The pig trough!!

Had a full day of sessions at the conference yesterday in Philly. Once the sessions were over at around 6 pm, they had a reception just outside the room where the sessions were being held. They had a table set up in the middle with food. Once those doors were opened releasing the people from the session, they just attacked the table of food. I compare it to pigs being released to feed on the trough. It was pretty funny...just picture all these people attacking this table. It lasted about 10-15 minutes, during that time the food was demolished, then as if the group was working uniformly, they started dissipating, to reveal a table with some scraps of food left, damaged as if it was attacked by a packs of wolves.

What is it with a table of free food, that brings out our inner animal? It felt like a cartoon, and all I could picture is a group of pigs released for feeding time, and they all rush to the table or trough and just go to town on it.

16 and Pregnant and Kate Gosselin and burgers cooked inside a pool of oil!?!?

If this doesn't sum up the US what does?? Flipping through some of the channels on the TV at my Philly hotel, and the 3 consecutive channels were MTV's "16 and Pregnant", CNN has their headline of the day as "Kate Gosselin of Jon & Kate plus 8 fighting back after husband is trying to trash her publicly and wants sole custody of all 8 kids and even the 'educational' Travel Network had a show on how this place serves burgers drowned and cooked in a pool of oil and apparently customers order the double decker burger with over 1500 calories and 200 grams of fat.

People always say, to find out about a culture or city when travelling, walk around, people watch and flip through the TV channels. Well, I walked around and observed fast food place after fast food place, Philly Cheese Steak specialty and flipping through 3 channels, I have realized that the words "Yes we Can" means yes we can be pretty fat and obese and pretty trashy!!! "Yes we can!!". Lololol

All kidding aside, Philly looks like a pretty interesting city and a lot of history.

Did get a chance to walk around a bit, and really liked the old parts of Philadelphia. Plus, the city is made even nicer with all the art and statues around the city.

Now let me go eat a Philly Cheese Steak and get a heart attack and spend $125,000 USD at the near by hospital. :)


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Whistler Bungee Jump

This was something I had planned to do for a while, but was never inspired to jump, until I read about Whistler Bungee Jump. I knew I would be on a work trip in Vancouver, so I decided to extend my business trip by a couple of days and make it out to Whistler. Instead of snowboarding or skiing, I decided to go bungee jumping. I knew that I never wanted to jump off those crane style jumps, I knew I wanted it to be over a river, in a canyon and around great scenery. This place had it all!!

There are a couple of other places I wouldn't mind jumping, one is in New Zealand and the other is in Zimbabwe right beside Victoria Falls. These places, like Whistler, have all the ingredients to make the jump a little more adventurous and exhilarating!!

Once I was on the bridge waiting to jump, I didn't feel nervous if anything more anxious. The wait was worse than the jump...

I stepped on the ledge, the guy counted backwards from 5, and I was off. I choose to jump backwards, the logic being that it would give me more of a rush, since you have no idea where the ground is and you are somewhat blinded. It definitely was a rush, and after the jump was over, you have this adrenalin pump and you are looking for what else you can jump!!!

The initial free fall was awesome, as I was screaming like an excited kid all the way down. Once you make it to the bottom, around 10 metres from the water, you think it's over, but it isn't. The bounce back up is even worse, then you float mid-air, like in a Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon. It feels like you are in one spot for seconds, and then "poof", like in the cartoon, that smoke image appears, and you fall back down. You almost feel like you are looking at the camera, and have time to hold up a "help me!!" sign. This happens probably 3 times after the initial first jump.

Once you are a little stabilized, they send down a rope with a clip, you clip yourself in, and they drag you back up.