Fuiyo. I just spent the past 12 hours coding with only an hour of intermission to cook and eat dinner. This further delays my world history homework which would take around 2 or 3 days to finish.



I was Joe's navigator throughout the trip to D.C. I had thought of lazying at the back seat until Amos gave me the front passenger seat because I'm the biggest in body size among all 8 of us in the van. It was a good experience though. The trip to D.C. was smoooth and in D.C., it went well also. Streets there are manhattan like but there were confusions when going to the Union Square. Going back yesterday was different. I misread Map Quest and missed the junction to I-70/76. What should be a mile ride along US-30 ended up a 100-mile ride along the countryside of central Pennsylvania. The road was just like Sarawak's intertown roads. One lane for each direction. Vehicles were very sparse and there we passed places that we absolutely uninhabited. Spooky at times especially when we passed empty and dark mills and houses. We even went up some higlands where the road were quite winding. Very much like the road up to the Kinabalu highlands in Sabah.



Joe stopped for a visit to the washroom at one gas station. I took the chance to ask the elderly man who manned the place. Absolute good samaritan. Although I didn't spend a penny at his shop, he gave me a detailed instruction on how to get back to highway. Actually, we had thought of just following US-30 all the way to some town called Greensburg and find out way to Pittsburgh from there. The straying into US-30 cost us an hour but nevertheless, it was an experience that I brag to my parents.



The trip to D.C. was to meet the Prime Minister at the Malaysian Embassy. He was on a very very tight schedule. During the morning, he had a short meeting with Bush Jr. at the White House. He met with us for less than the time planned but he did give quite an inspiring message to work on the country's human capital. "What's the use of having first class facilities when we're third class people?" he said. I managed to shake hand with him. He shook hand with every single student actually.



One thing I noted was there presence of the U.S. Secret Service. Yeah,  they provide security services for visiting foreign leaders too. I was impressed with them because while everyone were happily talking and smiling, they kept a serious look as if somebody would come out of the crowd with a gun. They were in their world of their own. A world of constrant suspicision.



The Malaysian Embassy is fairly a huge building. Few stories high with a few halls and a main ballroom. The diplomatic mission moved in quite recently so that explained why everything looked new. Dr. Zahratul, the MSD Officer for the Eastern region, was there. So suprised to see her remembering my name. In fact, she remembered many students' names.



About Washington D.C., it's a city where buildings are not closely built. There are no high rise like in New York. To me, the city's like a park where's there's less air of business around. Smithsonian Musuems were many around and are the tourist magnets. There's a huge memorial of Abraham Lincoln. So huge that the steps to his giant statue were as many to Sibu's Sacred Heart cathedral. We visited Arlington Cemetery where the assasinated Kennedy brothers were interned together with Jacky Kennedy and JFK's babies who died during birth. We were astounded were the huge number of white tombstones of the dead soldiers there.