Universal And Goodbyes

I couldn't believe that i would just have around 4 hours of sleep, but we had already make it a point that we would wake up early in the morning and leave for Universal Studio Orlando where we managed to get some cheap tickets (black market ones :p) from our colleagues in BK. I was half awake when we were in the bus on the way there but it doesn't matter since we were there in a blink of an eye. Couldn't blame us if we didn't look enthusiastic, it's just because we were all walking zombies :O

Well, a little bit on Universal, it is divided into 2 parks, one the Universal Studios park and another is the Island of Adventure park. We decided to enter the Universal Studios Park first and it will later turn out to be a bad decision :( Anyways, here are some pictures of the park.







We took on the Shrek 3D ride at first and i could say that it was a pretty nice first impression where we were required to wear those glasses and they throw you into a theater with moving seats and then put you in an adventure. The next was Jimmy Neutron ride and it was basically the same concept as the Shrek but only with more action. We then took on the 'The Revenge of the Mummy' ride. And these 'mummies' on walking sticks indeed caught the crowds' attention.



'Wow' was what we could said about the indoor roller coaster of the mummies, very cool indeed and it will be the appetiser of all of our rides. Sorry for the lack of pictures but that's the best i could manage since we have so much to cover within 11 hours because the tickets we had were of a day passes only.




Don't this street look like those that were in London?





The Jaw's ride were next on our list and it wasn't really impressive which same goes to the Terminator 2 3D which were similar to the first 2 rides. But we were at the main attraction of the Universal Park, The Simpson's ride.


And the ride indeed was breathtaking, it was a virtual roller coaster but it indeed got our adrenalines pumping! The moment we were out of the ride, we were all having neck pains (it wasn't a real coaster!) haha..

It was already around 3pm when we entered the Island of Adventure park and the sky didn't looked really good as it was about to rain and almost all the rides in the Island of Adventure park were outdoor as opposed to the ones in Universal Studios park.





But still, we gathered ourselves and moved on and the first real roller coaster (Incredible Hulk) caught our attention immediately, but to our disappointment the ride was temporarily stopped due to safety reasons while we were already half way at the queue.



We didn't wasted anytime and we headed to an indoor ride and it happened to be the Amazing Adventures of Spiderman.


I wouldn't say that it was a very good ride but it's at least a tad better then the Jaw's and Terminator ones :) But anyways, it was really our day (either we can call ourselves lucky or something) the rain stopped and the sky cleared, but some of the rides were still not opened to visitors. So we continued our walk......





and next was the Jurrasic Park.




It seems that this little guy was inoblivious that a T-Rex was just about to swallow him up :p


We took the river adventure ride of the Jurrasic Park and it was all boring until the end when we were thrown down on a 45 degree slope and a big splash right at the bottom although i didn't really got wet :)

We were on to the 'Lost Continent' part of the park and the ultimate coaster ride immediately caught our attention. All i could say was 'Life well spent' or rather money well spent, haha, because the ride alone was worth the ticket price, the ride was a hanging coaster and we went thru a pretty lots of 360 and downwards ride. By the end of the ride, we were all feeling dizzy and out and Damien was the first to get knocked out as he didn't took any ride after that. Well, in truth, i was pretty up for another ride of that scale and since it was the Dueling Dragons ride (realised the 's'? There were 2 rides for the Dueling Dragons) that we took, i wanted to have a go at the 2nd one but Winson and Dickson were already saying they are not going in again, so i didn't took the 2nd ride in the end.

After a drink, we (without Damien) took the Poseidon's Fury ride and guessed we were deceived by the name as it turned out to be the most boring attraction of all.


Me & Poseidon's Temple

We then headed back to where we started, the Incredible Hulk ride and although it was nice, after the Dueling Dragons ride, this was nothing :)

And right after the ride, i was already knocked out, and i can feel like my head was going to explode anytime soon (guess that the lack of sleep has taken it's toll, and i swear it was the lack of sleep and not my endurance of the rides :p) We went round looking for souvenirs right after that but i got nothing myself since i figured that this will not be our last time here.


We then headed back home planning to pay our Thai friends a visit before they leave after our dinner. But to our disappointment, all of them were not back yet and we decided that we go back later. But after around an hour or so, instead 2 of them paid us a visit while the rest were already asleep. After a chat, we took a picture together and bid farewell to them.


I couldn't say how much i'll miss them but they had been great colleagues in our 3 days of work and they had been of a great help during those times. It's just too bad that they were leaving this soon...

'International' Adventure

We all know that we need a Social Securite number in order to work in America, and that's what we have set out to do today, we hopped onto a bus at noon (yea, we were late since all of us were sleeping like pigs). After a transit and close to 2 hours of ride, we arrived at the center, and got our procedures done within 20 minutes. It was raining heavily when we were done but we thought that we wouldn't want to waste our time there, so we ran in the rain to catch a bus that happened to stopped at the opposite side of the road.

We decided that we should go for a walk by the International Drive since we have a bunch of coupons where it would come to great use. On the way there, we got a few pictures and here is one which could best depict a typical American neighborhood.



Here are some pictures along the International Drive that we will eventually spend our whole day at.












A fancy Chinese restaurant? (I bet it wont be as nice)

And look! A really big terrorist (incredible hulk?) ripped the building off the ground. Nah, it's a museum of arts.





Pictures of Pointe Orlando (remember the Curve?)





Guess you guys had heard before of the famous Ripley's (believe is or not) telecast, so decided to pay USD18 to have a tour of the museum (which Genting had one too).


A Malaysian Silver pipe (lol, do we smoke in pipes?)


A man with 3 legs (it's true!) Imagine him playing football, Ronaldo will not even match him.. haha


Run for your life! Head hunters!!


I didn't know about vampires being true stories.


The infamous Iron Maiden


OMG, mini me, dwarved by a chair.


Me & a chunk of Berlin Wall (Iron Curtain)

Night life in International Drive





Guess this was by far the longest mile (American units) we've ever covered in a day, at the end, we could be seen chasing buses because it was close to 10pm and bus services were about to end, but in the end, we were back in our condo by 11pm. And all we could say was 'life well spent'.. :)

1st Day Of Work

The day that we've been awaiting enthusiastically has finally arrived, we were all ready to go half an hour before the time our van were suppose to pick us up, this just shows that how much we just wanted to work, after almost 2 weeks of rotting, we finally got to put ourselves to more use. 3 of us (me, Damien and Dickson) were assigned to work in Burger King where else winson was assigned as a cook in Popeye's (yes, they have that in America:) )

Within BK, Damien was assigned to the fries, Dickson the lobby, and i was assigned to the burger board (lol, burgers again after my last experience in McD's). But it was a blessing in disguise, hehehe *sinister laughter*, my mentor (from the previous batch of WAT students) was a pretty cute thai girl, awwwww, lol, as usual, i went through all the training drill of making burgers. Since it wasn't really different from McD's (how different can it be?), i didn't had any problems besides memorising the dressings of each burgers, which they had, hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, double stacker, classic steakhouse, loaded steakhouse, and maybe 1 or 2 more, which i don't really remember, haha.. now imagine the pain i went through... but it wasn't so bad with the erhmmm as my mentor :) (well, i cant help it either, especially with her soft spoken voice and her cute looks :p) don't ever call me a desperado please, i can already hear whispers of it...

After a short 3 hour training stint, we were done for the day and headed back with the van we came.

At Last!

Finally, we got a surprise call from our manager, and he told us all of our drug test results came back just fine and we're ready to work, just a little paperwork left (paperwork and paperwork again).

At last we're getting to do what we're suppose to do here, since our funds are all running low :) So it's going to be all work work work and work for the next 3 months from friday (US time) onwards. And once we've started working, we'll have the cash to spend again, since those rides in Universal Orlando are already waiting for us :)

So guys, don't blame me if my posts are getting lesser and lesser :p but well, i'll still try my best to keep u guys updated on our 'American Adventure'. haha..

Food For Thought

I just cant explain how much i miss home cooked oriental meals :| lol, the thought of eating American food everyday just scares me off sometimes. So we've decided to get some ingredients and try to replicate what we used to eat at home :)

For 3 nights already we've been cooking our own meals, and all i can say is that it just gets better day by day.. haha. Of course i couldn't afford to have high hopes for superb meals, but it's just unimaginable joy when u get to eat white rice, and yeah, i'm not joking! :p

The 1st dinner, we've managed to cooked up oven baked pork marinated with garlic and salt, cheese rice which we bought off the shelf and lettuce on salad.


Now the story behind the food :) The pork was tongue bitingly salty, and we burnt our pot (the cheese rice became pieces of charcoal at the bottom of the pot) lol, and the salad was just salad, how wrong can we go with that:p

The 2nd dinner was whole lot better, we cooked up some oven baked chicken (yea, yea, ovens are for noobs) marinated with teriyaki sauce, and it was just wonderful! The white rice which we got from Wal-Mart was just great and salad lettuce again:)



I just hope we can keep going like this, then food wouldn't be a big problem anymore :)