10.29 - 11.04 - Sandy and drawing

We survived Sandy! Thanks for everyone who was worried about me and us here in Hamden, Connecticut.
This was the biggest happening in this week and the second biggest storm in the history of the United States.
We were lucky, we haven't got any damage except we lost power for 26 hours.

But others were not that lucky...
Here is Sandy by the numbers:

Sandy by pictures:

Flooded homes in Tuckerton, N.J., on Oct. 30 after Hurricane Sandy made landfall on the southern New Jersey coastline on Oct. 29. (US Coast Guard via AFP/Getty Images)

US route 30, the White Horse Pike, one of the majow three apporaches to Atlantic City, N.J., is covered with water from Absecon Bay in the view looking west, during the approach of Hurricane Sandy on Oct. 29. Hurridayn Sandy began battering the US East Coast on Monday with fierce winds and driving rain, as the monster storm shut down transportation, shuttered businesses and sent thousand scrambling for higher ground hours before the worst was due to strike. (Tom Mihalik/Reuters) - This is the route where we went to Atlantic City two weeks ago...pretty bad.

Boats cluste together at a marina in Brant Beach, on Long Beach Island of the New Jersey shore a day after superstorm Sandy blew across the New Jersey barried islands on Oct. 29. (Clem Murray/Philadelphia Inquirer via Associated Press) 

The darkened skyline of Manhattan is seen on Oct. 30. one day after Hurricane Sandy hit. Life ground to a virtual halt in parts of southern Manhattan still without power, but many New Yorkers seemes to be taking the damage wrought by Hurricane Sandy in stride. (Mehdi Taamallah/AFP/Getty Images)

Only a few bread items remain on the shelves at the Waldaums grocery store as Hurricane Sandy approaches on Oct. 28 in Long Beach, N.Y. (Mike Stobe/Getty Images) - In Hamden it looked just like this.

Brian Hajeski (41) of Brick, N.J., reacts as he looks at debris of a home that washed up on the Mantoloking Bridge the morning after superstorm Sandy rolled through on Oct. 29. in Matoloking, N.J. Sandy, the storm that made landfall Monday, caused multiple fatalities, halted mass transit and cut power to more than 6 million homes and businesses. (Associated Press Photo/Julio Cortez)

Broadcast that we did not listen to due to poweroutage

Our way of entertainment and broadcasting during Sandy - no power, no internet, no heating, no hot water

Sandy basically smashed the coastline of CT away, destroyed East Haven the most. QU was closed for 6 days and out of power for 5 days. Many people are without power even after a week:

This is only one of the two utility company's outage list.

Jeffrey is still out of power for a week now but the army is there and working:

10/4/12 - CT 6 days after Sandy hit land

I went to work on Monday morning when nobody did, except one of the boss, because I did not know that the office is going to be closed for two days. Great...So then I went home and started drawing a picture (I'll show you a bit later) then Andris came home and we discussed that we will get together and drink something during enjoying Sandy. Cool. But it turned to not fun. At 17:50 we lost power. What does that mean? No heating, no hot water, no lights of course, your fridge is melting down and basically you can do nothing, but sitting in a dark room waiting to be punished by the mother nature. It is definitely not fun. Around 10PM i went to bed and got up around 7:26AM, checked out my car and what has happened and I had to disappoint. Nothing happened...On Tuesday I was enjoying some great books and continued drawing the picture. As the night came and it was getting dark I called Xiao because she had power whether I could take a shower and use internet for a bit, even to make some warm food. I ended up in our Chinese friend's house on Whitney half an hour later at 18:10. As I arrived and took a shower we have been notified that power is back in Whitney Village:):) I brought some sausages that I baked and my friends invited me to stay for a authentic Chinese dinner. OMG, i simply cannot describe that culinary experience I had there. Thank you, guys!

Get back to the graphics I drew. Here are the flow of it without commentary:

Heading to sleep:)

10.22 - 10.28 - China town, NYC

After a crazy weekend and another week I did not want to go anywhere, just wanted to spend some time on my own and catch up with many things I am well behind. But of course it didn't happen as I planned:)

On Monday night we got our grades of the Management Accounting midterm. Hmm, i was pretty sure that i did a good job, but when i looked at the paper i was a bit surprised: 98%. Everybody was happy about his/her grade but i asked myself how i lost twooooo points?? It turned out that I was not able to do a simple math, something like that: 1,000,000$ + 350,000$:) Anyway, of course, I was happy.

On Tuesday night i got my inferential statistics midterm grade, it showed 94% result. I made similar mistakes like I did at accounting. Eventually I am glad that I chose Ottawa and Montreal instead of staying home and study my ass off. It paid off.

On Wednesday night i checked my grade of the foundations of health care and i got to know that the overall grade of my course is 91%. I am satisfied with it, however, i invested much more energy into this course than into the other two combined.:)

After the accounting class we went to a super restaurant with Alley and Jeffrey and ate a lot of wonderful food creations. OMG, how was it possible to taste at least 14 different types of dishes?:) Only we were in that popular restaurant at that time and the staff was watching the TV, basically nobody was on the street as well. Incredible! Why? Because of this: 

Third presidential debate - 10/22/12

I went home and had to watch it. Look at Obama's gestures. He is a genius speaker, very structural, logical, easy to understand and follow, suggestive, etc. Romney is a great guy, but cannot compete against Obama at least in the third debate.

Romney had a better performance on the second and on the first one:

First Presidential Debate - 10/03/12

Second Presidential Debate - 10/16/12

I am not a big fan of politics in Hungary, because it is simply stupid and I don't want to be involved in it. Here, you can feel the difference. Those guys made me curious about the whole election. So I made a quick research on the net and found this:

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/2012/romney-vs-obama-electoral-map

It is very visual and interactive site, perfect for Bence to get the most info in the least time. Bloomberg Businessweek just released a issue about the whole election: Are You Better Off? 

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/10/bloomberg-businessweeks-election-issue-138100.html

I got to tell you that is a great newspaper. (Are You Better Off now than four years ago? - it is the very same question that everybody knows in Hungary from the last election...This meme has been originated from somewhere, and i have an idea where:)

After work on Wednesday I went to fish and broke my rod again, more precisely a big trout broke my rod, anyhow the result was a broken rod. So Bence was thinking of buying a new one or fixing the existing one. I thought let's check it out. I spent about an hour with investigating the damage and came up with the solution. Now I have a fixed rod that work just fine!!! I tried it out in action and proved its great condition. I caught 5 trouts (just counted I kept) and a nice dace. It made me happy:)

And here comes the fun part of this week. On Thursday night Xiao came over and we visited Jing's apartment. They invited me to New York on Friday. I didn't plan to go to New York at all, so everything was spontaneous. I immediately said YES! Hell yeah i want to go to NYC! 

So then we packed up our stuff and headed to Ya Chu's apartment where we spent the night. I baked the pizza for dinner and she made her well-known spicy-sour soup! It was very delicious. We guys (Jing and me) slept on the floor in the living room just like this:

Two grubs:) 

@TimesSquare

Xiao and Jing:) 

@TimesSquare

Rockefeller Tower 

Trump Tower 

@CentralPark 

@ChinaTown

For me Chinatown was the best part of the trip. We had lunch in a real Chinese Restaurant (Shanghai Cousin) We used just chopsticks and spoon. Xiao and Jing taught me how to eat just like a Chinese:)

I had soy bean milk with fried dough ($1 and $1.25) that they usually eat for breakfast, but Bence was so hungry so I had to have it:) Soy bean milk is silky, slightly sweet and very healthy (and cheap). Fried dough was similar to the Hungarian Langos dough, as Xiao recommended I tore it apart and dropped into the milk and then when it is tender you eat it:) We also had steam buns, wonton and noodles.

Then we went to the Chinese Market, where i spent more than an hour just walking around and watching Chinese food and other stuff. The best part was the fish market, carp, tilapia, barramundi, eel, crabs, muscles, squid, bluegill, trout, salmon, catfish, shark, and 20+ more species. It was just WOW! I could have spent a half day just at that section...:)

I had to realize that i love pretty much everything that is Chinese. Especially the food and my Chinese friends:)  

Here is another great product, it is originated from Taiwan (that is not part of China, and on the other hand it is) That is why I dont like politics:) So this is the so called bubble tea! It is amazing product, i fell in love immediately. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_tea

In the afternoon we met Ya Chu and girls were shopping of course, in the meantime we were struggling with Jing:) At 6pm we took the megabus again to go home. It was a wonderful day. I fell asleep in my bed after we arrived. 

Right now we are preparing for the hit of Hurricane Sandy:)

http://www.weather.com/news/weather-hurricanes/tropics-scenarios-us-threat-20121022

http://www.google.org/publicalerts/alert?aid=f25868d95a209709&hl=en&gl=US&source=web

Last year's Hurricane Irene in Hamden, watch and pray for us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGSq7Ldzvtg suggested by Andris.

10.15 - 10.21 - Philly, Atlantic City, Cap May

After our midterm week we desired some fun, so thus we decided to go down to Atlantic City.
http://goo.gl/maps/kqbDJ
Hamden-Philadelphia-Atlantic City-Cape May-Cape May Point-Hamden - 535 miles

Philadelphia's second best PhillyCheeseSteak place, it is the second one, because we were standing in the line at the best one:) That was about 70 ft long and it took about 30 seconds to get your phillysteak sandwich. I was a little bit disappointed about the food. That was not #1 place. The sandwich is pretty simple: one roll, some beef, two pieces of american cheese and who is the next one - shouting loudly??? Well, and it was $10. OK, i thought there was another counter where you could get some free stuff, such as ketchup (as I thought), mustard, dried chili and sour spicy apple paprika. So I poured a lot of ketchup and picked up 4 pieces of  paprika.  

 Avid Bence is suffering from the expensive sandwich that he made inedible. Great Bence! Congrats! I was crying because of the XXX hot sauce (was not KETCHUP at all) and paprika. OMG, that was terrible! I did not buy coke since I had water in my car. Aziz helped me out with his soda. Thanks Aziz.:)

Indeed, everybody else was enjoying his/her sandwich. It is so typical, when Bence wants to beat something he always has to learn the lesson:)

At Pat's Steaks #1 Philly Cheese Steak place 

Beautiful Philadelphia with great people 

Hungarians are everywhere:) 

Almost at the Rocky steps 

In front of the Museum of Arts... 

...where Rocky Balboa in the epic scene was running up on the 72 stairs of the Museum of Arts

Rocky had about the same size of shoes that I have:) 

!Philly! 

Opposite angle with the same great friends! 

With the Champion! 

goosechasers... 

i love Philadelphia  

downtown 

andddddd this is Atlantic City ladies and gentlemen...the Las Vegas of the East Coast

with the biggest casino, the Caesars in the background 

Donald Trump is also everywhere 

Atlantic City sunset 

After arriving to Atlantic City we went to buy some booze and food. Enjoying our well-desired time:)

Atlantic City

Chillin with Jing, Lisanne, and Aziz, Xiao took the picture and we were waiting for the other companion (Andras and other four Chinese friends)

OK, so here is the thing. We went into the biggest casino in Atlantic City, it is the Caesar's. I did not want to gamble, BUT i was walking around and saw a voucher about 15 cents, i took it and was wondering what if i lose these 15 cents? Nothing. So I put it into a slot machine and started to play. It takes about 15 seconds to learn the basics. It is enough to lose your entire budget if you are stupid, or can make some money if you are smart. 

 

So I turned a 15 cents voucher into 1$ and 33 cents in about 2 minutes.

Here is how much i love money.

It was time to reinvest and make more! It is simple physiology. Easy money makes you stupid, so it made me too.

But I won again!!!

Even happier Bence:) Finally without investing any cents of my money I closed the night with 54 cents pure profit! It is great, isn't? Everybody had a great time there, we enjoyed ourselves so much in Atlantic City.

Almost everybody

 Aziz took a picture of this ever-lasting moment (this is the proof that Andris was also with us, jumping in the middle)

 On Sunday we went down to Cape May Point that is the southernmost point of the Jersey Shore with a beautiful Light House.

I mostly watched the fishers, didnt care much about such a beautiful scene and weather. 

I had to go into the water. 

October 20th, 2012, Cape May, NJ - closing day for this season

Heading home! One thing I learnt during this trip is that I will never ever take George Washington bridge again! We were sitting in a huge traffic jam about three hours or so. I was so unabashed, aggressive but still took forever to get to the bridge. If we did not see at least 9 accidents in 5 miles, we had not seen any. It was my worst driving experience. Terrible, exhausting, stressful, hopeless, etc. It is very scary when you have to change lines and at the same time a 18 wheeler also has to change lines and it doesn't see you in its blind spot and you cannot move anywhere...and it is still coming and coming.... 

The happy driver who carried his crew home in safe. 

10 of us had a great time in Atlantic City and a great weekend:) Keep going guys! Only one half of this semester left. It is not much to get this job done:)