My Long Christmas and Newyears Week

Well. I ran the sound system for the Christmas eve service. It was a mess! A funny one in retrospect, but rather bothersome at the time. I set most of it up with the help of a techie from SIS (my school, and where we had the service) on the 23rd, but there was this irritating buzzing noise from one of the mics. So, on the 24th, I went hunting for a way to get rid of it. I knew where the school kept the extra mics and equipment, unfortunately, they were all behind a locked door. Well, no problem. Locked doors are only a minor problem out at SIS, there are dozen ways by one. However, I didn't have my normal school equipment with me (my ruler) so I couldn't get in. However, you can climb over the back wall of the sound room from the boys bathroom and get in. Problems involved: wall is very high, around 4 meters. No problem. The walls in the shower block are two meters high, easy enough, and there is a ledge half way to help with that as well. Problem two: nobody ever cleans the tops of the walls. I mean, who ever looks there? The tops of the walls were very dusty, and I was wearing black pants and a black shirt. I assessed the situation and decided to take off my pants and climb over (here I must comment in gratitude to boxer shorts). I got my shirt dusty, but it was heavily patterned, so with a quick few brushes It was invisible. So I scrambled up and over the first wall, and then up and over the second, and faced a four meter drop down into the sound room, with very weak shelves to catch me on one side, and light bulbs sticking out of the wall on the other. Needless to say I did it very carefully. I got down safely, found the mics, and opened the door (all doors at SIS, when locked, do not open from the outside, but will open from the inside. This door was no different) and then stoped. Wait. The entire orchestra is sitting up on the stage, and I don't have my pants on, and I need to get back to the boys bathroom to get them. I looked up to analyze the reverse climb. Yes, the shelves were stable on the outsides, they were basically just a pile of cement bricks. I didn't exactly care to do the reverse climb (which was a sight harder than the first climb) while carrying a box of mics, so I set the mics outside on the floor and then started to climb back over. This is where things should have gone wrong, however, I got lucky. I managed to get back over the wall, only getting marginally more dusty than I was already, find my pants again and retrieved the mics. I live for crazy things like that, and nobody even noticed any dust! At any rate, Fate decided that I hadn't done enough in the service of the church that night: The entire sound system was up, running, beautiful, and clear. (I mean crystal clear, except for all the echos, which were unavoidable because of the design of the room. It was not designed with auditorium in mind. The ceiling is composed of several large triangular panels that incidentally reflect everything I have been able to launch at them with the exception of several very sharp darts (One of my friends' darts is still stuck up there, 7 meters off the ground. This is a big room) Including sound waves. Alright, so everything works well, but the sound is a little goofed from the acoustics of the room. Oh well, nothings perfect. This is where Fate kicks in. In marches the Ethiopian choir. All well and good. They sing a song or two every Christmas for the edification of the rest of the church, despite the fact that nobody understands what they are singing about. Then this bozo with a keyboard shows up and demands to be plugged in. Only one problem: no cables. So I rerouted some things and told him he could plug in to my equipment, that I was letting the orchestra use as a monitor. He wanted complete and total control, so he blasted the sound on his organ thing, and nearly cracked my amp open. I turned the master volume down, but my monitor was not connected to the sound system controls. Bad. At any rate, despite all that, the service was relatively clear, I got several compliments for the clarity of the sound. If it wasn't for my uncle it might have been much worse. My uncle runs the sound for his church, and I get to sit in the sound booth when I visit his church, where I learned how to do some things clumsily.

Anyway, that was the sound system mess. This is not where the story stops. Christmas dawned bright and early, and I had a wonderful Christmas. I am using the wireless mouse my brothers gave me even as I type. Well I would be, but I'm typing. But it is a really nice mouse. Ergonomic and everything. It works really well with age of empires, as it has two extra buttons that are very useful for idle villager and town center, for those of you who have played the game. What I want to play now is Mechwarrior 4 Mercs, but Jeremy up and went to college, so I can't. Ah well.

Camping at Hodeida has fallen apart. This year the Erskines, Kappers, Pahls, Libersomthingorothers (German name, unpronounceable), Mufurahs, Hudsons and McCulloughs went. Of those families five actually had youth group age kids, and only two had high school age kids. It was also short, lasting three days, and it rained. Twice. There is a long story about that, however, this post grows to ponderous lengths, so I will not include it here. The raft this year was a success! We went from being the only people not to make the wreck, to being the only people to make the wreck! We were not the only raft either. Tal is going to have a fit. He leaves and Abe and I beat the V's, and then we make it out to the wreck without him! I can't see that I blame him either. It took us an hour and seventeen minutes to go 4.4 km with the wind, and 4 hours to do it without it. Mr. Erskine designed the raft for us, and Jonathan and Timothy went on it, and I must say that I was skeptical, but it worked, and well. It was a brick! square and hard. It worked though! 9 truck inner tubes, 19 meters of 4cm by 4cm lumber, a huge pipe, a 2x3 meter tarp, and a kilometer of rope, and we made the wreck. The last 400 meters was purdy nasty. The water was choked with seaweed: the prickly type. Jonathan was howling. Good (if a tad nasty) fun. The wreck has disintegrated to the point of dangerousness though, so despite the fact that I have actually gotten to the wreck, I have never been on it. Bummer.

The way back was interesting. We had gotten very wet the night before, (it rained for 4 hours or so), and the mountains were full of fog. We were only going about 30 km an hour, and at that rate it was going to be dark by the time we got to Sana'a, so we decided to stay at a hotel. This was the 31st of December. The Coxes were having a new years eve party, and it was going to be good, but instead we spent it at a hotel with a bunch of Australians who got drunk to the sound of an Aud and drums. (pronounced sorta weird with a guttural in the first syllable Aood, or maybe Auood. Whatever). The Yemenis did their traditional synchronized knife dancing for us, and I abandoned the cause and went to bed. There is a lot of knife dancing here. (People who have been in Yemen and seen these dances will laugh at the description I gave.)

At any rate, this post is now at ridiculous lengths, so I will briefly conclude. Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

Faster Than a Speeding Car...

Today we went carolling. Cool factor of maybe a 2. I'm feeling generous. However, that isn't what I am going to write about. If you don't like hearing about peoples impressive (or not so impressive feats) this post is not for you. However, all you other people: I managed to outrun a car. In city, and on pavement. Light traffic. 1.2 km. Well, not quite out run. I got onto the street first, but our house was at the other side of it, so the car pulled up first, but that's not bad! I was at our gate before anyone could have gotten out of the car. Any way, its nearly bed time, I just thought I would spread my happiness on the web. Sing with me all you neohippies! Come on! Come on! Everyone, all together now: Kumbaiya...

Techno, Asimov, & Beta Blogger

Ok, for the sake of...stuff, I am going to address these things backwards. Firstly, I got upgraded to Beta Blogger!!! Like it? Google is amazing, simple and beautiful. My praise is never ending. I have only ever had one problem with any website put together by them, and I figured a way around it, so it wasn't even really a problem.

Secondly, I have taken it to my head to try to follow in Asimov's footsteps. Sort of. There is no way that I could write 400 boks before I die, inspired or no, neither are my skill sufficient for the task, or my mind acute enough. However, I figure that I have to start somewhere. If anyone would really like to see what I have done, send me an email at gmail.com. My address is the same as the URL in this blog.

Lastly, I have inundated myself with techno. It is a wonderful feeling. I didn't think it was possible to get hi off of music, but let me tell you it is. I have gotten one adrenaline rush after another listening to this stuff. It may even be addictive. The feeling of energy I get from it is just great! Where do I get it you ask? Answer: iTunes. Podcasts. Techtronic sound is amazing, I think there are some other good ones out there as well, but I will have to do some exploring to find out. Anyway, its getting late here, nearly midnight, I should hit the sack. Night dudes.

The Godfather

I have just discovered the second song worth memorizing! (on guitar that is) It is "Speak Softly Love": the love theme from The Godfather (incidentally, a movie I now want to see.) The first song worth memorizing was "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" but that one was a bit long, so I have parts of it all jumbled up. I should go back and work on it again. However, "Speak Softly Love" is purdy cool. I nearly have it, and I just got the music today. One of the great things about it was that to get it I had to learn a new key, but hey, this is exactly what I have been looking for: a piece of music that is quite a ways beyond my skill level that intrigues me, and I found it, and I got it and it was cool! I should record it and set it as my new song, but not tonight. I still sound terrible, and I have another 1000 words to write on my very large paper tonight if I am going to keep up with my quota... I think I am going to need more data by the end of this mess.

A Hair Straightening Experience

I finally have time to update! Cool. This last week I quite literally had a hair straightening experience. My hair was straight. You want the story? Ok. It all started in Economics several days ago. A girl I know decided that she wanted to see what I looked like with straight hair, so she announced that she was going to straighten my hair the next day in British Lit (we were watching some Shakespeare thing). So the next day I wandered into class, and she pulls out all this freaky equipment and starts clipping it all together. Eventually, she was up and running, and she got all my hair straight. The result?
Funny, huh? I should get a perm. It is perfect rock god hair.

What a Day!

Weekend rather. Wednesday was school, school was good, played volleyball after school, worked on spiking, came home, led youth group, went to bed. Slept in. Woke up late (ten or so) worked on homework and such for five hours. Played Ultimate Frisbee for two hours. Came home with a friend (Jeffrey). Worked on a RPG we are making together. He spent the night. Next morning is church. After church is church picnic, with another game of ultimate and a game of volleyball. Get home with six friends. Test our RPG game for two and a half hours with friends. Update blog. Go to bed. I am all sore from all this running and jumping and throwing and catching, and my brain is dead from one hard core thinking session after another (my calculator program that is supposed to calculate die rolls for me is still not working, four versions latter...) and several major revisions have been made to our RPG. I can't think straight anymore, so if you want an analysis of how the RPG test run went, you can go to Jeffrey's blog, which is fortunately already linked. I hurt all over. Good night.

I'm Flying!

Whee! 256kbps internet! (Be though silent all you people with mad fast internet.) everything goes twice as fast as before! I am feeling the inexorable call of research...gotta run. Sorry people.

All Alone

Well, Abe went to Bab al Mandab for 10 days, Mom and Dad went hiking with some visitors for the next day and a half, Peter and Lydia are spending the night elsewhere, and I've got the house. I am considering moving my amp downstairs and really blaring pieces of my music collection over it. I could play some of the really heavy ones that the rest of my family doesn't appreciate too with out any complaints... Demon Hunter, here we come. I am looking forwards to being a bachelor. Hahaha! I could also make an addition to Xebec... We shall see. The day stretches full of possibilities before me...

Violin Run In

Well, I forgot my guitar to band class today, so I had to make due with a violin. Curious things them. First you get this thing and you put it under your chin. Then you look at it. Then you take this stick thing with more strings on it, and to produce horrid noises, you rub the strings on the stick thing on the strings of the violin thing.

Half an hour latter, I was able to quasi sight read the simplest of songs. If you gave me an hour and a half or so in a quiet place with a stick thing, a violin, and some music, I should be able to figure the basics out. My intonation was terrible, but I have a great ear for that kind of thing. It was one of the things I was born with: the ability to hear these really irritating out of tune things that nobody else can hear. It drives me mad. I was nearly ready to beat the violin thing against a wall and break the stick thing over my knee by the end of it all. (out of tune noise is one of the best ways to irritate me.)

Something May Be Wrong...

I just finished taking a shower, and instead of trying to put my shirt over my head like I'm supposed to, I for some reason tried to wear them like pants. I was busy fantasizing about beating up robbers in a break in. I woke up when I realized that my foot wasn't fitting. I then began to worry about the state of my mind. I tried math. Things seemed to be working, but then, has two plus two always equaled four? I asked Dad. He said yes. However, he then said, "but if you had said five I think I might have said yes to that too," which got me even more confused and worried, so I called after him, "so is it four or five?" no response. This is where you can help. Is two plus two five, or is it really four after all?

A Holiday from Heck

That about sums it up. I have done a large amount of school work on almost every day of this week off. Tomorrow school starts up again, and I still have a 1200 word paper to write that is due tomorrow. The econ project that has been killing me for the past several days is mostly out of the way now, all I have to do is rehearse my lines and wave pieces of paper around now before I give the presentation. If we don't get an A on this project I am going to go postal. The type in a school. The one day that I did nothing was the very first day of this crazy "vacation." I have done more work this week than on a normal week that had school. Largely school is when they teach you stuff, you don't actually work, its the homework afterwards, of which I have been doing an inordinate amount. The goal of teachers is to kill seniors. I am convinced.

Ultimate Dinosaurs

I just got back from ultimate Frisbee, where I ran around in circles for two hours straight, attacking my team with a piece of plastic. I hit Keith's hand today. Most people don't come back for seconds... I throw fairly hard. I love that game, but for some reason nobody was playing very well, so it was a sort of muted fun.

Ok, I just finished listening to "kingdom of the Dinosaurs" by five iron frenzy. However, it is far too stupid to update. This guy just yells "kingdom of the Dinosaurs" again and again to this stomping tuba music in the back that is not all that well orchestrated... I have no idea why I just listened to that. Don't listen to it unless you need a sanity check. If you think this is good music, you failed. This is kinda like the insanity test: http://www.owenrudge.net/various/insanity.htm I crack up every time... Legally insane.

Engine Error

Well, dad has been fooling with his internet security things again, and there is now this big huge bar that usually says "Fraud monitoring is on" across the top. However, whenever I go to my blog, it says Engine error. From this I can make paranoid conclusions:

Something has hacked into my blog and now steals everyone's credit card number.

Norton is messing up again.

The Aliens are after me again.

Speaking of different things on the computer, we got iTunes 7. I love it. It has this lovely album art viewing mode that is just downright gorgeous. I should upload all my album art just so that I can enjoy it. Apple has some zen masters designing their products. Nobody can use anything else with them, but they just work so well. (for the most part. I have this ability to crash apples just by sitting down in front of them, but then Jeffrey can crash a windows in exactly the same way.)

I am in the process of downloading Csound. I have no clue what it does just yet, however, I hope I can do some sound synthesis with it, and if it meshes with Audacity I will be most pleased. It is 18 megs (a big file for my connection). Be quiet all you people with mad fast internet. I have very little talent in the realm of music, I mostly like to make noise. I recorded one thing and turned it into mp3 using iTunes, and one day it came up when I had it randomly playing through the library. Mom came in and said, "Turn that noise off!" maybe its me, maybe its my family, or maybe I need to find a whole bunch of people who are as musically stupid as I am and make noise together.

Bab Al Yemen

Wednesday, I went to the old city with some of my friends. It is Ramadan, so we went at about 10 pm. It was packed. We wandered around Bab Al Yemen for a while, and bought a cake of sugar (the red kind is best) looked at silver antiques (don't get me wrong here, they were like silver swords and guns from before the civil war and stuff like that) Then I bought fireworks. I am physically incapable of entering the old city without buying fireworks. I just can't. Unfortunately, they didn't have any corsairs... I had to make do with double charge explosives that are nowhere near as powerful... Oh well, I guess you can't have your kiyak and heated too.

YEAH!!!!

I GOT ACCEPTED TO PURDUE!!! YEAH! And as a result, after a dull day full of computer failures, I am now hyper. Once I got off of those abominable Apples everything seemed to work fine, so I am feeling good, and I can no longer type. At all. In celebration, I am going to download some more stuff by RED. I just can't get over the brilliance of their music. Regardless of my new prestige in my life as a senior in high school, I still have to take the confounded SAT again, and on Saturday, so pray that I don't batch it any worse than I already did.

Flames

In, well, my hair. I'm fine, no one seemed to notice whatever missing hair there is and Mom and Dad don't know yet. Here's what happened so you can all laugh at me with me. (I don't doubt that Jeffrey will laugh loudest). Last night the power was out and I was working on posting calculator code on my physics blog with what remaining battery power was left to me, and I had two candles lit sitting right next to my calculator so I could see what I was doing. I heard a snapping sound, and thought, 'The candles are popping.' I looked up. Sure enough, they were snapping happily away. I looked down again, as the thought, 'my hair might be burning,' passed through some dark recess of my mind (of which there are many). Suddenly, ash began to drift downwards ever so slowly and covered the desk with blackened curled up hairs. A feeling of intense alarm swept through me as the aroma of burnt hair swept past my nostrils. The next cognitive thing I did was reach up and see if it was still burning. It wasn't, so I went back to studying in a room that didn't smell quite as good as it did before and with a little more "dust" so to speak, laying around.

On a more serious note though, I have a lot of work to do for the day after tomorrow (the ninth of whatever month it is...I really should get myself a watch that tells me the month as well as the day... Unfortunately, Casio builds stuff for smart people who can keep track of things like months, and Casio is the only brand of watch I can't shred within six weeks...I should get a job working for a watch company. If the watch survives me for a year its well worthy of being sold.) And I have no clue how I am going to get it all done, so I will log off and get back to work. Prayers would be appreciated.

Math at its Muddiest

Today several fun and interesting things happened, but first and foremost we played Ultimate Frisbee as a youth group again. People are learning. Fast. Today there was much more running, throws were lower and faster, catches were more consistent, and there was more movement, less endzone sitting. We will have a Frisbee game by the end of the year, and I am looking forwards to it. In fact, despite how I hate running, I have started, so I can be in shape for Frisbee. But I digress. This is not math. Later this evening, we had a "Quiz" random facts about just about anything. We had one "Joker" we could place as we like, and being a calculus student I was saving our joker for math. What happens? Instead of being limits and derivatives and functions and all that fun stuff, its how many earrings does Denese wear, times the number of stars on the Australian flag. Irritation. Intense irritation. Not being so observant we go 20% right out of 10. Mega bad. Bleah. It was not math it was simple arithmetic and observation. Oh well. Next time I won't put it on math.

So Thats why Lawyers are rich...

My dad sent me this really funny thing about salaries I got a kick out of it.

Dilbert's "Salary Theorem" states that "Engineers and scientists can never earn as much as business executives, sales people, accountants and especially liberal arts majors." This theorem can now be supported by a mathematical equation based on the following two well known postulates:

Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power. Postulate 2: Time is Money.

As everyengineer knows: Power = Work / Time.

Since: Knowledge = Power, then Knowledge = Work / Time, and Time =Money, then Knowledge = Work / Money.

Solving for Money, we get: Money = Work / Knowledge. Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of work done.

I'm Not Alright

Just today I got this amazing cd from a good friend who is now in America: X 2006. I loved this song so much, plus I figured it was about time to change it. I have heard this song somewhere before, but I have no clue where...This is bothering me. At any rate, wherever I have heard it, it is by Sanctus Real. Aurellentia is still open to exploration should anyone be feeling ready for what I hope will be a fantastic journey.

Aurellentia

I am trying out beta version of blogger, and it is interesting. Very simmilar to Blogger, and you have to have a gmail address to try it, but I am trying it all the same. While fooling with it (before I put all my blogs over) I am going to follow the life of a fictional character through a war in Antarctica from before the last ice age: the magical land of Aurellentia. I have linked it if you care to follow.

Thursday

Ok, this is a tad late, but here goes. I had a cool last weekend. It was three days, due to Yemeni elections. Apparently, the army was used to influence voters out in the east where they still run around with machine guns most of the time, and I have heard rumors of terrorists and such, but over all its been purdy quiet...Except for last night. Ramadan started yesterday, and last night there were fireworks going off, and some one with an AK let off ten or so rounds under my window last night while I was trying to study. This morning at school, Andre was talking about the gun shots he heard last night, and everyone had their explosion stories today... At any rate, what with all the terror threats and such, youth group got cancelled on Wednesday, but when things stayed quiet, we all went out and played Ultimate Frisbee at SIS. I am out of shape. Very out of shape. I am staying after school today to run to get in shape so that I can actually play the crazy game next time. Ah well. I really should be working...

The Unending Flood

of nicknames. I thought that when Jeremy and Melanie left the tide would at least recede, but no. Kieth and Ms. Morieka have taken over for her. I am now "Bush" and "Hair" respectively. Sigh. Oh well, I guess it is simply part of the shape of the universe.

Word Recognition Software

I have done it. My calculator now recognizes three words: Yes, No, and Dunno, and responds to them. I am quite proud of it. I can program it to recognize more words, but it gets hairy fast. What I did was I assigned numbers to letters and then had the words (when multiplied together) demand responses. However, if I start doing long words and letters like z, the numbers will rack up in a big hurry and I will wind up writting a really buggy program. It works. I'm happy. Enough said.

Quasi English

After youth group this week (a lot of my life revolves around youth group, so chances are you will be hearing about it a lot) we were taking a taxi home. We found one for a reasonable price and got in. For all my Yemeni readers, we had one of those drivers that have had lessons in english, and for my non Yemeni readers, this involves bouncing back and forth in the two languages randomly. At any rate, we got about half way home before we stopped at this traffic light, and this big lalualui (land cruiser) pulls out from the right, drives around in a circle in the intersection, and then promptly stopped, hood to hood, with our taxi. I started to laugh, it was such a Yemeni move. At any rate, our taxi driver decides its time to show off his linguistic skill, raises his hands in a gesture of incomprehension, and says "What the fxxxing you?" I thought, yeah, I'm about as confused, but I didn't say it, I just laughed harder as the lalualui backed up, dodged two motorbikes in the middle of the intersection, and tore off back in the direction he had come from. I got a kick out of it. Its these little things that I live for.

Calculator Dependency

I have been developing bad habits. Lately, I have discovered that I can't do math unless I have my calculator sitting beside me with the cover off and turned on. It just has to be there for me to be able to think for some reason. Today, I turned it on and left it while I did my homework, even though I didn't use it once. Last night I tried to program it, but the manual is poorly written, so I guess I will just have to fool with it for several hours before I get it. I figured out how to do if/then functions physics this morning while I was only sorta paying attention.

Hell on Wheels

Normally I am not a car fanatic, sure I know the cls and the cls 500, several different classes of Lexus and other nice cars, but I have beheld something so massive, so incredible, so blooming fast I just had to show you: It is called the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 and is quite possibly the fastest car out there. I first saw it in an article that was titled: 1000 Horsepower. Any Questions? The rest would probably bore any one but a car fanatic, but here are some pix, to give you an idea of what the crazy thing looks like. I said I wouldn't go into details but I can't help myself. The blooming car goes over 400 kph at top speed and can last for 12 minutes on a full tank of fuel. At top speed, it can come to a complete stop in 10 seconds, but it takes it a kilometer to do so. This beast is the engine, which delivers 1001 metric horse powers, and should be made illegal except to me.
This is probably not at 400 k's, but you get something of an idea on the incredible velocity attainable by this beast. I'll quote from the magazine one last time before I conclude: To go beyond 375 kph (233 mph), the driver must stop the car, insert a special key, and go through a checklist ("Seatbelts, check; oil, check; last will and testament, check"). There are only 300 of these purdy things out, and that's it. They also run at 1.7 million us bucks, just in case anyone really wanted one, but where you would go to get one I don't know.

Dragon Slayers

Last night we had our first youth group of the year (my last year in youth group... sad. Very sad) I led (that didn't go as smoothly as could be desired) and Mr. Saeli spoke, calling us to be Dragon Slayers for Christ. He called us to fight the 'Dragon, that serpent, who is Satan, the Devil' at school, home, in our minds. I

I have just discovered something wonderful: internet radio. http://eternaltrance.temp.fm is great, provided you like euro trance, dance, house, that kind of thing.

Today Abe and I went out to school despite the fact that its a weekend here and worked on the scorpion project from last year. That is the coolest class I have ever had. I mean, how many of you people out there know even the theory behind welding without having to look it up, and how many of you have actually used a welder for hours on end making something out of metal? And fiberglass? How about bondo? all awesome. I now have fiberglass all through my left forarm, and it itches, but that's fine, a price paid for a cool class.

The End of the Beginning, and the Beginning of the End

Well folks, that was the last day of our first week of school. Guess what? I'm dying. By the end of the school year (just another 172 days away) I am going to have lost it completely and will be terminally insane. Despite all that, I am learning how to play classical guitar. While practice is boring, the results are quite exciting. I may actually become something of a proficient musician by the time I die, or loose it, whichever comes first. Looking at the year, chances are leaning strongly to the latter.

Murder

There is a difference between your senior year and all the rest of highschool. Your teachers are all trying to kill you. Research, Econ/Gov, British lit, Physics, AP Lit, AP Calc, and Music are all these huge classes that I really want to do well in, yet they rain down busy work on me. In addition to that I have Year book, and that looks like it will just consume time without really doing anything of profit. I have had more homework in this first week than I had in a month last year. This does not bode well, in fact, I should be doing it now. Drool later dhogs.

School and Rain

Yesterday, school started. In ways this is good, others, it is bad. I am now a senior. It feels no different, we are not special in any way, we just get to take cool classes like AP Calculus. Shiver. I got Jeremy's old book, I hope I can live up to his legacy. I am also one of three students responsible for putting together the yearbook this year. I am afraid that things might fall apart ever so slightly. I am also unsure as to our advisor (homeroom teacher person) because he doesn't do anything until after the bell has rung for us to go to our classes, and so Andry and I didn't get our scedules because a certain irate physics teacher wanted all his students in class imediately.

It has also been raining. To all you non Arab/arab afeliated types out there, in Yemen, this is viewed as a good thing, a blessing, because it happens so infrequently, and the land needs it so badly. It looks like it might even rain twice today! Once before school this morning, and the skies are gray and it smells like rain again now.

Explosions and Such Like

Well, our trip back from America was exciting! We were three quarters of the way over the Atlantic when the port engine burst into flames! Fortunately for us, we had a brilliant pilot and there was a aircraft carrier directly under us, and we crashed into the water and they pulled us out (those life jackets ARE hard to take off...) and then, to get the rest of the way, we went jetskiing...
you can't see it, but all our bags are tied on in the plume behind the aircraft. After that daring (and very fun (well, mom didn't like it)) adventure, we had very little layover time in Germany, but the next airplane also had issues, and we wound up splashing into the red sea, and were attacked by pirates! But, living in the ends of the earth, they fell off the edge:
I am not quite sure how we got out of that one, but mom is really quite good with her camera. Then there was a forty day hike over the mountains of the west side of the Arabian peninsula with nothing to eat but airplane food. (I hope this paints a dire enough picture for you...) before we made it back safe if not quite mentally sound.

U want the really story? Well, that one is much more boring. We got on an airplane flew to Germany, had a 6 or 7 hour layover, flew to Cairo, and then here to Yemen. No pirates, no jetskiing, no edge of the earth, but it is good to sleep in my own bed and use my own amp with my guitar.

The Twenty First

At least it might be. What month is it anyway? Moving on, I became a chimney sweep today! Sounds exciting, right? Well, folks, hate to break it to you, but its pretty dull. Basically, there is a mess in the chimney, so you knock it out by beating a heavy chain around on the inside of the chimney for 10 minutes or so to knock all the soot and gunk out, but, you guessed it, the mess is not gone, it just moved. Now it is in the fireplace and you have to clean that out, and you have to fool with the thing halfway up the chimney that controls airflow and all that, not a lot of fun. Then, you have to get the broom out and sweep it all out of the fireplace, and it can't touch anything, cause it will get black gunk over it, but supposedly it is now good luck to either shake my hand or to have me blow you a kiss, but the latter haven't been acquirable, even on the black market, for the past several years or so...

At any rate, I think that Andrew and I managed to deduce not so mathematically and logically that the fifth dimension is the multiverse, but that leaves very little for the sixth... And the multiverse is so two dimensional, but to understand it, you have to know just enough quantum mechanics to confuse you, and we know less, so we don't get it either.

Hey, if you guys want cool backgrounds for your computers, go to google images, and type in fractal flames and see what you get.

Ill-M-I

Jeremy, this song goes out for u man! (I am not sure that it uploaded right, I am on dial up, I'll check it when I get on a beter conection)

Lafayette

I just finished a many hour long car trip from Lafayette to somewhere in the middle of a retirement sector in Tennessee. However, despite the dull drudgery of that statement, the last three or so days have been undiluted, unadulterated, pure, fun. (Whether or not Andrew echoes this I know not, suffice for the moment that I enjoyed it) We played music, blew digital enemies off the face of digital never-never land into alternate realities, discussed possible science fiction tales, watched Pirates II, went bowling, and got ice cream. Day one was a church dinner, and I got to see friends one last time before we left, while eating very good food. Day two, we fooled with each other's musical compositions, (or rather, Andrew fooled with mine, his were slightly more complex than my prehensile grasp of music, so I left them...) We blew digital bad guys into digital astral who knows where on the computer, and then watched pirates II late at night. The next morning, we got up at the crack of noon, or rather, the crack of 11:00 or so. I think I am a minute or two off, but that matters not in the cosmic swing of the multiverse...(hopefully) and went out to Taco Bell, which was a first for me. I had never had whatever I ate at that place before. It was really good though, reminiscent of a creation in Yemen know otherwise as a Shwarma. (Semitic languages don't sound so good to English ears...) We got back, went to Paul's house, and played music Andrew did piano, Paul did base, and I of course played my beloved Kiara who is NOT named after the actress. (things I discovered while watching pirates II a second time. Needless to say this caused some amusement with certain more culture versed individuals, and will probably continue to do so...) I could play music forever... Maybe I should be a rock star... nah, mom would kill me...Just on the side? No, she will kill you! Hmm, maybe this shirt is having an effect on me...(it says "demented" in large letters across the front...) Anyway, that was three days in 77 square inches.

any ideas, concepts, or implied affiliations are copyrighted, but I won't take any responsibility for them either, so they are probably just going to sit here as a result of my irritation with the crazy legal system in the aforesaid country...At least, I think it was aforesaid...I had to have mentioned the US somewhere on this blog...

Glorious Ping Pong

Today Mom and Peter and Lydia all went to Tennessee or somewhere thereabouts. Yesterday, Dad went to Yemen, and that left Abraham and myself at my grandparents, and they felt obliged to entertain us for some reason, so they took us to the library and I finally got Dune Messiah, by Frank Herbert, a book I have wanted to read for the past year and a half. (So far it is living up to its predecessor: its loaded with subtlety and complexity in a speculative fiction matrix: what could be better?) After that, we went to a fitness center which had, glory of glories, a ping pong table I played my second sport this summer. The first was ultimate Frisbee out at the Kesslers, and this was the second. (very sad showing, I was hoping to play American football and some other things as well, but all the respectable teens have all gone off and gotten jobs, and the rest sit entranced in front of their Xbox.) Anyway, I played for an hour and a half or so, and I feel great. I had to play with standard American paddles which are like wood. No good, considering that I had one of my now three paddles, and Abe had his at our grandparents house. (one of my four paddles broke. Horrible.) But I got on, and I realized that I am out of shape. Very out of shape. Not a surprise though, considering the amount I have not been exercising. This was kind of a random post, but hey, I guess we are all allowed a small amount of insanity at least.

The Beast Within...

Recently, I saw a car that had a sticker on the side of the door that read "When all else fails, READ INSTRUCTIONS" I discovered certain reasons for the sticker as well. As repulsive as the idea is, there are reasons for it: it works. I have now had my Digitech RP 80 for a year, but I only used the factory presets that it had, oblivious to the wide range of wahs, flangers, amp models, pickup simulators, expressions, reverb settings, noise gates, and choruses available to me at the touch of a button or three. Presently, I have designed several settings, but I don't really like any of them, but the wahs are fun... very fun.

Camping

Camping is nonsensical. Why create civilization if the only point of it is to get away from it? Besides, civilization is good: it has electricity, computers, music, IM, email, soft beds, and toilets that don't stink and aren't in a building far away where you have to walk to get there, and when you pull up the lid on a toilet in civilization, you can't see this cess pool, sitting turgedly there, putrifying the place. Besides all these good resons not to go camping, all my friends, whether in Yemen or America, are all in some form of civilization. This ends my tirade on camping.

Despite all that though, there was one good thing about camping: we got to go jet skiing. Those things are fun! Dad got on, and took off for the far shore, going at about 4/5 throtle, turned around, and came back, same speed. He did get up to full throtle for a while, but he settled back down. I got on, and floored it, and went in circles, and figure eights, and every other kinky geometric shape I could think of. While I was using the monster given to me the way it was designed to be used, Dad fell off. I wasn't trying to or anything, but that doesn't stop me from feeling really good about it afterwards. I think I also terrified my mom, but I was going slow and wasn't being nuts, so that was kinda bad I think, but the rest of it was awesome. You would hit a wave, and have to eat it you were going so fast, spray shooting up in an arc from your sides...Awesome in every way.

One last thing. The Michigan dunes. They are tinny. If you have ever been there, immagine something about three times taller and twice as steep composed of perfectly dry, powdered sand, you have Socotra's dunes. The clossest thing to the dunes on Socotra was the glacer hill thingie, but even they fell short of Socotra's dunes, and these were half rock and on a rock, and thus were cheating, but then, you can't expect all of plannet earth to be as good as Socotra...

His Very Own Instrumental...

Yesterday evening I went with my cousin Kate and my two brothers to see one of Kate's friends perform at the county fair. That was really neat. We got there, and I saw all this equipment piled up, two footpedals, (both boss. That name didn't connect at this stage...), an acoustic guitar, a bass guitar, and then some other smaller instruments, a recorder, a tom tom drum thing, a triangle, and some other small stuff. Any way, he set up all his stuff, and started playing. He had a hilarious song about proposing to a girl on Halloween when she was dressed up as a ghost or something, and he had another one about how the medicine and drug industry is in league with doctors to get rich off of us, but that isn't what I want to talk about. The two pedals that I mentioned before. One of them was the boss me-50 (not the bass model) and the other was the boss looping station, which I didn't notice at the time. Both pedals packed a walloping punch though. When I first got there, I looked at his instruments and I said to myself, no electric. He had it. You just couldn't see it. It was disguised as an acoustic guitar and a pedal. He could make that thing scream, and wail, and everything else. It was awesome. Being an amateur guitarist, I really could appreciate the kind of effort he put into learning that instrument. He was incredible. The second pedal though. He would sit down, and push buttons on the pedal, and then sit down with his drum. He would play the drum for a while, and then put it down, but the drums kept going. He then struck a triangle at certain choice moments, before putting that down and puttering around for a while. Meanwhile, the drum and the triangle are still going off. By the end of the song, he would have thrown in another two drums, a tambourine, a recorder, his base guitar, some beat boxing or vocals, and of course some acoustic and electric guitar. It was fun to listen to. I could have sat there all night, but Kate had to go to bed because she had an early appointment at her job this morning and needed sleep and peter was kinda stoned, despite the noise. I had never seen a one man instrumental before, but I would love to see one again. He has an album out, I am going to see if I can get my hands on it...

Chips and Travel and Music

I have made a midyears resolution: I am not eating any more chips. Period. I was on a boat trip out to the middle of a lake, and we stopped in this backwater and ate lunch. While eating, I accidentally dropped a chip into the lake, and then watched in horror as it created an oil slick. Five minutes latter, I looked over the edge of the boat again, and grease was still comming off of it just as fast as it was before, with no apparent decrease in speed or anything. I was revolted, and decided that I didn't need that kind of food, and I have given up potato chips. Don't get me wrong here, they taste fine, it's just that it is disgusting. I have no problem with them health wise (as this post makes it sound I guess) but I was merely revolted, thus no more chips. Laugh all you like. (Jeffrey will thats for sure.)

Today, we traveled from TN to IN. A distance of about an inch on my screen. It took eight hours in the car, and I think I left my AP student handbook at my grandparents house, and I need it to get my scores. Mega major bummer. To make up for that stupid cosmic twist of Fate, Fate granted me cable internet. Wicked fast, and on 24/7. Gorgeous.

On a musical side, my cousin and my cousin's friend played my cousin's friend's music (his own composition. His name was Jeremy, and my cousin is Kate for simplification in later posts if they make it.) They are really good. They left for a recording studio this evening to record some of their music. I should be able to get some m1n15t3r onto my blog here as well, as upload times will be much reduced. I could also put up the latest Xebec song depending on comments.

m1n15t3r

Its a band, or rather a guy, and the name is pronounced minister I think. With a computer. No humans at all, either singing, or playing instruments. Just him and his computer. I am not on my computer, and I don't have all the audio juggling tech that I have at my finger tips on her, so I can't post his song for a while. Bummer. If you like metal kinda stuff, go to http://music.download.com/m1n15t3r/3615-8433_32-100584710.html?Tag=MDL_artist_tab_apsongs for a couple of free downloads. I recommend the Crunch. I am not completely sure how he made this, but I have tried to do stuff like this and it always falls apart as soon as I try to do anything. My most successful attempt was me programming the computer to play specific wavelengths with specific distortion... I got about 30 seconds of really bad sounding noise with a cruddy tick, tick, tick for a beat (I even tried drawing the sound patterns: a horrible failure) before I gave up. This guy is a genius, admittedly he is using different tools and programs, but all the same, this is really cool.

Enough!

That's it, enough. I am not an American, and I am sick and tired of hearing about patriotism and nationalism and the fourth of July, and it isn't even here yet, and it won't be for two days. I am going to go and buy black clothes, black lip stick, black nail polish, and some chains, and wear it all! I am going to embrace the anarchist within me! Of course, I have no expectations that anyone will appreciate any of it, but hey, I feel like expressing myself.

Friends and Relations

Yesterday night, a whole bunch of friends and relations of the Crowders (my mom's parents) came over, and most of them were excellent cooks, and the meal was great. After the meal, we all went in to the piano, and mom played the piano, I played guitar (Abe has a new, very nice, very expensive acoustic guitar), and Grandpa played violin. I didn't think we sounded too bad, but then that was because I played quietly. Mom has been playing piano for nearly forty years now...And she is really good, so she held things together. We played some hymns, and people sang, and we had a very nice evening, despite the fact that I was supposed to know everyone, but really didn't. The hymns that we pulled off sounded great. The funniest thing that evening was this funky lady with shortish kinda bobbed red hair who came up to me grabbed my cheeks and went, "You're cute!" before turning three hundred and sixty degrees around in a circle as I fell over backwards. (I didn't quite hit the floor...) After she had turned her circle, she said, "I'm going to steal you and take you to my church for all the girls to look at!" which was worse. I mean, what do you say to that? All that came to my poor beleaguered mind was: someone make her go away, but you couldn't say that, least of all directly to her face. Anyway, I am still trying to recover from that harrowing experience.

Of psychology and Aquariums

I know, I know, a weird mix, and it doesn't sound interesting, but that's my life at the moment. I think to stay alive mentally, and I was taken to a really nice aquarium, so here goes. I won't even talk about psychology, despite the fact that I could, I just thought I would use the word, as it is impressive. At the moment, we are staying with my grandparents in Tennessee, in a retirement area, where 50% of the population is over the age of 50, and then a good 75% of the rest is over 30. The result of that is that there are no teens living in the area with two exceptions, me and my brother Abraham. The end result of that is that there are two very bored teens in Tennessee. We are good brothers, we understand accouter and we get along great, but family is family, and you just want to get away from it occasionally, especially if your family includes six little kids, both cousins and otherwise, as well as multiple aunts and uncles and other long lost relatives that you wouldn't even know you had. Any way, there are all these old people in the area, and most of them have had a life of eating well, even the ones under the age of 30, and there are a host of fat people. Large, bloated, distorted, with a natural transportation method reminiscent to that of ducks. I can't wait to go to Indiana where there are teens, and not so many fat, old, grouchy people.

The Aquarium was awesome. There was this one large tank with 3500 some fish in it, including at least 5 two meter long sharks. I can now say that I have had a large shark swim menacingly over me. When you are first introduced to the tank, you are at the top of it and can only see a small part of it, but you keep getting different views of the tank, with new fish and new types of coral and all. At one point close to the end, the path goes under and through the tank, and there are large glass domes to climb in and out of to see the fish, but you can't see the path from outside of the tank, so the path through it was a complete surprise and very cool.

that's it for my life at the moment, try not to die of excitement while reading it.

Timeline & my Girl

I have a new absolute favorite book: Timline, by Michael Crichton. Quantom Mechanics and the medevil ages all in one. The guy is an absolute genius. If you like either quantom mechanics or knights and ladies and whatnot, read it. This book is right up my ally, at any rate. It starts to get really, really good around page 13o. It also has some archeology thrown in.

The second thing is that my purdy black singing girl (guitar) still needs a name. I posted about it in the last post, but only Jeffrey commented. There are some "rules" to the game, although if someone came up with a really neat name outside of the parameters I set up, chances are I would use it. Suggestions would be much appreciated.

Sorry about the really short post, I was just so excited over my new favorite book (I havn't had a favorite book for several years now) that I had to post about it.

In the US with my Guitar

I am not an american. This is something that I have realized quite intensely today and yesterday. I have mostly the same ideisms that the rest of america has, but my values are all off. This is something that I have only come to appreciate recently. The intense focus on individuality and yet at the same time conformity is rather unnerving: everyone has a car, and then drives it. Conformity. And yet every car is different, and they are usually the only person in the car, showing an individual lifestyle.

My guitar needs a name, and its a she. She is dark and chaotic, but she is understanding for the most part. She does have a temper though. I took her appart to bring her with me, and she is still mad at me despite the fact that I stayed up far latter than I should have last night putting her together again. She kept going out of tune when I tried to play her with mom. She was just fine earlier today when it was just the two of us. At any rate, I have considered several names. Darcy, which means dark one, but that is a guy's name. Melanie, which means dark one as well, but I have a friend by that name and I don't want to 1. insult her. 2. give her ideas. 3. insult her friend and give him ideas. That said. I need a name for her. She is a Yamaha solid body electric with a black finish and a white pickguard. She is alder, with a maple neck and a rosewood fingerboard. She's got two sets of single coil pickups and one humbucker, and she is in need of a name.

I am Going in Circles

Or at least it feels like it. This is going to be a fast one: I still have to pack, and we get on the plane tonight, lol. I just finished school! Yeah! Mega-wicked awesome! I am now a senior.

We leave for the states tonight, without a good chance to say goodbye to friends I have known a decade and longer and may not be able see again ever. Bad! Mega-wicked terrible!

This is my fiftieth post! I have hung on to this thing much longer than I thought I would. I am usually a jumpy kinda guy, my dad describes me in all seriousness as obsesive compulsive for new stuff. I try everything, and then hang onto the really good stuff, like guitar, this blog incidentally, and several creative pastimes of mine. It is kinda nice to be able to talk on this thing, to have a voice, albeit a small one.

Have to go pack, have to say goodbyes, have to finish cleaning my room, have to say goodbye to my old life. If you actually want to read something, read the post below this one.

Last Weekend

Last weekend was hectic, as I believe the list showed. At any rate, The last two days have been even busier: I did four Pre Calculus homeworks in the time allotted for one in a heroic (maybe) attempt to get an academic award. Anyway, that is now over with, and all I have left is a test over two presidents and a vocab quiz before I am DONE!

I don't know why I am actually doing this, but I will give a review of Narnia for our Phantom... Narnia was great. The witch was by far the coolest character. The Bull was also really cool, and the centaurs were done very well indeed. The graphics were great, and it hardly deviated at all from the story. They didn't know much about the language of weapons though, because when Peter arrives in Aslan's camp he pulls out his sword and waves it around: a sign of contempt as well as a chalange: Basically, he was saying come and get me, I am hostile to you, I have not come in peace and I can take you all on all at once. Also, at the very beginning of the battle at the end, He pulls out his sword and then gives the order to charge, but the gryfins fly over...Go figure. Also, the witch should so have barbecued Peter, because she was orders of magnitude better than he was. The other thing was that Aslan's voice was nowhere near deep enough. The only problem that I noticed with the computer graphics was the train at the beginning: the steam looked good except that it was going about four times too fast.

Thermite was bad. Very bad. One of my teachers heard about our enterprise and tried to do it for his science class, so we gave him all of our hard earned aluminum powder, and he pulled iron II oxide off the shelf (which is supposed to do in a pinch) as opposed to iron III oxide. He mixed it up with our aluminum in the right (I think) proportions and then pulled about a foot of magnesium off of the school's supply roll. It wouldn't light. Nothing would light. (besides the matches which we lit with reckless abandon.) We tried everything, nothing worked, so now we have this lethal red powder just sitting in his classroom. I think we didn't have fine enough powder, and I have heard that you can get it out of etch-e-sketches...

Xebec and Zarz of Hazard... I haven't actually done anything with them recently except work on themes and such, although I have worked for several hours on a song for Zarz of Hazard which is nearing a complete stage. I hope to finish writing it today and record it with Tim tomorrow. I also hope to actually do something with Xebec now that my computer has unglitched...

The new song is Song X by East West on the album Light in Guenivere's Garden. We go to the States in two days. I have to (in order of importance) dismantle my guitar (so I can take it with me in my carry on. I really don't like the idea of intentionally taking it apart...) pack and lastly clean up my room and my cupboard and drawers etc. I don't think I will be able to post for a while...

My Weekend

I know this sounds funny to you American types, but I just finished having my last weekend of the school year(weekends here are Thursday-Friday) . I did a lot of stuff: so much that it would not fit nicely on a blog, and it certainly would not be fun to read, so I will give you a list, and then let you vote in the comments, and the top two picked will get posted:

My Friend's Exodus
Frisbee
Abe's birthday party
five hour Mech Warrior Fray
A day of Firsts
Thermite Attempts
Narnia The Movie
Zarz of Hazard
Xebec

Computers and Their Users

A friend of mine showed me a hillarious site on computers. Here is an exerpt for you. I will try to link the site, but I may forget.


Tech Support: "Hello, tech support, can I help you?"
Customer: (slowly) "Oohh." (pause) "I think I did a bad thing."
Tech Support: "Ok, so tell me what's up."
Customer: "Well, my computer was running great. Everything was working fine, I had no problems whatsoever."
Tech Support: "Ok..."
Customer: "So I decided to open it up and have a look inside. I saw all these wires dangling all over the place. There were grey flat ones, and small red, black, and yellow ones, and it seemed like they weren't connected to anything. So I decided to plug them all in."
Tech Support: "Um, you mean you plugged them all in? What did you plug them into?"
Customer: "Well, whatever I could get them to connect to. I saw pins sticking off of some of the boards that didn't have anything on them, so I plugged all the loose wires in to make it run better."
Tech Support: "And then you..."
Customer: "And so I plugged them all in, and I hit the power button, and there was this loud bang and a flash and a puff of smoke. Now it doesn't work at all."
Tech Support: (suppressing all emotion and turning deep crimson) "Can you hold for a minute, please?"
Kaboom! "Explosive" doesn't adequately describe the laughter. I related the story to some co-workers between gasps for breath. Several of the techs and I had quite the laugh fest while he was on hold. After about five minutes of eye-popping, sweat-beading laughter, I wiped away the tears, took a sip of water, and came back on the line. I knew it'd be futile to even attempt to troubleshoot it.
Tech Support: "Ok, well why don't we just have you wrap it up in the original packing material and send it back to us, we'll take care of the whole thing."
And so another computer newbie learned that the extra power supply cables and unused IDE ribbon cables don't have to be plugged in for the computer to work just fine.

here is another one...


Customer: "Hi, I think I've got a problem with my monitor."
Tech Support: "Ah. Do you still have an image?"
Customer: "Yes, best image ever. Thing is, when I look at it from the side, I see red hot components."
Tech Support: "Uh, when you look at it from the SIDE? How can you see any components?"
Customer: "Well, through that big smoking hole."

Ben Hur

Yesterday I went through Ben Hur. I don't recall having ever seen a slower, more boring movie. The chariot race was ok, but aside from that, there was a complete lack of excitement. Judah's relationship with Esther made no sense to me whatsoever at all, and each scene took forever to start: You would see two people facing each other at opposite ends of a hall for say, and they would stand there and look at each other for a minute or two, literally! Before they even started either talking or walking towards each other, or if you were lucky, both at once. If I had a good DVD editing program I could cut 25% of the time out and still have a comprehensive movie, reducing it from the three some hour mammoth that it is to something more manageable. Also, the plot was dull and straight forward. A good plot should not be completely comprehended the first time. There should be some reason to go back and watch it again, and you should enjoy it more the second time through. Most of my favorite books are like that as well. (Dune is a notable example.) At the end of the show I was left wondering what the behemoth was doing parading around with eleven academy awards. My own life is more exciting, which makes me wonder: if that is the case, why am I posting about it?

Graduation

Sorry for the depressing last post. At any rate, I am one of the honor guards for the graduation ceremony next Wednesday (I doubt they chose me for the hair...). Jeremy is graduating, and all the seniors were wandering around in their capes and hat things, and photos were taken. On seeing themselves, Jeremy exclaimed, "foggies! We've become old foggies!" Whether he was pleased or not, I have yet to discern. My cousin's opinion on all the get-up is that it can make anyone look ugly, and I agree. Maybe I am just jealous, but somehow I doubt it: the cape things look hot and restraining, and the hats are designed to blow off in a breeze... Plus, they were not designed to go over an afro, or even just a halfro...

The End of My Life

My life is largely coming to the end of my control. My friends are going to colleges in universities two continents away from me, all my classes next year with one exception (muzik) don't look like any fun, and my summer has been taken away from me (we are trekking all over the states, but we will only spend a week or so in Lafayette, and we will have to go camping... I will probably have to learn to drive sometime, and I have had less time to play computers recently, and it doesn't look like I will be able to play them much in the future either. After I graduate, I will probably wind up in some university some where and discover that it is not all its cracked up to be, and find myself with ten minutes of free time a day, studying the heck out of who knows what, only to get a job and discover that its not all its cracked up to be either... A friend of mine once said this: life sucks, then you die, and I am starting to realize how true that is.

Muzik

Music has arrived in Yemen in two ways recently: firstly, we have DSL, and iTunes is now supported in Yemen, so I downloaded the album Hearts of the Innocent by Kutless the other day, which is, by the way, an awesome album, provided you like Kutless. If you don't know and want to find out, listen to All Alone first, and then decide.

Tonight was the annual piano recital. My mom taught every single last student there, and there was a list. Peter (my little brother) played Concerning Hobbits, and did really well, and both Jeremy and Melanie played brilliantly. In short, the evening was a smashing success.

Last Saturday, the last piano teaching session my mom got in in before the performance tonight had a rather humorous incident: I was listening to a song called Everything was White, by Demon Hunter (a death metal band) and was singing along. Melanie heard me singing, listened to the song, and decided that there was no tune and that I was making it all up. There was a tune though, not in the verse, but in the chorus, but nobody else could hear it. I like that song better than all the other Demon Hunter songs I know because it has a tune, but they thought not. I could be going delusional again (I kept seeing dolphins in Socotra that nobody else saw) Or I could be really stupid and am actually listening to the radio station I heard two years ago and it took that long for my brain to register, or I could have finally gone schitzophrenic and am hearing all my voices speak to me at the same time, and they are all friends, and have decided to make a band together, or aliens could be attacking me with their ray guns because I am so obnoxious, but our metabolisms are so different I am hearing music instead of dying. Well, that last one is a tad outrageous, but you never know!

Me

I must lead a really boring life: no comments on either of my last two posts, not even on the neohippie thing. I was sure that that would at least get some "you freak" comments, but maybe you all are just too polite. Oh well. At any rate, I finally uploaded a picture of me. The halffro is real, not photoshop, just incase you were wondering, and there should probably be more guitar in the picture, but whatever. (The chord is a C#m7 if you were wondering.) I am also not from California as the picture might lead you to believe.

Wednesday

I have had a long day (it is 10:30 at night now.) and I feel like unloading. If you are not interested, or are only reading this because of whatever, don't read it, it is probably desperately boring. At any rate, the day started off normally enough, I went to school, etc, and when the day ended, I played ultimate Frisbee. I had an awesome team: Mr. V., who only dropped one throw, Abe, (my brother) Jeremy, (an amazing athlete), and Rayman, who is another good sports guy. I think we won, but I never keep score, so I don't know. Unfortunately, We were playing with a bunch of guys who didn't really want to play, they had to to get credit in something or something weird like that. One guy (who had an over inflated view of his own abilities and is generally a jerk) gave me a death threat, and was generally in my face, and another fat guy on the other team just sat in the endzone and caught frisbees, and generally made points that shouldn't have been made, so a really good day of Frisbee was made not as enjoyable as it could have been.

After Frisbee, I went home and taught guitar lessons to a friend of mine, which was fun, but slow. When that finished, we all went to youth group, where I saw Jeremy again (youth group is at his house) he was loading things into the back of a car to take to the flea market tomorrow. His books, his computer games, his flashtronII car (which is faster than he is, and he is fast.) his pellet rifles, a lot of his stuff, and I was reminded that he is going to be in university next year, and I am not. My life is moving on, despite all I have done to hold it down and in place.

Youth group was amazing. A guy from the US (that probably sounds funny to you people who are sitting in the US reading this...) came to Yemen and played the piano for us, and he was amazing. Unfortunately, he was playing on a Yamaha clavinova, which is a fairly nice piece of equipment, but is not a real piano... He held a concert yesterday, but I missed it, and I am now regretting it. He apparently played some really nice music there.

After Youth Group, Jeffrey, Justin, Keith and I discussed a blog that we are trying to put together, and it looks like it might work. I think I linked it, it is the RPG blog I think if you are interested in RPGs and whatnot, and I need to send invites to people and whatnot. I have had this idea for a while, and it is coming together so slowly that I sometimes despair of it ever happening.

We took a taxi home, and I got a guy high on qat (a mild narcotic that you chew to get high off of.) who wanted to talk. Unfortunately, while dealing with a second language and a guy who is mumbling, (due to a large mouthful of qat) you don't get very far. He would mumble something, and then I would hear something that sounded like owul-la-laa? Which means is this not correct? And all I could say was La Aarrif, which means I don't know. This went on until we got off.

Before Youth Group, Jeremy gave me a Michael Chriton book to read, (sphere to be precise. Chriton is one of my favorite authors. Technothrillers are awesome.) unfortunately, Abe and I stopped half way home and fed a friend's cat, and I left Sphere on the table in the kitchen next to the cat dish, where it will probably sit until I convince Abe to bring it home the next time he goes to feed the cat.

That was probably dry, but I feel better having written it out. If you read it all, I am amazed, and you need something to do. Kidding. At any rate, good night.

The Order of the Neohippie

Basically, so far, I am the only neohippie, however, our, I mean, my numbers will grow and swell, until we take over the world! Bwahahahahaha! Neohippies don't do drugs, we, I mean I don't smoke, and I keep clean. Everything else is the same though. The big hair, the color schemes, the music, the expressions, (yo, thats like groovy psychedelic man! Those are like awesome vibes! Etc. lol.), the aversion to war (Bush should be nowhere near Iraq.), and the emphasis on peace. We, I mean I again will take over the world! (I can't get it out of my head that I'm the only one. Neohippies are also very concerned with being together apparently...) comment and join our... My (aaaah!) numbers... I mean number. That is depressing: I am a number.

Milk and Honey?

Just last night, while eating my mom's granola with yoghurt and lyles golden syrup, it occurred to me that I was eating curdled milk and synthetic honey, which is hardly what was promised to the Israelites... But then, there was milk and real honey right there waiting for me, so I didn't feel I could complain or anything. The thought just struck me as being rather amusing.

Scratches

I scratched my guitar. It is not a very big scratch, but it is right on the front of the guitar. It is the second scratch I knew about. The first was down next to the plug in, and the third was on the back, but this one is on the front. Fortunately it is small and you can't see it from a meter away, but it is sad just knowing that it is there.

AP Chemistry and Fiberglas

I just finished my AP chemistry exam. I feel so liberated: I don't have to wake up early every weekend to study it, I don't have to fret in my sleep any more about it, I don't have to study it endlessly, I am free! Well, at least for the moment.

Last period I almost got high on Fiberglas resin. That stuff is wicked. If you get it on your gloves, it stays there. If you get it in your brushes, it stays there, and it ruins the brush permanently. Even soaking the brushes in gasoline doesn't do a thing. That stuff is incredible. It hardens in about a quarter of an hour, so you have to work quickly while wearing latex gloves, aprons and gas masks (that don't do anything.)

Hand Cuffs

Today, two of my acquaintances hand cuffed themselves together using real, professional hand cuffs. I don't know where Madian got them, but he didn't have the key either. They then went wandering around the school trying to find someone who could pick the locks. Eventually they made their way into the art room where Mr. Stanton and his class were (I was part of the latter). At any rate, Mr. Stanton looked at the cuffs for a while, then set to work with a calligraphy pen nib, a dissection pin and a jackknife. He eventually got them both out of it, However, the whole concept of locking yourself up when you don't have the key is sorta dumb if you ask me, and definitely funny...

Cars and Evolution and are they Connected?

For the moment, let us all pretend that we are evolutionists. (Something I like to do occasionally. I like to think that it will give me a firmer base to stand on if I ever have to defend my faith.) That roll assumed, let me ask a question, or rather several questions. Why are some human males infatuatted with cars? Where does this trait come from? To carry it on, and not to be sexist, why are human females often so much less interested in cars? Is evolution so fast that the last 80 years, (the amount of time the automobile has been affordable) have markedly changed us, and if so, how is it beneficial to the race as a whole, and to the individual? If it is not, (car accidents are the leading cause of death in the US,) what caused us to be pre-evolved to "like" cars? I have thought of something, but I want to see if you all can come up with something better: I don't want to influence your thoughts before you comment. (hint hint.)

RVA, 6 times 7 and a Four Person IM Session

All my Rift Valley Academy friends are back! They go to Kenya from Yemen to RVA, a boarding school, and I get to see them three times a year or so. It is a really sad system, I lost nearly all friends to the abyss. I lead a sad life. I live in Yemen, away from my friends in America, and then I make friends with all the kids who then vanish into the dark regions of Africa... Oh well, I will only have to go to college in another year or so and have to start all over again... I am really enjoying my time with them while they are here though.

After AP Chemistry yesterday (shivers) I went over to Jeffrey's house where I took tests. I had my blood pressure and pulse measured ten times during the afternoon, and I took a series of multiplication tables. Since I am in more advanced math courses, I haven't practiced my multiplication tables for years, and I had forgotten that six times seven is forty two. The interesting thing about the blood pressure and pulse deal was that I could feel my pulse, and I tried to control it. I am one of those people who likes to be in control of himself, if not the rest of the world around him. With more practice, I might actually be able to control my pulse, but I doubt it.

Just today, I had a four way instant message conversation with Andrew, Abraham, and Peter. Unfortunately, I and both my brothers were on the same computer, so we had to put our initials after everything we said. I think Andrew has consigned me to the loony bin, but then I probably deserved it.

Easter, Battlefront, and Dubabs

Happy Easter everyone! Sadly, I only have today off, I have to go back to school tomorrow, and I had school yesterday, but hey, a day off I would take any day. At any rate, we woke up at 5:30. Bleagh. I am not a morning person, neither am I a late night guy. My preferred state is sleep. After the sunrise service our family came home and finished Captain Blood, and if you like adventure and buckaneering stories, this is a must for you. I won't ruin it, it is by Rafael Sabatini, and you can look it up at many books which I have linked.

After lunch, I headed over to Jeremy's house and we played Battlefront back and forth. Battlefront is a very realistic first or third person shooter, where you are dumped onto a battlefield, given several hundred allies, and told to get as many enemies as you can before going under and having to respawn. You can switch sides and continue, so that is what Jeremy and I did. One death each, back and forth, unfortunately we were on his laptop, and when the power went out and didn't come back on his computer went into hibernation and the match was undetermined...

On the way home I got on a dubab, (a long van that runs a bus rout that you can get on and off anywhere along the rout) one of the easier methods of transportation in the city, and if I am not in a hurry and I am next to the door, one of my favorites, because (if you get a good driver) he goes whizzing in and out and hanging out of the door can get you a nice adrenaline rush... (I am a hopeless adrenaline junkie.) unfortunately, I was in a hurry, I was not next to the door, and the seats were about half as long as I needed them: my knees stuck up over the seat in front of me by about six inches. I had no idea that the blood source to your feet is located in your shin, but it apparently is. When I could stretch my legs again, my left one was gone. I shook it, and it tingled so bad it hurt, so I just left it, and eventually it went numb, before biting me again. My shins are not going to forgive me for a while.

The Second Word and books

I finally got something out of a girl at school. It was a year since she last said anything to me, and that was no. I made the fatal mistake of asking her if she played chess... Complete and utter rejection for an entire year. Several days ago however, she said "Hey." I was so surprised that I looked around me first to make sure that she wasn't talking to someone else, before attempting to get out a "Yo." However, my wits hadn't quite returned in the half second that had passed, and all I got off was a grunt. I don't think that I am very high up on her list of "salvageable males" to use a zits term. Personally, I think that this is simply hilarious, although I don't know why.

Recently our family has been reading Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatinni (I think that is how you spell his name) at any rate, it is by far the craziest tale I have ever heard told, and I must recommend it to you. You can get it for free off of http://www.manybooks.net. (which is, by the way, an excellent site. I'll link it if I remember. Check it out if you are a book lover.)

Thermite, Xebec, and The Zarz of Hazard

I think we are actually going to succeed in making thermite. Thermite is simply aluminum powder and Iron (III) oxide, which you get by pouring bleach on iron. This reaction produces chlorine gas though, so I don't recommend doing it unless out doors in a windy area. All you do is mix the aluminum powder and the Iron (III) oxide in a certain proportion. (I think it is one to one, but I haven't checked it mathematically) at any rate, it burns at temperatures of up to 3000K and can burn underwater or in space, and can allegedly burn through the engine block of a car...

I am presently in three bands. One of them a friend of mine made and called Smile, however, she left and it sort of fell apart. The second is Xebec (which, incidentally is just me), and the Third hasn't actually done anything, but is called the Zarz of Hazard. When I get to America, I think I will join another one, bringing my tally up to four... I am now a teenage rock god... Maybe.

The Anarchist's Cookbook

The Anarchist's Cookbook is not really so anarchist as it is just how to do all sorts of really dumb fun sounding stuff, like how burn a hole through straight through a car's hood, engine block and the asphalt below with just a little thermite... Which they tell you how to make. It is online, go to http://www.everything2.com and then in the search bar type in anarchist cookbook. It should come up with a list of crazy things to do from nitroglycerine, to dynamite, to C4, to thermite, to phone taps, to computer hacking, to vending machine theft, to chlorine gas, to hypnotization, to messing up a MacDonald... The list goes on... It is a great way to blow time. The thermite recipe I think is the easiest, and it is pretty awesome too... Have fun, but try not to knock yourself out...

My Guitar

It busted. The entire socket for the wire came out. Fortunately, I am a tech loving nut case, so I was able to fix the problem, but my brain did freeze up: I couldn't breathe for about five seconds when I saw the problem. It turns out that Yamaha drills this big huge conical hole into the bottom of their guitars that they then cover with this piece of plastic that has the socket in it. They also put in about six inches of extra wire so that when it does fall apart, you can pull it out without completely dismantling the whole thing. I only had to take two screws out to put it back together. Better than before, when I thought that you had to undo five screws to change a string. Turns out that they out thought me there too: there is a grill in the back of the guitar that you can feed new strings through. I now know far more about my guitar than I ever wanted too, probably because it keeps minorly busting. Over all though, I love it, and I play it most days.

I am thinking of posting a picture of me on my blog, but I don't want it to be just any old picture. I want it to be of me and my guitar, and I want it something really alarming, like my face growing out of the pickguard or something. The only problem is that I have this quasi afro that I am afraid I will loose in the black color of the guitar. Ideas would be appreciated.

I don't think that this looks as good on the computer as it does on my paper, but this gets the general idea across. The shell was actually a bit bigger, I goofed when putting the hand in. 

I'm Back!

I went to Socotra. We went around the island by boat. It was so awesome. I had to keep a journal, and then I had to put it into computer, so here it is. Don't read all of it if you value your time...

Day 1
It all started at 6:15 ish at the dome at SIS. I fooled around in the dome for 10 minutes or so before I realized that Mr. Stanton wanted us all in his room to help pack “gorp” and other necessities. When we finished packing things, we all went in and watched the Matrix. I had been trying to watch the Matrix for a long time, and it lived up to my expectations with the exception of the cool fight scene effects. When that finished, we went to the dome and stacked all the mats up and then knocked them down while on tip of the ten to twelve foot pile. After that, everyone except Jonathan and I watched Gladiator, while we discussed the perversities of Battlefront before going to sleep.
Day 2
I had slept for maybe half an hour before the dome erupted around me. Jeremy and Luke had the mats stacked up again, and they had somehow convinced the girls to try it, something I found quite amusing to watch. I tried to sleep for a while, but I gave up after a while, and joined the mayhem. Two rolled around and we loaded all the stuff into the bus, and we drove to the airport. Some hours later, we boarded a 737 and took off for Mukulla. The plane took off and I fell into a coma. We landed in Mukulla what seemed like several minutes later, and then took off again, and I again fell asleep. When the stewardess came by with coffee, I gratefully accepted some, but instead of tasting nice like it usually does, it tasted as if they had been half charcoalized before grinding. I downed it anyway in an attempt to wake up, but I fell asleep again anyway, and woke up just over Socotra. We got off of the plane and collected our stuff before loading it all onto three land rovers which took us to breakfast which took forever to arrive tasted wonderful and burnt my tongue. We stopped by for supplies in Hadibo before loading everything into three boats, which took a while to start moving. Everything seems to take longer here.
Once moving however, things changed a little. I am afraid I started a burn today on my arms and neck because all my bags were in another boat along with my sunscreen. What really captivated my interest however, were the mountains. AT the airport, the mountains were sheer and green, with strangely rounded tops for a Yemeni mountain. (As we drove to the restaurant, I observed that the mountains were green because of shrubs that from the car appeared to be roughly four feet tall on average. We passed through one pass, and spattered evenly over the other side of the mountain were cucumber trees that our driver ID’d for us.) When we got into our boat however, I observed that the mountains were roughly the same shape, but less green. They changed steadily from that to giant rocks to the mountains I know in Sana’a. The only problem with our campsite is that it seems to have been a boat sealing place, because there is tar everywhere, especially between my toes.
I hope this pen has waterproof ink, because some of our stuff got very wet in the boats today. At the moment, we have our tent set up to dry out so it won’t mildew; a phenomenon that I have heard fantastic tales of, but have yet to observe…
Day 3
Today wasn’t quite what it was planned to be: we overshot by a goodly distance before we realized our mistake and set down to camp. Our tent had gotten wet the night before, so we set it up and slept in it to dry it out. Breakfast consisted of a large bowl of Museli: So large an amount that Mr. Stanton implied that I couldn’t eat it all. (I was very hungry: breakfast is a main meal for me.) Once we got clear of the surf in the boats, we could see straight to the bottom. We saw dolphins once off a ways away from us before we stopped for lunch.
We stopped for lunch on this beautiful beach. The beach was perfect, and there were no rocks or anything in the sand. The beach was incredibly level: the waves washed ten to fifteen meters straight in. I read somewhere that you can calculate the average particle radius from the slope of a beach, and vice versa, and that the flatter the beach, the smaller the particles. Whether or not that is true, I don’t know, but the sand was remarkably fine and soft.
After our lunch, a sand castle, attempting to build a human pyramid, and chicken fighting, (something Jonathan had never done) were set off again. The water was still clear as a crystal, and blue as sapphire when we spotted a pod of fifty or so spinner dolphins ahead of us. We could see them breaching surface for air and on occasion, leaping out of the water for the glory of it. After a while, I could see them breaching all around us: one did so between two of our boats, not eight meters away from me, and if you looked down, you could see the dark shapes of their lithe bodies as they sway underneath us. Unfortunately, like all good things, they passed, and we could see them leaping behind us. Abraham caught one on photo leaping. I hope it turns out well.
Dinner was a mess. Team 3 (my team) was responsible for cooking, and we were having baked potatoes and fish. Our team however, being comprised completely of ignorant young men, although ready enough, was far behind Mr. Stanton’s expectations. Nobody (including the fishermen) had ever grilled fish before, but regardless of that, the food was excellent. The potatoes were done to a turn, and loaded with margarine and spready cheese, they were perfect. WE opened canned fruit as well, which was beyond excellent.
Day 4
Today started out well. Breakfast was a mug of instant coffee and two bowls of Museli and my Mom’s granola. Mixed, it is really good. We didn’t have milk mixed up, so I dumped milk powder and water on my breakfast and stirred. Precision is apparently an option, but I couldn’t taste the difference. It was a tad pasty, probably because I crushed the granola. We set off early in an attempt to get the boats away from the heavy surf, which comes in right off the Indian Ocean.
Our teachers noticed that a member of our group wasn’t “pulling his weight,” So he was pulled into our boat for the day. I feel sorry for the poor kid. He may have deserved it, but this is as close to paradises as we are going to get on earth: I have seen dolphins everyday that we have been on Socotra.
I pen this now sitting in the prow of our boat. The spray is beginning to pick up, so I will close for now.
Abdulrahman seemed to perk up after he took a leek, Mr. Stanton did as well, but thin lost the bottle when a wake hit it out of his hand…
The beach we originally shot for we missed by quite a ways: Erher is six to seven hours from where we camped. Our original campsite smelled quite evil, but we moved and the stench left. I managed to get some good swimming in, and I felt much better for it.
Later that evening, we ate chili, which is a misnomer in three ways: the first is, this stuff was hot off the fire, I didn’t burn my tongue, but I nearly did. It is also hot spicy: my stomach was not pleased with my after I finished. A burning sensation in your stomach is a very strange sensation. Thirdly, chili produces a lot of hot air… Apparently it is called a blue angel when it is ignited…
Apparently Abdulrahman and co. invaded our tent while I was away. The reasons were quite random. I surmised that they did so to escape the mosquitoes: they were all well bitten after the last night at the mangroves. Abe and Jonathan thought it was because they were afraid of the crabs, Mrs. V. thought they were trying to steal something, and they said that they were just trying to scare us. I had heard about it, so I planned to remove the tent poles from the tent while they were sleeping, but they were gone by the time I was ready for bed.
Day 5
I had my two bowls of Museli, packed my stuff and our tent and then tried to help Mrs. V. I am afraid that I am not very good a seeing what needs to be done, because Mrs. V. made it quite clear that I was supposed to help, not ask how I should help.
The fishermen said that today is going to be hot, and so far they have been correct on everything, and today looks (and feels) no different. I am afraid I am going to get burnt today.
Today we are trying to get to Erher. Jeremy and Luke both say that it is beautiful, and I am thoroughly looking forwards to it. The girls are too, I think, at least partially because of the alleged shower. My hair is particularly awesome. Melanie had a mirror, and I scared myself by looking into it. Part of it is my sweat thing which is quite fun to wear, and has acquired several new nicknames for myself including Rambo and Ninja. Mr. Stanton has been calling me Sir Gray Ham, which is quite amusing.
I am riding in the girls boat today, and it is very quiet. I think it has something to do with me, but I don’t know.
The girls boat stayed quiet too, so it probably wasn’t me. Melanie and Luke had an umbrella, and we all wound up under it after a while eating gorp and having fun. From the sea, Erher doesn’t look like much: tow giant dunes with a little greenish brown smudge at the bottom. As you get closer, the smudge becomes a lush green and you can see the shower.
The shower is quite amazing: it is this three-inch diameter pipe with no shower cap. You stand there and it blasts you. It is quite remarkable and it feels ever so good. Mrs. V. Said that she felt naked after washing off her coating of salt. Luke gave me some shampoo and I think Melanie would have killed me had I not used it, and the rebellion that my hair had been staging was quelled.
The sand dunes at Erher are so awesome. They just go on and on and on, and when you think that you can go no further, they end, and you look down, and you see the boats in the bay with the wakes spread out behind them and your entire camp fits under your thumb at arms length. Then, you sort of flop onto the dune and slide, meters at a time, down the dune. The dunes are at (conservative estimates) 45 degrees off of level, and it is quite terrifying to sprint down them, and ever so fun to trip. It took all of ten minutes to get to the bottom of the dune.
When we got back, Mr. Stanton showed me how to light a fire with friction. You take one stick of soft wood with a hole in it, and you spin a stick of hard wood with a little sand next to a pile of goat pellets. The method looked like it had promise, so I fooled with it, and tried a list of other things but neither really worked. The most promising method I attempted was rubbing a log with a rock. I got a smell of smoke and a really hot log with a groove in it out of the deal before I gave up.
We had spaghetti… or at least, it looked like spaghetti; but the noodles had the texture, qualities and tastes of wood glue with ash in it, but the sauce was really good, so I ate a lot anyway.
I am hoping to see a whale shark today or tomorrow. Melanie saw one two years ago, here at Erher, and Jeremy saw one last year. So far we have seen dolphins every day, and Mr. Stanton caught a sea turtle, so hopes are high, simply because we have seen everything else as well on this trip.
Day 6
Today we had our first hike. We started in this small village and hiked up into the interior. The only thing that made the hike difficult was the intense heat and humidity. On the way up was a large fresh water pool, and since we were already in our swimming trunks, we all jumped in. The water was cool and ever so refreshing. When Isabella got there, she just waded in she was so hot: shoes, socks, shorts, shirt, sunglasses, and hat. It was hilarious.
At the top of the hike, (which wasn’t much further) there was a lovely airy hut with a breeze and a menu with exorbitant prices. We bought food anyway, and sat down two hours later to a bulletproof goat and really good rice and beans. From the hut you could see a mountain covered with dragon’s blood trees. I bought two bags of incense and a large bag of dragon’s blood for family and friends, and we wandered off among the trees for a while before going back. We stopped at the pool again on the way back for a while again to cool off and to have fun.
The way down from there was fun. Luke, Jeremy and I ran down the mountain, and even taking three breaks, we estimate it took fifteen minutes to go down the mountain it had taken us an hour and a half to get up. I experienced time distortion and scenery blur three times before we got to the bottom. I think I would have died had I tripped once, and I am a firm believer in the immortality of the teenager.
When we got back, it was nearly dark and we had cooking duties. I am afraid that our macaroni and cheese was not as good as Melanie said it was, although it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be at several stages of its creation. Initially it was this onion and garlic loaded goop that was loaded with milk powder and was very runny. After three circles of spready cheese and pepper were stirred in, it boiled and became much thicker. For all the stuff we added, it was surprisingly bland.
Due to our cooking related exploits, we were unable to climb the cliffs above Erher to the cave there. I was really hoping that I would be able to do that, but now it is too late.
I did not see a whale shark today, nor did I see any dolphins, although other members of our party saw them. Today was the first day I have not seen dolphins.
Day 7
We had our second hike today, and it was far hotter today than yesterday. I sweated more than I thought was possible for a human and still be alive. Admittedly I have consumed possibly six liters of water today to make up for it. In comparison, I have never sweated before today, and I may never sweat again. We took a boat to a spot on the shore several kilometers from Erher and then hiked up to a cave in the interior of the island.
The hike was amazing. We were so hot and the air was so still and humid it felt like we were carrying a hot tub on our skin. It was a very interesting sensation. When we finally got to the mouth of the cave, several people wrung sweat from their shirts and got quite a bit out. It was disgusting, terrifying and awesome all at once.
The cave was beautiful. The cave goes three kilometers into a mountain, but we were only allowed to go a third of that, which was sad, because that cave was cool, both literally and figuratively. Huge stalagmites went up, and in other places, massive stalactites hung down, and many of them had met and made massive columns. We refilled our bottles from the lake inside the cave, before we hiked back outside and ate lunch, looking down at the sea, which was possibly two kilometers away, as the crow flies.
After lunch, we hiked down again and surprisingly, this was where I sweated the Mississippi. I think I forgot my sweatband at the cave; I know I missed it coming down. We came down fast, but much slower than yesterday: I didn’t experience time distortion or scenery blur once. Luke, Jeremy and I had all acquired cuts of some kind, so we put sap from a specific tree on our cuts. The sap is supposed to do three things: 1. Clean out the wound. 2. Disinfect the wound. 3. Seal the wound. I couldn’t tell if it had a disinfectant in it, but it did sting when I tried it, the scratches appeared cleaner, and it did form a clearish gauzy seal. I was quite pleased with the arrangement until Melanie arrived, saw our near fatal wounds and put triple antibiotic ointment on them, which removed the aforesaid seal.
Right now we are in the boats heading for Di Hamri, where there are allegedly refrigerators, showers, toilets, and great snorkeling all at once. Tomorrow is free of responsibility (as far as I know) so I am hoping to do some good snorkeling, and maybe read some.
Day 8
Breakfast was tea, beans, bread, and bees. For some reason, our entire campsite was swarming with bees, despite the fact that there were no flowers anywhere within sight and there wasn’t anywhere the bees could build a hive.
Luke and Mrs. V. went scuba diving, and the rest of us went snorkeling. There is a reason Di Hamri is a marine protected area: it is loaded with fish and coral and lobsters and all manner of sea life. I saw a massive lobster, twice to three times the size of lobsters you find in the meat section of Wal-Mart, and maybe fifty species or so of fish. Jonathan saw several groupers, and Mr. Stanton saw an octopus. I also saw a really big clam. When I approached it, it withdrew into itself, and when I blew water at it, it sort of closed up. It was close to a foot long and maybe half that wide, and blue in color.
During the heat of the day we sort of lay comatose on the mats at the campsite in the shade and read and talked and laughed. A lot of us went on introductory scuba dives including Jeremy and Abraham, who went as partners. It was the first time I didn’t have anyone who I was tight with, to communicate with, as we had no cell phone coverage, and my brother and good friend were underwater. It was a rather strange feeling.
Lunch consisted of Pringles: lots of them. Mr. Stanton had bought a case of them, and we hadn’t realized it until yesterday evening, so today we devoured them. We ate them plain and with tuna. That was rather weird, but it was good as well. We also found out that we had three or four large bags of dry hot chocolate, so we dug in with spoons and ate it dry. That was really good, if exceptionally sticky. That stuff stuck to every thing in my mouth, and took forever to get out afterwards.
Around three in the afternoon, Luke and Mrs. V. Went diving again, and Melanie and I went snorkeling. We saw this awesome blue fish with concentric white rings on it, as well as two different species of starfish, three different species of sea urchin, an eel of some description, that we decided was, without a doubt, the most dangerous eel alive, as well as some sort of blue sponge. We also saw a really long thin fish that at it largest was a meter and a half long, and only four or five centimeters in diameter.
When we got out, Luke and Mrs. V. had returned, and they had seen a two-meter long shark. Apparently, it had circled them for a while before deciding that they were dull. I think I would have exited stage left very quickly had I seen a fish that big, regardless of its species, and I don’t think that anything would have been able to catch me either. They also saw an eel that was as big around as Luke’s leg, and as long as a person is tall.
Supper was fish, beans, rice, and bread, and it tasted just wonderful. After supper, we packed as many things as we could to take them to the airport tomorrow and went to bed. We were going to pack things into the cars tonight, but they didn’t come. If they don’t get here early tomorrow, we might not get to the airport on time, but I am not really worried about it. We have been going to bed so early these nights, and waking up so early as well. In a way, it is really nice, but in other ways, it feels so good to sleep in.
Day 9
The cars were here when we woke up, so we rolled our bedding up, packed it into our suitcases and piled them into the cars. There were three land rovers, the same ones that picked us up at the airport, and they had the same drivers, but they had undergone personality changes, or they had been imbued with the spirit of long dead rally racers or something, because we went to the airport at 110 kmph over dirt roads. I was in heaven as we fish tailed the corners and jumped the bumps (of which there were many). As we rounded one of the last corners next to the ocean to the airport, I looked out the windows, and low and behold, there were dolphins. I saw dolphins every day except two, and one of those was because we were in Sana’a and hadn’t even taken off yet. The other was because I wasn’t paying attention, because other people saw dolphins that day.
The flight to Mukulla went off without a hitch, but when we tried to take off for Sana’a, there were many problems, not least of them that the army had an emergency and had to put troops onto the commercial flight. I don’t know if anyone got kicked off of the flight because of it, but there were certainly no empty seats on the flight. I was lucky I got to sit in the same row as Abraham and Jeremy next to a window. Another reason that the flight didn’t take off on time was the fact that there was this addled lady who wouldn’t sit down. I am afraid that I fall far short of her intellectually, because I couldn’t for the life of me understand why she wouldn’t sit down. It made no sense what so ever at all. The third (and last that I know of) reason that the flight was delayed was this guy who sat next to Sofia who fainted because he couldn’t breathe. They told him that he shouldn’t be on the flight, but he said that he was fine (regardless of the fact that he had to be on oxygen to talk) and insisted that he be allowed to fly. That was at the back of the plane though, so I don’t know how it turned out.
When we got back home, I took a shower, and that felt so good that I can recommend the trip simply because you feel so good when you recover from it. My bed was exquisitely soft, and my pillow luxury, and if I wanted it, there was cold water in the refrigerator. Forget the milk and Sprite and Mountain Dew: there was cold water.