On the night before my flight, I had to wake up at 6:00 a.m. with only 2 hours of sleep. One of my friends was kindly willing to wake up during the wee hours of the early morning to drive me from Waterloo, Ontario to the airport in Mrs. Sauga, Ontario, which took over a l'il o'er an hour.

My flight was at 10:00 a.m. and by the time we got to the airport, my stomach was feeling a l'il funny. It felt like the time at Winter Conference in Three Hills, Alberta, where we stayed up playing poker and I felt so sick on the bus ride and on the plane that I was on the verge of throwing up into my friend's lap (but he didn't know that . . . ;P). And also the time when my stomach felt funny right before I fainted in front of the washroom door, and then embarrassingly in front of Uncle Charles and Uncle Kai (and almost everyone of you, came to visit me in Pastor Joel's office). This time, I didn't even finish the apple fritter from Tim Hortons or my 50 cents bottled water from Costco, which was supposed to be my breakfast. All I did on the plane was sleep, ignoring the muffins and the drinks that they gave out. The plane seating arrangement was amazing! I think the plane itself was almost empty. Many weren't squished at all. I had a whole row to myself-all three seats! I could've slept horizontally but I didn't want to be the l'il kid that I already am. :)

I imagine that the flight was 1 hr and 26 mins long and by the time I got there, it was a l'il past 11:30 a.m. My luggage came onto the carousel quite quickly and so did everyone else's, and Vonne and her "uncle"(family friend), Uncle Peter, were already waiting for me. We drove from La Guardia, New York (from hereon termed, NY) to Short Hills, New Jersey (NJ) into a mall and ate at Johnny Rocket(s), a place like Mel's Diner in Waterloo. Uncle Peter treated us. That mall is high class, perfect for HM people (that's high maintenance for you)! We didn't buy a single thing there because all it sold was DKNY, Guess, Gucci, Nine West, Jones NY, the list goes on and on. The washrooms were even a l'il too comfortable. Besides being clean, with 2-ply soft toilet paper, and softly thick good quality paper towels, there were couches for you to sit on (and you know what I discovered? It seems like sour-keys [the gummy sour candy] doesn't exist in the States. I tried looking all over NY and NJ for them but to no avail).

OH yeah! I definitely recommend this book, which I found in the mall at Short Hills, to Carey (a.k.a. "Liang Chai"). He is a HS friend of mine (don't ask me what HS means [and it doesn't mean 'high school' in this context] but it definitely applies to him if you know him): The Gas We Pass. I think I will buy it from Amazon using my $100 gift certificate (to see the reviews, please go to: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0916291529/qid%3D957323133/103-7444639-9361461). Because the reviews are so good, I might also even get Everyone Poops, All About Scabs, The Hole in Your Nose, or Breasts . . .

At 6:15 p.m., Uncle Peter came and picked us up from the mall (b/c he went to work after we had lunch) and we went home to Morristown (keep in mind that Vonne's uncle's place is Morristown and not Moorestown where my relatives are). We proceeded to go grocery shopping for our breakfasts, which consisted of cranberry-orange muffins, creamcheese and bagel, and of course, Tropicana OJ (that's orange juice, not OJ Simpson).

Dinner was extravagant (in a university student's eyes), a seafood dinner worth at least $25 Canadian at a local restaurant. Once again, he treated. Vonne and I soon realized that a meal with Uncle Peter would cost that much and it wasn't a big deal for him. I had so much seafood within the 4 days in NY! He even was going to treat us to Miss Saigon ($40 USD) but Vonne didn't let him (that's another story for later)J. By the time we got home that night, it was quite late so we unpacked and planned for the following day, I watched the Simpsons on Fox, and called it a night.

Day Two-Thursday, April 27th, 2000: Uptown, NY

Yawn, what an early morning. Vonne set her alarm to wake us up at 7:05 a.m. instead of 8:35 a.m. by accident. So I "opened" the lamp, thinking that it was time for us to get up, and thinking that a light in a dark basement would sure wake Vonne up. 5 minutes later, when I turned to look at the clock, it said 7:05 a.m., so I woke Vonne up and made her change the alarm to 8:35 a.m. When it really was 8:35 a.m., we woke up and got ready to catch the train to NY. We got out of the house by 9:55 a.m. and practically had to run to catch the 10:10 a.m. train. By the time we got there, it just pulled up to the station. I think Uncle Peter had forgotten that we weren't marathon runners like he was, so he didn't take into account that we walk relatively slow. I've never been in a passenger train before, with real conductors and all, but I imagine that this was similar to Lower Mainland's Westcoast Express but less fancy. It cost us $10.25 round trip NJ-NY. It brought us to Penn (short for Pennsylvania) Station near Madison Square Garden. From there, we walked to the Empire State Building and waited in line for hours. First, to buy tickets (the CityPass was for 6 attractions for the price of $32.00, which would save us 50% in comparison to purchasing them separately), then to line up to go up to the 86th floor and to the 107th floor observation decks. By the time we finished, we had spent at least 3 hrs in that building alone. My recommendation for future visitors is to go there early, and don't go on the week of Spring Break (for NY/NJ non-post-secondary students). We took a lot of pictures so when we develop them, we'll tell you more stories.

Walking from the Empire State Building to Times Square didn't take us too long, although there were a number of streets. There were many stores to distract us along the way. Especially one in particular, The Disney Store. I spent most of my "souvenir(s)" money in those stores alone J. Times Square was bigger than I imagined it to be, with flashy lights and HDTV ads! Vonne and I were really good at hiding the fact that we were visitors. We would hide in the corner of stores to look at the map and took pictures only in tourist attractions, rarely, if ever, on the streets. After a lunch at McDonald's, we discovered precious treasure!

The visitor's information center in Times Square had a YAHOO! Internet terminal. There was actually a line-up for people to surf the net, and to check e-mail on 5 terminals. The sixth terminal took your photo and sent it to the e-mail address that you specified. Both Vonne and I now think that it's a gimmick, because we had sent two, both on separate days, and nothing has arrived in our inboxes since. We hypothesize that they just want your e-mail addresses to add to their mass "junk" e-mail list. We are both very disappointed :( .

After spending enough time doing our e-mailing and photo-taking, we decided to saunter off to Rockefeller Plaza. My sister's friend wanted a Conan O'Brien cap, so we decided to go wander around the NBC store to try and find a clean cap for him. Well, there wasn't one, but I bought it anyway, considering he really wanted it, and it wasn't my money anyway :). On our way, we passed St. Patrick's Cathedral, a big Catholic church where they allow visitors to go in, make a candle offering, pray, or even take pictures and tour the building. We have some pictures of that too. What I noticed however, was that Catholics don't remind me of Protestant/Evangelical Christians (what Vonne and I are) at all. They have so many statues and pictures and stuff to pray to and make candle offerings to, that it doesn't make any sense, which saddens me.

By the time we were done, we had to catch the train back to NJ. So we walked, no, ran back to Penn Station (because we kind of walked too slowly in the beginning). We had plenty of exercise for the day. Dinner? Well, it was kind of with the late lunch we had, but we bought a Cajun chicken burger at McDonald's for $1 each and ate it at home, along with some ice cream, chips, Tropicana, and mango. We planned for Friday, and went to bed.

Day Three-Friday, April 28th, 2000: Downtown, NY

We woke up earlier than the last so we could catch the train from Summit?/Harrison?, NJ to the ferry in Hoboken?/Newark?, NJ. Maybe Vonne would remember, because I think she still has the maps. Thankfully, we decided to take the train to the ferry instead of to Penn Station like the previous day, because there was a derailment that morning, and all trains went to the ferry terminal anyway. If we were to go uptown from the ferry point the previous day, we'd be completely lost. I think that God kept a close watch over us, and gave us everything to our advantage including sunshine. Apparently, there hasn't been a sunny weekend (and following week) in 6 weeks J! The 1-way trip on the train costed us $5.00 and the ferry was $2.00. We ended up being very lost at first because we forgot the map at home L, but thankfully, we managed to pick up a map of the financial district on our accidental tour of the New York Stock Exchange.

The NY Stock Exchange was crazy. I haven't seen anything like it. I wish that we had time to sneak a peek at Nasdaq (as RIMM has kept my interest in stocks recently). At the NY Stock Exchange, one was only allowed to view 2 floors-the natural gas and the gold/silver trading. Going in, we had no idea what was happening. We could hear them even though we were viewing behind a glass. They all looked like l'il boys screaming and yelling at each other. Yep, we didn't see any women there at all. But that doesn't mean that there aren't any doing that as their occupation; they're just the minority. These people were circling pits and giving hand signals (wave in means buy, and wave out means sell) and trying to communicate to each other. It's all a matter of eye contact and mutual agreement. I would never want to do this! Too aggressive and too stressful for me.

Heh-heh, we went to Barnes & Noble, an American bookstore, much like Chapters (and yes, Chapters is Canadian because I haven't seen one in the States yet, although I haven't seen Indigo yet either). The reason? To look at the map to Uptown, NY, mainly to Chinatown. We memorized the streets that we should turn at J. Chinatown in NY is big, but there isn't much to do there unless you want to buy some fruits and veggies and such. Apparently, it's one of the dirtiest Chinatowns around but I guess that since I'm so used to the streets of HK, the streets didn't really appall me. However, the smells did remind me of HK. But then again, certain parts of Uptown, NY did too.

We met up with Vonne's high-school friend Stella and her boyfriend, Michael (?) for lunch in a café in Chinatown. The red-bean ice was really good because the ice was actually crushed! Vonne and I were once again treated for lunch, this time by Stella's boyfriend (you know what? We realized that if we had paid for all our meals, we would had gone over our budget long before our departure home. In fact, Vonne had budgeted just enough to take the shuttle bus to JFK airport from Newark. We were quite fortunate! God really took care of us and blessed us on this trip! J).

Those two ended up taking us to SoHo (meaning South of Houston-a street), an artsy, cultural community (supposedly), but we didn't see too much there except for this one paper shop. This particular store sold everything paper: paper by the sheet, even by the pound. Mind you, this isn't ordinary recycled or laser copying paper, there was so much selection of colours, weight, size, and texture of the paper, that the choices were endless. The stuff that I was looking for in order to do the grad invitations for CCF were all here. Unfortunately, most of the papers were quite expensive K. Ah, oh well, the invitations were done well with what we had, and with the assistance of Vonne anyway J.

We were going to take the subway uptown again, but we decided to just walk around downtown in case we had to rush to catch the train again. So we ventured into another cathedral (I think it was called Trinity Cathedral) that looked similar than St. Paddy's (as Uncle Peter likes to call it). We also found a store that Stella and her boyfriend recommended called Century 21 (no, it's not the real estate company). It's a department store that sells all brand-name stuff at a discounted price. Stella said that we wouldn't buy anything, but Michael (?) guessed that we would. Well, I was going to by a Pierre Cardin ($7 USD) leather wallet for my brother, but I didn't afterall because I wasn't sure if he'd like it or not. But, Vonne after much deliberation, bought a Hush Puppies wallet for her mother (so nice of her J!). However, we ended up running to catch the PATH train ($1 USD-isn't the fare more than quite reasonable?) back to NJ to meet up with Uncle Peter for dinner. We somehow seemed to have walked past the World Trade Center to Battery Park until we realized that we missed a turn. On top of that, we hadn't taken a PATH train yet, so we had to run to find where to go down to take the train and which track it left on. Thankfully, we made it on time! J

Dinner was in Newark at a Spanish restaurant. We ate dinner with Uncle Peter and his older sister, Auntie Betty, and her husband, Uncle Bob (?). More seafood for yet another evening, but this time, I was rather cautious about eating the Atlantic lobster. In Waterloo, I had broken out into a rash due to a still unknown reason, and I had thought that perhaps it may have been the Atlantic lobster from Red Lobster the night before. Vonne and I split a HUGE marina meal that we didn't finish. It had clam, mussels (many!), shrimp, scallops, and a small lobster tail. That was close to $20.00 USD and I was already feeling bad for eating such a big meal. The adults had lobster meals worth $25+ USD. Auntie Betty and Uncle Bob(by?) treated us thankfully, or else I would be heartbroken over a meal worth $20 that I would have to pay for. But then again, we split it so it was only around $10.

That evening, we tried rushing to the top of the World Trade Center in NY (oh yeah, I can't believe that they charge you $4.50 USD for the toll to NY from NJ every time!) but it was already closed. That's okay though because we were going to L'il Italy anyway (a l'il ways from Chinatown) to eat dessert. Vonne had strawberry shortcake and I had a raspberry cheesecake and Uncle Peter had a very tasteful Italian dessert. Once again, he treated. It was quite late by the time we got home, so we went to bed to rest up for yet another day.

Day Four-Saturday, April 29th, 2000: Museums and Miss Saigon

The day with Uncle Peter. First, we went to Times Square, NY to buy discounted matinee tickets. Actually, Uncle Peter stood in line, and he let us wander around. What we ended up doing was going back to the visitor's information centre to send another e-photo. However, we still haven't received anything from YAHOO! or from Burger King yet (that's the story for Sunday)-I think that I should e-mail YAHOO! and ask them if I don't see anything soon. Uncle Peter ended up waiting for us because the line went through very quickly. He got us seats close to each other (Vonne and I were next to each other, and Uncle Peter ended up moving next to us after the intermission because there was nobody beside Vonne) in the Orchestra section for a mere $40 USD (50% off original price).

Hmm, I think that it was about time for lunch, so Vonne and I shared 8 pieces of Popeye's fried chicken and we were so full that we had to ask Uncle Peter to finish one piece for us, and Vonne didn't even finish her extra side of potatoes. Ah, oh well J. 2:00 p.m. was the showing for Miss Saigon, so we went to watch our very first musical/Broadway show (except Uncle Peter, whose first one was Chorus Line). The show was quite good. I think I wouldn't mind spending some more money for future shows.

After 2 hrs and ˝ of the Broadway show, we tried to find LOAW Schwarz . . . (or something like that). Apparently, it's supposedly the world's largest toy store-the idea in Toy Story 2, and the store in Home Alone (1 or 2 I forget which). On the way, another Disney Store kind of distracted us. Inside, there were more souvenirs to buy, and more sales than the previous store (the goods of the sale were all gone the following day, when Vonne wanted to buy other stuff at the same store, so we were at the right place at the right time).

We proceeded to walk through Central Park (also featured in one of the Home Alone's when he finds the pigeon lady) to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This museum is huge and quite interesting, but I think I enjoyed the Intrepid or the Museum of Natural History more (which is a story for the following day). There wasn't much time after we wandered through the museum, so we quickly tried to catch a cab to the World Trade Center so that we could view the city during the night. We only had approximately 15 mins by the time we got up there, so we were in quite a rush. Thus, we missed the stimulated helicopter ride (whatever that was) of NY and we missed some photo opportunities in the WTC.

We took the PATH train back to Harrison, where we parked in the morning. Funny, that morning, we inserted only 3 hrs and 45 mins worth of quarters (which gives you 15 mins per quarter) in the meters, when we should have paid for 7 hrs. We decided to risk the approximate 4 hrs until we saw that many tickets were issued to cars that had meters expired along the way (Vonne's uncle lost some confidence in the risk). We then discovered that one could park all day for $3.00 close-by, so we gave up 3 hrs and 45 mins (and perhaps even a parking ticket) to park all day J. That night, we ended up having thin-crust pizza at home for dinner.

Day Five-Sunday, April 30th, 2000: Last day in NY!

Uncle Peter drove us to the pier where the Harbor Cruiseline left. Yep, we took a 2-hr cruise (from 11:30 a.m.) of NY Island. On the way, we passed the Statue of Liberty, many of NY's bridges, and the skyline of NY, which included the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Financial District, etc. We took many pictures, which we hope will turn out quite nicely J.

After docking, we went next door to the Intrepid museum, which is a retired aircraft carrier that fought in 2 wars, including WWII (because a couple of the ship crew are working there now), which survived bombed injuries. Aboard that ship was a very sleek US spy plane and beside it was the only missile-guided submarine that visitors were allowed to tour. However, because the line up was so long (first it was 50 mins, then it was 1 hr and 15 mins), we decided to pass up the opportunity. Too bad L. Sometimes, I wonder why Canada doesn't have more of these. It's so fun to climb aboard a war ship! In my lifetime, the only ones I've been on is in the States; I've seen one docked by Westminster Quay, BC, but I don't even know if they open that one up for visitors. We took many pictures too-silly ones. Unfortunately, the spy plane was at a bad angle so we couldn't get a picture of it.

We rushed to the next museum via subway. But we made a detour on the way. Burger King for lunch with one slight distraction. An e-video and Internet terminal! Woo-hoo :)! So after checking our e-mails, we took 2 e-videos and sent them out. Once again, they haven't arrived in our inboxes yet, so I think I will e-mail Adobe soon to complain. Due to our stop, we were late in arriving at the Museum of Natural History so we got in for free and ran around for ˝ hr prior to closing to take as many pics as possible J. In an amazing amount of time, we went through 4 floors of displays and managed to get a general glimpse of the museum.

The subway station was right beside the Museum of Natural History, so we took the subway to the Museum of Modern Art, but by the time we got there, 'twas closed. It closes on 5:45 p.m. on Sundays, you see. Ah, oh well. We went to the Disney Store instead, and on the way back, we passed by some stores to pick up more postcards and to see if we could find Vonne a Miss Saigon souvenir. Well, she almost bought a T-shirt.

Notice that I said "almost". Why? Well, because we got scared. We casually ventured inside a boutique, and all of a sudden, we heard screams and shouts, and then what looked like the beginnings of a fist-fight right outside the store. Even the store manager, an elderly Chinese lady went out to try and break it up, so we knew that it involved the store. We couldn't go anywhere, because 2 other ladies were blocking the only exit. So, me, having watched too many movies and read too many books, pulled Vonne behind the pillar in case anyone started shooting. Silly me J. Well, anyway, Vonne saw an opportunity to escape out of the store when the 2 ladies escaped in a hurry. So we all rushed out the store and the ladies said that as much as they wanted the shawl, they were not going back there to get it. And as much as we wanted to buy the T-shirt, we were not going back there either :( .

Anyway, all that commotion and searching for a Miss Saigon shirt made us almost late for the train again, so we practically sprinted to the subway station (well, speed-walked) and connected to the PATH train, just as it was arriving. Dinner? Er, I forget what we had. I think it was a mixture of lunch and the food we ate at home. Oh yeah! Vonne was hungry, so we dug out some microwaveable frozen pasta (which looked like airplane food but tasted much better) from Uncle Peter's freezer. That night, we ended up watching a very old episode of Friends before packing our luggage and going to sleep (which was very late relative to our vacation schedule-past 2:00 a.m.).

Day Six-Monday, May 01st , 2000 to Day Twelve-Sunday, May 07th, 2000: NJ!

Arrived in Moorestown, NJ late morning. Had buffet lunch. Shopped at Christian bookstore. Every day thereafter:

ˇ Shopping (everywhere including craft stores)
ˇ Eating (including a meal at Red Lobster [my second time there in my life!] on Friday, May 05th, 2000-yummy, more seafood!)
ˇ Sleeping
ˇ Reading (Phillip Yancey's: What's So Amazing About Grace; The Bible Jesus Read-both very good books!)
ˇ Beading (my new hobby J)
ˇ Playing (piano, with cousins, etc.)
ˇ E-mailing/writing my journal (the copy you see here)
ˇ Relaxing

Key Highlight(s): Thursday, May 04th, 2000: ILOVEYOU virus breaks out, and many people I know get infected. For additional details of this virus, please refer to: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/virus_000505.html

The End.

P.S. Thanks for your patience and time in reading this long (and probably boring report) of my trip. Hope you enjoyed at least 0.0001% of it :P!