Petezah

For people with access to espresso machines, I have something new for you to try. I was feeling experimental tonight and got the idea to try putting cocoa powder into the expresso machine. When I say cocoa powder, I mean baking cocoa, as in, ground cocoa seeds with the cocoa butter removed. It worked, as I expected, and produced a thick brown liquid similar to espresso in appearance. Also, as I expected, it was a little lacking in flavor; so I added a tablespoon of milk and a tablespoon of honey. It’s pretty tasty, I have to say. Anyway, I’ll probably experiment and see if it can be made better.

IGN just posted a preview of our game today. (“MX vs. ATV Untamed” if you don’t want to follow the link) It’s pretty favorable, and that makes me happy.

Yarr, I hope ye all talked like swashbucklers today. Otherwise I’ll be havin’ ye walk th’ plank, matey.

I found out we had a pretty decent art museum on Friday, so on Saturday I decided to spend the day over there. Not knowing how long I would want to spend at the museum, I went over there before noon, and ate lunch at their cafe before continuing my exploration.

They had some really neat scroll paintings in their asian art collection. The amount of detail in the pieces is amazing; more than once I noticed new things only after staring at the painting for a good while. In the modern art area, they had a really cool piece called “You Who are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies” by Yayoi Kusama. I’d describe it as a pitch black room with mirrors on the walls and ceiling and strings of multicolored and slowly-animating LEDs hanging throughout the room, but that really doesn’t do it justice. I say see it for yourself, and don’t look for a picture of it on google images first, because it might ruin it. When I first walked into the room, it was utterly disorienting—I couldn’t figure out which way to go, and almost didn’t find my way out again. It was most enjoyable.

On a side note, if you’re a museum guard: no matter how friendly you are, if I’m there by myself, don’t talk to me; I’m trying to museum-out, and it ruins my experience.

I’ve technically been back since Monday, but those long international flights take a lot out of me, it seems. Therefore, I hadn’t gotten around to organizing my photos until today, and I didn’t want to post anything here until I had them up in my gallery. Feel free to check out the summary page or just go straight on in to the whole album.

Anyway, it was fun, and educational; and parts of it were even relaxing, in between some of our rather brutal tours. That’s the nice thing about a cruise: even if your on-shore tour during the day is grueling and stressful, you can come back to sanity in the evening, and eat in a restaurant with waiters who speak English.