeah.

The next day my friend had a Canyon tour booked. I didn't want to visit the Canyon because I was like "Yeah I'm not going to see a pile of rocks" because I really didn't want to. The tour was supposed to start at like 11 or something and left me to deal with the rest of the stuff. We actually had another hotel booked that day so it was "moving day" so to speak.

What happened was I had to carry 2 sets of luggage and 2 backpacks with back spasms in the rain going between two hotels. I was literally walking about 10 steps and then I'd have to stop because there was a sharp pain in my lower back. Literally every 10/20 steps with the luggage and the backpacks in the rain. I literally saw grandpas pass me whilst I was walking. It was really painful and not very fun at all.

Now about the cab. I could've caught the cab and saved myself heaps of time. The problem was I went to a buffet the night I was at the Bellagio and when I sat down it killed my back and when I stood up again, it took me about 2 minutes before I was able to walk a bit without much pain. I thought that if I did that with the cab it'd take me heaps of time before I'd be able to walk properly. I didn't realise how much it really hurt until I started walking so by then it was already too late.

When I get to the next hotel I was like "Oh yay I'm here". What I didn't realise was the hotel lobby where I was to go was on the other side of the hotel. I entered the strip side of the hotel and I had to walk all the way to the other side with all that luggage and my back problems. I seriously don't know what sort of hotel puts their lobby and car area away from the strip. It's such a stupid design. It took me 2 1/2 hours to get from the other hotel to the lobby of the hotel I was going to stay at. I walked probably 2 kms at most and it took me 2 1/2 hours. It was seriously that bad...

I get into the hotel and drop off the stuff in the room. I find out that my friend's Canyon tour was canceled for that day because of the weather so rescheduled for the next day. My friend decided to visit the other hotels but my back prevented me from doing anything at all so I decided not to go. But on the way to the other hotel I saw a supermarket so I was like "Yeah I'll go there, get some pain killers and some water, come back and hope it works".

I walk there, get my pain killers and water, walk back to the hotel and it takes me about 1 1/2 hours. I walk past the lobby and I'm on my way to the lifts to the rooms. Whilst I'm walking I see a shop on right and I was like "Oh I didn't see this before". On closer inspection I see that they're selling the painkillers that I just bought and took 1 1/2 hours getting. That annoyed the crap out of me so much but I was in too much pain to care.

The next day was kinda frantic. My friend's tour was supposed to leave at about 8:30 in the morning. Now for those who don't know, I snore alot. I'm pretty bad. Because of this my friend developed a love for ear plugs during this trip. Because of the ear plugs my friend didn't hear the alarm go off for the tour and missed that tour.

My friend called up the tour company for another tour and they were like "Oh yeah there's another tour but you have to go through your entire hotel, over an overhead bridge, through another entire hotel and into their car park and you have about 15 minutes to get there". My friend ran out the door and thankfully managed to get to that next tour but yeah it was still pretty bad lol.

Whilst my friend was gone, my back was getting better after being really drugged up and I was able to walk alright. There's an M&M's store, a literal M&M's store in Vegas so I went in there whilst my friend was on the tour. There's an M&M NASCAR there if that's your thing. But there's so many types of M&M's there. There are officially 22 different colours of M&M's on top of a few special collections like an Indiana Jones mix and a Winter Wonderland mix. They also have the typical milk chocolate, dark, peanut M&M's, peanut butter M&M's and for those who want the best, premium M&M's. It's pretty crazy.

Later on after the tour finished we met up and found a place that sold a yard of margarita. My friend almost finished the yard and that was pretty crazy. I almost did as well except I don't know why but I was alcohol poisoned. Whilst I was having it I didn't go red, which is normally a good sign. But the thing is normally having any sorts of alcohol I go red. Then I got to a stage where I knew if I had any more I would throw up. I was at the stage where I could feel that I was going to choke so I stopped having it totally. It was weird I don't know what the hell happened...

Whilst alcohol poisoned, I boarded a flight over to San Fran for the next installment.



San Fran



We touched down in San Fran and planned what we were going to do for the two days that we had to spend in San Fran. The first day we went around and saw these really nice murals and there's so many of them with so much history and the stories behind some of the more famous ones are really touching. When I get the time to upload them have a look at them. They're pretty cool.

After the murals we went over to the Golden Gate Bridge. Now we walked the Bridge twice. I'll explain. We were planning to walk it just to see how it is and go yeah we've walked the Bridge. Now I'm terrified of heights. I hated being on that bridge. The entire time I was on the Bridge I was like "GET ME OFF NOWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!" On top of that we had to be at this specific location by sunset to watch the sun set because my friend was told it's a beautiful spot to watch it set.

We get half way on the Bridge and my friend asked if we should go back so we can get to the other location. I, against my own thinking, asked my friend wasn't it their idea to walk the entire Bridge so we could say we did. I convinced my friend that we'd be able to find a bus on the other side of the Bridge so we could be back at that location. There's no bus on the other side of the Bridge. So we walked back. Whilst we were walking back over the Bridge, the sun set. So we missed out on that other location.

We headed over to dinner where we had a reservation at a restaurant called The Stinking Rose which is famous for having garlic in most of their dishes there. My friend had a steak with 40 cloves of garlic or something and I had a pasta. Now I thought that for a pasta dish it didn't have enough garlic in it (Because there was virtually none) so on the table there's garlic extra virgin olive oil there and garlic paste just in case it wasn't enough. That wasn't the weirdest part though.

The weirdest part was dessert. I never thought I'd say this or ever see this but we ordered garlic ice cream. Yes garlic ice cream you didn't read wrong. It was really my friend's order and I took one scoop of it. I honestly don't know what was in it but from that one scoop it tasted like vanilla ice cream with garlic essence and it was really weird. Don't get that ever lol...

The second day we visited Alcatraz. For you who don't know about it, Alcatraz was the supermax prison in the US from about the 30's until the 60's. These days it's part of the national parks listing and tours are run everyday to Alcatraz. It's definitely interesting to see what a supermax prison was like back in the day and just the stories from former prisoners about how depressing that place really was.

For me, the worst thing was that you needed to take an audio tour of the place and my tape decided to stop working half way so I was blindly following my travel buddy whilst listening to absolutely nothing at all. Fun huh? It kinda sucked that it stopped but from what I heard it was pretty cool. We visited this place called the Ferry building and basically it's a fresh food market with fish and all these other stuff. There was an olive oil store that sold about 20 to 30 different types of olive oil and a mushroom store that had about 30 different fungi.

For those who don't know, there's a pretty famous chocolate store, similar to the Lindt cafe here called Ghirardelli. We went in there to try out the choc of course and it's really good but very different to Lindt. I had some milkshake and it was very smooth unlike the Max Brenner ones. It was pretty good hehehe.

The cable cars. Of course if you didn't try the cable cars it'd be a waste of vising San Fran. I thought that there were quite a few hills along the route that the cable cars took. The thing that surprised me was that yes it was steep but there was like 1 or 2 hills max and they're just steep. Kinda went "Oh...that's it?" Plus the fact that cable cars are ridiculously expensive for public transport. We talked to a visitor's centre adviser and he was saying because cable cars are classified as "Tourist Attractions" rather than public transport that was the reason why it was so expensive. Most tickets for public transport are $1.50. Cable cars are $5. Single. Be prepared to burn your pockets if you take a cable car...

Well we kind of expected it but we didn't expect what happened for dinner. We went to a touristy place called Fisherman's Wharf to try and find some crab. There's restaurants all over the place on Fisherman's Wharf and it's really hard to find good ones. We found one place away from the main street on the wharf itself and went in. It was a fine dining restaurant with your own waiters for your table and specific waiters to pour water.

It wasn't the fact that it was a fine dining restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf that was really weird. It was the fact that it was cheaper. Whilst on the crab hunt, some ordinary looking restaurants which weren't really full up sold crab $2 more than the fine dining place we were at. The restaurant we went to was pretty full as well and we were lucky to get a table too. That was pretty funky.

The next bit was pretty annoying. We woke up at 5am and caught the subway to leave San Fran. For US subways, they're no more than 2 mins late. Max. This one that we took was 15 mins late. No idea why.

When we got to the airport we had about 1 1/2 before a domestic flight and when we looked at the check-in line (We were flying United so it was long) and the first thing we both thought of was "That line...is huge...we're going to be pushing it..." We waited and moved up in the line for a bit then we saw one of the staff members walking around and we asked him whether we could be moved up the line because we were in a rush to check in and board. He's like "I'm sorry, you should've been here 2 hours before your flight leaves for a domestic flight." I have never ever heard that you'd need to be at the airport 2 hours before a domestic flight and never ever heard that you need to be checked in 45 mins for a domestic flight. Just pure craziness.

We ended up waiting roughly 2 1/2 hours before we could check in and of course we missed our flight. In the end we were standbys on the next flight out and caught that one to our next destination.



Seattle



When we touched down we knew it was going to be cold but not the change we expected. San Fran was something like 14-18 degrees then when we hit Seattle, it became -1 the day we landed. The two of us were like "Oh yay snow!!!!" because it was our first snow destination. What we didn't know was that the entire northern US was hit with a massive snow storm that was apparently the worst in about a decade. It was so slippery and really dangerous because although it had dumped, it was still -1 degrees, which meant it was still pretty slippery and very icy.

We met up with a friend of mine that I know in Seattle and we stayed at this friend's place the entire time that we were there. Because it was so slippery and dangerous the time that we went (This is during the holiday season and normally it's light snow during this time and not the dump that they recieved; which was something like 8 inches worth and in a place south of Seattle we were told that the snow was about half way up their thighs. It was a foot and a bit worth of snow.) we didn't really see much of Seattle.

The two things that we did see were Pike Place Market and Starbucks. Let me explain. Pike Place Market is something like the fish markets in Pyrmont combined with the Friday Night markets in the Rocks. It's a pretty sweet place and the one thing is the very famous fish throwing. Seeing it up live and close you really appreciate what is going on and how skilled they are. Here's a sampler of what they do. Quite crazy.

Starbucks. Yeah you can get it anywhere right? Sure you can get it anywhere but it's a different thing to say that you've been inside of the first Starbucks store that ever opened. Well now I can say that. As expected it's overflowing with tourists and not surprisingly it's a small store. For those who know me, you'll know that I'm very particular with my coffee as I'd only have some particular blends and beans. With that Starbucks shop, I was actually enjoying my coffee from that place. It was actually pretty good which is something I can't say about the rest of the stores. Quite surprising.

The only other thing that happened in Seattle was the transport drama that followed. The other stuff before about missing flights pales in comparison to what happened in Seattle. Seattle was where my travel buddy and I split. My travel buddy was heading up to Vancouver to continue the grand tour via Greyhound whilst I was flying back down to LA to meet up with a school buddy of mine.

After what happened in San Fran I was determined not to fly United on my way out, even though I had already gotten flights with United going down to LA. So I bought tickets with Virgin America for the flight down. So this is what happened on the day that I was going to fly out; It's 10 am in the morning and my friend had left for work. My travel buddy had to be at the Greyhound stop by 12. My United flight was flying out at 1pm. My Virgin America flight was flying out at 4pm. I get an email from Virgin America saying that my flight with them was canceled due to the weather.

So I asked my friend to take some time off work to help us out. We took my travel buddy first because my travel buddy didn't have that much time left and when we got to the Greyhound stop at 12, we found out that all services were canceled because of the weather. Fantastic huh? After that I was dropped off at the airport at 1pm so of course I missed my flight.

I got into their services queue and I waited for 2 hours in that line. The reason why the queue was so long was that other flights were canceled that day and all those passengers were trying to get alternative routes out from Seattle. I think I probably would've had about another 1 1/2 hours wait before I would've been able to talk to someone so I left the line and headed over to Virgin America to see if I could get something done.

I get to the Virgin America desks and they were only boarding for 2 specific flights. After they all boarded they informed everyone else who was remaining that there were no flights out to LA until the 26th. I was like "Great...let's see what else". Continental - no flights to LA. Alaskan - their lines were worse than United for some reason so there was no way I was going there. US Air - No flights till the 26th. American Airlines desk was shut down that day. There was no one behind the desks at all. I tried these smaller ones and I eventually found a flight to Long Beach where there was 1 seat left.

At that time I didn't know exactly where Long Beach was so I left the desk, called up my travel buddy just to see where it was and then returned to the desk. That took about 5 minutes and when I returned to the desk and asked if I could get that flight it was gone. So me waiting around and asking around took almost 5 hours and I couldn't get a flight out. So I decided to return to my friends place and I thought it was over.

Whilst trying to get back to my friends place, I had to ask about 7 cabbies because the 6 that I did ask wouldn't take me to my friends place because it was too dangerous to drive in that direction due to the ice that formed on the road. That was a really long day and got nothing from it. I talked to my school friend who was in LA by then that I'd be a few days late because of what happened and ended up flying out with United anyways. So much for that huh?



LA Part 2



So after finally getting out from Seattle, I met up with a good school mate of mine. Of course if you're down here and you've gone through this entire post then you would've known that my LA experience was very mixed. It was disappointing in a few areas but even though that happened and the other confusion, it was still alright.

It turned out to be a really good thing in the end. The experiences I had from my first visit in LA taught me well for my second visit to LA. This second visit to LA I would call my "Re-visit" part of my trip. Let me explain. I only had a day and a half remaining on my trip and even though my school buddy was there a few days before I was, he didn't see or do much in LA. So I took him to see some of the sights I had already visited. However the first idea wasn't mine...

The first idea was Disneyland. He hadn't been so I went back to Disneyland. I can officially say that I've been to Disneyland on Christmas Day. Not too many people can say that. It's quite packed on that day but not overly packed so you can still do some of the things that you want to do. Unlike my first visit to Disneyland, this one was full of rides and ironically we did water rides on a rainy day.

There's one ride where there's a 50 foot drop and I'm scared of heights. Turns out my school buddy's the same as well yet we still did it. Oh I forgot to mention - It's a 50 foot water drop as well so that was interesting. The other thing is the first time that I was in Disneyland, I basically missed out on the grand parade because my original travel buddy and I went to a different parade and when we tried to find a spot for the grand parade they were all gone. The second time I was there my school buddy and I camped out for a little bit and had an unobstructed view of the entire parade. I filmed it too so that was pretty sweet.

The transport issues that I had with my first trip to Disneyland? They didn't exist on the second time I went there. I learnt from my experiences and knew where I had to be so that was trouble free and very smooth. It was a long journey but it was very smooth.

My last day in LA I took my school mate to see the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The first time I was there I only took pictures of the outside. What I didn't know was that there were free self guided audio tours that you could take and it was really amazing. If you have a few hours, have a look at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and take the audio tour. It's really good just to see the intracies of a building of that calibre.

The other thing that I missed out on my first trip there was a rose fountain. There's a really pretty garden in the Concert Hall and in the middle of the garden there's a fountain in the shape of a rose. It's amazing and very awesome.

The last thing that I did whilst I was there was the food. Now I wasn't terribly surprised that in LA the quality is average to below average but it's dominated by mexican food. That's what we saw and we didn't see some good stuff. Now do you guys know GPK here? If you don't then click here and find out what it is. In LA, there's a California eqivalent and we went in and tried out the food there.

Of course I was after something different and something very unique. Then I stumbled across a Chicken Tequila Fettuccine. You didn't read wrong, there seriously was a Chicken Tequila Fettuccine. There's only a tinge of the tequila in the sauce and at first I found it very salty then it started growing on me and it was a nice dish at the end of the day. If you don't believe me, click here and have a look at the menu yourself. This dish actually redeemed the quality of LA food and I know this isn't the best as well. Not anywhere near the standards in San Fran but LA food's not too bad.



If you've read everything up to here in one sitting, wow that's dedication because it's a LOOOOOONG post that's taken me a while to write up but it's well worth it. As you can see there were quite a few setbacks during my entire trip (which was 2 1/2 weeks) but the main thing is despite all these things I still liked it and it was good just to see the world.

Normal commentary on my butt getting kicked at work will resume after this short (or long) break...

Barely here...

Well I'm still here but barely here. I'm still alive and kicking hehehe :)

I've had my butt kicked at work but hey that goes with the territory and I expect it to be kicked for quite a while...but this is just to say I'm still here sorta...

What I'll say is that there's a big post coming up when I get around to finishing it off. Some of you know what it's about as something big happened last month but for others...well...you'll find out soon :)