Sunday, August 3, 2008

from July 25th to Aug 3rd (1)

Well, sorry for haven't write anything for such a long time. Every day exhausted me.

July 25th, Friday, the day for shopping with Nan, Xiao, and Chris. Before that we made a "hot-pot" in the kitchen using the hot-pot sauce that we bought nearly two weeks ago when we for the first time went to a Chinese stuff supermarket. That was definitely extreme spicy, more spicy than you could imagine. We "enjoyed" some cabbage and meat in it (Acturally meat was comparatively mild I think). Shopping is always time-consuming work. Having experienced a hard time with no fruit and no vegetable other than cabbage because I didn't go shopping last week, supermarket was more attractive to me than ever before. That resulted in returning home late exhausted and of course, more stuff means more money spent. And it was even more energy-consuming both to carry those stuff upstairs and to cram them into the fridge... well, after those all had been done, I picked up the phone, and started to dial...

On July 26th, we went to a field trip to HenryFord Museum and Greenfield Village, and also, the IMAX. We went there by three vans, whose driver were the office ladies (HH, and another two elder) in the chemistry building. Unfortunatelty, my stomach ated again( Hey, why always Saturday morning, seems quite periodically, oh man...) on the way. I had to keep tolerating the terrible feeling of my stomach and at the same time try my best to have a decent smile on my face and prevent anything unexpected from happenning until we arrived at the destination. Before the tickets were given to us I was already driven by my instinct to the nearest restroom. I had " a quality time" there (using Tracy's words to describe it), and thinking, oh thank god, if one more second there would probably be an explosion...

Well, let's forget the embarassing stuff and have a look at the Village and the Museum. Green Village is a place where the Ford Company puts everything related to Mr. Ford or that age together to form a complete picture of the early 20th century. I took a lot of picture there. I saw old fashioned cars, buses, bicycles, wages and people dressed in traditional clothes having a picnic on the grass. There were dozens of small traditional houses that you can walk in, and there were staff ready to introduce the stories of these houses, like that Ford's brothers or one Ford's aunts used to live in this house, or this house used to be the most popular alcohol store in the town. There were also a few factories displayed in the Village.

Then after a short lunch break in the cafe, we went on to visit the Museum. I enjoyed being a model by the side of the cars, and asking Nan to take photos of me and the cars. The cars shown in the Museum were arrayed according to the age and that gave me an explicit picture of the history of the auto-industry in America (such as the big three, GM...). There were also places showing the development and evolution of aeroplanes and we flied the paper plane made by ourselves there(mine sucked...). I heard Mindy talked about the bus in which the black woman(don't remember her name) refused to give her seat to white person and from then started a movement of equality and civil rights. She said that very bus was in this museum, but I didn't saw it. Maybe I didn't recognize it and just passed by. Before going to the IMAX, I went to the Chocolate Exhibition, had a glance at the history of chocolate and bought some souvenirs for J and myself. In fact, I was suprised to see that there were lots of spray, perfume and other stuff made with a chocolate scent.

Then it comes to the movie, the Batman movie, the DARK KNIGHT. I have to say that the IMAX was incrediblely impressive for its intense visual impact. It was hard to accurately describe your feeling when you first sat in the IMAX, facing the huge screen, looking at the clearest and most distinct video. It was wonderful when I enjoyed the sample video shown on the screen before the movie began. The sample included scenes of huge whale swimming, cute pets running, a team climbing the snow-capped montains, people doing extreme sports in the sky(jumped out of a plane), and Michael Jordan dunking(yeah lip outside his mouth, and while Jordan appeared on the screen, a person was walking looking for seat in the front of cinema, who was like an ant comparing to the huge Jordan). The movie was full of violent scenes, explosions, killing, and death were the main themes. Batman fighted with Joker, who was extremely evil (just for being evil), but not like a superhero, while the end of the movie was not the success of the evil, but apperantly not the success of the justice either. In my view, it was not a hero movie, not even a tiny piece of it, but in stead a disaster movie. One thing I noticed was that there were kids in the cinema, but it should not have been permitted since this was a violent and dark movie that even an adult could be distressed by. I also heard that this movie was not allowed to play in the cinemas in China.

(recently I saw the critique of this movie and it said that the Dark Knight was not a hero movie but a super realastic and dark movie. It proposed the problem of the contradiction of law system and superhero with great power while confronting the evil. Like the Joker said:" you complete me", there is a dividing line, if transgress it, then superhero might be even more destructive than the evil, and what seems to be sacratic, the line is ambiguous. Is the movie warning us of the possibility of the government abusing its power which is given for protect its people?)

On the way back home, I knew that the actor who played Joker in the movie, died this year. I thought that there might be terrible mental depression on that poor person because of the darkness shown in the role's character.

We went to Jiaxiang for dinner, the restraunt which I should have come to on last Saturday evening for the welcoming party held by the Chinese student union in UM. But that night I worked in lab late, plus did not hear the phone call and unfortunately missed it. This time finally I made it, though I had to pay for myself.

to be continued...

No comments: