Dying in Italy

We found the world's best cemetery in Milan. When you die, you get a huge sculptured headstone.

Angels and Jesuses were popular (hand holes enable a positive ID on Jesus).

But you can also get swooning women and knights! (Grave from post-knightly era).

Not all of them were modest affairs. This one has a swooner, a priestly man, and a helper lady next to the carved dead person's feet. Barry shown for scale. On the front there are windows to the pit of death.

 

That's right, these things have crypts, and they are ready and waiting to be a movie set, complete with spiders' webs.

Would you like to go downstairs? No?

I was a fan of the flying angel, although I think she's using street performer tricks.

Barry liked the zombie grave.

Barry's favourite was a Darth Vader tombstone.

While I really like the "You can't make me go in there, I'm claustrophobic!"

In the end we settled on a simple urn affair, with a sculpture of our lives.

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787s, Travellators, and the T7ec Orbio

I have just seen a man bike through the airport. He didn’t have a uniform, but he did have an obnoxious white Bluetooth thing, so I assume he obnoxiously carried on a folding bike. I could have used a folding bike in Delhi. My flight was 2 hours late, and I had a 2 hour layover. However, when on the plane bridge thing, they shouted “Frankfurt” at me, to which I responded “Frankfurt!”. They then sprinted with me across the airport. The guy stretched his hands out pro runner style, seemingly not realizing that his goal was to get me to a gate, not to get a medal. Anyway, due to a convenient loop in time, I made my flight. This time warp thing continued on said flight, where it kept telling me I’d land at 4:30, even once it was already 6pm. I hope that the clocks the pilots use are better. How about an unrelated photo?

I’m sitting in front of a big LG OLED TV. These are in airports to make people want to buy TVs. However, the screen is frozen on yesterday’s news, which does not show off the OLED technology so much. I have just been passed by the airport floor-cleaning Zamboni. It is a T7ec H20 Orbio Technology model, which is fancy stuff. Making good use of free Wi-Fi, I found out that Orbio is a company that’s all about the water.

Leaving Singapore this morning, I faced a crisis related to Japanese pancakes called okonomiyaki. Barry has had an okonomiyaki keychain, and since I had envy, he got me one too. He left for Europe last night, and when I was about to catch my cab to the airport, I realized I had no keys. Without them, the apartment door doesn’t even close. So, my choices were to leave the country with my front door open, or to stay home for 12 days. I chose the former, and was luckily rescued by my housekeeper, who came by to lock up. The moral of the story is to destroy Barry’s keychain.

After recovering from this drama, there was the aforementioned flight delay. This was caused by power flakiness on the 787 plane, but no one told us that as we sat there for 2 hours. I had to use the washroom, but it had no power. So, strangely, the flight attendant held the door ajar to let light in as I facilitied. I tried to feel embarrassed. During the flight, my sleep was hindered by a strange blue light in my auto-darkening Dreamliner window. I thought it was a reflection until I realized it was the sun. This time I had real embarrassment, and considered a new seat guru feature.

Some loud Italians have dropped a bag between the travellators. They shouted and made a ruckus for a while, while walking to stay still. Since that didn’t work, they eventually pushed the stop button to reach their bag. It’s funny how many people still use the travellators when they’re not moving, as if they prefer the structure to smoother ground.

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Halloween Safety and Bunny Ears

First of all, ppy lloween! We hope that you celebrate safery.  Did you know that safety is different for men and women?

It has come to our attention that  Lang Tau Niu (LSN) (sic?) jeans advertise being copied from Canada, so we boycotted them immediately.

We will stick with more ramous brands. Ok, I'm gonna warn you now, some viewers may find the photos below offensive. I'm one of them.

I'm playing sophisticated bubble minesweeper games while travelling, and it turns out the Android facestalker brother doesn't know as much as I thought about me. I started getting these ads. Blazing Memory: I'm thinking it's a game about a sleepover gone wrong, where the victims suffer from painful deformities. I saw a movie like that once.

The women on the left started fighting back by tying parts of their body together. Bunnykins on the right wasn't so lucky, and got blazed.

Clearly bunny ears is a more common affliction than I thought. Presumably these games are both about getting medically necessary breast and bunny ear reduction therapy. The woman on the right is travelling to the west to do so, and both have sold the clothes of their backs to afford it.

Um, this game must be about the Gilette marketing department, figuring out how to advertise the new 13-blade razor.

Well, things got remarkably different once I got to Indonesia! The game on the left allows you to earn TENS of dollars by LV.10. The one on the right shows, oh my gosh, male flesh! Shocking!

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Geckos and Beach Creatures

Big news: after years I've finally managed to take a decent picture of a gecko! In the process I learnt that they have huge fingernails! You can see the second tail scar.

We were at the beach, where I found other creepy crawlies.

And admired to obsessive compulsiveness of the crabs.

Many people went to the beach part of the beach resort only to take selfies.

Once again, I had to conclude that we were doing it wrong, what with enjoying the outdoors and such.

Here is how to use a selfie stick at the beach.

There were so few swimmers that the boat sped through the swimming area instead, safety-second style.

For visitors who prefer to stay in their rooms, there are canned sardines and curry on offer, along with yogurt face masks.

Here is my favourite beach resort family. Dad prefers only pants and Louis Vuitton belt. Mom carries son's shoes. Son carries mom's purse, and daughter abhors sunshine. Peachy beachy.

Rather than try to fit in, we took Barry's picture with some age-inappropriate bathing gear.

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Drinking wastewater, Photographing drains, and Burning Curbside

Singapore further wished us a happy SG50 with our funpack, shown above, costing $8 per household, and assembled by volunteers.

The best items are Singa, the collectable lion (we got the SAF machine gun version), and Newater. Have you drunk recycled wastewater? I have, because I'm modern like that.

A sign it was time to get out of the house: Barry started matching his clothing to his book. There was more action on the street.

It's Hungry Ghost festival, and there were many offerings.

I find leftover streetside offerings to be some kind of gritty beautiful.

Below, joss sticks were burnt curbside in cucumber slices, next to the garbage bin.

Whoever bought the value pack of joss sticks had a lot of ancestors to honour.

Barry was more into drain apps than fires. While you may think a drain app is overkill, please remember the floods and the tropical rainforest climate.

We bought a new mystery fruit from the Thai grocer. After some thought, he told us with conviction that it was an "acorn". Hmm.

It's actually a santol in English, or a krathon in Thai, which is some kind of Star Trek character I'm sure. The pulp, which mainly gets caught in your teeth, tastes like a sour grape and lychee's offspring.

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