Day 24 - Shopping, lots and lots of it, yea lots of it

Shopping day!

Its the belated CNY shopping trip for brand new clothes. Today the usual gang (basically the Chestnut household) decided to go down to Franklin Mills to do some shopping. Basically most of us(mainly the guys) decided to go crazy buying new clothes cos it is a hassle to wash em ^^


Cat Showing off her buys from woodbury(another place) the day before


The Place Proper


Inside Franklin Mills

Well that was a rather nice shopping trip, for those interested to know the overall prices I found out, just catch me on msn.


My new Fossil Watch


Half of what I bough..... well maybe less I dunno

Day 23 - Russel Peters! and Happy CNY

Went down to Atlantic City, New Jersey today. Atlantic City is kind of like a casino city, there was the Taj Mahal, Ceasar, Trump plaza and many others too. It may not be Las Vegas ( which I would like to visit) but still it is a casino city. Unfortunately I forgot to insert my SD card for my camera so it became a dud. Photos today were courtesy of both Weijia and Pacey.

Random Shot 1



Random Shot 2


Random Shot 3


Trump Plaza, 4 "Apprentice" Facing Off


Weijia, Pacey,Deliang and Me outside Caesers' Palace


Broadwalk its along the seaside, most casinos are along this stretch

A Korean War Memorial


Ripley's Believe it or not

This place is rather interesting, the waiters will dance

A pretty interesting thing happened while we were at Caesers, me and deliang we doing a pretty crappy pose with a chariot when this lady(quite pretty) came up to us and asked me to take a photo with her. I have no idea why. Worse part, I did not ask her for her name. Well she did wish me a Happy CNY.

Me and Deliang


Me and the Lady

Why did we go Atlantic City? We had tickets to watch Russel Peters at the Borgata. For those who have no idea who Russel Peters is, he is this stand up comedian whose jokes are based around race and culture and accents. Some may call him racist in a way, but how can you be racist against all races? Go google him out, he has tons of his vids on google video.

The trip to the Borgata from Broadwalk(where we were at initially) turned out to be a pretty scary walk. We walked through a wrong neighbourhood. There were people shouting at us to get out of their place, and I had a stone hit me on my leg, good thing I wore baggy jeans so there was little to no impact. It felt kindda dangerous, so the guys gathered around the girls and we just got the heck out of that street.


Borgata

Russel Peters show was seriously funny, that guy is good despite the fact that sometimes the language is rather crude, explicit, but then again, its just comedy ^^. Best part about the show? SINGAPORE got mentioned! Just happened that Melvyn was in the front row and Russel asked him where he was from. After Mel said Singapore, the entire NOC grp cheered very very loudly. We were seated in 4 goups in different parts of the theater so there was kindda of a surround sound effect. Russel went "Did you just bring HALF the country with you?!?!?!" /ROFLMAO

Damn funny, definitely worth the trip. Although I cannot get over the fact that we cannot get our $15 bus rebate cos we did not get off at the correct stop.

BTW: GONG XI FA CAI!

Day 20 to 22- Ahhh the nice mundane Life

Day 20 - /whine
I really need to get a desktop, not JUST a desktop, but one with at least 1 gb ram, a nice processor and a damn good vid card. If not I cannot play WOW /cry, which is bad. I miss raiding with the guys in creed, I miss pwning ppl in AV and I still got 500+ rep items not turned in. I want a desktop!

My Turn to cook ^^

Day 21 - Chemical engineering

Was just wandering around the corridor of the UPenn engin building while wating for my class to start. I started looking at their old graduation photos that were hung along the corridor. I suddenly noticed the words below the frame. " Class of XXXX, Chemical engineering" I did a quick head count on a few photos and found out that they size of the Chem eng cohort is............................................................... 30 + on ave. That is just about the size of my NUS class!!! But then again I am not surprise, it seems like the main engineering building(Towne Building) in UPenn, is smaller then NUS' engin fac which is big, maze-like. I wonder why there is such a drastic difference, I shall definitely have to find out one day. Well I hope my classmates in CN3B are enjoying life back in NUS ^^

Anyway today is me and Catherine's turn to cook. Nothing much to say here, just that she is definitely good, I was more or less just the person who did the chopping and cutting. I can learn lots from her, guess my skills will level up in this 1 year. Maybe I will ding 300 in cooking, artisan level ftw(only WOWers will understand this statement, so do not wreck your brains, like most of you actually care).

Day 22 - My first Overseas Angpao

Actually it is my first pay cheque! all USD 565.36 of it. Damn taxes took away $98. Finally I can see income flowing into my bank account, no longer is there outflow, there influx /woot

My paycheck!


A shot of my chair ^^ my own personal $80 chair

Going Atlantic City Tmr!

Day 18 to 19 - Body aches

Yup whole body aches bad. Even after so long. Guess skiing took a huge toll on my leg muscles. Back to life as usual. Nothing too unusual these days, just trying to get ppl and tickets to watch the 76ers in action.

Well at work my boss got me to open a package of chemical that just came in. I happily went to open the box, then I notice a BIG SKULL on it. And then the label WARNING. /sweatdrop

Ok, I had to get the proper safety gear to open it, so troublesome, but cannot be helped right? Lab safety is first and foremost. ^^

And finally we got our first pack of rice, Weijia and I headed down to Chinatown to do some shopping. We ended up getting a lot of CNY goodies, sauces( finally got oyster sauce, OMG) and most impt is RICE. Total amount of goods bought was rather scary for 2 people to carry, and the poor guy (ME) had to carry almost everything. Weijia did help carry the rice so it was not that bad, 9 kg off my overall load. Good thing the rice was vacum sealed so it was quite easy to carry. Weijia mentioned it was like a textbook. Then again I never heard of a 9 kg textbook. >.<

Good news, I finally got stable internet connection, ie: cable modem + router + LAN cable. Good news for the Guys at Creed, I will be returning to WOW soon. And I can check my email as and when I like. I really need internet to survive, and a handphone too, its amazing I made 2 weeks handphoneless.

Day 15 to 17 - I really suck at skiing

Finally a nice road trip. We had our orientation trip to Poconos, which was a nearby place where we could go skiing. Being a first timer at skiing, I had illusions or should I say disillusions of granduer where I could do cool stunts like you see on X-games. Sad to say, the follow poster sums up my skiing attempt.



We gathered and left for Poconos on friday evening. Did not really do much that night, me lawrence, deliang, pacey, cat and Niki just stoned at the TV .

Me Ripping lawrence's head off, guess going to gym pays off /lol

Saturday was expected to rain hence we did not go skiing at all. People went hiking around, or just stayed in the resort and enjoyed the activities. I went with the hiking group. I was expecting to have a nice trek around and enjoy natured. Instead it became a photo taking session. Our speed was not measured in km/h or mph. It was PPH (Photos per hour).

Just some pics from around the "hike"

Ram, Niki, Jaron, Tim, Iris and Wei-ern


Random Trees


Random House


Random House 2


Shamir trying to look cool, gonna call him Sham-ster


Group Photo


Grp photo by the lake


I am soooo scared


Lake Harmony which was kindda frozen, not totally but close enough


The 4 smart alecs who are trying to walk on ice


Me lazing in front of the lake


That's me on the frozen lake, and NO the ice did not break


Jaron ice fishing I think

Ram on ice

After a nice hike in which we realise there wasn't gonna be any rain for the day (wasted not skiiing). We just chilled in the resort. Went to play pool until it was time for orientation program.

Peiling, me, pacey and yewzhen

Yup, this trip was not all fun and games... about 95% F A G (fun and games). Was a quick lesson on cultural differences and how to handle it by Marcia a Prof at Wharton I think (pretty bad memory... actually i dozed around). We played an interesting card game to simulate such situations.

In the evening there was a 3- point shooting contest. NCBV decided to represent Singapore and send out 5 players!

NCBV Bball team looking cool before the 3 point shootout.
Me, Kaihong,Kelly, Shamster, Lawrence

Unfortunately, all of us got knocked out in the first round, with me scoring 2/10 shots as the highest among NCBV.

We ended the night with Bingo, congrats to Kelly for winning $20 and treating us ice cream

My cards


Wayne and Estee, I am in the reflection btw


Deliang looks sian cos he lost out on the $143 jackpot by just 1 number

On day 17, Sunday we went skiing!!!

Poconos


Gean and Eric, btw eric is just trying to look cool cos he cannot get up from his fall


NCBV skiiers!


The Ski Lift

As for my ski experience, it was like the first poster. I just plain sucked at it. But my crashes were nothing short of impressive, can get at least 8/10 for it. The best for my 360 spin followed by a flip into a ditch. But overall it was a nice experience once you get the hang of it. My way of going down hill is by leaps and crashes. Just speed until I crash and repeat. Its pretty efficient.

That's me trying to look cool before I crashed my way downhill

Day 14 - Happy Bday Gean

Celebrated the Bday of Gean, our NCBV co-ordinator. Everyone headed to this pretty nice Italian restaurant called Olive garden. There was an attempt to fool her into thinking that we were celebrating the Bday of another Snr, Kelly. Not sure if she was fooled or not but well the food was great, everyone had a good time. We did the usual thing at the end of the event, ta bao. Too much food as usual, it was crazy.


That's Gean, our dear NCBV co-ordinator, the one who got us our jobs, told us what to do, made me waste 15 mins calling USA so she can brief me on NOC.


Gean with Batch 6


Gean with Batch 7


Family Photo