Categories: Food, Friendship, Overseas, Personal life, Pictures, Travel, With my NEX
I don’t deny that I booked a flight to LA because of soondubu. Haha, I first discovered from Uber Eats back in my 2022 trip. I had an epic incident back in 2022 which I don’t think I blogged about it earlier. Anyway, the tldr is that I really love the seafood soondubu that I wanted to come back again in 2023. So here I am!
Thankful that Gulabi joined me for lunch so we can order more food this time to share.
So the story back in 2022 is that I took an Uber to Santa Monica Pier to take sunset photos then I went to the Tofu-Ya restaurant back public bus. Then somehow I decided to take public train back to my hotel at night. It was like 8pm or 9pm so it was quite late for someone to stay out late. I walked passed by under a bridge and saw many tents of homeless people and 1 homeless guy. It freaked me out and I was texting my colleagues on WhatsApp. I regretted and should have taken an Uber back. :/
I reached the train station and missed my train. The train station at that time had 4 guys and it was fortunate that it was overhead station. It was feeling a bit unsafe to take Uber from the streets near the station especially when I saw a police car just parking there to monitor and some homeless people at the streets too. The area around seems dark and unsafe too. The train station seems the safest around the area too.
Anyway, I stood near the Chinese guy who seems to be the most normal one in the station and made it back to the hotel safely. Somehow West LA felt more unsafe than Downtown LA. What an irony.
Categories: Friendship, Personal life, Pictures, Rants, With my NEX
I went with Alex and Jin Quan to take photos for National Day Parade (NDP) yesterday. Well, it has been like the tradition for many years with them. I’m very glad that I still have friends who are still into camping for taking photos on the NDP day. Last year I joined them at a later time because I don’t want to fall sick just before my surgery. It was my first surgery and also my first time having GA so I want to make sure that my body can handle GA. So I joined them at a later time. This year I planned to join them earlier but I ended up taking more time to pack my luggage. I also started using my hand carry luggage to put mostly my camping essentials rather than the camera. Haha. Should have packed the night before since I am quite a slow packer. Anyway, shortly after I joined them, I saw the rain clouds coming and it started raining heavily. I quickly put in my jacket and started looking for my umbrella in my luggage. I did not expect the rain. One of the rare times the weather forecast is accurate omg.
Anyway, I took some time to set up my tripod to “chope” (reserved) the place then stood there for a while to see if I can find Alex after knowing. I ended up standing in the rain for a few mins before I decided to just seek shelter. Then I forgot to take my Koi black tea latte. Sigh, I only drank 2 sips and it is a large cup. Sighhhhh. I was feeling really irritated by myself when I realised I forgot about it when I reached shelter. Luckily Alex and Jin Quan shouted at me when I walked past them so we managed to reunite at the shelter. Haha.
After the rain somewhat stopped, we went back to the place we “choped” and I had to look for my orange tripod before. So glad that my tripod is bright orange so it is easy to spot it in the sea of black tripods.
I had to throw away my black tea latte even after reuniting with it because it probably got lots of rain water. Oh well. Wasted S$5.60. I also noticed that I am losing the data connectivity on my phone but luckily I didn’t really use my phone much. We watched the NDP show on my iPad using Alex’s data plan. Somehow his phone network is not impacted. Low key irritated that mine was impacted though. I should have paid the S$5 enhanced data connectivity instead for my black tea latte. Lol. Alex didn’t pay for the enhanced data connectivity and is using the same telco as me but was not impacted. So weird…
Alex’s SD card stopped working when he was checking his camera. Luckily he realised it before we need to use our cameras to take photos.
We also met Jin Quan’s photography friend, Ethan, along with some other folks who are like below 20 years old. Happy to meet new people with the same love for photography. Alex and Jin Quan were exchanging Instagram handlers with them but none of them asked me. Lol. Probably quite awkward because I am literally the only lady in the area. Lololol.
While on my way back home, I met this extremely rude and irresponsible for her own safety lady in the train. She fell down and grabbed my hand to break her fall. In the end, she broke 1 of my bracelets and did not offer to compensate. In fact, her stop is the next stop and she just alighted after apologising. Lol. Such a rude lady and now I am a broken bracelet. Luckily it is costume jewellery and not my diamond tennis bracelet. I almost planned to wear that today. Thank goodness I decided not to. So now I have to bring my heated ruby with freshwater pearl bracelet back to ACrysty Co to repair and have to pay for the repairs out of my own pocket. Oh well.
Maybe the bracelet is broken to block some bad/unlucky energy for me? Shrugs. Luckily she didn’t break my rainbow tourmaline bracelet. I will demand for compensation if that’s the case because that is quite expensive even though it is costume jewellery (because it is not using real gold hardware but gold plated hardware).
I came home with tired legs and very tired arms and shoulders. Well, 2 days of gym on 7 and 8 August 2024 is really draining. Lololol. I don’t think I can hit 3 days of exercise this week sadly. Oh well.
Update: Sharing some of the photos I took during NDP this year.
I also uploaded the photos I took in last year NDP events too.
Categories: Overseas, Personal life, Pictures, Travel, With my NEX
I always love to explore Christmas decorations. It is especially lovely when it is night because the lights will be turned on and it will be quite beautiful.
This time I went to Downtown Santa Monica and took a leisure walk with my colleague friend, Revathi. It was her first time to US and I can see she is a bit anxious haha. I’m just like “aiya, heck care lah” kind of attitude. A bit of a daredevil to be walking at night in US. But it was okay since Santa Monica is like the rich people district. Lololol.
The streets are relatively quiet and is quite different from Singapore.
Categories: Overseas, Personal life, Pictures, Travel, With my NEX
We passed by the Grand Canyon Dam while on the way to Horseshoe Bend so decided to check it out as well.
Categories: Friendship, Personal life, Pictures, With my NEX
I went to i light festival 2 times this year. It’s the 10th year anniversary so the exhibits are actually quite nice. It’s also bigger too. I went to Marina Bay area to explore the exhibits on 1 of the days. Then sometime later, I went to Tanjong Pagar area with Alex and Jin Quan.
It’s funny how my ID saw me when I was at Marina Bay area. She probably saw me with a guy but I didn’t explain further. Lol. Doesn’t matter anyway since I rejected him liao… 😡
Here are the photos I took that I shared on my Instagrams for Marina Bag i light event…
Also spotted a snail whole walking back to the train station after the date.
Here are the photos from Tanjong Pagar…
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