Hello everyone.

I am leaving for China very very very soon. Next month to be exact.

When I am away, do not send me sms. I WON'T reply.

I am on holiday now. Breathing the singapore air.

Want to meet up when CW come back after 28th Dec?

Most likely no one read this post.. heck.

Enjoy~

Update #2

Things have been pretty mundane since the last update. Now it just feels like a regular city. The only thing of note is probably that we rented a car over a weekend and clocked about 650 miles, covering landmarks like the grand canyon, a meteor crater, a pretty famous place called sedona.

Here're some photos:


We stopped by at a town called Flagstaff, which is along the way to grand canyon, and also in relatively close proximity to a few other attractions. The photo above was taken just outside the visitor center. As can be seen in the photo, there's nothing to stop a pedestrian from going on to the tracks. I stood on the "yellow line" and it can be rather scary, and awfully loud. I don't have photos showing the train here because i was shot it on film. Show you guys after i come back.
Next i went to the famed canyon.



Grand Canyon is HUGE. What you can see on the horizon in the photo is the North rim, since i approached from the south. If i remember correctly it is 20+ km directly across the canyon. If you were to drive around the side to the north, it is 200+ miles. It is such a big place that you can literally stay in there for a week, and people really do that. There are plenty of inns inside the canyon area itself, and the tickets are valid for a week. So you could hang around the explore the part of the canyon you're already at. It would take a really long time to cover the whole area.



What you can't see in the photo is the Colorado River, which runs among the canyons. It is quite a distance to the north, too far to be seen. One of the precautions written on the boards near the visitor mentions warns visitors not to plan on hiking to the bottom of the canyon and back up in a single day, probably because it's simply not going to happen. We planned to visit a few other places during the trip, so we couldn't stay for long at the canyon. It was quite a pity.

Other than getting to the bottom of the canyon by the honest way (hiking), you could ride a mule down. No photos here, also because i was shooting it on film. Other than transporting people, mules are also used for transporting goods down into the canyon, since the paths are rather narrow.



What i also didn't capture on photos is the whole trail of shit left by the mules. Goods are usually transported by a convoy of mules, so when they do shit they leave quite a lot around, which is hard to step around because of the narrow path. Despite that, mules have an amazing track record of zero casualties. Regardless of weather conditions, they have always been able to get in and out alive, along with their human passengers. A story i read in the bookstore in the visitor center made me slightly skeptical about their safety record however. It goes like this:

A man was transporting some goods along with four mules down the canyon along the path, during which a winter snowstorm occurred. They were driven to the edge of the canyon and the man released himself from the mule in order to save himself, kicking down the mule in the process. Since the mules were all bound together, the four of them tumbled down the edge, hitting the ground more than 300 feet below. Despite this, the mules still kept a perfect safety record because they all survived the fall. Pretty amazing creatures aren't they.

The photo above is taken at another place called Sedona, along with Grand Canyon, it is one of the biggest attractions in Arizona. Nothing much to say about it, except the mountains in the area are formed by red rocks. It was free, because the entrance to the visitor zone was so crowded that we gave up waiting. The photos of Sedona were all taken on the highway.



Over here you can almost expect them to charge you for every location you see on the tourist map. The state of Arizona is heavily dependent on tourism for its economy, and it has an annual tourist population of about 33.8 million. Most of them are domestic tourists though. One side thing to note is that only 25% of US population owns a passport, main reason being that there're too many things to see and do in their own country anyway.

Coming back to the present, I've been noticing a lot of bike seats being stolen, and someone just told me her bike seat got stolen as well. I got panicky for a bit and removed my bike seat so that i could keep it in the house. This morning i woke up to find my rear wheel stolen. That seriously sucks. About the bike, It was part of the lease agreement. Only that they took a month to fulfill it, including internet access. Over the next few days i'll have to hunt for a wheel somewhere. The bike is far more important here than it is in the SG. If you feel bad about the transport prices in SG, it costs USD$1.75 for a single ride on either the bus or the rail, $3.50 for a day pass. The single ride pass makes no sense because you're going to take at least two rides if you're going back, and you have to take more than one bus ride to go anywhere. Since the city is organised like a grid, the buses usually go either only in the north-south or east-west direction. So diagonal travel means two bus rides.

I'll keep the rest in a future update!

cw

Photos from U.S.A


Things have been rather hectic these days, and to my surprise, i found myself taking much less photos than i would have liked. Here are some photos since day 1.



This is a parking meter, taken near the Cholla Apartments on the next street, which is Terrace Road. I stay on Lemon street. Next street means about 7-8 min walk from my place. The city is organised in a very neat grid, like monopoly. Maybe i can show you guys how it's like in the near future.





This is my school, or a small part of it. It's HUGE. 2 yrs ago, it was the largest university in the States. Now it's no longer, but it's still pretty close. It has 67000+ students, which is a few times larger than nus. Area-wise, Btw if you guys are interested, my address is

1011 e lemon st
206 SQ University Properties
Tempe, AZ 85281
Phone number: 1-480-463-0137

1 - Country code a.k.a USA
480 - Area code
the rest - my number




The 2 on the left took the plane with me, the leftmost one is pamela, which Huixia+jx will know. The middle one is Yizong, a teacher to be and an awesome badminton player. The guy on the right is James. He brought us to to a Chase bank near the school. We met on the bus, when we asked the bus driver for directions and he offered to bring us there. And he did, all the way. The photo was taken in the Chase bank building itself. He's an architect and a student of akido. Cool guy.

Some facts

I'm staying in the hottest state in the U.S. How nice. I bet Vasaant would love this weather. Yesterday it was 41 degrees celsius, but that's not the hottest yet. It can reach 47-48 degrees.
If you want to know how it feels like, it reminded me of the sauna session i had at Vas's place some time back. Wonder how ppl live here at all.

I stay in Tempe, nicknamed the Grand Canyon city. That sounds like it's close to grand canyon, but it is still 350 miles away. Not exactly CLOSE is it?

The cheapest way to eat here is to cook, probably pasta which i've been doing since day one. The 2nd cheapest way is to eat fastfood. Tacos can get as cheap as 89 cents and burgers like McChicken and McMuffin are a dollar each.

Soft drink prices at Macdonalds:
Small: $1
Medium: $1
Large: $1
Extra large: $1

And its refillable.

About the people here.
The people are very outward here. It seems as though their mouths don't get alot of rest coz they greet practically everyone here. After a visit to some of the shops here, i could see why Sg service isn't considered to be very good. Salespeople greet you as you pass by even if they know you're not a customer. They don't follow you around like they do in some stores in Sg. And somehow, they manage to appear very warm and willing to help without being intrusive.

About the traffic.
In Tempe, pedestrians are the big shots. Cars give way to pedestrians anywhere. There are dedicated bicycle lanes throughout the city, and if you can't find one you could always ride on the sidewalk. The thing is you've got to cycle in the same direction as the road traffic, and give way to cars on the corners. Now i'm eagerly waiting for my bike to come.

The greenery.
Even though it IS a desert. I find plenty of grass and plants and trees around. I was told it was all man-planted. It's pretty amazing. At late night, about 11pm, you'll see alot of sprinklers come on and water the plants around them. They need that coz it really doesn't rain much over here. About 30 days a year i was told.

My apartment.
I'm staying in a 1-bedroom apartment on Lemon St. It costs abt $350+ for me. It's nice, except it doesn't have internet which makes it hard to get online. I have to walk quite a distance just to get internet, and it's in the middle of nowhere, which can get really hot really quickly. That aside, they provided a TV, but no antenna, which is kinda dumb. The light bulbs were broken, the boiling plates in the kitchen were not fixed, the wardrobe doors were broken, and the promised sofas were not there when we first entered.

My school.
One thing i noted about my school is the huge police station. They have a force of 77 policemen just for the school campus, which spans across 4 cities. The HQ is a large building within the campus. But again, everything here is large, so it's just normal.


That's all for now, will update again soon. =D

CW

This is how bored I am for the moment.

Very bored.

Bored

Too bored to care about anything else.

No one is going out anywhere.

The darn movie "UP" is still not UP in Singapore yet. Mind you, it started screening in US 2 bloody months ago.

Oh yar, if u guys even bother to drop by this forgotten blog, do leave a bit of comments.

How come i can upload here but not on my the other blog?? LIFE SUCKS.!!

And I think I just got myself a job for 2 days. hip hip hurray..

First the cows.
Then the birds.
Now, it's the pigs.

What's next? The lambs or fishes??

May i suggest to have a CNY gathering??
since wanjing is back, we have more ppl ard..
plus we've not seen her for v long..
and when will vas be back???

ey... gather at cw hse for steamboat?
LOL!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009!!!!!