My name is Thaddaeus but Jac coined the term Thadii to accommodate to my multiple personalities.
I am nice and friendly and I am currently located in GeorgiaTech.
Surfing is NOT EASY. Snowboarding (which I picked up during the North Carolina ski trip) is a piece of cake compared to surfing. Surfing is hard. You literally fight the elements and 90% of the time, you're desperately trying to paddle and fight the waves to get out to the "surf" zone. 101% shag. Every inch of my muscle could feel the strain.
We didn't manage to ride the waves like pros, but after 4 hours of wild thrashing and determined attitude, most of us managed to stay standing on smaller waves for a good whole 5 seconds or so =)
Day 2: Disneyland, Magic Kingdom
Disneyland brought the kid out in me. All my childhood started flooding as I went through the fantastical theme park...Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, The Little Mermaid, Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves...the list goes on...
Dreams Come True.
The place is obviously unreal, yet everything is carefully engineered to create a warm and fuzzy feeling within you. From the staff, to the life-size characters, to the rides, and the decorative details, nothing here is a mistake. I thoroughly enjoyed myself immersing myself in the exciting and fantastical shows, parades and rides.
In the evening, just before night fell, we were treated to a special sight that wasn't engineered by Disneyland...
This is by far my favorite firework picture...not because it has been excellently taken (obviously it's out of focus, I'm a noob photographer remember?), but because of the shape of the firework...
Lots of great rides and experience here. Lots of great thrills. I do pity the "tour guides" of each attraction somewhat though...I salute their professionalism and ability to entertain each batch of endless tourists...without them, most of Universal Studios would probably have been boring.
Now I'm going to give a mindless list of ride/attraction recommendations. Bear with me.
I love crazy roller coasters, free-fall, and weightlessness!
No pictures though...I don't have an underwater camera. Alan did manage to see a Nurse Shark though...lucky bugger!
Now check this out. Coral Castle.
In brief, it's a castle carved out entirely of coral by a single man, Edward Leedskalnin in the 1960s (I think). Till this day, it's a mystery how he did it with simple tools, and moved the corals as well to create such an intriguing piece of architecture. The story goes that he wanted to marry a 16-year-old girl, Agnes, but the marriage was foiled due to reasons of parental objection due to a 10-year age difference. Heartbroken, he eventually made this castle in memory of her...and lovingly refers to her as "Sweet Sixteen".
Simply fascinating!
We saw a couple of sea turtles along the way too, coming up to the surface for oxygen. Sadly they dipped down really quickly. There's simply no telling when these magnificient sea creatures would appear, thus no pictures =(
Cool eh? They have really sharp teeth and can bite themselves free if a normal fishing line is used, thus wire lines are used to catch these nasty creatures instead. When the barracuda bit the bait and got hooked, there was a REALLY audible snap.
This is gonna get hilarious, but nearing the street that led down to the above marker monuement, everything was marketing themselves as "southernmost". There was the "Southernmost Inn", "Southernmost Restaurant", and even "Southernmost House".
But this one cracked me up big. It was a house nearest to the monument, and after the house shown in the above picture.
Certainly, it takes the cake hahaha...oh and the dinner we had here at Keys? Seafood. VERY VERY VERY FRESH SEAFOOD. YUM!
Neverending stream of cars parked...it took us 10minutes to walk through the carpark to the motorway, and that's just ONE of the SIX carparks!
Here's some hot babes for the pre-race event shows. Apparently sponsors of the race cars will set up booths all around, selling paraphernalia and giving out freebies such as lanyards, posters, keychains, tee-shirts etc.
Anyway, I got to admit that watching these cars race at 200mph gave a huge kick, especially when they were tailgating like nobody's business in order to overtake one another. Of course there were crashes and collisions, and what started out as a 40-car race ended with 33. How's that for casualty haha...
During the 322 lap (325 laps in total), a car crashed...and after all the pit-time adjustments and all...Kurt Busch was placed to start in 2nd position...and with 2 laps left...it was a crazy race to the finish.
And here's a video of the cars doing a lap after a restart...love the sound of the engines as they pick up speed! Enjoy!
And on the ground...
Oh boy...anyway...like bumpkins we are...us Singaporean kids went out for a bout of snow fun! The campus is usually dead on Sunday afternoons...but today...it was ALIVE.
A silly, dirty, mini-snowman...
And another variant!
Tons of people were around, engaged in snow fights and snowman building. The Lacrosse field was beautiful (random nugget: we kick soccer on the Lacrosse field most of the time haha). An entire vast expanse of flat, white, snow...and people all around...wheee!
Some of the black guys were horribly irritating though...they kept smashing snowballs at everybody else...and some "cheated" by firing off snowball from the top deck of the multistory car park 3 levels high...and it HURTS like hell! And there's nothing we could do about it because there's no way to fire back snowballs up 3 levels..hmph...damn cheaters!
And a crazy local who dressed up like a King for the occassion! By the way, see the snowman in the background? Haha...
Anyway...even in the snowy weather...I had to camwhore hahaha...but this has to be, by far, one of my favorite camwhore shots due to the unique situation and background!
And here's a short "video tour" of the snow as I headed back to my apartment...
Beautiful yet deadly snow...it claimed the life of a pigeon. It was frozen solid beneath chunks of snow...slowly left to be covered and buried in an icy tomb...