4th of july
so it's 4th of july again... major streets near the river are closed and everywhere you can see street vendors selling fried doughs, hotdogs, ice cream and various other typical 4th of july snacks. i'll be going to my cousin's apt and see the fireworks from his balcony instead of going anywhere near the river. i've learned my lesson from last year. no more sitting under the blazing sun for hours on the grass with nothing to do while thousands other people cramping around me.
[a note after the event: it couldn't have been better. we got a great view of the fireworks from the apt, and we didn't have to be among the record-breaking crowd of 750,000 people at the esplanade! the crowd more than doubled this year, and a lot of people had been there since around noon to get good spots. the fireworks didn't even start until 10:30! crazy, huh?]
these past two weeks have been absolutely hectic. after days of being in a daze, i finally caught up on my sleep last night. i slept for almost 12 hours straight, which is a really good thing.
about my trip, well, actually i was in LA only for a couple days. on my 2nd day there, we drove to las vegas and stayed for 3 days. originally we wanted to stay at mandalay bay, so we could have access to their tropical sand beach (a beach in the middle of a desert! isn't it cool?), but we couldn't get a room. so we ended up at the luxor instead.
some people said that mandalay bay was owned by tommy soeharto. hmm... i wonder if it's true? the hotel's interior design were infused so much with balinese flavors that at times i couldn't help but felt i was back somewhere in indonesia. but the hotel was so luxurious that it would feel a bit obscene to exist in a country still recovering from crisis like indonesia. it had a rating of 4 diamonds, and no hotel in indonesia has a rating even of one diamond. if mandalay bay was really owned by tommy... where did he get all the money to build such an extravagant hotel? it made me a little sick in the stomach to think of the answer.
since i wasn't interested in gambling at all, i was kinda bored the whole time in vegas. mostly i just walked around to see the various hotels' attractions along the boulevard. one of them that was kinda cool was the dancing fountain at the bellagio, where every 15 minutes the water would come alive and dance along with the music (as seen in the movie ocean's eleven)... it's really beautiful!
i tried to get tickets to cirque du soleil's show at the bellagio, "O," but to much disappointment i was told that the circus was on vacation until the end of the month. sniff... :(
when i returned to the office on wednesday, harsh reality in the form of mounting piles of work and deadlines was already waiting for me. not having fully recovered from the westcoast trip, i had to go to new york for a church-related event over the weekend, and didn't get back to boston until 3 in the morning on monday, and then had to wake up to go to work a few hours afterward.
needless to say, i was more or less sleep-walking and operating solely on auto-pilot for the entire week, while my deadlines were moved to thursday (since it's a shorter week because of the 4th of july holiday). so not only i had to work more hours, i had to work faster as well, which was a pretty tricky thing to do. not to mention that i also have to juggle my bedtime with order of the phoenix these past few nights.
Comments
Happy 4th to you too, d! Have fun w/ the fireworks.
It looks like there won't be any light up down here, storm is coming our way :(
Posted by: xinda | July 4, 2003 06:10 PM
uuhh.. senangnyaaa jalan2... iya nih my web hosting sucks!! nyebelin deh.. anyways.. foto2 doongg... heheh.. :D
Posted by: sLesTa | July 5, 2003 06:11 PM
vegas .. baby ... my fav kind of place ...
Posted by: emon | July 6, 2003 07:51 PM