Trip to the States - Day 2

Just got back to Jay's place from a 3-day NYC trip. Sorry to say but will need some time to organize photos and publish them. And also because of jet-lag and loads of walking, am bloody tired now so only writing out part of the trip.

08:30 South Station, Boston
Got on a bus to New York. This is a Chinese bus company, and is probably the cheapest way to get to NYC from Boston. According to various sources, the train Amtrak to NYC costs about $60, and takes 3 hours. This bus costs $15 one-way and takes about 4 hours. Think this is definitely a sensible choice.

12:30 Canal Street (China Town), New York City
Arrived at Manhattan after a 4-hour hectic journey, with one break at McDonald's on the way. I was shocked by the scale of the China Town. There are a lot of signs only in Chinese, and even the sales are only shouting in Chinese. For a second or so, I thought I was in a market in Yuen Long!

Spent a full-hour looking for the way to Penn Station (at 31 St and 7th Ave) to meet WJ. He is a very close colleague of mine, who happened to be working as a consultant in New York this month. He was our guide for the first 2 days of our NYC trip.

Really tired now, to be continued.

Continued (written on 3 June)
Let's start with a little picture.


From top left, clockwise:
Me with the coach, little Italy in NYC, first taste of the New York subway,
seeing WJ in NYC!

After meeting up with WJ, he started touring us around in central Manhattan. We started with Reuters office, Times Square, lunch at a small Spanish canteen, Rockefeller Plaza, JP Morgan Chase buildings, the Grand Central train terminal, and United Nations head quarter. Unfornately by the time we arrived, the UN head quarter has already closed.


From top left, clockwise:
WJ and me under Reuters office, Times Square, No. 2 & 3 United Nations Plaza, Grand Central Terminal, a market on one of the avenues.

We then took the subway to the east side of Central Park and hope to visit either Guggenheim or the Metropolitan Museum. Unfortunately (again), Guggenheim had scarfolding all over it, and the Met was closing early because of Memorial Day Sunday. Damn!

So, to make ourselves happy, we went into Central Park to enjoy the lovely sun!


Jay taking a nap and the rest with the cones.


I think this one is a nice picture. It was shot when we came out from a subway. I was hoping to take the yelloe sunset, but this lady just appeared at the exit when I pressed the button.

We then headed to Chelsea and West Village area. It was beautiful, with the little houses, amazing sunset. We finished our evening with a dinner at a restaurant playing live Jazz.


European style (or is it?) house at Chelsea, the river side, the beautiful sunset, the restaurant where we ate.

After saying goodnight to WJ, Jay and I took the subway to the Queens area, which is where our hostel is. It's a small 2/3 storeys house, with 20+ rooms, operated by Hong Kong people (I think). It's not the best, but it's damn cheap!

Trip to the States - Day 1

11:00 Streatham, London
Got up and started packing. Made breakfast and a little bit of Winning before leaving home.

14:51 Streatham Hill
With the help of Journey planner on Transport for London website, worked out that the best route from Streatham to Heathrow should be:
Streatham Hill -> Clapham Junction -> Feltham by train, then Feltham -> Heathrow by bus.

Inside a Southern train to Clapham Junction

The suitcase is all wet because of the pissing rain. See you in a week time, rainy London.

Wandsworth Common in rain.

Feltham Station, an official connection point to Heathrow (apparently).

The bus indicator for Heathrow. You don't see that very often.


16:05 Heathrow Airport
Arrived at the airport surprisingly early. Was thinking to have a drink before boarding. Then had a dilemma between all those cafes at the waiting lounge. Well, as I'm heading to the US, I thought I shouldn't go to Starbucks. So went for Cafe Italia, had a Pain Au Chocolat and a Hot Chocolate. Then boarded the American Airline AA 155 to Boston.

From bus stop to terminal.

In front of this gate at Terminal 3, I had to see my bobo flying home and leaving me staying in London. This time I'm leaving and no one is crying.

The transcalator to Gate 22.


18:05 Take off
The flight is quite full. I was sitting at an aisle seat at the second last row of the flight. This is a shit seat because it's right next to the toilet, and the cabin crew (a bunch of women) were chatting behind all the way. Perhaps that's why I was sitting there, and no one was sitting next to me.

Snack Box. This came after the dinner. The dinner was a total nightmare - beef with hashbrown, coleslaw, chocolate cake, a cold lump of bread.

Contents in the snack box.


21:00 Outside Boston Logan Airport
Got asked a few question at the immigration desk, as expected. He even asked who I know in Boston, and where I knew him from.

Jay picked me up from the airport, and then caught a shuttle to the subway station - Airport. The subway system is surprisingly old and messy. A brief search says it was built in 1895!! Well, at least the oldest lines I suppose.

Outside the airport

Looking at the subway tracks from the bridge.

The subway train. Look at how "unattractive" it is.

The track, which you may notice it's almost level to the platform.



22:00 Dropped off luggage and headed for dinner
Went to drop my luggage at Jay's place before going to dinner at a Thai place. Ordered a fried flat noodle with pork, super spicy. And Jay told me that in here everyone who looks younger than 40 needs to show ID when buying alcohol. Luckily they accepted my UK driving licence.

Jay, his food and my beer.

Jay's studio.

Few pictures

Found the following while searching for useful information about my trip.

Weather forecast of Boston. Please note the descriptions: T-Storms, Shower, A Beauty, Hot Stuff, & No. Shore. Excellent.



Map showing Boston and New York, the two cities I'm going to. Note Springfield in between (the home town of the Simpsons family), and New London.

Laughter

A friend of mine appeared on the TimeOut London magazine, for a leisure group that he went to last month. It's called "Laughter Yoga". Please see here for the article.

I always think that laughter is suspicious. There're a lot of research about this subject, and many suggest that laughters can improve health. In the above article, it mentioned an event - Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic (wikipedia description). I wonder what joke they had in the boarding school to make people laugh for half a year! Anyway, if it's real, then it means laughters can be disastrous in the extreme cases.

Went out yesterday with the CIBC team. As expected, it was a great evening, with nice drinks, nice chats, and fantastic food. The place is called Ladbroke Arms, near Notting Hill and Holland Park stations. I was a bit drunk after 2 pints of ale, glass of white wine and 2 glasses of red, and it was late (~23:30) so didn't want to go all the way to Streatham on my own. AW and LL kindly invited me to stay at their place in west London. So I had the chance to meet their cat Parker and their apartment. I wish I could afford to have my own property.

Snooker

Played snooker tonight.. Not a good evening in terms of snooker performance. Missed a lot of easy pots and left KC a lot of chances. Finally lost 2-4 tonight. In addition to last week 2-3 defeat, aggregate is so far 4-7, in spite of all previous matches between us.

As I was such a bad loser, I didn't take the 22:06 train home, nor the 22:36. Ended up on the 23:06 train. It travelled to Elephant and Castle, then had some problems with the train ahead of us. Waited for at least 20 mins, the train eventually needed to go back to Blackfriars (yes, it went backward!), went on another track before heading south again. Finally it arrived at Streatham at 00:07, and I arrived at the bus stop at 00:12. SHIT, MISSED THE LAST BUS!!!

Being a small Chinese, new to Streatham region, I did not feel comfortable enough to walk home from the station at all. Was heading for a brighter street, but saw some youngster on the same street, wandering, clearly had nothing to do and quite obviously looking for targets. So I took a black cab, and the journey took about 2 minutes.

Sad, ain't I?

Another day, another week

Another week without comments. I know I haven't put as much effort as before on writing my blog, but still, you can leave some bulls**t.

What I've learnt today:
1. My fried rice isn't too bad.
2. Don't speak just for the sake of speaking.
3. Monday trains are less crowded, possibly because people are more reluctant to go to work


News of the day:
1. 3 out of a family of 5 were dead, a 3-year-old girl will never be able to move her arms and legs again, after an Israeli's airstrike against Gaza City: here

2. Woman being prosecuted for putting rubbish into recycling bins: here

3. Montenegro has announced independence after referendum: here. But Serbia & Montegnegro are playing in the World Cup in less than a month time, mm...

Picture of the day:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday

The "Ray Wong"s

I've found a lot of "Ray Wong"s in google. The ones appear on the first page are quite cool, as one of them have been making short films, winning awards with BBC. Another one who is also registered at blogger.com has recently finished a novel and you can buy it from Amazon.com.

There's also a magician based in Vancouver, "Ray started magic at the age of eleven by working in a magic shop after school. He worked for the McDonald's Restaurant Corporation for five years performing eight shows a week for their parties."

And you can only find me easily in google with "tummywong".

Transitional Period

I look at the coming two months as a transitional period.

From life in UK to life in HK.

I moved on last Saturday, with the help from my brother, to his place. Don't mind sleeping in the living room at all, as long as his flat mates are ok with it. Also shipped a lot of stuff to HK on Saturday. Hope they will all arrive safely as it contains a lot of worthy stuff + memories.

I used to "commute" for 3 mins (or 40mins to Edgware Rd office), whereas now at least at hour. 20 mins on foot, 20 mins on train, 20 mins on bus. But, amazingly, I've been arriving at the office much earlier than before. This week so far I wake up at 8:15 every morning, which is quite good in my standard.

In addition to this, I've been working hard at work. No more procrastination Ray, real work! Otherwise you won't succeed, in anything.

Also now home feels more like home because there are people, and it's much larger. A rough estimate is this flat is 15 times larger than the studio I lived in last week.

Many happened this week around the World. One thing to note is that this month marks the 40th anniversary of the start of China's cultural revolution under Chairman Mao. It's something that shouldn't have happened, and should never happen again. This page from BBC has some interesting view on it - see here. My favourite remark is about foundamental hatred between human beings.

Also this week I've finished the book about Chinese history (the book is very brief). Unfortunately, as it was published in mainland China, it's biased towards the Communist Party. The last sixth of the book is about history in the last 80 years, about how Communist Party rose from nothing, and eventually took over KuoMinDang to establish the central government of PRC. One thing the book mentioned was Communists used the reason "not allowing one party to rule the government" to kick out KuoMinDang. But it looks like the case for themselves in all the years after the civil war.

Enough for now, and sorry about the bad English and poor explanation. Very tired now and don't want to spend hours to refine it.

Good things about working at the office

Having been a consultant for almost a year, it's nice to back to the office to work with real colleagues. Here is a shortlist of good things I can think of now:

1. Indoor 5 or 6 a-side football, sponsored by company, once a week.
2. No one hates me. Or no one asks why I am here.
3. The office below us used to be Jazz FM (now changed their name to Smooth FM). They had shit loads of Jazz CDs to get rid of, and asked us to grab the ones we like. My colleagues got about 50 for himself and me.
4. Lunch at Hyde Park, under sunshine, discussing interesting topics, watching girls with bikini sunbathing.
5. Got chance to walk between station and office, wheereas before I only needed to walk for 1 min to get to the client's office.

Bad side:
1. Hot. There's no air-conditioning.
2. Far from home, but I am moving tomorrow anyway.

Moving

Have been very busy this week, packing, packing, packing, and packing. Also needs to arrange transport + change address etc etc.

Booked ticket to Boston (return!) for end of May. Look forward to seeing an old friend over there. Also the first time to go to the US. I don't like their government, particularly their foreign policy, but I'm sure there will be a lot to see.

Bobo, I miss you, and I love you.

News of the day + 成長之Pre-大學篇

News of the day: Here
Can't believe I had never heard about this, and missed it.

成長之Pre-大學篇

九年前我是一個白痴，很慶幸我現在不是。

當初決定赴英，一半出於逃避，另一半想找一個轉變，這決定對我成長的影響是當時意料之外的。

剛到?時，因中三有外籍?師授課，對自己的英語會話能力充滿信心。結果發現，根本不是那麼一回事，除了聽得懂一小部分外，會說的只有"Yes"、"No"、"Thank you"、"Sorry"，和需要如?時問的問題。

在英第一年，住的是寄宿學校裡的"Dormitory"（Yahoo! 字典譯作"團體寢室"），大房子裡二十多間小睡房只用矮木板隔開，高個子可以輕易看到隔鄰的傢伙在幹甚?。睡房沒有門，只有類似窗簾的東西保障有限的私隱。就在這樣的環境下，我開始學習怎樣和不同性格、國籍、年齡、文化、背境的人相處，學習韜晦、忍讓、結他、和怎樣才不會被打。

兩年後結識了寶寶，才知道我在別人眼中很惡、不討好。她讓我學會了怎樣去愛人和被愛，亦令我看清楚了自己。

A-Level 的兩年亦是我開始尋找目標的時期，開始為考入著名大學而努力，給混混愕愕的少年時代劃上句號。

單程票

This entry (apart from this sentence) is in Chinese, well, quite obviously. Tough if you can't read.

過去九年寒暑，無數的喜樂和哀愁、歡笑和憤怒、成功和失敗、痛苦、艱辛、愚昧、無知，被人輕視、忽略，到被人尊重、以至仰慕，從偏遠小村到煩囂都市，由一個普通學生，到普通員工，是時候了。

家
從前總是拿一張雙程機票飛到這邊，假期用回程的那一半返家。隨著每年留英的時間漸長、擁有的東西漸多，歸屬感也增加了。家的定義開始變得含糊，父母、祖母和其他親人仍在港，但同樣這裡也有我喜愛的人和留戀的物。

記得初中的時候，哥每次回港放假，他會說：「要買那樣那樣返過去。」我曾想為何他會用「返」去形容到英國呢？難度那邊已變成他的家了嗎？

直到我在異地生活了好幾年，發現原來需要建立歸屬感才會活得開心，不然每天看香港雜誌、到唐人食店進餐，永遠融入不了主流社會，只會每天倒數甚麼時候回港渡假。

如是這，終於在兩年前第一次用單程票飛來這個從來也不屬於我的地方，其後在這邊買雙程票回港。方向變了，原因不是我不會離開，亦不是這裡已變成我家，而是不知下次回家會是何時。

有一天跟媽媽通電，提到我要拿某東西回家，她問為甚麼要帶那東西回港。明顯地我倆當時對「家」的定義各有不同，當我更正時，她說：「你不是把你現在住的那裡當作家吧？」

我不排除有很多人因在異地居住久了，漸漸地把「家」移離本來出生或長大的地方，但我沒有。大約三個月前，我知道，是時候回家了。

昨日我買了另一張單程票。

成長
九年前我是一個白痴，很慶幸我現在不是。(待續)

Rooney

I won't even try to hide my admiration of this guy. He's a genius, he's quick, he's strong, he's good with the ball, he can strike, he can hold, he can dribble, he's aggressive, he's only 20 year-old, but he's injured. Having lived in England for many years, I've been infected by the passion of football. Since China haven't qualified for this year's World Cup finals, so I am going to be an England supporter. But, this guy got injured last Saturday, which I think England will have very little change to win it now.

The reason I say that is not because England do not have good players. But I think these established players do not have the "fearless" that you find in Rooney. I said when England played Uruguay in the last friendly, I saw Joe Cole doing tricks to the Uruguayan. Apart from that, the others were only trying to pass it as safely as they can, no tricks, no aggressive passes. Even Joe Cole's tricks weren't that agressive. Is that a result of the massive pressure they get from English people? I don't think that's the whole reason.

But the fact is, Rooney is injured, and he's very likely to be ready for the finals. It's a blow to the team, to this country, and to him as well. Yes he's still young, but David Beckham, Lampard will be too old to play 4 years later, even Gerrard and Owen will be 30 year-old by then.

Let's face the reality and start planning the alternatives. Personally I don't like Peter Crouch at all. He'll be completely useless when playing against other national teams in the World Cup, people will break his leg in the first match. I think Defoe, James Beattie, or even Dean Ashton will be possible candidates. Darren Bent has only shone for one year and not enough experience on big occasions (well, same for Ashton actually). Vassell and Andy Johnson can be considered too. Or push Joe Cole forward, then bring in Aaron Lennon (even more inexperienced, but that's alright, he only needs to run).

Enough bullshit, let's see what Eriksson will say on 8th May.

4/5, 1:41am BST
Watched Matrix: Revolution tonight. Never watched it before, only heard the story line or the concept from someone else. But, oh my god, the computer graphics were so so good. The robots, flying ships, evil machines, agent Smith x 1000000, all look so real. Now I know why it's a great movie / series.

Also watched a short documentary called "Fans United". It was about how businesses have forced football fans to betray the clubs that they love with full hearts, and go away to set up their own clubs. Few years ago, the company that owned Wimbledon FC decided to re-locate the club to Milton Keynes, 70 miles, which they think they can generate more revenue. The local Wimbledon fans were gutted, and went on to set up the new AFC Wimbledon football club, run by fans. It's been proven a success as it kept being promoted and having a sizeable fan base week in and week out.

Another example is FC United of Manchester. It is set up by fans of Manchester United, which were taken-over by the American Glazer family last summer. The new owner had to borrowed most of the 700milliion pounds that it spent, and now transferring the cost by putting up the price of season tickets by more than 12%. Fans who felt hard done by set up this small club FC United, and now playing in a league which is 10 below the Premiership (it's called North West Counties League Second Division, see here).

What amazing is, Barcelona FC is another club that is owned by fans!!! Fans have the right to vote for club decisions, including which manager to hire. Hope the two clubs mentioned above can someday achieve what Barcelona FC has done, and beat their original clubs.

Some pictures

Sigh, it was not the final browsing day...

Pictures from trip to the west:

Using the digital camera

A statue in Bath, and visitors
The church next to the Roman bath, the angels are climbing up to the top
The two of them in front of the pump room. The sun was great!

Using a traditional SLR with films:
Inside Cardiff castle, looking at the Millenium Stadium
A male peacock looking for food/partner
A male peacock met photographers/partner

Final browsing day

BBC make very good documentaries. Previously I mentioned about the one that talks about faith, comparing science to different religions. Tonight, BBC is showing "When Lineker met Maradona".

A brief introduction to these two people if you are not a football fan.

Lineker is one of the best strikers England has produced in the past 20 years. He started at Leicester City, then Everton, Barcelona, Tottenham Hotspurs and finished his career in Japan with Nagoya Grampus Eight. He retired from international football with 80 caps and 48 goals, one fewer than Bobby Charlton's England record (although Charlton took 26 more caps to score his one extra goal). He also earned the nickname "Mr. Nice Guy" with his record of not having got cautioned (not a single yellow card, let alone red card) for a single time throughout his long player career.
Maradona is regarded by many people as the best footballer in the world ever. The most famous achievement is probably how he won the World Cup in 1986 for Argentina single-handedly, which in the quarter final against England (which Lineker played in), he scored his famous goal using the "Hand of God".

20 years after that quarter final, the two men meet again. After their playing era, one man has become a successful TV pundit and sports broadcaster, and the other has been struggling with his cocaine problems and also had two heart-attacks that nearly killed him. In the run-up to tonight's program, this is a little warm up - here.


All information comes from wikipedia, see Lineker and Maradona.

May day monday

This year's May Day comes in the perfect time for me to rest. Well actually any bank holiday would be good.

I went to tea with relatives, before going to snooker with SL, AW and H. A very satisfying performance for myself. Then went to Kilburn for Sizhuan food. Bobo, I would love to bring you there. But it's certainly not the best, because of the environment. Lots of people smoked in nearby tables, and it's quite hot (in terms of temperature) to eat spicy food. Well done to SL, FL and myself for eating the chillis.


Just read the news about Iran sending a letter to the UN, critisising the US of refusing to rule out missile attacks on Iran nuclear plans. Personally I do not know what Iran's nuclear development's purpose is, but how can the US threaten even to use nuclear attacks on other countrie's nuclear plan without confirming its purpose? They did once against Iraq when they claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but where were the weapons in the end? What they did was kicking Saddam out, getting controls of the oil fields, and then left the country in the current state - suicide bombing everyday, and on the edge of civil war. Even before the war against Iraq, people were saying that the next target for US would be Iran, which is another country with huge resource of oil.

US citizens, we can't vote for or against who become your president. But this man/woman has a lot of influence on the world given the economic power of the US. People get killed because of his/her decision on e.g. fair trading, global warming, and war. Please vote the person who will make us all good, not only you.

I know some of you tried - see SORRY EVERYBODY.