I had so much trouble sleeping on Sunday night because of my jetlag. I ended up getting out of bed many many times in the wee hours of  Monday morning to go online and do some work. Xes who was sharing room with me though slept all the way through! After being restless for as long as I can remember, the sun began to come up. It was 6AM. I got Xes.cx out of bed so that we could start early on our sight-seeing.

After a quick breakfast, we decided that we were going to see the Statue of Liberty first… you know… with it being one of the most famous landmarks in New York. So we went over to Battery Park, queued up to buy ticket and were on the first ferry off from Manhattan to Liberty Island. Kiasu huh?

Some 10 minutes later or so our ferry reached the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island. Xes.cx and I were very very surprised.

I mean … I don’t know if it’s just the both of us but we both expected the Statue Of Liberty to be a lot bigger than it actually is. I don’t know if it’s from us watching it on TV or in movies or what but when we got there Xes was quick to say “Eh… are we at the right Statue of Liberty?  Did we kena con and brought to a fake one?”

Either ways bigger or smaller, it was the real thing and it was still quite something to look at. After so many many years of seeing pictures of it, watching it on TV and so on so forth, it was great.

Here are the very touristy pictures I took with the Statue of Liberty in front…

and at its back.

Liberty Island also overlooks New York City so the view of the skyline was quite something. My poor camera skills don’t do justice to how nice it really looked. Carol just complained to me a few days ago on why I constantly just use the “intelligent auto” settings of my camera without playing around with its features to take better shots.

After Liberty Island we hopped  back on to the ferry to Ellis Island.

If any of you remember, Ellis Island was featured in that Will Smith movie Hitch where he brought his date to find her ancestors that first moved to the USA. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, America had acquired lots of land towards the west (from the middle of the USA all the way to California). So what the government then decided it needed was people and immigration was their solution.

They went around trying to get as many people from all over the world to come to the USA to pursue the American Dream and these people passed through Ellis Island which was like an immigration point for them.

Ellis Island had a museum in what used to be the actual administrative building where the immigrants would come and then get their documents approved to see if they were allowed to go into the USA or not.

In there they had all the old records of people who came here a hundred years ago. Even down to the shoes the young immigrant children wore when they came. For the more educational part of it, they also had all sorts of stats and figures about immigration in the USA and even all over the world.

There was this chart that showed how people moved around in the past few hundred years and I managed to see this record… of Chinese from China migrating to Malaysia between 1890 -1915. Between that 15 years, over 1/2 a million Chinese from China had moved to Malaysia to do tin mining or whatever… which is where a lot of us Malaysians today come from.

I thought I learned quite a lot about immigration in the USA there. There were lots of quotes from leaders of the USA back then, one of them was this.

“Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life” – President John F Kennedy.

Basically there was inherent theme there that American wouldn’t be what it was today if it wasn’t for many of the immigrants who came over 100-200 years ago and made this place their home.

One of my other favourite quotes though was this one by Theodore Roosevelt in 1915.

“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism…. A hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true for a man who puts ‘native’ before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any other man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good as American as anyone else”.

That’s reminds me of what 1 Malaysia is about. From now on, I will no longer refer to myself as a Chinese Malaysian, but a Malaysian.

I arrived in on a Sunday afternoon. I was supposed to meet Xes at my hotel since he was bunking with me for that night. I arrived at the airport only to get a text from him saying that he was waiting for me at the airport so that we could take a cab together to the city.
Well that was fine and all except that…. New York has like.. 3 different airports or so….? And we were both in separate airports… miles away from each other. So when I texted him back to tell him that he said “Ohh no wonder I couldn’t find your flight on the arrival screen!”.

So I got to the hotel soon enough and checked in. The room was okay.

I mean it was clean and nice and all but really really small. And if I thought that was small, the toilet was even smaller.

The toilet literally is about the same size as an airplane toilet. This is it… seriously. This and a small shower on the right.

You know the toilet is small when you can shit and wash your hands at the same time.

Overall though, the hotel  was okay because it was right in Manhattan. Manhattan is an island in New York that is where most things are. Wall Street is here, Central Park is here, the Empire State Building is here and the of course Times Square.

We decided to take a walk to Times Square after we finally met up at the hotel. We grabbed a hotdog from a hotdog stand for dinner… you know, trying to be all New Yorker and stuff. After some 20 minutes of walking, we arrived!

HELLO TIMES SQUARE!

Heck this is one place that I’ve seen so many pictures and TV shows of and finally being here gives you a bit of a surreal feeling. The place is full of life!

Lots of lights and billboards.

If you’re wondering why in the next picture there’s a billboard that says “ASS” in big capital letters, it’s not what you think it is. It’s actually just the second half of an ad for the movie “KICK ASS” which was a great movie by the way!

Of course the reason why all that advertising was there was because there were A LOT of people wandering around!

And to protect all the people there (possibly because of the recent bomb scare in Times Square), there were lots of cops. They also sent this cute little police car to protect us all! VROOM VROOOM!!!

NYPD FREEZE!!! OR I’LL….. BUMP YOU WITH MY CAR!

I felt totally safer already. I mean how can you as a terrorist possibly want to do anything to harm this car? It makes you want to go up to it and pinch it in the… err… headlights or something!

Around the watching eyes of the men in blue were also lots people doing all sorts of things like these guys here who were doing the “Free Hug” campaign.

They would all just stand with big signs saying “FREE HUGS”… and announce “FREE HUGS HERE!!!”… almost as if they were selling something. I don’t know what inspires people to take time out of their day and do things like that but I find the thought of it refreshing! I mean here are people who are doing things not motivated by money or any other ulterior motive but just… to give someone a hug! That’s just something!

Of course that’s a little different from this other thing I saw there. There was this person in an ugly looking Hello Kitty costume that looked totally imitation standing around there. If you wanted to take a picture you would have to pay her something. That’s fine and all but here’s what’s worse…

I saw this tourist wanting to take a picture with the imitation Hello Kitty. She took the money, then pushed up her Hello Kitty helmet to reveal the face of an old Chinese lady in her 40-50s or so. Then she started counting the dollar bills right in front of that person before she put her helmet back on and posed with the tourist.

Serious, I even took a picture of it.

If taking off the helmet while still in character was bad enough, the aunty looked really grumpy too. Imagine if this were to happen in Disneyland. Say some children run to Disneyland to take a picture with Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse then takes off his helmet and… SURPRISE!!!

Oh yeah and speaking of tourists,  that’s the other thing that Times Square has a lot of…. TOURISTS… LIKE ME!

HELLO!!!

So that everyone.. was my first time at Times Square.

Tomorrow we are going to the Met (The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Now My Hello Kitty calls me a philistine because I don’t care much for museums or even appreciate art much but tomorrow I shall go and truly try to learn to appreciate it!

It’s going to be a looong day tomorrow. Oh oh and we’re watching a musical tomorrow night. Avenue Q. Can’t wait for that!

Okay good night guys!

Hey Everyone,

Early tomorrow morning while many of you are still in bed I’m going to be hopping on to a plane to New York. Yes my long awaited trip is finally here. I’m so excited about going to New York that I kept worrying that things would go wrong and I won’t be able to go. Like if I fall sick or my corneal erosion comes back but so far so good. *fingers crossed*. I’m really excited about New York. We watch it all the time in the movies and TV shows, finally I have the chance to go for the first time in my life.

I’ll be meeting My Hello Kitty there too. That’s right. For the first time in like 1-2 weeks I’ll be seeing My Hello Kitty. This is the longest time in which we’ve ever been apart. To be honest it actually really flew past for me and I’m assuming it felt the same for her too. While she was in San Francisco seeing Angela and all I told her that she doesn’t have to call me every night or anything like that. Just call me whenever she gets the chance… even if it’s just once in a whole week. I know she’s been getting a lot of attention from the guys there but bah I trust her.

Back here in Malaysia though I’ve also kept myself busy. I’ve found what I consider the best XBOX game of all time: Splinter Cell Conviction and I played it non-stop for like a week (minus the time I had to take out to work of course). It is THE best game ever… and for a moment I felt a bit of guilt…. that an XBOX game managed to fill the gap of My Hello Kitty not being around… until I was looking through my laptop and I saw this picture.

This picture reminded me of how she was (short and cute and always doing stupid things) and made me miss her. It was taken just the night before she left for the USA when a few Nuffnangers went for a meal at Pizza Hut to try out their new Fish King Pizza.

Meeting us there was one of the big bosses, the General Manager of Pizza Hut Operations: Winston Lee. Winston inspired me that night. He was with us throughout the beginning of the night while we tried the new pizza. Then halfway through the night the restaurant started to get really busy.

Next thing I know he disappeared for a while and the next thing I saw was him going from table to table, waitering. Talk about being hands on!

Anyway, Kampungboycitygal, KY , PinkStilettos and Huai Bin were among the few of us who were there that night.

And it was the first time I met Proudduck 🙂

Yes I had no photographic proof of me being there because I was taking all the pictures. Oh well.

Alright guys, I gotta go finish packing for my trip to New York tomorrow.

Update you guys from there!!!
NUUUUUuuuu Yorrrrrkkk……

Concrete jungle where dreams are maaaadee off….

So when we were in the outskirts of Melbourne living the slow weekend life of a nice quiet Australian town, we found something totally random. We were just walking around the streets checking out the stores.

Most of the stores on the quiet streets there weren’t the kind of stores you see in KL or any other city to be honest. You don’t see too many chain stores or anything. What you do see are stores that look like they’ve been around forever and passed down from generations to generations.

We went into this toy store where we had some of the oldest toys ever. Like old Pinnochio figurines and all. In the store too, Ming and Pierre managed to find something else that caught their attention.

They found these lads.

They brought it quickly to the restaurant where we were having tea and started playing around with them. When the waiter came to take our order, they didn’t order their food. Big Bird, Elmo and Cookie Monster did it for them.

The waitresses all thought that it was soo cute that some of them started crowding around Ming and Pierre and talking to them. Man talk about a way to pick up chicks man. Just bring a Sesame Street hand puppet along.

While I sat there that afternoon sipping my most delicious cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows,

Pierre and Ming entertained us with Sesame Street sketches starring Elmo, Cookie Monster and Big Bird.

I only wish now I took a video of that 🙂

Bah some of their puppet shows were so inappropriate it probably would’ve been taken off YouTube anyway (or at least flagged).

Yes yes! I know, it’s about friggin time.

I’ve had the previous template for the longest time and it’s broken in more places than one but still I never really had the time to fix it. I always hoped that you guys read my blog to read what I write rather than read my blog for the nice template right? Ming used to scold me all the time. He used to scold me saying that since I represent Nuffnang, I should have a better blog template. Hahaha… plus I’ve had timothytiah.com for some time back already but never really found the time to migrate everything over here.

I have finally done it though. Thanks to some help from Veen Dee. What do you guys think?

On the way out of the restaurant later that night we passed by this other restaurant that had something really cool. Check out this restaurant and tell me if you spot anything.

I would do it again some time. Not too often but some time again 🙂

If you’ve been following my blog since 2 years ago you’d know that I once had a recurrent corneal erosion. If you want to know a bit more about what it is and how I got it, check out my previous blog entries here, here and here.

The food was just okay if you ask me. Just didn’t think the fish & chips were anywhere close to the one I used to like a lot in London. The view though was great.

After lunch we spent the afternoon doing something so many people have told me about… touring the wineries where all that Australian wine is made.

At one winery we decided to sit outside in the cold to have some wine (when every other sane local there was seated inside). You know… we thought since we don’t get cold weather in Malaysia much might as well savor the moment right?

Well that was right for us.. until about 5 minutes later when we realized our balls were freezing off. So we ran off before we had the chance to order.

My Dad loves wine so I bought him a couple of bottles. They were really cheap though. At least compared to the wine we get back here.

Such a fun experience… you know getting high and all indulging ourself in wine culture.

I would do it again.

In the next entries, I will blog about the Spanish Villa we stayed in 🙂