|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| 明天到中國去. I'm heading to Shanghai tomorrow, I'm going to teach English for a year in guangzhou but first heading to Shanghai to have some fun.
I'll try to give more insight here.
英國再見.
| | |
| So july 4th in NYC perfect timing. The last time 4th july was so monumental to me, was on LB lol. I remember that quite well, party poppers were going around and we 'celebrated' independence day.
So I was expecting 4th July in USA, in NYC to be a big thing. But i guess i was a little let down. In the morning we did a bit of shopping, and around 4/5pm headed to FDR drive to get a good spot for the macy's fireworks . Since the fireworks started at 9:30pm we had a good few hours sitting on the highway, but we had a good view of the hudson in preparation for the fireworks. Looking around the highway ppl brought towels, blankets to lie or sit on, families brought food to sorta picnic.
When the fireworks came they were pretty good, slow at first but they came up trumps. There were some crazy fireworks i hadnt seen before, like cube shaped fireworks and fireworks which froze in the air. Its hard to describe u gotta see it in action.
So after the fireworks, i was looking forward to some sort of celebration - but however there wasnt really one. EVeryone just buggered off home - boo is that how u celebrate independence o_0
Ok so me and james went to this jazz restaurant, cleopatras on 92st broadway i think. So the food was good and the music was too. We decided to walk it back to the hostel which was 27st 5th, and to checkout wats down broadway. INitially we went the wrong way so we ended up to 97st, before realising (dumasses). So we walked down broadway towards 27th st. Wow it was quite interesting as we went thru mini ghettos (hoping not to get mugged), and places which were pretty much a dump. I thought broadway was where the theatres were at. But at some point we detoured to 10th avenue and got temporarily lost, before we made our way back. Effectively we walked over 70 blocks what fun =)
So the last night, me and john decided to go to white castle, we had been sayin all along we would go at some point, but now we were already leaving the next day. John said he saw a white castle the other day near times square, oddly i never saw one during our exploring. We went at around midnight after bein stuffed at texan hill country restaurant. We entered this proper ghetto and white castle didnt look appealin at all, it was a dump. We went in, and there were a couple loners eatin by themselves. I went up to the counter and asked if they did any dessert (since i was already stuffed from hill country), the guy was like, 'no but our milkshake is like dessert'. So i got a vanilla milkshake, which actually turned out to be vanilla ice cream in a cup with a straw stuck into it. We sat down, and there were these 2 white kids who went outside of white castle and kept lookin in. it seemed to me they were lookin at me but i dunno it was weird. Now i wanted to take pictures of the place, but it felt so weird - we were in a ghetto area, there were loners, white castle was a dump. So i didnt want to run the risk of gettin mugged or wotever but here is the only pic i took (john and my 'milkshake')
After about 10 mins while we were sitting, these ghetto kids make their badass entrance blastin their stereo and knockin down the 'wet floor' sign. This black girl, one of the loners, actually knows some of the kids and she starts arguin with them, that they should be more considerate. one of the kids goes to the counter and demands a burger for free. Obvisouly the white castle dude says no. At this point i'm indicatin to john lets move out, eventually when we do move out, the black girls says, ' look what u done now, u drivin ppl out'
lol ok i understand why white castle sucks, but i didnt get to sample their burgers so i have reason to return haha
Overall it was a good trip - pluses of the states
- cheap
- food is (slightly) better
- bigger portions
- simple layout NYC is a grid, u could place super giant chess on it
- good use of technology
minuses
- receiver of texts and calls also pays ahhhhh. So ANNOYIN, when i was low on cred and i received a text!
- havin to figure out tax, why cant u jsut have it added on to prices???
- tips - i am a poor student (teacher)
- SPORTS - learn to play some real sports. going into niketown and seeing baseball apparel as the centrepiece made me cry
- lingo - my lingo has become slightly more americanised. i'm sayin 'store' more (we say shops)
yes i finally finished.
| | |
| yes im lazy i should written this a long time ago.
anyway so headed from DC to NYC thru the chinatown bus. So i heard its meant to be really dodgey and rubbish. Actually the ride was quite nice, although i was sleepin most of the way. But the bus was modern and clean.
So at NYC we stayed at the gershwin hotel/hostel which is right next to the museum of sex LOL (27th st, 5ave if ur interested).
did pretty much all the siteseeing in NYC. Went to yankee stadium did a stadium tour, my mate is a mad yankees fan - i have no idea about baseball and with all american sports quite sceptikal. It was funny cos on the tour one guy said it was his dream to be on the tour, i was like umm i dont really give a dam..
yeah and went to all the usual central park, some museum, macys, etc all toursity stuff.
Went to this quite funny japanese restaurant with benny wong
we ordered the good stuff.
Yeah one time we were walkin down the street and u get those rapper wannabes tryin to sell u their cds. My friend james got caught by one of these guys, so i went back to help him out.
rapper: yo whats ur name? (to james)
james: james
*rapper signs his cd and writes 'to james'
rapper: whats ur name (to me)
me: andrew
*does the same with another cd
rapper: now thats 15 bucks
me: its alright, we're good
james: no thanks
rapper: yo man, alright how about 10
james: no i dont listen to rap
rapper: ok let me bust some rhymes
*rapper busts some rhymes
james: ur good
*me thinking why are u encouragin me!
me: no we're ok
rapper: i got kids to feed man, i'm on mtv2 tonight check me out
me: ok
rapper: just give me whatever u got 1 or 2 bucks
james: i'm not buying your CD
rapper: i've signed your name already man
me: ok i'll give u 3 dollars
*me whips out 3 bucks from my wallet
*rapper tries to peak in my wallet to see how much doe i got (but obviously i angle it so he cant see)
yeah basically thats how it went and i got a CD frome some random NY rapper woohoo, i bought some legit music for once. Now i reason why i said my name to the rapper, was i assumed we were gettin it for free and james already said his name - otherwise i wouldnt have. If anyone wants the album i will happily rip it and upload it to the net.
Another interestin story is my venture to buy a camera. Now benny recommended to stores B&H and J&R. So i first went to J&R, went to the camera section and it was pretty busy at the time. Eventually i managed to get hold of a salesman, he was an old man from maybe malaysia? so i asked him a few q's he wasnt really helpful but i pointed to a camera in a leaflet and asked to see it. the old man said ok and wizzed off. I waited 10-15 mins and i wondered where the hell he had gone. So i looked down the counter and i saw him serving someone else, i'm wondering ummm what are u doin?!? so i waited another 5 mins and he was still down the other end of the counter serving someone. So I looked for another salesman, and saw this other salesman free, i waved to him and said, 'can you serve me?'
rude salesman: isn't someone serving you?
me: yes, but i've been waitin 20-30 mins and he hasnt come back, can you come and serve me please.
rude salesman: You shouldn't be so polite, you have to be more aggressive!
me: (shocked) well if you dont want to serve me i'm leaving!!!!
and i left the building. I am embarassed for those guys lol such poor service.
So couple days later went to B&H this place was funky, pretty much all the staff were jewish i never seen anythin like it. And their system is all electronicatised (u know what i mean if u ever been there). the salesguy tried offerin me a job in engineering before we talked cameras, totally nice bloke. And i bought my camera; totally opposite service to j & r - top notch.
tbc - still need to write about july 4th, white castle, walkin broadway
| | |
| So after DC we had a weekend to spare. John went to philly to see his mate, i and james (other mate on the trip) went to n. VA to visit lber monica's hometown. Again it was somethin new lots of trees everywhere and residential to the max. Arrivin in the residential it was v. american (obviously) with the mailboxes at the front of the lawn of the house, and bigass houses. Exactly how u see on tv dramas (like desperate housewives not that i watch it haha). So monica tooks us around the hood we went to tysons shopping mall, ate at funky places like cheesecake factory, cpk. Went to kings dominion theme park. Incidently at kings I saw the most fattest obese kid ever, i'm guessin he was about 8 or 9 years old but he was so fat. To make things worse i dunno if he was a gangsta or just couldnt handle the weight but when he walked he lopped sideways. And to tip it off he was carryin two super large drinks. I wanted to take a pic of him but i thought it might be disrespectal so i didnt.
Ye was me and james went back to DC to watch LA galaxy vs DC united, a soccer match woohoo (at least there is some logic in the states). Arriving in the at the stadium there were scores of ppl it was nice to see so many ppl goin to a soccer match. Apparently hardly anyone actually goes to soccer games, it was just cos david beckham was playin in that game ppl decided to come along. Immediately i could see the difference between a watchin a game in uk and us. In the uk there would be loads of police around the stadium and everywhere, cos of hooliganism and passioniate fans havin a go at each other. But at DC there was zero police presence around the stadium. The view was really good, i was suprised since we were at the upper level. The game was pretty rubbish, I'm embarassed for beckham and the MLS (major league soccer) in generall, the level of play was like school kids. The atmosphere wasnt nothin like a uk game, and was only created by the hardcore DC united fans. I think most americans view a soccer game as a family outing, much like goin to the cinema. But in the uk its like part of ur life so it was hard for me to appreciate the whole thing as much.
ok so at monica's place i decided to open a bottle of beer, now i was drawin my inspiration from one of my mates youtube video where he popped open bottles of beer using all types of things (watch it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZNduJ4epl8). So i tried to pop open a bottle with another one like in the video but couldnt do it. Monica didnt have a bottle opener so she suggested some sort of automatic can opener. In the process of tryin to open the bottle with the can opener i cut my finger ahhh.
 
So after failing miserably, we found out that u twist it open. And basically little monica took the bottle off me and twisted the cap off just like that. there's me shocked in horror, havin put my blood, sweat and tears into bottle the dam bottle. Just to let u know in the uk we pop bottles open :P
| | |
| So we head from dulles to our hostel. We took the bus to roselyn to get the metro. it was interestin as we passed the pentagon. We jumped on the metro and headed to Georgia ave. When we got there it was pretty ghetto, like it was run down a bit an all black area, past some dodgey shops and eventually got to our hostel. Now our hostel was a house converted into a hostel which was weird, seeing as it was in a residential area. When we went to check in, the receptionist guy, Keenan, said he didnt have our reservation booked. We were like ummm well we booked thru STA and we paid them (so give us some beds fool). Keenan said, hold on a sec, and we went downstairs. a few mins later he came back and said, we have 3 beds spare so u shuld be ok. And that was that we checked in and headed out to central DC.
It was an action packed 2 and half days in DC visitin all the sites, we pretty much went everywhere, o ye it was super hot  when we went back to our hostel to crash we were surprised to see all the residents chillin out chattin to each other. The atmosphere was so chill it was awesome, most guys were internin in DC and crashin there, met another brit. The most interestin guy was our roomy (As we were in 4 bed room) he was internin for the congressman of cali, and he invited us to a tour of capitol and the other buildings connectin to it.
The tour was pretty funny as this guy Dave, our roomy-turn tour guide was incredibly intelligent however his tour guide skills kinda sucked. He walked incredibly fast and gave the talk to whoever caught up with him first. Considerin there was a disabled woman in a our group made it more hilarious (that he did this). We sat in some congress talk which was cool, and had loads of congressman wizz passed us to go vote for somethin. Had no clue who they were but i guess they were pretty important.
DC chinatown was funny cos all the shops and stores and the chinese name next to them on display (i took a pic of the urban outfitters one) (all the pics are on fbook). We went there to get a sim card for my phone so i could call locally, it was funny cos i think overall it costed like $15 and i paid with a $100 bill. The sales guy was pissed off a bit cos they had no change, but i said, "i'm a tourist what can i do?". waited like 20 mins for him to get the necessary change. They had the microsoft surface there which was pretty geeky and cool since we dont have it in the uk yet.
DC overall was pretty different v. green and they encourage recycling a lot which is good. But it was bloody hot and lucky there are fountains everywhere. The metro is really nice i liked it, hardly any advertising (surprisin since we're in the states) and the stations all look pretty cool.
| | |
|
