Lists

I love lists!

My father had a book that lists the “7 Wonders of the Ancient World”, “7 Wonders of Nature”, etc. Our conversations involved enumerating the seven wonders from memory. If you ask me now, I can name some of them: Pyramids of Giza, Colossus of Rhodes, Temple of Diana, Temple of Zeus, the Lighthouse of the Pharaohs, the Hanging Garden of Babylon and a mausoleum in Ephesus. I think I just named seven. Let us check Google if I got them right.

This is from Wikipedia.

Wikipedia screenshot: I got a few names wrong.

The Temple of Artemis is also called the Temple of Diana.  Artemis is a deity in the Greek mythology. The Roman counterpart is Diana.  (In the same way,  Aphrodite is to Venus as Zeus is to Apollo.)  The Lighthouse of the Pharaohs was in Alexandria so I think I got that right, too.  The Statue of Zeus was in a temple.  I got the mausoleum location wrong, though.

Don’t ask me about the seven wonders of nature. I think the Grand Canyon and the Amazon (rainforest, not the online store) are on that list but don’t trust my memory on that. We can always check Google to verify. 😉

Famous Lists

I came across a list of famous ghost towns. Sounds creepy, right? Number 2 on the list is Kowloon Walled City. I missed this in Hong Kong. I did some research and the area was already converted into a park in 1995. There are photos in the Internet of how the place looked before it was demolished. It looked scary.

One day, when I get the opportunity to visit Hong Kong again, I’ll have a park tour. Hong Kong has a lot of parks and gardens nestled between skyscrapers and I’ve only been to three.

Left to right: Kowloon Park, Hong Kong Park, Nan Lian Garden

Just for fun, I looked at the list of popular movie villains. The Joker played by Jack Nicholson in the batman movie first came to mind and he ‘s not on the list.  I guess some people find other characters much scarier than The Joker. (One commenter on the site agreed with my choice, though. ) Since the list is all about famous villains of all time, The Joker may have been less scary than the new ones that were created like Voldemort.