I was totally ignoring him.. :p I felt so bad that I couldn't recognized his voice. To think we used to hang out a lot when I was there. Sorry, Charles a.k.a. Grumpy. :p
One of the best and memorable 2 months of my life. Even now, it still felt a like a dream. I remembered when my boss sat me down and asked me if I were interested to go on a business trip to Milpitas, North America. I didn't wanna go in the first place as I just got back from Germany and there was the rollout of the project that I was there for. Not only that, I also realized that the previous batch that was there were from a different team, I would be taking up their role if I were to accept. There would definitely be some uproar later on. Don't really want any trouble. But my boss managed to convinced me to go which I'm very grateful for as that was the last business trip before the big economic downturn.
So there I was on a plane to the States on an April morning, together with my colleague, Punitha. We were chauffeured to the KL International Airport by the company hired limo early that morning. I was so excited I couldn't sleep. 2 months, man, 2 whole months!
All the years of watching American series and movies while growing up - from Saved By the Bell to Beverly Hills 90210 to any Hollywood movies showing now, I've never imagined I was able to go there. Well.. maybe later in life, you know.. when i'm old... when I have enough dough... just old... :p
Anywho, the life there for 2 whole months would be utterly boring if not for the friends that we've made when we were there. First you have Punitha's cousin, Jai and his wife, Vicky who were super nice and kind to pick us up from San Jose Airport and took us in during the weekends there. Being unable to drive there does not make it easy for us to get around. We spent every weekend for the month of April at their lovely home in Livermore. I even get a chance to visit an Indian temple there (Haha.. at Malaysia berlambak but never go also...). Vicky borrowed me her Punjabi suit for the occasion. We get to attend both their wedding receptions as well, one was held on a hill top in Oakland and another at the temple back in Livermore. Some weekends they drove us to places like Walnut Creek and San Francisco (..saw Alcatraz from Pier 39, Lombard Street from top view, the Palace of Fine Arts, the famous Full House town houses and Hooters :p ).
Of course we have our dear friend and colleague, Trung and his lovely wife, Truc and son, Tommy and the rest of his family and Truc's sister, My to thank for. Trung is the teamlead for the NA Desktop team in Milpitas. He and Charles will bring us out for lunch every day. Sometimes it will just be him and sometimes it'll just be Charles. At days when he's free, we'll go over to his place to hang out. The first time we went to his house was a funny story. Being a foreigner cum tourist in NA, gave me the license to bring my camera anywhere and take as many photos as I want including flowers on the pathway... police cars... lamp posts... sign boards... you name it! Trung always call us weird for doing that. One day, he decided to bring us out for dinner. But before that, he had to stop and pick up his wife and son. When we turn a corner, we came to this housing area where the houses are so tall and beautiful. I was trying hard to take some photos whilst the car was moving. So, he told us that he'll stop somewhere for us get off to take some really good photos but we have to hurry in case anyone spot us and calls the police. He stopped the car and got out. While we were busy taking photos, he took his bag and walked up to a house. His house. And we thought.... (>___<)
Truc and My took us shopping once. It was like a girls' day out and it was fun! We even stopped at a garage sale on the way. I think I got a "Scanner Darkly" DVD for a dollar and 2 bracelets. Punitha got herself 2 pairs of shoes. After shopping, we went out with Truc's mum... for more shopping. We had Vietnamese cuisine for dinner that evening, courtesy of Chef Trung. He was busy preparing dinner while we were out with Truc. Afterwards, we had karaoke before going to "Coffee Bean".One time, they even brought us to Chuck E Cheese. Fun place! It serves buffet (pizza!!!) and the dining area was surrounded by arcade machines.
Soon enough, we started to hang out with more people from office -- Ralph (drove us around San Jose town in his pink/purple truck), Michael a.k.a. Mike "Butch", Boris, Nikhil a.k.a. Salman Khan (he really does look like Salman Khan..) and Maria (an intern from Russia). We had so much fun with them too. They brought us to the Golden Gate Bridge, Stinson Beach, Stanford University, Santana Row and the Cheese Cake Factory in Palo Alto. We made a couple of pit stops on our way to Stinson Beach -- the Golden Gate bridge, with the cold wind blowing in your hair, it's simply amazing just to be standing there; Bird Island and a viewpoint as Maria was getting a lil bit dizzy due to the winding road up (yeah, you have to drive uphill then downhill again to get to the beach). One time, we got lost during our way up to Vista viewpoint and later again when we're coming down. On another occasion, Mike's car brokedown when we went to Standford. It turned out that his car was leaking. He managed to drive the car to Palo Alto but had to tow it back to San Jose while the rest of us took a cab home.
The grand highlight of our business trip was our long weekend trip to LA. Lucky us, we had a Monday off while we were there. It was the Memorial Day weekend. Having 3 days off including Saturday and Sunday, we decided to plan a trip to Disneyland, Universal Studios and Los Angeles city. I managed to book a hotel room and get flight tickets at a very reasonable price, a month ahead. So on that Friday evening 22nd of May, we're off! Trung drove us to the airport and we took Jetblue airlines to Long Beach airport. They actually serve blue chips on Jetblue flights. Our hotel in Anaheim is about 15 minutes walk to Disneyland.
Disneyland is the one place on Earth that I definitely want to visit again and again and again and... again! I was really really really really really excited that day. I've never been soooo happy my whole life! It's definitely the most happiest place on Earth! Probably it's because it has been my childhood dream to go to Disneyland. I remember always opening the Disney world map and just staring at all the highlighted Disney castles on the map. Or probably they pump happy gas at the theme park :p. We did so many crazy stuff there. Ride on nearly every rides (...we got this Dream fastpass at Mickey's barn that enables us to go on rides without the need to wait in-line... ), saw all the parades, took pictures with nearly all characters we can find (the only one we missed was Buzz Lightyear cause he has to head back to command center.. or so they say...) -- We were practically there from 8am when it opens and left at 12.30am after it closes... hoho... oh, we did went over to California Theme Park for a few hours. It's just NOT enough time!!! Camera status: 1000++ photos. After that, we had this little adventure of our own -- the bus dropped us at the wrong hotel and drove off! We wanted to walk back but after walking in circles for a while, we had to ask the receptionist of a nearby hotel to get us a cab to get back.
Universal Studio was another great place to go too.. again and again! We were lucky to be there before the big fire destroys the buildings exactly a week after that. The tour bus took us there. We had a bit mishap at the entrance due to some miscommunication with the tour guide. We managed to be escorted in later after the staff spoke to the tour agency. We took a studio tour that brought us down New York street, to the set of the classic "Psycho" Bates motel, Wisteria lane from Desperate Housewives, Whoville from How the Grinch Stole Christmas, to the set of Jaws, King Kong and Back to the Future. Not forgetting the NBC, Heroes and Hulk stages/studios. And the terrifying feeling when you wait in line for the Mummy ride. They made you wait so long that you went from scared to terrified to horrified to drop-dead-piss-in-your-pants-terrified to bored to scared again to.. the circle just repeats itself. As the tour to Universal Studios ended earlier, we decided to take a bus to Downtown Disneyland for more shopping.
Our last day there was spent on a half day trip around LA. We went to the main city which was a bit dead due to the public holiday. We passed Johnny Depp's club, Chinatown, the Wax Museum, Disney's Concert Hall and Beverly Hills to checked out the movie stars' houses.(hehe.. typical tourist. House also want to see...).. We only stopped at the tourist spots like the Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Kodak Theatre and Rodeo Drive.
The last week in Milpitas was spent moping around. The thought of us finally leaving was just too much to bear. Of course we missed our families and friends but....sigh... We had 2 farewell dinners -- One from the guys from office and another from the management which includes some IT admins too. We went around taking photos with each and every one we know during our last day. Trung took us out for our "last lunch" together (oh this was the day before... he went on leave during our last day...hmmph!) and Charles took us for some last minute shopping and dinner. We went out for supper after that with Jai and Vicky. Truly a sad... sad... day. Mike and Boris came over the next morning to have breakfast with us before we leave for the airport.
For me, I've made many friends there that I will cherish for a long time. Friends like Jai, Vicky, Trung, Truc, My (Truc's sister), Charles, Mike, Boris, Maria, Lorn, Nikhil, Mike Jones and Mike (Mike and Mike), Ralph (the donut guy), Saleem, Lynda, Henry Chen, colleagues like Wesley, Harry Go and also the coffee machine, the snack machine (had my last Cliff bar... they're out of my favs: Banana nut), our cubicle #12093, Charles's Jeep (that we are so familiar with already), our hotel room in Homestead and our little kitchen area in the room. It just breaks your heart to think that you will never see them anymore... I wonder if they will remember us.
A lot of things have changed after we got back. It's been more than a year now... Maria has gone back to Germany/Russia, Trung and Truc is going to have a baby boy soon, Mike has got himself a steady girlfriend :p and the King Kong attraction in Universal Studios was burnt down... hehe... Not sure what went wrong exactly, maybe it's just me but... we don't even chat with each other anymore. I had a great time hanging out with Punitha when we were there -- cooking, shopping, laundry, working... we did a lot of things together. Although we sometimes don't see eye-to-eye but things do worked out well, in the end.
Oh well... 2 months and things are back to where we left off. By the way, did I mentioned I got to watch Ironman with no subtitles? Hehe...

















