6 Flags

What's "6 Flags" you ask? Well... ever heard of Magic Mountain?

6 Flags theme parks operate throughout the US and there are marine parks, waterworlds and of course rollercoaster theme parks!! That's exactly where I went on Saturday afternoon - 6 Flags over Texas.



After talking to someone from work about this, I decided to go check it out myself on the weekend. Took me about half an hour to drive there and when I saw the place, I knew I was in for one heck of a ride (or mutiple rides...!!).

The place was HUGE. I could see the rollercoaster from like miles away (literally). you pay for entry to the park and after that all rides in the park are free, for as many time as you want. So pressumbly, people get there in the morning and stay until it closed (around 8pm on Sat).


I was quite in my element there - no shortage of rides. While there were quite a lot of people around, I was actually at an adventage being alone. There were actually queues (or lines as the Americans call them) specially for single riders! So I got to go onto the Superman Tower of Power in about 5 minutes of arriving at the queue. ACE.

My favourite had to be the Texas Giant and I could see why it had been named the #1 wooden rollercoaster in the world. I couldn't say for the world, but undoubtly it was GOOD. It was 143 feet tall (around 43m) and what a ride!! 2 minutes and the ride was over, but let me tell you, there were no dull moments out of that 120 seconds.

Then there was the Titan. Not as tall, but the drops were steeper and faster. I actually had to make an effort to maintain balance when I came off the train.


And it was here that I came across one of the best invention ever for a day out at a theme park - a refillable plastic cup with a strew you can tuck away complete with a belt clip. Basically you had the option of buying one that allowed you free refill at any of the food outlets for soft drinks throughout the day; Or you could buy one that costed you 99c per refill. A plastic belt clip was provided so you can holster the cup like a pistol... Perfect for the sizzling Texas summer weather!! Even just getting ice would have been worth it!

Week 4.1 - Deep Ellum's Sweet Endings

Deep Ellum apparently is an area of town where one can find all sort of interesting shops, juke joints, blues bars and eateries.


There are actually 2 parts to my Deep Ellum adventures:

Part I - Nothin' but a lot of hassle (Sunday ~5:00pm)
Just going by what I could see on Main Street, the place was actually pretty dead. There were no one on the street. I parked my car and decided to go on foot for a bit.

I turned the corner, and woah, there were like a good 50 people hanging around a place called Bar Clearview. I kind of felt out of place there - I wasn't in my trendy getup and I had a camera in my hand, which kind of gave me away. Gotta come back another time and be more prepared.

I was just walking towards my car, this guy carrying odd bits of bags with 2 ceremic mugs in boxes walked up to me. Sensing what was about to happen, I stepped back to avoid him.

Apparently this man has been homeless for 17 years and that he was just trying to get money together for a meal and would appreciate what ever money I could give him for a mug. He needed to get around $8 together for a meal. Hmmm.

I didn't want a mug from this guy and who knows if he was really after money for a meal or not. However, I was kind of in a good mood so I gave him 2 dollars towards his meal but I declined on the mug offer. He basically forced it onto me and won't let me leave until I took one of the boxes from him. Oh and then he got thinking (oh yeah he did) and tried to make me a deal on his other mug.

I just kept shaking my head and eventually he gave up but still managed to smile and wave me goodbye thanking me for my original purchase.

So what am I trying to say here? Well there are quite a few people like that on the street here but they are at least non-abusive if they don't get what they want.


Part II - It's a Jungle out there (Friday ~9:00pm to midnight)
Not too happy with my first trip, I went back to Deep Ellum on Friday night again. I noted down locations of the big clubs and reviewed eateries.

Ok, much better. The first sign that things were happening: There were valet guys with orange flags trying to "flag" and lure you into parking at their lot. I could see people on the street, and many cars driving around.



The streets were lined with clubs, pubs, tatoo parlors and cafes. Under the cover of bright neons and street lights, Deep Ellum definitely looked much sexier. I saw girls in clubbing outfits with heels that lit up like christmas lights; 4 policemen running down the street chasing someone (didn't see who); Twenty-somethings hanging out at beer gardens; Bands loading and unloading gear through backdoors of clubs; Different kind of music playing in the air - some blasting out from the rooftop balcony of a club, some muffled and leaking out from behind closed doors (yeah, the club doors are all closed even when it is actually open - not very inviting).

Then suddenly I heard live guitar music. Completely out of place but very nice! It was coming from this corner shop called Sweet Endings. Ah-ha. Dessert AND live music.

I went into the shop. It was part cafe, part gift shop and apparently on this particular Friday night, you could actually stroud your stuff and display your musical talents if you had any. There was a large table of about 6, and then a few people scattered around smaller tables. I firmly planted my butt on a large sofa in the corner after ordering a key lime pie (Texas specialty) and a Latte.


It turned out to be great - these customers actually had TALENT!! Somehow, everyone could play guitar and belt out a few tunes. The people from the big table must belonged to some church choir. One of them was from Peru(his friend introduced him) and he might well have been a professional singer.

Week 3.6 Part 2 - Texan Characters

I drove passed the Dallas City Hall and Pioneer Plaza on my way to West Village (ie. the equivalent of Melbourne's Chapel Street/South Yarra area).

The Dallas City Hall building was the work of famous architect I. M. Pei. It was shaped like an inverted triangle and the front face of the building appeared almost to be at 45 degree with the ground. There was a nice water feature in front of the building with 2 red spherical sculptures floating and drifting around in the hot afternoon breeze, adding a splash of colour to the area.

1. Dallas City Hall
2. Structure near City Hall
3. Reflection of a City


Right near the City Hall was the Pioneer Plaza. Here I found the largest bronze monument in the world, depicting cowboys on horseback driving 40 longhorns along what was the Shawnee Trail - the first trail where cattles were driven from Texas to Missouri. The details of the longhorns and facial expressions of the cowboys were amazing. I would have loved to stay out there and looked more closely, but it was an open space and I was beginning to melt.

1. Longhorn Drive
2. Lonesome cowboy


Anyway, so I was hopping around from one shady spot to another (they were hard to find) and I eventually came to the top of the plaza where shades were in abundance. That's where I met Dallas local, Quinn. He was chillin' out with his music and I was chillin' with my camera. He saw me and we nodded at each other. Then he proceeded to ask me THE question:

"Hey you wanna take a picture of me?"

I told you - people like their pictures taken here. So ok, I took one. Then I thought oh maybe he can take one for me? Hmm... but can I trust him with my camera? Anyway, it ended up with me taking another picture of him in front of the cowboy statue. You probably won't be able to see it from the picture but he had 4 gold front teeth. Very impressive.

1. Bank of America Plaza in the background
2.Silly photo time (had no tripod so legs got chopped off... *sigh*)
3.Meet Texas Local, Quinn


I said goodbye to Quinn, who proceeded back to his shady spot under the trees with his music. I headed back towards the car. Then I noticed this gentleman sitting out in the sun looking at a plaque and I decided to investigate.

Remember that trick that you learned in science class? If the sun was out and you held a magnifying glass up, sunlight would converge at the focal point and produce a single point source of heat and some of us might have even tried it on a line of ants or other little innocent insects on the ground in a hot summer day... (not me personally but hey guys, don't tell me you haven't thought of it).

WELL - this gentleman was actually harnessing this energy to perfection artistically. He was actually burning patterns onto a wooden plaque by moving around a piece of magnifying glass!! I TOLD you Dallas was hot. Now I have proof of it.

1. Artist at work
2. Look at that smoke coming off the wood
3. Close up

Week 3.6 - X marks the spot

Saturday afternoon in Dallas, sun is glaring as usual.

I stopped by the Tourist Information Center in town - partly because it was a very cool looking building (it is known as the "Old Red Courthouse" and looks like a castle from the outside), and also because the air-con was VERY cool inside. I knew of a historic trolley that ran from town to West Village (these trollies were like the city circle trams in Melbourne) and thought it might be nice to try to catch one.


I was informed by the nice man at the Info Center that yes, they run and come by every half an hour or so but he didn't know how late into the evening they ran. There was no way I was going to stand out in that Texan sun for half an hour - I would have evaporated by then. So didn't matter, I went across the road to the 6th floor museum, dedicated to President JFK instead. Well you couldn't go there without going to the much talked about grassy knoll either!!

So off I went - very easy to find because that's where all the tourists and hasslers were. Now let me just explain to you the location of the grassy knoll. It is really a fenced off area behind the patch of lawn that embanked 1 of the 3 underpasses that lead in and out of Dallas city center.

I kept seeing people running out to the middle of the road to take pictures and I wondered why. On closer inspection, there was actually a red "X" on the ground in one of the 4 lanes of this particular road (near the middle). That's where President JFK got shot when his motocade passed! Well how can you resist? If X marked the spot, what else could you do but to go to the spot? However this was dangerous, because cars could be travelling down that lane anytime when the light turned green like just up the road!!

Week 3 Supplementary - US to Oz Translation

After a few blank looks from people here, I have come to realise that there are slightly different terms to some common objects and phases used here comparing to back home. For example (in no particular order):

Cell phone - Mobile (and mobile is pronounced as Mo-ble, not Mo-bile)
Soda - Any carbonated soft drinks
Sac - Plastic bag, for takeaway
Wireless - Most likely referring to a mobile, unless in context of a PC
PC - A laptop, the chunky desk versions are called desktops
To go - Takeaway (when at an eatery ordering)
Can't miss it - O Yes you can!
Wrench - Spanner (use spanner and you will be accused of talking like a Brit)
Candies - Lollies, sweets
A couple of miles - 2 miles is roughly like 3.22km
Biscuit - A kind of cheese scone (but much nicer), not a cracker type biscuit like Ritz. I have been told the best ones are the ones at Popeye
Popeye - Not referring to the sailor; It is a fastfood place that serves the best fried chicken (so I have been told)
Checkin' in - Contacting someone via phone or email to see how they are going
Hey what's up - the US equivalent of "Hey mate, howzit going". The correct respone is "what's up", not "nothing is happening..."
Shrimp - What we call Prawns. No one knows what prawns are out here (just remember Forrest Gump - Babba Shrimps)

So here is a sample convesation:

[B calls A on his cell phone]

A: Hey bro, what's up.

B: What's up man, just checkin' in.

A: Hey, I am starvin'. You wanna go grab some popeye to go?

B: Oh yeeeeah, I love those biscuits. There is one a quarter mile down the road from me.

See? Easy.

Oh and here are pictures of a Popeye meal consisting of Cajun butterfly shrimps and a biscuit (sorry couldn't resist and took a bite... too hungry). Next time I will try the famous fried chicken.

Week 3.5 - Sambuca and Jazz

No, not Sambuca the drink, Sambuca is a restuarant.



It was Friday and I was feeling very tired. My options were to go home and sleep, or go out somewhere. I felt I owed it to myself to go out for a bit of fun, after such a busy week at work.

I tried to look up a jazz club place that someone recommended to me earlier but that was actually closed! A bit more searching and I ended up booking myself for dinner at this restuarant uptown called Sambuca. On the web it said that live jazz bands plays there every night. Sounded good.

As per normal, I drove myself there with the aid of HANA (after I swore at it a few more times and ignored a few of its comebacks). Sambuca was a very "swanky" resturants. There was a long queue of cars (you know, your "normal" BMW, Ferrari, Jaguar type of cars) waiting for the valet parking out front, with a lot of nicely dressed people walking about. Luckily I decided to put in a bit of effort and didn't just go with my usual t-shirt and denim.

My table was right out the front near the stage where the band "B and the Buzz" was performing. It was like getting a front row seat at a concert really. I was immediately happy about my decision to come out (easy for me to take photos... haa haa).

My guess? "B" is the guy playing the electric guitar and doing the singing and "the Buzz" were the others accompanying him. B looked exactly like Robert Neniro with a long beard who had gained 30kg of weight.

Music was great! People were tapping their feet along and some even decided to stand up and do a bit of dancing (this one couple in particular was dancing up a ball and people actually clapped for them as well as the band).


At the server's recommendation, I ordered an caremel apple martini and the house special for dinner (which is Mahi Mahi fillet on 4oz of lobster meat, with a mango and 3 colour bell pepper salad drizzled with olive oil and vinegrette sauce and not on the menu).



Oh YUMMMMMM... That martini was devine. And the fish was lovely too.

And to finish it all off, a hazelnut eissouffle for dessert. Well I am pretty new to the world of fine-dining so when I first looked I thought souffle, as in your normal souffle. But I asked the server and he said "eis"-souffle is actually a German dish and is more like an ice-cream but made with souffle ingredients.

Well pardon me for not knowing better! He said it is always a hit with customer especially of the hot weather. WELL hey, it doesn't get any hotter than Dallas right now so I ordered that. It was nice a rich, I am not sure I could handle so much cream and sugar, but it wasn't a bad dessert for a hot day.

I sat and listened to the band for another half an hour and only left when they took a break (their breaks are slightly long, like half an hour). But it was a thoroughly enjoyable night out!

Week 3.4 - 10 Good things about Texas

Alright, it would seem that I haven' been very positive about Dallas so far and all I have done is share my mis-adventures.

So here we are: 10 good things about Texas/USA

1. Ladies are treated like ladies - Everyone addresses you as "M'am" and the guys will hold lifts, open doors and pull chairs for you. Maybe it is common American chivalry, but hey, kind of nice especially when you have a few laptops and bags to juggle.

2. Free refill for soda at most food places - The Hungry Jacks in North Sydney does that, but here we are talking about a large varieties of drinks you can have, including ice-tea and slurppies. It is great because you can fill up a cup of ice before you leave a place, and 5 minutes outside, you have yourself a nice ice-water.

3. Sauce and condiments are free - We are not talking the 2 sachets of tomato sauce that you might get at Mccas if you asked. Tomato sauce, soy sauce, mustard, sweet and sour sauce, chili sauce; You name it, they've probably got it. Drown your food in them, all free. (The package is so cute too!!)

4. People are generally very friendly and chatty - you will get good mornings and good afternoons from strangers passing you by in the corridor at work, in a queue in an eatery, etc. There also seems to be quite a few people wanting you to take pictures of them on the street if they see you with a camera... (maybe that's not necessarily a good thing, but these are friendly folks).

5. Rates for Pre-paid mobile are great here - Local calls are very cheap. I have a prepaid phone, where I can call anyone nationwide on the same carrier for free anytime I want. All it does is deduct 99c a day and I think calling other carrier's phone cost me like 10c a minute. You can't beat that!

6. The main post office here operates 24hrs - If you ever felt the urge to go and send a letter in the middle of the night, you could!

7. Summer nights are great for hanging out - It is always balmy at night around the 26-28C mark - you can keep your summer flowy dress on all day and all night. No jackets required.

8. Everyone seems to love the Aussie accent - Maybe there are not that many Australian tourists here, but I have been told repeatedly, by lots of different people, that they can just listen to me talking all day with my Aussie accent (do I really have that strong an Aussie accent??? Maybe they are having me on... Oh and they always want to know if I am from Sydney and when I tell them I am not, they ask me how far Melbourne is from Sydney…)

9. It is ALMOST always sunny (well, most of the time) - It is great if you wanted to get a tan. Just go right outside and tan yourself to the shade you want, all in under an hour.

10. Shopping malls are open till late every day - They are open until 10pm weekdays, and 9pm on Saturdays at most places. Gals, it is like late night shopping EVERYNIGHT!! *spend spend spend*

Week 3.3 - Chocolate makes the world go round (at least MY world)

So after my disastrous Monday, Tuesday I made up for it. I took the day off (well you know, to recover from my concussion!!). I slept in to compensate for all the hours I have missed on the weekend. I did get more work done *sigh* and I didn't leave my room the entire day apart from 1 small trip to the post office.

It was room service for dinner that night (I felt justified to be lazy and splurge - simply too hot to go outside). Oh boy it was great though! I put in an order of buffalo wings, with a pink lemonade and a sundae dessert called "Turtle Smoosh". Hear me out, this was the description for it -

"Eli's fabulous Turtle Cheesecake with three scoops of Haagen-Dazs Dulce de Leche ice cream, topped with whipped cream, chocolate and caramel sauce, chopped walnuts and raspberries"

How could you go pass something like that??! Alright, sounded like hell for the waistline, but hey WHO CARES!! It was definitely doing things for the brain because I was immediately feeling much better just knowing that I have ordered it.

Let me tell you, the buffalo wings were awwwwwe-some (use plenty of Yankee accent when reading this) and that Turtle Smoosh... I couldn't believe the size of it. It was HUGE. You could have shared it between 2-3 people. Oh but sadly, I had no one to help me out so I had to eat it all by myself.... *awwwww... what a pity huh*

All that chocolate, sugar and cream were magical. I spent the rest of the night feeling very content.

Week 3.2 - Texas 1: Cowgirl 0

Ever had a bad work day? If not, here is am example for you.

Sunday afternoon/night - My laptop stopped working properly. Many hours were spent on the web with some guru IT friends (thanks guys, you know who you are, thx 4 ur patience & time) trying to troubleshoot it. I tried just about everything bar throwing the laptop out the window. No dice. My prep work for a training class hasn't been completed and it is almost 4am Monday morning.

Mon 6:45am – Foggy outside. Left the hotel for the client's 8:00am training class. The client was only 10 minutes drive away so I thought I would have plenty of time to actually hop onto their network and set things up in the training room.

Mon 7:10am - I was lost somewhere in downtown Dallas trying to get onto the highway. HANA (ie. the Hopeless Avis Navigation Assist device) was giving me "download error" "no GPS Signal" and "You have left the route - creating a new route" instead of ACTUAL useful directions. It must have been the fog. I didn't have a map either.

Mon 7:15am - Still lost, the fuel gauge light came on. I was running out of petrol. I had no idea where petrol stations were. I was still somewhat lucky at this stage and stumbled onto a one eventually. The petrol station guy gave me directions.

Mon 8:30am – At client’s training room. I could not connect to the client's network due to security reasons, and no wireless access was available so I could not access the training server over the internet.

Mon 10:00am - Half way through the class, this lady came into the training room and informed me that I have parked in a VIP Restricted area and my car was about to be clammed and towed away. I ran down and drove my car to a different area (which by now had this big orange sticker stucked onto the side window saying VIOLATION - PARKING IN RESTRICTED AREA). Ok, fine, whatever. I had past the point of caring.

Mon 11:30am – Finished the training class in 2.5hr when it was suppose to last three 4hr sessions. It was mostly due to the fact that I could not setup any test data for hand-on work activities due to my laptop problem, and partly because I had no idea how much details I was suppose to go into with the topic. Well everyone was half asleep anyway.

Mon: 6:15pm - Finished at 2nd client around 5:45pm. I had an hour to wait before I was due to meet up with my PM to catch up on client progress. It was like around 35C one minute and the next minute there was something like flash flooding. Water was spraying up so high from cars around me as we drove along the road that I could not see a thing out of my windscreen. I tried to navigate to the PM's place using HANA and of course, no GPS signal again. I seriously thought my car would lose its grip and get carried down the road like you see on TV.

1. Storm front approaching 2. Downpour at red light

Mon: 7:45pm - Got to the PM's place and caught up with him. He offered for me to take a break and wait for rain to stop and I could use his internet connection to do some work in the meantime if I wished to. I really just wanted to go home as I was tired and in a bad mood and still had to prepare materials for the class on Tuesday.

Mon: 8:45pm - I stopped on the way home, went into this diner thinking I would quickly get something to eat instead of ordering room service at the hotel again. Bad idea. I shouldn't have – I felt worse after a horrible sandwich.

[At this point, I will forgive you for thinking gee is she going to stop complaining? But wait! There is 1 more to go!!]

Mon: ~9:00pm - I got in my car and slowly pulled out onto the main road to head home.

*bbbbbeeeeEEEEEEPPPPP* (note: just approaching horn, no screeching from tires)

*BAAAM!!*

My car was spun ~90 degree and ended up on the nature strip. Oh just great. To top things off, I got hit by a car. Lucky for me I wasn't out another foot or so, it could have been me instead of the front panel and wheel that got mangled *shiver*. But blxxdy hell, this just couldn't be happening. Not in ONE DAY!!

Alright, I surrender, Texas. You win this round. I'll get you back another day.

Week 3.1 - Tourist Town and Boots Heaven

After spending days in confinement of the hotel room and acquainting myself too well with the hotel room service menu, I decided I need to venture outside to see what else Dallas had on offer.

So Sunday night, I drove myself down to where all the tourists were - The Westend Historic District.

The Westend distrinct is near the famous grassy knoll where President Kennedy's motorcade was passing when he got assassinated in 1963. Around the corner is the Book repository where the assassin actually took the shot from. It has been turned into a museum dedicated to JFK of course (which I still haven't been to and will try this weekend).

After being in Dallas for 2 weeks and not having seen any tumbleweed, cowboys or saloons, I actually felt quite content to find the Westend village which houses all the typical souvenir shops. It reminded me of the Asian- operated souvenir shops along Swanston St. back in Melbourne.

OH one shop had cowboy hats up to the ceiling and a corner full of cowgirl boots in all the colours you could imagine - I was in BOOTS HEAVEN (look at that chair too)!!

A cheap pair of boots would have actually set you back around USD$299 (and that's just the plain ones). NO kidding!! They were supposed to be hand-crafted individually.

Wow. Ok, even if I had no intention of buying a pair, I would at least have to try a pair on. They were actually very comfortable! If I ever bought a pair, would I ever have the opportunity to wear them back at home...?!?! Probably not. But oh just look at them... There MUST be a places where it would be cheaper...