.:Brutally Honest, Honestly Brutal:. \m/

LETTERS FROM THE LIVING

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Just got bamboozled in another exam... Hence, i'm taking this time to unwind and update my beloved readers on what happened since my Mardi Gras trip. First and foremost, a belated blessed Chinese New Year (my year!!)! This is the first time in the duration of my existence that I've spent the Lunar New Year away from home!!! We [the GIP(eeps)] organised a dinner on Friday nite at our apartment activity room. We were tasked to cook mostly chinese dishes, invited our foreign roomies and educating them on CNY and of course feasting on the obscene amount of food we prepared. Not missing was also the "lo hey" and the "yam seng" [beer here is cheaper than soft drinks and Yeo Yap Seng!]!!! The celebration lasted till the wee hours of the morning and it was one of the most special CNY i've celebrated so far!!! My signature fried rice received several compliments, but wat a shame the late comers missed out as it was wiped clean much earlier. My roomies also thoroughly enjoyed the occasion, particularly Robert, who said he wanted to throw up so that he can eat more!!!

The student experience, which many readers who were still uninformed, makes NTU studies look like O-levels! I am here to officially dismiss any preconceptions that studying in US is chicken feet, esp. at reowned institutions! I'm currently taking 5 modules for the semester, which is considered heavy in GaTech standards. Why? I have to hand up every frickin' piece of homework assignment every week and it is graded (thus counted towards final grade)!! To add salt to wound, there is a quiz for each subject every other week and mid-terms(read: mini-exams)!!! To top it off, the lectures here are clear and succinct, but we are required to do a lot of readings for the finer details and explanations!!! My ZZzz timings have hyperboled into the am regions, which I've hardly done in NTU, gym hours are constantly compromised and I can't even enjoy te DVDs I bought online!!! Argghh... This is the first time I've really mugged and although the feeling isn't top-of-the-world, it is surely something money can't buy. Sounds cliche I know, but I will definitely appreciate the more laidback setting in NTU when I get back and not take education for granted... I am still not as disciplined as expected, but I hope I will improve on that too!

VJ Titanium doesn't smell enuff iron in your blood, so here's another slab of rollicking good'o heavy metal from straight-edge (dun do drugs), hardcore metal band Bleeding Through!! Grrrl....

Bleeding Through - Kill To Believe

Gonna prepare for my next exam asap!!!

Laid to Rest at 1:30 AM;

Friday, February 16, 2007

Finally returning to student mode again after a rockin' time at New Orleans in Louisiana to celebrate Mardi Gras. I have not been able to blog due to the cumulation of homework due, exams and quizzes this week! Been sleeping less than 5-6hrs for a few days and nearly missed lessons too!

History: New Orleans is home to jazz/blues music, and also presents a mish-mash of both Southern and French colonial flavour, and it just recovered from the devastating Hurricane Katrina. Mardi Gras is "Fat Tuesday" or something in French, where there will be parades, parties and merry-making throughout Mardi Gras week. It's the first time I visit a place that parties 24/7! Adults and children wear Mardi Gras beads like a fashion statement early in the morning and everyone's just in a festive mood. The most happening place in New Orleans during Mardi Gras is perhaps the French Quarters. Here, you'll find hotels, restaurants, Voodoo shops and of course Mardi Gras outlets selling beads and party accessories. The highlights include a series of "chingay-ish" parades where marching bands and gigantic floats will roam the main street in New Orleans. During these parades, people on the floats will throw colourful and sometimes special beads to the crowd. The adrenaline rush comes for the crowd to get the beads. Btw, from the pics, u can see i got the most beads on Saturday night, and got kudos from the rest of the GIP(eeps)!!!

At night, the wildest place will be Bourbon Street (yes, named after that liqour!), there are countless watering holes, strip clubs and fantastic restaurants along the street that stretches at least a kilometre! This is also where infamous bead-throwing takes a whole new meaning! Party-goers will be prowling the streets for more exclusive and bigger, nicer beads. People who have beads stay on the balconies along the street to throw them to the crowd! The catch? The girls have to flash their boobies to get those exqusite beads!! We saw a few girls on the balconies who requested guys to flash their privates!! Usually, most are sane enough not to do it, but we witness some sporting (or rather tipsy) people (both sexes) who did it!!! The place is not sleazy as cops are stationed on horses every other corner of the street.

There's more to New Orleans than Mardi Gras, as we managed to sample their signature dishes as well! We tried the best baked ham in the world at Mother's and we had amazing biegnets, which is the french equivalent of donuts at a famous cafe called Cafe Du Mont. It's more of like a "hum-chim-peng" with a huge dose of extremely fine sugar powder coating it! Another is Cajun-style cusine, where we tried both fried and grilled alligator meat, fried frogs' legs, and many other South-meets-French kind of food! It was worth every cent we spent!!! (Salivating again...)

We also visited the D-Day Museum, which showcased the part the US played in World War too!! We also took a walk along a part of Mississipi River! All in all, it was a fantastic time spent and so much so we prolonged our stay till Sunday late afternoon! We ended up speeding back to Atlanta (hitting more than 100mph/160kmph!!) and reached back to campus at 2am!!! Many turned into non-flesh eating zombies the next coupl of days and became stuck in their dorms catching up lost time on homework and revision!

Laid to Rest at 2:34 AM;

Friday, February 09, 2007

All in the name of fun, we headed down to New Orleans (7 hr drive!!!) for the start of Mardi Gras! The trip was so enjoyable that we dragged our stay there and reached back to our campus in the wee hours of monday morning!! Pictures comin' up soon!!! Meanwhile...

As promised, my home-made vids!

My skiing tomfoolery

My first contact with snow

Suffering from PMS!!!
Post Mardi-gras Syndrome...

Laid to Rest at 6:37 AM;

Monday, February 05, 2007

No more road trip this weekend and just so happened that there will be a UFC Fight Night event on Saturday! My room mates, Tommy and Robert asked me along and I got some guys from NTU to go as well. And we thoroughly enjoyed the night out!

UFC is the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and it is huge in the US. It is not the lame-ass, "kelong" kinda wrestling, but the real stuff. Street fighters, boxers, professional wrestlers, jujitsu masters and mix martial artists all train hard for years to get into this competition! The fights may be brutal, but it is definitely entertaining - especially the knockouts!!

Before you jump to any conclusions, Hooters happens to one of the few places that broadcast the Pay-per-view event on TV. Plasma screens, LCD TVs, big and small littered the place. However, we got there late and had to make do with either standing with the crowd or sit out in the cold and windy porch. We chose the latter and soon regretted it.

Thank God for the Buffalo Wings (one of their signature dishes), those hot wings taste even better in the bitter cold. We headed inside as soon as we're with the food. The Hooters girls were very busy, grabbing their attention to serve us was difficult, let alone trying to chat. The beer here is cheaper than Coca-Cola. Tommy caught us all by surprise when he secretly foot the bill, claiming "it's his night". We were all touched by his gesture, and promised to invite him and Robert for our CNY celebration.

Another road trip this weekend!! Mardi Gras here we come!!!

Laid to Rest at 1:47 PM;

Friday, February 02, 2007

The Office Of International Education (OIE) in GaTech organized this trip specially for the international exchange students like myself. About 50+ of us attend the NBA game between the Atlanta Hawks and Orlando Magic at the Philips Arena near downtown. It was a priviledge as the tickets, which were like just grandstand seats behind the VIP section and costs $60, were free of charge! But we still need to fork out public transport and food at the arena. (Asking too much huh?)

Although I'm not a basketball fan, it was still an enjoyable trip and game. I must confess it pales in comparison to my Arsenal game 2 years back! Thks Jie once again!!The courtside entertainment was aplenty, from freebies, to cheerleaders, the mascot, and the fans as well. We were even featured on thegiant screen whilst cheering the Hawks!! Here are some pics I took at the game! A fairy tale trip will have a fairy tale ending - Hawks won...

By the way, this is my 100th blog entry!!!

Laid to Rest at 12:08 PM;