maya expo at the rom

So on last last thursday I went to the ROM to see the Maya expo. I did not want to miss it and the week-end was the last day. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed :( Getting out of museum station I saw this (see pic below) and I was like "gawd don't tell me...again???"

school buses lined up!!

I did drop by the ROM during March break for the Maya expo and this was the BIGGEST mistake ever as this is THE time when all kids head to the museum w/ their grand parents and what not. The lineup was huge so I went shopping instead.

This time I was determined to wait and see the expo despite the hoard of kids as it was the last week it was being shown and I would not be free to do it later as I work on week-ends. Thanks god all the kids were already in and it was a short queue for admission.

 where am i?

It was an interesting expo and the clay works by the Mayans are so intricate and lovely. Something that got me wondering is the common theme in all ethnicities/religions world wide about how the creation of the world is a violent process. In addition, the mayan believed that night and day were a daily event of destruction and creation. There was also a section about the famous end of the world in 2012 which is when the Mayan calendar ends.

To be honest when I first saw the paintings by the Mayans, it added to my belief that they were a violent culture: torture/sacrifice of war prisoners, scarification as beauty marks, cutting their tongues to draw blood for sacrifice etc. I was reminded of a comic I read when I was younger about Spaniards who traveled in the mexican jungles and were killed by the aztechs/mayan or sacrificed and how they came to a temple where there was a mountain of sacrificed corpse missing vital organs like the heart. Don't ask me how a kid like me got her hands on that type of comic. It was in "Le petit Spirou" album.

Upon deeper thinking, I realized that it is in human nature to be violent as past wars, holocaust, rape of nankin etc have showed us. It's just some cultural violence are more mediatized in books, tv etc so the Mayan "violence" was in fact no more violent than the vikings etc.. It also showed the Mayan nowadays and it's awesome to see how some managed to keep their ancestral language and culture.
After the Mayan show, I headed to my favorite hall in the ROM: the dinosaurs!!

I am never bored of watching the skeletons resurrected from the past. My only complaint is that at the ROM, the skeletons are not arranged in a way to give you the right "impression" of their sizes. The skeletons are too close to one another, giving a feeling of crowdness when in fact some skeletons are really more impressive in size and structure on their own. 

Also saw the weird specimens from the Burgess shale and unfortunately some of the lights shinning on the rocks were off so I could not really see all the details of their structures. I don't know if the burgess shale specimens are temporary or permanent as I would love to go back and see them again. Paleobiology is sooo coooll. Need to go to redpath museum in Montreal as well. I would love one day to go to Nova Scotia and walk along the Joggins cliffs where they have fossils. It's just too cool, like jumping into the past..just like when i saw fossilized plants at the Don Valley brickworks and yeah the dinosaur provincial park is on my list as well.

Now I just need to find a traveling companion and money :P...

it's all about attitude

"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything.”-Win Borden

“It takes more courage to reveal insecurities than to hide them, more strength to relate to people than to dominate them, more 'manhood' to abide by thought-out principles rather than blind reflex. Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles and an immature mind.”-Alex Karras

“Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”.Churchill

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; Loving someone gives you courage" Lao Tzu

"

if something is not working, change your way of thinking. why waste time to do the same thing over and over again and accumulate the same mistakes <= random thought in my head. Currently I need two things: courage and patience and to learn to listen to my fears without letting them take over me.

I'm curious about Anais Nin. I read quite a few quotes by her and she looks like a striking person - in character. On Friday I went to the ROM to see this exhibit: Out of the Vaults-South African dinosaurs eggs and embryos and was pleasantly surprised to see that since it was open doors Toronto, the museum was free. yay! So i save 11 bucks :P It was nice to see the dinosaurs again and I managed to take a few pictures which I'll hopefully load later. My only disappointment was that the hall was too full of screaming kids and I could not enjoy everything without the flash of Asian tourists. The fossils are amazing as always and it makes me wander when I see the size of those reptiles..I did wish they had a larger section of the cambrian era but I guess since most creatures had a soft body, they could not get bones. I'm curious to see those amazing sea monsters they had, one that had an armour body..or maybe I miss it since the area was quite crowded and my aching feet did not want to linger too long.

I also had the opportunity to see House calls with my camera- I fell on it by chance- and one quotation struck me. It was along the line of how when you age, you become invisible to the people around you. A lot of the pictures were poignant and made me think of the pictures I saw in the "Science et Vie-La mort" magazine which dealt with death from different aspects (physical, spiritual, scientific etc..) I highly recommend this exhibit. Words cannot describe it, you need to feel it. The pictures were of senior people who could have been your grand pa, grand ma or even your parents or even you in the future. My favourite was about this couple: first picture showed her sitting side to side to her husband each in their chair. Both had medical conditions but looked like your average senior, then the last picture showed the woman only with a picture of her husband and her aged 13. She was still sitting in the chair where the first picture was taken and you could feel the emptiness of the other seat without her husband. Actually now I am thinking of it, it makes me think of the animation Up in the air. That woman met her hubbie at 13 years old, dated at 17 and then got married. Is not that cute? There were also some other pictures of a war veteran, a homeless guy and a woman who suffered from memory loss. Pictures of real people are always so much more poignant.

Due to the crowd and achy feet, I could not drag myself to the other floors. I saw the Biodiversity room, the mineral ones and then went back as it was getting late as well. I missed the bus and arrived at Mississauga at 21:46. These are times where I wished I lived DT just to be able to stay up late to see events because I don't feel at ease to walk in the desert streets that late in Mississauga. I'm definitely going back when they'll have the The warrior emperor and China terracotta army exhibition in June. I wished I could attend some of the presentations but they're rather expensive :/

My head feels itchy lately. I've no idea if it's the aircon, the weather or the water. I need to try natural remedies.