Philly Cheesesteaks!

I'm back from Philly! It's been an *eh hem* sorta arduous couple of days (more about that later), and I'm dead beat. My pops are off to Taipei for the whole of this week today, so no mum-calls for the whole week, which is kinda strange. My mum calls me promptly at 9.30pm every single day - It's like clockwork. I guess I never realize how significant that is till she stopped calling (and today's the first day of their trip!). Anywhoo, mummy dearest promised me that she will try to call me everyday. Apparently, it costs $1.70 a min to call here when she's in Taipei, and my dad is refusing to let her call. So her plan of action is to pretend to go to the bathroom and call from there. Isn't that sweet. Heh. Her alternate plan is to find a cheap calling card. My mum can be full of brilliant ideas sometimes. :D

Anyway, more about the trip. It started off on the wrong foot - I am supposed to take the United flight from San D. to Philly, connecting at Chicago. I got to the airport on time, and before long, I was comfortably settled on the plane to Chicago, dreaming of Chicago cheesecakes and deep-dish pizzas. The instant we landed, I turned on my cell only to find a voicemail from United that goes "Hi there, we are calling from United Airlines. This is a gentle notification to inform you that your flight from *pause* Chicago to *pause* Philadelphia on the *pause* 24th of November has been subject to a *pause* cancellation. Please consult our friendly front desk for an alternative flight. Thank you, and we hope you have a nice day." The first thing that ran through my mind was "What the fuck." The second thought that came running was " How am I supposed to have a nice day when you fucking retards just cancelled my flight!" ( Anyway, the pauses are really there. It's an automated message in their feeble attempt to cut down on staff, so they just pre-record messages and fit in the appropriate details as deemed fit.) I got to the customer service counter, only to be greeted by an extremely unpleasant staff (or rather "friendly", as United retards put it). She informed me that I was booked on an U.S. Airways flight now, and it's 1/2 hr later than the United. I asked her if I can have an earlier flight, only to be slapped with a curt "no". Resigned, I went to the U.S. Airways terminal, and obtained my new boarding pass. The lady was telling me that United pretty much dumped the 50 people on the canceled flight on their flight, and she says it's prolly to cut down on costs, by combining the passengers together. WTF. If I had known that I'm getting this from my 730 bucks ticket, I would have known better to choose United. I was so pissed off at that point, and even more so at the fact that I have to wait TWO hours to board the plane. Well, what better thing to do than to get crunk at the pub next to the boarding pass. So there I sat, drinking a total of three beers while reading my book and talking to occasional beer drinkers. At the end of it, I felt pretty happy. All my anger at United had vanished, and I couldn't wait to get on the flight! It even landed half an hour earlier than the estimated time, so I was pretty happy. But alas, that is not all. After waiting for my luggage for an hour, the representative informed us that our luggages are lost, and PROBABLY still in chicago. That was the last straw. We had to get in line to file baggage claims, and I was steaming mad. Actually, everyone in the line was, and we were rallying for boycotting United in the future, and sending complaint letters. We figured that the United retards prolly thought "hey, the flight's canceled! Let's just head home earlier for thanksgiving dinner and forget about the bags still on the bloody canceled flights!" Well, tomorrow I shall compose the most vicious complaint letter.

So the first night, I had to borrow a shitload of stuff from Jenn's mum. Left me pretty grumpy. The thanksgiving food was really good though! In my hunger, I kinda forgot to take pictures, but well it was excellent. Heh heh. I had to wear Jenn's mum's PJs too. It was pretty funny.

The second day, we went to the 2nd largest mall in the states. It's called King of Prussia, and man, was it big. We were pretty grossed out by the massive crowds shopping on Black Friday though, and the only remotely interesting thing was when they were going to nab a shoplifter at A&F. Seriously! There was even a cop, but they were taking too long to stake out the guy, Jenn and I got bored and left. Yep. And that brings us to the highlight of my entire trip ----> PHILLY CHEESESTEAKS! Jenn and I had to follow the GPS, cuz we didn't know how to get to South St, and it was worth every ounce of effort! We went to this place called Jim's Steaks, and I got the cheesesteak with american cheese and mushrooms. It was heavenly. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was the supple, almost chewy Amoroso roll the steak was set on (Amoroso rolls are only found in Philly, and people believe that the flakiness of the roll is due to the alkalinity of the water in Philly), maybe it was the very well-seasoned steak that simply melts in your mouth, or maybe it's the combination of steak and melted salty cheese. Regardless, it's right up there with the In-and-Out burgers in Cali. Dishes like that, I really do marvel, because they taste so spectacular for something that looks so uh, not spectacular. Man, my stomach's growling for another cheesesteaks. Anyways, enough of my rambling - pictures! :D
Jenn driving us to the mall. I wanted to take a full picture of her, but didn't want to distract her from her driving.
Typical view of roads on suburban Philly. I was trying to take pictures as we were driving, but well Jenn was driving really fast, and my camera was really slow, so this was the only presentable non-blurred picture.
Crappy food at the food court at the mall. The mapo-tofu still had the edges of the tofu on it, and is the worst MP tofu ever. The tempura shrimp left me with a queasy stomach. The only reason I took a picture was to remind me that this is the record holder for worst asian food ever. Need I say more?
Downtown Philly on a Friday night.
South Street. Apparently a very historical street, and where all the good cheesesteaks are! :D
This street is so cool, their adidas store even has an in-house DJ spinning.
The massive line at Jim's. It follows a snake-like pattern, so it's longer than it looks. Jenn says there's always a line, every single time she was here.
The walls are covered with framed pictures of celebrities who came here to eat. Judging from the state of the pictures, I can only say this shop goes waaaay back in time.
The cheesesteak! Man, the onions were sooo soft, my stomach's growling again. Sigh.
The juicy meat. Mmmm. Sorry about the blur picture, was too eager to get to the cheesesteak. Heh. It looks so deceptively plain, man if you only knew.

They have this thing called Tastykake, which is a trademark of Philly. It's pretty much iced sponge cake, but there's something about the buttery cake and the sweet icing that makes this a great treat.
Jenn and I went to this bar type thing, where the hispanic head chef was trying to hit on us. The crowd was pretty bad, and well, not exactly the most fun night I've ever had.
Jenn's mum treated us to lunch before I left for the airport. It was at this classy, up-scale fusion Asian restaurant. I should have taken pictures of the decor, but well, it's comparable to restaurants in Vegas, and the food was superb. This is the walnut shrimp, and it came in an exquisite emsemble (the shrimps were perched on a tower sprinked with alfafa sprouts), but I was quick to destroy it. The shrimps were huge, about 3 inches wide, and very fresh. Yum!
This is the Mango chicken. It's a decent dish, but I prolly can find something similar in the Thai restaurants here.
The eggplant shrimp. It's pretty good, at least the eggplant didn't come in the typical thick starchy sauce Chinese here like to cook eggplants with. The eggplant was thinly sliced enough for it to absorb the flavor, and it was pretty good.

Anyways, that's about as much pictures I got. And I'm tres tired. Heading to bed. Ciao ciao!