expo! expo!

So yesterday I was invited by a friend to attend the world expo with some people. There were 4 of us in total, which was a good number to keep movement as one unit without the constant worry of shepherding people and such. It was a rather sudden development, as he called me at 10 PM the night before to confirm. Thankfully I don't really have plans, so naturally I was excited to go.

The world expo is a crowded place. Having it held in Shanghai makes that a very glaring problem. Anywhere worth going there is a waiting line of at least 1-2 hours. So inconvenient. It makes everything else a problem. It's extremely hard to find the medium of minimum waiting time + interesting content, as usually the only ones without much waiting time are pretty boring. Let's see if I remember all of the pavilions I visited (I assure you, this won't be the last time I'll be going): first was the Chinese Oil Pavilion and Japanese Corporations in the morning, Netherlands, Greece, Estonia, Finland, Luxembourg, Italy, before dinner, Turkey, Denmark, Belarus, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and New Zealand before we had had enough of sweating and walking for 13 hours. In total we hit 17 pavilions. I think that's pretty impressive, considering the sheer number of people and the size of the world expo. The total physical size of the expo takes about 3 metro stations to cover. That's pretty damn big, if you ask me. I took over 500 photos in the span of the 13 hours, and I got lazy too. You know, I'm pretty damn proud to see my home town so successfully pulling off this gargantuan feat, hosting a world expo. All eyes are on us at the moment, and China has risen to the occasion again.

On another note, China, the more I observe, the more I see its socialist side. The first pavilion I entered, the Oil Pavilion, had a 4-D movie. It promoted industry and the progress of mankind, and made the subject of industrialization something nationalistic and positive. It echoed those high school history classes which taught of Lenin's and Mao's many acts of industrialization, and how similar in idea it is. As well, one of my friends who went on the trip mentioned that everyone must take classes which taught Marxist and Mao idealism. I guess when you look closely, China really is still very Communist. Thankfully I have seen things from another spectrum, which makes me wary of the large gap of societal thinking which makes eastern and western culture so different still.

Well, I hope I can update you guys on the expo again. I really can't describe the expo other than using photos, and I can only upload so much here. Enjoy for now :)