The Real 'Downtown'

LOL, i was wrong in the 'Day 1' post it seems, cause the place we went with lots of malls wasn't called downtown Orlando after all, but it was Millenia boulevard instead. But we had plans for the real downtown and we decided to take a bus downtown, since, there were lots of traveling required, we decided to get a day bus ticket. After a long ride, which took us around 45 minutes, we arrived at the central station in downtown Orlando.


The bus terminal in downtown Orlando.

We got on our foot and started to explore the town, or rather city, lol. Here are some pictures of downtown Orlando.







We dropped by a pizzeria, well maybe because it's smell attracted our senses, and guess what, the pizza was great, and it's portion was humongous!


Look at how the pizza occupy 2 plates!

We headed to a park nearby, which we got to know through the tourist information center. The moment we set our eyes on the park, we were wowed and stunned by the immense beauty of the park.Here are a few pictures of the park or also known as Lake Eola.








Look! A rubbish bin the middle of no where lol.

After some pretty long walks, we then hopped onto a bus to the biggest mall in Orlando (Florida Mall) which was around 40 minutes from the downtown.


One of the walkway in the mall.

Guess what we saw? M&M's world, yes, u heard me. It's everything M&M's, clothes, pants, souvenirs etc. And we were also told that there were only 3 M&M's world in the whole world, and this is one of them.. :)




Everything M&M's.


The Wall of Colours.

After having some Tacos and Burritos for my dinner, we then took a bus back to our condo and our day ends there after.

Groceries!!!

If you're wondering why did i named this post 'groceries'? it's because i ran out of names and i'm starting to get lazy:p nah, i was just joking, but basically, we did nothing much besides getting more groceries, which we had been doing for the past 3 days, haha...

But well, this was also our 1st time cooking a chinese meal :) rice, pork chop, and spinach. lol, words cant explain how much i already miss those meal :p But the chinese meal today was inspired by our lunch, where we had a very expensive chinese meal, which was around USD 5 a plate of what we usually call 'chap fan'. Anyways, here are some pics of our mile-breaking meal.

Judgement Day 1

JUDGEMENT DAY!!!!!! We'll be havin our drug test today, and so that was the thing that got us up early in the morning. After havin our breakfast of bread and egg, which we had been having for the past few days.... :)

Uh huh, after having our breakfast, we met up with our future colleagues, which are staying in the same condo as us. To our surprise, they were 4 Ukrainians, 3 girls (errrhhhmmmmm) and a boy. Well, we were picked up by a van from our company HMS HOST and went to the very plaza that we will be workin for the next 3 months. First impression wasn't very good, since it's those kind of rest house along the highways, only much better then the ones in malaysia :p

We met up with our boss, Mr Ron, he was a nice guy, he gave us a brief talk and he even treated us to lunch :) After our meal, we immediately went to a diagnostics centre to have our urine tested. LOL, damn, i feel so uncomfortable giving people my urine, it just doesn't sound right :| Well, there were 8 of us, and after a long wait, we were finally done and headed back home with the same van we came.

Back home, we checked the public loaf and had a dunk in the swimming pool, and guess what, i've found my gym, woooooooooooooooot~~~ haha:)

Day 3

Oi, it's 10 already, get your a$$ up and start moving, nah, just joking, no one said that to me :p But well, after having our breakfast, we did our usual routine as well and went exploring again, and this time, instead of heading to millenia boulevard (where all the malls and IKEA were situated), we headed a different direction, south of our place. LOL, the road looked like it was never ending but finally we stopped by 7-11 to have a refuel, yea, to refuel our bodies:p We then continued our journey and dropped by Festival Bay Mall. After a drink or two, we then headed to the opposite of the mall, it was like a boulevard kind of thing with shops along the walks, guess we finally found a shopping haven with stuff at factory outlet prices. Brands like Calvin Klein, Timberland, Nike, Addidas etc etc (can't name them all here) were all selling at floor low prices.


The Boulevard of shopping haven

And guess what, i saw the exact pair of shoe that i bought in Malaysia for RM220 and it's only selling here at the price of USD29.99 (around RM100), OMG, u cant imagine how pissed i was, GRRRR....


THE SHOE!

After a great while of walking around the boulevard, we decided to call it a day, on our way back something caught our attention, TACO BELL!! mexican food that is, and with a good deal thrown into it, so we had our dinner there, among the most filling one since we arrived here. After our feast, we headed back, with the sun setting, there were sceneries where you can only see in your dreams! Here are 2 which looked great by a lake.






BTW, TAKE NOTE, I'VE ADDED A SATELLITE VIEW OF THE PLACE WE'RE STAYING IN AT POST 'DAY 1' (TAKEN FROM GOOGLE MAPS)

Day 2

The day started with most of us waking up at early in the morning (that's around 4am), after effects of jetlag? nah, didn't had any problems with that since i'm used to sleeping at odd hours in my university :) Anyways, what else could we do besides exploring again? So we went out to look for our breakfast and guess what we had for our breakfast? Mc Donald's yea, that's right :) It was like any Mc D's in Malaysia besides that it has different menus, and i had a big mac, which was like what we had exactly in Malaysia.

We then took a bus to the Universal Boulevard (Universal the company that produces movies) When we were there, i can say that everyone of us were stunned, oh my, that place indeed was a paradise :) Yea yea, i heard that, pictures, yess... here they are..


The entrance of Universal park


Hard Rock Cafe in Universal Boulevard


The world reknown Universal logo

Pictures of the boulevard:






Me & giant Jordan


A picture of Universal store

After a draining day, we prepared our first own cooked dinner, it was meant to be a soupy dish, but it turned out to be too dry, but it still tasted great regardless, with the pork chop we cooke up :) Here's a memorable picture of it

Day 1

Pictures of our condo that we'll gonna get stuck in for 3 months :p


A picture of our hall


A picture of a room me and winson is sharing


A picture of our kitchen

We didn't had much sleep since the previous night, lol, maybe because we slept most of the time in the airplane. Barely 5 hours of sleep and we woke up, driven by our hungry stomachs, we decided to go out on foot to explore Orlando :) Believe it or not, it was a half an hour walk to the nearest mall, but lol, there were like 2-3 malls in that area and we went from one to another.

Of all places, we had our breakfast, or rather our brunch in IKEA, here's a picture of hungry me eating my breakfast meal :)



Here are some pictures of downtown Orlando






lol, i dun think i've ever seen this in Malaysia where we have our 'lepak' culture but in america, we're not allowed to do that in a bus stop, ROFL

After our meal, we headed to a hypermart (super target) nearby to get our needies, lol, and we spent most of our day in our condos thereafter :p




lol, believe it or not, these are 2 pictures of a view from our balcony (isn't it cool?) at 8pm, yea, u heard me, 8pm... lol. There's more daylight then night due to summer over here in florida :)

Here's a satellite view of the place we're staying in, it's called Walden Circle, if you wanna know more, go to google maps and type in the search bar Walden Circle, Florida.

About Airports And Transits

7.30pm, that was the time me and my friends (damien, winson, dickson) were supposed to meet at the main terminal of KLIA :) so says 7.30 and as usual with all the reasons in the world which i don't wanna get started on, i was late :| and i got my friends waiting, urgghhh, what a bad feeling it was, but well it wasn't my fault that i got stuck in the jam for nearly half an hour (here i go again)...
but well, so my friends waited and i arrived 15 minutes later, we checked in and got everything settled and waited for the time to enter the departure hall, ohhhh, all the scanning and stuff.

RAPE!! RAPE!! nah i was just joking, haha but well, i did got literally 'raped' by the imigration officer, as in i was being performed a body check after the metal detector sounded when i walked through it, apparently it was due to my belt :( and i still can't believe that i lost my virginity just because of that ^^

After countless security procedures, finally! at last! in the end! i was in the plane, after 8 years since the last time i was on board a plane. lol, this time, it was made even sweetter with the japanese stewardess welcoming us on board :p

Barely able to settle down, we were immediately told that we were about to touch down at Changi, rumoured, or at least that was what i heard to be the best airport in the world. Well, it turned out to be somewhat true :) with so much of free stuff around, massage chairs, good internet, free TV and the list goes on and on....


Me & Changi :)


Changi

8 hours later...

The worst has yet to come, but the coming flight will be a 7 hours one, hardly i could imagine resting my a$$ on a chair for twice the time it usually takes for me to return to my hometown, but whatever :p 7 hours of torture ensued, lol, the hardest thing was to find something to keep myself occupied, sleeping wasn't a really great option due to the terrible turbulence now and then.

But somehow, 7 hours passed and we landed in Tokyo Narita airport.Well, to be honest, Narita wasn't as good as Changi in terms of entertainment, but hell, it was holy clean and the legendary toilets in Japan was really true, heated seats, automatic wash, super clean floors and on and on and on. 3 hours, that was the time we had in Narita before we boarded our next plane, so all we could do was to hang out at our departure gate and kill out time there. Up next will be the mother of all tortures, a 12 hours flight, urghhhh........


woooooooot, me beside an aeroplane in Narita :p

What i could did during the 12 hours flight was just sleep sleep and sleep, there were much turbulence, very, shaky ones, lol, at times i was wondering whether i could reach chicago in one piece or not, haha.. our flight brought us across the alps like mountain near Alaska and what a sight to behold and i even managed to grab some pictures :) there was nothing much about this flight besides the food, which was among the best meal we ever had since we started our journey towards the east (east yes, we flew across pacific).









Upon arrival at the chicago airport, we were required to go through the customs and later take a domestice flight towards Orlando, Florida. LOL, i got the scare of my life when the customs detained me for further interview (only me and not my friends), i was interviewed by a customs officer and everything turned out fine after all but i had to admit, i'd never felt that kind of fear in my life before. We moved on to the departure gate of our domestic flight after going through the stringent checks of the US customs. Before that, we managed to grab some fresh air outside the airport and the temperature was a cool below 20 celcius, there were time for some pictures too :) All i did on the next flight was to sleep and soon we arrived at our destination and we were transported to our condos after a short wait.


A picture of chicago airport

SO HERE WE ARE AMERICA :)

Succumbing To The 'Dark'side

LOL, i can't believe that i've been saying 'how on earth people have the time to maintain a blog daily' all the while, guess i'm forced to eat my own words now huh?:p

anyways, i'm gonna start this blog off with my trip to US for a work & travel program that i've signed up for during the summer to keep myself occupied bla bla bla (lots of background stories), that was the very thing that got me started blogging alright...

so here i go again :)