29th November, 11:00

It would appear I forgot to write down what I did last night. After the awesome Planetarium night sky show and more playing around the exhibits I participated in an El (subway) fiasco, but eventually got to the Lincoln Park area. After realising it was too dark to actually go to the park I ventured up the main shopping part, which was full of hyper expensive, independent, small fashion shops. I also was entirely unsure of the general area as the lighting wasn't fantastically illuminating and I didn't know what the neighbourhood was like. I found a Starbucks though, where I finished my Manga book. Yeah, so manga is very expensive for it's content. I'm not saying it was bad, just short and ended rather abruptly. I then tried to walk to an el station, got a bit off course, aimed for a different one, which turned out to be shut, so had to carry on walking through neighbourhoods that I had a severe lack of knowledge about. It all ended up groovy though, and I walked down the mag. mile for the last time and had a gargantuan Jimmy John's.

When I got back I packed and sorted everything out for the train ride. The night's sleep was pretty bad as loads of people snored and people came in late, banging around. I slept in a bit and then cruised the net for cool N810 apps.

28th November, 13:00

Sitting here in the Adler Planetarium I suddenly had the intense urge to drive to Exeter, A303 style. But alas, those days are gone, no matter, I got to drive a mars rover today, or at least a far cheaper copy. After waking up, a bit late, I decided Planetarium then Lincoln Park was the best bet as I probably know enough Science & Industry stuff already. Plus, it's in an area where I might get roughed up for my lack of modesty.

Anyway, Planetarium is excellent, very hands on, quite quiet so I got to be a big kid. Like most days really. I have some crazy show to see now, something like Night Sky Live! which might prove problematic as it's only 1.10pm. I have to work out how long I can spend here before walking to subway and going to Lincoln Park and surrounding area. I wish I could remember when the sun sets.

27th November, 21:24

I'm currently at the top of the John Hancock Building, and I think it's better than the Sears tower. It probably helps that it's a night, and the low rise neighbourhoods and lake hugging roads look far more impressive. Very festive up here, with many a christmas tree and christmas music playing. I didn't buy the photo I had taken as my eyes are half shut and I look a bit special. I helped a couple have their photo taken, and every time the girl exchanged the camera with me I got a massive electric shock. So she's either a robot or an electric eel in disguise.

More info for your brains: Chicago isn't called the windy city because of the wind, which explains why NYC was windier.It's actually about the long winded speeches that some folks gave when trying to secure Chicago for some exhibition. Also, the river in Chicago was actually engineered to run backwarsd to prevent pollution entering the lake! Crazy Americans.

27th November, 20:00

When I get to San Francisco I should have a day on random unplanned wandering and just with no need to go anywhere specific. I might get time to write some postcards then! Man, I suck at getting things done. Down with Tom.

27th November, 19:47

I decided I should head to the museum of contemporary art as it was free on Tuesdays and shut's at 8pm. You may question why I, again, abused my brain with contemporary art, and with good reason, but it's kind of interesting seeing what these crazy folk came up with.

Therefore, I saw floors made of vinyl records, videos of dead masked spirit girls exploring a western town, many rock inspired art works, and other crazy things I've blocked from my memory. One piece that was amazing was an awesomely paranoid narrative in words and diagrams of a conspiracy theory behind a spaghetti restaurant that never had spaghetti. Very funny. They also had the same damn painting, that is just a big black canvas, that every art gallery in America has because the artist made so many because it's so easy. It's actually split into 9 squares, each a slightly different shade of black, but meh. Anyway, I enjoyed the madness in the end as it was free and Taking Back Sunday kept me sane in there.

I'm now in Seattle's Best coffee, writing this all down before I go up the hancock observatory and see chicago at night. Unfortunately this is in a Borders, so I may get trapped in here a while.....

27th November, 16:30 (Longest Post Ever!)

Right, that's settled, my mp3 player and I have formed a mental bond. I was thinking, I would jolly like to hear Soca Amaretto Lime. I slammed on Brand NEw and it was randomly chosen out of 48 tracks. I love coincidence.

After waking up a bit late, I slammed a new SD card into my camera and steppted out into the bright chicago mornign sun. More cityscape shots it is then. After enjoying the moderate walk to the Field Museum I soon discovered it had about 3 days worth of content and the Darwin exhibit cost more. After greeting Sue the T-Rex at the front I made my way to the evolution section, was was extremely excellent. Though there was many a school child scrabbling through, they were all moving at about 88mph, so it was fine.

Man, there have been some crazy animals, sharks called Helicoprion have some crazy spiralled bottom lip full of teeth for example. They had some cool dino bones and some itneresting videos on mass extinctions and ice ages. Apparently we're currently in an inter-glacial ice age at the moment, hence the polar ice caps. The human section was also very interesting, for instance, until relatively recently we shared the earth with at elast 2 other hominid species. For example, the neanderthals originated in europe, where as we came from Africa.

More interesting things include about 11% of us are missing a Palmaris muscle, which is a remanent of when our tree dwelling ancestors, tree dwelled. Other remanents of our ancestors include wisdom teeth, goosebumps, ear wriggling muscles, our 5th toe and what's left of our 3rd eyelid.

Returning to mass extinction, the "normal" rate of extinction is one species every 4 years. Currently 30,000 species go extinct every year. Human's are the win! or possible something more apocalyptic. I then went to a random plant section which was empty as there were no dinosaurs for people to gawp at. At this point I was slightly delirious from tiredness, thirst and eating too much when I entered the museum. I still took a photo of a model of a tea growing extravaganza for Rex and Tracey though. And also of a venus fly trap biting a man's tongue....

In my delirium I stumbled into a jade and precious gem exhibit, which was also empty and surprisingly interesting. A few gems of knowledge (haw haw) inclued that emerald's are actually rarer and more valuable than diamons, but they tend to be cloudy and have imperfections when they grow over a certain smallish size. Also, gold "carats" are different from diamond "karats" but I'm sure I'm boring you enough already.

I then crashed through haiwai which seemed a very good reproduction with beaches and markets etc. Soon I came across New Zealand and a Mairu house, which all suspiciously merged into Cheyanne artifacts. Then Asia cropped up and I collapsed at a fountain next to Sue's head. After some thirst quenching, reviving aqua, I entered the also barren (of people) Underground Adventure. Where I was promptly shrunk down to the size of an ant, or possibly smaller. What followed was an extremely good attempt at making soil exciting. Including anamatronic insects, very creepy sound effects as I made my way through some underground earth tunnels. After be regrown I used a crazy comptuer to help plan a town's redevelopment and I wa apparently excelelnt even though I paid no attention to the writing and just chose options according to the pretty map and Year 8 geography - sponsered by Crayola.

I then fond myself in Egypt, with some nice recreations of the nile and a display case of all the fake ancient egyptian things the museum had been duped into buying. They also obviously had many more authenetic items, or they just hadn't tested them yet....

I then ran out of time, lucky for you dear reader, which is probably only me by now, and exited from the building. Sun was setting beautifully and I took some photos of the outside brontasaurus against it.

Hoo ha!

I have internet time left, and nothing left in my magic book of wonderment to type up. I am officially caught up with all things that have occurred in the windy city. Which seems to lack wind. Chicago is really great, I really wanted to go up near Lincoln Park and see the posher end of town, as I think they have cool second hand bookshops and the such like. Ah well. Maybe next time, and I'll drag Rex along that time, and destroy him with puns, such as this one I pwned him with today:

Rex: "I like dolphins. Lots. Did you fall in accidentally?"
Tom: "Nah, on porpoise... *gaffaws*"
Rex: "Good night mr tom. *sighs*"
Tom: "*giggles* night dude, you sure set me in my plaice *sniggers*"

Good times, good times. Just done my good deed for the day by helping a person of Scandinavian origin use the vending machine. I should really go to bed as it's 23:45, and I need a shower. I'm a bit scared though as I fear my dorm is full of old men, and they may get grumpy with me for wearing a garish t-shirt and not being tucked up asleep yet. Ah well, us riff raff must continue to be the spanner in the works, the bane of their existence, the apple in there carrot cake, the brick in their washing machine and the suspiciously placed post box in the hanging garden of their hearts....

Yeah, I'll sleep now then.

Newly Revised Chicago Plan:

Tuesday:

• Field Museum: 09:00-13:30
• Planatarium: 13:30-16:30
• Contemporary Art Museum: 17:00-19:00
• All You Can Eat Pizza And Beer For $20: 20:00

Wednesday:

• Science & Industry Museum: 09:30 - X
• Planatarium: X-16:30
• Hancock Observatory: 20:00/21:00

26th November, 23:00

I then headed to the Planaterium (spelling?) as it was free today. It was only open for a short while longer but I saw a show about Black Holes which was quite interesting though I knew most of it already. Though I didn't realise that there is a black hole in the middle of most galaxies as well as our one (the milky way). They had some snazzy computer graphics and liam neeson or someone narrating.

After it shut I wandered back to the hostel and via the medium of text organised to meet Tim for drinks. I then grabbed a Gargantuan Jimmy John's sub, which was excellent and then met him outside the Art Institute (though I waited outside for 15minutes because he was late). We then cruised down the Mag. mile to the Hancock centre, which is a massive skyscraper with an apparent very posh bar on the top, but we got in fine. Was quite expensive but the view was immense. I got a coors light ($8.25+tax) and he got some crazy cocktail which was tiny ($12.00+tax). However, his was immensely strong, apparently, and he got drunk off it quite quickly. By this time I had started to realise that he was a bit dull company as he didn't really pay attention or keep the conversation going. He also appeared moderately racist and snobbish towards Americans, which was a slight issue as he would talk to anyone, just often say the wrong things. Luckily, as it was expensive, we moved on, and the next bar we went to that suggest wanted a $10 cover, so we moved on, after a while of not finding a bar he got tired, which I was glad of, and he parted ways to go back. I'm quite glad in the end we only had 1 drink as I think I would have got REALLY annoyed with him as he was extremely hypocritical, especially in that he claimed all American's were ignorant to everyone, which is in turn an ignorant view. Ah well, at least we didn't agree to go to any museums together like we were gonna.

This post may be more rambling than normal, or longer, or something, as I am typing this straight from my neural pathways, because I couldn't be bothered to write it out, and I can type 10 times faster so I tend to splurge my brain on here. Yay me! Man the aquarium was awesome.

26th November, 17:20

Now that was an awesome day, makes me wish I had longer here. After I last left you I bought a random Manga book because I could and the blurb was humourous:

"On his way home from a round of heavy drinking late one night, master Moocher and Game Programmer Keita Ibuki decides to satisfy a craving for ramen at a noodle stand. But instead of slurping soup, he gives up his meal to a cute girl (an apparent ramen fanatic). Unbeknownst to Keita, the girl is a superhuman being known as a Mototsumitama who's being hunted by others of her kind. When a battle suddenly ensues, Keita gets caught in the crossfire and loses his arm. The next time he opens his eyes, he's back in his apartment - arm intact. But just whose arm is it?! Asking the strange girl raiding his fridge only makes things more complicated!"

Anyway, I took a really nice walk to the museum campus, with many trees and statues on the way. I went into the extremely impressive Shedd Aquarium and bought another City Pass. It's amazing in there!!! To start with there was a 90,000 gallon replica of the Caribbean coral reef with Rays, sharks, fish, etc. Even a giant turtle called Nickel, who was injured by a speed boat and swims awkwardly now. When they were rehabilitating her, they also found a Nickel lodged in her food pipe, hence the name. a diver also went in to feed the sea life and a small presentation about it all occurred.

Afterwards I wandered around looking at the huge amount of aquariums in there, with all sorts of crazy fish, eels and turtles. Some fish swim up and knock into other fish so their babies, which they carry in their mouth, fall out and can be eaten! Another type of fish as a long aerodynamic snout which is similar to an aeroplane wing and is needed as otherwise the fish would just swim downwards the whole time. Then I walked out to the Oceanarium, where they have dolphins and a type of whale that I have forgotten their name, but it begins with B. Watched a dolphin display, which was awesome, and shows how well trained and happy they were. Their environment was 63 times the size of the minimum regulations for keeping that many dolphins (5). Down below you could see underwater as well as see Penguins and sea otters.

There was even a lizard section which had some crazy looking critters in there, including some that would drop their tails if caught, and then the tails shatter. They also had a majorly huge and very lazy komodo dragon, but it can't apparently get up to very high speeds. Other sections included more turtles, spiders, another coral reef replica with some cool fishies, electric eels, huge ants and many more fascinating things besides. I took MANY photos. Whoa this entry is getting big.

In between I got a nice salad for lunch, with egg and turkey ham. I also got three cookies cos they looked the yum, plus a cranberry juice. I also scratched my head twice, fiddled with my bracelets, stretched my arms, looked slightly to my left, then back to my right, and all manner of trivial details that you really don't need to know but I seem to tell you anyway and you don't have a choice. Mwahahahaha...

26th November, 10:52

Mmmm coffee and a japepeno pretzel. Good times. Last night after returning and kinda chilling I met an Australien called Time. He lived in Vancouver for half a year but can't find anywhere to teach so is flying back to Oz. Had a really good sleep, and my South Korean chum gave me a subway pass for free as he was leaving at 5am. Jolly nice of him. Today is Aquarium day. woo! and then Field Museum if I have time, possibly with Tim though he's moving hostel today as snoring kept him up (not mine). Awesome quote I found in Barnes & Noble:

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!” - Jack Kerouac

Random Thoughts

• I should get some brain books.
• Hopefully on my big trip I won't be nervous beforehand like with this one, just excited.

Thoughts for your soul

I am exceptionally tired. I may just lace this page with some random thoughts and words. It's also cold. At least outside. Eels are a fantastic band. I forgot to mention something I heard in the contemporary art section of the Art Institute of Chicago, said by a little girl:

"Daddy, I can do that"

so very true and it cracked me up. While I was walking around the streets yesterday a guy zipped by on a black segway. Turns out it was an on-duty police officer! Crazy. I've began to ponder how easy it is to buy things here with a credit card. Today I got a drink from a vending machine simply by swiping my card, same with the Internets. When they do sometimes ask you to sign, they've already given it back to you (the card) so they can't compare anyway.

I might get an early night tonight. Really need to catch up on sleep before the epic train journey to Frisco.

25th November, 15:25

Well after a large blogging stint I hit the sack and woke up a bit late (9am). It only feels late because most people leave at like 7.30. Shwoered, checked email and then hit the streets where I walked to the Sears Tower with a purpose. No one around, and no queues so I went straight up to top. Lift goes 18mph, which I'm told is fast for lifts. Audio tour was pretty good and the view was nice, though doesn't quite compare to New York. They had an interesting display around the observation deck about Chicago and it's achievements. There's also a cool toblarone shaped prison you can see.

After grabbing some Maccy D's, as you do in America, I began to walk to Michigan Avenue, and through a nearly deserted Millenium Park, which was a bit spooky. After some suspicious road crossing, I made it to the lake shore and harbour. This also lacked any form of life and boast. After a nice walk along, followed by a very dangerous and back-alley style ascent across the river, I made it to the Navy Pier. I took some photos of my confusion along the way to help the narrative.

Navy pier has a shopping/restuarant type plaza followed by a long building holding various things such as a festival hall and ballroom. There is also a free stained glass window museum there, which is the only one in America/World apparently. Probably with good reason. There was also an interesting display on drugs, people who had died from them and policing methods/equipment. At the end of the pier I helped some crazy people take a photo, as we were as lcose as you could get to the light house out in the harbour. There's also a very big anchor.

After that I went up to the roof where there is a ferris wheel & spinning ride, but as i was winter there were very few people around. Next to the little theme park is the crystal gadens, which is a huge green house with big palm trees and awesome "jumping" fountains. After that I started writing this and get dodgy chinese all over my book again...

24th November, 20:35

Well today was full of disappointment, but I still enjoyed it, so take that Santa! After bursting through the doors of the Art Institute of Chicago, I cleaned up the strewn glass and ran around like a crazy mad man on my Hopper Hunt (TM). After 30 minutes I asked someone where it was and it turns out it's not on display at the moment... but don't worry it's back mid feb...

DAMMIT, I was extremely distraught and exceptionally upset. Then I realised I was getting far too dramatic over a single painting, even if it is the best in the world, so I spent the next 3 or so hours enjoying the museum. Not after first getting steak, 2 cookies and a smoothie too cheer me up. There are some very good paint and Asian pieces in there, and also some extraordinary bad contemporary art which looked exactly the same as some other stuff I've seen in the past art galleries that I frequented.

After that, I walked around Millennium park in the sunshine and went into dunkin' doughnuts for a bagel. Where I had a chat with a guy about black-on-black racism, and how he'd been shot and beaten into a coma. It would appear he didn't fully recover, but it was still a nice chat even if he did tell me he was a black muslim called Kahlid about 30 times as I think he kept forgetting he'd told me.

After rollin' to the hostel I utilised my sensual n810 to check for stuff for tonight on Timeout and also talk to Stu. Turns out The Academy Is.. was playing tonight!??!!!!!

OH MY GOLLY GOSH!

Then I found out it was sold out. Blast. Nothing else took my fancy so I decided to just walk down state street and the magnificent mile. Grabbed a salad in Macy's and took some pretty night time photos. I walked into bloomingdales and my wallet promptly died from shock. $165 for a random shirt, $20 for a hot chocolate! I formed a plan to use my poshest English accent and claim to be a duke of Antioch (yes I know it's in Turkey) if my raggedy presence was questioned. After that, I did my normal borders patrol. Haw, haw, get it? I don't. I decided I might get into Manga, but the choice was immense and I knew nothing. So I ran. I need to actually type some of this up as I am days and days behind.

To the hostel ->

Oh I may try and get tickets for theatre or something of equal night excitement. I still can't upload photos, *shrugs* maybe I'll do it when I get back to Orp.

24th November, 10:00

Woke up, showered and rolled down stairs. Called my Mummy *waves at mum* and then utilised the free coffee here, woo! Chicago Institute of Art time.

mmmm NightHawks.

23rd November, 23:00

Well that was frustrating, after exploring Chicago up State Street & down Michigan Avenue, which was awesome, blue skies and all, I came back to check in, only to find Sta Travel had failed to pay for my hostel. And so I won the international award for longest sentance. After two hours of waiting it was all sorted out, I showered and cruised down to Jimmy John's or something, that made really nice sandwiches and was scaring away all the custom with heavy death metal playing. After that I went back and chilled at the hostel as I was bushwacked.

Hostel is EXTREMELY nice, very clean, like all of chicago and people here are quite friendly. In a 10 person dorm room with some nice peeps. Chatted to a guy from South Korea for a while, he's 27 and studying a year abroad here (in Microbiology). In South Korea they have to do military service for 2 years, which explains his age. He was stationed as a medic in West Tameria in the UN peace keeping force with people from Australia, Portugal, Japan etc for 6 months. Amazing difference in lives we have. He supports Liverpool, as apparently the premiership is big over there, more so than their own league.

Also met a guy called Adam (what a stupid name) from Ohio who is just here for weekend and majors in Digital Design. He was cool but also tired and a bit ashamed he only came from Ohio.

Argh I forgot to really talk about town. Book shops are dope, I had to restrain myself from buying all of them. I got a foolish looking hat from Seas and bought a new memory card (4gb) from Radioshack, which then spent rest of the day setting off all the store alarms. Down the magnificent mile I saw a cool ice rink and crazy sculptures. Finally, I wandered randomly into a comic store and bought the first Angel: After The Fall comic. Woo.

23nd November, 10:44

Chicago you say? a might nippy but quite excellent. I easily walked to hostel and they let me store my bag there for the day. As it's Black Friday I thought I'd hit State Street and then the Magnificent Mile. Been distracted by a Barnes & Noble, it's coffee, a jalepeno pretzel and a free copy of the chicago reader.

They have an interesting "I Saw You" section where if you saw someone you liked but were too shy to tell them, you can post an advert about it. On an unrelated note, people in chicago seem nice, it's quite quiet right now though.