It has been a long time since my last entry. Right after returning from Florida, a rush of exams and work came with the week.



We left our apartments in Oakland for the airport very early in the morning. Thanks to King's early flight and Joe's willingness to send us to the airport, we were at the airport by 5.30am. A few days prior to our vacation, Pittsburgh was enjoying a warm Spring-like weather but on the Monday we left for Florida, it started snowing again. The timing was just right. We escape the return of the cold by flying south to sunny and warm Orlando, Florida.



It was my first time flying United Airlines and it is also my first flight on a 757. It is very much to my delight since Malaysia Airlines has none of those in its fleet dominated by 737s. The cabin is much wider and longer but still it is 3-3 seating. I had a feeling of Dejavu when I arrived at the terminal in Orlando. Is this the airport Kevin's (Home Alone 1) family rushed when they realized that Kevin was left in Chicago?



We stayed in a Sierra Suites which is along the International Drive, a long stretch of road lined by hotels and entertainment spots targeted at tourists. The room is spacious for 6 of us in each. By the way, there were 13 of us: Me, Kenneth, King, Chern Yih, Seng Keat, Eunice, Phey Yuen, Ken Yu, Joo May, Brian and his gf Angela, Wendy and Ding. The hotel is reasonably priced and our stay came in a package with three theme park tickets. I like the kitchen in the room. Unlike other hotel kitchens, this one in Sierra is perfectly complete. It has a refrigerator, dishwasher, microsave, pots and pans, plates, forks, spoons and knives, cups, a roll of kitchen towel and a coffee making set. There was no oven but who needs the oven when there's a barbeque pit at the pool area downstairs?



On our first day, as what most Orlando tourists would do, we visited Magic Kingdom in Disney World. I'm so amazed on how much land Disney World occupies. It's like an estate big especially with lots of trees still untouched surrounding it. Basically, Magic Kingdom is a place for kids and for adults who want to revive their childhood fantasies. I am not a big fan cartoons anymore, not even a big one when I was small. The rides were good though epsecially the one with drops and suddens turns (no 360 vertical spins please). The Space Mountain was the craziest of the most. It was a rollercoaster but we couldn't the tracks above us. All could be seen was a dark dome ceiling but lots of stars. But after straining my eyes at the flashes of light zooming above, I realized that those were the trains that were moving. Indeed, the right threw me around at quite an amount of Gs. Basically, the we rolled down from the top, making sudden turns in absolute darkness. Good thing I was seating on the second seat from the front so I could see what were coming. We attended a Philharmagic Concert too which was 4-D movie show. We had to wear polarized sunglasses in order to see the 3D effects. The 4th dimension was the tangible effects water splashing at you.



The next day was spent entirely in Universal Studios. I find it's better than Disneyland simply because I prefer real-life movies than cartoons. There were the cars in The Fast and The Furious. My brother will die to set his eyes on this cars. The Philharmagic equivalent here was Shrek's 4D show. Most of the rides Universal are simulations. I particularly like the Twister simulation where we witnessed a simulated tornado in a room with gale force winds. Another great simulation was the earth quake one. It was about experiencing an earthquake in a Los Angeles (or San Francisco) subway. A tanker truck came "crashing" down towards us and it caught fire. On our right, water gushing in as if a dam has just gave way.



Seaworld was our third destination. I was quite skeptical about how appealing this place could be to me. However, seeing Dolphins and Killer Whales in real life for the first time made me think otherwise. There was Shamu, the killer and the other one which I can't remember the name but the largest killer whale in captivity. I took a lot of photos of the dolphins and whales doing their impressive trained jumps. I just wonder how could these large mammals rocket out of the water. Their tails and fins must be very strong to exert such huge hydrostatic force (ehem..physics eh).



I always look forward having good food during vacations. Not neccesarily expensive but at least unique to the region or even better, exotic. Though not exotic as our kebabs in Little Russia, New York, last Winter, the grilled ribs I had in Seaworld was awesome. The queue for it was an hour long and it cost quite a bomb. It was grilled with wood fire. My vocab in describing food is quite limited so all I can say of the barbeque ribs is DELICIOUS. The southerners are known for their fabuluous grills so I furthered my fulfillment of cravings for their meaty diet by trying out the steak at Hard Rock Cafe. It didn't taste as good as Chili's in Kuala Lumpur. However, HRC Orlando is freaking huge. I would say it's 5 times larger than the one in Concorde, KL.



Our Orlando trip was also a picture-filled vacation. I took a record of 586 digital photos. That was me alone. The rest of my friends took around the same number too. So, every night before we went to bed, we would have a gathering around my laptop and watched the photos we took for the day. This trip introduced us to taking candid shots too.



We came back on Friday night and our home Pittsburgh welcome us with cold weather and snow. It was a first a bit bitchy to have urself waiting for 28X in the cold. I almost lost my bag when I accidentally left it while taking out my friends bags. I cannot forget Chern Yih's deed of running for the bus although he didn't manage to get it. I managed to stop the bus by chasing it after while I stopped at the Craig Street traffic lights. Running in temperatures below zero can be deadly I think. I nearly fell sick that night but luckily Kenneth insisted that I took a hot bath. Swalllowed two tablets of American panadol and I was fine the next day.



A mountain pile of work waited for me after the vacation.