Welcoming Wee Loon

For a complete photo album, please visit my Flickr page at http://tr.im/carrboro. Wee Loon’s take can be read here.

Wee Loon, aka Dr Ong, arrived at Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) at about 20:00. My roommate kindly drove me to the airport so that I could pick up Wee Loon and get the rental car from the airport.

I waved to Wee Loon as he exited the sterile area. We greeted and hugged; I was so delighted to see him. He was obviously tired after the more-than-20-hours flight to the United States. I guess the 8-hour Malaysia-Australia flight did not seem that bad after all.

We proceeded to luggage carousel to identify a red backpacker’s luggage. After spending several minutes staring at strangers’ bags, Wee Loon told me that his luggage might have not “made it on time.” The time in between the checking-in of his luggage and the pane’s departure was about 30 minutes or so. His luggage should be on the subsequent flight to RDU, which was scheduled to arrived at 23:00. So in between, we headed to P.F. Chang for a light dinner.

The next morning, I took Wee Loon to tour the UNC campus. I would have given a more informative tour had it was University of Michigan campus. Nonetheless, I think I did a decent job. Wee Loon, who had his extremely professional photo-taking device strapped around his neck, was taking pictures from time to time.

The old well at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (by Wee Loon Ong)

After we have concluded the brief campus tour, I drove around Chapel Hill and Carrboro. We made a stop at Weaver Street, which is the most happening place in downtown Carrboro. On Sundays, there are performances right in front of Weaver Street Market (a locally operated green groceries store) during brunch hours.

Weaver Street Market at Carrboro (by Wee Loon Ong)

The crowd seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Wee Loon and I (by Wee Loon Ong)

I chanced upon a friend Bevin Maultsby from the department too that afternoon.

Bevin Maultsby and I (by Wee Loon Ong)

Then, we went to Cheesecake Factory for a late lunch. We stopped by Apple Store and Target, where at the latter we got ourselves some titbits for our one-day road trip the following morning.