MORE OF THE TWINS

The last of the photos taken in the twin cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul before I returned to Tokyo. The last few were shot in the Walker Arts Center, where I caught photographer Alec Soth's exhibition. His idea of "finding the lyrical in the everyday" was intriguing. It's so hard to make everyday people and things look interesting.

LITTLE TOWN MANKATO

Little town Mankato. It was charming in its own way. Quite a few people asked if it wasn't boring. Actually I seldom feel bored when I'm on a trip, no matter how small the place is, there's always new things to see and interesting people to meet. I think all fellow travel junkies will know what I mean.

By the way, can someone tell me how dust can find its way in when everything is shut up? My house is scarily dirty after 5 weeks. I even found some dried leaves and blobs of dirt on the floor. It's baffling.

THE MISSISSIPPI RIVERFRONT

From top

1>> View from Mill City Museum. Minneapolis used to be home to a large flour milling industry. It's the oldest part of the city.

2>> "Gold Medal Flour" refers to the best grade of flour by General Mills.

3>> What's left of the Washburn A Mill. A huge explosion and fire destroyed much of the building in 1991. I kind of like the look of the ruins.

4>> The St. Anthony Falls which provided energy to power the massive mills by the riverfront.

5>> Guthrie Theater which was just beside the Mill City Museum. Interesting architecture.

6>> Interior of the theater.

GREENS, SPOON & A CHERRY

My favourite from Minneapolis, photos of the Cowles Conservatory and the Sculpture Garden. I think I went a bit gaga over the succulents. I used to have one but it died (I might have given it too much water), but after seeing these I'm determined to make a terrarium of succulents once I'm back home.

This is the most interesting sculpture in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, the Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, both Swedish by descent. There were a lot of Swedish who migrated to States in the 1800s and they seemed to have all congregated in Minnesota. I can understand why though, knowing the Swedes' love of nature. There're a lot of beautiful lakes, woods and wildlife here.

Edit>>
Someone just asked me if I photoshop my photos a lot. I don't actually, except to do some resizing, I don't even tweak the contrast most of the time. The chemical reaction of the film with light does all the work.

LET IT SNOW

I've been so busy in Japan meeting up with friends that I haven't managed to upload anything. It has been an incredible trip. Strange to be back in Singapore after more than a month, maybe because I've been moving around a lot, especially the last leg in Japan where I was doing Tokyo->Hakone->Kamakura->Tokyo->Chiba within a week. 

These are the photos of downtown Minneapolis where I was staying. Heavy heavy snow. I was walking back from the museum when it started to pelt ice pellets, which was actually quite painful (imagine someone throwing small ice cubes at you). It continued for like maybe another five, ten minutes and I was thinking I'm going to get blue-black from this when the ice suddenly turned into large flakes of gorgeous white snow, and that continued throughout the day into evening. My feet were numb from the cold but I didn't want to go inside. It's not the first time I've seen snow but I've forgotten how beautiful it is. 

I'll have more photos of Minneapolis in the next post, meanwhile I've got to clean the house before my cat gets back ;)