seattle's snow chased me all the way back to texas

Have already been back from my thanksgiving trip for 4 days, but I haven't gotten down to blogging about it. Will do so when I get all photos uploaded. Overall the trip was really fun. Didn't buy all that much, because I didn't manage to hit the outlets cos the timing was always wrong, and there was a major jam on day 5, so well.. I guess someone up there wants me to distribute the spending. I've already spent pretty much for the trip as compared to if I stayed in Texas, but I think it was all worth it. I bought some magnet, pens and chocolates.

I also brought back super ugly welts on my leg though. damn depressing just looking at my freaking ugly legs. super dry weather makes my sensitive skin act up again and it's itching bad. Plus, I've got scratches on the front of my calves from the ski boots pressing into the flesh, and the new northface winter boots I bought at sports academy's clearance section have rubbed an entire ring of abrasion around my leg so that the skin there is dark and scaly. Argh!!!!!! disfigured legs. I really hate my legs. I want to cover up my legs forever. =(

Oh yeah.. Im supposed to talk about the cold front! The 4th and 5th day of the trip saw seattle snowing unexpectedly. On the last day, we spent hours stuck in traffic jams on the highway, because of the bad weather. Because it doesn't usually snow in seattle, many people didn't know how to drive on the snow/ice and we saw many cars which went off track and skid into drains, grass slopes etc. And my flight was delayed for 2 hours before I reached home safely at 9.45am Monday morning. Got into the shower immediately and got to the office finally at 10.30am.

2 days later on Wednesday, people told me they weren't coming to work the next day because it would be dangerous driving to work and to prepare for the upcoming cold weather. Found out that it was going to snow in texas the next day, which I found it quite hard to believe cos it was so hot this morning. Did some reading online to find out that a cold front hit seattle and it had then moved downwards towards texas. So it was an average of 20 degrees on wednesday and it hit below zero degrees on thursday. I thought it was pretty amazing how drastically temperature can change. The snow in Texas is nowhere like that in Seattle and Vancouver. It was very fine, almost like powder one time, and the other time it was little round pellets of ice.

watching 'love actually' on the tele now; one of my favourites. good show for the holiday season. heartwarming, just very sweet. I like all the little stories inside. Though the love stories are all very sweet, the show doesn't make me wanna fall in love. It makes me wanna call home.

I haven't called home for 2 weeks. And my phone line has been down for the past 2 days. Am quite pissed with the dumb system here. It takes me forever to get anything fixed. and its supposed to be the united states. All those automated helplines that are supposed to faciliate our enquiries are SOOO not efficient. I make a call and spend 5 minutes on the machine, b4 I can talk to an operator, then I find out I need some other information, so I get off the phone, call someone else, then call the service centre again only to have to listen to the machine again, b4 I can talk to another DIFFERENT operator, who tells me I need a different set of information. And this has happened to me a couple of times that I've given up setting up my internet at home, and have settled on using my neighbours wireless. However, this time it's my phone line that's disconnected. Sigh... Have emailed someone in a company for help instead of trying to get it settled on my own, since the phoneline is settled by the company.

ok, enough ramblings, back to tv first.

Thanksgiving Trip Day 5: Boeing

BOEING EVERETT FACTORY TOUR

Outside BOEING

Deep snow and a circle draw out by some car's tires, snow accumulated on trees and atop the bus.

We were supposed to be visiting the boeing factory. However, as we arrived at the destination, we found plenty of fresh snow. As we got out of the car, people started throwing snow balls at one another, dumping snow down each other's backs and ahemm.. thowing people into the snow. -)

I like this photo with the snow flying. Great action; Danny and I trying to strip Weijie of his jacket: posed shots of us throwing snow balls at mark.

As some people micheviously playing with the snow, there're people like Mark and Jeremiah who were busy taking photographs of the scenery and activity.

This is weijie running away to the other side of the road without his jacket. Still trying to hurl snowballs at others.

This is all of us happily watching weijie and me holding on to his jacket.

Some more great action shots

Lone ranger Miah, who's more interested in taking photographs then to get involved with the snow fight.

Weijie running away after an attack, miah STILL watching on; Philip with a snow ball that's WAYYY big; danny being thrown in the snow; Pawsie and me!

I got thrown into the snow too by Danny, and suffered a blackblue near my butt, but this is my blog, so I get to filter out what I want to publish. I think Pawsie actually looks like she's going to dump the snow on me anytime, but yeah.. I guess I didn't notice the huge lump of snow in her hands, and pawsie is too peace-loving to attack me. =)))

Finally, we move into the Boeing Building to begin our tour. We were too late for the 10.30am tour, and so decided on the 11am tour, which made time really tight for weijie, elvin and mark because their flight was at 1.30pm later on! We can't take photos during the actual hour-long tour, so too bad. There wasn't much to take too, because we mostly observed the factory activity about 4 levels above in a gallery.

Here are some photos taken at the boeing exhibition gallery after the tour.


Inside Boeing Building

Last photo at boeing before we have to rush to the airport 40 minutes away to get Weijie, mark and elvin on their plane!

Some Lookout point

It turned out that Weijie, mark and Elvin were too late and missed their flight. Fortunately, they were able to take another plane scheduled at 3pm. As for the remaining 5 of us, we went to return the mini-van and picked up Jeremiah's rented car. The car was yellow and pretty cool! The lack of auto-lock feature in the car isn't quite as cool, but oh well..

5 of us drove to a lookout point that allowed us to look out at seattle city and the space needle.

Wonderful view of Seattle

Some old snowman built by other people with the little bit of snow in this area. Too bad we didn't get to build one ourselves.

Jeremiah's funky yellow car.

After the lookout point, we decided to grab some late lunch/early dinner. Our first choice was outback steak house, but they werent open till 4pm and Danny and Philip had to rush for their flight at 5pm. In the end, we went to Denny's diners for food. 4 of us ordered breakfast sets, while philip had nachos. As Danny and Philip had to rush off, the 2 wolved down their food, Danny dabaoed his pancakes and Jeremiah drove them to the airport nearby, while Pawsie and I continued our breakfast. Jeremiah came back shortly to finish up his 'breakfast' and then now there was only pawsie, jeremiah and I left.

With Only 3 Left...

After 'breakfast' at about 5.30pm, we planned to go to microsoft which closed at 7pm and then to the premium outlets. However, as we got back onto the highway, we met with a very heavy traffic jam. After being stuck in the jam for an hour, it was obvious that we weren't going to get to Microsoft in time, and we decided to try to get to the outlets instead. However, with the horrible traffic, visiting the outlets turned out to be impossible as well. As what the people here call it, the highway's like a carpark. You hardly can move an inch. We ended up spending about 3 hours in the traffic, without getting anywhere.

Quite a beautiful shot on some street that we passed by while we were trying to figure out the route back to the airport.

As we made our way back to the airport, we saw many cars that had lost control and made their way into the ditches or down the slopes along the roads. As it does not usually snow in seattle, people were not prepared for such driving conditions I guess, which made the traffic so bad. We finally reached the airport about 9 plus, while my flight was scheduled at 11.50pm and pawsie's at 12.15pm. We had some coffee and cheesecake at starbucks to pass the time, before finally going through the customs at 11.pm.

Me, Jeremiah and Pawsie at the airport, before the 2 of us headed into customs. Jeremiah will stay for the night before returning back to philadephia the next evening.

After entering customs and checking the schedule, I discovered my flight was delayed till 12.20pm, so now my flight was about the same time as Pawsie's. We walked around a bit, and shopped at Hudson news, where we bought some magnets and drinks. Then we parted ways and I went to look for Rian who phoned and said that she was already at the gate.

waiting and waiting for my flight to take off

Turns out the bad weather caused our flight to come in late, and in the end our flight was delayed for 2 hours. My inital plan was to reach dallas at 6 am and then get back home in time to go to the work. In the end, we reached Dallas airport at 8 -someting. It was also peak hour, so the traffic on the highways back home was pretty heavy and I finally returned home at 9.45am. I put down my stuff, had a shower, and got to the office at 10.30am.

The thanksgiving holiday was short, but definitely enjoyable. But it's back to work.. For now.. till I get to go for another holiday =)

Thanksgiving Trip Day 4: Seattle

Day 4 morning was spent visiting the Pike's market that we never got to explore on the first day. Loads of things on sale, like any other market, but the highlight for me was the cooked crabs for sale. We bought 2 to eat during the day, and in the evening, we came back again to buy another 3 which we polished off with beer at the end of the day.

Pawsie and Vincent bought this music instrument which cost about $38 to 42 USD each. I think it works something like a recorder, but instead you have 4 hols to cover only. Think you can only play one octave on the instrument with covering the 4 holes in different combinations, but the tone gets lower as you buy the bigger ones.




Just opposite the market was the original first starbucks which we went to to get some coffee.





After that, half the group went off to EMP first while, weijie, mark, pawsie and I went to send Gabriel to the airport because he was leaving first. On the way, we also stopped by to check out the chittenden locks.

Us braving the rain to view the Chittenden Locks; Fish Laddar; Chittenden Locks

The dam keep the water at two different levels. The laddar is constructed, so that salmon and other types of fish can make small jumps to get from water in the lower level to the higher level. When a boat wants to get from the low level water to the higher level, it first enters an enclosed area, between 2 locks. Then the lock between the low and high level allows water to seep slowly into the lower level so that the water level rises slowly. When the water level in the enclosed area has raised to the high level, the gate is fully raised, so that the boat can now travel through.

After sending Gabriel to the airport it was already 4pm. We called the rest of the group and it turned out that they were still in EMP having lots of fun and still didn't want to leave. Although we only had an hour and a half left in EMP before it closed, we went in anyway. Mark, Weijie, Pawsie and I had a pretty good time jamming away in the jam rooms. Actually come to think about it, it's pretty much self-entertainment. We were trying very hard to thnk of songs to sing and play too and we were all quite brain dead most of the time. The group gets to stay in each jamming room for 10 minutes and there will be a recording done for you. After that you can go to a booth to listen to the "music" you produced during the 10 minutes and even choose to purchase your cd. Of course, we didn't buy our own music, because we were basically making a fool of ourselves, playing and singing nonsense in the room. We found out after we left the room that there was a speaker outside and people outside could hear what we were playing in the music room. No wonder people were smiling at us when we exited the room!

We also went to this cool room, which was a simulated stage, where we got to play our own music instruments. There was coloured lights blasting and a screen with screaming fans cheering us on.And it didn't matter that we didn't know how to play the instruments, because they kind of play on their own. You just have to fake and act the part of the cool rockstar. After that, we stepped outside, where we got tickets for our concert with our band name printed. We also watched our music video and viewed our own poster. After then, we continued jamming in any other jam room we could find and this time Nesha joinned us as well...

Me and Pawsie acting as DJs. I think Xin'en looks very mischeivous over here.

Us jamming at the EMP

When we finally got kicked out of the EMP when it closed, we went to a mexican restaurant for dinner. Miah, Mark, Weijie, Nesha and Philip had to rush off to watch Omitheatre Happy Feet, while Danny, Vincent, Elvin, Pawsie and I decided to have some drinks at some pub.



We went to Pike's pub/brewery for some beer and chatted. Conversation was mainly about Vincent, Danny and Elvin's adventures on Whistler on the third day when the rest of us explored stanley park and the suspension bridge. There was a blizzard when they were up the mountain. Miah was a pro and whizzed down the moutain, but the 3 were new to snow boarding and had more difficulties. They ended up only being able to snowboard 1/3 of the moutain to slightly below the 2/3 point. Then among the blizzard, Vincent asked Danny if they wanted to continue down the slope, then Danny told him there was a thin line between garangness stupidity. That's when they decided to retreat back up to the 2/3 line so that they could take the gondola down instead of snowboard down. Vincent was telling us how Elvin was shouting at him to Call for help when he had almost already made it back up. Their story was pretty hilarious as they acted out how they climbed the mountain. They used their snowboards kind of like picks, by digging it into the snow above them and trying to pull themselves up. After about 2 hours of talk, the rest from Happy Feet met up with us at the pub and had some drinks too. Then it was time to return back to the hotel to rest.