26th May : No pictures!

Too lazy, too busy, pictures came out too lousy.

grand central station and brooklyn today, didnt catch too much of either. sighh..

tomorrow it will rain. so my phototaking isnt going to work either.

argh… cross fingers hope for the best.

May 25 : Lower Manhattan…

I am insanely pissed at the internet in the hostel. apparently 10 people on the network is way too much. so i cant plan anything, talk to anyone, shit like that. it’s crazy and my holiday plans are up in smoke. shit.

Statue of Liberty, NYC. Bland skies REALLY SUCK. BAD DAY.

New York is really big. and there’s so much to do! i wouldnt say it feels like home, it’s much bigger. but at least i finally get the big city feel again. things are moving even at 10 at night. the subway is awesome. it’s better than singapore’s. i think public transport back home really sucks as im just not a fan of the “hub-and-spoke” idea. thankfully i get the car sometimes, i dont enjoy taking 2 bus rides and a train ride instead of a 15 min drive. =/ here you just hop on and get to wherever you wanna go. right to the door. beat that!

NYSE, Wall St, NYC

Walking down the streets of wall street, as with any major financial district, it makes you wonder if perhaps you should have just followed the money and gone into the world of finance. I dont think that Tiffany and Co would choose to open in the middle of a engineering company.

Sometimes I wonder, if i put effort and balls into trading, would I have made it as one of the big players? would i be one of those types, with the tailored suits and coarse language?

Sadly (or not) i know that i will never have the passion for the sum-zero cutthroat game that we call the stock market. so it will be a life of financial mediocrity and intellectual satisfaction for me, then.

World Trade Center Memorial Site, NYC

Kinda tired from travelling, and my attentions have shifted back towards my work. also, the MF internet doesnt help much.

i just want my girlfriend by my side… =/

May 23, 24 : New York City

So i havent done much today. museum of natural history, which took up all the daylight, and chicago at night, which was positively awesome.

nyc is a busy city. you can hardly tell from the surface. it’s almost subtle… people wait for the light on the road, instead of on the sidewalk. there’s so little patience. it almost reminds me of home, where public transit is usually this harsh forbidding congregation of bits of personal space in too small a cabin.

Dino Skeletons, Museum of Natural History, Manhattan, NY

The museum was awesome but too little in the way of.. “live” stuff. everything’s stuffed so it was like walking through someone’s huge trophy game collection. =/ dinosaurs were awesome but the section was closed for some talk, can you believe it?!

Ambassador Theatre, Manhattan, NY

Chicago was awesome! I got the rush tickets in the morning at 11 in the morning for 36.50.. about half of the price of the guys sitting next to me. At these prices I might actually try for avenue Q tomorrow! woots woots. ruthie henshall was excellent, it was a surprise to learn that she would be playing roxie. :D

after the musical i decided to get some pictures of times square. if only because the ones i took in the day are so abjectly horrible. not that this is any better, but still.

Times Square, Manhattan, NYC.

Such a long day, and i’ve barely finished half of manhattan! goodness. so much more sights to see tomorrow. lol…

Saturday, May 22nd : Enter to Grow in Wisdom

Need I say more? Cambridge, MA.

Cambridge, MA houses 2 of the world’s leading institutions of higher learning : harvard and MIT. as such it’s not hard to imagine the place basically growing around the 2 colleges, with tons of cafes, bookstores and furniture stores.

When i was young kid i used to read about yale and havard, and MIT was always my dream school, along with Caltech. A sense of sadness enveloped me as i walked through the MIT campus. All my regrets of not going overseas came back to haunt me. I knew the financial means were beyond me, so much so that I never ever took the SAT. With grad school and funding opportunities though, it’s a different story. I’m not going to to live with 2 big regrets in my life. at least im going to try. I think of my grandpa sometimes – he lived to see me fail to get into RI, but didnt live to see me get into hcjc. I remember my first thought in getting posted to hwachong was a kind of regret that my grandfather never lived to see this day. Till now, i still work hard to give my grandma good news everytime i see her.

Hugeass wind tunnel in MIT, Cambridge, MA.

After this I made the best decision ever in Boston. I went to the Alive and Kicking Lobster shop. It’s mostly a seafood store but they do make lobster sandwiches. and THEY WERE AWESOME. coming from someone who’s not easily impressed by lobsters, that says alot.

Chunky meat, fresh off the shell, chewy and delectable, with mayo between 2 buns. zomg. ZOMG!

so this place is Alive and Kicking lobsters. find them off yelp.com. junction of river and sth. really obscure but SO WORTH IT. gem of a place! woots.

Lobster place, Cambridge, MA.

I told you it was a humble family run thingy. They have their own boats and cages, so you know its fresh. :)

The big apple beckons tomorrow. WOOTS!

PS. forgot about breakfast at dempseys. wholesome american breakfast. tt was good as well. :)

May 21st : Red Sox..

Freedom trail. Basically a trail explaining how Boston was the birthplace of the american revolution. A long and scenic trail that brings you through the heart of boston. It was all I did today, sometimes you just veer into the alleys and before you know it, an hour has flown by.

Along the Freedom Trail, Boston, MA.

Interestingly, the origins of the entire “Tea Party” Movement began in Boston. Reading the murals around town quickly revealed the origins of Boston as a British colony disenchanted with the ability and interests of the British to defend it. If you’ll wiki the tea party you’ll know that it’s nothing like the GOP actions these days. Indeed, those were more noble, more glorious days. Or at least history wrote it that way.

Quincy Market, Boston, MA. Looks like Covent Garden, Doesnt it?

Moral of the story for today was : Dont eat seafood first thing in the morning. It was the best clam chowder I’ve had yet, and also the lobster roll, but still… lol. FYI, nothing special to scream about. I guess, having come from a place where seafood is cheap, good and in abundance, my standards were probably too high.

Stairwell, Boston, MA. I love the architecture in the north end!

Man, the place felt like a scene out of Jay Chou’s “Yi Fu Zhi Ming (In father’s name)”. It was actually filmed in italy, i think.

Truck, Boston, MA.

Past the drydocks and onto my surprise of the day : My 7 day Boston pass gives me rides on the commuter boats as well! Nothing like a free trip across the Boston Bay, is there? I’ve kinda missed the classic “View of the Bay” as some cities have. That view is conspicuously missing from both Seattle and Boston. Even Singapore tries to engineer a nightscape with buildings and lights; efforts which to me are both a waste of money and effort and comes of more Vegas-ish than truly giving Singapore some character. Just look at Chinatowns around the world, with their chinese menus and cantonese speaking store owners – compare that to our 3-for-10 souvenir trinket shops lining the streets. In a word, our efforts to conserve our culture is disgusting. I sincerely hope that they leave hong lim untouched.

Drydock 1, Boston, MA.

Tomorrow I head for Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of Havard and MIT, which happens to be my dream school since my middle school days. In all honestly, I hope that someday i’ll return to the hallowed gates of MIT as a student, not as a tourist. I mean, who in their right mind would travel to NTU to take a picture of it?

View from the Boat, Boston, MA.

Have a good weekend y’all!

19th, 20th May : Back on the East Coast

Failed to update again… lol. Maybe cos I havent had the time or space to work on this over the past few days, resulting in intermittent updating.

An overnight flight with a transit in chicago at 6 in the morning (goodness) and I’ve arrived in boston. I got so tired that I took a nap, so in the end, I left for downtown boston at 6 anyhow.

So, seattle rained out on me, but my friends told me that there wasnt much to see anyway. oh well. i had such a hard time getting information on where to go anyhow, so i really couldnt figure that city out.

Busker outside the Very First Starbucks, Seattle, WA.

I like seattle as a city. it’s nice and big and developed and not too tourist-minded. which is always good. as a backpacker the last thing you want is to have specially prepared experiences for you. most of us prefer the anonymity of travelling, to pursue the kind of transience that only comes with wanderlust. to really know a place is to observe a setting – the last thing you’d want is for your act of observation to distort the original conditions. not all agree with my view, but i’d much prefer things to be this way.

So first meal of today was at 6pm. lol.. so expensive, but so worth it. It was at this place called the daily catch. really pricey at 21 bucks for a black ink pasta. but omg.

Flambe, Boston, MA. The chef posed for a series after this but i like the original one the best.

The restaurant was a typical “hole in the wall” setup. (learnt that off the internet). I accidentally discovered that this restaurant was smack in the middle of Boston’s Italian community. And honestly i think it’s one of the most awesome italian communities ever. Italians know their seafood, boston has good seafood. Match made in heaven. It was also a small joint, so much so that you’re never too far from the action. take a look at how close the people on the left were to the chef, I was a similar distance away. how crazy is that?

Apart from the food, there’s the architecture as well. the cast iron, the red brick, it brings you to another world the moment you get into it. there’s just nothing like it.. =/ in one word : amazing.

Boston Architecture, Boston, MA.

Bob’s Grocery, Boston, MA. In the italian district.

Ended my day with a walk by the riverside bumping into a little league game. MLB has been extremely boring for me, not least because at a professional level, you lose all vested interest in the match. once you pay for it, you’re always expecting to be blown away, by feats of athleticism that only a select few are able to display.

not so with the little leagues. here you have excited parents cheering on their even more excited kids. the standards are of course low, i could kick the ball faster than they can hit it, but that’s not the point. kids dont hide their emotions, they do not have a grasp on the concept of composure. watch one after a catch gone wrong, or after a good pitch or a good hit. watch the reactions of the parents, urging their children on when there’s a play going on.

it reminds me alot of collegiate sports, and in essence why we play sports in the first place. while we obviously strive for some form of sporting perfection, how many of us truly let our skills define our enjoyment? is it not mostly the company you are with, the kind of teamwork and other intangible aspects of sports that keeps us coming back? what was the most memorable sporting moment in your life? chances are, it’d be something that you did, not some record breaking feat you watched on ESPN.

and that kind of raw, unfiltered emotion, the little leagues have in bulk. it’s amazing.

Little League Match, Boston, MA.

See y’all tmr!

May 17th & 18th : Seattle, Washington. Friends!

Always good to see friends again.

so, i know i didnt post yesterday. but no worries, news of my demise has (unfortunately) been premature.

Lockheed Martin M-21 + D-21, Museum of Flight, Seattle, WA. All time fav plane.

Seattle is a nice a big city which isnt touristy. much. I didnt really see much as I spent all day at the museum of flight with Tng, who was nice enough to bring me around. The museum had lots of really cool planes, though. Such as the French SPAD XIII through WWI, the above M21, the Supermarine Spitfire (also one of my favourite planes), and also the Fokker Triplane. If you’ve ever had an interest in planes, they have them right here. in abundance.

Seattle is home to Boeing and Starbucks, arguably 2 of america’s biggest and well known companies. But Seattle, unlike some other cities i’ve visited, is diverse enough not to be defined by just a handful of large companies.

Im too tired to blog anymore. lol. maybe i’ll just sum seattle up tomorrow. I really havent done as much travelling as i’d love to. but i’ve gone say 2 weeks without a proper place to call home and no privacy. it’s really tiring when you cant sleep well and travel around and have no privacy. it just gets to you. =/

well, night, people. i really think seattle is an awesome city. now if i only knew where to go to check the place out…

The 2 Alvins, Seattle, WA. The concorde’s in the background.