Portland was the true state that welcomed me to America. Seattle did little to welcome me, except shove bad food (read: BURGERS and Sandwiches) down my throat and freezing cold in my face. It did help that the treatment that I got in Portland better - we had a room in Hilton Hotel with Lavazza coffee and Crabtree & Evelyn toiletries, if that's not bliss I dont know what is. It did help that Portland had America's biggest bookstore and I can lost in rows and rows of books (floor to ceiling shelves, no joke). Books were not cheap per se, and I got a surprising total of two books after much deliberation. But it was the smell of books on a winter day, seeing people who love books walk pass me down the aisles, finding 3 versions of the same book (which means I could choose my favourite font size and paper thickness) that liberated the bookworm in me. It was seeing that the books they placed on recommended shelves being those I have already read, it was seeing the "new releases", titles that I could not wait to get my hands on that made my heartbeat accelerate.
Books aside, fun means having abit of action, not too much, just enough to get your adrenalin pumping without breaking into a sweat. That was how my first NBA match was defined - Portland Trail Blazers VS Indiana Pacers. Sitting in a stadium with over 20 thousand people, watching the action take place right before my eyes, seeing the team we supported (Trail Blazers) trail way behind in terms of score and catching up and winning the game in the last quarter, dancing to the music played at every interval, laughing at the lousy(but damn hot) cheerleaders, winning free fries (exclusive to the section we were sitting), seeing other people being randomly selected to receive ridiculous prizes like 3 bottles of mineral water or a pair of tickets to the automobile show, seeing ronald mcdonald make a guest appearence (right before we won the fries), shouting "defence x100", throwing random high-fives with everyone after winning the game ... it was the package. Well of course, I have not watched basketball for a grand total of 4 years, since leaving secondary school, since my brother stopped playing competitively. It was nostalgic.
And there was the food. Portland was known (well, at least my friends say so) for street carts, awesome food, awesome prices/portion. Well, we were big on thai food even back in Singapore so I went straight for thai food. Uncle was nice enough to go with my request of "basil chicken rice with fried egg" at no extra cost - even though it wasnt something on the menu. Best thai ice milk tea I've had since Bangkok for $1 too! So I coulden stop jumping around (even after I got my food). Soon, a long lined formed behind us, all Caucasians, I guess they really trusted us in finding the authentic asian flavour. Either that or this store is a gem we've discovered, randomly. After main course there's always desert. So this time desert was in the form of a 1.5 hour queue for "VOODOO donuts". This is the craziest thing I've ever done since queuing 3-hour for 2 dozen donuts at Donut factory. In preparation for this donut i had starved off donut for a week, so I was drooling in the queue, no joke. When I had my first bite of the maple-bacon donut, I felt like pigs died for the right reasons, well, and that was that sugar rush.
Well shopping was a mad rush, the only time i truly lost it and tried to grab everything I could in 20 minutes was at the NARS counter at Nordstrom. Stocking up on my necessities, eye liner and blush. I feel so cheated in Hong Kong (SGD50 for my orgasm blush VS USD26 for the same damn thing). Well luckily for me, god decided to let the NARS makeup artist not come to work today, so I was served by the Bobbi Brown makeup artist, she did not know shit about NARS, so I got say 2 products less.
