great weekend

gosh..I'm so exhausted both physically and mentally. Signs of emotional exhaustion is coming to be visible too. But I'm still gonna blog about my weekend before I get home.

Got out of work early on Friday, which was great because I had a chance to go to Walmart and check out some furnitures - found out that they have cheap bookshelves and saw a desk that I quite like but it didn't look like it would fit my giant 19 inch monitor (it's times like this when I wish I have an LCD because all the desk that they sell these days seem to fit only LCDs). As always, I never leave a store without buying chocolates - I'm chocoholic - and Hershey's was on sale! I even got some Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I actually got the curly ones but it didn't taste as good as the traditional doughnuts, which of course is not even as good as Dunkin Donuts from home. I have yet to try Dunkin Donuts here though..maybe they're the same.

Went to Ohio on Saturday with Nok. We start out around 10am, she being an impatient driver, we arrived at Maumee, Ohio at around 1pm and stopped at Panera Bread for lunch. It was a really fun time because we were laughing all the time and it's comfortable because we had so much to talk and found that we're so much in common. Left Maumee and arrived Cleveland, Ohio at about 2.30pm. Ben's place is great! I love their apartment..it's bigger than the apartment mum and dad had in Beijing but of course, everything that's nice has to come with a price - USD 1k per month! and it's unfurnished! If I have more cash and earning more money, I would have stayed at places like that too since it's right at the heart of town and just minutes outside Case Western Reserve University. It was a great opportunity to be able to visit the uni since it's a great medical school and lots of great scientist had studied there. However, I wouldn't want to stay or go to school there - it's more of a city kind and I'm a 'country' girl. They have tons of malls there too and even a luxury mall for the upper class.

Ben brought us shopping and I fell in love with 2 elephants - it was mine in just minutes. It was really cheap too! I can't help it - the moment it got to my hand, the hug felt so good that I just couldn't let it go. Can you imagine such cute elephant go into mud-covered hands of 5 year old boys and into flour-covered hands of 5 year old girls? What about when they get mad at each other? The soft, large ears are gonna be torn apart! It's a nightmare! It'll be so much safer with me for sure.

For dinner, Nok wanted to cook some noodles because I said I like it a lot. So we went to Asian Mart to shop for some Thai food ingredients but there was a change in plans. We saw ducks!!! Our first reaction - laughed so hard till our tummy ache. They were grilled so well that their skin are shiny brown and they just look so delicious hanging there. The aroma was filling up our empty stomach that we just had to get it. So we got a whole duck, shopped for some junk that we misses so much - I got swiss roll (it's BK's favourite...I like it too but for some reason, that was the thought when I bought it), chocolate love letters and pisang goreng! I was holding the box of chopped duck, sitting in the back seat. My hand was itching to open it and grab a bite but it was impolite so I made myself sat there with wonderful thoughts of me eating the duck. It was the longest ride home ever! But the duck made it home with us untouched by my itching hands. Nok cooked the rice and I made some miso soup (obviously using some packet ingredients). The dinner was one of the best dinner I've ever had in months..haven't had a real sit-down dinner for a really long time. It was heaven on Earth!

Sunday was tiring but we still had a good time...

Went to Case Western's campus and roam around. They had a really good blend of the traditional architecture - Cathedral, Business Management building, Dance building - and modern architecture - museum, Accounts building, Law building. The accounts building is the one that amazes me most. It has a very unique shape and does not have any straight wall and I was surprised to see Malaysia flag in the building! I didn't expect that because I always thought that Case Western does not have lots of Malaysians but apparently they have enough to put the flag up there. After the campus tour, Ben brought us around the area and we drive through a cemetary. That was the prettiest cemetary that I've ever seen. Unfortunately my camera ran out of battery but Nok and Ben wasn't very keen on taking pictures there too so I didn't try. It is a Christian cemetary and the richer families put up huge and fancy tombs for the deceased. Some even have a tiny house. It wasn't even eerie like the chinese cemetaries we have back home - especially the one at Mt. Erskine.

We left The Triangle (the area Ben stays) at 3.30pm and head towards downtown Cleveland. Most of the cities in United States have a 'downtown' area where the government offices are located. The city hall is usually the most beautiful building (since it's government funded) and that's also the place you pay all the parking tickets and fines. However, the Americans tend to take their Sundays off too, which is unlike Malaysians (in fact, most Asians) would work harder on Sundays since it's the day where everyone brings their family out and go shopping. So we were just driving around the town looking at buildings and it looks like a dead town despite the really nice architecture of the buildings. It was breathtaking. We were just looking out and ooo and aaaahhs over all the buildings. Then Nok wants to get a cup of coffee so we decided to stop and get into Renaissance Hotel, which is a huge building. But guess what! When we went pass the door - it's a hotel cum shopping mall. It is unlike shopping malls in KL where you see lots of the shops on the outside and different shops on the inside. This looks completely like a hotel outside with a lot of African Americans (Blacks) loitering around it. But when you step inside, it's like a completely different place. After walking a few stores, it was just the same as any shopping mall - Gap, Footlocker, Taco Bell, McD, Abercrombie and all the American brands. So we got Nok some coffee and left. As we were walking out the door, a Black man stopped us and asked if we have change for bus. That freaked both of us out because that place is a really luxury area and there are people who stands outside the building asking for change. It was such an obvious gap between financial class between Blacks - the rich spending their money on clothes that they probably have ton of them already in the inside vs. the poor asking for change and loitering outside looking in. This is a segregation within the Black community as there was hardly any Whites there. We fumble with our pockets, said no and walked away as soon as we can. But after driving for a while, a thought came to me - we get even more eerie beggars in Malaysia, especially around Kota Raya area in KL - so why were we so freaked out? That's when it dawned on me: we were clouded by the ugly thoughts about the Black community - they are the failure of the society that creates crime, which is completely not true. They just can't help being that way. But then again, being in a foreign environment, I think what we did was best because one could just snatch our purse away if we were to take it out.

We laughed about our silliness in the car, drove home with tired eyes and body that craves for a soft comfortable bed but with wonderful memories of Cleveland, Ohio. We came back to my place, ate duck - yes, again but it was just too good to be missed! Those of you back home could just go out to any of those 'kae pui' stall and ask for 'siow ak pui' but what we get here? Only those ducks in Red Cedar River (the river that cuts Michigan State into North and South campus).