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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