Must Vegie, no Belly: Travel

Buffallo day 2 (July 2)

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 16:04:58 GMT

During the sun rise, my camera's battery decide to deplete at the right moment (and I decided to not bring the charger with me!!) so no pics ever since, and frankly, Wilfred's camera's battery also run out (with an almost-full CF card)...

After the sun rise (about 6:30am), good guess for those who think I would go back to sleep (which is exactly what I did)...

My friends woke me up around 10, then we kindda rushed to Buffalo again (to another outlet). With the help of GPS and the nearly-no-line-up-customs, we got there around 11.... (wow 1 hour, how nice)

For lunch, we went to an italian-style restaurant (again!). The price was lower, and the food was so-so, nothing special ;-)

The outlet consists of both outdoor and indoor stores, and what we bought from there? SHOES! Man, I can say no-more, it's mad-expensive to buy shoes in Canada, period. After exceeding $100USD for each of us, we panick'ed and remove all the boxes for shoes (since they costed the most) and wear them (and hide the old shoes somewhere in my car).

When we go to the customs, I made a boo-boo decision upon seeing a traffic and thinking I could get around that....... ended up having to get on the same highway after 10 mins (yes, we lost 10 mins and the line up grew a little)...

The customs asked us for passport, and we started chatting ever since... normal stuffs like "how long have you guys been in US for", "what did you guys do in US", "are you all residents of Canada", "how much of the goodies you guys bought in this trip"... while the custom guy were holding our passports. After all the chats, he gave back our passports and we're free to go ---- wait a min, when did he scan our passports? No he didn't actually~

After passing the customs my friends finally used the DVD in my car, and passed out after the movie until arriving home~

Buffallo day 1 (July 1)

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 22:16:06 GMT

I know I spelled it wrong (or did I spell it right?), but I do mean to spell it this way...

The trip was "buffy", and it has "fall", and it does pronounce as "buff fallo".

The trip consists of 2 days of shopping and 1 nite of staying at hotel at Niagra Falls. I never thought staying at Niagra at night would be so much fun, so much that me and my friends didn't get to play the UNOs we brought, so much that we used up our limited battery for our cameras, so much that I never had a funner night seeing others sleeping.

I've never driven to Buffalo before, actually I don't remember going to Buffalo for my entire life. So GPS is needed for me (well for us), which Vincent (my friend) bought it a few days before the trip. The thing just works, even everytime it tells me to turn Right, I turn Left! All it does is to adapt my way and sense of direction, and do its "Recalculating". In turns, I get to know its way of thinking too -> No U-Turn!

So on Sunday (July 1), just about 2km from the border into NY state, as the last exit passed us, the traffic jam hits us. By then I notice there's another section of the road (separated by concrete barrier) for trucks specifically, and we saw few cars stopped and try to turn back (as they realize they're in the wrong section). We were so laughing (while we're stucked in traffic). As we slowly approach the border (which is just 2km away), we finally saw the custom stations (an indication of we're almost there). By the time we get to the custom station, we realize that the cars are diverted and the station WAS NOT IN USE! We felt dumb, and at the same time, we found that the truck section of the road, which was previously separated by concrete barrier, is MERGING into our section! GRR! (we know we should've just taken that section!)

So by the time we arrive at the mall it's already 3pm, 3 hours to shop - fine! One thing I do have to mention is that, unlike Canadians, ppl there are really working hard, and even at 6:30pm - 30 mins passed their closing hours. They showed no sign of packing up and leave, they showed passion in helping us to find what we really need... I was astonished.

We then head to our home-of-stay-for-the-night -> Hilton Hotel. Betty (my friend) told us it doesn't have Falls-view, thus no fireworks and no sun rise. Here's the surprises start - we get the falls view, and better yet, we get BOTH of he falls covered in the same view, and the Fallsview Hotel is just right in the middle between the Falls, not blocking any scenaries, it's just AMAZING!

We went for the swimming pool, and frankly I was the only one that couldn't swim! LAWL >:O

After that we went back to our hotel, dress up, and the fireworks begin. Here's another surprise, the fireworks take place near the American falls, which is right in front of us (since we could see both of the falls). I was taking the video (though crappy) while Wilfred (my friend) was doing the camera-man, taking fast continuous pictures. And this drained the batteries of our cameras.

Hmm... wait, we're missing something - dinner. Oh yes, so let's count the time -> 6:30pm left mall, 8:00pm check into hotel, 9:00pm swim, 10:00pm watch fireworks, so when did we take our dinner? Nope, we haven't. We then walked to Fallsview hotel (actually the mini-mall at Fallsview casino) and had our italian-style dinner there.

Stuffed belly, stiffed body weren't good for us, and we just headed back to hotel and... sleep!

I actually slept quite bad that night, almost awaken for the whole night, and I managed to get to see the sun rise. On a side note, even though I managed to take the picture when I first see the line of the red-sun, Wilfred told me the sun had risen long ago, just that we didn't get to see the sun itself (cuz there were buildings blocking and all the other craps!)

After that I went back to sleep and waiting for the second day (it was the second day already but anyways!) to come...

Take care, my friend

Sun, 02 Jul 2006 20:53:58 GMT

I've been in Canada for almost 10 years, and for the very first group of friends I know in CGPS, he's the first (of all that stayed in touch throughout these 10 years) to leave for good. Eric Li is going to Seattle for career, hope he'll be doing good there =D

The pics are taken in Philip's home last night. Eric's flight is on July 3rd, 2006 morning (10am something)

Welcome back~

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 07:02:15 GMT

hee~ June 14 (yesterday) was quite a funky day, with all these tornados and severe thunderstorm warnings all over the place, my parents' flight (along with other flights) were delayed. Glad, my parents' trip were a safe one, without a hitch~

yeah~ Johnny was back from hong kong on June 13 for his recovery process, dunno if he got time for a tea~

I'm back lu~

Tue, 31 May 2005 17:31:06 GMT

hee~ I'm back lu~ I kindda stopped updating my previous entry cuz I got a feeling that it'll be huge!!~ and indeed it would've been if I continued. So far I have taken 939 pictures (not included the deleted ones) in 14 days, which is 67 pictures per day. And now I'm back home, facing my big screen and cleaning my house. (I wonder what my bro has been doing :S )

My first solo-flight isn't really a pleasant. Despite of the fact that there's an empty seat beside me so I can put stuffs at, the flying was kindda bumpy, one of the stewardesses were kindda rude, one side of my provided ear-pieces doesn't work, the guy in front of me slept throughout the whole travel while he bent his chair to the most-far back as possible!~ Well, it's all good. The plane landed on 6:10am (1 min ahead of schedule) but parked on 6:20am (awww so late). It took me 15 mins to clear the customs and around 10 mins for luggage.

After all those, here's the great part - Alice was lost but she found the correct exit that I was walking through. She didn't wave hands, she didn't shout, but I know she's there waiting (cuz she called me by cellphone, haha~). We went to parking and guess what, the parking is divided into 3 sections and we were at the wrong one. When we were on 401, it was already 7:10am.

My 2 weeks trip to San Francisco

Tue, 17 May 2005 03:23:45 GMT

hey~ my 2 weeks trip to San Francisco begins tomorrow morning. I'll post up pictures as time goes. :D

-= First day, May 17 =-

Me and my family arrived around 11am, May 17th 2005, at San Francisco Airport. Note I didn't mention "International" since my flight isn't considered as international (Canada must be special. :D). After claiming all luggages and a huge picture frame, we started heading to my uncle's place.

My uncle's family lives in a near-by town called Fremont. It's south of San Francisco I guess (or east, can't remember). The house is old in terms of age, but it's relatively new and nice. I like the design of this house more than my home's. The house itself doesn't have a basement (as you expected), and the backyard features a outdoor fish-pool and some recreations.

My uncle's family has 3 members - my uncle, my aunt (also my mom's little sister), and my 10-year-old cousin. They moved to US since 10 years ago, even earlier than my family moved to Canada.

Since I have 2 weeks (and my parents have a month), we basically went to near-by places, to buy daily-accessories, to eat, to look around. Then of course, sleep~

-= Second day, May 18 =-

As a lazy pig usually does, I woke up late, having 3 more hours due to geometric-differences wouldn't help. Anyways, we started off checking out somewhere further around the town. Most importantly, to check out my future laptop. We went to an electronic store called Fry's Electronics. Heck, that store, even my uncle says it's not the biggest, is 4 times larger than the Best Buy store in Markville. As a result, I have an eye on Sony VAIO T250/L.

Since I woke up late, we didn't go much places, so there isn't anything done after that. :D

-= Thid day, May 19 =-

Due to yesterday's laziness, I woke up quite early. Today's topic is outlet mall, that means I have something else to buy besides laptop here. I went to Nike, picked up 2 pairs of running shoes, 2 short sport pants (yes, short sport pants). Then I stopped by other shops, bought another pair of shoes, a "jacket", and a candle stand (*cough~).

One thing I'd have to mention is that, this outlet mall is huge and funny looking. Instead of having 1 big plaza at a side next to an avenue, this outlet mall occupies the 4 corners of an avenue intersection, with each of them as big as First Markham, you do the math.

Second thing I'd like to mention is the lane marks on the road are quite unique. I seldom seeing paint-line lane marks on the road. Rather, they use raised-dots to replace the paint-line marking scheme. My uncle says it's good to alert drivers when they drive too close to the edge of the lane, or simply fell asleep during driving.

Third thing is the highway entrance design. Unlike the entrances in Toronto, they have a traffic lights (at most entrances). Cars are required to wait for green light, which may let 1 car to pass through on each green-light, to enter the highway. Is it a traffic-control? or is there any other special meaning behind this design? I dont know.

Forth is that, shopping at outlet that's 4 times larger than First Markham is really tiresome. I felt asleep soon after we started heading back home.