"awkward" reunion

at the boston common with steph, liying and sneha.

i'm finally back from my adventure to the east coast...a lot went down. some good some bad. this is how it all began...

i decided that i was going to make use of time and skip class on thursday to head to nyc. because of the time difference, i didn't get into nyc till 7pm when i left for the airport at 6am that morning. as usual, i stayed with sneha, who at the time of my arrival was about to head to an chinese talent show. made it just in time to return for the talent show.

surprising, her elementary chinese class sang a jay chou song which i couldn't even read the lyrics to. props to them. some of the acts at the talent show was slight awkward and confusing. at one point, the opera that one student was singing literally caused audiences to cover the ears. im not even kidding.

we then headed out to eat with her chinese class who were really nice kids. we went to chinatown to some place called hop kee. it is zagat rated but to be completely honest, the food isn't that great. its simply american chinese food with lots of soy sauce and oil it in. though i have to say, the steamed pork dumplings were not too bad.

when we got back to her room, i got to hang out and chill with her suitemates, evelina and celina. we talked for about 3 hours. what we talked about cannot be elaborated here. before we knew it, it was 3am.

woke up in the morning, had a little mishap because sneha's ID went missing. just bummed around her room for the entire morning before heading out to union square. went to the strand to get a tote that i owe my friend, Hang, for almost 6 months now. also got one for myself since i gave my one away. I also managed to buy myself a book. i literally judged the book by its cover. that is why i got the book. haha haven't started reading it yet though.

after sneha ended class, we went to get some boba at a some tea place called Kung Fu on 10th and 2nd. it was more expensive than what i pay for here at berkeley. i tried their jasmine milk tea. it was really sweet! though i didn't make use of their option to control the sweetness. i didn't realize i had the option to do that at boba stores until i walked into this one. after that, i grabbed a bento box at teryaki boy across the street. it was not bad at all. it was a chicken with california roll bento. it was pretty generic and average. later, i was told that teriyaki express around union square is the best. it just opened recently too.

went back to her room, tried to look for her id again. still no luck. packed for boston. we headed to the bus stop at chinatown. we took a bus called the lucky star bus. which is literally like the feng wah bus. we were told that someone has gotten lice from taking the bus before which freaked both of us out. but ive been fine since so i'm good :) we forgot to buy dinner so we bought outselves 2 dollar sandwiches from a little asian convenience store next door. to be honest, though it was simple, it was pretty good.

the bus ride to boston was just filled with chatterboxes. we sat at seats with a table. there were 3 indian men that got on and sat across from us. sneha soon figured out that the 3 indian men spoke the same dilect from as her and pretty much from the same area in India. throughout the ride, sneha and i were marathoning the OC. yes, its cheesy but i still love. meanwhile, the indian men across from us were talking about sneha thinking that we had no idea what they were talking about. fine, i didn't know, but sneha knew.

what made this even more awkward is that sneha decided to go up to the 3 indian men and tell them that she knew what they were talking about all along. the look on their faces was just full of awe and confusion. we walked away before they had even time to respond. how embarrassing for the 3 of them. i wish i could have filmed this moment...it was so awkward but also extremely hilarious at the same time.

we got into harvard at around 130am. we hoped onto a "party bus" which really is the harvard shuttle with loud jams pumping and a strobe light flashing. i've to say, it was pretty cool. slept over at stephs for the night.

we got to sleep in a little the next morning. we went to harvard's earth day fair where they were giving out these nice big nalgene bottles. all we had to do was go around the booths and get answers to 12 of 18 questions on this sheet of paper. got to bring home a cool nalgene bottle with me :)at the boston marathon expo...steph put her arm around the skeleton. haha

we tend headed into boston so that steph could pick up her number for the boston marathon. yes, she owned the 26.2 miles by the way :) we got to walk by the famous charles river. we walked around collecting free and healthy samples. i didn't realize how big the boston marathon was until getting there and finding out that my friends who go to bc have the day off on monday because the marathon crosses through their campus. i wish the oakland marathon crosses the berkeley campus so we get the day off. yeah, i wish.

went to an asian american talent show called kollaboration. it is "empowerment through entertainment." it is actually the first time i've heard of it though they already had shows in san francisco for a while now. most of the acts were performed by students from colleges around the boston area like bc, harvard, bu and berklee (school of music)

then headed to bc to sleepover at my friend liying's place. we got in pretty late but we still got something to eat. the rest of that night was just not too interesting.

next morning, we had lunch with liying and steph in boston. we tried to go to 2 of the top rated brunch places. paramount and mike and pattys. we didn't realize that mike and pattys was so small that there was barely a table to sit and eat. it was a really cute place but we decided to head over to paramount where there was supposedly more setting so we could all catch up. we walked by the boston common on the way. its interesting to see how much i forgot about boston since the last time i went there (about 5 years ago). the wait at paramount when we got there was too long so we went into an italian cafe next door which served really good lemonade. i ordered a half soup and half sandwich combo.

after lunch, we got to try j.p lick at cambridge (where harvard is). i got to try the coffee oreo and it was BOMB. it reminded me of the ice cream i used to buy during break at choate from pralines. damn i miss those times...

hoped back onto the lucky star bus later that afternoon to go back to nyc. we got in around 8pm so we decided to try this chinese cafe place close by. i got myself a bowl of rice noodle soup and a cup of hong kong style milk tea.

that pretty sums it up...:)