So...I suppose I'd better talk about my 4th July weekend then. I was going to write earlier today, although; how blogging about my weekend as soon as I got back from work turned into drawing another picture of Fai, I don't know.
I'm quite pleased with the picture as it is, but I'm not sure if I'll put it up here or not. It's a bit, you see, well, *coughs* you know, isn't it. I'll give it some thought.

So Philadelphia was nice. It was odd, in that it's similar to NYC but different. Overall, it's prettier than new york, because it's older I suppose. The style of the buildings gives it the feel of a nice old town (one you'd find back in the UK), but all the buildings are bigger than anything you'd find in a little old town, so it has this wierd feel to it. Apparently it's not a very safe place..I wouldn't know, I only saw the nice bits.
Shilpa lives in the centre of the city, which seems jolly convenient, and I'm a little jealous of her. But she does have to pay through the teeth for her appartment, so perhaps I'm not that jealous.

We met up with some more people from my course (which was a nice surprise for me) who'd flown in from North Carolina. We all went to the live8 concert together, which was jolly nice. It was also jolly hot and jolly full of people and had jolly disgusting porta-loos. Seriously, there were a lot of people there. I didn't count them all, but there were a lot. It reminded me of the crowds of people that I saw swarming around Trafalgar Square when I went to London for new year's eve. On second thoughts though, there were a lot more people at live8 than I saw at new year's.
As a consequence of all the people, I couldn't see a thing. I mean, no-one but a rare few could see the stage, but I couldn't even see a screen. You see, when the music starts, everyone stands up so they can see better, and in the standing up race, it is the short person (ie. me) who loses. But I didn't mind so much. I still got to see the Kaiser chiefs on the screen, because it was right at the beginning and nobody cared because they didn't know who they were :D
I also saw a bit of stuff (like Will Smith, who was very good) when Shilpa and I decided to try to make our way forwards a little. Man, and what a scary journey that was. So many people! And all glaring at you for trying to push past, I have no idea how we ever made it out of the crowd. At the end the crowds had died down a little so we could get quite close to the stage (still couldn't see it though). We saw Stevie Wonder then, he was on last, and that was good, we also saw one of the events staff dancing on some scaffolding at the crowd like the whole show was just for him, which wasn't good, but it was funny.

Later that evening as we were walking around, Shilpa found a $20 bill on the floor. I don't know what amused me more; the fact that Shilpa decided to ask a random guy who was parking his car if it was his, or that the guy said it wasn't his and then tried to change his mind when he found out it was a 20. Obviously, the rules of the world state that if you ask one person if the money that you've found belongs to them, and it doesn't belong to them, then that's as much as you can do and that money now belongs to you. And so it was dinner at an expensive Italian restaurant for us that evening.
The restaurant was nice, they had live jazz with a man playing a double bass. Live jazz with a double bass makes me a happy person.

We did more touristy stuff, which seemed to include walking around where there wasn't any shade in the intolerable heat. But we went to an eat as much as you like ice-cream festival which I think made up for that. It was nice to be in such a historical place for independence day. I saw liberty bell and all that stuff. It was quite interesting.
What interested me more was when I realised that the William Penn who founded Pennsylvania and Philadelphia and has lots of stuff named after him there, was the son of Sir William Penn who worked with Samuel Pepys. Wow, I like it when stuff like that comes together and makes sense. Yay Pepys! *punches air*

There was another concert, also free, this one had Elton John in it. It seemed less crowded than live8 and was in the evening, so it was more pleasant. Mr. John did give the crowd a long wait before he turned up though, so much so that the crowd started booing. Bad news Mr. John, bad news. I think I only recognised one of the songs he played...I am rubbish. After the music there was a fireworks display. It was the most impressive fireworks display I'd seen in my life, although coming from the girl who thinks sparklers are impressive, that's not much. But they were good, and loud, and long (I thought they might not end).
On the way home amongst the heaving crowds there were lots of police sirens. This was worrying seing as how we all had to rush out of the road because the police were coming right towards us. I heard later that there were quite a few shootings in the neighbourhoods that night...did I mention about Philly not being that safe a place?

Among other things I also went to the museum of art, which was good, perhaps not as good as the Met, but still nice and airconditioned interesting. We also saw War of the Worlds. I was expecting it to be a bit rubbish, I was wrong. For some reason I got really caught up in the film and therefore thought it was very good. It is very good. (I even started crying at one point, and I never cry in films) As it is based on old school sci-fi, it doesn't feel much like sci-fi at all, which is good, because sci-fi bores me due to overexposure to it as a child. In fact, it felt much more like a horror film and it was very easy to empathise with the characters I found. Sci-fi films that feel like horror films are good, just look at Alien for an example. So that was an exciting ride of a film...with the worst possible ending for a film ever. Seriously, it is because the film is so good that the ending seems so bad. I just don't understand it, it's almost like they got bored of filming half-way through and threw something together. I shall seek courage in the fact that its probably too good and clever and symbolic for me to understand, or something. Still, I would recommend going to see it because the rest of the film is awesome.
I know I started to read the book way back when I was 13 or so. But I stopped reading it either because I ran out of time (I was reading it in our reading class at school) or because I got bored. Either way, I'd like to try to read it again, and see if I can give it a better go this time.

So I think that's about it for Philadelphia. When I got home, I had my new mouse waiting for me (at which I was very happy), and fruits basket volume 4, which I'm currently beasting through.

Toodle pip *salutes*