Life In The US of A

Another year older

2007-10-07T20:20:00.000-07:00

It was my birthday on Wednesday and the malaysian society had a surprise party for me at one of their rooms. There must've been about 20 of us all cramped in one room but it was good. 7 years in England and nobody had a surprise party for me haha, we went out and drank, but no cake or anything. It was nice of them though and I appreciated it. There are alot of people who have their birthdays in October, Lisa's on the 2nd, Pigu's on the 7th and KeaVee's on the 8th.

On Friday night we went to a bistro called Piztro, it was nice if you wanted a quiet place to sit and hang out with friends. About 15 of us went to have a couple of shots and drinks. We got there at 11 and the place closed at 12, then we got lost trying to get to the club, so we ended up at The Shadow which was playing live music and had an older crowd.

On Saturday night, we managed to get one of our friends Alex, to take me and Andy down to Flashbacks for a night out. It was our first time out to a club in Wichita and we had a good time, although the music wasnt all that. Drinks are way cheaper than malaysia or england. $2.75 for a corona or a captain morgan's. On the way out we met one of Andy's friends who gave us a lift back and took us for a nice supper at IHOP. Yum! Eggs, sausage, bacon, hash brown, ham and pancakes at 3 in the morning! Overall it was a good birthday weekend, it could be better, but the most important thing is.. it could've been worse, so I'm content!

Hmmm why?

2007-09-27T21:24:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering about a few things recently about things around here. Firstly, I reckon I know why people here use pencils to take notes and why students in UK don't. I take notes with a pen, you should see my notebook, it is a BIG mess! The lecturers change what they write on the boards more times than they change their underwear! Well some are worse than others, take my maths teacher for example, he is by far the worst teacher I've had.. his writing is smaller than an ant and messier than a 5 year old's. u's look like o's, n's look like m's, f's look like t's, not only that, he will write a whole load of stuff on the board, then realise he's either made a mistake or he found another way to do it and rubs the whole thing out. To top it all off he can't speak clearly and he shakes too much, he's about 70 and he shouldn't even be teaching. Read the comments here, they give you a good idea what I mean. Oh, here are my other lecturers, Steck and Horn. I agree with the comments, even this one, she is hot! but no pic unfortunately.

Secondly, everytime we want to go on an outing organised by the international student office, we have to trek 20mins? across the campus to the international student office to write our name on a piece of paper and then trek back. Wouldn't it have crossed their minds that international students don't have cars? and maybe an office in the middle of the campus would've been a better idea? I don't mind walking, sometimes the weather just makes it uncomfortable..

Finally, I tried to apply for a job on-campus, but I couldn't because I didnt have a social security number or a driver's license. The driver's license is easily obtainable, but for the social security number, I can only get it if I work on-campus due to some rules on my visa which permits an international student to work off-campus until after 9 months. The only way to get a number now is to work on-campus, which makes me wonder why they wouldn't give me an on-campus job if that is the only way I can get a number.

Well now that I've got that off my chest! I thought I put this in:

Before

and after

Mooncakes on the golfcourse

2007-09-27T21:13:00.001-07:00

Tuesday was mid-autumn (mooncake) festival so we decided to eat some mooncakes under the full moon even though it was like freeezing outside. We ventured out into the golf course which was literally like next to our dorms and sat on the golf green. It was really quiet, away from other people and a really nice place to get away once in a while, either to chat, to mess about or to 'mess about' you know what I mean ;) with a girl obviously and not 4 guys hahaha

No we didn't stay there til the morning, I purposely left my camera shutter open for longer so I didnt need to use the flash, we did however have to stand really still.. and when we didn't the second picture shows what happens..

The Zoo and mooncakes

2007-09-27T20:41:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy week, had a test today and a few homeworks to do which explains why my blog hasn't been updated.. oh and almost all the american tv shows start their new seasons this week :)

Anyway the international students office planned a trip to the zoo for us international students so a bunch of us decided to check it out and i took the opportunity to improve/practise my photography skills. I took about 250 shots, a few shots for each animal so that I would get the best picture. Quite a few came out really nice such as the pic below. It took me ages to get a good shot as the otters were swimming around too fast and there were little kids in the way.

and this

There were all kinds of animals from bears to bison to lions to huge ass gorillas and even penguins! Definately better than Zoo Negara! The only disappointing thing was the amount of time we got to spend there. We arrived at about 1.30pm and had to leave by 3.30pm, 2 hours?! it was definately not enough, but then again it was scorching out in the sun and we had to go to a mooncake celebration organised by the malaysian society at 4pm.

All the malaysians who attended were taken to a picnic area in the woods nearby, there were barbeques around and benches with shelter which was nice.

We were made to play some silly get-to-know-each-other games which took ages and people lost interest halfway which was useless!! I ventured out into the woods to find see if I could find anything interesting:

Yup some ants getting jiggy

and a red berry of some sort

Then it was time to eat mooncakes and play with lanterns and take group pics.. and I still havn't received any of those group pics from the "official" photographer haha. Overall it was an enjoyable get together although there could've been more girls.. jeez like 1902748037481234019 guys and 2 girls? what's going on there?!

Yup taken without a tripod

Trip to Fairmount

2007-09-15T21:13:00.000-07:00

Me and two friends took a hike to Fairmount towers which was on the other side of the campus. They have an all you can eat buffet there so we decided to try it out. On the way I took my camera incase there was anything interesting. We saw this lil fella with a nut in his mouth:

I wish I had a telephoto lens!! Anyways the buffet wasnt too bad, $6 something and they had pizza, burgers, salads, ice-cream, cookies, muffins, cereal, all kinds of drinks and a few other random stuff. On the way back we saw an even smaller fella:

And maybe even superman..

I've posted most of my work in deviantart or multiply

Christmas comes early!

2007-09-11T22:58:00.000-07:00

Well my camera finally arrived today! I've taken loads of test shots, about 100 actually and as expected only a few came out pretty nice! The whole kit has everything I need for now before I go spending more money on additional stuff!

Using a macro lens add on I managed to take this

and without..

I've always wanted to do this effect!

Kansas State Fair

2007-09-08T23:54:00.000-07:00

First time to an american state fair so I was eager to go find out why americans love their fairs so much.

Bobby and David were taking us to the fair at Hutchinson, another town about 1 hour drive away. We got up early, well I say early it was actually 10am (early for us). 5 in each car. On our way there, we saw this! A car on fire! How the hell it caught on fire is a mystery but it was interesting none the less!

We made it in the end and had to pay $7 just to get in. There were all kinds of stuff you would expect at a typical fair, animals, exhibits, food, fairground rides even a cable car. You don't however get to see weird looking birds.

Or huge turkey legs! $7 for a leg, which feeds 2 to 3 normal people, or about 50 starving african kids.

There were even humongous pumpkins! Told you everything is huge in this country!

There was a fairground game where you had to stand up a bottle which has fallen down on its side using only a ring on a string, to have a go it was $5, I had a go, however both Bobby and David spent $25 altogether trying it! The prizes were a PSP, some bicycles and mopeds. The dude who ran the stall made it look so simple, well he would since he runs the damn stall! It's safe to say we got tricked haha!

We ended the trip with a visit to the cosmothingy space museum, well just the lobby anyways.

Too much going on, not enough time

2007-09-08T23:14:00.000-07:00

Bah, time really flies when you're having fun! Although thats only half true in this case, the other 50% is just laziness! So talking about flying, our uni had a convocation and everybody in uni was invited, they gave away free food, free tshirts and had cheerleaders flying about as well! What more could you want?! haha nah basically it was like a ceremony to welcome new students and a few speeches by various people.

Courses have been quite tough actually, although I might have 1 or 2 hours of class a day, I spend the rest of the day trying to understand what is going on! Man sometimes, actually most of the time I feel like I shouldn't be doing a master's degree in aerospace, why do something you don't enjoy eh? But I dunno whether I can quit now as I've spent quite alot of money on fees etc, I've even thought of applying for jobs in australia and then flying back during xmas to go for interviews.. ah its such a mess!

On the other hand, I've decided to take up photography, got myself a Nikon D40x, isn't it beautiful? haha been waiting for days for it to arrive, but im hoping it will be here within the next few days coz I can't wait any longer to be honest and on that day it would be like christmas again! Meanwhile I have been playing about with photoshop and I've actually made a normal non artistic picture taken by me with a 4MP camera look half decent! Check out the original here and the edited here and here.

Looks cool eh? There will be plenty more of that later on!

Wow!

2007-08-18T21:40:00.000-07:00

Gotta love them: link

Headless Chicken

2007-08-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened since I last posted, registering for classes, orientation days, paying fees for all kinds of stuff etc. Fortunately all those are done and I can now relax and visit the original Pizza hut!

Sorry about the dark picture, but I will take another one when I get the chance! This is the original pizza hut, the very very first one! Doesn't look much like pizza hut and its not opened either, but very interesting indeed.

The orientation was interesting, they even gave us a talk about american culture, more specifically if a woman dresses like they do (short shorts/skirts and revealing alot of skin) it does not mean they "want to be more than friends". Funny stuff. Also getting around is difficult without a car, so we came up with the idea of instead of getting a car, we get a girlfriend with a car, obviously!

I learnt that the uni campus doesnt have a club/pub, in fact the clubbing scene is pretty crap, they do however have a student center with bowling alleys and all kinds of restaurants, its safe to say that americans do like their food! I can see quite a few differences with UK and US universities, UK students love to party so they dedicate the first 2 weeks of term to party every night, US students dedicate the first 2 weeks of term to activites like, beach parties (no alcohol), ice skating, zoo outings and trips to Walmart... all with food and drink of course! I guess its because the age limit for drinking is pretty high in the states and everybody is still pretty much underage, they dont really promote the party scene that much. Well I did say I wanna try a different country, so I cant really complain. I'm already planning to travel during christmas break, since we get 5 weeks off, florida maybe?

Anyways classes start today and I best be getting ready to go!

Finally got there in the end!

2007-08-09T15:23:00.001-07:00

Our flight was delayed by two hours from HK to Chicago because of the typhoons around Taiwan and so they had to kick off 50 odd passangers in exchange for fuel to fly a longer route. I made it to Chicago in the end after 14-15 hours of flying and then got held up at immigration as usual for another 2 hours probably because they thought I was a terrorist, do I look like one? which means I only had 1 hour left to get my bags and re-check them in to make my flight from Chicago to Wichita. There was a lot of running and rushing about involved, trust me. Luckily they delayed the boarding time by 30 mins so I managed to get there on time, however that wasn't the end of it, once everybody boarded the plane and was ready to fly there was a problem... there was nobody there to fly the damn thing! We all ended up waiting for another hour before finally arriving in Wichita at almost 12am.

The president (of the Malaysian society) was there to meet me and take me to the student housing which was nice of them, he got me settled in and took me and his mates to IHOP (International House of Pancakes) at 2am. The place is open 24 hours and it's the american's version of mamak, for those of you who don't know, here's a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamak_stall. If you're all wondering where are the pictures, sorry I didnt take any as I was busy rushing at the airports and too tired to remember whilst eating pancakes at 2 in the morning :) I did manage to take pictures of my room today though.

The weather here is amazing too it's probably as hot as Malaysia at around 30+ degrees celcius and will last for a couple of months according to the other students.

Anyways its dinner time which means more burger and chips! great...

Quick transit in Hong Kong

2007-08-07T20:01:00.000-07:00

After a 3 - 4 hour flight from Singapore to HK, I had to get on the same flight but at a different gate, how stupid is that?! I guess its better to have small breaks in between flights rather than a non-stop 20 hour flight! Plus planes couldnt really fly 20 hours non-stop anyways.

A night at Changi Airport, Singapore

2007-08-07T10:30:00.000-07:00

Well after reading one of my good friend's blog (http://justanadabloga.blogspot.com) I was inspired to start a blog too. I guess it's the easiest way to let everybody know what I'm up to if I don't catch them on MSN or whatever.

Anywhoo, my first post is coming all the way from an airport lounge in Singapore. I left Malaysia at 22.45 and arrived at 23.45, got myself cosy in one of those chairs in the pic below, hooked up my laptop and it is now 01.45!

In case you're wondering.. no I didnt take 2 hours to do all that, I had to find the bloody place first plus I went round window shopping and magazine-flicking.

I kinda miss my friends and family already, even though its been a few hours. It's scary the next time I see them would probably be in a years time, but I guess it's just a new chapter in my life, it's time to make some new friends and live the american dream!!