Not that long ago, I learned that there was a Municipal Rose Garden in San Jose, and that there was no tickets needed to get in - it's free! I decided that I had to pay it a visit, and so on Memorial Day, after visiting my mom's friends, we drove on over to the garden.

This garden must've been around for quite a while. There are little signs on the ground that tell you when a certain kind of rose was planted. There are roses that have been around since 1980, for instance. And there are also new ones planted in this very year, 2010.

The way the garden is designed is like a circle, with a fountain in the middle of the garden. There are roses of all sorts, small ones that don't look that much like roses, and a kind of rose where many red ones grow together. And there's a funny kind - I think it was called Oranges and Lemons? - Click here for a picture.

After we left the garden, I felt rather sleepy. Somehow the fragrance of the roses made me feel tired. Or maybe it's something else. I've been sleeping oddly lately. We got some blinds installed to help keep the room dark in the mornings so that my brain would not realize that it was daytime and that would help me sleep in on the weekends. Over the weekend I would stay awake thinking during the night, then eventually fall asleep, only to wake up early in the morning, and then fall asleep again for a while. I don't think I was getting very much sleep. Or I was just sleeping fitfully. I really have no idea.

Speaking of sleep, I recently watched a movie called Paprika. It's about dreams and how someone has stolen a DC Mini, a device which allows you to see people's dreams and even enter them. It was a rather disturbing movie, but the ideas of it are interesting. I wonder what it would be like to see into people's dreams. I think such things are under development already.

My dad says that you can see roses several times a year because they "get confused and end up blooming in the winter". But I don't think that the roses are confused. I believe that it is their gift to us. To give us a little beauty in a world that is often ugly.

Labels: age, beauty, blinds, confusing, dreams, flowers, free, garden, memorial day, mistakes, movie, oranges and lemons, paprika, rose, san jose municipal rose garden, sleep, variety

Today, my parents and I went to the library. Instead of checking out books, I decided to go on a photography spree. There's a courtyard in the library which I've only visited a couple of times.

I noticed something on the ground - a snail. It was moving along slowly, leaving a wet trail behind it. I decided to take a photo of it. Slow-moving animals are a lot easier to photograph, if you ask me. Then I wandered off and started taking pictures of the flowers. I realized there was something funny on a flower...It was a tiny slug. I took some pictures of that one too.

Then I walked around some more and stumbled upon a few more snails. I was getting a bit disturbed by this point. There seem to be a lot of snails and slugs around. I saw some things that looked a lot like dead worms or slugs, which was even freakier. I was both fascinated by the snails and creeped out by them. Some of the snails were pretty big, almost as big as my thumb (imagine a small person's thumb with a snail shell on it). I took lots of pictures before I got tired of staying outside (the sun had come out and it was getting too warm).

I have a theory for why the snails are there. (True, it rained the day before, but that is too boring and logical.) The library needs money to buy books and keep their system up and running. They have decided to profit through exporting goods. Seeing as they already have plants in their courtyard, the people at the library thought it'd be a good idea to make use of this courtyard by raising something there. They decided to get the business of French restaurants by selling them snails to use for escargots. And thus the library worked on a plan to mass-produce snails. The money from the snails would be used to buy new books (hence the Measure A funds or whatever it was).

After going to the library, my family and I went to a local Chinese supermarket. It's always quite the popular place. My mom likes to buy things there because if you buy a certain amount of stuff, I think you can get a coupon for food. (I'm not talking about groceries. You can buy food and it will be cooked for you. The line for it was really long) It was a good day to go because there were quite a few samples. There was some carrot/apple juice (interesting, it wasn't that bad, actually), noodles, and even a bunch of snacks. Apparently the snacks part is pretty uncommon.

I saw all sorts of foods, some of which reminded me of my childhood. There were those Yan Yan snacks, which are like sticks which you dip in chocolate (or strawberry?). I also saw Pocky and a Pocky imitation (there are a lot of Pocky ripoffs, so I've seen...) and there was Hello Panda.

Hello Panda is little cookie type things which contain chocolate in their centers. My dad says they used to be much harder, but apparently kids were choking on it, so the Hello Panda snacks are now quite a bit softer.

I went around eating lots of things, and got to try Meltyblend, from the company Meiji. Even my mother thought Meltyblend was good. (But then, she seems to like chocolate. She really likes Kit Kat especially.)

I just love free samples. I don't get much chance to have them anymore. Whole Foods doesn't seem to have many cheese samples any longer, which saddens me. I hear Costco has samples, but I haven't been to Costco for a long time either. I remember we had to have our receipts signed or something before we left the building, and I always wanted the people to draw smiley faces...Those days seem so far off now. When I was younger, I had more free time, less worries...The world used to seem so fresh and fun. I'm still making good memories, but now I'm not seeing things through "rose-colored glasses", which is really a shame.

Labels: animals, costco, courtyard, escargots, flowers, food, free, hello panda, library, meltyblend, money, photography, plan, pocky, receipt, rose colored glasses, sample, snacks, snail, whole foods

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