Has anyone else managed to fall asleep standing up right on a train? I managed it today and I am amazed I did not fall over and hurt myself.

One minute I am standing by the train door as there were no free seats and the next minute I wake up as the train pulls into the next station and throws me forward slightly.

I was just glad the train emptied at the station and I was able to find a seat and finish my sleeping in a more stable position.

My last day in NY, I am both excited and sad but I can’t wait to be home with my hunny bunny. Just wish I didn’t have a 3am start tomorrow

I have put lots of new photos on my Flickr account. These are photos from:

1 – the karaoke night. Every Thursday after work, the consultants in the office go out and drink… lots. Recently we have been going to the Karaoke bar much to my despite because i really hate singing. As it was our last Thursday night out with the guys from work, we went to the Karaoke bar and after a few pitchers of American beer (also known as water) I was singing to Parklife by Blur (Sam was doing all the singing I just tried to say “ParkLife” at the right time) and some other songs. I took my camera with me and left it on the table and at the end of the night I had 50 photos! All these photos are in Flickr, including the embarrassing ones.

2 – Museum of Native American Culture. Sam and I went to this place expecting it to be a museum about the native Americans but it wasn’t. We were a bit disappointed as it just contained a few pots and other crafts created by the Native American people. Some of the pots were even created in 2005 so there was no history at all but the museum building was very impressive.

3 – Liberty Island and Ellis Island. If anyone is going to New York, you have to go to see Ellis Island. It was the best museum I have been to in a long time but make sure you give yourself plently of time to look around because it’s huge. I found the museum interesting, informative and fun and would love to go there again in the future.

4 – Rin and Dees last night in America before flying back to Thailand. Eating Sushi after a night of beer and karaoke is not a good idea. By the morning, the fish were swimming around in my stomach. I hope you guys made it back to Thailand ok.

Big brother now plans to watch your rubbish:

A Link to the BBC News Story

“Miss Hamilton has thrown out a large chocolate wrapper, an aspirin packet and 2 used tampons… better not tell her about the rise in council tax this week, shes probably suffering from PMT”

Okay, slight exaggeration.. but it could happen!

I haven’t got round to summing up our trip to Boston yet so here it goes:

Unlike New York which is filled with lots of business people with a lot of money to throw around, I found Boston to be a more student town. Most of the people seemed to be under the age of 21 and not as ’sophisticated’ as the people in New York. I guess this is probably due to MIT, Harvard, Boston University and many other institutes close to the city.

The first thing we noticed when we got there was the really cool boat looking car with everyone on board quacking. We hunted down the boat/cars and were lucky enough to get a ticket on a bright purple one with a hilarious driver who reminded me of Billy Connolly.

The driver gave an interesting and amusing tour of the city before driving the boat/car down a ramp and into the river for some great views of the city.

I drove the car/boat while it was in the water, i’m surprised I didn’t crash the thing given my skills of nearly killing my dad and I TWICE while driving – once when I accelerated a quad too quickly and made the thing fly up into the air, and once while driving a tractor I pressed the accelerator instead of the break and nearly drove into a wall. If it wasn’t for my dads quick thinking in both cases, I could have killed us both!

I found Boston to be a very pretty city, filled with lots of European architecture and nice parks. It was nice to be able to walk alongside the river and see the boats in the harbour. I’ve always thought it was a shame that Manhatten it is surrounded by water yet it is almost impossible to get close to the water as there is a great big highway in the way.

On Sunday it rained and rained and rained. We went to see the US navy’s flag ship ‘Consitution’ and a museum about the ships history. I’m sure the ship would have been more impressive if the weather was better, if they allowed the public to view all the ship rather than a 1/3 (the rest was shut off because they didn’t want people going near the original wood) and if you didn’t have to go through xray machines and metal detectors (I guess i should just be glad there wasn’t any naked scanning machines!).

Being a big history fan, I was disappointed to find the museum very bias in giving an account of USS Constitutions involvement in the War of Independence and glamorised the event unnecessarily. I could write a whole essay on this but instead I’m going to go to be thankful that I fly home in a weeks time.

Conclusion of Boston – defiantly worth a visit if you are on the East side of American but I wouldn’t recommend staying more than a couple of days.

There is nothing worse than being in a meeting and half way through deciding you really need to wee.

D o you:

a) Cross your legs, hold on tight and then run to the toilet as soon as the meeting is over

b) Make up some lame excuse up in order to leave the room and go

c) Just wee yourself and hope no one notices the puddle on your seat or your wet trousers

I’ve always gone with option ‘a’ but sometimes it make me wiggle and lose concentration so maybe I am better off with ‘b’ or ‘c’, what do you guys think?

Lee was telling today about a new scanner at Heathrow which produces a nude image of people who are asked to walk threw it. I was both shocked and appalled that our society had let such a machine be allowed to be in use. Of course I understand the risk of terrorism and the need for additional security at airports but surely this is taking things to the extreme.

I do not wish for a random stranger to see me naked, it’s a breach of my privacy and can be easily be misused. The registry http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/08/heathrow_scanner_pilot/ makes a good point about the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Would parents really want a stranger looking at an image of their children naked? History has taught us already that no amount of security checks could guarantee that the person using the x-ray machine is to be trusted.

And why should frequent flyers be subject to regular doses of x-rays which claim to be harmless but we have no proof of that other than the word of the manufactures of the machine. Interesting to know, the manufacture is an American company and I have seen first hand the lack of control in the US market on false claims about products.

For those interested, here is a picture of what the machine will show http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3071573/

Maybe it would easier and cheaper for the government to order everyone flying to just come to airport naked!

I really hope the day never comes when they enforce these machines at airports because there is no way anyone is going to get me to walk through one ever. I would rather never fly again.

PS – guys you might be interested to know, they can see the size of your willy using these machines, maybe that would make a little less eager to support it

I learnt a second valuable lesson during my trip to Boston – never ever let Sam book a hotel room.

I’m not sure what was the most disturbing thing about the hotel/hostel we stayed in while at Boston:

- The scary hippy listening to classical music who took our money and gave us our keys

- The charming decoration which looked as if it had been stolen from an old woman’s house in the 1930’s and hadn’t been cleaned since

- The smell in our room which dispite Sam spraying an unhealthy amount of mens spray around, did not go.

- The scary dolly attached to the lamp in the bedroom which looked like it was going to stab me with its plug the moment I shut my eyes and the scary picture on the walls of dead people (they were alive when the pictures where taken but they had that dead look to them). We had to hide the dolly lamp and dead people in the wardrobe so we could sleep.

I feel like I have now experienced being a backpacker for a weekend especially as I smelt like one too because I refused to use the shower all weekend for fear of one of the many pubic hairs left behind by the previous user, might touch me.

I learnt a valuable lesson this week, nothing is ever cheap without a reason.

Sam and I went to Boston for the weekend on the Chinese bus. The bus ride cost us $15 each way for the four hour trip and almost seemed too cheap to be true. That was until 10 minutes after leaving China Town we broke down on a bridge.

In true dramatic American style, loads of traffic cops arrived with flashing blue lights. They closed THE WHOLE bridge so we could get off the bus and wait on the pavement for another bus to pick us up.

But of course in the US everything is bigger than it needs to be. So they closed the bridge another 2 times while we were waiting so they could remove the broken down bus. Can you imagine a major road in the UK being closed every-time a vehicle broke down on it, there would be chaos!