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No idea why I suddenly decided to start blogging about this whole trip but it was just a random decision and let’s see if I will manage to finish the whole account of my three months 😀

I think this photo was taken the night before.

oh well i agree that i brought a little too much things.. which included a lot of food which eventually ended up not in my mouth. haha. especially the milo packets. yea i don’t exactly like milo but i brought it over anyway. and i remember trying to ration my horlicks.. only had 8 sachets of it. and i did not bring any stuff toys okay.

13 MAY 2010 [SG]

this was my last meal at the airpot. kway chap! it was a random craving from terminal 1 staff canteen. airport staff canteen always have nice food! i still think the airport is a very pleasant place to be.

i think the flight was around 11am or 1pm or something. We took BR226 and stop over at taipei.

at taipei airport during transit. there was the free massage chair..

after that there was the long flight all the way to newark airport. since we reached late, i booked a hotel near the airport where we could rest until the next morning where we went to point pleasant.

i remember we had to go this place called airport shuttle or something and there were like rows of telephones. we had to choose the correct phone and call the hotel. and shortly after, a van came to pick us up. gosh, it was freezing i swear. it was so freaking cold. summer doesn’t start in may.

this was the view from the hotel room window

pretty cosy and decent place. we paid $93USD for it. everything from this point onwards will be in terms of USD. (at an exchange rate of 1.39 back in May 2010)

and of course, everywhere i go, my laptop follows 😀 i remember it was around 11pm back there. and it was 11am in the morning back in SG. oh well, i had the unlimited SMS walkie talkie which i had to contact my mum with her countless questions. Also could keep in contact with my friends. Nevertheless, the sms got lesser as the days went by..

14th May 2010 [USA]

If i didn’t remember correctly, there was no breakfast provided, but I had the food which my mum prepared. endless energy/muesli bars and biscuits. So we took the airport shuttle back to the airport (oh well it was supposed to be complimentary but paiseh people like us go everywhere also pay tips)

After reaching the airport, we had to take the sky train to the NJ transit terminal. inside the train where we had seats. wait or was it just the both of them sitting down. hmm.


not my luggage. anyway, just a tip, please buy luggage with 4 wheels. it is so much lighter when you push it around.

this was our hotel we stayed in the night before. we could see it when we were in the sky train. that’s how near it was.

alright so we reached the terminal, paid $17 for the 2 hours train ride to Point Pleasant Beach.

a picture of their railway. i guess it looks pretty much the same everywhere.

Can’t remember if I managed to sleep or not but we reached somehow.

I guess this place is really true to its name. we were so protected inside this part of new jersey. aww.

while waiting,

After that, we had to call Chris who picked our luggage and us up (separately) He gave us a short tour around the place too. I remember this library which I never visited. muahaha. I never even found time to finish the book I brought there..

and soon we arrived at our house, 808 ocean avenue. what a pretty name, what a pretty house.

the view from the balcony was simply breathtaking.

After we took forever to decide upon our room, we decided to squeeze 4 people into a 3 bed room.

and the bottom one was my bed. these were the images before any furnishing was done..

and there was supposed to be 2 double decked beds so we could have more floor space but neither of them wanted to move, and so.. ya. looking back, our room was really a mess. mayhem. everything terrible.

after that we decided to go for subway lunch. it was such a risk because we couldn’t lock our room doors but chris said that this place was so pleasant and that you dont have to lock the doors? it was really quite since summer hasn’t exactly started.

the subway was really awesome. look at the amount of ham. but actually i think it was that the boss there was really kind. knowing we are students, coming all the way to USA to seek a living.. he provided us with double meat. woah. when we went to other parts of USA, the subway didn’t look so fantastic. Point pleasant, was really a pleasant place. By the way, it was $5 for a footlong subway. relatively comparable to sg prices.

and the cookie looks the same everywhere.

After that, we visited the only supermarket, Foodtown. Along the way, which was about 15-20mins walk, the view was really pleasant.

this is a fire station.


and i realise only now that i did not exactly walk towards this pavilion while i was there.

After a hard time shopping for groceries, it was really heavy with those gallons of mineral water we had to buy. On the way back, the sky looked threatening and we decided to drop by this ice cream shop, Hoffman’s ice cream, instead of rushing back(my plan) their small is really huge. gosh they are so freaking generous with their scoop of ice cream. i think i had a mango sorbet.

I think we ended up eating the chicken at the place too. I can’t recall exactly.
It took me forever to finish my ice cream.
This was before we set off on our way back.

Anyway, there were kids screaming along the way because there was lightning and thunder and it was cold and we had to carry heavy groceries. Gosh. and I had the ice cream in one hand.
This was the ice cream when we were back home. The serving is really huge.

After reaching home, we started with our clean up, with instructions from the Housekeeping manager.

Can’t recall how long it took us, but I guess we slept really late since we woke up really late the next day.

15 May 2010, Saturday

We had Yakun kaya and bread for breakfast and after that, we had to take the 15-20mins long walk to the bus stop.

Random sightings along the way

Don’t you think the houses look exactly like The Sims. Then again, Sims came from USA. lol.

I always thought it was Border’s not Borden’s. Lol. I never bought anything from this shop though.

While waiting for the bus,

The journey to Walmart on bus 317 cost $2.10.

And soon we reached the legendary Walmart. This was the only walmart we visited in USA. The rest we visited walgreens which was more of a 7-11 equivalent. Oh well, the big hoo haa about walmart. it is really huge.

We decided to have lunch first. And guess what, I remember falling sick right after this meal. Had a bad sore throat and slight fever or headache I think. Macs is bad =/ I think I ate quarter pounder.


And there was really no such thing called Chilli sauce in USA..

After eating, obviously acting very auntie, buying things that were on offer. I remember I bought a pair of shoes too which I threw away before I left.

Waiting for the bus to return home. The bus came at very precise timing. Which was like every hour. So we couldn’t afford to miss any bus. And we had to pay another $2.10 to get back home. Life sucks if you don’t have a car.. It is really that inconvenient.

I remember we spam quite a few boxes of pasta or spagetti. it was 99cents.


According to my photos, we went to foodtown after walmart.

and we had spaghetti and egg for dinner!

Can’t remember if I was the cook 😀

the skyline is always that awesome.

16 May 2010 (Sunday)

I think I woke up quite early the next morning and I attempted to cook the japanese rice i brought. I can’t recall what it turned out to be. I remember I used the pot and the stove to cook. I think it became porridge. Lol. Anyway, we went to Brick town Mall. Alright, so in our head, we were thinking of a Mall. Like tampines mall or something..
It was another $2.10 gone.
This was the mall which greeted us.

anyway, we went over to AT&T to get ONE simcard. haha. among the four of us. we had that walkie talkie anyway. then again, i remember that I haven’t checked my handphone bills for the months when I was in USA. I guess it wasn’t terrible. Otherwise, I would have heard something about it. hmm. maybe i should check. we made a few calls using my m1.

the sky was awesome. as usual, it was cooling yet scorching hot.

Interesting name for a shop. I guess the mall looked really disappointing. Well, they have too much land over there. why will they bother to build multi storey.

we ate the famous $5.95 eastern buffet which was really worth the price! So cheap! and you get a fortune cookie after you make your payment.

there was sushi! and i remember we said we must spam the fruits because fruits was crazily expensive in foodtown. there was seafood as well.

Being very pro at being a paparazi.

After that, we did some small shopping. There was this shop called dollar tree which was really amazing. everything was for a dollar and gosh there was a wide collection of cards and chocolates and sweets and it is all the super sized boxes! I remember we bough creamy prego sauce from there too! i bought my spongebob kite there too.

By the way, taxes were always non-exclusive in their prices. So the things in dollar tree were actually $1.07. different states have different taxes. New jersey taxes were 7%. New York was 8.1625 or something. Boston was 6.something. Los Angeles was crazy. 9.+ %, wait. Washington DC was the worse. I think it was 10%.

After that, we had to catch the bus back.
the sky was awesome.

we decided to take a stroll down the boardwalk, the place we would work for the next 2 months.
it was a pleasant sunday down the boardwalk.



it’s really a pretty beach. Anyway, just some random information. People have to pay $7 to enter the beach during summer, in the morning. Maybe that’s why the beach is so clean and nice. But they stop charging around 4pm onwards. the beach is crazy in summer.

And now some random rides!

it’s really more of a kiddy place.




i still didn’t sit this washing machine ride. i can’t do things that are so repetitive. i swear i would have puked if i rode it.

the swing was one of their signature ride i guess. yea i sat it.

i refused to sit this though. you see how blury it looked. means how fast it went.

there was a mini rockwall as well. didn’t climb though =/

it’s so pretty.

i bet she asked me to take this photo for her.

the sunset?

That’s all I have for week 0. I have all the way till week 13. I guess I started to regret a little the moment I started on this and I shall see how long can my enthusiasm last.

And this was only a recount of 4 days. Oh well, I hope i persevere.