Just one Cornetto,

give it to me,

delicious ice-cream, from Italy,

Vanilla and chocolate treat,

Give me Cornetto,

from Walls' ice cream.

I like Cornetto Ice Cream. Today over lunch the conversation somehow included Cornetto icecream. My favorite is the Cornetto Classico, it has vanilla with chocolate and nut topping, and got the chocolate plug cone that's very nice. Mao the Googler decided to google Cornetto, and found this fact: In 2004, Wall’s sold 80 million Cornetto ice cream cones – enough to stretch from the UK to Australia.

Haha.

I went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts today. Actually I was supposed to go there to complete an assignment for a class, we had to look at a painting by Paul Ganguin and then write essay about it. At first I was like wah lau... this kind of assignment... so mafan. But then Idina and 100+ boy mentioned that MFA quite nice, so I thought ok lah give chance I go and jalan jalan a bit. So I did. And I loved it.

Here's the painting I had to look at:

The painting, D'où venons nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous? (Where Do We come from? What Are We? Where Are We Going?) was created in 1897 by Paul Gauguin, a post-impressionist artist. I always hear these terms used to describe artists, like renaissance, medieval, expressionist, impressionist, post impressionist etc but never really knew what they meant until today!! So cool got little panels in each museum gallery that explains everything. Anyway, Gauguin's painting above actually depicts the life cycle... see the baby in the right bottom corner and the old woman in the left bottom corner? The painting is meant to be looked at from right to left.

There was a special exhibition -- Things I love: The many collections of William Koch. This Koch guy is an MIT alumni... super power one. He got PhD in chemical engineering, founded his own venture capital company, and is now president of the Oxbow Group which specializes in energy production. He also won the America's Cup in 1992, one of the most prestigious sailing trophies. Anyway so this guy is very rich, and has lots of paintings and model sailboats.

I love maritime paintings, so I was very happy to see so many paintings of boats and sea. I have this liking for the sea... I like to hear the waves and smell the air at the beaches, especially at night. And I like to look at boats. I think boats are majestic and graceful at the same time, especially the ones with the huge sails. I also like to see the pictures that show boats in the middle of a storm... I actually feel scared when I see the paintings, not like scared OF the painting lah, but like feel kan cheong for the sailors in the boat. Saw one with a fisherman who caught 2 big dorys but got storm approaching. Quite exciting right.


My short trip to the museum turned into a 2.5 hour visit... cos I was captivated by the boat paintings. There was a series that depicted the War of 1812, in particular the capture of the american frigate USS Chesapeake (above) by the british ship HMS Shannon. There were about 8 paintings, some by the artist James Edward Buttersworth (1817 - 1894) that captured the drama of the battle. I stared at the paintings as if I was watching a movie. The museum not bad... somemore hang 2 models of the frigates from the ceiling. I give them 100000 points for that.

Unfortunately I couldn't stay longer, but I think I'll make another trip back there before I leave Boston. So cool lah Boston.... I love it here.