Skating and Shopping

Finally things seem to be coming together. I was saying the previous weekend that I had nothing much to do which made me feel homesick. However, this weekend, I was so busy so much so that I didn't have time to do all the things that I wanted to.

On Friday night, I went ice-skating for the very first time. The rink apparently had a special rate of $5 for Drake students instead of the usual $7.50 so I decided to go as I've not skated before. A bunch of us went but when we got to the rink, the line to the counter was so long! There were tons of Drake students there including many of my American and Malaysian friends. Anyways, it took us about 30 mins to get our skates and by the time we got ours, they ran out of skates for the rest of the people waiting in line.

The rink consists of 2 ice-skating rinks and I think they are both bigger than the one at Sunway Pyramid. Anyways, I had this warped fanstasy that once I got onto the ice, I would just take off and skate like I've done it forever. The boots were a little unkind to my bony ankles...they were like two planks strapped to your foot on each side. You have to lace them up pretty tight to prevent your ankle from breaking if you ever fell down on the ice. Out of the 4 of us, only one of my friends, Nicole had skated before. I gingerly got onto the ice.

It was so slippery. But I decided to shuffle slowly by the wall with Nicole next to me. I've roller-bladed before and it is very similar to ice-skating except for the fact that ice-skating is much more slippery. I made progress along the wall and then I lost balance and was falling to the ground. Nicole grabbed my hand and my weight pulled her to the ground. I fell on my butt and she fell on top of me. All this happened in less than 1 minute when I got onto the ice. So much for my fantasy of being able to glide on the ice.

But thanks to Nicole and Amber and my previous experience with roller-blades, I got the hang of it faster than my other 2 friends. Eventually, before we left, I could skate the entire rink without needing to stop or falling down. I fell a total of 3 times, the 2nd time was karma...I was helping Nicholas to skate and he made me fall down, like how I made Nicole fall. The 3rd was entirely my fault. I stopped using the wrong technique and ended up kneeling against the wall. By the end of the session, all of us were glad that we got onto the ice and would definitely go back again.

That was on Friday night. I decided to go shopping on Saturday. It happened to be a cold and windy day so it was torture waiting for the bus when the windchill was -10 degrees or so. But we managed to get to the mall. I managed to snag some good buys.

I got these two watches by Tilt from Pacsun. The original price was $29.50, I paid $5 each.


My next stop was Aeropostale. I needed T-Shirts as I didn't manage to bring many from back home. I got 2 shirts for a mere $4.50 each instead of paying $14.99 per shirt.


My friend Ann wanted to get some hair accessories. We decided to go to this accessory shop. There was a bargain rack in the middle. Bags and clutches were going for $3 each. I saw this nice metallic mesh-like bag. It was the only one left and I thought someone might have dumped it there. But I decided to take it anyway. I looked at the tag, $26. I can always say that I don't want it if it was really $26. Then I got myself a nice black clutch ($14), the last one left. I took them to the counter and when the sales assistant rang the bill up, it was $3 all right...both of them. It was so cheap!!!


After Aeropostale, I went to Bath & Body Works. It's a really nice chain of bath and beauty products and they have shops all over. I spent some time looking around the store because I needed to get some lotion. I ended up buying the lotion and some shower gel and lipbalm as well. Wanna guess how much they were? $3.70 for all of it. They were 90% off!


The thing about shopping in America when things are on sale is that, when they are on sale, they really slash the prices. The best part is that the items are usually in good condition and are nice. I can't possibly get that metallic bag at that quality back in Malaysia for RM 15 even. Aeropostale t-shirts at FOS cost no less than RM 23.90 usually and the bath products that I bought were Made in France and I'm sure they're as good as Crabtree and Evelyn or L'Occitane products. I'm just waiting for the spring/summer sales...