It's my day off today and I am bored. Qiuqun went hitchhiking this afternoon, with a lousy cardboard sign that Liyan made, to get a ride to Mammoth. But she missed her appointment there and went missing for 3 hours. Frightened us for a while there but she finally managed to get a phone call through to us to explain that she was late for her appointment because the kind folks who picked her up made detours to take in the sights. Moral of the story is: do not hitchhike if you can help it because you worry other people, especially when there is no mobile coverage. But actually I've done it before too. But my sign was of a superior quality haha.

I think I walked at least 5 miles today, what with looking for Qiuqun and Angel's walk. Alot more walking when it gets warm enough to hike. I want to qualify for the 100-mile t-shirt this season! With the physically taxing work and thin air up at 2.6km elevation, I am going to be so so fit =) Get back all the health I squandered in lab.

This is so random but I want to talk about my food stash because I am so proud of it. I brought like 25 packets of instant porridge, 2 boxes chicken rice mix, 1 box ba kut teh mix, 1 box chicken curry mix, 2 packets tom yam soup mix, 3 packets microwaveable chicken rice, 1 packet microwaveable nasi bryani, 2 packets microwaveable gomoku kama meshi, 10 servings salmon furikake, 20 servings Anpan-man dunno-what furikake, 12 servings instant matsutake mushroom osuimono, alot of powdered konbu dashi stock, 2 bags kuzugiri, 2 packets maggie vegetable and tofu instant soup, 2 packets mccormick fish and preserved vegetable instant soup, 6 packets mccormick hot and sour instant soup, 6 servings instant asari miso soup, 4 servings instant nameko miso soup, alot of instant tofu miso soup, 4 servings shijime and wakame osuimono, alot of chili spice mix, one bottle sesame oil, one box sencha and one bag instant cereal. Luxury items include 1 bag 7D dried mangoes, 1 packet kyoho grape flavoured kanten jelly, 1 bag dried mushrooms and 1 small pack 鲁蛋. You must think I am crazy but yesterday Jamie joined me with one drawerful of various instant noodles and beehoon, 1kg rice and 3 cans luncheon meat. That's not all. Liyan and Qiuqun brought more food than me. They brought 2kg of rice, sushi vinegar mix, oyster sauce and er... alot lah. More powerful than me. And their pot and hot plate are bigger than mine! I have knives but they win: they actually have a chopping board. We can do steamboat sometime. I think we rock. I'll upload pictures of our food stash sometime =P It's impressive, I swear. But it's still so not enough.

So there's no food in Yellowstone? There is an Employee Dining Room, but the food is bad. Even the Americans think it's bad so it's REALLY bad. And we're basically very removed from the rest of human civilization so we can't get any other type of food. AND we have no kitchen; just a microwave in the common lobby. You'll be surprised at the various things we have learnt to cook with a microwave.

We also have a frightening volume of toiletries. Will show you sometime too =P Oh and our books! Borders conveniently had a 35% discount on all books the week before I left so I bought like 5. I brought all of those plus 2 others and the notorious midori no hon (kanzen masuta-). Ain't I studious.

Ok enough verbal diarrhea for now. See you!