20061126 - Enter:Chicago
Alright now i'm all rested and ready to work my fingers and post some pictures! Definitely not all, because that'll take me a long time and for those who know me...i'm not the most patient person around.
Day1
Left Bloomington at around 10 in the morning, collected our rented car and Shuzhen started her epic 5 hour drive to Chicago with Pamela and me as her passengers (Pam got lucky and sat at the back so she had the chance to sleep while i sat up front...and had the honour of navigating). Everything went kinda smooth til we reached Chicago itself. That's when we hit the wrong exit and couldn't find our way to our hotel. And guess where we ended up?
THE HOOD! Yeah man, the hood. As Pam would put it "Wah damn scary to wake up and see the car surrounded by blacks man". Yup, we ended up in the Harlem of Chicago, the south side. Pam didn't know we took a wrong exit so when she woke up and saw the amount of blacks, she got kinda freaked - and with good reason!! The place was filled with african americans. Didn't wanna take any pictures of them in case they got offended and carjack us. Another memorable quote from Shuzhen - "Lucky i didn't hit any of them down". That was said because they were crossing the road like they owned it (even though no one would probably challenge the fact that they owned it...)
We needed to get out of the place PRONTO and so we stopped over at some kinda depot and i asked a taxi driver (yupp..african american) for directions. Nice old guy.So we got the directions we sorely needed, buckled up and get our behinds out of that place!
Reached the hotel in no time and while the girls checked in, i lingered around the lobby and tried to hide my face from the center desk (that's cos they booked the room for 2...not for 3...I was freeloading! Kinda...but i still had to pay my part for the room). Rested up in the room, let Shuzhen rest her butt after all that drivingg. Toooo bad for her, we didn't rest for long...because we had to head up to Gurnee Mall before dark. Since it's winter, the sun sets at around 6. Decided to head up to Gurnee Mall because rumour has it that there's an Abercrombie & Fitch outlet up there. For those who don't know, outlet shops sell stuff cheaper..bout 20-30% cheaper? So we had it in our heads that the trip up would be worth the drive! Hmmm...... Oh and here are some pics of the view from our room.
So here began our trip up to Gurnee Mall. Traffic was NUTS! Bumper to bumper for at least an hour, even though the estimated time to reach the darn mall was put at 55minutes. So traffic put us quite abit behind schedule. Didn't take much pictures the first day because time was mostly spent driving and shopping. But shopping the first day was kinda tame for a few reasons. First, tired. Second, lousy things on sale. Third, lousy things on sale. Fourth, stuff at A&F sucked so baddd. Didn't wanna get any of the products even though it was on the cheap. Prrfft. Basically, the only thing that justified our trip up to Gurnee was Banana Republic. Soo...had dinner and scooted off for the hotel to get some sleep and prepare for a longgg day ahead. You'll see why.....
So that's it for Day 1!
Day 2...oh wait..before Day 2...here's our room.
That's Pams bed on the far side, Shuzhen's bed on the near side...and that's my bed, the right picture. Yup, right smack in the middle on the floor. Some way to treat The Niq huh?
Day2
Woke up at 11 plus. Kinda late...but with good reason! We weren't planning to sleep that night because there was a sale at one of the outlet malls on the other side of town. It's called Midnight Madness, where everything goes on a further discount at 12midnight. So that was gonna be the main attraction for the day!
Today, we decided to take a walk around downtown Chicago. Take in the sights, the sounds...and whatever else la. But since it was Thanksgiving Day, most of the buildings were closed. Though we didn't plan to do any shopping downtown, that didn't matter to us. What mattered to us was the fact that we couldn't find a single bathroom! ONE BIG CITY, NO BATHROOM!!!!! More on that later..
Sooo...our journey around Chicago..i'm just gonna let the pictures do the talking la. Kinda lazy. I was more or less photographer of the day, so i'm not gonna be in most of the pics :) besides, had a bad hair day...you'll see why.
There's a sweeeet car parked along the side of the road right there!!
Anyhow, sorry folks, blogger's being a pain in my butt and the upload rate is slowing down. So i'll take a rain check on blogging bout Day 2. Trust me, you'll wanna see the pics from Day 2. AWESOME!
But amidst all the fun, i still wished to be in another part of the world. You'd never guess where that would be...
K advertising time....go get +44's album! Got my money's worth. They're more highly rated songs are the loud ones la, which i don't really like...but are decent. But their other tracks are smashing. They're essentially Blink182 minus the previous leadsinger. Which is a good thing, because i couldn't stand the previous guy's vocals.
