We visited US in April. I had the honor of being the Itinerary planner and as usual, I had to pack many destinations within the short span of 16 days – San Diego, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Los Angeles, San Francisco and even Hawaii. Sad to say, the flight to Hawaii was cancelled on the very day we were supposed to fly. ATA (the airline company) closed down due to bankruptcy issues. In the end, we had to drive from LA to SF and then back to LA again (that should be the distance from Singapore to Thailand and then back to Singapore again). Maybe slightly further…
This was our luxurious 3.5 L car which we drove throughout our trip. It’s a cool babe with enough power to cheong the US highways at 90 miles/hr (yes! the Americans used miles, not our familiar km/hr). Safety comes first!
And our dear NeverLost which never failed to provide us with the most helpful navigation. It was our saviour on many occasions. Croaky loved his Panda Express so badly that he GPSed it everywhere we went. Chinese food!
Buying gas (Americans call petrol “gas”) was 100% self-service. And they had their strange system of pay first and refund you later if you over-paid. It was a hassle to go in and out. And Croaky overfilled the tank on one occasion.
I never fancied zoos but Croaky said this one we must go. It was supposed to be world famous.
Pandas were big attractions in the zoo. The queue to see them was unbelievably long. And the Americans love all things panda. Even the fridge magnets sold in the souvenir shops had pandas as their mascot!
A close snap of Polar Bear! Isn’t he cute? I think its a “he”.
And Grizzly Bears at San Diego Zoos. They are supposed to be native American bears not seen in other parts of the world. Pity we didn’t see the real wild bears at Yosemite National Park. These bears would snatch food from you! And their rubbish bins were supposed to be “bear-proof”.
Our last destination at San Diego – the monumental Hotel de Coronado. This is the equivalent of Raffles Hotel in Singapore. And it was a breath-taking sight to drive through Coronado Bridge! Let me figure out how to upload and embed my video in future…
Rest of the trip to be continued at a later date…
I decided to add a new category called “Donna Bistro” and the red bean soup shall go into this place.
The above was my latest experiment; Croaky commented this tastes superb.
Here’s how you get creamy red bean soup.
1) Wash and drain 1/2 bowl of red bean
2) Boil the red bean in 4-6 bowls of water until the red beans are soft (approx 2 hrs)
3) Add in 2 small pieces of dried orange peel
4) Throw in a large cube of rock sugar (or add sugar to taste)
5) Blend everything in a fruit processor until creamy
6) Stir in sago (you need to prepare this separately)
7) Keep in the fridge for at least 2 hours
It’s a cooling dessert to drink in this hot weather and I wish I have cooked a bit more.
I think it is taking forever for me to finish doing this website. Last week, the comment box is straddling across the whole page and I spent close to one hour trying to figure out what went wrong. In the end, I gave up and pluck comment.php from another design template into this. Till this date, I have not attempted to test the comment box to see if it is working. These PHP codes get a bit haywire when you copy from somewhere else.
The dell lappie is running too slow with the new programs which I have installed. The new Asus notebook is even worst – it cannot logon because it is running on Linux. SingNet does not support Linux but Wireless@SG does. I see the only way to surf on my Asus is to lug it to a shopping mall to log on to free network. We are considering the following 3 options;
1) Post on hardwarezone forums and pray that a good samaritarian gives us good advice on how to log on
2) Get an external CD/DVD ROM to install Windows XP – so Linux you must go. But we don’t have both the software and hardware for this option.
3) Get a wireless modem. I am not sure if this will help.
A laptop which cannot surf the internet is akin to a tiger with a toothless grin…
p/s: The above problem has been fixed. We got a Linksys wireless router and managed to log on after I spent an entire Sunday afternoon talking to the Linksys customer service officer. It’s complicated.
Recently I discovered a series of cartoons on Shaun the Sheep.
Wikipedia says: Shaun the Sheep has an inquisitive, mischievous nature which distinguishes him from the other sheep, and leads him into tricky situations from which he usually recovers. He is popular, and is a natural leader. He is also a moral character who will try to “make things right”.
Shaun seems like a popular name in Britain.
