zoo and durian

Two things that go together awesomely well...you folks should try it! Went to the Philly zoo today. We took pics, but my camera sucks and I suck and taking pictures from behind glass sucks so most of the pictures sucked. But some were salvageable...so onward to the pics!

First off, the zoo was organized sort of weird, I think they are renovating because the exhibits were randomly arranged.

The first thing we saw was the camel ride (an excellent picture taken by my student photographer).

Then it was on to the cheetah exhibit, they weren't very active though so I just took pics of my friend...can you SPOT chester?

Next we saw lowland gorillas. They were really sedentary, it was either food coma because we got there a little after lunch or they were really depressed about being caged up. Although they did have access to an outside pen but it was kind of hot and not much shade. Here's the biggest one, it had silver haired back. We spent the most time here just staring at them, they really do act human....or we act gorillaish.

...and a close up.

Next we saw peacocks, unfortunately, they didn't bare their feathers...maybe they were shy or someone needed to scare them into doing it. Here's one.

...and here's the posterior of another one along with some flowers, I like flowers, they are always photogenic.

On to the penguins, which were from Chile or Peru, so no ice/snow/very cold temperatures needed.

We also saw a polar bear in the middle of philly, that was one of 2 highlights of my day, the other one was seeing African ELEPHANTS, which I forgot to take pictures of. Yep, I was pretty content after that, two highlights in one day!

My friend, who was also an 'eater, pointed out Peter to me.

Finally to the giraffe and zebra exhibit, but we only took pics of the giraffes.

There were also indoor exhibits for mammals (nocturnal and diurnal), reptiles and we saw lions, tigers and bears! All in all it was a fun experience if you can go with friends! You could also go on a hot air balloon ride that's tethered to the ground but someone thinks they are unsafe...so we didn't go.

On to the durian, forgot to take pictures, need to really hold on to that camera the whole day...Anyway I mentioned I bought durian this week. So we cracked it open and shared it with my roommate and his girlfriend...that was kind of fun feeding strange smelly fruit to durian virgins. The durian was pretty comparable to the fresh ones I use to eat. The rind had a brownish bruising or damage from the freezing instead of being all white, that was kind of offputting a little. In case you haven't seen durian, here's a picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Durio_kutej_F_070203_ime.jpg

try some if you get a chance or go to your local asian market and get some. To open, find the end without the stem and make a cut and, using your hands, pry open to reveal the custardy goodness.

Quiz

So in almost every philly bar, there is a trivia game every night called quizzo. I thought I was the king of trivia, but they had some way out there questions. One was name the race of lizard creatures in the Land of the Lost TV show...lets see if anyone knows the answer...without looking it up...we're on the honor system here.

So we went Tuesday night and got second place...the reward was a $12 gift card for the bar. My friends used it on a pitcher of margaritas.

Anyway that was fun, had a quiz today in Biochem and got a 100%, mean was 77%.

I bought durian, it was the frozen kind, like they freeze it before they ship it...so maybe not as good as the fresh ones I use to slurp up in Indonesia. Can't wait to dig into it...my breath will smell rotten all day :)

Have a good labor day weekend!

Socal to Phila road trip, Day 4....PA, PREPARE TO BE BOARDED!!!!

So on the 4th day, I started to get a little antsy but was glad that I wouldn't be spending the night in a crummy hotel with sweaty smelly pillows. Here's Dayton or Columbus, I forget which...maybe I should've done this while my memory was still fresh. Oh well.


Here's me speeding by small Ohio neighborhoods.

Luckily, a few miles outside of Columbus, I found this:

You guessed it, I missed the exit and had to wait 10 miles to turn around and go back westward! So I finally arrived and was greeted by the above gates and also this:
SO COOL...anyway on to the motorcycles

They didn't really have a lot of interesting bikes. Here's a few of an old Norton


This is Tom Cruise's Triumph, which he rode in Mission Impossible 3, see next pic, click to embiggen.


A cool indian, which was stuffed away in a back corner...OK maybe a little background is needed here. So they were having a display of bikes from famous people, so they had that Tom Cruise bike and a few others such as the bike that Neil Peart, of Rush fame rode after the death of his daughter and wife within the space of a year. He rode 55,000 miles around North America to clear his mind. He wrote a book called Ghost Rider about it. There were other bikes too like TV bikes from the Captain America tv show and a few others that didn't really jump out in my mind.

This harley was cool, it was super long and really thin and had a neat drawing on the top of the tank, see a few pics down.



Gold accents on the engine of the same harley

Another Indian racer, this was prominently displayed.

Neat looking bike

This bike was ridden by Will Smith in the movie iRobot I believe.

Two triumphs welcomed visitors at the front of the museum, this was one of them and the other is below. Matching Triumphs.

The other one, there are slight differences.


So after leaving the museum, I went on to more Ohio countryside. Ohio is a really beautiful state, flat but beautiful. Lots of green and trees and little farms like this one.

Leaving Ohio and entering West Virginia. There was a nice riverside town on one side of this bridge, but unfortunately I accidentally focused on the windows of my car instead of the scenery and it all came out bad. Sorry

And leaving West Virginia and entering Pennsylvania. If you look at a map, there is an impossibly thin section of west virginia peeking northward between Ohio and PA.

So I stopped in Latrobe to visit a good friend who was doing rotations there. We had lunch and I went on my way. It was my first contact with a friendly soul for 3 and a half days. It was fun. After leaving Latrobe, El GPS took me on a backcountry road heading towards the main highway. I went through the Allegheny Mountains, and saw some really pretty country.

I passed by Fort Ligonier:

At the top of a hill overlooking PA countryside, oh I also passed a side road that leads to where Flight 93 crashed outside of Shanksville, PA (I was on Hwy 30).



PA was the prettiest state I drove through, tied with AZ, but they're different categories of pretty. Mixed in with all the forests are big huge hills and rolling countryside as far as the eye could see. It was moving...I kinda wish it was California's backyard...so California would be surrounded by the majestic beauty of AZ's canyons and the rolling foresty countryside of PA. That would be perfect...now just need a few million years for California and AZ to fall off the continent, make its way around the world and over on to the east coast, crashing through and completely obliterating New Jersey and snuggling up next to philadelphia.



I passed by the manufacturing facility for Cannondale Bicycles in Bedford, PA. Kinda cool, my ex roommate rides a Cannondale and actually so do I, but I left that bike at home.

Back on the main highway, destination: Philadelphia. I passed through 3 mountains via tunnels. Here's Tunnel 1:

Tunnel dos:

Last Tunnel:

And that's all, after that it was a straight shot to Phila with nothing very interesting along the way. I arrived sometime after 9pm. I traveled a little over 2700 miles in 4 days and I wished I could've spent more time exploring interesting locales along the way, taking more interesting pictures for you. That's all....really...you can go now...go do your work...really there's nothing else!

Until next blog...

my room

Excuse the bare walls, it actually is not as depressing and cage-like in person as in these pictures.

philly skyscrapers and greenery

Ahh, Philly was beautiful Saturday, a perfect day to be outside. We went to study in Center City and walked around for lunch. Here's some views of the city from our perspective:

This is Broad St, renamed Avenue of the Arts for all of the theaters along the street. The big tower in the center is the south tower of city hall, there's a similar tower on the north side. Basically it's smack dab in the center of Broad and the street sort of circles clockwise around the big behemoth. It's an awesome sight driving up Broad with the tower approaching in the distance.

More big buildings

Interesting statue holding up a clock...

...and from the front along with the big buildings that you see everywhere around the heart of center city, the heart of the heart of philadelphia...

...here's what the metal man was standing over, a familiar, welcoming (or maybe not) color to many of you:

I think it's an ex fire house, but the street's so small I don't know where they'd put the fire truck, maybe around the back. It was some kind of eatery underneath.

This is one of the few malls in the city, kinda small I heard, didn't go in.

There are a lot of cathedral looking churches about this size around the city. This is one of the more interesting ones I've seen, not that the others weren't interesting.

Summer foliage in Rittenhouse Square Park. My friend told me there is a Christmas tree that gets put up in December, I'll definitely be there to take pics. Sometimes I get the right balance of exposure with my little digicam to capture an image with vibrant colors and contrast. This is one of those few times, I didn't have to fuss with it on the computer. Click to embiggen.

People lounging in the park

Guitar player jamming slow tunes, he was later joined by a trumpeter.

The benches we sat on had these plaques on it, I guess you can donate/buy your own bench. I wonder if that means you can kick people off your bench?

Hispanic family with 2 kids who were playing behind us.

Families coming out to play

A statue near where we sat

Building bathed in the waning afternoon light, set behind a rittenhouse neighborhood.

Building against soft whispy clouds at dusk light...errr maybe more like late afternoon light

Murals, one of many. Somewhere else, they even had one where they painted windows on a wall with a painted ledge with plants and they made a hole in the wall where they placed a pot of flowers in. Really cool, I'll take a pic if I pass by there again

Another mural/sketch.

That's it, more studying Sunday and looking forward to Labor day. What are you all doing for the upcoming three day weekend?

ps, we had dinner Friday night at an Ethiopian place that was really good. It was served with these sourdough crepes that's used to scoop up the goodness from the plate. Most of it were veggies but we had lamb and beef too. I ordered the lamb and my friend ordered the beef, but we ended up liking the other's meat choices, go figure. Here's a picture of the partially consumed food...apparently there's an image on the bottom of the plate that I completely missed until now...guess we'll have to go there again :)

pps, it technically wasn't Ethiopian food, it was Eritrean food. Eritrea was a province of Ethiopia until citizens whined, complained, civil wared (for 31 years!!!!), and the UN intervened and finally Eritrea was declared independent by an overwhelming vote by its citizens. Look at the Eritrea link, they have a monument dedicated to the sandals the revolutionaries wore...the sandal monument. So I guess they share a lot of the culture and food.