BOSTON BOSTON!

I know it's a bit late, I've been in Boston for my 3rd and last day now but this is the first chance that I have enough energy to blog.

Anyways I should start from the beginning of this whole exciting trip. 5 days ago... It's SPRING BREAK WEEK!!!

Well Spring Break officially started on Friday of last week, 7th of March, so our plan was to leave Pittsburgh for New York on Saturday by plane, then go from New York to Boston by Bus on Monday and then bus back from Boston to New York again on Thursday, and fly back to pittsburgh from New York on Saturday making a full circle trip. The second leg to New York was due to our friends who we're meeting up with in Boston wants to go to New York so it's good for us to have more time in New York.

Well.... Guess what... the first thing that happens when we first got to the airport on Saturday was.... Our flight got canceled! CANCELED!!! We woke up so EARLY and got to the airport at 9:00 AM for the flight at 10:50 and they made us wait until 13:50 to tell us that the flight has been canceled due to heavy snow and rain in Pittsburgh and New York (zero visibility) so since my friend has already booked a broadway show in New York wants to get to New York any way possible he wants to re-book the flight.

Once we got to the ticketing counter the next available flight is Monday... Which we are supposed to already be leaving for Boston! So this isn't good for my friend who really really wanna watch the broadway show so we tried to ask for the counter lady to help us... but she couldn't get us any earlier tickets to New York and the best she could do was give us a free flight to Boston on Monday. So that was the next best option (Pitt-NY, NY-BOS flights on Monday, meaning no first New York trip until Thursday.)

Since this was the one and only option apart from going to New York by bus, we took this. The baggage system of the airport was terrible so by the time we got our bags back it was already 8:30pm. I was dead tired and I felt a fever coming on...

Sure enough... the next day a fever broke out and I was bed ridden the whole day... terrible for spring break. It's Sunday a day before I'm flying to Boston, and I've got a huge cold... So I slept all day and wish that by the next day the fever would be gone.

Well by Monday, my fever was much better so thankfully I was well enough to travel. Most of the trip was uneventful until I got to Boston.

The one thing I have to say that Boston's quite a nice city. The first day we got to Boston at around 3:30 and met up with 2 of my other friends at around 4:30 or 5pm so there wasn't much we could do after we checked in and everything so we went out to Boston Market and took a look at it at night and had some dinner and came back to sleep.

The next day, Tuesday, we covered Harvard and MIT. The universities were quite ok, not as beautiful or "wow" as I had hoped, but they looked much better than CMU, lol. I was a bit sick but I've been taking medicine everyday so it was alright to walk around. There isn't much to comment but I've got pictures which I will post up after the trip.

That brings us to Today~, Wednesday. We covered the MIT museum and the Boston Market again. The MIT museum was very very interesting. I'm quite amazed by the MIT "Hacking" culture, I wish we had that in CMU or SMU for that matter.

Anyways, tomorrow's the bus ride to New York! It's going to take around 4 to 5 hours to get to New York so we're going to go early, waking up at 7 and get to the bus at 8 and hope to get to New York by 13:00. Annnnnnnd since my internet time is running out (10 cents a minute) I'm going to have to say good bye until next time!

Sick....

Ok I don't know how it happen but I suddenly got sick yesterday... I woke up in the morning feeling terrible, body aching and my throat was a bit sore...

At first I thought it was just from the snowboarding but it was worse than the day before and by the end of the day I was about to die.

I'm extremely touched by Mingfei, Ei Ei, and Vidit actually... Mingfei dragged me home and cooked noodles for me and gave me medicine. Ei Ei helped bring porridge to me this morning, Mingfei made it... I'm very very grateful >_< thanks!

Vidit made some hot water for me last night when I told him I as sick, awesome guy.

Today I still feel terrible even when I slept for over 12 hours. It wasn't good sleep though, got up many times... it was uncomfortable... I need to get some more rest...

Boarding + Skiing Frenzie

HOLY CRAP, OMG WTF LOL BBQ! ITZ AWESUMZ!

Ok, I guess I have to calm down a little bit (just a tiny bit) but LYKE I WENT SKIING AND SNOWBOARDING! It was so goooood, (fell a lot but totally worth it.)

So how this happened was that we're lucky enough that CMU has a snowboarding and skiing club
which organized this trip for JUST $15 (includes bus there, packed lunch, AND SKII and BOARD RENTAL) It's sooooo cheap! And since the tickets are so cheap it sells out within 10-20 minutes of the start of the sale, SO I have to thank Andy, Hui Ting, and Kevin (the brave souls) who braved the trail and lined up for it for me when I couldn't go (forgot).

That's how I got such a great deal for this trip! AND The best part is that we got there around 11:30. Started around 12:00 noon, and ended at 7:00pm SO it was SHERE 7 HOURS of Snowboarding and Skiing for the people who went!

Since this is the first time I ski or snowboard I chose to snowboard cuz I wanna kill myself (wad... it just looks cooler....... :P ) So I thank all my friends for all the best wishes and kind farewells before we started... I'm sure I'll miss you guys too if I ram my head into a tree or a cable car pole.

Anyways, snowboarding is really tiring and hard on me (butt and face) cuz I fall a lot and the only way to fall on the snowboard is the front... and the back... no side cushions for me. I manage to learn to stop and go quite well, the only part is turning.... always trips me.

I stayed with the board for about 5.5 hours of the trip, super fun. This was until my thigh started cramping... (it's just super tiring on the thigh.) So I complained to Mr. Choi AND since he wanted to try out boarding as well and his shoe happen to be my size, we swap equipment! So I got to try out skis for 1.5 hours!

Now I actually love skiing cuz I actually fall 1/10 of the amount as I do on the snowboard and it's like ice skating, I got the hang of it quite fast :D very very fun. I think next time I will just ski, spend less time on the ground, bwahahahaha. THIS IS AN EXPERIENCE OF A LIFE-TIME (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)

I'll definitely go again next week (the last time they're going to do it this year.) So I'm gonna get ready to queue up for the tickets this time!

I'll update with photos later as it's on Mr. Choi's camera :D

This got me thinking of my list of things to do before I die.... and I have a few things checked:

1. Visit the Taj Mahal
2. Ride camels into the dessert
3. Learn to Ski
4. Learn to Snowboard
5. Learn to Ice Skate
6. Learn to Roller Blade

There are probably more, but can't recall right not haha. I should work on this list a bit more :P

DROP IT!

Haha, I guess you're wondering what made me get off my ass and blog today. There isn't anything special thing about today (except that it's Valentine's day... and that's not the reason I'm blogging, lol.)

This is actually a blog to announce that I'm going to drop 15-211!!!!

This is the course that's been torturing me since I got to CMU. I couldn't understand ANYTHING being taught in class and assignments practically kill my brain. It also makes me feel like a piece of shit when people in the class seems to find this stuff EASY! The thing is I thought this course would be fun, I mean a course named "Fundamental Data Structures and Algorithm" MUST be AWESOMELY INTERESTING right? (Please understand that this is sarcasm.)

Well I actually added this course because (1) my professor in SMU wants me to try it out (he thought I might like it... boy is he crazy) and (2) two of my friends are taking it and (3) it can count for an IS elective back in SMU. Now... my two friends are dying too, but the thing is their grades count while mine DOESN'T.... and even THEN! I don't think I'd even PASS! That's how hard it is...

So for some time I've been thinking that I should just pull through and bare with it, I can't possibly fail if I work hard at it. BUT I've also been thinking that this is impossible! Stacks, Queues, Binary Trees, CFolding, Bubble Sort, Merge Sort, Select Sort, Recursion, Hash Tables, Algorithmic Runtime Analysis, Big-Oh, Little-Oh, Big-Theta, Big-Omega, etc..... YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!? (Actually... you probably never heard of half of those things I just listed... Guess what? That's what I thought too when I heard those.)

Ok so one of the reason was that it can count for an IS Tech Depth elective... and guess what... it turns out I ALREADY have enough credits that I don't need this one! I found that out today while checking back on my documents from SMU! SO THAT'S WHEN I DECIDED TO SHOVE THE ASSIGNMENT AND THE COURSE UP THE PROFESSOR'S @$$ and tell him to go stuff it.

*****I'm actually nice in person, really.******

Anyways, so now I'm laughing at my friends who are still in the course. I can finally relax more and act like what other exchange students do on exchange.... RELAX AND HAVE FUN!

On a lighter note, I'm going to go ski this Saturday, I'll try to get pictures back for you guys to look at :)

P.S. - I hope I don't break my hip or something.................... >.>

Photo Updates

Hey! Haha, it's been quite a while after I've last updated the blog. Well this time, I won't disappoint!

I took lots of pictures and have just got the chance (the cable) to upload the photos from the camera to the computer so I'm uploading them now.

Yesterday I got attend a live concert at CMU to see Andy McKee!!! He brought 2 other amazing guitarists with him as well: Antoine Dufour and Craig D'Andrea. It was AWESOME! The room was packed such that some people were not allowed in because it was more than the allowed capacity of the building. Some people drove all the way from D.C. just to see them! Just to show you how great they are I'll post samples video of each person's songs from YouTube:

Andy McKee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Igb5Yors4
Antoine Defour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlExaU0WOhY
Craig D'Andrea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAGyWkSWlfg

Check them out! They are great! The best thing is: my friend was the organizer so I got to help them clear up afterwards and went for a drink with the 3 guys! It was awesome! Here are some of the pictures from the event!

http://smusg.facebook.com/album.php?aid=41004&l=2cda7&id=529632068

A few weeks ago I also went around campus to take pictures of the buildings here at CMU so I could share it with everybody, and here's the link to all the pictures. The most beautiful building on campus is the College of Fine Arts, due to the art works they have inside the building, mostly.

Here's the link to the gallery!

http://smusg.facebook.com/album.php?aid=41006&l=be361&id=529632068

The Lion King Musical

HEY! Haha, finally got time to update the blog here. Most of the time it's just laziness though. However, just finished a CS homework that is due today at 11:59pm so at least that's out of the way.

I just got back from a Broadway Musical, "The Lion King." IT was AWESOME. It was quite good, the best of all? I got to see it for a total of $0! FREE! This is thanks to my friend Natasha and her prof for being so nice and giving away his extra ticket for free. Of course also thanks to Sam for letting me sit in his car there and back.

It a great show. The effects were awesome and the singing was good. Would recommend to everybody to try to catch it if they can.

To continue the story

Okay! So now I have a bit more time again to update and add onto what my last post gave.

However, I'm a bit LAZY so basically I'm going to shoot through what happened a bit faster since I don't wanna spend toooooo long on this. So since I tagged along with the people who are moving into their new "home" for the next two years or so I had a chance to go to IKEA.

Since I'm staying in their house for free, I feel obligated to help out as well so I went to help them shop. Basically they were there for the whole day. My friend sort of went crazy there and bought things like whole beds, tables, book shelves, and rugs. Anyways, they spent in a range of $350 (the guy who was the most thrifty) and $1000 (the guy who got a great bed, it's really awesome, but the bed's about half of that total cost.) Hui Ting spent almost $900. The number's quite large for me personally =__+;; but then again they are going to live there for 2 years.

NOW, the problem isn't that the things were expensive.... but it's that they bought A LOT OF SHIT! And we only hav ONE truck.... ONE! Even if its a freaking TITAN, but TITANS aren't big enough to carry 4 people's BEDS in one trip! And guess what.... IT STARTED RAINING!

Oh yes... and Weiyi happened to have bought a mattress base at Salvation Army prior to coming to IKEA... so it got drenched... XD that part's funny cuz he wanted to save some money... he kinda poked a hole in it after like 5 minutes of getting it so he's kinda pissed off about that. NOW it rains... so it's drenched and got thrown away in the end.

ANYWAYS, so it RAINED... the f***ed up part is that IKEA had no loading area that's COVERED! HOW OUTRAGEOUS is THAT?!?! So we had to load the truck in the rain... when it's like 0-1 degrees Celsius... and by that time it's already like 8pm! It was like hell...

So I helped them load the truck with them in the rain. It was FREEZING! Good thing the coat dad gave was water-proof. Since we couldn't do it all in one trip, we had to load some and leave some back and let me tell you, the stuff are FREAKING HEAVY!

I went with the truck to help carry the stuff into the house, 3 stories.... heavy as hell.... and raining... During the ride, the windshield fogged up... so we had no choice but to lower the window and turned on the aircon so the fog would disappear, we didn't have time to find the de-fog button so we drove like that both trips, it was crazy. I admire Andy for driving in that cold.

Anyways, that night was like hell, just that it was really really cold, lol. Good experience, but never wanna do that ever again. My back ached after that.

So that was the trip to IKEA. Now onto less depressing things.

Now I just finished the first week of school. The professors here are extremely good and teach extremely well. Some courses are damn hard and I have no idea what the hell they are talking about, but hey, my grades don't count XD so I don't have to worry that much. I'd just have to pass.

Food here is extremely expensive and tastes like shit, so that's the bad part. The cheapest meal I can get on campus is $4 so that's what I've been eating everyday. The portion's big so it will feed me properly. It's cool how these food are sold to students. They come in trucks called "Food Trucks" and it's the most popular with students because they are the cheapest option on campus. Other places you'd have to expect to pay upwards of $6.

If you eat in a restaurant you'd have to expect to pay upwards of $10 and for a good meal, at least $15. IT'S EXPENSIVE if you consider that in singapore you can get a meal for S$3.50 and that's already considered pretty expensive in Singapore. Oh well, I guess that's the price of living in the states. That's why yesterday I went to the grocery store "Giant Eagle" to buy some ingredients for sandwiches and bananas + cereals so that I can get cheaper meals at home...

That turned out not to be totally true... I made some sandwiches from stuff I bought yesterday... and I calculated that I actually spent about $7 for the sandwich.... I think the hams are expensive... BUT the sandwiches were AWESOME! Tastes damn good, and I'm very proud of making such awesome sandwiches, WAHAHAHA. I don't regret spending $7 in ingredients, lol. I had turkey ham + balony ham stacked up 8 layers, with 2 layers of lettuce, one layer of pickles. I two of those. It was heavenly. Gonna make more when I can, wahahahaha. Then I had salad (actually just lettuce + salad dressing) and banana. It was a good lunch. I'm definitely making more of those soon, hehe. If you guys are interested in what it tastes like, I can make them for ya, I'll charge $10.

Anyways, there was a CMU Singaporean gathering today so I just attended it. Got to know more people and went out to eat with them. It was fun, made lots of new friends and starting to feel more at home at this freezer of a town. It's actually quite beautiful. Went to eat at a restaurant... called "Steak & Lube" I think... weird name... but they only sell chicken wings, lol. And that's about all the update I have today. Good night!