Spring Crawfish Boil

It's crawfish season~

Everyone at the office was treated to a huge lunch of crawfish... and some other stuff. Lunch is held from 11-2pm to accomodate the large number of employees.

My first time having crawfish too. Not really sure what to expect, but good things most definitely. It's pretty much done buffet style. But instead of getting a plate to pile our food, we were given a tray. Dang it... Texas wants me fat.

Walking with the tray in my hands, I approached the first guy manning the start of the short bufet line. He plonked some potatoes on my tray. I moved on and the next one gave me some grilled onions. Then I reached the crawfish section and without asking anything, the lady dunked like a whole pail-size of craw-fishes onto my tray!

See... I wasn't kidding...

It was great lunch. They even had a band there to perform for us. Most of the time they were playing some Texan country song but the music was turned on too loud and that kind of spoils the conversation because we almost had to shout to be heard.

I only managed to finish like three-quarters of the total food piled on my tray. Well, not because I couldn't eat anymore. The crawfish may look like a lot on the tray, but after its head and shells are removed, the only edible portion is small, slightly smaller than the size of my thumb. The main reason that I just wouldn't finish my food is because as I was peeling off my 10th crawfish or so, I noticed that the grainy substance on the crawfish might not be spices as I thought they might...They were more like sandy stuff, like mud.

Crawfish live in muddy areas and with so many crawfishes being served at this scale, definitely they are not going to be bothered to clean or wash them.... Ugh... I just tried to ignore that thought and went on eating :P

Had a bit of dessert to wash the mud down :D

That night a few of us went to the Malaysian cuisine restaurant close to Chinatown. It's called Banana Leaf.

We just finished shopping at Memorial City Mall and were to meet at Wild West at 10.

Shangar's nasi lemak that he had been craving for weeks.

Melanie ordered bak kut teh. Doesn't really look like the sort of bak kut teh that we have back home. This looks like a very much simpler version of it without much herbs used and only a few pieces of meat here and there. Served with a large bowl of rice.

I ordered a Seafood Combination Stir-Fried Noodles. Not very sure why but I suddenly had a thing for seafood. I am beginning to enjoy prawns and stuff like that which I never really bothered with before.

Portions were of course huge that in the end I had to tapau.....

NASA: Space Center Houston

How can you possibly visit Houston and not visit the NASA Space Center? Hehe...

Only four of us were keen enough to get up early, others were either too lazy to get out of bed on a Sunday or had to attend church service.

The drive there is only supposed to take about 40 minutes, but the traffic was so bad that we only reach, like close to 2 hours later. We never found out why the traffic was so bad.

Hehehhe..... of course, all of us needed our caffeine fix.

It's a good thing that we had the city passes thingie though. So, entry to Houston Zoo, Aquarium, NASA and 3 other attractions are only $39. Normally entry to these places will cost between $10-15.

We decided to start off with the tour ride around space center. There was already a long line of queue and security seems to be pretty tight here, we had to go through the metal scanners and our bags checked.

The line was long, but those on the front had to fill up the seats at the back of the tram and lucky for us, we managed to squeeze through and get seats in front of the 2nd tram! Teeeheehee.

After being hugely disappointed by the Downtown Aquarium, we weren't very sure what to expect from NASA (also one of the reasons probably why not many were keen to visit the Space Center) plus the rain before really kind of dampened our moods. Anyway, on that very day, the sun was out and it was actually a nice day to be out :) First of all the tour ride brought us to the Mission Control Center.

These are actual areas where the launching, training, etc are carried out and not just some exhibition area. Since it was Sunday, there wasn't anyone working but I have no idea what it would have been like to be working and have a glass case at your back with people looking and staring at you work.

Missions Control Center.

Of course, here and there we were given lectures and informative stuff about the area but I'm too lazy to type and recall all that.

After that it was to another building, the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility. This is apparently where the astronauts are trained under conditions simulated in space.

This place is really huge.....

American flags are everywhere! Not only here but overall in the United States of A. These people are darn proud of their flag and take every opportunity to fly them. Of course, they show them with pride and have the flags huge and swirling in the wind hinged on thick tall poles. Us? Puny little flags on plastic handle fixed on cars. Sad.

Some missions on banners.

This was towards the end of the tour. We were driven to this area of some rockets that remained. Those you see here are only the small puny ones that are powered by an engine.... Wait till you step in...

Ready!

5 Freaking engines! Just for the 2 minutes of lifting.

This vehicle is the one remaining from one of the missions which I can't recall at this moment.

Pretty flowers just outside.

Great shot taken by Cecile.

Then we were back to the exhibition area. The whole tour I think took us around an hour and half.

Wonder if the poop floats around in space.... lol.

So many freaking buttons!

At another part of the exhibition, this little girl is inside a sleeping bag. There is another sleeping bag there. Can you see it? Lol.

In one of the movies showcasing the history, bla bla, achievements, great American stepping stones. bla bla.

I love this shot the most.

Waste management compartment.

Cannot imagine being an astronaut lor..... Living in such a cramped space and have the whole world's eyes on you while you make decisions based upon billions of dollars already invested with high expectations imposed upon you.

The food items taken by the astronauts to space. They are dried and look horrible lol. Hot water is added and I suppose it will constitute the horrible dried stuff and turn into something horrible wet stuff.

Cute little candy cookie hehehehheh. It's really a great place to visit. Thousands of times better than that silly Aquarium. :)