It has been three days, and I am still suffering from withdrawal symptoms.

Every now and then, I will check my watch and subtract three hours from the time, and then I'll think about what I might be doing now if I were still there. Then, I'd try to recall what we were doing one week ago at this time. How will I be like a week from now? Will I be doing the same thing, except that I will be thinking "Remember what we did two weeks ago?" instead?

I miss so many things. The weather (definitely), the people, the food, even the freaking animals. The birds and squirrels here are too small, and there's not a single bookshop in Singapore where you can walk in and find a giant chocolate labrador lying on the floor while his owner browses through some books. I miss having green notes of the same size in my wallet. I even miss having to sort through a whole bunch of confusing coins whenever I'm at the cashier. When I got back to Singapore and looked at the Singapore notes in my wallet, and couldn't help but think, "How colourful." And as strange as this sounds, I still find the right-hand drive vaguely weird. It doesn't really make much of a difference, but whenever I'm in a vehicle, I see the driver's seat on the left instead of on the right. Whenever I'm on the road, I see myself travelling on the right side instead of the left. Whenever I'm on the bus, I see the door on the right instead of on the left. This definitely didn't happen when I returned from China and France, so I have no idea why it's happening now.

On a lighter note, I made an amazing "discovery". Okay, maybe amazing only to me. I think I just stepped out of a shower on my toes, then I realised that I had left a footprint on the ground. It wasn't my full foot, just the part my toes and the small part below that which I have no idea what it's called.

And then. I realised. That it looked like a freaking paw print.

Suddenly, I saw the light.

Okay this is cheesy.

The point is, I suddenly understand how our bone structures are similar to other animals!

Backtrack.

Have you ever realised how our bone structure is kinda weird? Look at a horse. Its front legs bend the way our legs do, while its hind legs bend the way our arms do. Look at a wolf, or a cat, or a dog. Its front legs bend the way our arms do, but its hind legs bend the way our arms do, like a horse's.

I have a theory behind it! In reality, there are four parts to the entire leg. For us, it may look like it's only the thigh, the lower leg (what is it called too lazy and excited to check now) and our foot. But in truth, I think it's the thigh, the lower leg, the back and longer part of our foot, and then the front part of our foot plus our toes. Confusing? Not really. The different joints basically separate the different parts.

Now look at the bone structure of a wolf. THE HIND LEG AND FRONT LEGS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME AS A HUMAN'S OMG.

It's just that due to evolution and the way we walk, we walk on our entire foot, whereas the wolf only walks on its toes. That's why our thigh bone became so freaking huge, and caused our leg to bend this way, while the middle bone (argh seriously what is it called) of a wolf (or whatever any other animal that is similar) became the seemingly larger one and caused its leg to bend that way.

Oh the thigh bone is the femur. And the "middle bones" (I feel like an idiot) are the fibula and tibia okcan.

I AM SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO EXCITED OMG!!!

I sound like some nerd.

Similar explanation for the horse.

And I even found an image to prove my "theory"!!


Oh god this is why I love evolution and why I want to study it ):

Picture post, after all that random crapping during the road trip earlier on in the day. I actually didn't sleep at all (like really not a single wink) during the entire trip! O: -blows horn of victory-

Instagram pictures from all the way last Thursday O-O

Stanford.

Pretty overheda bushes! As in the trailing type on the... ceiling.

Hoover Tower

View down Palm Drive.

The Memorial Square.

I think this is the IT place? As in the more IT part of the school... okay I really don't know.

Zee church.

I have no idea what to write here so I'm writing this.

Orange poppies!

Hoover Tower! Again.

US flag :D


My feet and someone else's.

We were waiting for the other lecture to finish, and most of us were out at this patch of grass... At first Rachel and I started doing some random thing... was it jump shots? Then it got to the point where everyone was practically rolling about and dancing on the grass. Over here, we lay down in a circle with our feet held up in the sky, then someone took a picture of all our feet in a circle :D

Gosh that was an awesome day. And so long ago TToTT

Hui Min's fortune cookie was so surreal and pretty...

Bubbles!

The silhouette of a seagull by a window at the guard house of Alcatraz.

OMG LOOK AT ZEE BABY TOMS OO:

Lucky babies. Seriously, babies these days have such gorgeous shoes and clothes.

Wires overhead.

They had a huge Forever 21 stall which we did not go in!!!!!

Union Square of San Francisco.

Random street lamp

Palace of Fine Arts!

One of the joys of having a road trip is observing the cars outside on the road, especially of you're in a foreign country and sitting high up, like in a coach.

For one, I notice that there's an inordinate number of container trucks on the interstate freeways.

I've also seen cars from Washington, Oregon, Utah, Nevada and Florida. And also, even one from somewhere in Europe. I mean, it had a California plate, but that plate was hung over a familiar European one. I could not see the leftmost corner of the European plate and a letter, but anyway, it was distinctively European.

I think it'll be so super cool if one day, I can collect all the different car plates from all over the world. I can already have fifty from America alone.

Another fun thing about observing cars is watching them zoom past you. Of course, this is not recommended if you're sleepy because the zooming cars will have a rather hypnotic effect.

How I wish I were
a falcon,
so I could swoop and soar
over hills and mountains
and feel the winds ruffling my feathers;

or a wolf,
so I could lope and wind
through the cold forests
and feel my paws pressing against the crisp snow;

or a horse,
so I could gallop like an arrow
across the wide prairie
and feel my mane and tail streaking out behind me.

But dreams are
just dreams.
I was born human,
not a falcon or a wolf or a horse.

But they tell me we are superior.

Why?

Some say it's
because we have emotions.
So in that case
a mother elephant mourning for her lost calf
is entirely emotionless.

Some say it's
because we are intelligent.
But what is intelligence when
we don't have so many things that the rest do?

We can't
move fast without automobiles;
we can't
fly without metal wings;
we can't
move things a hundred times our size
without monster trucks;

so let's just face it:
if thrust entirely into
the harsh embrace of Mother
Nature, we would've been one
of the first to perish.

We're not superior.
We never were.

As we go further south, the land seems to be getting more and more like a desert. It's amazing how a state (not even a country) like California alone can have such diverse sceneries. The redwood forests, Yosemite, the Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert...

Feelings of amazement aside, I'm feeling a little pissed. The reasons are... Personal and sensitive. Let's just say that I feel that some people are somewhat insensitive. I can't read Lone Wolf now. Not in these conditions. I actually felt like migrating to the back of the coach just to read.

I miss the serenity and peacefulness of a completely quiet bus, where I am the only one awake besides the bus captain. Oh how I hate noise.

We've just driven past some really beautiful scenery, and a lot of my friends are clambering to snap pictures of it. Me, on the other hand... I'm just sitting here like chill.

I feel snobbish. Everyone's oohing and aahing over how gorgeous it is and how the water's sparkling, and I'm just like... Meh. I've seen much better.

It all comes down to how lucky I am, I guess.

So we just stopped by at this place called Casa de Fruta. I'm having a strong sense of déjà vu. I've definitely been here before. And everyone bought so many fruits. Mdm Lee bought strawberries and cherries for everyone. Two things on my long list of Things Koh Han Yi Never Eats.

Gosh I haven't posted in DAYS. And I realize that my blog isn't really... Reflection-ey -guilt guilt- since blogs are like supposed to be online diaries.

Anyway, we've just started (half an hour into) our eight hour journey to LA from SF. And pretty soon, these awesome twelve days will be over and then we'll be thrust back into reality.

I'm going to miss America so much. Over here, everything is so... Wide. And I'm not talking about the waist span of the people. I'm talking about the scenery. We've spent so much time on the coach, and I rarely sleep, so a lot of my time is spent looking out of the window. So maybe it's just the San Francisco area... The rolling hills just stretch on, and the sky is literally 一望无际 because there aren't many high rise buildings. I love it this way. Just like last December in Bordeaux, all their buildings are low old-ish buildings (like gothic ones) and there aren't high rise buildings too. Perhaps, after spending all my life in a country where one high rise building is less than a kilometer away from the next, this wide emptiness is definitely a change. It makes me feel more... Open and relaxed. The air is fresher and I don't feel as claustrophobic.

That's it for now. Maybe I'll post again later on in the bus journey to make up for all the days I haven't.

Hello from Frisco! Which explains the odd hour (okay not so odd, but a little unusual) hour at which I'm posting. It's 11+ here now, and I'm eating :D

Too lazy to seive through all the pics to choose some the post, so I'm just gonna use those that I instagrammed.

Waiting on the plane. This is the one heading towards Hong Kong.

Oh. And that's it for instagrammed pics of Day 1. Cos I accidentally deleted the rest of the pics that I wanted to instgram, so O-O

Day 2! Which is today. It was quite fun! ((: Next few days will be like all the Math-Science-ey days.

First stop: UC Berkeley. The US and California flags flapping in the wind... Actually I took a few shots before this but they were all in the absence of wind -.-

UC Berkeley has humongous squirrels, maybe the size of a small rabbit. And they're super brave. Like one was clinging to a tree, being all photogenic and allowing us to take pics of it (I didn't though :/), then all of a sudden it leaned forward and thrust both paws outwards towards Mdm Lee. It was begging for food .__.

Some random but pretty bush of lilac flowers.

The famous Campanile of Berkeley

Golden Gate Bridge after that!

It was super windy and I was like... -shiok-

After which, we went to Fisherman's Wharf, but I've no instagrammed photos of that one. We walked around mostly, after our "lunch". I had 8oz of clam chowder ._. And it's annoying how so many people say it as "oz" like The Wizard of Oz, instead of "ounces" ==

And then in the last half an hour or so... We discovered a shoe shop at the second level that sold Toms, Converses, Vans and Uggs among many other stuffos!! So I got excited (naturally) and got an original pair of Toms (the red ones) and measured my feet properly.

Size of 1st pair: 5
Size of 2nd pair: 6.5

1.5 sizes too small -smacks head-

On the way back to the hotel, we drove under/through/above (only for the journey there) the Bay Bridge.

Sunset... Can't figure if that small white speck is the moon, or just some random piece of dirt on my camera lens.

I am currently in a dilemma because I can't decide which pair of shoes to wear tomorrow. Help.

So....

I'm sixteen already :/

Well, not technically.

Technically, I was born at around 8.30 in the morning, so technically, I'm still 15.

HAH!

Well yeah, but no one cares about what time you're born. Once you've crossed the 11.59pm-12.00am border, that's it. You're one year older.

Which is ridiculous considering how sixteen years ago on this time, I was still somewhere in my mother.

So, I'm 15 years, 11 months, 16 hours and 25 minutes old. As of 14 May 2012, 12.05 am.

IN OTHER NEWS.

8 more hours 8D

Thank you, Tammy Lim from 305.

One of the Sundays (5 May, if memory serves), we got dragged to go bird watching at some place opposite Changi Airport.

An A380!

The sunset was beautiful, though. It was the evening of the supposed monster moon or whatever it is. Mega moon. Whatever.

With Instagram.

My new wallpaper!! <3 Messy, but I love it :DD All my favourite things (okay, a few of them)... Being Human BBC, TVD, Lord of the Rings, One Direction, Toms, Starbucks, Sherlock Holmes...

Too bad I didn't put Avengers in there ))))': cos at that time I hadn't watched Avengers yet. Sigh. That's the fallback, I guess.

Forgot when I took this :/

Spot the face! Prawn eyes, vegetable moustache, and whatever-hell-that-food-is mouth

Han Wei was like -.- when he saw me arranging my food carefully into a face.

"不妨在购物时宠一宠自己"

okay this was quite some time ago, but still...

 childhood snack...

Hello Panda!

The whole bunch of gerberas Mdm Lee got for us... (':

Colour gradient during Chem hoho :D

Redondo!

My beloved red gerbera...

On Dad's bureau. It doesn't live there, by the way. I just put it there for like 10 minutes because Han Wei was settling some stuff on the com and I was watching.

<3 It's dying soon though... as of 13 May 2012 )))))': More and more petals are somehow... curling up and drying... I feel so sad. It's like... I'll come back in 2 weeks' time and I find a dead gerbera on my table...

So this was the stuff Han Wei was settling :DD

The things lls got me for my birthday...

Ninja!

Hwa Chong JC, 11 May 2012.

Class tee!

Catch of the day, 11 May 2012. Oh, how I miss touring the library like that and just scouting for random books!! Okay, actually only Cloaked was random, but still.

I love this picture. I don't know why... I just love it.

Bringing The Hunters and Brave New World to US 8D

Zee earrings I'm bringing! Actually I'm already wearing the peace and bunny one now :D

Our first fully self-initiated movie together... The Avengers. Freaking awesome... but if you're not the kind who enjoys fighting shows... I think you'll be bored.

But the 6 of them are like perfectly paired up!

The Scientists: Tony (Ironman) and Bruce (Hulk)
The Old-Fashions: Steve (Captain America) and Thor (Thor, duh)
The Assassins: Clint (Hawkeye) and Natasha (Black Widow)

Though Loki really is very "poor thing"... It's like he's insane... Even the actor said he was "cray cray".

My "lunch" today.


The show kinda differed from the book though. As in, the front part was mostly same, except near the end? Though I must say, I prefer the show cos they really went to introduce the antagonist (Dexter's brother) quite early and he was just like a harmless character at first... then all was revealed which produced a pretty awesome twist. And there were clues here and there of Dexter's past. Unlike the book, in which Dexter's brother only popped in right at the last chapter (I mean say what?!) and so did the whole thing about his past. It just felt kinda sudden.