Check out our new Honda Civic LX!

Kevin and I have never been really big on cars. We never really felt the need to get a big, flashy or pimped up ride...just because it's a cool thing to do. To me, a car serves the purpose of transporting us from point A to B and that's about it. I'm not saying that we don't like nice cars (who doesn't, right?), it's just that we don't see the point of throwing a whole bunch of money into one. Maybe one day, when we are super rich and have a lot of excess cash, then will we look into getting a high end or sports car :P That's why, for now, we were happy with our old beaten up 1999 Chevy Lumina. As long as it still moves, everything is cool with us.

For the past few months, our Chevy have been making a lot of noises when we apply the brakes. Lately, we can hear loud clanking noises even when we just drive normally. We knew that it wasn't such a good sign, it looked like our old faithful Lumina was slowly dying on us. The final straw came last Thursday, when Kevin was driving over some railroad tracks. He wasn't sure what he ran over but there was a loud crash and after that, we could hear like a ringing sound, like something has been broken off. Now, the car is only worth $400 (at the most) and getting it fixed would set us back about $2k. Looks like we didn't really have a choice but to go out and get ourselves a new car. So, we headed out to Planet Honda on Route 22 on Saturday to get one!

Prior to all this, we have been looking around at cars (since our Lumina first started giving us problems). After all the research, we narrowed it down to either the Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla. Both cars have their own pros and cons but we finally came to the conclusion that the Honda has a slight edge over the Toyota, in terms of resale value and the 'cool factor' :P After spending like what seemed ages negotiating, we finally reached the magic number and we were ready to sign. It took almost 4 hours, from the time we walked into the dealership to the time we were ready to sign. Phewwww, what a long and stressful day.
Here is Kevin saying goodbye to our old friend, the 1999 Chevy Lumina. It was actually quite a bittersweet feeling, to trade her in. While clearing her out earlier that morning, we found many things from the past few years of our lives. Things like the sitting chart from our wedding dinner in Pittsburgh, an invitation to one of Kevin's good friends wedding (they just celebrated their 2nd anniversary not too long ago), brochures that we picked up in Hersheys when my parents came to visit us, the envelopes that held our plane tickets from Marlboro...even a price tag from some newborn baby's rompers. It took me a while to figure out how THAT got into our car. Then I remembered. We were on the way to visit a friend who just had a baby and I was wrapping the present up in the car. I guess I must have forgotten to throw the tag away. Oh, by the way, the baby is now a 3 year old toddler :P Ahhhh the memories, we will surely miss our old faithful Lumina.
After saying goodbye, we headed over to the new car delivery section of the dealership and with a firm handshake, Mike Hanna (our salesman) congratulated us and we now have the keys to our brand new Honda Civic LX!
Here it is! This is the first photo I took of Kevin with our new car. Doesn't it look all shiny and nice? I just love the new car smell :P I wonder how long before all that goes away? Wanna see more photos of the car? Well, I'm gonna show them off anyways, even if you say no. So, enjoy!
There were quite a number of colors to choose from. It was a toss up between Polished Metal or Urban Titanium. At last we went with Urban Titanium. Polished Metal is gray, with a bluish undertone where else the Urban Titanium has a brown undertone. I felt that the Urban Titanium has a warmer look, so we went with that. Also, the Urban Titanium is a new color (just introduced last year) and it's only available for Civics and CR-Vs. Looks cool, eh? Here are more photos from different angles.
The interior looks pretty cool at night. Just love the blue back light, kinda sharp looking :P We still haven't gotten our license plate yet, so we are still driving around with our temporary plates. Hopefully we will get it by this weekend or early next week. We are both still very excited about our new car and we can't wait to collect more happy memories with our Civic, just like how we did with our Lumina! :D

12 Hour Layover in Korea

On our way to Malaysia, we had a 12 hour layover in Seoul, Korea. Since both Kevin and I have never been to Korea before, we figured it would be great if we joined one of those transit tours, just to see what Korea is like. The timing of the layover was also great. We flew into Incheon Airport from JFK really early in the morning (around 5am) and we fly out of Korea to Kuala Lumpur at around 5pm the same day. It was just perfect to join one of the day tours.

When we arrived, it was still way too early and the transit tour desk wasn't even opened yet. So, what do you do when you are bored? Cam whore! :P Yup, we just went all over the airport taking photos (Incheon Airport is really nice!) and stuff. We also went to KFC to eat some breakfast and of course, to waste more time while waiting for the transit desk to open. Will blog about that later on.

While roaming all over the airport, trying to kill time (2 hours to kill before we could register for the tour), we saw some pretty cool stuff. Check this out. You can find an "Etiquette Bell" in every stall in the restrooms. What does it do? Well, I am guessing that Koreans are pretty shy people and that they do not like the person in the next stall to hear all kinds of 'bodily sounds' when they relieve themselves :P So, all you need to do is choose what kind of sound you like (ranging from music, running water, flushing of toilet) and press the bell. This way, it will mask any other sound that might not be too pleasant to the ears! Hahaha! Since it was 5am in the morning, nobody was in the restroom except myself. So, I had a great timing testing out all the sounds and laughing to myself (yes, I know...LAME!). I am just thinking, wouldn't it be more embarrassing if you used the bell? Just imagine that the restroom is crowded with people and suddenly there is music coming from your stall. Everybody would then know that you are doing your #2 in there!!! LOL!

Here is another funny thing that we saw at the airport. We had to go through immigration before we could check in at the transit tour desk. When we went to fill up our arrival card, we noticed that not only were there pens provided, there were also reading glasses!! Of course it's normal to find pens at the counter but reading glasses???? Boy, those Koreans do go out of their way to make life easier for everybody :P

After waiting for like two and a half hours, the transit tour desk finally opened. We signed up for the 5 hour city tour. That particular tour originally cost US$80 per person but if more than 4 people signs up for it, it will be only $50 per person. By the time we signed up, there were about 6 other people on the list, so were pretty pleased to that it will only be $50 per person. The lady at the counter then told us that since 2010 is 'Visit Korea Year', there is a 50% discount on this particular tour! Yeah, so we only paid $25 per person! The tour includes a return trip from the airport to Seoul (takes about 45 minutes on way), an English speaking tour guide, a traditional Korean lunch and a free gift. There will be three main stops during the tour (excluding lunch). We will begin by visiting the Gyeongbokgung Palace (entry tickets to the palace is included in the tour), then some souvenir shopping in Insa-dong followed by Cheonggye Plaza to see the man made stream in Sejong-ro. The tour will end with a traditional Korean lunch. A whole lot of stuff for just $25 a pop! I will blog more about the transit tour in my next post :D

I just love Netflix!!!

Before I say anything, let me verify that this is not a paid post. I just think that Netflix is really cool and I wanna share it with my readers. I know Netflix is not a new thing, it's been around for the longest time. However, we (yes, I know..a bit slow :P) just signed up for it about two weeks ago and we are lovin' it!

For those of you who don't know what Netflix is, it's an online DVD rental service. We just need to pay a membership fee of $4.99 a month and we can get DVDs sent direct to our home. All we need to do is go online, choose the movie that we want to watch and place it in the queue. Netflix will then send the DVD to our mailbox the very next business day.

I love the smart design of the envelope. We need to tear it open carefully becos we would need the envelope to send it back to them after we watched the movie.

The movie comes in a little sleeve, along with a short summary, rating and duration of the movie.

Once you are done watching the movie, just pop it back into the prepaid envelope and send it back to Netflix.

It's really convenient for us, we don't even have to go out of the apartment to get our movies and to return them! :D Another thing I like about Netflix is that we can keep the DVD as long as possible, there are no late return charges. Once we return the DVD, they will ship out the next movie on our list to us. Also, we can watch movies on their website (while waiting for the DVDs to be shipped to us). For $4.99 a month, I think its a great deal. So far, we have already watched 3 movies and I've watch the entire season 8 of South Park online :P We are currently waiting for our Twilight DVD to arrive, it should be here today...Yay!!!

Macy's 4th of July Fireworks

We managed to get home from the Street Festival in the city just little bit before the sun went down and just in time to watch the Macy's 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular. The Macy's fireworks is known to be the biggest 4th of July fireworks display in America. With over 120,000 fireworks lighting up the New York City skyline, shot out from 6 barges on the Hudson River, it's definitely a sight not to be missed.

This year, Macy's 33rd annual fireworks display returns to the Hudson River. It's to mark the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudsons historic voyage down that river. For the past few years, they have been shooting the fireworks from the East River. The move back to the Hudson is really great news for us. We could not really see the fireworks from our apartment when they shot it from the East River, cos it was on the other side of the city. Now that they have brought it back to the Hudson, we have a full unobstructed view of the whole display.

After setting our chairs up near the big window and tuning to 1010 WINS, we are ready for the show to begin. By tuning into 1010 WINS, we were able to enjoy the fireworks display with synchronized music accompaniment by The NY Pops, Audra McDonald, Idina Menzel, Rob Thomas and the Choir Academy of Harlem. At approximately around 9:20pm, the show began! Here are some of the photos that we took of the fireworks display from our apartment window.

The whole display lasted for about 25 minutes, pretty amazing actually. We were however disappointed with the grand finale (or the lack of it). Overall, it was a good show but for something that is labelled the best and biggest fireworks spectacular in America, I guess the finale wasn't really that spectacular after all. But still, it was pretty cool. Thanks Macy's for the show!!

Just a little side note. One of the six barges caught on fire following the show. It took them a couple of hours to put the fire out!! Nobody was hurt and everything is fine now! :P

Strawberry Festival @ Alstede Farms

Strawberries are in season again! We decided to drive out to the countryside last Saturday to Alstede Farms out in Chester, NJ for the Annual Strawberry Harvest Festival. The festival runs for two weekends, starting from June 13. We decided to go for the first day (a bit kiasu :p) so that we will get the best harvest and not the left over strawberries. Alstede Farms is about 80 years old and has a daily early morning harvest of over 100 different home grown fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

The drive out to the country was really pleasant. It took us about an hour to get there, since it's almost hitting the Pennsylvanian border. The sky was really overcast and there was a slight drizzle in certain areas that we drove past. We were praying hard in the car that the rain would hold until we were done with our strawberry pickin'!

When we arrived at the farm, we were really glad that it wasn't raining yet! :D We really didn't know that to expect ( in terms of the amount of people at the festival and parking) but we were pleasantly surprised that there was ample free parking at the back of the farm.

After parking, we headed straight to the "pick your own" check in counter. You can buy containers for the strawberries here. Only 10 cents for pint & quart boxes and 75 cents for the large flats. We bought one large flat :D Strawberries are $2.29/pound. It's a little bit more expensive then those you can find in the supermarkets (strawberries are on sale in our local grocery store for $1.59/pound), but hey, you cannot get them fresher than this! So, I guess the pricing is pretty reasonable. You can also buy tickets for all kinds of rides and kids activities here.

We started the long walk towards the Strawberry Fields. The first patch that we saw were pretty disappointing. There were not many strawberries left. The workers at the fields told us that if we were to walk further away from the main farm area, we could find bigger and nicer strawberries. So, we continued walking.

Alstede Farms has about 10 acres of strawberry fields, so there are a lot of strawberries to go around! Ahhh, at last we found a nice strawberry patch. Beautiful and ripe red strawberries! Yuummmyy!

So we started picking...

...and pickin'....

...and at last we almost filled our box. Well, it wasn't really fully yet so we spent a little bit more time pickin' more! :P

After we felt that we picked enough strawberries, it was the loooong looong loooooooong walk back to the main farm area.

Of course we could have just paid $2 to ride on the hayride but we noticed that only families with little kids rode on the hayride :P Anyways, it's good exercise to walk..haha!

Alstede Farms also has a large collection of barnyard animals. There were horses, sheep, billy goats, donkeys, rabbits...just to name a few. You can buy carrots ($1 per pack) to feed the animals too. They also have a whole lot of activities for the kids. From hay pyramids, a moon bounce to pony and tractor train rides!

We brought our strawberries to the check out counter to weigh it and also to pay. It was just a little over $9! Not too bad for such a big box of strawberries!!

After keeping the strawberries in the car, we headed over to the main barn area to look at the fresh produce. Alstede Farms grow their own vegetables and fruits. They also have a large selections of home made chutneys, dressings, jams, marinades, sauces and pickled vegetables. You can also buy wine from the nearby Four Sisters winery that is on display at the shop. Oh, before I forget, Alstede Farms also make their own candy and ice cream!! Yums!

There is a very impressive garden center by the side of the barn. They had all kids of flowers, vegetable plants as well as fruit trees for sale. Most of the flowers were in full bloom, so it was really pretty to look at. Too bad we live in an apartment, if not, I would have bought the whole garden center!!

All this walking around and picking strawberries made us hungry. So, we headed out to the Hen House food cart located on the grounds of the farm to sample some home made strawberry treats. We ordered a strawberry milkshake ($4.95) and strawberry shortcake ($3.95). They had all kinds of strawberry treats as well as German food like potato pancakes and bratwurst for sale too. Of course you can also get the regular hot dogs, cheese burgers and chicken sandwiches if you like.

The strawberry shortcake was soooo yummy. It was really the authentic type of strawberry shortcake, with the cake tasting a little bit like scones or biscuits. The milkshake was really good too. Huge chunks of strawberries, really really good!

After our snack, we decided that it was time to head home. As we pulled out from the driveway of the farm, the rain starting to come down. Not just a light drizzle but really heavy rain. Looks like God really answered our prayer and held the rain until we were safely in the car, on our way home! What a perfect way to end a perfect day of picking our own strawberries.

Note: To view more of the photos that we took at the strawberry festival, click here

Weekend Trip to Pittsburgh

We will be leaving for Pittsburgh in a few hours time, the moment Kevin gets home from work. We hope to leave by 6:30pm, at the very latest. It will probably be around 1-2am by the time we actually arrive. Oh welll...

The main reason we are heading back to Pittsburgh this weekend is to witness Kevin's nephew's confirmation. Not only is Kevin Nick's only uncle, but he is also his Godfather. Traditionally, the Godfather plays a huge role in the child's religious development and is responsible to make sure that the child grows in the Lord. Therefore, we felt that it's really important that we make an effort to be there in such a significant event in Nick's life. Also, Kevin's sister will be celebrating her birthday on Saturday night, so it's good that we are able to go back to be with the family this weekend.

Since we will be travelling lots and most probably be busy with various family events, I'll be taking a short blog break. We'll be back on Monday night, so I'll probably post some updates then. Til then, have a great weekend and stay safe! :D

Saturday Afternoon in Times Square

We decided to head out to the city today to check out the all new pedestrian mall in the Times Square as well as the Herald Square area. We don't usually like to go to Times Square (unless we have visitors) because there are just too many tourist and the sidewalks are just jammed packed with people. You can't really enjoy the full offerings of Times Square because you will be too busy trying to push your way through the sea of people. I think the city of NY also know of this problem. Therefore, in an effort to reduce traffic and pollution, the city decided to try out an experiment. Starting last week, they have closed down sections of Broadway to traffic and make it into a pedestrian mall. The plan is to try this out for 6 months and if it works, it will be permanent.

We took the PATH down to 33rd St and walked over towards Macys in Herald Square. Check it out, I'm standing in the middle of the road that would normally be filled with traffic! They have closed down 33rd to 35th St and laid out chairs and tables for the public to just chill. In a way it's a good idea, but I don't know. It looked kinda silly too. Traffic was being diverted to the other streets while people just sat around, doing nothing. Isn't that what Central Park and all the other parks around the city are for?

We walked down Broadway to towards Times Square and they started to block off traffic starting from 42nd St. That's where the famous Times Square ball would drop every New Years Eve. People were just hanging out and relaxing on the green lawn chairs! It's quite funny to see Times Square without traffic (well, not counting the time when I went for the New Years Eve countdown).

We walked further down Broadway and now there were blue lawn chairs! It looks like a huge beach party, minus the sea and sand :P

Every time we go to Times Square, I would take a picture in front of that...haha! Don't ask me why. The difference today is....I get to take the picture from the middle of the street! I cannot believe I am standing in the middle of Broadway, minus all the yellow taxi cabs and traffic.

We decided to take a break and look for somewhere to go to for dinner. I wanted to check out Bubba Gump, so we went in. It was sooooooooo crowded and the hostess said that we had to wait for about 45 minutes to get a table. Forget that! So we continued walking in search of another place to eat(we ended up in Charley O's at the theater district, will blog about that later). Oh and if you are wondering why it's only me appearing in all the photos today, it's because Kevin says that he has been appearing in the blog too many times and there is not enough photos of me in here. Soooo, its all me today :P

As we continued walking up Broadway, the chairs got even more comfortable. Now there are deck chairs all over the place near the TKTS booths. For those of you who don't know, you can get last minute Broadway show tickets here for 50%! You should definitely check them out whenever you are in NYC.

After walking a little bit further up, this is what we see. Now the chairs are just plain absurd! Look at all various designs and shapes that they are in! I think it looks weird, but weird in a good way. Pretty cool actually.

This was towards the end of Times Square. I have never seen so many people (excluding the NYE countdown of course) in Times Square before. No traffic, just a sea of people.

There were all kinds of people from all walks of life down at times Square today. Also, all the Times Square 'celebrities' were out in full force. We saw the Birdman, Superman, the Naked Cowboy, some cartoon characters and even four Statues of Liberty! We also noticed that there were a lot of police standing around at every corner. At the time, I thought that the NYPD was stationed there for crowd control. They must have a lot of manpower to station so many officers just for this pedestrian mall. Little did I know at that time that there were two (well, three) very important people visiting the area around the same time as us.

Nahhhh, not those two! :P Yeah, they were in Times Square too but they were not the important people I was talking about. President Barack Obama and his wife were actually just a few blocks away from us. Not on official business but it was 'date night' for them. They flew in to have dinner at the West Village and then headed to Broadway for a show at the theater district. No wonder there were so many cops! Guess who was the other? Prince Harry! Yup, Prince Harry was in town for a polo match earlier in the day and he was going about visiting tourist attractions like 30 Rock and other places in the city around that time too. No wonder security was super tight that afternoon/evening! No, we didn't get to see the Obamas or Prince Harry. We didn't even know that they were somewhere near us until we got home and watched the 11 o clock news!

We had a great time in the city today though we didn't get to see the President or Prince. We had loads of fun shopping, people watching and also had a super yummy dinner. Sooo, what do I think of the new pedestrian malls? Keep the one in Times Square and scrape the one in Herald Square! The Herald Square pedestrian mall is just plain silly. There were not as many people hanging out at the one in Herald Square anyways. I think that they are both too close to each other. One is enough. :D