My Trip

[SQ]

Cardiff, Wales, was simply amazing. I mean, the people weren't so great, but the land was *whistles*.

Of course, London had some nice stuff too, but I think it paled in comparison to Cardiff.

Alaska was also cool, and New Orleans was only made cool because I hung out with ex-friend(then friend) Jovo of Jovonexus.net the entire time.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, was boring as a town but it's zoo is FUCKEN AMAZING.
(Alaska's Zoo, and Lowry Park Zoo[here in Tampa FL] are also good ones)

I just went to New York, and Albany and Newburge look pretty historical. I liked it, but the economy was pretty much at a standstill there.

San Francisco and Sosoleto(sp) California were really cool and "american" and such, but the people made it pretty dumb. :/

Hawaii is also waaay overrated.

Been other weird places but not worth mentioning here, I suppose.

[requiett]

Here's some pictures from my most recent trip.

[guy07]

Looks like it was a good trip.














Gimme some

[oldwrench]

I took a tour of Egypt this year. If you like history, there is more history there than anywhere. The pyramids weren't even the hilight of the tour, there is so much else to see. The temples and art is wonderful. A trip down the Nile is very beautiful. Almost everything in the country in within a mile of the Nile river.

A few of my thousand pictures






What I was doing on my birthday

[Bakadeshi]

Washington DC clean?

You didn't go very far did ya

[Willen]

Hawaii is also waaay overrated.

I somewhat agree.

Avoid the more tourist-y areas and there are some nice stuff to try and see. The beaches here are generally nicer than those in most other places, and the weather is usually pretty agreeable. And crime is fairly low.

The cost-of-living is more expensive and I'm always stunned at how much cheaper most stuff is in the rest of the U.S. Although gas prices in some other states are close or higher (California, Oregon, etc.).

I always feel a bit weird if I'm visiting somewhere and I can't see the ocean or a mountain nearby.

I've been to Hong Kong and China when I was much younger in the 80's. I'm sure they are quite a bit different now since China took over HK and the economic and industrial boom happened to the mainland.

Oregon is always nice, although I seem to only go there during spring and summer months. Hopefully, my next visit might be during fall (leaves changing color) or winter (snow). Not paying any sales tax is something I always find amusing. I can give $1 to the person at McDonald's for a 99-cent double cheeseburger and get 1 cent back.

San Francisco was nice to visit, I got to see the houses on Steiner Street next to Alamo Square, and of course, the Golden Gate Bridge.

Los Angeles has a lot to see, and Disneyland is always pretty fun. But the water from the tap sucks big time. I probably should go and visit my relatives there again sometime.

I visited Las Vegas when I was younger, but I'm sure it's not nearly as interesting unless you are able to gamble in the casinos. The buffets were nice, though.

Vancouver B.C. was both nice and crappy. Stanley Park and the Vancouver Aquarium was nice to visit. Although parts of the downtown area are not so nice...

I'd like to visit places in the U.S. east of Nevada (AWA?), Europe, and Japan someday.

[SQ]

Yes, the Vancouver Aquairum was great. I went with WuWu/YCSTR =)
We also went on the suspension bridge(capilano?) That park was really interesting, too.

But for Hawaii, we didn't go to any reall touristy places. We went to Oahu for like a day, the big sugar cane plantation owned by the AOL guy, Kawaii, and some city that began with an M, but's very popular or something. We went in a submarine to see a coral reef(that was planted by the company...) which was pretty cool. Then we went to your version of SeaWorld(forgot what it was called) and it was interesting. Swam with a dolphin, which wasn't worth it. I mean, who wants to STAND in a TANK and have an instructor tell the dolphin come by you so you can stick your hand out over it and have the dolphin do the petting for you? Stupid, and not "swimming with dolphins" AT ALL. Ergh. I was kind of pissed about that. :/

And then we did a helicopter trip over all the canyons and such, but we never went to the rain forest or the valcano, both of which I wanted to see. >_>

If I went to Hawaii again, I'd go for the rainforest, zoo(if they have one) and maybe the Sea World thing again, because it was cool aside from the dolphin ripoff thing.
But my trip sucked. And I couldn't imagine being in Hawaii at all, because all the jobs are tourist-based, most tourists are Asian, I can't speak any asian languages, and THERE ARE NO SEASONS.
HOW DO YOU SURVIVE WITH NO SEASONS? D:
Seriously, there's like no more than a ten degree temperature variation all year, yeah?

Oahu was kind of cool, though. For a city. Except it felt weird since everything was "english - Hawaiian
Japanese/chinese/whatever else"

Too many languages for signs ok? =_=

[Willen]

With no seasons, the days all just kinda blend together... At least I can wear the same type of clothing all the time.

Ah, the volcanoes are memorable. Too bad you couldn't see them. It's like being on another planet. Or some movie set of another planet.

And our zoo sucks.

[godix]

Mexico is a run down piece of shit country and after visiting it the only thing about illegal immigration I don't understand is why there's anyone left in Mexico at all. I know I generally insult things just for the fun of insulting things but this time I'm serious. The only reason I didn't stand in middle of town and yell "Anyone who wants to leave get in my car. I'll drop you off in the poorest slum I can find in America. Trust me, you'll think it's a fucking paradise" is that I only had a couple years of spanish in high school so was having a personal crisis for 15 minutes until I remembered the word I needed is 'bano?' For some reason I also remembered the phrase 'Quanto dinero?' but I never used it. Instead I just gave them $10 for whatever pottery piece of crap I was buying and tried to ignore their obvious reaction to the fact I just casually handed them more money than they'd normally earn in a week. Nice people though, although maybe that was just a result of me spending around $100 there and that being about $75 more than it'd cost to just flat out buy the entire town and do with it as I wish. If you ever go to Mexico stick with Tijuana or some tourist result, going elsewhere is just too depressing.

San Diego was alright but mainly because I had an aunt who lived there showing me around. Even so it didn't strike me as somewhere I'd actually want to live. Cool ass zoo though.

San Francisco is another place I don't understand why people still live in much less how the place is considered a tourist destination. I was there for a HP training class for several days and my boss kindly booked it so I wouldn't fly back until Sunday. So all day Saturday I was on my own. The golden gate bridge is just another bridge but painted red. Fishermans wharf looked like a carnival sideshow. Not one of those interesting carnival sideshows either, but rather a carnival sideshow full of nothing but hucksters trying to get you to pay them for the privilege of tossing a couple rings around a bottle in an attempt to win some small plastic crap that'd you'd throw away in an instant even if someone handed that shit to you for free. Chinatown looked interesting but after a few minutes I got the distinct impression that not only is English not the primary language there, it isn't even a fucking option. So all told I hated San Francisco and if anyone on the org is stuck living there I can only hope you have the good fortune of moving someday.

Chicago is interesting. I live about a two or three hour drive from it so I've gone to it often. I've gone to the lake shore from pretty much any direction and method you can except boat. I have yet to figure out how to get to downtown Chicago without driving through miles and miles of areas that make you think 'Dear lord, if my car breaks down here I'm just fucking dead.' Love the stuff downtown though. I visit it about every four or five years and that's enough time for the museum, planetarium, etc. to get enough new exhibits to make it worth the trip. And of course there is Acen, which I've gone to every year until I was able to finally talk my wife out of it this year. So for living several hundred miles away I actually have a pretty damned good mental map of some suburbs streets.

I lived in North Carolina for a year (Cary NC, a suburb of Raleigh). I was in the area of it that was so overrun by northerners that I never encountered the southern accent enough to get used to it. Only place I've ever lived where I would walk out of my house at 2am to get cigarettes or something and it wouldn't even occur to me that I should lock the door. One interesting memory I have is a co-worker of mine who was an elderly southern lady. Apparently she got used to me because one day she went on a five minute rant about carpetbaggers moving south and the evils of yankees and all those other southern stereotypes of northerns that are funny as hell coming out of a kindly 70 year old grandmother type person. Then she remembered I come from Illinois and ended her rant with a dignified 'present company excluded of course'. I was laughing so hard tears were coming out my eyes. This is also around the time when I developed my theory of why the South lost the war. The way I figure it around January or so Northern troops marched south. A few snow flakes fell and the southern army damn near killed itself in panic while the northerners just looked around saying 'Spring already?'

After visiting Florida I'm absolutely convinced that we'll lose the entire population of FL due to drowning because of global warming. Ever last one of them will be standing in three feet of water and STILL be too fucking stupid to think 'Maybe I should leave'. The thought is enough to make me want to go outside and spray some CFC's straight up into the sky. As a further plus, as if raising the average IQ of America by 10 points after the great mass die off of retired ignorant fucks wasn't enough, our national elections will probably run smoother once FL is out of the picture as well.

[SQ]

Couldn't agree more about FLorida, Godix.

Can't wait until I move out of this shithole.

.... Zoo was still nice, though. >_>