after settling in their beautiful house, dan left for work at microsoft, while gerri, my sis and i sat around the table and chatted. when lunch neared, we left to drive to microsoft to pick up dan for some lunch in microsoft's staff cafeteria. it had good food!
microsoft offices, or campus as they call it, is filled with identical buildings with hardly any decoration. it's simple, frills-free, functional and compact. i was reminded of them when i visited the WB studios in burbank, california during my LA trip.
the microsoft company store, features staff security, cheap microsoft software and a whole range of microsoft memorabillia. i particularly like the 'geek' tees and the msn butterfly keyrings. (:
then we headed to costco for some grocery/dinner shopping. costco is this retail chain in US that sells everything in bulk. really in bulk. everything there, from cereal to frozen food to vegetables and fruits, were all packaged in HUGE packets/boxes. it's quite hilarious actually. and cheap. and you need to be a member to get in. so what the americans do is they either buy and keep, or buy and share with their neighbours. this way they save a lot of money. here is a huge selection of many wines from all over the world.
the next day, we had this yummy spread for breakfast. ahhh i miss it. and for the record i cooked the pancakes! so it was pancakes with maple syrup and strawberries topped with icing sugar and whipped cream, pan-fried bacon, sunny-side up eggs and toast. plus good coffee. yummyyy.and it was a beautiful saturday. we headed south to tacoma to visit the famous tacoma glass museum.
an installation featuring thousands of wine bottles.
glass-blowing demonstration. the museum also produces their own glass art pieces. it was cool watching them shape molten glass by hand, mould and our very own air.
outside the glass museum. cool crisp saturday air.
that's xandaer, gerri and dan's older son.
railroad tracks.
the famous glass overhead bridge links the glass museum with the university of washington, tacoma campus.
and this is the very pretty younger daughter, miranda.
the bridge.
over our heads on the bridge.
and then we went horseback-riding! it was great fun! and my first time on a horse. sadly i couldn't take pictures of myself with my horse. they are in some other camera. so this is dan with miranda on a really greedy horse, who kept stopping to eat the plants. looming behind them is my eldest sister, riding the most handsome horse of the lot.
xander, on his pony, holding on to our guide's horse.
the tiny farm.
this is my horse! he is not bad-looking isn't he?
on the way home.the next day, we headed to downtown seattle for some shopping for my sis, before meeting my 2nd sister who just arrived, all jet-lagged, demanding for a starbucks venti vanilla latte. then we all drove down to chateau ste. michelle, a very famous winery in washington state.
the main winery place for wine tours looks like a high-class villa. but inside, are high-tech machines to churn out bottles of wine each day to feed alcoholics like my sisters.
after the free wine tour and free wine-tasting (which was yummy by the way), the kids played outside on the lawn. (: while my alcoholic sisters roamed in the shop, buying 4 bottles of riesling.
then we headed back to downtown to see the olympic sculpture park, an open-air museum. a smaller-scale than the one my sis and i went in hakone, japan.
here is the familiar steel tree, also present in new york city. here instead of surrounded by skyscrapers, it's surrounded by the sea and mountains.
olympic sculpture park's signature.
art is all around.
the 2nd sister contemplates.
so the first week of school wasn't so bad. except for the slew of projects and presentations coming up, a stark difference to our usual lecture-tutorial-70%exam-30%quiz system, which i so detested. i like doing projects and presentations (even though sometimes they freak me out). the one i remember was for my genetics seminar - presenting a paper on my own, for 25 minutes, in front of undergrads with much research experience, plus a super zai genetics prof. but i survived anyway.
oh and i finished the west wing. finally. 7 seasons in 1 month. not bad at all. (:
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