We are back in Malaysia.

Hi everyone,

We just touched down at KLIA at 1pm today. We had a great time in California and Vegas.

We went to LA downtown, Chinatown LA and Hollywood on our first day. We went to the place with celebrity's hand print, and the 'Hollywood on the hill' sign. The Aviator was having it's premiere at a hall while we were there. We also watched Les Miserables at a theater in Hollywood. We got fantastic last minute front seats. It was my second watching this play. (Oh by the way, I can't wait to watch the movie version of Phantom.)

On day 2, we went to Santa Monica beach. There weren't any surfers because of winter, but there were skating, volleyball etc going on. Because Christmas is round the corner, there was a lot of sales going on. Levi's jeans are cheap in the States. A 501 costs about RM120. Other Levi's jeans costs RM80-150. Shoes like Nike, Converse, Skecher are cheaper too.

We spent day 3 studying and psyching up for the exam. We had our exam on day 4. The exam turned out to be less 'academic' than we thought. It actually focused more on communication skills, and all the PPD and DPHS stuff from med school. It will be about 2 months before the results will be out.

Day 5 was a fun-filled day at Universal Studios, where we had a go on all those rides e.g. Terminator 2, Back to the Future; and had a peek on movie production stuff.

We had a 3-day/2-night in Vegas. There were many hotel/casino with themes such as Paris, Aladdin, Excalibur, Luxor, Caesar's Palace, New York. Our Sunway pyramid may have been a ciplak of Luxor, a pyramid-styled hotel/casino.

Then we had two 'magical' days at Disneyland. That place really must be heaven for kids. It really kind of like lights up the child in you. That is amazing because after all the crap we get from work as HO/MO, I am surprised that I still have that little warm fuzzy innocent corner in my heart. We had a go on the rollercoaster stuffs, which were fun. We also watched stage musical version of Snow White and Aladdin there.

The expenses in the States is actually not expensive for their local people who earn US dollars. Well, for us, everything is 3.83 times more expensive. Their cars are really cheap. A brand new Honda Civic costs less than RM80,000. For the local people, that is less than US$30K. And the high school teachers in States earn about US$3000 a month.

The weather wasn't too bad when we were there, about 9-18 degrees Celcius. Most of the days were sunny with clear skies. But it gets dark at 5pm during winter. No snow in LA.

Now the fun is over, and it is time to go back to daily work.