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That's the sound of my whistle! ;D

My last photo entry was on the first two days in Virginia but today's already the 20th day! i can blog more today cos i just transferred photos from my camera to my lappie last night. It turns out that my SD card is high capacity and my lappie's card reader is not high-tech enough to read it, so i had to borrow a card reader to transfer photos. BUT now my lappie keyboard is giving me problems again, after one whole semester of being tame. So i'm taking a very long time to type this entry, with many letters missing =X i guess i shall put up more photos and type less. Here you go!

My room at Best Western.
Pretty much a hotel room. (Sorry for the mess.)




The pool where we had lifeguard training.
There's no photo of us training cos i was having training, obviously.

Class of May 22, 2008!
It seems like there are alot of guys but the batch a few days before us had much more girls than guys. Something like the reverse of ours. And i always so happen to get the male instructor (one of those sitting in front) for practice so no worries about me puny little girl saving big ang mohs yah..

We're LIFEGUARDS!
We earned our whistle, i assure you. Not blood and sweat though, but more of burns and shivering. Most of us got sunburnt from the first day of training, yet the pool was so cold that some of us bit our fingers to prevent from biting ourselves.

Retard, me, and wanted man (and someone's fingers) with our whistles! Tweet tweet!

Josh, Vincent, Eric, Chris, and Ruiz! Those from our batch posted to Dolphin team at our ride with our supervisor (i like his blue eyes!). There's three more SG girls from the previous batch in our team.

This is how our ride goes..


It's not bad, but need to take with those 重量级 (heavy) people then it'll flip more.

The day after we 'graduated', we went back to do saikang - clean up the park to get ready for opening the next day. Presenting to you, the lifeguard cleaning company:
Okay that's just the few of us spastic people posing with our barang barang. But our cleaning company is foredoomed to fail cos it took 10+ of us to clean one small room.

That's all for today. i'll post more photos of the theme park, of our current dorm, and of Winnie in hospital the next time. (FYI there was a hailstorm today. So exciting!) Bubbyeeeeeeee!

the early days pictures...

VCU hostel.. rhodes hall, whr we live :)
outside & lobby looks pretty. but the room looks utterly rundown.
1611 is winnie & khine wa's room.
1600 is minrui & sirong's room.
directly opposite each other.


we met up with alicia who came down from Boston :) hehe! lovely.


just opposite where we live, is Monroe Park.
a small sianz park with cute squirrels.


the intersection of Broad St & Lombardy St. where Kroger lies.
we get groceries from Kroger each wk :)


18 inch Cheese Chicken Steak Sandwich from Fat Larry's! oo. juicyy!


Fresh Cut fries from Fat Larry's! YUMMY!!
with cajun powder~


Minrui, Sirong, me, Daryl, Dael & Xian jie visited Science Museum of Virginia together! interesting museum. 9bucks admission thou. i was abt a half hr walk frm VCU.


minrui, me & sirong JUMPING at the entrance of sci museum.

sick winnie bloggin..

its 2pm here. and i just finished lunch.
ate chicken noodles soup minrui & sirong got for me at Kroger.

winnie was sick and now feeling much better already.
i still have 3 big dots on my left and right hands because of the blood taking and drip etc. pain... ouch. thinking back, i dont know how i managed it and it really hurt like crazy. ive always got a fear of needles and this time 3 needles. sheesh. madness painful.

ive been working 8hrs per day. almost. didnt record how much work ive done thou.
but i seriously dont really care. im kindaof broke not much money left. i need Bank of America soon. $$$!

i wanan go shopppingg. oops. paiseh very random.

minrui took pictures of me at the hospital looking extremely tired and sick.

everyone is at work. and im hanging ard in my room watching bian zou qu. im still abit too lazy to upload photos. maybe later lor =)

anyway, thanks to khine wa and her boyfriend erwin, minrui & sirong who have been looking after me while winnie is extremely sick :) greatly appreciated!

Guarding lives

i realised our update is really really laggy so i shall do a quick entry here. Photo updates will come later cos i haven't transferred them. So for the first week we had orientation and stuff, second week minrui had training and she's now a lifeguard! YAY! Minrui's really really happy cos she's been wanting to learn these skills for years but find the courses expensive. But now she's being paid to learn. So YAY!

Work started proper over the weekend (it's Memorial Day weekend by the way) cos it's turning summer and the water park is now opened. It's quite hectic i'd say. Minrui will either be at the water ride or at the pool guarding (just like what i told yall back in SG). We rotate throughout the day so i get to be at different places. Dispatching people down the ride is fun. It reminds me of the odac times when i dispatch people down the flying fox. Talking about that, an odac junior is here working as a lifeguard too, and i JUST met an odac batch mate like ten minutes ago along the corridor (she's also here for work and travel)! Cool, this is like reunion time! There's much much more reunions going on and i'll talk about these when the photos are up.

So i was talking about dispatching people. Other than that there's also other positions like unloading people after their ride, and of course lifeguarding. Lifeguarding's quite fun though abit boring. Boring cos you just sit there and scan the water. But it's fun cos minrui gets to ruminate on things or just stone and minrui really enjoys the me-times. And also because i get to see cute little boys (toddlers) at the pool! Too bad i couldn't take photos of them since i was working.

i work for about 8 hours a day, and including lunch time (to be more accurate, break time) it'll be 9 hours. And for that 9 hours i'm always on the ball, either at my position or rushing from one place to another for rotation of job. It's pretty tiring but it's not as tiring as doing camps where we work at least 18h a day (and the pay's pale in comparison). But camp's a 3-day-2-night thing and even if i do camps back to back it's 5-day-4-night? Yet this is going to last for 2 months. i don't know whether i can "tahan". Then again, we have a day or two off every week and we're taking days off for trips to Washington DC and New York City. And i guess with getting used to the routine things will be fine. But i'm already "chao-tah". Yes, a mere two weeks and i'm tanned. (And i actually got sunburnt on the first day of training.) Show yall photo of my bronze skin next time.

For the whole day we just keep applying layers after layers of sunblock, as if they're free. Technically they're free cos they're just there for us to use, but that's not the point. Oh and even so it doesn't make it a free good; it's still an economic good. Gasps, i still remember my economics! But i digressed. Despite the burning sun it's still cold here, cos it's just the turn of the season. BRRRRRRR.. And i suspect i'm so going to lose weight because shivering burns fats (i think) and i'm using alot of carbohydrate for my work. Then again i may gain muscle mass. But maybe not since i'm spending half the time scanning the water. Okay i'm not making sense already. Time to bathe and sleep. There's still work tomorrow! Toodles.

Almost heaven, (east) Virginia..

..blue ridge mountains, Shenandoah river. Life is old there, older than the trees...

We're in VIRGINIA! May 12, 2008!


The van we found at the airport which brought us to our place.


Kings Dominion! Where we'll be working at!


Best Western, the hotel we're putting up at for a week.


Minrui's room, which was supposed to be Winnie's room.


Sirong and Winnie in Minrui's original room - Room 511!


Grocery shopping at Walmart. i've heard of Walmart, did case study on Walmart, and i'm finally at Walmart! Heh.


Winnie seeking help from the Walmart people, trying to find adapter and sim card.


Lugging bags of groceries... walking to the place where we were supposed to board the shuttle bus back to the hotel. And may i add that it was after sunset and we were unsure of the directions =X


Minrui's groceries.


And this marks our first two days in Virginia. We slept alot cos of jetlag.

(Eastward) Journey to the West

Yayyyy minrui is FINALLY here to blog! Whee~ So here's the photos for our 36h journey to the West, eastward!! SG-taipei-LA-Dallas-Richmond

SG-Taipei:

Byebye SG


Minrui's in-flight entertainment - Kid's world, musical wonderland -.- And her favourite is the first song!


Rainbow on the plane!


HELLO Taiwan!! We step foot in Taiwan! Only in transit though... But we'll be back, Taiwan! ;P


Taipei to LA:

More "entertainment" on the plane! Very very cute baby!!! But she only smiled back at Sirong!! *pouts*


Winnie engrossed with her touch-screen entertainment.


Result of turbulence - Minrui's spilt milk tea.


We've reached LA!


Hello USA!!

Clearing the custom was... interesting(?). But minrui didn't dare to take photos at the custom.

We had 9h in LA and hence, our little adventure in LA:

Boarding the CityBus to Fox Hills Mall, Sepulveda Boulevard.


But it's a Sunday evening so most of the shops were closed -.-


LA-Dallas:

Winnie and Sirong with the state flag - we were queuing to go through the security check (in LA) when they sneaked out of line to take photos! -_-|||


We were sitting separately and coupled with the fact that it was a midnight flight and minrui was zzz-ing, there's not much photos of the flight. But i can show yall the Dallas airport! *grins*

TGIF! And since i'm backdating this post, we see this brand of food in the supermarkets too!


And minrui likes their ads..



How the guys entertained themselves while in transit.


Sunrise in Dallas!! :))


Roaming the airport in search for breakfast.


We found McDonald's! And they have stuff that we don't get back home!


Rainbow in the airport!


We're surprised that the toilets here have gaps so wide!


Dallas to Richmond:

Winnie is so tall that her head touches the top when she's standing upright!


Our very first photo in the land of Virginia! We took this immediately when the plane touched down. So so glad that we've finally reached. After 36hours of traveling!


Yayyyyy we're finally at Richmond! *beams*