Greetings from Los Angeles!

Hello all! The day turned into night which turned into day again, and before I know it tomorrow is the Step 2 CS exam day. At this point I'm beyond freaking out. The heart can only take so much of anxiety a day, and if I allow myself to keep feeling that I'm gonna go nuts. So right now I'm just gonna chill, sleep early and do my best tomorrow. Wish me luck guys.

On another note, it's so good to be back in LA! LA, my second home, the place that took me in for a good four years what seemed like eons ago. There's a sense of estrangement on a familiar land, or familiarity on a foreign land. Whichever, whatevs. All I know is, it feels great to be back, and I've missed all my friends here. It's a pity I can't meet with them all, due to the short period of time that I'll be here. Perhaps another trip.

My last view of KLIA before we took off. Very hazy morning.

View from up above. Such a huge difference from the skyline in KL. 

After 8 hours of waiting time in Guangzhou airport and 14 gruesome hours of flight, California is finally in sight. I almost got DVT from all those immobility. 

First meal in LA? Of course it had to be In-N-Out! Haha. I don't care if it's gonna clot my arteries, I'm having my cheeseburger, fries and chocolate shake. :P 

Took a walk on Manhattan Beach pier, and saw someone caught a baby shark. Not that I'm a huge fan of fishes/sharks/fishing, but it's pretty cool this little guy trying its best to wriggle its way out of a human's grip. The guy wanted to keep it as a pet, but alas he couldn't find a pail and so it was released into the ocean. Bye baby shark! Swim as far off into the ocean, don't ever come near the shore!

Last but not least, this is how I feel right now. 

Yes. THIS IS IT. I will win this battle.

SPARTAAAAA!!! 

Good night world. I will write more when I'm done with exam! xoxo. 

A Day at Getty Museum

When certain things are within reach, I find myself taking them for granted. One example would be the Getty Museum. It's quite close to where I used to live, yet I've never step foot into it, until two weeks before my departure from the place I called home for the past 4.3 years. But at least I finally went there with some friends. Here are some of the pics. 

Just another day to some others, but to me it was a beautiful day that filled my heart with layers of emotions as I counted down to my departure.

A vantage view.  Don't know how to get rid of the glare. (Brandon help!)

If the parking fee wasn't so expensive, (and if I weren't leaving the city for good), I'd go there every week. 

Ladies in green.  

Life would be much simpler if I were just a little fish in the sea. 

No, actually, I'd like to be a whale- so that my life wouldn't be too short. :P

Nothing to do with the above picture though. Hah. 

Instead, I'm trapped in a maze, and I can't seem to get out. 

Odd looking plants. I suppose they're some form of cacti. 

10 minutes to three. In the afternoon, of a certain Sunday in January.

It was. It will never be again.

I miss. 

Mojave Part 3

Yay! And this was the 2nd morning! Despite only getting three hours of sleep, I felt energetic and refreshed. Must be the absence of neon lights, car honkings, phones ringing and TV! : ) Aaah let's stretch our limbs.. and fingers. heh. Was asking Paul to do the peace sign, commonly known to them as 'the asian thing'. Roy gave me a dirty look, disapproving me of doing that 'act cute' gesture. But my logic is, hey why not, its fun! and funny tooo! But most of all, if americans or westerners in general start doing that too then it wont be an asian thing anymore! It'll be a global thing!! =) Why do people always have to categorize every friggin' thing? Compartmentalize people according to their races or places of origin, to name a few. Why? See Paul did a good job with the peace sign, didnt he? And everyone laughed. :) I love listening to laughters. Warms my heart. :)
And how can we leave the place without any of these close-up smiling pictures??? I just realized we all have nice teeth, dont you think?!And this is Vincent, or Vicente in Spanish. Vinny for short. :) Isn't the name itself so adorable already? He's the fox with grey hair on his back. Lucky we got a good shot of him! Gotta get some unfinished business done before we left. Bury some stuff... No, it's not Vinny's leftover bones!! We werent so barbaric. It's some treasure thingy in a box for geo-caching purpose. Then we have to save the exact location of it, upload it to the web so that people can actually come and search for it. So cool eh. Global treasure hunt. :)
Then we drove to some volcanic site... Memory ain't serving me well and I just cant recall where was it anymore. But we did climb up a bit and then get back down to take this group photo! Can you spot me? I feel like everyone's just there as backdrop while the supermodel is Roy. Check out his pose!! The sole guy who stood out.. :P
Some cars couldnt drive all the way up some lava site, so we packed ourselves in this truck! :) Very fun.. and bumpy!
Oh look... it's cactus! Or not.. I don't really know but Roy told me it is. So cactus it is then! :) This is Richard, trying out the peace pose tooo!! See, now it aint so "asian" anymore, ay? ;)

Going in the lava underground hole, whatever you call it... But basically these are the routes where the hot volcanic magma rushed through and pushed itself out of the ground and came out as lava. That's me going in and Roy' s butt in front of me.. :P
The rays of sunlight shining in from one of the top holes...
The last group picture before we left the site. :) Everyone's happy. Yay.

Mojave Part 2

These people walked so damn fast... I lagged behind cuz I got distracted taking pictures. bleh.

They climbed up there already, when I walked to the foot of that rock-hill (whateva-you-might-callit). And now I have to make my way up there.. not easy for someone like me who never really exercise much let alone rock-climbing. Although to them it's like eating peanuts..they looked as if they glided up effortlessly okayyy. I felt like some clumsy kampung chicken among them. No wait... kampung chicken would be good at this, so I'm the clumsy home-reared chicken.

Zooming in.... we're got, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8..... * people almost up there and I'm still way down there.

Aaaahhh FINALLY. I'm up here! Looking down, far and away, ... enjoying the breeze and the view. See the small oasis-like area on the far upper right corner? That was where we started out at the resort. Walked so much!!

Heading back.... :) After that some of us took a nap while the rest of us played Cranium. A game with a mixture of spelling bee, charades, general knowledge questionaires etc etc.. a board game rolling dice taking turn to move, and see which team gets to the End Point first. My team rocked! whooo hoo we rocked! :) Dinner was fab, the cook prepared vegetarian lasagna, sausage, salad and baked a chocolate cake! And whoa was it huge! I had lots of it... since I walked so much and all... reckon I deserved it :P

Mojave National Preserve

It's about two hours' drive from Pomona to that place, which is somewhere near Baker and east of Barstow. You'd have absolutely no idea how arduous (for the car) the 4 miles of bumpy dirt road was! It was the only route to get to the desert studies center, and for me it was plain torturous. Well on normal circumstances it would've been fun, but it's just terribly wrong timing - for someone who needed to pee badly!!!! What can I say? Tough luck!

Aaaahh look! We're at the CSUC - BLM Desert Studies Center, located at the former Zzyzx Mineral Springs Resort. (CSUC = Cal. State Univ. Consortium; BLM = Bureau of Land Management) And no, the word Zzyzx is not a typo error, but a word this guy Curtis Howe Springer created in 1944, pronouncing it as /ˈzaɪˌzɪks/, as in "z-eye-ziks". Guess he must be feeling creative at that time, and now he's remembered as the guy who came up with the last word in English language! Sounds like something I'd do, maybe I'll come up with another word and make his become the second last word in English language!! heh. :P Anyway, he built and operated this Zzyzx Mineral Spring Resort illegally under mining claims and was later arrested. It was only in 1976 (2 yrs after he was arrested) that BLM allowed a consortium of CSUs to manage this land and turned it into Desert Studies Center. Cal Poly Pomona is one of them.

And that's me on the right with Leah on the left, swinging freely on a Saturday morning, basking ourselves in the California sun.
I just like the name of the streets... Castle Way and Boulevard of Dreams. :) We're in the Spring Resort now.. which were turned into dorm rooms for visitors to bunk in during the visit. Simple and nice, rooms are heated and will be air-conditioned during summer.
Ooooh... off we go on our first mission. Geo-caching. Something like treasure hunt, only we're not exactly hunting anythg... just using the GPS units to find the locations around that area.
Brian who looked like Indiana Jones with the hat, and me. :)

Universal Studios Pictures 29 Dec 06

Garlic Moments

So anyone fancy some garlic ice-cream and garlic martini? Who's in with me?! :P Chean? Jun?

Oh btw, pictures above taken from The Stinking Rose.

Jeanie in Town

Mr. Scarecrow with the Powderpuff Girls. ;P
Clockwise from right: Me, Jeanie, Jessoms, Chean.

Heyyy Brandon! You're supposed to take pretty pictures of us!
Not our gluttony look! =P How embarassing..~

 

Around Campus

This is the Japanese Garden. Very beautiful, serene place where you can just sit under the tree and relax, or even lie on the grass and take a nap.


They call this pond the Duck Pond. Because (obviously) it's where the ducks hang out. *duh* It's just another pond similar to the Jap Garden except it doesnt have a bridge or garden path to walk around, and it's not as nice as the Jap Garden. Sometimes it's said that the ducks would wander to the Jap Garden and swim in the mini pond. Even the ducks know where's the cooler hangout! =P
Another picture of the Jap Garden's mini stream. Well I cant exactly remember if it's connected to any pond or its part of the same pond on the other side. You see, I was too mezmerized by it and kept looking through the cam while snapping pics, you know, to find the correct angle for a nicer looking pic, - till I forgot to look at it as a whole, with my own eyes. *dumb* It happens eh... Just like in life, we often enlarge the tiny details or flaws and fret, yet forgot how lucky we actually are for lots of uncountable reasons, if not just for being alive - which leads us to miss out plenty of the good stuff!

This is one of the yellow roses blooming in the Rose Garden. So huge and beautiful!! There are a lot more, in many different colors, I swear its so tempting to wanna just reach out and pluck one out for myself!! And I would! ... if not because of the cctv (located on the building behind the garden) watching the area 24/7... =( I was gonna show you the picture of the small dot of the cctv... but I couldnt post it up here for some unknown reason.. (stupid blogger.com).. so I'll just show you next time.

First Few Days

Flight from KLIA to LAX was alright, long and not so comfy but bearable. At the very least, we had our own small tv screen. Some said food was terrible, but I thought it was actually not bad! Well of course, I was comparing it with Uzbek airline and Aeroflot...heh.

Everything went pretty smoothly, and by the time we put our stuff in our assigned rooms, it was later than their predicted time, so we hurried to the International Center (IC) for Middle Eastern food they prepared for us. *yumm* =) Food was good, people were friendly, ya-da ya-da... nothing much.. it's the usual chatty conversation you make with ppl you dont quite know yet just being very extremely polite and sociable and talk bout evythg under the sun... there were maybe a couple of cute guys but one was kinda cocky.. that's bout it that night. Oh we did went to Walmart (if you consider that something to talk about =P)!

Well I didnt really take much picture until the 2nd or 3rd day cuz my batteries drained out. So let's see what I can find to entertain you guys. =P

This is Liz on the left and Beverly on the right. They're our orientation coordinators who worked for the Bronco Student Center with the IC and they brought us around, briefed bout the quick facts bout Cal Poly.

This is the intersection of the campus where most events or anything take place. They call it 'the quad'. Sorry my photography skills sucked.. More pics next post! Going to bed now. Tmr early class. Ta~

And The Journey Begins... (Pictures)

Well I couldn't put up pictures one by one all in 1 post, so this is the best I can do. Sorry for short descriptions, will try to work something out. Enjoy the pictures! =)