Chris and I arrived in Oakland a few weeks ago after our 17-day road trip across country. The country, the nature, and the Americana experience is amazing!
I initially thought of not having personal pictures up on this site but this road trip documentary would be an exception because I want to share the trip, the good time and the beautiful scenery with family and friends. It's just easier to do it all in one place, here. We'll share the beauty of the country in the next 17 posts. Pictures (no matter how good they are) do not do justice for the grandeur of the nature, the beauty of the mountains, the vastness of the prairies and the ocean, the wisdom of the trees, the darkness of caves (and their hundreds of millions of years in age), and the experience of sharing space with wildlife...but I tried, and hope you like the pictures coming up in the next 17 posts.
Chris' mum took this picture to commemorate the celebration lunch of me getting my Greencard. But to us, this is a nice lunch to thank mum for the wonderful summer.
This is the "before" picture, still looking fair and pale...before the summer tan.
Day 0: Louisville
The day before we left on our 17-day trip, mum (Chris' mum) drove us to Louisville. We initially wanted to have lunch at an African cuisine place Chris used to go when he used go to Louisville for gigs (over 10 years ago) but the restaurant is no longer there! The website is still up and running but the storefront says "to rent" so this must be pretty recent. This is a good excuse to take mum out for a good lunch before we leave town so we turned around and head for Proof, the restaurant in 21c museum hotel. We were quite impressed with the food the last time we were here (see posting titled Louisville) that we wanted to take mum here. I ordered steak and eggs again, but the ingredients are slightly different this time. I guess the dish varies depending on the season and the chef's choice.
The exhibit has changed as well but a couple permanent art pieces are still there. What I just realized this time is that the alphabets on the projector does not just move as our projection touches them. The letters can also be raised! :) The quality of the video is pretty bad because I was having too much fun playing with the letters (instead of taking a video). But the 2-second clip shows how this projector works.
The artists were still setting up this exhibit when we were there and TV crew just left after interviewing the artists. I didn't ring my circular polarizer filter with me but despite the reflection, you can see the art. Bottom left looks like a basement where bears live, having popcorn watching TV and talking on cell phone. Looks like a depiction of the good American life. Top left has birds on trees during winter. The box on the right appears to be a foreign land where all our junk gets shipped to. From the character pieces, it's pretty clear that's China. People sitting on going through piles of scrap metal, batteries and computer chips and mother boards, separating recyclable parts. There is a polar bear and a goat hanging out (leaving the role of them to your imagination). To the right of the trash pile is a building with a chinese family on the ground floor, old lady tending to a sick man on the upper floor and what appears to be like a classroom in the other building. The difference is that they were wearing face masks. On the other side of this box is a building with female workers on a mass production line on higher floors, and women hanging out in their living quarters filled with bunk beds and stools. You get the story this exhibit is trying to tell.
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