Goodbye Boardwalk, Goodbye La Bahia, Goodbye Santa Cruz

In a blink of an eye, my 3 months work and travel at Santa Cruz is over. There is a lot that I love and hate about this place. A lot that I'm dying to get out off and a lot of things that I would miss. At the end of the day, I will look back and be grateful for all the experience, work, friendship and traveling I went through.

Work at the boardwalk was easy and boring. I did not really like it but its the job that gotten me here in the first place. I always wanted to do something else. So I guess my second job at Surf City was a good outlet. I look forward working there as much as I look forward to getting their free meal. Lol. Trash and cardboard time are horrible but that always marks the end of my day. After those 12 hours shift I would always walk around the beach and wharf to relax and listening to the sound of the waves, feeling the breeze and counting the stars above me. Guess this is what I'm gonna miss the most.
I realised that most of my off days were spent out of Santa Cruz. San Francisco is the place I visited the most. That was my main reason for choosing Santa Cruz actually. Its proximity to SF. Now that my work is ending, it will definitely be harder for me to visit lovely SF as often. But I do remember some off days spent in Santa Cruz. They were simple days like those that I head to the gym at UCSC, jog around Westcliff area and enjoy a wonderful that home cook meal at M&J 's.
La Bahia, my home for these months has really trained me on my sensitivity towards temperature. I am now a pro on switching the hot and cold faucet off intermittently to maintain a correct temprature while showering. Haha. I will also need to say goodbye to my dear microwave, one which I abused so much throughout my stay. My only means of cooking my meal.
Well, though I will leave all these behind. I am sure that the friendships made here will last for a long time even if not forever, thanks for making everything so hard, irritating, fun, exciting and memorable.

A final person to thank would be the W&T coordinator Sequoia without whom I will not even get to come here to Santa Cruz. Not forgetting Dave our housing coordinator for helping us out on all little nonsense too.
So adios work and travel 2008. Gonna keep this piece of memory for a long long time to come.

Experiencing the OC

The next 2 days in OC was spent visiting beaches, eating at restaurants and shopping at the mall. Well, that's what the lifestyle of the rich and famous is about after all right.

To satisfy Mixue's craving for Vietnamese food, we went to Brodard twice. Simply because the first time we went was right after clubbin and ppl are still suffering from the alcohol effects. Lol. Second time was much better but we certainly did order too much food. Haha.

Checked out the Crystal Cathedral. A very famous and huge church with glass panels as the structure causing it to give great reflections of the whole surrounding. Very beautiful architecture indeed.

The process and the outcome!

Luv It!

Also spent our time around the very famous Laguna Beach. The beach is so much smaller than the one in Venice. But its compact shops and beach makes the whole places a little more vibrant then its counterpart. True enough what we seen in the TV series can be found here. We were not lucky enough to see famous ppl. Ok, we were too into taking photos and enjoying ourselves that we forgot to look harder. Lol

We also check out a couple of shoppin mall. Actually 3 altogether. Fashion Island near Newport was really posh with all designer brands but its landscaping is just as nice. Irvine Spectrum was impressive with the Morrocan design and African feel. But I still enjoy South Coast the best as it is entirely indoors and definitely with more familiar brands. Watched Dark Knight too. Did not really liked it as it was too complicated and .dark'.

Thanks to John for taking us around. Really helped make our trip around the OC a success!

Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous

The agenda for this weekend is the lifestyle of the rich and the famous. Yup we are gg to the OC! But first we have to survive a 6 hour long drive from Santa Cruz to LA. Did a couple pit stop here and there. We get to try out Jack in the Box for the first time too. Skip the cheese nuggets. At almost 2 dollars for 3 pieces , gosh it is certainly not worth it.

The most interesting little town was Solvang. Still remember Shawn recommending me the place during her exchange. Just a small Danish town. Nothing really big but it is an interesting place for a pitstop.

Nutcracker!

Thanks to the LA traffic condition we reached Monterey Park only at around 8pm. Picked up poor Mixue who was there from half an hour ago as she has traveled from Vegas to LA to meet up with us. The traffic jam is the worst I ever seen in the US. Oh wait actually the one at Manhattan was worse. Still remember it took 2 hours for Teresa to drive me across the tiny tip of Manhattan. Met up with John at dinner that day. Asian noodles are s delicious.

Since it is a Friday night. To get in the TGIF mood we went clubbing at Hollywood. Everything here is expensive. From cover to drinks all double the price in SF. Really lifestyle of the rich and the famous. We partied hard. Thanks to John's recommendation of Tokyo Tea and Motherfucker. But it was fun seeing ppl rolling round the ground and falling on the dance floor. Ooppps..............

No photos from clubbin as they were all too kinky. Haha. Actually the truth is we forgot to bring our camera. Argh!

All About the Flowers and The Rock

Started off the day with a really sumptuous meal. Went back to the dim sum restaurant that Vince and Thang took me to a week ago. It was really nice. We all ate so much this time around that the final bill came up to 100 dollars! OMG! Walked around the South SF neighbouhood a little to digest the food. Fooling around at the playground is so so fun!
Pick up Miss Joyce at the 'Cowtrain' station and drove to the Twin Peaks for a view of the city. It was quite foggy that day but we still manage to catch a glimpse of the city with the Bay bridge. The GGB is totally covered by the fog. The wind is really really strong and chilly up there. We decided to hide in the car and film crazy vids as the others were exploring the place. Lol.

The visit to the Golden Gate Park was good. The Conservatory was really beautiful. Took lots of pics and my goodness some ppl actually fell down on the flowers. Smashing them flat. Poor flowers. Serve thenm right for messing with me. Whahahahahah.

Doing the grass thing again. Reminiscence of Capitola Village

The Japanese Tea Garden is also really good. The architecture are really relevant. If only they have cherry blossom then everything will be perfect man. We did not manage to explore the whole place as we had to rush off to the wharf for our tour to The Rock.

The whole Alcatraz experience was simply marvellous. No wonder the night tour gets sold out so fast everytime. The whole experience seem more realistic when the sun goes down. They also have much better customer service too. I still remember how rude some of the people at the Statue of Liberty were. This time around in SF everybody was just nice an pleasant. Those ppl from the Statue of Liberty National Park should really learn from these folks here at Alcatraz.

View of the Bay Bridge, Coit Tower and Transamerica Pyramid

So make sure you go on this tour when here in SF. The whole prison cell experience is so haunting. And you can say that u've been on the movie set of The Green Mile too. Haha. It is funny how they name their walkways from names like Times Square, Michigan Avenue and CD Street. The view of The City from the island at night is simply magnificent. How I really wish one day I could stay in SF.
We bid farewell to Mixue that night as she continued her voyage to Vegas. The rest of us made our way back to Santa Cruz after a nice dessert meal at Ghiradelli again! Really should try something else next time around.

A Visit to the Wine Valley

Alex has gotten us 4 free passes which means we only need to buy 1 tix for the tour!I'm more exited bout seeing a vineyard up closerather than learning bout wine. :p We stopped by Krispy Kreme for some donuts on the way. Bought like 2 dozens of them. So many flavors to choose from. Finished like one dozen before it was even evening time. Haha.

When we finally arrive at Domaine Chandon, I realise that the vineyard are really not as impressive as those we saw in the picture. Wrong spot maybe. But the whole establishment itself is very nicely decorated. The winebar is really cool and nice.
The tour around the place was just alright as we get to see little bit of everything. Did not get to venture into the huge Vineyard. Sigh. The underground place where they store the wine for fermentation was very impressive. Like tons of barrels inside a huge huge basement. I can still remember clearly the smell of the place now.
After and informative tour, we got to taste the wine. Cannot believe that a lot of us are bad at wine. Most of our face was as red as tomato even only after a few glass. OMG! So we chatted and waited for a while before we finally left the place to go back to SF for some shopping at Union Square.

Dinner at Richmond was really really tatsy, cheap and funny as we see Thom sturggling to finish the steamed chicken legs his order. Lol

Speedboat Racing.......Wooohoooo

This day marks the last day of the whole nature getaway trip. We got up pretty late in the morning as the only agenda on our list is to see the lake. There is however, lots of ways to see the lake. Drive, take the gondola or go by boat. After a long long discussion, we decided to do it the speedboat thing. The most expensive way, but it turns out to be a really exciting experience.

The search for a speedboat that accommodates 9 ppl turns out to be a hassle. We went to the first rental company just to find out that they rented out all their boats. Bummer. Should just let us know beforehand when we called, wasted our time driving all the way there. Luckily we get it right at the second rental company.

It is time to sail!

Off we go to the Lake. Everybody took their turn to drive the boat. I think i drove the least. Scared of ramming the boat into some rocks underneath as the insurance only covers anything above the water line. The whole thing was so fun especially when they race at full speed. Haha. My ass was so painful from the bumping though. Here's a tip, the front is really bumpy but that's the best part. Haha. Shouting from the boat is so fun!

What I did on the boat

Act Cool!

Relax

Drive
Hooking up

Err... I dunno what I was up to

After the boat, we bid farewell to my roomies as they need to go for bungee jump. A group of us decided to skip due to the expensive price and of course too afraid to try. Haha. So we explored further up north to the lake. Only to find that it is not really beautiful. We couldn't seem to find those picturesque spots. Sigh. We however, did a really funny dance video. Tsk tsk.

We drove Mixue to Sacramento after the trip. As usual we stopped by a Walmart to get our groceries. Upon reaching Sacra, we kinda find out that the place is really just a capital. Everything looks dead. Now this is more like a ghost town. Lol. That's the really scary part. Its totally well maintained but there is not a single sight of human soul. We bid our farewell to her as she checked in the hostel. A huge old Victorian mansion.

We flee the ghostly capital town back to Santa Cruz that night as we got to work the next day. Oh wait they got to work. I've got another 2 days off. Gonna head down to my beautiful SF again!