Tuesday, September 13, 2005

a quick catching up! (Part 3)

(Cleveland, continued. Friday 9th September 2005)

A large, many-legged insect spotted on bed - hit it with pillow (took off some legs), but the main part of the body disappeared so it probably was maimed, not killed. Fun. I had urge to empty all bags and repack carefully to make sure it or its family were not gonna stow away in our stuff!!

ugh.

checked out (plus complained... ugh... the staff were apologetic but kinda insisted on awarding 1000 points to Kosh's newly set-up "loyalty card program", but they didn't provide a good explanation of the significance of the amount... I mean... is it worth a free night's stay, for example. I will be composing a *nice* letter to them over the entire incident!!)

made our way to the Erie waterfront...

on the way, got accosted by a scary-looking woman who took a look at our t-shirts (we were both wearing our newly-bought Meat tees), and said loudly while pointing to us "Look! Two bats out of hell!" teeheee!

close to the waterfront, next to what turned out to be the City Hall building, we saw a huge stamp out by the road:

(will insert picture... hopefully soon...)
(*someone* needs to e-mail me pix taken from the phone!!)

In the City Hall building was a "branch" of the Cleveland Museum of Art: our eyes were caught by the exhibit on Tibet, and went in to see. But of course, it being an official administrative building, we had to go thru "security" first (just sign in... but that took a while to be established!).

the guard looks at our tees and says "hey, I think meat loaf is going to be in town tonight, are you going to see him?" - we smile politely and say that he was here LAST night and yes, that's why we're in town...

The Tibet exhibit is actually a "live" exhibit - a Tibetan monk working on a mandala. reminded me immediately of the creations made for Thaipusam (or was it Deepavali? ugh, sorry, my mind is drawing a blank!!). It's an immense work, and I can immediately say that the act of creating such a mandala is an act of worship and meditation all by itself.

(I took some pix... if they look ok, will post 'em here... later..)

Made our way to the Science Center, where Body Worlds 2 was on display. We had been told that people usually go thru it in about 2 hrs. We were there from 12:45 - 4pm! With only about 45mins max of lunch break. Well, when one goes to such an exhibit with a medical student who happens to LOVE anatomy... ah... lecture mode... teehee! Sure, it dragged the trip out a bit, but I think it helped me understand much more of what I was seeing.

My fave was "The Swordsman" : The body had been cut into 3, and kinda fanned out... giving an excellent view into the all the internal organs in addition to the "usual" detail on all the muscles...

What was VERY sad; to see the plasticised body of a woman and her 5-month fetus. I admire the person for donating her body(ies) to the exhibit upon knowing that both she and the baby were unlikely to survive whatever it was that she was suffering.

What pissed me off: a group of young (18 y.o.?) nurses, being very noisy, brazenly touching (PETTING!) the exhibits. Even taking pictures. When there was ample signage about NOT touching and NO photos allowed. Worse, to me it signified total lack of respect for the bodies in the exhibit. yes, the people are now dead, what we're looking at is just the shell... but still...

.. and WHAT A SHELL we have ... it's just amazing... if you haven't seen it, so check it out.. hopefully it will be coming to a museum near you...

~~~
After the exhibit, took a another break to rest our weary feet at the waterfront... and had a couple ask us about whether meat was in town, cos they saw our t-shirts... had a brief chat with them about the "quality" of the concert :p Funny - THREE instances of Meat enabling interaction among strangers, teehee!!

We had purchased a combo ticket for the Body Worlds AND Rock & Roll hall of Fame... so despite being really tired, we went over to the neighbouring building.

Ugh. It's essentially a Hard Rock Cafe but you have to pay admission.

okay okay i supposeit's a bit more than that. But still... overall I was *not* impressed... the "main" part of the Hall was downstairs, and all it was was a showcase of mostly clothes from all these artists. So what. There were some interactive booths, but really, nothing earth-shattering. The only thing that caught my attention was they had John Lennon's report cards from school, that had teachers' comments on his attitude. There was also a postcard to Julian Lennon I wanted to read, curious if it was from John or Paul, but some other visitor was oblivious to me and was totally blocking. Ugh.

Then we made our way up to the other floors. They had a special exhibit on TOMMY (The Who) on the uppermost floors. The other floors included THE SIGNATURES, oooh ahhh.. yeah, the signatures of the inductees to the Hall of Fame itself (of which Meat Loaf is NOT a member, shame on them!!!). I know. *so* exciting.

In the end, the place we spent most time was at the merchandise store (and boy do they have a LARGE store! lots of crap on sale!!), and got an inductees tshirt for Kosh (listing all inductees since it started in 1986), and another baby-tee for me.

The building was closed by then.. and we did a fast hike back to the hotel to get the car out of the parking lot before 6pm... then made our way outta there to a town south of cleveland (or north of Akron), where we had dinner and spent the night at Kosh's friends from med school, who were doing their residency there.

Saturday, 10th September: drive back Akron - Urbana. Ohio -> Indiana -> Illinois. around 5 hours' drive. nuff said.

... psycho lonely cat waiting for us.

and less than 24hrs later, we gotta leave for St Louis!

Why? you'll find out in the next post!

'laters!!

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about two months later...

 ... hi again. This return to blogging is really not working out, is it? Actually, I am writing, three pages of mind vomit and affirmations ...