A city that never sleeps

View outside hotel room


Taking monorail in the morning


The stratosphere


McDonald is everywhere


So happy to find breakfast


Winners eat at hotels, losers eat at McDonald


Zoey wants to see the camera LCD


Interesting design inside Forum Shopping Mall


Got Milk?


Eye-catching window


One of many art shops


Ladies' shoes


Balls in the air


Gucci


Louis Vutton


Zoey Zzzzz.....

I heard the most ridiculous warning in my life at the MGM Grand hotel casino food court. I had just finished eating Nathan's chili dog. While waiting for Amy and Zoey to return from the restroom, I rested my head on my hand and closed my eyes. Suddenly I was rudely awakened by somebody knocking on the table and reprimanding me for sleeping. The man talking to me wore a uniform of some kind and based on his subsequent remarks, I think he probably wasn't trained very well. Since we were getting ready to leave, I didn't feel like arguing with him. What's the point anyway?

So I think Las Vegas is a city that never sleeps. There are patrols to make sure that you don't in public places.

Are you sleep-deprived?

I think my sleeping hours are rather irregular nowadays. I think most active bloggers sleep pretty odd hours. I was told that 5xmom blogs till 3am.

Sometimes I sleep as late as 4am and on average, around 1-2am. Maybe that's luxurious by some people's standard. But if I get good music, it keeps me going through the night. Right now, I am listening to Anita Mui's songs. If you like, you can sign on at imeem and as a registered user, you will be able to search for many, many songs.

When I was young, I had some kind of sickness that made sleeping difficult for me. It sometimes took me 2 hours to get to sleep. And sometimes my sleep got interrupted and I had to fight the pain to get back to sleep.

I understand that some people are used to taking sleeping pills to sleep. My neighbour, for instance, takes those and sleeps like a log, even with his baby crying all night. His wife told me that he couldn't sleep well because of his work stress.

Now, I did not resort to any medicinal help. I tried a method where I basically slowed down my heart beat rate by keeping my breathing slow and long. I succeeded in sleeping but in the excitement, I was stirred up again. So I had to find a way to switch off that 'wake-up signal'. It took a while but eventually I managed to tell my subconscious mind to do it. Now, whenever I have sleeping problems, I just use this method to overcome them.

Talking about sleep, I came across some interesting facts about it while looking for material to write. You can find it here at Howstuffworks. For example, cows can sleep while standing up! Reptiles do not dream, birds dream a little and mammals all dream during sleep.

When I don't get enough sleep, I tend to become irritable easily and am unable to concentrate well. I think this is true for everyone. When children don't get enough sleep, it can affect their growth development. And you know, the usual advice for people who are ill is to take more rest. So, sleep also allows the body to heal and the brain a chance to figure out what to do with the information it gathered earlier.

When I was a kid, I usually slept by 9pm and had to get up by 6am to go to school. Gee, it was so difficult to get up. Sometimes my mother would send us - me and my younger sis to school and because I was slow to get up, she had to drive like I have never known her before. Other times, my best friend's parents would be patiently waiting in their Mazda 323 car outside our house gate for me. Anyway, I had about 9 hours of sleep, not including maybe a one hour afternoon nap.

I was still getting quite a lot of sleep in my late teen years. The only time when I wasn't getting enough sleep was during exam revision and that was due to last minute study. Now, it seems I am getting less sleep. On average, I get around 8 hours of sleep. My buddy from Seremban seem to think that I don't sleep enough. But, now with blogging and babysitting, I am really sleep-deprived.

Older people sleep even less, maybe around six to seven hours a day.

Anyway, I think you will know if you have slept enough when you feel your best.

Exercise also helps you to sleep well. After my rigorous badminton games last weekend, I was sleeping very well.

So, back to Las Vegas....

We took the monorail in the morning and stopped at the McDonald restaurant near Harrah's for breakfast. I don't "lovin' it" McDonald but in this situation, I was very happy to find one in town. What I needed was a simple, cheap breakfast. I wasn't expecting such a long waiting line though.

After that, we walked around outside and went to Forum shopping mall. There is not a great deal for me to do there apart from window shopping and taking photos. You can find all kinds of shops selling branded stuff. There is one shop that sells very expensive egg-shaped figurines and arty-farty items. It was showing a video recording of Michael Jackson shopping inside while everyone else was kept outside. VVVIP treatment.

If you are crazy about designer labels, you will be happy to know that Louis Vutton, Gucci, Emporio Armani and some more names that I cannot spell can be found here. Oh, it should be Louis Vuitton - the second 'i' is silent.

We walked through the maze of shops and arrived at the big fountain area where animatronic figures came alive in "Fall of Atlantic and Festival Fountain" shows. Around the fountain was a 50,000 gallon saltwater glass tank which was home to more than 1000 species of ocean life, including tropical puffers, flounders, sharks and stingrays.

We took our lunch late at Planet Hollywood. Oh, if you are looking for seats, don't count on hotels and casinos. They only want you to sit in the gambling or dining buffet area. Better to go to shopping malls as seats and benches are conveniently available. The Planet Hollywood was nicely decorated with props used during filming. They had the Terminator machine, Norman Bates' Psycho mom in the rocking chair, a naked Sylvester Stallone (Demolition Man) etc. Wait, I thought I saw a Britney Spears lookalike walking in and out of the cafe. This version seemed to have a bodybuilder's shoulder muscles though. Arrgh.

We gave a miss to other shopping malls this time. At Bellagio, you could find retailers like Tiffany & Co., Giorgio Armani, Chanel, Dior, Fendi, Prada etc. Too bad we didn't go there as it was already past Zoey's bedtime. Bellagio has a wonderful musical fountain display, claimed to be the longest(not sure) in the world. Something like the one they have at Sentosa Island, Singapore. If you enjoy more shopping, situated not too far away are the factory outlets for your buying spree. You can get Nike etc. etc. etc.

We took the monorail to MGM Grand - Amy wanting to show the lions to Zoey there. It was way past dinner time, so we went to the food court but could only find burgers, pizzas or fried stuff everywhere. There was McDonald too but I was kinda tired of eating McDonald all the time. And Zoey didn't want any of those. Finally, Amy went to an adjacent chinese restaurant ($$$ rating) and bought a $13 vegetable fried rice meal for her.

Everything is expensive is Las Vegas. In the past, I would be looking forward to their famous cheap buffets. Now, I understand they have upped their prices.

Did I mention that Amy tried to ask for some hot, drinking water to be brought into the hotel room? It cost $(I forgot) and another $5 to be delivered. What a rip-off!

I was glad when we finally got back to our rooms. For the most part, it was a fun day. Now, everybody was tired and needed to go sleep.

In their hotel rooms, of course.

P.S. And now, I also gotta get some sleep.....good nite, bloggers.