Hollywood Bar, Morgan-Monroe State Forest & Brown County (again)

The title pretty much sums up wat I've been doing last weekend, more on that later... Been MIA for a couple of days cos I've been busy checking out deals for a new rig, basically manage to set up a pretty decent rig for abt $1k USD. Except for the lcd monitor and speakers everything else is here, but everything should be up by the end of the week. :) Some of the stuffs I've got...


Last friday night was at this nifty cinema called Hollywood Bar and Filmworks, basically what you can do there is catch a movie (not the latest though) and have your dinner and a drink at the same time. For smokers there's tables at the back for you to enjoy your fags. Anyway, I thought the food was not too bad I had a Whoopi Goldberger which is a half pound cheeseburger!! We caught the 40 year old virgin which was absolutely hilarious and it sure helped with the whole experience. I'm pretty sure I'm be back there again especially when tix are free from sunday to monday for lilly employees. hehe...

The following day we went hiking with a colleague and his black labrador. I was initially quite wary of the dog but it turned out to be pretty ok, I didn't freak out. For those uninformed I'm actually a little afraid of dogs after being chased by on 2 occasions by big dogs when I was little. I remembered the day being -1deg when I woke up and I thought shit it's gonna be a cold day. It warmed up to about 7-8 deg when we arrived at the forest trail in Morgan-Monroe State Forest. It feels kinda cold at first but after some walking it's actually pretty alright. Don (my colleague) even showed us how to spot poison ivy and how to identify some trees. The hikes weren't too demanding, we did a 5km hike instead of the 16 km one cos we were afraid that don might not be able to hold out due to his knee problems. I must say he's still pretty fit for a 56 year old. I figure he must be much fitter in his youth having done 3 marathons!

After a short stop at a town called Nashville where we did some sightseeing and had lunch we headed to Brown County(again). Some of the trees have turned yellow and red but I would say more than half were still green when they should already be bare at this time of the year.... oh well, guess it's jus our luck we can catch the full beauty of the fall season. Did another short 5k hike at brown county and I thought it was somewhat less enjoyable than Morgan-Monroe forest trail as there were lots of folks around. Apparently, brown county is the most popular state park in indiana...

Kinda sad that I'm at home blogging now, today is Halloween but somehow we've got no invites to any parties!! arrgghh, hope we'll know more folks by next year and go to some happening party...

Sabbatical

Today marks my first month anniversary in indy. Time really flies before I know it I'll probably be back in singapore. Before I came here, I thought it was imperative that I get a mobile and pc. After spending a little time without all these stuff(at least when not in office), somehow it feels pretty good without them. I get the feeling I'm in some kind of sabbatical leave, away from home, away from everything... The only reason for me to get a mobile now would be simply a matter of convenience, as in for me to contact other folks to liase meetup place/time, etc... On the other hand, some part of me prefers to remain uncontactable, as in I take control of when and whom I wanna call. Is this cruel or aloof? What about family and close friends? Frankly speakly, I don't know how to answer that question. I only know I'm gonna make the best of my remaining 17 months here to do the stuff I wanna do, have a good break, learn lots of new stuff and go back to singapore fresh and ready to pia again.

It has been a pretty quiet weekend, spent the bigger part of saturday at brown county state park. Was told that it was supposed to be quite scenic but it turned out to be dissapointing. Ok we were there to check out the leaves changing from green to yellow and red marking the start of the fall (autumn) season, turns out that the change was not as complete as we had hope. The worst part is that this supposed change in the color of the leaves takes place in a short span of time so that means next week they could have all fallen to the ground already!! At least we did manage to have a nice little bbq at the park grounds.
Johno and I decided to check out the pub scene that nite and we popped by this place called Rathskellar, they had a little dance area and a live band performing outdoors and it seemed like a good deal. Well, we were stopped at the entrance by this gal wif an attitude asking for our photo ids, so ll gotta head back to our apartment to get our passports.... The crappy thing was jy backing out the outing and claimed that she now preferred to vacumn her place after we gotten our ids!! Talk abt PMS!!! It seemed as though she was angry of sorts cos she was walking ahead of us pretty quickly and I must say it kinda irritated me and sorta dampened my()and john's) spirits.... But anyway, I just switched on my bo chap mode, me and johno went to have our saturday night chillout(it was 8deg so it was literally chillout). Outside the pub one can hear some kind of retro music and it wa kind of bizarre to see folks dressed formally in suits and dresses doing some kind of (informal) ballroom dance.... Our mission that night was to check out the live band so we headed to the outdoor area, the suay part was that the blardy band stopped performing at 11pm and we were there at about 2245. So knn we were there for like only 2-3 songs!@#@%!@$% The only good thing was that I discovered there is a place in indy that sells good beer! Being more appreciative of european beers, it was nice to know that they serve several decent draft beer there. Ok now for the bombshell, according to another friend that place is meant for folks 40 and above!! Dammit, tats why that day got no chicks, only got lao mu ji....

Jialat

Nothing much over the weekend, went plucking apples and the usual weekend shopping!!! I didn't spend a single cent from monday to friday cos was packing lunch the whole week. But come saturday all hell broke loose... bought sneakers, clothes again.. damn at this rate I think me and johno gonna be broke in no time, not to mention I also got some com stuff online... Anyway, I think I won't be uploading the pics we took here anymore, took much of a PITA will probably put it up somewhere else and put up links here. The most depressing news of the week is that aku here put on a bloody 4.5 pounds within 5 days!!! dammit I dunno how is that possible, I wasn't eating like that much and john was eating more than me!! Last wednesday I used the balance scale and weighed in at 163.5 pounds, yesterday after a run(!) was at 168 pounds. :-( dang, gotta start hitting the roads for longer runs... gd thing I not a shortie...

Windy City

Was up in Chicago(aka the Windy City) over the weekend, did some shopping, lots of eating and some sightseeing whilst there. Not gonna talk too much but just gonna put a few pics up, the rest will come later when I have more time.

On our way!

After a 3 hr (boring) ride, had dim sum at chinatown

In our hotel room, Holiday Inn Chicago City Center fopr US$50 off priceline

Exploring downtown chicago

Chicago has a blend of old buildings amongst skyscrapers


Inside Niketown, 4 stories of Nike stuff, but very ex...


There were lots of people playing some kind of music including one really bad one of the sax and one joker who was dancing to some 80's dance music which was damn funny, here's an entire band playing at one of the road junctions.

Now one of the stange things about chicago is that there's a beach right beside the downtown area! Chicago is right beside Lake Michigan where the beach is, down there you can see lots of folks running, cycling, blading, somewhat like ECP but on one side you get a view of the sea and the other the chicago skyline.

johno and i doing some stupid 'deep in thought' pose


Back to downtown chicago!

Some pics I took while we were resting in a cathedral,




Ate chicago's famous deep dish pizza at Gino's East for dinner, ordered 3 personal and a side of wings but ended up tabaoing most of the stuff. It was quite filling but shiok... oh btw we queued up more than half an hour and waited 40min for the pizza!!




and now for some shots of chicago's breathtaking skyline at the top of the John Hancock Center








Will upload some other stuff later, feel free to drop me comments as I'm new to taking pictures. Hopefully part 2 will be up soon...