Vacation Highlights (Cont)

I'm just finishing up my previous post on some remaining vacation highlights that I now remember. Some of them I had conveniently forgotten for obvious reasons. =P

• Lunch at Wow Bao (Hot Asian Buns) in Chicago.
• Took a morning walk outside the hotel for the day's first snowfall.

• Slipped and fell forward down a small hill of fresh snow in the park. No pictures provided.
  
• My hotel played host to a Christian youth conference. Hundreds of teenagers and their bibles. Can you say, "Be afraid. Be very afraid"?
• Still amazed at Chicago's skyline (From the Shedd Aquarium entrance).

• Dinner at Oysy, a Japanese restaurant, Izagaya style. Think of it as tapas or dim sum.
  
• The maps exhibit at the Field Museum was awesome. I came across maps of Hull-House district (ca 1890) in Chicago that identified individuals/families by race/nationality and wage. There was also a map of England measuring literacy rates by color codes, as well as ones identifying health, income, etc. Biopolitics anyone? Governmentality?
  

First Day in Chicago

My partner and I made it to Chicago without a hitch even though CNN was reporting that National was having at least 30 minute delays. We checked our flight on the departure/arrival board and saw no delay from any airline at all.

We arrived late in the afternoon, checked in, and we had lunch at Eleven City Diner. It's a wonderful old-time diner with a "cheery Chicago attitude" (read: not New York). I immediately get the sense that there's some historical/cultural rivalry between Chicago and New York. I don't know if I'll have time to explore that on this trip, but I will tread carefully in the few days that I am here. Anyways, I ordered a patty melt and Wisconsin cheese cheddar fries. Very satisfying and huge portions!

Afterwards, we headed over to Shedd Aquarium which was very near Soldier Park. Everything was in walking distance from our hotel so there was no need to grab a cab or rent a car. The air was cold, but not frigid, no precipitation or the famous Chicago winds. At the aquarium, we were able to see Chicago's stunning skyline, and the evening twilight made the view spectacular; stars in the urban sky. It definitely reminded me of San Francisco and New York. It was just nice to be in a proper city again.

This morning we woke up to snowfall. Temperature is cold (to me it's always cold) and the winds have picked up. It's not a storm, but it's a steady downfall which might make sightseeing somewhat difficult today. Hopefully we and another friend/colleague who is also interviewing for another position will be able to check out The Field Museum and their exhibit on maps. Yeah I know it sounds weird but Foucault did talk about geography and the field is entertaining some of his concepts and theories. So at least it'll be inside.

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I'm keeping up with the latest news on Benazir Bhutto's assassination yesterday. The latest report suggests that she was not killed by shrapnel or a bullet, but from physical trauma like hitting her head (???). I watched the press conference by the secretary of the interior (?) who then showed the last known video of Bhutto. That was seriously disturbing to watch because you know what happened next. But frame-by-frame, Bhutto moved offscreen as the camera panned to the right, and a second later you can see the people in the crowd react instantly to the blast.

Bhutto was buried today and no autopsy was performed on her for cultural and religious reasons. Which means no one can confirm the actual cause of death.

At that moment, I realized that the assassination is already having some eerie similarities to JFK.