Cortically Magnified

This cobbler has remained in the same corner in Taipei for decades. The neighbourhood has experienced dramatic changes. Old apartments have been replaced by modern buildings. Traditional food stalls became hipster coffee shops. But this cobbler is apparently frozen in time.

In a recent trip to Paris, my wife and I visited the Montparnasse Cemetery, hoping to find the tomb of the mathematician Évariste Galois. We were disappointed to learn that although Galois was indeed buried in the cemetery, he was buried in a common grave and the burial site can no longer be identified. However, we were delighted to have found the family tomb of Henri Poincaré.

The unusually thick glasses on the windows of the Old Art building in Melbourne University seem to be hand-polished, whose uneven surfaces naturally distort the view into an American expressionist painting. The historic building of the Drum Theatre in Dandenong, Victoria was reflected on a modern office building across the road. The reflective windows reconfigured the image into an incongruent mosaic.

I received a Nintendo 2DS as a gift. The 2DS is a downgraded version of the Nintendo 3DS handheld game console. To cut price (2DS retails at about $150 AUD), Nintendo removed the 3D display but interestingly it still has a pair of front facing cameras. The photos are saved into the .MPO format, and can be loaded and processed by many programs running on computers.

Have I neglected the backyard garden this much in the last few weeks? This morning when I opened the backdoor, I was surprised to see the grounds covered by mysterious coin-shaped objects. They were clearly seeds — seeds wearing papery, gossamer skirts. Sure, I have seen them before, but not so many all at once. They parachuted from my neighbor’s golden elm tree - an elm native to northern America.