This morning, about 8am, I received 3 sms from my eldest sis, saying tat my 2nd sis had already given sign to deliver the baby today. Some sms said about the condition of the baby tat made me quite worry at tat time. I sent sms to my bro who is in Philippine for vacation, in case he didn't receive any sms from my family in Indo. All of us kept praying for my sis and the baby. And, thanks GOD, He's answered our prayers in His time.
Actually, while I was waiting for the baby to be delivered, I really worried. I thought why it took such a long time. Since I received the sms saying tat my sis was in hospital (8am), went for the church service (11am), and until I came back home (3pm), I kept sending sms to my mom, asked about their conditions. But all the reply were the same. Still waiting. I wanted to call my mom, but the phone in my house suddenly couldn't work. =S
After trying to check the phone wire, etc. finally the phone could work. I called my mom (5.30pm), and she said that the doctor had taken care of my sis. Well, it really made me relief. But, still we kept praying. At 5.45pm, my eldest sis sent sms to me, saying tat the baby was born safely and normally, and my sis is fine as well.
Really thank GOD, for He always takes care of my family. He always has the answers for our prayers in His time. And today,
in Bandung, 29 June 2008, 4.33pm WIB, Redrich Vicente Maleakhi, my first nephew from the 2nd sis, the first grandson & grandchild in the family, has come to the world, to our family. Thanks GOD!!!
Great show, great contestants (especially the top 5), and great ending. I like this show because it exposes the places all over the world. I feel that the tasks in this season were not challenging enough and always dominated by 1 or 2 strong teams only. But, who could guess that the ending would be like this?
Well, I know it's very late to continue writing my blog, especially something that happened a few months before. But it's just way too good to skip this place.
On March 17, American celebrates the St. Patrick's day. Actually, it's kind of Irish public holiday. And on that weekend, 6 of us continued exploring states in US. Remember that last week, we visit Detroit where there was nothing much there. And actually, this place also had nothing much to see. Well, expedition still had to go on while we were still staying there.
In the snowy morning, at 8am, 6 adventurous people has met up at the apartment lobby. And actually we were waiting for one of our friend to join us. After 1/2 hour of waiting and calling him, the guy never came down, so we decided to leave him. Well, he couldn't get up because we went clubbing the night before until 2am+.
So 6 of us, took 2 cars were ready for a 5hrs journey to West Virginia. It was not easy to drive on a snowy road, cos we need to drive slowly to avoid skidding and accident. But, the snow itself has made the journey become nicer and unforgettable.
On the way, KS suddenly cut right across a huge truck and exited the freeway and XL didn't have enough time to react to it. I told her not to do the same, because it was quite dangerous to do so. So we, without GPS got lost. It was already noon and we drove up to Denny's tires. We asked the owner for their exact address so that KS could come and rescue us, because their car has GPS. After a very long wait, almost 1 hour I think, they finally came to rescue us. Haha...
After being saved, we prepared ourselves and our cars for food and drink. McD for us and petrol for the cars. Before having lunch in McD, we saw a sign of Maryland state. So, actually we had our lunch in Maryland, which was not on purpose cos we always thought that we drove directly to West Virginia. After lunch, we then checked our GPS to find a nearest local attraction in West Virginia. We found out that Seneca Rocks was one of them and it was not quite near from where we were at that time. But, since we have driven for so long, we wouldn't back off and just continued driving.
And here we are in West Virginia...
Our destination was Seneca Rocks. On the way there, we passed thru a very beautiful scenery near a small town that really forced us to just stop and enjoy and of cos take some pictures.
The mountainous and snowy road really made our trip harder and longer. Imagine that we left at around 830am in the morning, and it was supposed to be 5-6 hours to reach the destination. Ended up, we just reach Seneca Rocks in West Virginia at 430pm. It was 8 hours trip. =|
8 hours trip just to see this rock???
Of cos not... Here is the real Seneca Rocks.
Not really interesting, tho, cos the visitor center has already closed so we couldn't go closer to the rock. And there was only one souvenir store over there. So we shopped some souvenir to remember this trip. =p
After feeling satisfied with the rock, we prepared ourselves before continue to our next destination, by visiting the only toilet over there. And our next unplanned destination was Blackwater Falls. We never planned to visit this falls at first. It was just that we saw this place on the road sign along the way to Seneca Rocks, and Xin'En apparently saw this place on the magnet fridge she bought from the shop. So, why we should miss it where there was nowhere else to go.
Along the way, it was snowing cat and dog (is there such a word?)......
the road sign looks familiar??
12 more miles to reach Blackwater Falls... But it was really worth our driving. See to believe. =p
Well I think we will need some introduction on who we are.
We were really having fun with the snow. =) Well, so sad that we should leave the place cos it was getting late and darker. So, another drink for our car and some cleaning from the snow.
I said b4 that that day is St. Patrick's day. Something to do with Irish thingy, but I only know that on that day, people are drinking green beer. Apparently, it was just a beer with some green coloring in it.
Well, I didn't drink much, may be only a few sips, cos it was my turn to drive back home. And worse thing that after dinner the snow was getting heavier and heavier. Even our car was covered all over by snow. But we just decided to drive home slowly and safely after cleaning the cars of cos. Yes, it was really stressful to drive on a snowy road at a snowy night. Very dark, and very very slippery with lots of snow (the car skidded a few times =p), poor visibility cos of darkness and snow coming towards our cars and the roads were small and we weren't familiar with them.
After few hours of driving on a small road, finally we reached the expressways which were wider and cleaner from snow. Means I could drive a little faster. After 2hrs of stressful driving I switched with Erwin. And yes, we managed to reach home safely. The trip that we thought was nothing much turned out to be a very beautiful scenic drive and the most adventurous trip ever.
Last Saturday we had a one-day trip to Detroit. It's only 3 hrs drive from our place and we heard that nothing much there, so... 1 day is more than enough. Were we so desperate to get away from Cleveland after winter ended? I think so.
So, 9 of us went to Detroit, driving 2 cars and took turn on driving. We surely had enough driver. Way to go... =)
Our first destination was Henry Ford Museum. Seemed like there was nowhere else to go, and yes ,there was nowhere else. Well, on the way there, we saw something quite unique about McDonald. It has only one arch. See it from the 2nd pix above.
Finally, here we are, at the Henry Ford...
Nine of us (left-right): Wang Jiao, Jing Yang, Puji, Me, Ching Yuh, Erwin, Scott, Xin'en, and Kok Song was behind the camera.
...inside the Henry Ford, the tallest among the tallest, lol. =p
"We are in Michigan !!!"
What we could do at the Henry Ford were watching IMAX, museum, and factory tour. For the museum, it looked kinda boring to us, so skip. Factory tour sound interesting, but they said that on weekend there was no assembly, so kinda boring, too. So, we decided to watch IMAX about Deep Sea. Since the show started at 5.40 pm, we went around Detroit to visit some other places.
Next destination.....
"Eastern Market"
nice drawing, huh...
Look at what we got from the market, a case of seedless sweet grapes, for $10 only...
Beside the grapes, some of us did some grocery, bought, garlic, carrot, onion leaf, etc. It's kinda funny, btw, going to Detroit and doing grocery there. But, as I said, nowhere else to go.
On the way to the next destination.....
"Tiger" baseball field, Fox theater, Hockey Town...
Our destination was General Motor headquarter building somewhere in downtown.....
GM headquarter (left) and E&Y building (right) *interesting, nat, making u like ur company more =p*
tough Hummer - cool Saturn, which one to choose (I wish...)
GM headquarter was pretty cool. A lot of unique and nice cars there. And it would be too many to be displayed here right now. Too bad my flickr account has very limited space for uploading photos.
Back to the Henry Ford to watch IMAX movie.....
b4 the movie started.....
The movie was quite interesting and pretty cool 3D effect. It was Deep Sea 3D movie that showed us about sea-life. I was amazed with the movie. How great the sea-life and sea-creature are, and above all of that, how great the Creator is.
The movie finished around 7pm, so it was time for a nice dinner. Our destination was Greektown, the place where bunches of casino and Greek restaurant are. Kind of happening place over there. It was really hard to a get parking slot and table for dinner. But, luckily we finally found a place where we only need to wait for 20-30 mins. So, we had our dinner in New Parthenon restaurant.
quite a happening place, huh.....
waiting outside the restaurant at a windy night; it was breezing.....
the waiter just burnt the food with wine, "cool and hot",
especially when he burnt it right behind our seats.....
we were enjoying our food, yet.....
.....he's a money-eater. =p
Overall, Detroit has nothing much to see and to do. But we quite enjoyed the trip, or at least our journey of exploring the states are starting again. It was pretty tiring for us, and some of us still planned to go for skiing the next day. Yeah, last chance to enjoy the snow, ski, and of cos snowboard. =)
another *what's the name???*, choc-fudge cake (before)...
choc-fudge cake (after, a bit mess, huh), tat's wat Ameek's done to the cake, even Kevin looked shocked...
To summarize, all the food were a home-made by us *looks good??* and it really tasted good as it looks. Yeah, we had a Christmas party about 1 week b4 Christmas, since some of our colleagues were going home during Christmas. So, early Christmas party... why not? And as it always happen to every party, we always made too much food till we couldn't finish it. And of cos some leftover were kept for the next day, and next day, and next...
Well, enuf for the dinner, now we moved on to the gathering, singing a song, chatting... Actually we have some talented ppl to play piano, sing, sit and watch them play and sing =p. And here they are, some talented ppl playing piano, sing a Christmas songs. Well, these were not all the ppl, tho.
After being tired of singing *we're not well-trained enuf, we continued with a game. I dun knoe wat exactly the game called (shered... watever) but basically it's a game that one person will act to describe the movie title and his/her group has to guess what the title is. It's rili fun since we always tried to make fun of another group by giving them some funny or difficult movie title. There's always a lot of fun playing this game.
And here are some pictures of us playing the game. Most of the time we were thinking hard how to act and describe the movie title, since some didn't make sense at all.
Now for the next event, a gift exchange, or we called it a "White Elephant". This give exchange is a bit different. Each person has to bring something that he's already owned and isn't used anymore or something that's cheap. Well, we learnt from US ppl about this gift exchange, and they rili give *or throw away* some useless stuff in this gift exchange *lol. Well, the thins is it brings us a lot of fun and laugh.
And here are some pictures of us after the White Elephant thing. The giver took picture with the receiver. Some ppl were to shy to take picture together with the giver/receiver, right? =p hahaha....
And last but not least, our group photo. Everybody's holding the 'gift' and I'm sure all of us had a good time together. Well, I did tho. Yeah, gathering with all these colleagues always brings us some fun, laugh, and of cos closeness as a team while we're having fun and doing our job. =)
Thanks GOD!!!
Thanks GOD!!!
