New Look

It's been a while since I got back from Seattle, but... I've been busy (kinda sorta... not really). I have managed to procrastinate my way into using that banner that David made for me a couple of weeks ago though. Thanks David =D

Anyhow, I've been to the US, which, surprisingly enough, doesn't actually look too different from Canada (who would've thought?). Woke up way too early on Sunday morning to get the bus (it was still dark!), and did the whole bus trip thing. Managed to get over the border, and yes, they did ask if I had participated in any terrorist activity (on the form anyways).

Along the way, it was interesting to see how many American flags were dotted along the highway (there were even a couple in Canada). We probably passed one at least every couple of minutes. They stopped a little bit when we got to the city though.

It was a bit gloomy on Sunday in Seattle. We pulled in on the bus and had lunch - my first meal in America =D Guess what it was =P


Yeah, I wanted to supersize, but they didn't have it =( Apparently I have to go to Texas for that. The drink (blue, yay =D) is Powerade, which they had in the post-mixers thingo. Note to anyone interested: That's way too much Powerade for anyone to have in one go (or I suspect any drink that isn't produced by Rowater =P)

So we went down to the Pike Markets. Which are just a bunch of markets really. Not particularly interesting unfortunately.

A bunch of people went clothes shopping (the Canadian dollar is above the US at the moment), but a few of us decided to do something a little more touristy. Unfortunately we couldn't find anything to do. I found the first-ever Starbucks, which was kinda cool (but I didn't get anything from there):


It turns out that although it was the first Starbucks, it initially was down the road somewhere. The queue was huge though, coming out onto the street. Not sure whether that was becuase it was the first one or not - but I haven't seen that happen anywhere else. However, that occupied me for about 5 seconds so eventually we fought our way through the rain to the Seattle Aquarium.


I was slightly disappointed by it (I want my $16 back). They had otters and seals and stuff, but no stingrays or Sharks =( Or anything cool really =P Apart from these jellyfish, which were in a tank which was a ring that you could walk through. That blue light actually changed colours, which was pretty cool also.

So I spent a few hours in the Aquarium, and then went off to find dinner. At one point we went inside, came back outside, and it was brighter than when we got inside. I think it was a combination of the sun being at the right angle to reflect the clouds, and the street lights coming on, but it freaked everyone out.


Had pizza for dinner, which was kinda cool, very big (and my pizza was an oval shape, which was a little weird), before about half of us left to go back to Vancouver, while the other half went to our hotel.

Watched the latter half of Napoleon Dynamite, which was kinda funny - if completely random. The dance at the end was inspirational. =D Then we tried to go out. Unfortunately we were now all underage again, so we couldn't even get into a place to play pool or anything. So it was an interesting night in...

The next morning Wilco (doing Mechanical Engineering in Wollongong) went to the Boeing factory tour, which would've been pretty cool. However, I wasn't ready to part with my sleep (it left the hotel at 7:45), or my $50 to go on it. Maybe on the way back through later.

We went into the city again - to a cheap shoes shop which a) was very cheap, and b) had a buy one get one half price promotion that day. Two pairs of shoes for $45 isn't bad =P (although neither pair was mine).

Back out of the city to the Space Needle. Here's a photo of it from the night before:
And here's the view from the top:

Not sure if you can see it in that photo, but in the top right, there should be this:
It was pretty incredible. There's also a rotating restaurant up the top of the Space Needle which rotates on a one and a half horsepower motor - which is pretty impressive.

After spending an hour or so at the top of the Space Needle, we went down to the bottom, to the Science Fiction Museum and the Experience Music Project - which strangely enough were in the same building, and were joint-admission.

Unfortunately no cameras were allowed in there, but they had a cool tower-like statue, which was made out of 200+ instruments (mostly guitars), 40-something of which were self-playing. It was a very, very cool monument.

There was also a history of the guitar display, which was also very cool. I learnt a lot about guitars there =P Upstairs there was a bunch of interactive stuff - where they had little videos which taught people how to play the electric guitar, the bass, the keyboard and the drums, as well as little mixing stations, recording booths, and other little games. Spent a fair bit of time there before moving onto the Science Fiction museum.

That was also very cool, which a lot of props from just about every science fiction movie, a bunch of books, and a lot of interesting comments about science fiction in general. I came out of it wanting to watch and/or read a bunch of movies/books - most of which I've forgotten now.

And that was pretty much it. We had pizza for dinner again (which was quite possible the most awesome pizza I've ever tasted), and bussed it back home.

On the way back we had another cool bus driver ("Hi, my name is Paul if you had a good trip, if you didn't, my name is George"), but a long wait to get through customs. Even though buses have their own lane through customs, we had to queue in order to get to the lane. I think we were waiting for almost an hour to get through. For some reason the guy didn't like me and drilled me with questions, but let me through well enough. Kinda scary though =P

And that was my trip to Seattle. Got back about 11pm, and didn't do much that night - but still managed to get to sleep late. The next day (Tuesday) I procrastinated way too much, started the assignment due on Wednesday morning at about 6pm, and didn't get it done until 1:30 or something. Pretty much wasted all of Wednesday - except found out about a couple of assignments which are gonna be really hard - and yeah, that brings me to today. Which, again I didn't do much in. Slept, messed around with my blog template and writing this post, and that's about it.

Now I should actually start one of those assignments (writing a program that solves Sudokus - I'm liking the assignments here =)). Oh, and all the photos are available at a much higher resolution should you want them =P (Although it's likely that I'm the only one that cares about them that much)

Shall post again soon hopefully. Seeya =)