memorials memorials and more memorials

first stop of the day. time check: 9.30am
The United Stated Holocaust Memorial Museum


Problem was that we needed to obtain passes in order to go in, so we had to join a super long queue that extended all the way along the sidewalk. finally got tickets for 2.15pm. tried to get tickets for the mint too, but they were all gone by 10am, since it opened at 8am.

so we went off to our next stop: the Washington Memorial


ok it was supposed to be a 'Charlie's Angels' pose, but we look like James Bond or something else instead. owellz, we had other cool shots there too, but its not in my cam.


The Washington Momument is surrounded by many american flags, and overlooks the reflecting the pool and the lincoln memorial, below.


ok fine, just a poseur picture with the lincoln memorial in the palm of my hand.

here's the reflecting pool that reflected the lincoln memorial if u stand on the side of the washington memorial; vice versa.


ok here's a closer look at the monument from the outside, and the inside, where the man himself sits...


between these 2 momuments there is actually a massive world war memorial but it's so massive i can't get a picture of everything, havent tried the panorama feature yet, so i havent joined the pieces together haha.

anyway, we walked somemore and got to the korean war memorial, which was kinda cool cos of the scupltures:


walked forever, around the humongous tidal basin, to get to the Thomas Jefferson memorial. He's the guy who penned the declaration of independence, and later on became the 3rd president of the US.

the massive walls bearing his speeches, this is the one i like the most, and see how debbie pales in comparison to the statue of Jefferson, which faces the white house, probably telling bush to stay on his toes... haha

ok fine, you can't really see The White House below, but it's in between the trees in the distance (looks like the camera's zoom wasn't powerful enough after all... sigh) notice how nice the sky is! i just had to take some random shots...!


ok enough of Jefferson, it was time to go back to the Holocaust Museum, but they didn't allow photos, so we didnt. it wasnt what i expected it to be tho, maybe cos it was too crowded and the school children were too noisy. but it was like reliving my history lesson all over again, how hitler rose to power cos of lousy hindenburg, and the night of the broken glass and his aryan race thing. but i learnt a lot too, especially about the different ghettos, and how the jews were deported and packed into trains. when they arrive at the ghettos, they'll be told to strip so that they can take a shower. all their belongings were confiscated. they were put (in the thousands) in a chamber which had shower heads, except that poisonous gas emitted from them, not water. they died in minutes, and within hours of arrival at the camps. their hair was shaved off and sold to make different things, and then they were cremated. horrible. but of cos, in the midst of all the cruelty, there were stories of the heros who hid jews in their homes, and saved the lives of thousands of them. it was a heartwarming and emotional 2 hours we spent in that museum.

as if things weren't morbid enough, we headed off to the arlington cemetry next, in virginia. it's the most famous cemetry in the US cos the kennedy family and lots of other famous people were buried there.



the grounds were HUGE, and we were quite afraid of getting lost. it was about 6pm, and it was gonna get dark soon... but we found the grave of the kennedies alright.. there's JFK, his wife, daughter and brother...


the tomb of an unknown american soldier from ww1 was quite special. members of the US 3rd division infantry kept virgil all day, and there was a ceremony to change gurads every half and hour, which we saw. i have it on video, no pictures.


there was also the tombs/ memorials of those killed in the challenger spaceshuttle (1st pic), and the recent columbia space shuttle that crashed during its return to earth in 2003 (2nd pic).


ok that's all for the cemetry, and pretty much for the rest of the day. went to pentagon city for dinner (it's a huge shopping mall but we didnt shop. at all. the guys did buy some stuff from abercrombie tho, but that's cos they live there... )

some random pictures to round up the day...

saw this on the metro, quite funny. people here keep right, not left. somehting i CANNOT get used to...


guys, dying to ORD? hur hur...


can u believe esmond walked around with his jacket like that the whole day? freak. haha.


ok, thats all from me today. what a long post. it was a pretty sobering day.

12 hours on foot in DC

woke up to a nightmare but it was nice and warm in the bed so it was quite alright. our host, claire is so nice, she gave us bread and yoghurt for breakfast! we dilly-dallied a lot before finally leaving the house at about 9.30. eugene walked us to the metro station, we're indebted to them man... the sun was out but it was quite cold in the morning, and we started to get worried about only having a thin jacket...

at the metro station, which was a lot less complicated and newer than the NY subway. a man was giving out the express on the way, something like our 'today' newspaper. its a subsidiary of the washington post.

met the guys at the smithsonian station. smithson is a scientist from england who had never set foot on america all his life, but he donated a lot of money to build up an institute of learning and knowledge in washington DC, which turned into the national mall. a massive stretch of monuments, memorials, and museums, all free! the one u see above is the washington monument, which stands at 170m tall. no building in DC is allowed to be taller than that. we havent really gone to that side of the mall yet. will do so tomm...

the first museum we visited was the museum of natural history. of all sections, the guys wanted to see the section on mammals. *sigh.* there were lots of life-sized animals (i dunno if they're stuffed or just fake) and the guys were even busy watching the video on evolution, telling them the 3 factors that distinguished mammals from other animals. 1) they have hair 2) they have a middle ear 3) the mothers can produce milk. it was totally like primary 3 science. sigh! and then, guess what, there was a gallery on dinosaurs, and as you can imagine, they went crazy. hahaha. ok maybe im exaggerating (sp?) a little. it was quite sad how there was so much focus on evolution tho, and all that crap about millions of years ago...

what was quite cool was that they had a section on the sikhs, and i thought ot manveen immediately... wonder how he's doing in canada! that section was placed together with the mammals section tho, after all the stuffed animals. *shrug*

the really interesting gallery we loved was the one on diamonds. have you ever heard of the cursed hope diamond? it is worth a lot a lot of money cos of its rich history. it was found in india, sold to the french royalty and placed on the crown, then stolen during the revolution and reappeared in london, and finally sold to some rich guy who donated it to the natural history museum in DC.

then there was a display of some of the famous diamonds worn by famous people, like the diadem below given by napolean to his wife during the birth of their child.

below is a pair of earrings worn by French Queen Marie Antionette, who according to Debbie is a bimbo. haha.

the november birthstone is topaz (or so i found out). was rather disappointed cos it looked quite ugly, but maybe that's cos the one they showed was uncut and not refined. but apparently thats one of the biggest, almost piece of topaz around.

what i really really loved was sapphire, ruby wasnt too bad either...! (:

hmmm.... after this, i think i change my mind about diamond rings... (:

ok i should move on. met juline (finally!!) for lunch! was so happy to see her cos the last time we met was before she left for this foreign land... we had lunch at macdonald's, which was quite ex, but was apparently the cheapest food around... after that the guys wanted to watch imax about some moon thing (guys!) cos we were in the national space museum, so deb, juline and i went to the Kirshhorn museum and the national gallery of art sculpture gardern. it was quite nice...

it's basically like a museum of contempory art and photography. the above picture is an example of an exhibit, how bizzare...! the sculpture garden was rather interesting tho, we took a picture in front of a giant typewriter eraser, haha, it's hilarious i tell u! the house was funky too, it could move as u walk past it, but of cos u cant see if from just a pic...

we didnt have much time so we headed for the steps of the Capitol Building, where congress sits. the view was magnificent. decided to stop using my camera cos it was gonna die (i think nick took many stupid pics of animals and raw crystals! haha) the shots we had in front of the capitol are in julz's camera, it was a super super good shot... we wanted to ascend the steps where martin luther king made his famous 'i have a dream' speech, but they weren't giving out any more passes for the day, maybe we'll try again on fri...

walked to union station next, another famous train station but again i dun have pics. poor juline had to go back to school for lessons. the rest of us walked what seemed like forever to get to the FBI headquarters. and when we got there, it was closed anyway.. no more tours till 2007. sigh. saw a few cars with tinted windows come out tho, one of them was paul white (dunno who, but must be quite impt i think). took some pics and went to hard rock cafe nearby for dinner. deb and i had the legendary 10oz burger; and a mac and cheese. we were so full after that. quite ex tho, cost us $21.51, but at least we're sharing all the meals so its not so bad i guess.

started to walk to the white house after dinner, it started to get quite cold cos the wind was blowing quite strongly, and Pennslyvania Avenue seemed to go on forever before we reached number 1600. and when we got there, there was all the secutiry thingies, and all we saw was.... THIS.

right. and we saw all that through a fence. pathetic, but well. we were so tired by then, we didn't really care anymore... heh. and it was getting really cold so we just wanted to get home quickly, which we did. we walked so much today. probably like twice the length of the mall, which is 1 mile from the washington monument (the tall pencil like thingy) to the capitol building, plus the insides of the museums and the walk to union station.

tomorrow we'll go to the holocaust museum, and the US mint. long day ahead, and a lot more walking to do. we'll be so fit by the time we get to ohio. dun need to train la, jiamin. *oh ya, we saw people playing frisbee on the grass patched in the mall, they looked good. man. i wanna play too...!*

hope everyone's having fun in singapore as well! (:

New York and Washington DC

ok i'm jet-lagged. been constantly tired since i landed on sat morning. its tues night now, and i want to sleep. it's only 9.30pm by the way.

just arrived in DC this evening at about 5.30pm. today was quite an adventure in itself. ok let me just skip all the details of the past few days, will update on that another time.

woke up at 9 this morning cos the sun was shining right into my face. it was super super hot. debbie went straight to the table and started writing stuff while i simply looked for a corner that was still shaded and went back to sleep. haha. finally woke up at abt 9.25. we thought we had all the time in the world. had cornflakes with milk (i think that was our first decent breakfast!) we thought the milk had gone back cos it looked like water, but it was just fat-free milk. how sua-gu of us. but u cant really blame us for expecting the milk to be bad cos everything in that suite seemes a little too dirty, too messy, too unkempt. haha.

made stan skip the first session of soccer so that we could go walk around the school and take pictures. it was really great to see the american college lifestyle. everyone walking to class, sitting around chatting or reading, some people sprawled on the grass reading... (it was a sunny day remember). deb and i took some pics but we were quite afraid of looking like idiots. until stan came along and said that it was very normal and became our photographer. before we knew it, it was almost 11 and we had to hurry back cos stan had another session of soccer at 11.

the grand 7-story lib where they filmed ghostbusters

the $ sign (seen fr the air) in front of the biz bldg

we tried to pack our stuff but we couldnt fit all our stuff into the bags! had such a hard time. ambrose and esmond were having buffet lunch opposite in the freshman dorms and invited us , but we HAD to pack. they missed called us at about 1145 and we were supposed to meet them the junction so that we could take the subway together. but we only managed to get downstairs at 1205 or 1210 cos we couldnt 1) close the luggage 2) carry the luggage. we waited and waited at the junction until 1220, then we decided to call them. but they put down on us and got an sms which said that they had left without us.... we were furious man! we specifically told them to meet us there cos we couldnt handle our luggage!!! so we decided to find out how much it was to take a cab. called stan again (who had finished his soccer class then). he met us and took us accross the road to get a cab to chinatown. thank God for stan. heh. we were so helpless, waiting at the junction while watching the rest of the students file past us to go to school! how gentlemanly, guys these days... tsk.

columbia students - the real genius and the wanna-be

we took the nyc cab, which really wasnt as bad as we expected. he didnt swerve too much, or talk to us. he just kept horning at the cars in front. the whole trip took us all of 20 mins and cos 22 something, so we paid 25. turned out that we were the first to arrive at chinatown, we just couldnt wait to load up our stuff. the competition at chinatown is really fierce, all the bus operators were trying to convince us that they're bus was the right one, even when we already had tickets! sheesh! anyway, since we were so early, we decided to look for some nice chinese food for lunch. spent 3 bucks on some chicken noodles which looked like maggi mee, but the chicken was quite nice. it was too hot and we had to rush like mad-literally ran all the way to the bus. but we go there on time, at like 12.25, only to find that ambrose and esmond hadn't arrived!

we started to get worried and tried to call them but all they would say is that they're on their way. the bus driver got a bit impatient cos he wanted to leave. gabe and nick tried to go look for them and all we could do was pray. they finally arrived at 1.35pm. dunno how on earth they took so long to get to chinatown! until now, deb's still hasn't gotten over that. why on earth couldnt they have waited for us, we could have all taken the cab together. and they would have to wait for us anyway, even if they left first, assuming we took the subway. and ambrose still had to check to say that we would have died if we had taken the subway.... doesnt he get it!! sheesh. anyway i took the motion sickness pill in case i felt carsick, but it made me so drowsy i slept all the way to DC. 4 hours in all. heh.

was super groggy when we arrived in DC, got off the bus and saw this dark-skinned guy asking esmond and nick for tips, so i quickly took my bags away so that he cant touch them and ask for tips, heh. i was so happy with my quick move when i saw the guy leave our area, until ambrose brought him back and asked us to tip him. like, what! crazy! i didnt even see him take my luggage out of the bus. i didnt want to but they were like staring at me so i gave $1. still dunno what happened. i must go ask ambrose why on earth he brought that guy back! sigh!

thank God for debbie's friends, eugene and claire. we're at their place now, which is really nice and cosy. eugene picked us up from that junction. thank God we didnt even have to wait cos i really felt quite uncomfortable there and the guys were leaving after finding out where the metro is. we're in the guest room, which is quite big. claire just came back from work but she went to the supermarket and bought stuff for dinner. she cooked pasta and baked pizza. they're really really nice. eugene is a foreign correspondent for the straits times (now that i think about it, i think ive seen his face in the papers before) and claire works for the EDB. very smart pple i think. was quite nice talking to them. oh, we had ben and jerry's for dessert, apprently it was $2.50 for 1 tub!!! cherry gacia frozen yoghurt, yum :p today is free cone's day, but we didnt get a chance to go queue...

ok thats my update for the day, ok im too lazy to type out the stuff that happened in NY, i will some other time, but in the meantime, go check out the places we visited on deb's blog http://songofdeborah.blogspot.com i havent actually gone there before, so i dunnom if it works...!

ok, the bed beckons... i'm gonna sleep... night!

narita airport, tokyo

ok decided to set up this blog after much procrastination, and since i've one hour more before boarding and nothing to do.

left for tokyo on an ANA flight at about 11.35pm singapore time last night (ok by the time we took off it was like midnight) was quite blur and still too overwhelmed by the fact that im actually going away that i couldnt get my seat right! had to change seats and shift my stuff like 2 times! and there was this bunch of hokkien-speaking old ladies around talking quite loudly, and the one sitting behind me kept kicking my chair, so it was quite irritating. didn't sleep till about 2am cos i was watching 'rumour has it', and cos debbie said not to sleep till4 so that i wont be so jet-lagged. i wonder how that's gonna work. i was too tired after that show anyway so i went to sleep, tho not very well. watched 'little manhattan' when i woke up so that i would get acquainted to new york, haha. it was really quite useful.

narita airport wasnt what i thought it to be at all. thought it would be very sophisticated but it kinda looked like the bangkok airport iof not for the jap words. ok, maybe the skytrain was good, but the whole place was so bare and i was just so so lost. so i just queued up wherever there was a queue. haha. but thank God the people here speak english. finally found the place where there were more people (i.e the check-in place) after like half hour to 45 mins. and then i found the duty-free shopping, but there was really nothing much. and i have a pathetic 500 yen or something haha, cant buy anything la. maybe a drink, which ill prob do on the way back.

thank God for this free internet thing. managed to send out mails and SMSes home. and quite importantly, managed to email stan and got a reply, like finally. heh. if not ill really be lost in NY when i get there. tsk tsk.

i didnt have time to research on NY before this. hopefully there'll be some stuff for me to read on the train. i really dunno what we're gonna do over the next week before we report for work! i know we have a dinner appt tonight with esmond's friend tho, so that's good, at least we wont go hungry! haha.

i wonder what deb and gabe are up to in frankfurt man, at least theres 2 of them! really praying hard that none of our flights get delayed, cos that will more or less destroy our already-shaky plans to meet at the northwest counter at JFK later. sheesh this is scary. how am i supposed to know where on earth is the NW counter!!?! wouldnt it be at the departures? and i dont even know if we're coming into the same terminal, darn. and JFK is supposedly very very very big. last time i checked the website, there was a whole shopping mall in it. oh crap. i hope stan's right about there being only 1 international terminal. talk about trust. haha.

ok that must have a really long and boring post. oops. i dunno how to blog la, forgive me! ill post the pictures when i can i guess,dun really want to meddle with their coms. but this yahoo cafe is quite cool. free internet accesss with all the laptops and webcams set up. mine's a toshiba lappie with a logitech webcam. couldnt find the site for msn web messenger tho, cos its all in jap!!! took me so long to figure out how to navigate this blogger page in jap too! heh.

ok, time check: 9.43am tokyo time (1 hr ahead of singapore). if i were back home ill be at frisbee trng now. cant wait to play with debbie when we get to ohio! i cant believe year 1's over tho, time really flies, without learning first to walk. ok thats out of point. till later! i shall go take some photos now, tho there's really nothing to take... owellz

take care friends, God bless! (: