An early and boring breakfast in McDonalds, although i had a ‘McGriddle’ which was weird, like an egg and sausage mcmuffin but with small pancakes with raisins for a bun, bizarro.
We headed to the docks via the subway and collected our tour tickets and stuff before setting off to the Statue of liberty island (liberty island? idk) by boat. There were also about 3 security checkpoints just to get onto the fucking pier where the boat leaves, the 9/11 stuff obviously really made them paranoid.

When we got to the island we went to a small cafe to get some drinks, 3 bottled drinks… $10 , conversion rate of pounds to dollars is 1.5 (aka. NYC is fucking expensive)

Then finally, the main attraction – which we already actually saw a few times from boats, the rockafella centre and just walking along the coast..

Yeah, you’ve probably seen it in pictures or on TV, it really is pretty impressive though. Really really big.

Walking through the building underneath it is a museum about the construction, architecture and whats inside and things like that, which was actually more intresting than you’d expect from a museum underneath a statue, (for example, the copper layering is 2x 2pence pieces stacked , or something like that.
We also got the pleasure of a 150step flight of stairs to get onto the podium (just underneath where she is standing), pretty nice view of the NY skyline from up there

We ‘splored a little more, then traveled by boat to staten island, which is where US immigration to NYC used to occur, it was pretty boring and exactly like you’d expect from a museum on immigration to be like. No photos because it was all crap.

Back on the shore, we saw this – which was random.

From here we went to ‘Ground Zero’ , which i hear used to be a monument or memorial, but is now just a MASSIVE construction site in the middle of a bunch of skyscrapers. They are building the ‘one world trade centre’ now, and it’ll apparently be done around 2012. We did however run into a red bull car, with hot girls outside giving out free cans of red bull. Yass.

Walked around and looked at shops and stuff before returning to the hotel due to exhaustion.
Came out at dinner and took a cab to ‘Ichiumi’, which is probably the most amazing buffet restaurant ive ever seen in my life, (and i thought golden corral in FL was good).
It was a huge japanese seafood array (as you’d expect from a restaurant whose name translates to ‘one ocean/sea’)
Those of you that read my malaysia holiday blog posts will know what comes next..

Pictures really dont do this place justice, you cant really understand just how long that fucking buffet spread is without walking it, they also do gyoza, noodles, rice, teppanyaki, fresh oysters, crabs, lobsters (2 lobsters for $10) and the drinks are bottomless, its ridiculous.
We ate until it was coming out of our ears and then walked it off slowly over 10 or so blocks in a reasonable 25deg C (at 9 or 10pm)

M&M shop was HUUUUGE! And had so many different types of M&M, we actually bought some coconut flavor ones and a pack of ‘pretzel’ ones, which are apparently ‘salty,sweet and crunchy’….

This market spanned pretty much the whole of the road, all the way down (i think it was 8th avenue or something), all the way from times square to central park, which is a really fucking long way. Sold some really nice food as well, bubble tea, roast Corn on a cob, crepes, gyros and these weird pancakey cheesy things which i forget the name of.

From here we went to Central Park and rented some bikes, we rode around for a good few hours… in the BLAZING SUN.
It was seriously like 30 degrees C or something silly.

Its a very pretty, and very big park, it would be nice if it wasnt so hot and you could actually take your time riding around and taking in all the sights, as it was though it was just riding around trying to find downhill sections so that you could stop pedalling and enjoy the breeze.

Afterwards we went to mcD’s to cool off with some drinks (fuck yeah aircon) and then headed back to the hotel to shower and stuff.

Dinner at ruby tuesdays, a gorgeous steak dinner and then some more shopping afterwards where i bought some shoes from the ‘element’ shop.

A surprisingly uneventful day actually, although biking around Central Park really was a nice experience, its such a massive park  (842 acres or something i think i overheard)

Tomorrow is statue of liberty and some other things, also i think i’ll upload all of the photos when i get back to my own PC as its just way easier that way (tiny netbook screen ftl)

oh. also.

We went to the ‘top of the rock’ which is similar to empire state building sort of a deal, ride a lift up and check out the sights from the roof (about 80 floors up or something), it was pretty cool and actually way better than the empire state building in just about every way.

Afterwards we had a look around and ended up taking the NBC Studio tour, which was a guided tour with some chirpy (and p. hot) tourguides, the tour went through the filming studios, behind the scenes in the control rooms and just a general overview of how the industry works, it was really intresting and well worth a visit.

From here we walked to Grand central station, the main train station in NYC (and that place that cyclops destroys in the Xmen film, or the place where a scripted event occurs in Crysis 2). It was pretty damn huge, and we had lunch in the food court area there – which was kind of terrible but oh well.

We travelled uptown to the American natural history museum next, which was pretty standard fare as natural history museums go (although the ‘Fare’ was significantly more than standard [$40] ). It was filled with dinosaurs and animals and some sciency stuff, pretty intresting i suppose.

Another trip on the subway (which are fucking abysmal by the way, really dirty and poorly made subway system, which is confusing to use and just pretty skanky in general) to near chinatown, I say near because the train decided partway to turn into some sort of express train which basically means it goes past all the stops you want it to go to and means you have to take extra effort to trackback go wherever it is you wanted to go…

Chinatown was really impressive, unlike the London chinatown, this place is actually a goddamn town. Loads of streets filled with hawkers, fresh fruit and all sorts of weird asian shit (including shop which exclusively sells chopsticks wtf). Dinner at ‘Peking duck house’ or something to that effect, which specializes in peking duck (derp). Good stuff, although we wasted a ton of food because we were all too full.

—

Cant be bothered to upload photos right now tbh, we’ve really been zerging through NYC and as such, totally fucking exhausted. My feet ACHE :(

We had a walk around times square and ended up eating breakfast in Hard Rock Cafe which wasnt particuarly great eating, but they had alot of cool stuff on the walls to look at (guitars from bands and stuff)

We then walked off and around, and ended up at madame tussauds (wax museum thing), it was pretty cool, although really fucking creepy. You’d be standing around and wondering who was sculptures and who are people.
Actually they have a ‘scream’ exhibit, which is actually just really dark and filled with actors who pretend to be fucking scuptures then grab you and shit.

Uhhh…. After this we walked down to the docks to buy tickets for the cruise tour, we went to the intrepid museum afterwards – which basically has a Aircraft carrier battleship, a submarine and a concord for you to look around the inside of, it was pretty kewl.

We then lounged around for a while , went to a place to get a snack and my brother ordered a hotdog and chips… We were all disappointed when a small hotdog appeared accompanied by a packet of Lays crisps.

We played around in a fountain for a little and then sunbathed it off, before going for the cruise. The cruise lasted 2 hours and went round the coast of New york with some guy yapping over the mic about all the history and stuff.

We walked back to the hotel ,where im typing this up now.
We’re going to the empire state building tonight and i think we’re going for bubba gumps shrimp for dinner. Tomorrow i’ll hopefully be meeting with cross and doing some other stuff which i cant remember.

The flight was supposed to take off at 2pm, we ended up having to wait around until around 8pm and then the boarding and the plane taxi’ing made it so that takeoff didnt actually occur until about 9:30pm….
We arrived in NYC at about 30 mins past midnight, we were supposed to arrive at around 5pm :<

The bridge to connect the plane to the terminal then didnt work for some reason, and… yup. more delays. After this we had to queue for ages to get past immigration and shit.

Just overall a terrible first day of a holiday, we got to our hotel practically on the verge of consciousness.

File #3: http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/WoWScrnShot_080710_175928.jpg – deadboat

File #4: http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/WoWScrnShot_080710_230526.jpg – kited

File #5: http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/WoWScrnShot_080810_015555.jpg – above the arch

File #6: http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/WoWScrnShot_080810_021905.jpg – running around iron

File #7: http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/WoWScrnShot_080810_031604.jpg – firegod

File #8: http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/WoWScrnShot_080810_221645.jpg – ironaya

File #1: http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/WoWScrnShot_080810_223525.jpg – iron guy

File #2: http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/WoWScrnShot_080910_215024.jpg – slowflal fail

File #3: http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/WoWScrnShot_081010_011238.jpg – scarabs

File #4: http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/WoWScrnShot_081110_032946.jpg – fuck azhara

File #5: http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/WoWScrnShot_081110_033144.jpg – fuck azhara part 2

File #1: http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/WoWScrnShot_081310_000953.jpg – slowfall race

File #2: http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/WoWScrnShot_081310_134513.jpg – wat

File #6: http://www.mengsbizarreadventure.com/uploads/WoWScrnShot_081510_033805.jpg – room of skeletons

it also now comes in orchestral

[you are SO dumb, you know that?]

^Deadmines

^ The magic that is Rario and Ruigi

^ Raid Icons make everyone easier to identify!

^ Stop i love you, stop i love you, stop i love you

^The sunset riders – On their way into the heart of alliance territory

^ Just outside ironforge gates… where we got stuck on this hill for about half an hour. It all went downhill from here

^A silly dungeon made sillier by someone aggroing the entire dungeon which came to steamroll us. I wish i could have screenshotted the actual swarm which attacked us, this is only the aftermath. I’ll have to be quicker to my printscreen button nexttime.

Signed~
Bobby Kotick.

ps. Currently 32 Mage, Frostmane EU

Based on the adventures of Me, yomar and cross

- Have started driving lessons again, but the teacher is a bit of a weeb, im only really staying with him because he has a good car which is easy to drive.

- Coming towards the end of anime ‘one outs‘ m still enjoying it. It really is alot like kaiji (which is also enjoyed)

- League of legends seems to have died down recently, i guess people are starting to get bored of it, i suppose there is only so many ways you can push a lane and use 4 skills. Saying that, most of the key players have been offline recently so maybe thats the only reason. 5v5 premades really are a completely different game to solo or 3v3′s

- Spurred on by boyce, Ive started playing WoW again (wuh oh). Currently level 12 on Frostmane EU server. I actually picked a mage again, despite already having one… I did consider rogue or hunter, but at the end of the day nothing really beats a class that has good damage, survivability, the ability to create food/drink and is able to teleport to all major cities instead of taking public transport (hell, i can even jump off cliffs with the aid of slow fall)

- Alien Swarm – Free on PC via steam, is actually an awesome game, It can be easily compared to a top down alien version of left 4 dead and its good stuff, alot of fun and you really need abit of teamwork to be able to survive (on higher difficulties anyway). It also has a persistent unlock system which is pretty cool.

- Oh, i saw Inception last week. Its a pretty damn sweet film. Something like a cross between the matrix and oceans 11. Really worth a watch.

Really, really nothing much happening.

Oh, i did complete Red Dead Redemption (main story), and its really good, like.. everything about that game is awesome. (oh. aside from one of the challenges having to be to kill 2 cougars with melee knife, that shit is infuriating because they just knock you down and kill you instantly pretty much)
Aside from the red dead, ive been getting in some practice on SSF4 , but im still really bad with the arcade stick, cant get off ultras and stuff consistently yet.
Ive also been playing Monkey Island 2 : Lechucks Revenge (SE), and thats pretty amazing. The great voice acting really helps add to the already brilliant script in the game.
And then theres League of Legends obviously,we’re all around level 15 now and ive played ~90 games, which probably average at around 30-40mins each. Crazy timesink but its still alot of fun – i cant actually work out why its still so much fun, we usually play the same chars and they have the same 4 skills and buy the same items each game, there is pretty much only 1 map with 2 colour choices…. I dunno. Still fun though.

Also, its hot as hell recently, hard to even sleep without a fan blowing in your face constantly

Packing yesterday took bloody forever, I had no idea I had so much junk.
The ride home was long, about 2.5 hours. But now im back, and i celebrated by playing some SSFIV and Red Dead Redemption ( which looks fantastic on our HDTV, compared to the SDTV at unihouse – yay for being able to read the text)

Id like to say that now i can relax more and stuff, but the reality is probably the opposite.
I need to get out there and find a job
I need to hope i havent failed my degree
I need to get a few driving lessons before my driving test mid august
And probably a bunch of other shit which i can’t think of right now.

On the plus side, should still have lots of time for late night League of legends (of which we still could use 2 good players to make an arranged group of 5) , and im going on holiday to New York at the end of August, which should be awesome.

Since the holiday period has started ive essentially been doing nothing but playing games – league of legends in particular with cross and leetfella.
my housemate yesterday got Red Dead Redemption though so ive had a chance to play that some, i actually bought it myself but ordered it back to my house in Essex, figured id get the full experience with the big HD tv and surround sound. The mexican standoff thing at the start of the team deathmatches should be in every game from now on, its amazing.

Stuff planned:
Today – Nothing
Tomorrow – Alton Towers
Friday – Epic cleanup of the house and then Pizza hut buffet
Saturday – Go home

uh.. i think the drinks were like…

- pint of guiness (skipped)
- Pint of lager/Cider (par 2 / Me 2)
- Shot of baileys [wuddufuk £3 hell no] (skipped)
- glass of wine (par 2 / Me 1)
- Strawpedo [bottle drink - smirnoff ice] (par 1 / me 1)
- Rhey and Nephews [which is a 65% shot, the strongest one they have] (par-1 / me-blackhole)
- Vodka redbull (par ? / me 1)
- Sex on the beach [cocktail] (par 1 / me 1)
- Pint of ‘eliminator’ [which is a bunch of crazy shit, i know it has lambrini in there and a bunch of shots]

After the 65% shot i was pretty fucking wasted.
Wasted enough to not know when to stop, and then downed the vodbull, sex on the beach and tried downing the eliminator.

Couldnt walk straight, couldnt see straight, couldnt SIT straight, couldnt talk intelligently

I actually feel kinda drunk now – the morning after. C’mon liver/kidneys, stop lettin the team down.

The exams ‘Good , bad and the ugly’!

The good:
Cell Signalling lecturer ‘Davey’ gave the most blatent hints as to what the essay questions in this years exam was going to be, everyone wrote down what he said during the lectures, everyone powerrevised for those questions, praying that they would actually be there. Exam time, and lo and behold- there they were, both of them, in the exact same wording he said ‘might’ be in the exam. I have never written so much for one essay question ever, i think i wrote about 4 pages (including a diagram) on phosphorylation in signalling pathways – which will hopefully give me a decent mark…

The Bad:
I think it was ‘Enviromental Health Microbiology’, one of the questions worth 3 marks were ‘name the reservoirs for the following diseases’ (In English – disease is commonly found in…… ) and then went on to list a bunch of diseases (tuberculosis, salmonella… etc) , I…. had no idea, didn’t revise it, didnt even see it in the lecture notes. I wrote ‘cows’ for tuberculosis and moved on. I usually come back to check that i’ve written something for every answer after i finish doing the questions but I ended up using up all of the time in the exam writing on the essay questions.
After they announced to stop writing, i noticed I had essentially left the front 2 pages of the answer booklet empty. I peeked up to see where the invigilators were, and without skipping a beat went down the list of 6 diseases and wrote ‘birds’ ‘birds’ ‘birds’ ‘birds’ (cows) ‘birds’. Closed the booklet, handed it in. Why birds? I have no idea. Will i get any marks? well… one of them has to be birds surely.

The Ugly:
The first exam we had, the essay question came up (we get a choice of 2), one of them… I didnt really know in much depth at all – “discuss repeating regions” or something. The other one I sort of knew, but the question threw me off…. “Discuss phase variation, relate it to one pathogen”
Now… I had revised phase variation in a fair bit of detail, thinking it might come up, its basically when the organism is able to flip around abit of its DNA, letting it make a different protein (letting it do different shit [variation between phases] ), the example we had studied it in was ‘Salmonella’ – I looked at the exam question again, I don’t know this, i thought to myself.
“or well.. i know what phase variation is, but we didnt study any pathogens that use it, I only that it happens in Salmon”
……….
That was my genuine thought process.
Thats right, I did not answer the essay question I knew the answer to because I thought I had learnt about something which occurs in Salmon instead of Salmonella.
Fuck. Sake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNxM8qKP-Ew

http://boi.perfectworld.com/