Back at home!

Happy Chinese New Year. May the year of Tiger bring great health and prosperous to all!

So, where shall I began this post?

Let me begin with my interesting trip back home! (Yes, I'm writing this from home - Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia!) For the Lunar New Year, I took 12 days of my annual leave. (Gonna be a tough rest of the year, with 6 days left for the entire year.) It was all good until the night before my flight, where the weather forecast for the next day was turning tricky in NYC. I had half of my luggage packed (1 suitcase with all the foodstuff: dried plums aka 'prunes', dried apricots, dried cranberry aka 'craisins', almonds, peanut butter, jelly belly and macadamia nuts, all ~40 pounds worth of food) and some of the essentials clothing in the other semi-packed. Thinking that I had the entire night to pack, I decided to work til ~6.30pm on Tuesday night.

Things got interesting for me as while I was on the phone with my realtor, sorting out communications for the next two weeks when I'm back at home, I got another call coming in. I ignored it and got a voicemail. It was my travel agent. Eff! Apparently, my flight from Boston Logan international airport to JFK the next morning was canceled. I tried calling American Airlines (AA) to talk about when will be my next flight if I were to miss this one. Because of the inclement weather, I was waiting on the phone for a good 20 minutes before I got to talk to someone, and another good 20 minutes for the personnel to searching for possible flights and all, before him telling me that it will be a good week (today) before I can get another flight home. TROUBLE!

While waiting on the phone, my mind was wandering everywhere, and I was talking to Mel on Gchat, thinking about possible routes, and finally, I decided to check if there will be a train that can take us to NYC that night. Or, as a last resort, there's always the 'dependable' Chinatown bus. So, I gave up on the AA's help, and decided to take the chances of going to JFK by land and hoping that the flight out of JFK will not be canceled. If it were to be canceled, I was thinking that what I could do will be to stay in NYC til Sunday and go back to work (instead of going home) the next week.

At that time, it was around 7.30pm. I took a quick shower and rushed to pack the remaining suitcase and cleared the trash and left my apartment at around 5 past 8. It was a total mad dash and I was pretty sure I was going to forget something because I was too lazy to prepare a packing list this time around. Fortunately, I had placed all those important documents into my bag the day before. Knowin that things that I will forget are things that I can live without. So far, things that I found out that I forgot : Some clothes, my sunglasses, my SD card for my camera (so much so for clearing the SD card so that I can take more pictures)...

So, I reached my friend's place at 9.05pm. Our cab to Boston South Station was already there. Drove with him to his workplace and back so that I can park at his place. Finally, left his place at around 9.20pm. Thankfully, the cab was willing to wait for us without charge, we gave him a rather generous tip for that. We reached the South Station at around 9.50pm, we missed the 9.45pm train. So, we ended up taking the infamous Chinatown bus (Fung Wah to be precise) at 10pm to NYC.

Normally, the bus ride takes about 4 hours, with a short stop after a couple hours for passengers to grab a bite or to take a P... I guess it was because of the weather getting worse (forecasted), they didn't stop and drove straight to NYC. We reached NYC with my empty stomach (didn't have dinner and only had 1 packet of Cheezit and a couiple of clementines for lunch) at 1.30am. From Chinatown, my buddy and I walked to the nearest subway station, took the J train to 2nd to last stop and from there, took the airtrain to JFK. It just started to snow then. By the time we got to JFK, it was about 3am. By the time we reached terminal 7, it was 3.20am. Too bad, the terminal doesn't open until 4am. So, we waited in the indoor connecting bridge between the parking lot and the terminal til 4am. At 4am, we went into the terminal 7 and waited at the Cathay Pacific counter until it opened at 5.30am to checked in our luggages and went through the security checkpoint to get FOOD. I had never tasted McD breakfast as tasty as that one. The coffee was still bad though. By that time, I had been awaked for more than 24 hours straight (minus an hour or so nap on the bus).

So, we hung out at the McD after our breakfast, and waited for Mel! She got there around 6.30am. She had breakfast too and then, we went shopping for stuff at the duty free shop. The price was just reasonable. So, I didn't buy anything, and decided to buy them on board. All but 2 flights were canceled, one Cathay Pacific to HK flight and the other is British Airways to London flight. So, the terminal was pretty empty most of the time.

There was a minor delay at JFK because it took them more time to clear the runway and also to de-ice the plane. It was delayed for about 1.5 hours. It was a long flight... How long? 16 hours + long. Given that I always have a hard time sleeping on the plane. The 16 hours was hard to kill. I saw 2 movies (law abiding citizen & cloudy with a chance of meatballs) and gave up on 2 other movies (surrogate & district 9). Spent a couple of hours studying (Materiality, Preamble, and yada yada yada on Statement of Actuarial Opinion...) and 3 1 hour+ naps. The food was OK, but I particularly enjoyed the instant noodles. I guessed I was really hungry and also it had been quite a long time since I had instant noodles. I want to say, it must have been more than 2 years, closer to 3 years since I last had instant noodles.

We reached HK at about 3.50pm (more than an hour later than scheduled.) We were hoping that the plane that we were supposed to be on was delayed, hoping that many of us who were on the plane from JFK were going to be on the connection to Kuala Lumpur. And indeed, there were more than 30 of us. So, they held up the plane for more than an hour for us!!! While walking to the very end of the plane to our seats, we saw quite many unhappy faces. Even more so when we had to 'kick' the people who were occupying our seats . People, really, please follow your allocated seat.

We reached KLIA about an hour late at around 8pm. After clearing the immigration and finally collected my luggage, I met up with my dad outside, and my brother waiting in the car. I saw my friend Laura at the airport as well! The weather was crazy hot and humid. It's bad for your body to jump out from a freezer (it's way sub freezing in Boston, MA) into a sauna steam room (35C/95+F and 100% humidity here). I finally got home at about 9.45pm. So, from door-to-door, it took me a good 36 hours and 45 minutes to get home. How fun!

I'll write up a separate post on the food I've had so far. :-)

An update...

Seems like I'm slacking more and more when it comes to updating my blog. I think it's my fault of setting a really low target of updating it once a month at least. Even that, I think I'm barely meeting the minimum. Oh well, I'll try to make up for the lack of frequency with severity. So, I'll try to write a long one here.

Thanksgiving came and I didn't travel to Richmond, VA like I did last year. I didn't spend much on Black Friday either. I bought a shoe rack, a couple sets of tools and a vacuum cleaner. I'm so proud of myself for not succumbing to all the 'temptations'. What I did over the long weekend was just eating, drinking, watching tv and reading. How relaxing!

Can't believe it's December already! Well... in less than 3 weeks, I'll be done for the year. I'll be heading down to VA to celebrate Christmas and New Year. On the way back from VA, I'll be stopping in NY to attend my cousin's wedding dinner. Maybe even stay a day or two in NYC. :-)
However, that translates into slightly longer work hours, just to make sure I can get my stuff done before I take my vacation for the year.

(Took another week off here...)
Last week, in separate visits to stores and Amazon.com (thanks Trent for hooking me up with Amazon Prime!), my Christmas shopping's done. I still need to wrap them up, most probably will do that while watching football tomorrow.

Anyway, just found out that I PASSED CAS 6!!! So, 6 downs, 3 more to go.

I've been reading more, as some of you might be able to tell with those quotes and all. Currently, I'm reading Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres. Hopefully to be able to get a few more books in before I start studying for CAS 7. Given CAS 7's reputation (most material among all CAS exams), I'm pretty sure I'll be spending much more time preparing for the exam. Also, given it's the exam to ACAS, a lot more is at stake. :-)

So, working on Monday, and I'll be done for the year! I've said 'time flies' too many times now, but really, it certainly does. In less than 2 weeks, we will be entering the year of 2010. That's mind boggling!

Again, it's been an amazing year. Just want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have supported me in any way.

Wishing all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Enjoy this video by Straight No Chaser - an a capella group with their version of 12 Days of Christmas

About Bees and DRIVING... Lotsa Driving

So, for my 4th of July weekend, I took an extra day off, on Thurs so that I can enjoy a 4-day weekend. I drove down to Richmond, VA to meet up with my uncle and aunt, who were visiting my cousin.

I thought leaving at 8am will allow me to most of the traffic, but I was half-right. I managed to beat the traffic in New York and most of New Jersey turnpike, but, it was about 3pm, when I was clearing Washington DC. The traffic in Northern Virginia was bad, really bad. I was pretty much crawling at 20-30mph for a good hour. So, my 8.5 to 9-hour drive turned into a 10 and a quarter hours.

It was great to see my uncle and aunt, and of course my cousin, and cousin-in-law and niece. I really enjoy hanging out in Richmond, VA. More like, hanging out with family. Too bad, I was suffering from a minor cold. Started feeling a parch-throat on Wed, stuffy-nose on Thurs, droopy-nose on Fri, and the rest were history... But, that didn't stop me from enjoying all the good food. All the grilling and roasting...

So, the next day, Independence Day, we went to the Botanical Garden. Weather was hot, but, we went there anyway. The garden is of good-size, but well-maintained. The colors were so breathtaking, and just the sight, sound and smell of nature were really overwhelming. And the lunch at the tea-house was great. Amazing food. The Baja beef salad I had was delicious. I took a bunch of pictures, and here there are...
Bees... pretty huge ones...
More of them...
The colors....
Looks artificial sometimes.
Flower... flower... ORCHID-Lah...
More flower... oops, i meant more ORCHID-lah
An interesting-looking orchid. Just like a pitcher-plant.
A giant hibiscus, like the size of a soccer ball.Dragonfly...
The conservatory, reflected upon the lake.
More bees...
And another...
Very last one...

So, that was fun. Then, we had a great dinner on Friday. Always do when I was in Richmond, VA. Always some kinda holiday or celebration. Grilled lamb... seriously...

On Friday night, we planned to watch some fireworks in the city, but, the event was canceled because of bad-weather. And, we drove to the other part of town, more like another town, hope to catch another firework display, but apparently, it was canceled as well. My poor niece was very disappointed, as all the anticipation to her first 'LIVE' firework display was called off.

The next day, we drove up to Washington DC, to attend a cook-out of my cousin-in-law's relative. Well, it was a great party. We spent the night at Westin Hotel, in Arlington, VA. It was a nice hotel. The next day, we drove to Silver Spring, MD for lunch. I found a highly-rated, well-reviewed dim sum place, and true to the words, the food was pretty good. And we waited about an hour for it. Probably, 'value-added' in that sense too.

Then, a good drive back to Shrewsbury, MA from there. We left the restaurant at about 1.30pm, with them heading south to Richmond, VA, while I head North. On paper, it should be 7 hours. But it turned out to be a 11.5 hours monster. Again, the driving through New York was actually not that bad. With my fastlane tag, I managed to skip all the queue of cash-paying drivers. But, the traffic came to a standstill on I-91, right outside of Hartford, CT. Apparently, a fatal accident had occured and the police closed down the highway, and it wasn't 3 hours later that I was able to get out of that. When I google-news the next day, I found out that it wasn't until 6 hours later that the freeway was fully reopened. It was like something I thought would only happen in some movies, where people turned off their car and walked on the highway. But, what can you do?
Looking back...
Looking ahead...
So, I got back to my apartment at about 1.10am. Starving and exhausted, I assembled a quick bite, took a quick shower, and went to bed at about 2.30am. Woke up 4 hours later to go to work...

Did I mention that my house-warming gift from my cousin survive the entire journey. It's a plant. I'll get the picture up soon.

Spring Break 2008...part 3 (Grand Canyon, AZ -> Las Vegas, NV : 02/27/2008 - 02/29/2008)

Part 3:

Day 6(02/27/2008):

So, the day started early, really early, because we needed to reach the airport at 9ish for Keng Yang's flight at 11.30am flight. Not too bad that the flight's at 11.30am. But too bad that we were 200+ miles away from Las Vegas McCarran International Airport. So, to be safe, very safe, we decided to take off from Grand Canyon, AZ at 4am. YES, 4 AM (Mountain timezone). So, we have more than 6 hours to make sure we make it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.


Also, it was a really cold morning. Checkout the snowflakes on my windshield.

Somehow, we managed to make it in slightly less than 5 hours because we didn't have to stop for anything, other than a little bit of gas. Because of driving, I missed the star-filled skies! As it was there wasn't much light pollution driving from Grand Canyon, AZ to Las Vegas, NV, star gazing must be great, and the sky was clear too. KENG YANG, I blamed you for this. And all this while, you were sleeping at the back. ;-) Just kidding.

So, we made it to the airport at 7.45am. So, it will be too long a wait for our friend, and we were pretty hungry, so we decided to go for breakfast and come back later. At first, we were thinking about some breakfast buffet, then, I remembered most of us have never been to IHOP, so, I decided to go to IHOP instead. And, after some turning around, we found one right next to the hotel we will be staying at for the next 2 nights, Stratosphere. So, after 4/5 cups of coffee, a huge omelet and a stack of pancakes, I'm all recharged. And others too had their stack of pancakes and whatnot, at about 9.30am, we went back to the airport to drop our 'burden' down. Did I mention where he is going? Oh, for a job interview. All the best!
Stratosphere tower.

Driving down Las Vegas Boulevard. MGM Grand.
New York, New York.
Bellagio, with the infamous fountain.

So, after that, we went back to our hotel and try our luck on getting an early check-in. After standing in-line for awhile, (I tried to self-check-in kiosk, but it didn't give me the non-smoking room option); hence, the waiting in-line. So, we got our room at about 11am.
Me, waiting in line.

SWEET! After some rest, we went to check out the casino. It was alright, but I don't like the 2nd-hand smoke. My throat was irritated. The reason we chose this hotel, north of the Las Vegas boulevard, was because of the great price for the promotion I found. Not only it was free 2nd night, there were 2 free show tickets and a bunch of coupons in the package. So, we got tickets for the show at night, and then, a couple of us started playing slots. At first, it was just some random slots that I played, then, I discovered the video poker and that was it, before we knew it, we spent like 3 hours playing it in a trance.

Then, it was about time for us to go to the show. It was American Superstars. A show tributes to some of America's best stars: Elvis Presley(wasn't there for our show), Michael Jackson, Tim McGraw, Rod Steward, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears, impersonated by some rather talented people. Especially, the Michael Jackson, the moves of the impersonator was amazing. The singing of Christina Aguilera and Tim McGraw impersonators were great too. The Britney Spears' wasn't bad at all. Rod Stewart too was alright.

After that, we decided to walk to Sahara to try out their buffet there because I saw it on an advertisement in the in-flight magazine and it was cheap or something. So, we went. It was like dorm food. (SO, never trust in-flight magazines.)! :P

Then, we went back to our hotel to call it a night. I guessed most of us were so tired that we fell asleep without taking shower. I managed to be the first one among us to fall asleep, quite an achievement for me since I had been having trouble to sleep early and sleep much.


Day 7(02/28/2008):

But, I woke up at 6am, after a shower, I went to play some slots again so that I can accumulate enough points to get a t-shirt. :-P I mean, it's a free t-shirt, and I was only like 10-15 points from getting it. So, $10 later and an hour later, I got the t-shirt. After that, I went to the gym to run off the carbs I'd been piling on from the buffets. And, we were planning to go to a few more buffets before the end of the trip. So, 3 miles later, I went back to our room and others were up and about. We went to the Stratosphere tower as planned. (We got free tickets as hotel guests get to access the tower between 10am - 2pm for free).
Some crazy rides on top of the tower.
View from the top of the tower.

After that, when it was time for lunch, we went out to the central of Las Vegas boulevard, with all the cool hotels and stuff to do all the touristy stuff. From my friends' recommendation, we went to this Japanese Restaurant, Todai for what we considered to be the best buffet of our trip. We enjoyed the sushi and stuff a lot.

The weather was great. Mid 70s in the afternoon.

We concluded that people here loves to read, as most of these magazines racks were empty.

Paris!More of Paris!
And Paris at Night. Viewing from Bellagio.

Then, we walked more. Because of the amount of food we store in our stomach, we were worn off easily. We went back to our hotel for a siesta. Then, Siew Gee and I decided to explore some stuff around Stratosphere. First, because we walked past these aqua-massage machines many times and were tempted by it. So, we finally gave it a try (we had those coupons too). In my opinion, it was not shabby, but, somehow, too noisy for my liking, one suggestion, prolly providing us a pair of headphones with some sort of relaxing music will be great. Then, on the way back, we passed by this oxygen bar, and out of curiosity, and didn't want to go back to our room and rot yet, we decided to give a try as well. The package was a neck and head massage and 30 minutes of inhaling pure oxygen. It was rather corny, having to inhale it through some special tubes, and stuff. Not sure whether it's a psychological effect or physical effect, but I did feel fresher after the session, not to mention $20 poorer, and also, sore from the massage.
From Bellagio, looking to the North of Las Vegas Boulevard.

Poooooofffffffff... The climax of the fountain show. (I had the entire video, but it's 300+ mb, can't seem to get anywhere to host it for me, and I'm too lazy to resize a video.... it takes forever.)
Siew Gee missed her show at Cirque Du Soleil...

Ahhhhhhh!!! The city of Lights...

But, it was rather fun. At night, we went to Bellagio, damn, the hotel was magnificent. We went there for the water fountain show. Then, for some reasons, we decided to walk from there to Excalibur, a good 20-minute walk, with a bunch of Latinos(nothing racist here, but that's who they are...) handing out call-girl cards and promise us a girl in 20 minutes. DAMN, that's even faster than Domino's delivering a pizza. Come on, Domino's, pick up your game.

Luxor... Love the architecture.
So, from Excalibur, we took a tram to Luxor, where we walked around a bit. As we couldn't stomach another buffet (pun intended). We decided to call it a night.

Day 8(02/29/2008):

Last day at Las Vegas, NV. Woke up at 7ish, and went running and soaked up some sun. Well, the weather was great, in the 60-70s. Then, we checked out at about 10.45am from our room, and then, went for the lunch buffet. It was rather good. Ranked 2nd among all the buffets we had on the trip.
Soaking up some sun. That was me.

So, we left for the airport at about 1pm. Because of some rather heavy traffic (Nascar weekend at Vegas I supposed), we arrived at the airport at about 1.30pm. So, for the entire trip, we(I) drove more than 1500 miles. Yup fifteen hundred plus miles.

We were kinda rushed but made it through the security and all for our 3pm flight with 15 minutes to spare. So, I managed to buy a shot glass and a deck of cards as souvenirs. I thing amazes me of this Las Vegas airport is there are slot machines right beside the boarding gates.
Amazing, isn't it?

The flight wasn't bad at all, even though I sat between a huge guy and a big guy. One's a student from U of Michigan - Dearborn, while the other is a Marine on leave, and will be a free man in a month. We had quite a lot to talk about, and it was eye opening to talk to a Marine. Hats off to you, man. He was only a few months older than I am, but, he already served 4 years in the Marines Corp. To make such a huge decision fresh out of high school, and to undergo all the trainings and all. Good man. We talked about a lot of stuff, joked a lot too. And finally, bid each other best of luck once we reach St. Louis, MO. We had a connecting at St. Louis, MO, just a 45 minutes layover.

We reached Ann Arbor at about midnight. Due to the heavy snow storm just before that, the drive back was INSANE. Everybody was going really slow because the condition was extremely bad. I was talking about 25-30 miles/hr slow. And even at that speed, I was having quite some hard time controlling the car. It took us about an hour and a half to drive from the airport to Ann Arbor. Along the way, we saw more than 5 cars skidded off the road, making some 180/270/360 degrees spins. I was so afraid driving, not that I was afraid that I will crash into another car (I was keeping a really safe distance from the car ahead of me), but more so that other cars will rear-end or side-swipe me.

Fortunately, we got back to Ann Arbor without any incident. Got back to my apartment at about 2am. Called home, and called it a night at 3ish. After transferring more than 3Gbs of photos and videos onto my computer.

Overall, it was a great trip! Within my budget, great memories, great companies, and great experience.

What's next? Skiing, skydiving and many more.

Spring Break 2008...part 2 (Yosemite, CA --> Grand Canyon, AZ : 02/24/2008 - 02/26/2008)

Part 2:

Day 3 (02/24/2008)
So, after another complimentary Continental breakfast, we left Oakhurst, CA for Las Vegas, NV via the Death Valley National Park. Because the famous CA-120 is closed for winter (one of the most scenic driveways in the US), we had to take a rather long detour in order to go to Las Vegas via the Death Valley National Park. According to both Microsoft MapPoint's and Google Map's directions, it was a 10-hour journey. The drive to the Death Valley National Park was rather uneventful, the sceneries were not bad at all. We saw a bunch of wind-turbines (modern windmills) along the way.

For lunch, we stopped at somewhere-I-forgot when we found a Denny's at about 1pm. Breakfast food for lunch is always good. :)Long drive, but this is what we see for most of the drive.

Death Valley National Park is famous for its well below sea level elevation, in fact, it is the lowest elevation in North America at -282 ft. Also, it features the Mojave desert and stuff. We saw some great sand dunes, and drove through dips and stuff. (Sorry, not really that well converse in geology.) Also, Death Valley is also famous for being hot. Really hot in the summer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley

Also, while driving to/along Death Valley, our GeoSci major friend Keng Yang spotted a horseshoe-vortices cloud formation.
I tagged this photo because it's a rare thing and don't want others to steal it... :P http://www.weatherscapes.com/album.php?cat=clouds&subcat=horseshoe_vortices
Keng Yang couldn't find a pole, so needed to look for a hole to settle his business instead. On his way back after his small business.
Cam-whoring while waiting for Keng Yang dealing is small business.

We continued our journey and reached the Death Valley National Park and found a designated scenic spot. So, we took some pictures, some rather interesting ones. It was rather windy, so I decided to put on my sport jacket.

I suggested (I think I did) people to leap/jump and I'll snap their pictures while they were in mid-air, a much better pose than the usual say-cheese-toothpaste-commercials-smile. So, it was all good when I was taking the pictures, perfect timing for most of them. :P
First, Pei Ying...
Then, who else...
Then, Siew Gee...aka Atsuki
Then, Ren Jie...

Then, when it was my turn to jump, oh my, Keng Yang and Ren Jie really wanted me to have some workout, had me jumping umpteen times, until Pei Ying finally got it on her second try.
Here are the evidences:
Too late...Another one...
Yet another too late...
And another...
And another again...
And another...

FINALLY!!!
Then, the harder group-jump photo. Other tourists must be thinking that we were crazy and all.
Pretty neat huh?

After about 20-minute of admiring the beautiful view of the basin lake, and enjoying strong wind breezing through our hair, we decided to continue our journey.
Because of unclear printed directions, we sorta overshot but managed to claw our way back when we saw a kinda 'unofficial' road sign pointing us to Las Vegas - 86 miles.

~"Country road, take me home, to the place I belong..."

Ren Jie and I decided that it was 'safe' to follow the unmarked, but paved road, as it was leading us to the right directions. It took us to a town, Pahrump, NV, where the highest building of the town is 2-storey tall, and it was ghetto-looking and stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pahrump,_Nevada
Love this picture. Ren Jie!!!
We stopped for gas, and Keng Yang, Pei Ying and Siew Gee almost wandered into a bad-looking bar while looking for the bathroom unknowingly. Luckily we spotted the sign of the bar and Ren Jie warned them just in time. After refueling, we continued our way, and hit the major road of Pahrump and it was much better.

So, after a rest stop, where I got more coffee, the sky was getting darker, and we had about 60 more miles to cover before reaching Las Vegas. As we had to go up and down the mountainous terrain all these while, often going up to elevations of more than 5000ft, it took more than an hour to cover the 60 miles.Elevation 4000 ft...
Sun is setting...

We reached our hotel at almost half-past eight. It's the Monte Carlo Hotel, on the Souther part of Las Vegas Boulevard! Checked in and ka-ching. We were set for the night.
We went to Luxor for dinner buffet. It was not as good as we expected. So, Luxor buffet, a NO-NO. But, we still do pretty well. At least I did, 3 full plates of meat and stuff, a plate with 5 different desserts and some fruits. Not to mention ice-cream and a cup of coffee.


We walked around and stuff, and called it a night, of course. The 3 lightbulbs gave Keng Yang and Pei Ying their own time and space, but asking them to go on their own. The 3 of us pretty much back-track to our hotel room and called it a night after everyone of us had a long shower. Really need to point out that the water pressure was really strong and I really enjoyed the shower. Best shower in a long long time.

We dozed off at about midnight, and the two lovebirds only came back later. Ehem...

Day 4 (02/25/2008):

We woke up slightly later today, at about 7.30am I think, after packing and all, and Siew Gee and I got our Starbucks coffee, we hit the road at about 9am. Next stop, Grand Canyon, AZ!!! Initially, according to our directions, one says it's gonna be 4.5 hours, while the other claims approximately 6 hours.
Crossing Hoover Dam... into the state of Arizona
Also, the weather was great... Some interesting cloud formations.

We did it in about 5 hours. Including a little bit of stopping for informations (maps) and gas. Of course, along the way, the lovebirds were busy dozing off, while the other three of us sang our hearts out to some old tunes we can remember. Fun fun fun! ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz........



So, we were able to check into our hotel early, at about 1+pm (different time zone, it's Mountain time here). We had a late lunch at a Wendy's nearby, and then, went back to our hotel room for some rest. Before we headed out again for the Grand Canyon National Park for the sunset.We saw snow on our way to Grand Canyon.

So, some pictures of the beautiful Grand Canyon and of course, the sunset.While waiting for the sunset... we took pictures of what else at Grand Canyon....
Magnificent...


Can't believe wherever we went, there were snow.
Group picture...
Staring at ... well, just turning away from the camera man... Keng Yang
How cute...
Quick... guess a professor... You know it, you know it... come on...
Sun setting...
Sun really setting...
Sun really really setting...
Told you so...

How cute... over the shoulder...
On the way back to our car, we saw a couple of rabbits.
Snow at Yosemite and now snow at Grand Canyon. At night, we did nothing much, other than watching tv and playing Big-2. Dominating the game of Big-2 was fun. :P

We went to bed rather early again because we were planning to catch the sunrise the next day.

Day 5(02/26/2008):
So, we woke up at about 6am and left for Grand Canyon National Park at 6.30am. As we checked from weather.com, the sun rise will be at 7.09am. While driving there, just a short 5-mile drive, the sky was kinda bright, and we thought we were gonna miss the sun rise, but apparently not.
Love the color...
This one looks even better... The shading, the color...
And, love the leng chai...
First glimpse of the sun rise...
A couple minutes later...
And later...
And even later...
And by popular demand...
Love the light shone on the lens and created the ray and the refraction.
It was freaking cold, well, relatively. It was still below freezing and the wind was really gusting. But, the sun rise was absolutely amazing, and thanks Siew Gee for sparing me your extra pair of gloves.
Mother nature at her grandness...
Yup... no doubt about that...

After the sun rise, we went back to our hotel for the breakfast. It was rather good breakfast. Bacon, cereals, biscuits and sausage gravy, yogurt, coffee, toast, eggs and stuff. I pretty much stuffed myself with it. Then, after a couple of hours of resting, we went back to Grand Canyon National Park again.
The weather was great, but the temperature was still not warm at all...
There, we did more sight-seeing, drove along the scenic driveway, stopping along the way. Snapping pictures of deers and elks.
~"Doe a deer, a female deer....
A GIANT ELK doing its business... That's our car hood...it's only like 10 ft away from us. And our friend Keng Yang suggested me to honk it. You crazy ar?!?!


And all those stuff. We even had our cute little picnic at the very tip of the South Rim of Grand Canyon.Our picnic spot...
I mean, having a snack while enjoying such breathtaking view... Can't be that...

We did some 'hiking' too. Nothing serious, just about half a mile, until we saw a sign that says where the trail leads to and warnings to people that are unprepared. It was a 9-mile trail that will take us all the way to the Colorado River. Maybe next time, as we said it so many times during the trip, we will come back in the summer. Right, guys?

So, we head back to our room at about 3pm, I think. Bored! I went to check out the swimming pool. Damn, the swimming pool was tiny. One kick off the side and I'm at the other end of the pool. Spent about 30 minutes floating on my back, just relaxing. Then, went back to join others and dominated the game of Big-2 again. Went out for dinner, and then, called it a night even earlier as we will be hitting the road at unearthly hour tomorrow. All for the sake of our friend Keng Yang.

So, that's part III.