Monday, September 13, 2010

A WEEK BEFORE SCHOOL!!



Just a week before school, but I already purchased all of my textbooks! I've shown you guys my Intermediate Algebra one which is freaking thick!

Lately I got two other textbooks for my English class which are much thicker and cheaper. Good thing, cos it'd be easier to carry them around.


Reminds me that I need to read them before school starts. Previewing, as you can tell.

Anyway, it also came to my realization that I lacked of nice casual clothes for college. Most of my clothes are dominated with white, and that's too monotone.
You wouldn't go to the campus everyday wearing the same color shirt would you?

So I was planning to buy (not shop) for some casual yet colorful shirts and coincidentally, my friends (Patricia and Astha) sort of asked me and Elda to hang out to the nearby shopping mall to just have lunch.
There was an impressive moment during lunch though. Patricia, who's also from Indonesia, happened to randomly asked Astha who comes from India about Hindi culture. We ended up talking about Hindi movies and the culture. Interestingly though, we also learned a bit of Hindi language, stuff like Namaste.

At the same time, the Asian lady happened to sit next to our table turned out to be an Indonesian and had a nice short talk with us. Apparently she comes from Central Java and had a pretty Javanese accent (how I miss hearing that accent). Her American husband suddenly popped out and greeted us with an "Apa kabar?".
It was sooo awkward that there was a short pause before we responded him. Isn't it interesting and surprising at the same time when you discover an American's able to speak your mother language?

After lunch, we moved to another mall located quite far from Cupertino and it's in Milpitas. To get there, we had to take a bus ride to Santa Clara, then switched to riding Light Rail (the so-called monorail you saw in my San Jose post eventually turned out to be referred as Light Rail instead of just monorail).

The second mall we happened to visit had cheaper stores. Elda, Patricia, and Astha were kind enough to help me look for some decent shirts.





On the way back to our apartments in the bus, Elda happened to hear two girls and one boy sitting behind her speaking Japanese. Then one of the girls and the boy got off, and there left the last girl on her own. Suddenly, the next thing I saw was Elda was already having a warm talk with that girl. I even heard some of Japanese words I happened to recognize, like "ima" which means "now" and "iru" which means "there/exist".

Everything seemed to go very fast and that the next thing I remembered, after Patricia (who sat next to me at that moment on the bus) got off, the Japanese girl gestured for me to sit next to her.

Here are some of the memorable quotes I was having with Ai-san (her name)
Me: Anata no namae wa nan desuka? (Trans: What's your name?)
Ai: Ai. (Then she sort of spoke "And you?" in Japanese. Forgot the words)
Me: Carissa. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu! (Trans: Nice to meet you!)
To which she responded with a laughter. She kept complimenting us how our Japanese was good despite of us being beginners (no, ME being a beginner. Elda has learned a lot of Japanese through its dramas. So consider her more as an intermediate).

I tried to recall all Japanese phrases I've learned at high school. But using them to speak with a real Japanese person seems harder than talking with your own teacher.

FYI, this is my first time speaking Japanese to a real Japanese person. You can imagine the whole awkwardness and stuff.
Me: What school do you go to go? Are you a DeAnza student? (I don't know the Japanese words for this. Probably stuff like "Anata no gakko wa nan desuka?)
Ai: No, I go to San Jose State University. (her Japanese accent is soo kawaii!)
Me: Ah... *pauses* sugoi! (Trans: good!)
Ai mentioned that she was really happy to finally meet someone who could speak Japanese, because she hadn't met strangers (non-Japanese) who could. I guess that day was her lucky day? Anyway Elda continued speaking random things in Japanese about dramas and we ended up talking about Arashi (a Japanese boyband) on the rest of our bus ride.

We felt all saddened when we came to our stop and that we had to part. But Elda had asked her email already and Ai said that she was going back to Japan in a week.
Safe trip, Ai!

That day was a bit multicultural-ish. It started with us learning some Hindi words, met a Javanese born lady, and ended with a sweet conversation with a Japanese student. :)

-----------------------------------------------

Yesterday was a bit exhausting, but it was really worth it since I finally got to find good yet cheap shirts. Not that cheap but at least reasonable (yep, that's exactly the word).

Yet today I hung out with Patricia and this time with some of my other friends like Rebecca, Angie, and Amira. Good thing that today, we got to watch Going the Distance.



That's like one of the not-so anticipated movies for me, but it turned out to be quite hilarious! I can tolerate the cursing, dirty jokes, and whatsoever, but Drew Barrymore looked fantastic there. It's not a surprise anymore that her costar in the movie, Justin Long, IS indeed her real life boyfriend. That's one pretty interesting fact about the movie.

Movie time was over, but sadly there wasn't plenty of thing to see in the mall where the cinema was located, so we decided to go to Santana Row instead to take a look around.

Patricia happened to spot this CHILI restaurant where we munched on our afternoon snacks.



Cheese fries
I'm a fan of french fries but this is my first time trying a cheese-smeared fries.
Cheese is also one of my favorite side dish. So you can imagine...
French fries + cheese = perfection!

Love the jalapenos too.
Anyway I think it's spelled "halapenyos"


Chicken Crisper
You need some sort of thin bread (don't know how to call that in English) to wrap these chickens. Then you eat it the way you eat a hotdog


The side dish. :p


Chocolate Molten for dessert!
A combination of heated chocolate cake and a vanilla ice cream underneath the dome-shaped chocolate.
I luuurrrrveee chocolate so much!
This is probably my most favorite chocolate cake I've ever eaten. Yum yum.

Speaking of chocolate, I'm planning to make some experiments on chocolate later on. Lately I've been into cooking pretty much, mixing random spices, garnishing onions, garlic, pepper, and salt.
But the result's not pretty bad. I used to cook when I was little though, but then I always puked everything that I cooked, so that's why I stopped cooking until I moved to the US, where the situation forced me to resume cooking.

Cooking's been pretty much my current hobby aside of writing these days, and especially after I'm forced to temporarily skip my two favorite hobbies after moving in to the USA: photoshopping (I haven't installed it on my mac yet T_T) and playing violin (just broke its E string and changed it immediately, but considering that I live in an apartment, I can't do that freely. Unless you want a neighbor to actually knock on your door and ask you to shut up).

Anyway, back to cooking. So yeah, so far I've cooked random things without the help of recipe at all. I've been applying "Ratatouille" concept of "Anyone can cook". Maybe next time I'll post some of the food that I got to cook here.

It's been a long post. See you very soon!

SCHOOL STARTS IN A WEEK!!! ARRRGGGHHHH

No comments:

Post a Comment