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Friday, July 29, 2011

Farewell Granddad

I got a text from Dad in the morning at work on 19th July saying that my Paternal Grandfather had passed away last night. It wasn't that unexpected since I know that he had already been hospitalised a few days ago. But you know that feeling of denial and how you just get caught in a time frame?

I wasn't close to him since young as I brought my mostly by my Maternal Grandparents. But then again, he is still my grandpa and was the only living grand parents at that time whom I thought was able to attend my wedding dinner in Jan 7 next year.

But I guess it's good that he has stopped suffering and has gone to the other world to join my grandma. Dad's parents were staunch Taoist and so they didn't believe in Jesus/God. Though I still believe of course, everyone went to heaven because God loves us all. Here's a lighted candle - RIP dear grandpa.


Monday, July 04, 2011

King Tuthankhamun's Exhibition

We went for King Tutankhamun's Exhibition a couple of weeks ago at Melbourne Musuem. It was the Museum's Winter Masterpieces for this year. This will be the last stop before the exhibition returns to Cairo to be displayed at the Grand Museum of Egypt, which is being built next to the Pyramids.

I've always loved ancient history and this one was definitely another one not too be missed. I've read about ancient Pharoah's and stuff and mummies always fascinated me. The most famous of course from ancient egyption history was Cleopatra for me. Anyway back to the exhibition, we couldn't decide which date to go and it was too late to book online. Luckily the museum reserved tickets for people who walk in and purchase over the counter. But you still had to be early and lucky a mate of ours, Wai went with a friend to line up and get tickets for us before 9.00am.

And as expected, photography and videography is not permitted, but they had this smart idea of taking photos for groups of people before we enter and then super-imposing us with a picture of an artefact.

The group of us who went for King Tut's Exhibition. Taken with the King Tut's Tomb.

The large poster display of King Tut Exhibition
Official Companion Book to the Exhibition
The exhibition was truly enjoyable and extraordinary. We took about about 1-2 hours inside as I wanted to scrutinize every artefact and object and read everything about it. From it, we learnt the lives of King Tut and how ancient egyptions lived in those days. It was really amazing how some of the artefacts were so well preserved up to this day.

We also learnt about a lot of the incest that happened in the family, which sort of led to how King Tut was born. Even though his tomb was uncovered, King Tut's death was still a real nystery. He wasn't even listed as a Pharoah in ancient egyption compilations and rules only for 9 years from early teens. The main reason he got famous was only because his tomb was uncovered in an almost perfect condition in 1922.

We got a little disappointed though, because we were hoping to see a real mummy. But they only had his golden tomb on display and at the last part of the exhibition they projected video images onto a live size stand to show how his mummy looked like. The projection was quite clear, but nothing beats seeing the real thing.