and this was wat i took during one of the days where we had a thunderstorm...

yes it's as scary as it looks... this is wat u call a thunderstorm...

photos of our VCU dorm, the place we called home for the past 3 months...

enter the hall and take the lift to the 18th floor...

come out from the lift and go down the corridor...

until u come to room 1806...

and ta-da!!!!! the room where me and ching set up our pig sty for 3 months... hahahah...

and den we have the laundry room...

and the toilets...

and becoz eating out is really expensive, and we got really sick of western and mexican food aft awhile, we started cooking our dinner everyday...

and it was supa fun, esp when everyone cook a few dishes and we juz put everything tgt and sit down and eat...

these are all the cheapest ingredients we could find in the supermarket, becoz groceries are really expensive!! we can spend up to USD30 per person on groceries that will only last us 1 week or so... -_-'''

and on days when we feel richer...

and on days when we feel poor and lazy...

haha... and this was my life for the past 3 months in VCU dorm... great frens, good food and total independence...

US of A has been a great place to be at for 3 months, but will not be a good place to live in...

it's inevitable for all of us to start comparing every single aspect of USA to Spore...

and after awhile, you start to realise all the country has is wealth. and tat is all there is to it.

the country is not clean at all, their buildings are old and unfurnished, their roads are like rough terrains... and why am i not surprised that despite the fact that she's supposed to be one of the richest countries in this world, and yet everynite i see homeless ppl roaming the streets asking for money???

US of A is not as wonderful as she has been portrayed on TV. call it media manipulation (or mebbe i was juz too naive) but many things i see there shocked and surprised me.

I always tot, becoz Americans are perceived to be 'open-minded' and so not conservative like the Chinese, they would oso be more flexible and less rigid when it comes to doing things. after all, isnt tat wat singaporeans always complain abt? tat the system here is too rigid and suffocating?

and to think i have always been wrong abt that.

when they say americans are open-minded, they meant sexually and physically, they never meant mentally and emotionally. how could i ever have tot that their open-mindedness applies to all aspects????

they are sooooooooo narrow-minded you'll be shocked by some of the things they actually say. for your information, they noe nothing abt the rest of the world. their world and lives revolve around US of A, and in some even worst cases (i have met those, mind you) their lives revolve only around the city they live in. ask some of them where new york is, and where san francisco is, they wun even noe new york is in the east and san francisco is in the west.

ask them abt the iraq war and u see blank faces.

so i wasnt tat much surprised when i realise they noe nuts abt the asian countries or european countries. and it was at this point that i'm suddenly grateful to the government here and the media here. thank god they forced me to study geography or history. thank god our media tv broadcast not only tv shows from singapore, but oso fr msia, fr china, fr taiwan, fr hongkong, fr japan, fr korea, fr USA.

becoz all they've ever been exposed to are things fr their own country.

how can anyone even be so ignorant abt the rest of the world????

like, hello????????? ur lives dun revolve ard u and ur country ONLY.

there are other homosapiens living on this little globe called EARTH with you.

and all those aside, they're really self-centred and arrogant.

they think they speak better english den us, and they think their english is superior to ours.

oh wait, they dun think that. according to them, they KNOW that.

and i gave it to them, the first time we mentioned this issue. becoz sure, how can singaporean english even beat the american english, even tho the singaporeans haf been learning english since young, since forever!

but not until i saw them spell Wednesday "Wendsday".

not until i saw my supervisor leave a note for me in totally broken english (it's worse den singlish i swear).

not until i mentioned one hot afternoon that "i'm feeling super lethargic now" and an american guy ask me wat does 'lethargic' mean.

not until during a random conversation that we somehow ask the americans if they noe how to spell 'exhilarated' and they gave us the blank look.

they are all University students, mind you.

sure, we dun speak perfect english too, we speak singlish but at least we write in more fluent english den them, at least we dun make terrible spelling mistakes like 'Wendsday' and even if we do it's prob coz we do it on purpose when sms-ing and not becoz we have no idea how to spell it properly at all.

and they can get oh-so-arrogant over all these. it's really irritating when you see some americans looking down on asians, and den u think, 'there's nothing superior abt them aft all'. in terms of language or general knowledge we beat them hands down.

oh, in terms of intelligence too. i'm sorry to be so frank with facts, but they arent exactly the smartest ppl on earth.

oh and by the way, they have nothing to look forward to in life. they dun yearn to do things to make their life more fulfilling at all. according to them "oh, if me and my friends can meet every night to drink, that's good enough for me", which is a GENERAL consensus, not an individual one...

if u're able to look past all these, the arrogance, the self-centredness, the perpetual 'haa! i'm so much more superior' look on their faces, den sureeeeeeeee, they can sometimes be really nice ppl.

except for BIG MEANIE DAMON.

that's our area supervisor for congo. he's mean, he's rigid, he's discriminating against us, he's stoopid (no really, he is), and he's incapable.

oh, and not to mention really FAT.

everyday the CONGO singaporean gers will think of different things to do juz to get back at him. hahaha very childish, but when u wanna handle a childish person, the only way to get to it is thru childish means.

there was this really fine day where all of us called in sick juz to make him have to solve the lack of manpower problems.

yes, he is really really really really mean for all of us to do that.

and according to him "i noe i'm an asshole, but i like being one".

yes, he said that. and he's already 27 years old. Old on the outside, and yet so immature and childish on the inside.

ahhh, this feels really good to get everything out of the system. for 3 months, the congo singaporean gers have been at his mercy. seriously, working for him is a torture. *pui

the themepark has politics going on, surprise surprise...

apparently as long as it's an organisation u'll always see politics, backstabbing etc etc...

but one thing i really admire abt the americans, are the fact that they can really express their emotions and feelings easily. i grew up in a really conservative chinese family, where we dun express our love for each other by hugging or kissing. we dun tell each other straight in the face 'i love you'. we show our care for each other by naggin at each other. and yet in US of A, i see the children hugging their parents, i see teenagers hugging their parents, i hear them say 'i love you' to each other the whole time i was there...