Touchdown...New York!

This past week have been a blast...had so much fun and went to so many places, Santa Monica beach, Hollywood, Universal Studios, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon..Just reached my fren place in NY and wil spending the rest of my 7 days here..its 230am now, feeling really tired..shd sleep early so I can be prepared for my tour of NY tmr..Just checked my NACE course results, 88 for written and 97 for practical!! woohoo!! so happy! :)

Santa Monica Beach......

Me at Venice Beach....
Kodak theater at hollywood....

The famous HOLLYWOOD sign up on the mountains....

The view from universal studios....

Ken and I at universal studios...
Nightlights at Vegas....Me at the Venetian....

The magnificent Grand Canyon...

Sunset at Hoover Dam....

The musical fountain show at the Bellagio .....

Feeling excited...

Wow, time passed really fast....I thought I just said its the first day of my course and today its the second last day. Tmr will be D day. Have been trying hard to adjust to life here, adjusting my sleep and eating pattern. Now its been six days already and things are getting better. I really enjoyed my classes and it really broaden my entire perspective of what I am actually doing... its amazing when you thought what you are doing is so insignificant and you attend something and the instructors share with you their life experiences and you go...geez there are actually so much more I can learn and go through...if I stick to this field that is. Anyhow, I hope I will be able to do well tmr and then can truely enjoy the next 2 weeks with a peaceful mind...2 more days and I am out of here! So exciting...cant wait to visit other parts of US...ok time to go for my breakfast..

Lesson 1

Just finished my dinner and going to start doing my homework soon. Had my first lesson today and I was so worried I am going to doze off..surprisingly I didnt. I think its becos the instructor is very experienced, he is 72 yrs old, and also very humourous. The 5 hour lesson is not abit boring at all. Why cant NUS lecturers be like that...Anyway, had to do a self introduction at the beginning of the course, as expected...and I am the youngest and most inexperienced...haha. I am like the only 20 yr old seated among all the ang mohs uncles . When they introduced themselves, they were citing 10,20 years of experience in this field and when its my turn...I said one and a half....I was quite surprised nobody gasp. In fact everyone was very friendly even the instructors..Tomorrow is going to be really tough, 4 chapters to cover out of a total of 8. I think I better go and start my revision and try to get some much needed sleep...

Jetlag sets in...

Its 5 am in the morning and I am at the hotel computer room typing this ...I finally knows what jetlagged feels like...and it sucks..I felt so sleepy when I got here but I cant sleep at night. I slept at 11pm and woke up at 2 ..then I kept tossing around and trying to force myself to sleep but I just cant...in the end I ended up watch Apollo 13, smallville, and some other crappy shows on tv until I just cant take it anymore..so here I am surfing the net waiting for free breakfast to start at 7am...I am so fucking hungry...

My class going to start at 1pm later, so I hope I can get some sleep after my breakfast since there is not much to do here anyway. I am seriously worried I am going to fall asleep during class later.

There is so much to get used to..lol. I still cant believe I am in the states now. Its always been my childhood dream to visit the united states, and here I am at Los Angeles, just few miles from Hollywood...its just amazing. I cant wait for my course to end and do some serious exploration...

The weather here is cool...20 degree C when I arrived and I think it felt much colder when it was at night..I am so glad to escape the freaking hot weather in Singapore. The hotel room is quite fantastic too..139USD a nite, and its freaking huge. 2 TV sets, one in the bedroom one in the living room. ...yeah there is a living room, complete with a sofas, a fridge, a bar counter, and a dining table. Then a bedroom with a king size bed 2 cupboards and a shower room with a nice bathtub...what more can I ask for man..haha. Only thing I dun like is the toilet bowl flushes itself every 10 mins on its own...totally freaked me out at first...thought some unknown entity likes to frequent the toilet. Its really noisy and its probably one of the reasons why I couldnt sleep.

Gosh, its still so early, what am I going to do next?... the sun has only began to rise...yeah, the sun sets kinda late and rises kinda early compared to Singapore...

I am still trying to get used to the tipping system here. I am not sure how much tip is the right amount. When I first got here, the guy who drove me to the hotel told me it cost 44 USD, so I gave him 45 and asked him to keep the change...and he shot me a look...only then did I realise he did not factor in the tip in....so in the end he got 1 USD for tip from me..haha sorry..felt so guilty. But its really kinda expensive living here, 44 USD for a 30mins ride from the airport and thats like 60 SGD!! I can go from my home in boon lay to changi and back...midnite charges included! Food was expensive too..I had a small pizza and a calamari and it cost me 20 USD...but the service was really good though....the waitress looked abit like Linsay Lohan..haha.

Ok I think this is so not going to work...breakfast starts in another hr time and I am not going to spend the next hour facing the computer...maybe I should go back to my room and watch tv..
Grocery shopping at Ralphs supermarket....

Touchdown...LA!

Just reached my hotel at Downey, LA...super tired from 24 hrs of flight...transit and transit...its oreadi 5pm on 16th June...not sure what I am going to do now...feeling abit lost...where should I have my dinner? haha...maybe I should just call room service...feeling abit jetlagged...hope I wont fall asleep when class starts tomorrow...

Black is in...but not for me...

Totally regret my decision to dye my hair black 2 months back...so today i decided to bring back the browness in my life and I went to dye my hair again...lol and got a nice haircut...just nice for my holiday

Feeling bored and worried....

Here I am sitting in my office on a saturday morning, waiting to go back. Working on saturday really sucks..Not many people are around, and there is absolutely no motivation to work. Feeling very worried now as the day draws nearer to 16th June. Will be attending a course "Cathodic Protection Level 2" course conducted by National Association of Corrosion Engineers aka NACE in LA on the 17th. I am so not prepared for the course and I am kinda worried I might end up failing it. My colleague had three years of field experience before he went for the course...while I had one year of office experience...Lol. God help me! Really very sia suay if I go all the way there and fail. Hope that wont happen..I got only 2 more weeks to study ...and the manual is so freaking huge! See already also sian. And they going to cover the whole thing in 6 days..really all the best to me man.