Day 5: Musing

A bad-luck premonition greeted me for breakfast on this day.

We were headed to the National Museum of Natural Science, and I was pretty stoked bc I am definitely one for museums. They’re like movies, but you get to take pauses when you want and get to touch/breathe on real life things in front of your face.

i really do like to just touch things when they’re in front of my face. for example, this is Teresa (?) who greeted me Day 0 of orientation at the pick-up station. she was wearing a pair of cool glasses so I nearly made grabbie hands at her frames to try them on. thankfully, i stopped myself in time and asked if we could switch lenses for a hot sec to take a photo. i took two photos, but i like this one better because it’s me not even ready for my own picture that i took of myself.

Our guest speaker was supposed to be a big man Man head leader person of something I believe. Or maybe a doctor.

But he had a meeting in Beijing, so a different man came to make the presentation.

I actually really liked his presentation!

First of all, he was this stylish daddio researcher/curator at the museum who had just come from a tiring flight bc he went to go see his daughter I believe and then he immediately jumped on stage and gave the presentation. Love.

He told us about museums are to be live learning tools for the whole world and also how curators (researchers who work at museums) then sometimes are a little too eager to bash information into new minds. Essentially, his presentation wanted to give this message:

I fux wid it.

Really feel that.

Why force cake down someone’s throat? Give them a tiny sample, and they’ll come back begging for more. @costco

So anyway, I gave him such an applause and felt so spurred to explore the entirety of the museum.

At first, I’m listening so intently to the curator’s spiel about this big antique centerpiece. Let me tell you about it.

EDIT: I’m actually not too sure when this was created. Don’t quote me on the dating for this.

This right here looks like some intricate wood carving, and it is, but it’s also a c l o c k.

Craftmanship! Also doubling as a useful tool! What an idea.

See those miniscule signs? They note each 15-minute section of the day. Each one rotates to the front to show the time. Unfortunately the words are too small so I can’t tell you what it actually says. ha ha not bc I can’t recognize the words or anything.

This was made a million years ago (give or take), so there was no such thing as an iPhone to cross reference the time with. And this was one of the earliest methods of keeping time. So how is this powered???? Is it just wood that rotates??

Here’s the back view of this towering monster. Look at the reflection of the little girl to compare for size reference. I mean, there are stairs to the top of this thing..

This whole thing was powered by an intricate set of cogs, but what powered the cogs!

these men come alive when you’re not watching to move the cogs.

The cogs were powered by water, amazingly. A specifically measured flow rate of water would pour into a tank that would in turn, drop this belt-and-pulley system arm to move a cog. Enough movements after a given time will give a clockwise-click to the wheel with the men holding time scrolls. And then boom, the right time scroll man will appear at the doorway.

Who decided the flow rate of water? What did that person use to check the accuracy of this creation? Idk, but this has been a working clock system for a very long time, and it’s only off by 100 seconds.

And then I turned and asked Jerry how long we have in here.

“Thirty minutes,” he whispers.

?!?!

..There’s that evil sausage Trump premonition coming to life.

How does anyone expect anyone to explore a museo in a matter of 30 minutes?

I kicked it into second-gear and high-tailed out of there.

Signs, sign, signs. I needed a directory. Ah, labeled arrows pointing to–Yes, the color/light/sound exhibit.

the appetizer to the light/color/sound exhibit

the almost-entree to the light/color/sound exhibit

my future skeleton & also the entrance to other tech/science/archeo wings that i just blew past

I touched everything as fast I could, yes exactly like that, like a virgin on his first field day. Pressed buttons, turned wheels, slid screens.

trippy webbing that wasn’t actually colored, the blue&orange screen reflected the coloring

honestly a really scary horse picture that i thought would turn out to be less scary looking when i actually looked at the optical illusion. but it’s still a scary horse.

a cool spaceship orb that had little computer games in them that i didn’t get to play. i did move the joysticks around though.

There was an entire side of the color exhibit called something like Color and Sound in Nature that I didn’t get to explore and just took pictures of the empty hallways I wanted to run through.

ugh the best part was that we basically had the entire museum to ourselves, all ours to roam and explore with no annoying kids in line behind you to play with the displays.

i was literally jogging through the place

i’m talking heart slightly pounding, mouth slight agape for oxygen, and camera clicking in the opposite direction my eyes were looking

the display sounds of each station was going off automatically and it actually got sorta haunting at this point so maybe it was good that i didn’t spend that much time in there

Honestly, it gave me flashbacks to those overwhelming buffet meals.

There was also a small music wing, which I played around in and banged on some instruments behind glass.

On my way out of that exhibit, I wanted to snap a roid of the neon colors. I whip out my Polaroid and hmm. Yup, the battery’s dead. Curse u evil trump sausage.

I prepared a near full cartridge of film even with a new 10-pack film to spare just in case, but the spare batteries were back in my hotel room. Devastated.

I sat down and dry cried. For 30 seconds only though, because there was no time to waste.