Post exams

I went prawning with Sam yesterday. I wanted to go out and do something different for a change because I was bored. I think its been more than a year since I last went prawning and I've lost all my courage in picking up the prawn and getting the hook out, not to mention skewing them from the mouth to the gut afterwards while they were still alive. I apologise for the vivid description, but those thoughts were exactly what went through my head yesterday. And yes, it did creep me out.

Anyway, we caught a total of 14 prawns in 3 hours of prawning and we BBQ-ed them after. It was pretty late by the time we were done so we decided to head home.

Since we're on the topic of food, Sam asked me to cook dinner with him on Thursday since it's a public holiday! We're going to do really simple dishes like the ones we cooked in Iceland. I went to browse some of our dishes for inspiration and here are some of my favourites. Note: Of the 6 of us in our Asian house, none of us has ever cooked before this exchange. Heh. Prior to the trip, I only learnt how to cook vegetables.

Broccoli with shrimp, mushroom and garlic. Somehow, this was Sam's favourite when I decided to cook this for supper one day when he came over to my place. He's a garlic lover so I guess that's how I won his heart. Hahaha. 

Steamed fish. Nothing much but because Sam loves fish and because fish is cheap is Iceland is probably why it was always on the table. I think we could get some fresh cod fish for Thursday! :D

Goreng Pisang! This one was fried by Sam and Kyung Eun so I don't have the recipe but these bananas were really really awesome. 

Mussels! I cooked this with Sam and it was pretty easy, also because the mussels were pretty fresh! There were only 2-3 main ingredients in the pot but I only remember adding celery because I hate celery, ever since they served it to us for the 'O' levels Biology practical (which I mutilated after finishing the paper hahaha). Anyway I was happy that these mussels turned out good and there wasn't too much of a distinct celery taste when I ate it. (:

Okay. Honestly, eggs are one of the more expensive items on our grocery list. With a dozen eggs, we could buy I think maybe 700g of minced meat in Iceland? I'm not an egg lover so I'm definitely for minced meat over eggs but everyone in the house except me loves it so... it's a staple on the table. I think this egg roll was made up of 7-8 eggs. Imagine our faces when we saw the egg tray deplete so fast - it was scary considering we only visit the supermarket once a week to stock up.

Last but not least, we have chicken! After trying different parts of the chicken, I think we stuck to buying chicken fillet because it was easy to handle and tender too. This was chicken with spring onion and ginger, a very simple dish. 

Okay, so if you're unimpressed, don't say I didn't warn you. :P Going to have brunch with Liv tomorrow. Good night everyone! :D

P.S. I'm currently addicted to "My love from another star". I haven't reached the end yet but I think I will do a marathon tonight. Hehe.

U with the S and the A - Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco

During the final leg of our short trip away from Iceland, we visited the other side of US. I enjoyed San Fran and all the different versions of clam chowder we tried. Yum!

Fremont street experience

In Las Vegas, we went skydiving and I was the first to jump off the plane. It was exhilarating and just fantastic to be overwhelmed for that free fall moment of a lifetime.
And yes I was drowning in the suit they gave me - probably because they had no small sizes left.

Enjoying myself to the max

And happy that I completed the jump!!!

Waited for Sam to come down and took this awesome shot.

You can tell we thoroughly enjoyed our dives!

Having a little fun in Hollywood. I was actually sitting beside Bugs Bunny.

 

We stayed at this hostel - the hollywood youth international hostel. It is situated at the most convenient location, just opposite Hollywood highland center and the chinese theatre but please DO NOT ever go there. I got bitten by bed bugs all over my arms and legs and it was just a horrid place to live in. When we spoke to other patrons, they complained of bed bugs too.

Just outside the hostel - shopping!

Universal Studios Hollywood - this was exceptionally special, simply because I love visiting theme parks like these (I have probably been to USS Singapore 4-5 times already) and it was also my first anniversary present from Sam. Had so much fun and the weather couldn't be more perfect!

Unlike USS Singapore, they have a plethora of packages and discounts. We paid for one day and got this year free! (:

Also, I think it's extra cool that they printed our names on the tickets hahaha - of course I know it's for verification purpose in case we come back.

Hugging the fluffy plushy. Love how stupid it looks!

One of the rides we sat on was a studio tour where a tram would bring us through many film sets in Hollywood and it was just amazing. This was one of them - a huge plane crash. The fake dead bodies were there because they were preparing for halloween.

We just had to take a picture with him because for one of our modules in Iceland, we had to read his whole story and write a group essay on him. Frankenstein - the monster who terrorised us in many ways.

I kind of thought he was trying to prank us or that he was a fake guard standing at his post but he called us over to take pictures with him and these were the two.

What an awesome personality.

Of course we wouldn't leave hollywood without taking a picture with the famous sign!
This was as close we could get - a background picture.

Alas, we were invited to take several hilarious photos of ourselves just to see how we looked and we ended up purchasing this. 

Leaving the studios

We headed outside USS to the Citywalk. They had several shops and restaurants and we had dinner at a cheap place before heading back home. We tried our best to stay out as late as possible just to avoid going home to bed bugs. ):

Since we stayed just opposite Hollywood highland center, we crossed over on the last day to take some shots of the Hollywood sign from far. We didn't have time to travel nearer to take a closer shot. I guess in a way this was good enough. 

This was one of the favourite parts of my trip and an impromptu one too! We actually reserved a day for Disneyland but it would take 6 hours in total to travel to and fro by public transport, so we decided to give it a miss and find somewhere else to spend our day. I chanced upon this Citadel outlet mall while googling and it took us 2 hours and 2 buses to get there. Brands like U.S Polo Association, Kate Spade, DKNY were really reasonably priced there. I walked away with a lot of goodies that day. Guilty.

Finally, San Francisco! The temperature was a drastic change from LA which was 28 degrees in the day at that time. I froze when I reached San Fran and Sam bought me a jacket because I was hopping from store to store desperately just to stay warm.

Fisherman's wharf

Sourdough bread - turtle shaped

Clam chowder! We had many many more after this one. We made it a point to buy clam chowder from as many different sellers as we could just to try.

We cycled to the Golden Gate bridge on the same day we took the cruise to Alcatraz prison. Our cruise was set for 3pm in the afternoon and therefore since we woke up late, we didn't have time to cycle all the way to Golden Gate and back but we were close enough to take these nice pictures! We were fortunate enough to view this bridge one last time when on the plane leaving San Francisco except that it was covered in fog and the only thing we could see was the top of the vertical structures. It was still kind of cool if you can imagine it.

Enjoying the city with my new fluffy warm jacket!

Alcatraz prison. We stayed to tour till closing time. The most interesting part was learning the story of the 3 escapees who were never found.

One of the nicer jail cells

In jail

Our cruise boat

Bought this crab at Fisherman's wharf. It was fresh, cheap and extremely juicy! We were eating this while standing by the road side and watching fireworks at the same time. They were celebrating the anniversary of Fisherman's wharf. What an experience!

And that was the end of our US side trip!

The Bahamas

Since we were in the US and we thought we could spare a few days, we decided to head to the Bahamas to dive. It's off the coast of Miami and it was pretty fun!

We decided to go with the company Stuart Cove's because they are quite well known there. (:
Here is their boat dock.

Leaving the dock for our very first dive.

The boats were pretty new and spacious for all our equipment. The equipment was relatively new too!

Standard pose

There were a couple of grey reefs swimming around and we caught one on camera!

We decided to go with the company Stuart Cove's because they are quite well known there. (:
Here is their boat dock.

This was a plane wreck that was filmed in the movie "Into the blue" with Jessica Alba

Bf sitting on toilet bowl

Me on a beach chair. I struggled to sit that way and Sam just kept laughing at me while watching me manoeuvre myself. 

Camwhore underwater

And again.

Shark teeth that an instructor found for us... which I successfully kept safely and brought back all the way home, only to lose it in my living room. ):

Grilled lobsters for sale at the beach side

Mahi mahi with rice, fries and mac n' cheese. The mac n' cheese comes in a cube, it's quite cute. 

These are conch fritters! Absolutely awesome I must say!

We had 6 dives in 2 days and we had a shark feeding dive which was pretty cool. There were around 40 grey reefs and swimming around us competing for food which a shark feeder who was also our dive guide brought down to feed them - mostly dead chunks of fish. We also saw a lot of wrecks that were used in films - most of them were sunk on purpose for movies. The shark feeding dive was the best part of our diving trip in Bahamas. (: