nothing edifying » travel

Long Day

mim — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 06:00:18 +0000

Our flight yesterday was at 7am, and of course for one reason or another (one reason is my sister; another reason is my cousins, damn them — I’m a 9-hours-a-night-would-be-nice kinda girl) I didn’t sleep much the whole weekend. And there was a time zone change. So you know what happened? I ate 4 meals and napped all day: breakfast a little before 7 (a breakfast sandwich from Potbelly Sandwich Works, quite good), then napped on the plane, then ate lunch (sandwich from Potbelly Sandwich Works, good but omg don’t get hot peppers if you’re not gonna eat the sandwich right away because the hot pepper flavor soaked in), then slept more (if you’re tired enough sleeping on the plane is easy peasy!), then got back home and picked up lunch, then slept, then woke up started unpacking and whatnot, then got hungry again at like 9pm, so we went and picked up a medium pizza and ate the whole thing, then played with the computer, then went back to bed. Sounds healthy, no? :p

Going to Las Vegas for Star Trek: The Experience

mim — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:17:50 +0000

Last weekend, we went to Las Vegas, mostly cos Yut told me that Star Trek: The Experience was closing down September 1st and OMGWTFBBQ NOOOOOOOOO! Why would they do that?! It’s complete madness I tell ya! I don’t really consider myself a Trekkie or Trekker, having never been to a convention, or gotten dressed up, or anything like that, and well, I didn’t even know The Experience was closing ’til Yut told me, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen every episode of The Next Generation, and I just think it’s so awesome, especially Captain Picard who is hawtness. I just can’t believe it’s not gonna be around anymore. But I’m so glad we went cos it was so fun! There were people there getting married (dude, we shoulda thought of that, but that might’ve been too much planning:p), and a couple of people dressed up in Star Fleet uniforms, and of course some aliens wandering around.

PictoBrowser requires Adobe Flash Player, but you can also see the Las Vegas photos at flickr.

Oh yeah, and we ate a lot too. :)

Iron Man

mim — Sun, 11 May 2008 04:28:26 +0000

Have you noticed how often movies (especially “summer blockbuster” types) are long integrated commercials nowadays? I think the most egregious that I can think of right now is probably Transformers, which was a series of car ads — GM specifically, I think — I dunno, I’m no expert. But anyways, Iron Man, it didn’t focus so much on one company’s products, but a multitude, instead — LG, Chevy (cars, not the restaurant chain), and Burger King that I remember. It didn’t detract from the overall movie too much, mostly it was well integrated (except Burger King), but if this sort of thing bugs you, you probably don’t want to watch this, or maybe any, summer blockbuster type movie. As far as the movie’s concerned, there are a million reviews out there, so no need for me to get into it, but overall, I liked it. It was fun, and moved well for an origin story — all too often the first movie featuring a superhero is way too much setup and it can get boring, but I thought they did a good job with it. Casting was pretty good too; Robert Downey, Jr. was pretty perfect for Tony Stark. I even liked Gwyneth Paltrow as his assistant Pepper Potts — so much better than Katie Holmes, who marred the otherwise rather good Batman Begins. (It looks like they replaced her with Maggie Gyllenhaal in the Dark Knight!) On the other hand, I confess to a little bit of weakness for comic book superheros, and all I’m looking for in a summer movie is fun, so I’m probably not the most critical person around. So yeah, fun, good for a Saturday afternoon, probably better on the big screen. Oh but one other thing that bugged me: Tony Stark’s lipstick. I don’t know what’s wrong with Robert Downey, Jr.’s lips, but his lipstick always looked much too obvious. Unless he’s one of those people whose lips are just naturally lipstick looking (like Emily Watson), in which case, forget I said anything. But it was weird.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got to say about that! Next weekend, Yut and I are going to visit Chicago, just a quick weekend trip. So if you have any can’t-miss places or restaurants or any other suggestions, lemme know! We don’t have too many plans right now, so anything’s good, but I guess especially if there’s one place that really stands out to you about Chicago, that would be especially helpful cos we only have a weekend. :)

Holiday

mim — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 00:19:40 +0000

We went to my in-laws for the winter holidays, down in SoCal, where the weather is nice(r). I mean 60 degree days, maybe one day was colder and super windy, etcetc, can’t complain. We went to the San Diego Zoo, and I helped out CT with her site, and Yut helped his dad with his computer, and we went for eats a lot. But as usual, all this end of the year travel stresses out my immune system. I think it’s like the 3rd year in a row that I’ve come home sick with some kind of cold for New Year’s Day. Not that it’s so bad, Yut and I decided to just stay home and drink sparkling wine, which cures what ails ya! Hope y’all had a fun holiday!

Thanksgiving Trip, Now With Photos

mim — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 07:12:46 +0000

I think it’s pretty clear from the photos that we spent all our time eating and playing cards. Just the way we like it! :) K, I finally posted up photos! I meant to for days, but you see, I had this little problem called Fire Emblem, which is what I played all weekend. I don’t know why, but I get so addicted to turn-based games, and I end up spending all day in my pjs playing and playing and playing so that nothing gets done. Today I haven’t turned on the Wii yet cos if I did, there’d be no photos. :D

Bleach Watching

mim — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 03:03:08 +0000

Y’know what I thought was funny? I took home some Bleach episodes for CT to watch, and I thought when she got done with ‘em she could pass them on to the rest of the family. But it turns out they’re all bigger anime nerds than me; 3 of them already watch it, and they’re all caught up. So CT and K are actually the only holdouts! Go fig.

Sleeeeeepy

mim — Tue, 22 May 2007 15:31:00 +0000

I only got a few hours of sleep on the plane. Now I’m trying to decide if I should go nap or try and stay up to regularize. Just 1 hour ago I was leaning towards staying up, but now keeping my eyes open is getting harder, and I’m leaning (inexorably) towards sleep. Zzzzzzz

Maryland or Bust

mim — Mon, 21 May 2007 21:15:48 +0000

Going to Maryland tonight! Red-eye, should be fun. :p See y’all there!

An Entry!

mim — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 07:44:00 +0000

I realized today that I hadn’t posted for a whole week now, which is a long time! I dunno, been busy I guess. I did put up a whole bunch of photos this week, though. I finally finished putting up photos from Sydney! Well even though it’s super late, I’ll sum up Australia really quickly. Basically, the country was really homogeneous, mostly white, until we got to Sydney. In Sydney we saw more Asians, but still, not that many. I guess I’m used to more diversity. The other thing about Australia as a whole was that it was so clean! And there were no homeless people! I don’t know, are there seriously no homeless people in Australia? We might’ve seen a few in Adelaide, I’m not sure. They were also Aborigines, not sure what that says. Anyhows, it was especially noticeable in Sydney, which is a pretty major/big city.

In Sydney, we went to Tetsuya’s, which is supposed to be one of the better restaurants in Sydney (and I think therefore Australia). It was good with some standout courses, but I didn’t think it was uniformly spectacular when comparing it to other super swanky top-notch sorts of places that we’ve been to. The service was pretty awesome throughout dinner, but making a reservation was awful. Besides getting my credit card info which is pretty standard nowadays, they also sent me email and told me to fax some form back to confirm my reservation. I just called them when I got to Sydney, but it was kind of annoying and ridiculous. I guess they must’ve gotten burned by diners from overseas a lot, but still. Anyways, I put up photos from Tetsuya’s and my thoughts on the food on flickr.

Funnily enough, we went to a place called Sailors Thai (106 George St. 02.9251.2466) that we thought was much more exciting and delicious, although it was a completely different type of restaurant. There’s a “canteen” and a restaurant upstairs and downstairs with the canteen being more casual and the restaurant more sit down formal. We ate at the canteen and it was just awesome. From CT’s photo’s: .

Okay, there’s probably more, but really, I feel a little silly finishing up my Australia posts over a month after we went. At least the Australia photo set is finally complete. :)

Adelaide (and March Madness)

mim — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 09:54:11 +0000

I put up photos from the Adelaide part of the trip finally (March Madness distracted me for a few days). But first, the scores after all the first round games:

Let me know if I made a calculation error somewhere. Otherwise,

Lew, Yut: 28
CT(!), misa: 27
Kitty, Steve, Yuhk: 25
me, YB: 24
Seth: 19
Jimyo: 16

Lew is totally benefiting from beginner’s luck! Yut and misa are the previous winners and they’re both in the running for the top spot AGAIN. CT’s new tactic is really working out for her cos she’s tied with misa. Then a bunch of us in the middle. Then Seth! 2nd to last! But on the other hand, he was the only one that picked Bucknell over Kansas last year. (Yes I am still going on about how Kansas let me down last year.) And Jimyo is last cos he underdogs. A lot.

Okay, that’s all the updates for today. Now back to talking ’bout Adelaide. My subject changes are so facile and graceful, aren’t they? B-)

We did a lot, different things everyday, in Adelaide. Come to think of it, I think most of the time my timestamps on the photos are off cos I didn’t necessarily remember to change the date/time on my camera. Oh well. On Friday, which was pretty hot (in the mid 30s Celcius, which is like 90+°F), we went to the beach at Glenelg. The nice thing about Adelaide is that even when it’s hot, at least it’s not humid. More like SoCal weather, less like Florida weather. We took the tram from Victoria Square in the middle of the city basically directly to the beach. Got some fish and chips for lunch, then hung out at the beach all day. The water at Glenelg was calm and clear, really nice relaxing time.

On Saturday we went to the Barossa Valley for wine tasting. I’m not really an expert on wines, but between the four of us, we got seven bottles!

This is the Kaesler Vineyard tasting room. I think they’re famous for their Old Bastard Shiraz, which they were out of (I think). We tried their Bogan Shiraz, but my favorite was the Stonehorse GSM (Grenache Shiraz Mourvèdre) which was lighter and easier to drink (to me). We also went to Chateau Barossa (CT and I got flavored grape liqueurs), Rockford, and Charles Melton, all worthwhile. Most wineries seem to close between 4 and 5pm, but I think all the ones we went to closed at 5pm.

Then Sunday we went to see the last day of the Clipsal 500 road race, which is the start of the V8 Supercar Championship series (sort of like a NASCAR season or whatever). Obviously I’m no expert in cars or races, but still, it was cool. They closed off one of the city parks and a bunch of the roads around it, there were tons of people — it was like a festival or something, and the cars are faster and noisier and the race is more exciting than on tv by far. There were a lot of races going on that day, so after we wandered around and got lunch, we took a nap under a tree between part of the track and a giant screen they’d set up. Then when the main race started it was easy to watch the race on the big screen, or go stand by the track. It was our first time at a car race, it’s really different with the sounds of the cars and actually seeing them go by (vs. just flipping past the channel on tv).

Afterwards there was a huge outdoor concert with lot of different bands (unfortunately the first bunch of acts were all stuff we didn’t care for), and then fireworks.

Monday was one of the best days in Australia for us. We took the bus to Cleland Wildlife Park in the Adelaide Hills (public transportation in Adelaide is pretty awesome) to see all sorts of Australian animals, and pet some of them. Before we got there, we were really looking forward to holding a koala, but on weekdays the park only has an afternoon session at around 2:30 (on Sunday I think there’s an 11am session too). The last bus leaves at 2:45pm or something, so there wouldn’t have been enough time. We figured we go to the regular koala petting session and then if CT, me, or Yut really wanted to hold him (Yut’s brother had already done the holding the koala deal before), we’d take a taxi (expensive) or otherwise figure something out. In the end though, after we’d all petted the koala and stuff, we decided that we didn’t care about actually holding him; getting our pictures taken with him and petting him was good enough. Koalas are actually completely uninterested in anything but eucalyptus and their fur is pretty rough. Speaking of completely uninterested, emus aren’t too friendly either. Really big and cool looking, but tended to ignore people. All the animals were really cool, but I think we had the most fun with the kangaroos and wallabies (they look like smaller plumper kangaroos).

We bought pellets from the park to feed the various animals, especially the kangaroos, but they’re pretty spoiled by visitors everyday, so some of them weren’t too interested. They’d lift their heads and eat if you walked over to them, but otherwise…

Yut was feeding this big kangaroo when it decided it wanted the rest of the pellets, bag and all, and just took it. Makes me laugh every time! :)) Kangaroo 1, Yut 0!

We saw a couple of wallaby fights.

I think one of the wallabies (a male) would go scratch and massage another wallaby’s back (a female), then a third (the alpha male!) would come fight and scratch (not the same kind of scratching) and chase the back scratcher away. And we played with the friendliest mother and baby wallabies ever.

Sooo cute! Cleland was totally awesome.

I think that was the last activity in Adelaide. Oh in Adelaide and the Cairns area, they had great Iced Coffees (espresso, milk, and gelato), which we got practically everyday. And we ate a lot on Rundle Street, which was just full of eateries, restaurants, cafes, and bars. We stayed with Yut’s brother most of the time in Adelaide, but since he’s in a 1 bedroom 1 bath apartment, we figured we shouldn’t stay with him the whole time (although he was really nice about it). We stayed a night in Hotel 208 by Constellation which we didn’t like, so if you are gonna be in Adelaide and you have a choice of hotels, don’t pick 208 unless it’s been a while since I wrote this and you hear it’s been recently renovated or something.

Okay, that was waaaaay long!