Around Half the World in Six Days

I have set a travelling record for myself recently in which I traversed more than half round the world in just six days. I guess I will never do that again as it was really hectic to get from one time zone to another in such short duration.

The reason I had to do so much air travel in such a short period of time was that my Eastern Europe tour cum Ireland holiday was back to back with my conference trip to Hawaii. My return flight for my holiday was on 11/6/2013 via London Heathrow Airport with the connecting flight from Singapore to Kuching on 12/6/2013.

Four days later on 16/6/2013 without fully recovered from jet lag, I was already on my way to Singapore again to catch my connecting flight on the next day to Tokyo Narita and then to Hawaii.

On 17/6/2013, I arrived at Hawaii slightly later than 7:00 a.m. local time with a very sleepy mood. Since Hawaii is 18 hours behind Malaysia, I got very confused with the time. Even more so that I was at a time zone that is 7 hours behind Malaysia just about six days ago.

That was one experience that I guess I won't repeat as it is really tiring. I wonder how all the frequent fliers cope with all those jet lag thingy due to rapid change in time zones.

British Museum: Ancient Egypt

The British Museum has a wide collection of the ancient Egypt artifacts and the exhibits span across a few rooms. The first thing that comes to one's mind when ancient Egypt is mentioned would definitely be mummies. Therefore, coffins and mummies were the things that I first saw at the exhibition rooms. The mummification itself is a big area of research for the curators.

There is even a mummy of a cat dated back to the 1^st century. Cats were highly regarded in ancient Egypt and sometimes they were even divinised.

Other than mummies, there are many other artifacts on display, including this ivory figure of a woman with incised features dated back to 4,000 BC. I reckon that Pablo Picasso must have seen this and translated it to his paintings.

Most of the other exhibits are murals, statues and figurines. All of them are very colourful. The Egyptians were already good in utilising colouring materials in the ancient time.

Before I left, I took this picture of the most intricately decorated coffin amongst all the exhibits. It must had been the coffin of an important person in ancient Egypt.

British Museum: The Parthenon Sculptures

The British Museum has vast collection of Parthenon sculptures from the Acropolis of Greece. These marbles are sometimes called the 'Elgin Marbles', after Lord Elgin who brought these marble pieces to Great Britain in the 19^th century.

In the modern days, the Greek Government is requesting the British Government to return all these sculptures as they are considered "stolen" artifacts from Greece. The British Government however denied the claim.

The judgement on morality is somewhat contemporary to the time people live in. Something that was right in the last century maybe wrong in the eyes of today's people.

However, something that has been "taken" from the other people should be returned if it is not acquired legally. I do believe that some of these sculptures were plundered.

Even then, the British Museum still refuses to return any sculpture to the Greek Government. Well, it is not for me to do any judgement, so let's just admire the sculptures while they are still in the British Museum. Nobody knows where they are gonna be in the next 100 years.

British Museum: Private China Collection

I have a strong passion for pottery and porcelain as I grew up in a pottery factory. It is always fascinating to see the soft clay being transformed into hard and brittle wares. Even more fascinating is to see the mineral ink paintings on them disappear under the coating of glaze and reappear after the firing process in the kiln.

When I was visiting British Museum back in June 2009, there was an exhibition of China from a private collection. So, missing it was something out of the equation in my itinerary list!