Chicago, Illinois, USA

geez, this is my fourth attempt at composing a blog and i've had enough disappointment writing a blog only to see it unprinted.

anyway, i'm in chicago now. arrived this morning at 7am. immediately got onto a cab and checked myself into the travelodge near to o'hare airport. chicago just got hit by a cold spell last night and the weather's freaking cold right now, i really won't be surprised if it snows tomorrow. and the best part is right now i'm in the chicago public library in downtown in my berms and slippers. geez. no wonder the whole world's staring at my shivering calves...

the train from pittsburgh was really interesting. it was a crowded one so i got assigned a seat(previous they didn't need to do that). i got to seat right beside a 13yr old amish aspiring magician. the amish have always left me perplexed i've gotta say. the world's moved on but these people choose to live on without the use of technology thereby rendering them without the car(they actually still use horse carts), the computer(never heard of it), television(instrument of the devil) and even electrical lighting(oil lamps for them). still they've managed to get around and keep their tradition alive till today. which in itself is an amazing feat. so this boy's name is paul and throughout the ride i get bombarded with questions about singapore and my way of life and blah. i let him play my handphone games and i try to satisfy his questions as best as i possibly could. amish come from huge families and are devoutly conservative christians. they don't like to have their pictures taken and they dress in standard farm clothing even when they go to the city. so for paul who happened to be with his brother matthew and mom on the train, they were all wearing 19th century farming garb. wow. anyway all the way till we both fell asleep around 3am, he was either bombarding me with questions or showing me some pretty cool magic tricks. and i tried my best to be a good audience. so least hte ride was pretty interesting. by the end of it he gave me his address(no email) and i gave him mine and i told him to write me. his mom also gave me an amish souvenoir keychain which was radically cool.

pittsburgh

i had this really long blog lamenting the waste of the first blogging waste back when i was in new york with joe. was blogging in brandie's sister, brittany's room when all of a sudden the internet connection crashed. i could've hollered enough expletives to bring the house down. no kidding.

anyhoo, pittsburgh with the grabskis was a total blast. i'm so thankful for brandie and her family for making my experience living with an all-american family such a wonderful and memorable one. and all of them loved me to bits(must be the lack of a male presence.

the house brandie's staying in is in the tiny town of hopewell 25minutes out of pittsburgh and her mom, megan stays with her step dad, ed and stepsister, brittany. then brandie's sister, heather lives not far away, whose husband is on duty in iraq and she's gone all crabby and lonely because of that. i got to sleep in the basement of the house which was really cool with me. first day i was there brandie brought me on a short tour of pittsburgh(she hardly knows much of hte city herself haha) and then we went with megan to watch brittany's soccer match which they lost oh-so-unfortunately to a fluke goal to a rival high school.

at night we went to cheong. it started off bad cuz i was not allowed to enter one of the trendier clubs because i didn't have my passport with me(bloody ic is not enough for those snoots). so we went to the south side and hung around in the clubs there. it wasn't too bad but alot of hip hop and pop. drinks were downright cheap on a wednesday night so i totally had too much to drink. we tried all sorts of shots and rums and they were really unique because their shots were ultra-concentrated sweeteners as well instead of just straight up vodka or whatsoever liquor. so it was obviously alot easier to down. i thought i was okie but then we went to a diner for supper which was when everything kicked in and one thing led to another and all of a sudden i was wasted amongst the barstools of the diner and the whole diner's employees starring down at me. haha. i don't really recall all that happened but according to brandie i had gotten up to go to the toilet and then kinda fainted and the waitress thought i had alcohol poisoning or something. anyway gist was that i was well taken care of and the huge burly cooks did a great job of carrying me to brandie's car. haha. so that was it. 4th time in my life i get wasted. right in the heart of pittsburgh. i think the only bits i recalled were scenes of brandie screaming that i'm from singapore and i was here to visit and everyone was like "whoa thats helluva long way from here!", and me somehow hurting my elbow. hmm.

okie enough of that nonsense. next day we just hung around in the towns of aliquena and aligheny and hopewell. brandie brought me to her favourite eating places and see some sights. in the evening the whole family and myself watched the first of hte presidential debates. kerry is definitely a better debator. and then at night, even though we both said we won't cheong anymore, we somehow appeared in this hip club in the university of pittsburgh in downtown. that's cuz it was 80s night! whoo!! and the club scene this time was alot better. alot wilder. and alot more fun! not to mention that i drank alot less too.

finally yesterday i thought my train left in the afternoon but turns out it was at night so that allowed me to hang around more with the family. brandie had to go work(she took the previous two days off), so i ended up being entertained by megan at first, playing a scrabble game with her. think she's pretty impressed since she got whipped good. then she brought me to heather's high school openhouse parade(where she's teaching). its like a procession with marching bands and floats and stuff so it was a pretty interesting sight. then together with brittany she treated me to a really spendid lebonese dinner. it was kibae(raw beef) and grapeleaves. pretty interesting. finally she brought brittany myself and heather to this uptown to do clay painting. it was really fun and she said it was supposed to be a bonding session for all her daughters. we had a really good time and brandie came over to join us after her work. then it was time to go and brandie sent me to the train station. gonna miss the whole lot of them but we'll be keeping in touch.

so thats it for pittsburgh.

joe had written about the experiences we've had since we left long island after our haagen dazs working stint. i guess i'll elaborate on that later tomorrow when i'm in narita airport. it was a really memorable trip with him and we've had all sorts of the greatest funniest and crazy experiences. but more on that tomorrow bah. i'm left with 15min on the computer - i was dumb enough to try to apply for a library card only to realise you can get a temporary pass for free. and i'll be walking around chicago downtown, its a lovely saturday.

catch ya later.

oh joe, if you're reading this, i have no idea what these guys did to the library computer system here in the chicago public library but its a whole lot better now. the internet access is not on the 8th floor anymore, its on the first floor and there're about a 150 computers now and the system they are using(use library card number) is alot easier and faster. just so you know.