First week...

So, last week was my very first week of work, real work. However, I didn't really feel new or out of place. If anything, I felt really comfortable, and know my way around.

Before that, last Friday, the day the bed was delivered. In the evening, I went to the bar with the whole bunch of them, and had a really good time.

So, don't want to really bore you guys with my work, but, after just a day or orientation and another day of getting my computer and HR paperwork done, I'm pretty much started doing real work, which I actually enjoy and able to get quite some sense of satisfaction. Workaholic. What more can I say?

Also, I rejoined the gym, so I resumed my running 'regime' again, did 4 miles for Monday - Thursday, and 5 miles on Friday.

Got hit by a strong heat wave, and temperature was up in the 90s for yesterday and today. Also, because of the strong heatwave, I didn't go down to Boston either. The heat, and the people (baseball in the afternoon and basketball at night) would have made it an not-so-enjoyable trip. So, will be going there this weekend instead.

More orientation for the next 2 days, and then, on Thursday, gonna have something like an actuarial-olympics game event. Missed it last year by a week when I interned last year. Not gonna miss it this time. It's gonna be a blast!

Did I mention the NYC trip was great? Well, maybe another post.

New York City revisited...

So, last Friday, I went to work early, started work at 7am, and had my lunch at my desk, hence, I left office at 3.30pm. After I checked that I had everything packed, I left my sublet and started walking to the Worcester Union Station at 4.30pm. It took me about 30 minutes to walk there. And it was quite a scary walk, as Worcester is not an ideal town to travel around by foot.

It cost $7.75 to travel from Worcester to South Station, Boston (the last station) and the journey took about 90 minutes. I left the Worcester station at 5.38pm, and reached Boston just after 7pm. The bus station is connected to the train station, and I was there waiting for my bus in no time. There's a huge line waiting for the bus to Boston, (the greyhound bus system works in a way that they will just sell ticket without controlling how many they sold, and it's passengers' responsibility to wait for their bus early on to make sure that they get on the bus they wish, if the bus is oversold, they will have to wait for the next bus. I thought they got really oversold, but apparently, 2 buses was delayed because of an accident en route to NY or something like that. I boarded the bus at 9pm, instead of 8pm that I wanted. While waiting in line, a guy tried to cut the queue, into a position 3 people in front of me, and the guy in front of me called him out, and they had an exchange of words, and that guy insisted that he was waiting in line for awhile, but he 'forgot' to move in front... a lady (and all of us) didn't buy it, but we tolerated for awhile. And then, a cop walked by, and the lady told the cop about the incident, and that dude was thrown to the back of the line. :)

So, I reached Times Square (42nd St) of New York city at about 1.15am. Met up with Teck Hua at about 1.20am. Then, we went to Astor Place for Japanese food, and from there, walked to his place(where I crashed at for the next 2 nights), reaching at about 3.00am.

The next morning, I woke up at 9am, thanks to my body clock, (6 hours of sleep), and I spent the next 2 hours watching 'The Soup!' and ESPN. Then, Teck Hua, woke up at about 11am, and, we left for Chinatown at about noon. We walked around, and damn, it's like Kuala Lumpur's Petaling St. "Miss, handbag? Gucci, Fendi, Coach?" "DVD!" "Perfume?!" All the road-peddlers with counterfeit items... And the place was packed!
Summer Fair!
So, we walked around, and discovered the NYC Summer Fair (every third Saturday of July), where there's lotsa food stalls, and other handicrafts and stuff on sale on the street.


For lunch, Teck Hua and I met up with Melissa and May Ying, we were at Canal St. (Chinatown) earlier, and was walking while waiting for them to come. Waiting.. waiting... waiting...Waiting to meet up with us, and I took this picture from across the street. :P

So, for lunch, we went to 'Nyonya', a Malaysian restaurant in Little Italy. The food was great, more authentic than Penang's (the restaurant chain) and more reasonably priced.
There's also a fair going on in Little Italy.
And yes, I took this shot in New York City. There's a park where a lot of senior citizens, 90+ % Asian, hang out... We walked by this park, after lunch, from Chinatown towards Wall St.
Snapping some pictures along the way... This is the NY Court House.
And that's LAI(me)!!!
Reaching Wall St. (smiling ear-to-ear from L-R: May Ying, Teck Hua and Melissa)
Us (Melissa, I and May Ying) in front of New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Well, as a tourist in Wall St., one thing that you must do is to take photo with the Golden Bull. As I previously took one, and there's a huge crowd in front of it this time, I didn't take one with the big bull. There are actually 2 smaller bulls (one bronze and another silver) near Merrill Lynch's HQ. As it is still a hidden secret, nobody was there, and we took full advantage of the photo opportunities.
The four of us in front of Merrill Lynch's HQ. (not really in front of, but the HQ as background).
While the smaller bull is easy to be mounted by some. It still proves to be a challenge for others, like kids...

and Melissa. :P
She did manage to get on it, but, I decided not to put it up here. :)
Teck Hua and I.
And also, the bull was touched.
Not to mention, the weather was great. Sunny weather, about 30 Celcius hot!
Not sure why this picture turned out like that.
'Putera lilin'...

So, we went to this Peruvian restaurant, Pio Pio for dinner. The chicken was amazing, and the price, was very very reasonable. Thanks to my cousin's husband (is there a genealogical term for it?), Tomas for recommending this place. With dinner (and Sangria) including tips, it only cost us
$13 per person. For dinner, we met up with Sui Lin, and Jon San, and also, Teck Hua's roommate, Crispin.

Before....
After:
(just kidding... pidgeons -//-> chicken... just like you can't turn coal into gold.)
Fried plantains, and rice + beans. And also the amazingly good green sauce (to go with the roasted chicken).
After dinner, we went to TimesSquare's AMC to catch a movie. We saw I know pronounced you Chuck and Larry. It was a really funny movie, and kinda a movie that increase LGBT awareness in a backhanded way.TimesSquare in the evening...
After the movie, taking subway to a lounge. (May Ying, Sui Lin and Mel... exhausted...)
At the lounge, a really cool place (it was much darker, but with the flash, this is the end result).
From L-R, Jon San, me, Teck Hua, May Ying, Melisssa, Sui Lin, and Crispin...

So, that's pretty much my short trip to New York city. After this, we parted ways, and Crispin cooked us really good mee goreng...

So, it was all good. The next morning, woke up at 9.06am (I checked my watched), again, 6 hours of sleep, but seeing it was still early, I went back to bed, woke up at 10.35am, and packed and all, and left Teck Hua's place at 11.30am for the NY Port Authority to catch my 12.30pm bus back to Boston. Reached Boston at 5.00pm, and had a McD dinner, and caught the 6pm train back to Worcester, reaching at 7.40pm, and took a scarier walk back to my sublet, reaching at 8.10pm. It was still bright out, but, it was really scary. I think I will not walk along in Worcester downtown anymore. The conversation I overheard on my walk back from the station to my sublet, and also the broken glasses on the walkway are really scary.

What a day of doing absolutely nothing

Yup, that title is absolutely right. But, well, I need my rest too. So, on Friday, we went out for a good lunch to celebrate Dave's birthday. We went to Ruby Tuesday, where I had a jumbo lump crab burger. Sweetness... After work, I went to gym for a quick run, but, after entering the locker room, I found out that I forgot my workout clothes, I did laundry, and forgot to put a set of new one in my gym bag, so, damn, I had to drive back to my sublet, to get a change of clothes.

As I had been going to the gym everyday since I started my internship last Monday, I never had to face the rush hour traffic before. It was pretty bad for traffic but not that bad for a rush hour traffic. Instead of the usual 12 minutes back, it took me about 30 minutes, which wasn't that bad I supposed.

So, it took me an hour to get back... I did an interval training, running the treadmill at various speed, running and sprinting intervals... So, after that and a short shower, I rushed back to my place to reheat my dinner, and fed the cats, check on the batteries (still doing fine), then, left my apartment at about 7pm, for my colleague, Katie's place at Rhode Island, about 40 miles away.

After getting on to Route 146, it was all good, the traffic was alright, and I was at her place about 45 minutes later, (fortunately, didn't get lost too badly)... So, after waited for 15 minutes for another colleague to come, we left in 2 cars for the drive-in on route 146, about 15 minutes away. It was an interesting experience, watching movies in an old-school drive-in theater. We saw Ocean 13 and Live Free or Die Hard, 2 movies, for $20 a car load. So, it was all good. To listen to the movie, we tuned in to a frequency. Actually, there were 3 screens going on at the same time, the other 2 showing, Rat-a-2-lee & Shrek 3, and Evan Almighty & something. The movies were pretty OK. Nothing great.

Can't wait to catch transformers though... Will only be out this Wednesday, 4th of July. Not sure if I'm gonna watch it on that day, but will definitely go catch it.

So, after the movie, it was about 1am, and I drove back, and reached my place at about 2.30am as there was construction and all going on, and I got lost following the detour, and it was dark, and I couldn't really navigate that well, I didn't even know the place.

So, the next morning, woke up feeling pretty good, went to the gym again for my TB (total body) workout. With SB(stability ball) and DB (dumb bells)... well, just felt like throwing in some jargons and all. So, after all that, went back to my place for lunch, and, after about 2pm, I set off for Boston, MA. It was about an hour drive, and I got lost again as usual, but after a phone call, I found Grace's place, and I met Ray finally. So, they brought me around Boston, tour-guided me and all. And they were so into photography, and I was the 'model' of the day, so, I'll put some up when I get them.
After all that, we had dinner at Chinatown, and the food was great. Lobster, clams, black-pepper pork, and salted-fish with chicken tofu claypot.

And after that, we went back to their apartment, chatted awhile more, and I went back to my place at about 9.30pm, reaching at about 10.20pm. And the batteries were dead!! I changed it to the backup batteries right away, and in the process of changing, there were some serious sparks, but it was alright. Also, I gave Ted a call to inform him about it, and charged the batteries up.

Woke up this morning, it was alright, and, I did totally nothing for the rest of the day, other than, online and chat, and that's about it...but, it's all good, I had 7 hours of sleep, + 2 hours of nap... which was great!

So, that's pretty much my 2nd weekend here. Wait, actually, I did some online research about probable trip, maybe a whale watching trip sometime when I go to Provincetown, the tip of Cape Cod, MA.