28th: a couple of museums

Writing this blog late so I might have forgotten things.

I think I had quite a big sleep in. Then I woke up and ate Fruit Loops. I met some cool people while I stayed at this hostel. I talked with Tre for a bit more before I left, I think. Then I decided that I should go out. I think one thing stopping me from going out earlier was that it was very hot. It was probably 34 or 35, but it was also very humid. So it was fairly unpleasant.

I walked down to the mall and then went into the Museum of Native Americans.

On the way I saw my car. Except my car has a sun roof and a better engine and is nicer probably every way.

I made it inside and it has a cool huge open central area thing. It also has air conditioning.

I went into this museum because Amanda said that they have good food here and that I should check that out. The food looked pretty good. But the signs were saying that it'd cost me about $16, or more, and I don't really spend that much on food, so I just had a look around to see what it was all about. It looked interesting. I'll try and cook some sometime.

Then I had a look through the museum. I was fairly disappointed by the whole thing. I went to the second floor and there was something that was supposed to be about Hawaii; the 'real Hawai'i'. I started reading about it and then I had a look at the first few things. They were garden rakes and things like that that you'd buy from a normal store. The caption said they were traditional fighting implements used in Hawaii. Then I realised that the entire exhibit was following in the same joke. I thought it was stupid, so I moved on. On that floor, the gift store covered about three quarters of the floor area.

I went up to the next floor and most of the stuff was about what Native American people are doing today. I found it a bit boring because it was mostly saying things like "they do pretty much what we do and we don't even know they're descended from Native Americans." I wanted to learn about how they lived before and there was nothing at all about that.

Meshuggah. This is a cool Native American guy. This is just a photo on the wall to show us what Native Americans are doing today. They're listening to Meshuggah apparently. Meshuggah are a very good band.

This painting looks very similar to an Australian Aboriginal painting.

These people fixed up a creek using Native American techniques, and replanting stuff. I thought this was pretty cool.

I left the museum because it was a huge building with nothing inside. Then I walked over to the Air and Space Museum.

Along the way they had a scale representation of the solar system. Here is the sun, and then further along are all of the planets at their rough scale. It was a cool representation. The first few planets are really bunched up a lot....

I went in and there were lots of planes and space stuff.

I wandered around for a while. They had a big thing about the Wright Brothers. That was interesting. It explained a lot about the progression of their attempts to make something that would fly and also a lot about their family life etc. For some reason I wasn't feeling that interested in much of the other stuff this day. Maybe it is because I've looked at lots of museums over time, and sometimes I don't really care about small snippets of information about random objects. I'm interested in the stuff, but sometimes the information is too basic and general and I'd prefer to read about the things to a greater depth. I find this really frustrating sometimes.

I left the musem. Then I think I sat down on the 'mall' and read for a while on my Kindle. I was reading Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. It is about a guy who wakes up one day to find that he has turned into some kind insect-like thing. He has to deal with that somehow. It is difficult for his family. It turned out to be fairly short. I finished it over a couple of days. It was pretty good but I don't think it had as much in it as The Castle. I think Franz Kafka was a great writer.

As I was sitting down, a storm developed in the sky around me. There was very loud thunder. Where I was sitting there was no rain. The storm was slightly over from me. The air had a nice feel to it as happens when a storm develops after a hot day. I walked back to the hostel and it was very nice.

Thinking about Franz Kafka, or maybe thinking about nothing.

A great storm.

I got back to the hostel and I think I cooked a lot of pasta again. I talked with a guy from Russia and the Cuban girl who works at the place, for a while. I think we talked about Socialism and other stuff.

I went up to my room quite late expecting that I would wake everyone up. But they were all still awake. They were talking about stuff. They were all Americans so they did the typical Australian jokes. I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to respond to them. They were fairly 'chatty' people, so we had some interesting conversations.