For Those Who Stayed up with me....

my bird did come. At 2:45 sharp. We may actually be able to board by 3:15AM, and be off the ground by 4:00 AM. Remarkable. I have really enjoyed this Internet connection, definitely worth the 7 bucks I had to put into it to make it work. I got several hours of entertainment out of it as well as a good long conversation with various family members. I can't wait to see them, I'm only hours away now!

Santa Clause and Anti Clause

Well, I just finished reshuffling my suitcases for my flight back to Yemen. Royal Jordanian is a mess. Yes, they may be cheap, no, you don't really want to fly on them because they have had numerous flight schedule changes, and I have no idea how much it costs to be over weight. So I had to go under the weight limit, and Seeing as I am carrying gifts from two sets of grandparents, an aunt and a family member for Christmas, I felt a good deal like Santa. Unfortunately, due to all the stuff I was trying to get rid of my clothes and other "essentials" before I had to become Anti Clause and start leaving gifts behind. Fortunately I managed to get everything in and situated... Mostly... Minus three or four books, one pair of shoes, two sets of my clothes, my backpack, my guitar amplifier, and a ton of other useless stuff. I think I forgot one of my gifts in my closet in my dorm, and as I am now in Columbus, I can't just pull it out and stuff it in. All the gifts are in at any rate, and I think I managed to get some stuff that will make people happy. It is nice to be able to bring special stuff from overseas, and it does make shopping for gifts a bit easier.

At any rate, I should go spend time with grandparents. Pray for a smooth flight and no random security checks.

WOOT!

I finished my first semester of University. I just have to hold out for another day. I think I have the books, video games and empty pieces of paper to keep my mind off of all this glorious free time. I haven't been this high since... uh... um... A while. (That's sad Graham. I know, but you can shut up. No, you. Go away, there is only supposed to be one personality going on here. What? Why? Just because the semester ended doesn't mean you can utterly loose it. Since when have I lost it? Just now! What? Yes! I'm me, what does that have to do with loosing it? Uh... Only everything? Oh...yeah...about that...forgot... heh, sorry me. So, now that we are done arguing with myself, we can continue our blog.) I now feel the delirium of nearly pure bliss. The only two things disturbing my inner peace (shaky as it is) is the fact that I have to wait a whole week to get on an airplane to go home, and the second is the simple fact that I have a good solid another 7 semesters to go, and they probably only get harder. Oh well, I have a month off now. Time to destroy something.

Life and then the lack there of

A lot has happened in these last few weeks. Classes have been winding down, Tomorrow I pack up my chemistry lab drawer for the year. In ways I feel more alive than ever before, This Christmas I go back to Yemen and party out with my family (odd, no?) as well as a good number of friends that I wasn't entirely sure I would see again. Friends that I might not ever really run into again include the Wrights, Stephen Whitson, the Powers...

Despite all this, there are many things that make weeks very fun. I have been eating breakfast a few days a week with an interesting fellow, very intelligent but bellow par social skills. I think that contributes to us getting along as well as we do. Running into new music has also been a true pleasure. Before the year started I hadn't really heard of Within Temptation, Demons & Wizards, Deathstars, Guano Apes, Rage Against the Machine, Incubus, and Lordi. Half of it is so over the top that its just crazy and funny to listen too, others are more serious and have some good talent like Within Temptation. Others just sort of mesh with my style. Like Demons & Wizards. Its like a nerd group that worked out, and I have the yelling from their rip off of Led Zeppelins Immigrant song echoing in my head. They use a lot more reverb on it and that really worked out for me. When it all comes down to the end of the day, I just gotta go for some good old Kernkraft 400 by Zombie Nation. Making music has been a blast. One evening after a Purdue CORPS rally I hung out with three guitars and two friends and just made some music. In my life, I find very little indeed that is more gratifying than making music with a few friends, and in general, the larger the instrument, the more fun. Pipe organs rock. I should learn the Tuba. Actually, my amp is about that size, I'll just stick with it. Lunch with Andrew has been a blast, wandering through new video games here and there, making a few comics to one side or the other, learning how to integrate (cosx/sinx)dx, exploring the nanoscopic worlds of crystalline structures, getting huge speech assignments out of the way, designing 10000 USD sound systems complete with dual FBX and FBQ (same thing really) three power amplifiers, and a few other good fun things.

The few things that I wish were different about the situation is I wish my family was a little more accessible. Skype has been a blessing, but there isn't anything like actually looking at a face not just a digitized on screen version of a face if even that. Another disappointment has been my bike. I wrecked it once, and I'm up to having it simply fall apart twice now. Both times it was the rear derailleur. The first time it just popped open and I lost the first gear but I managed to find it. So I took out some chain links and converted it to a single speed. It works. Then the derailleur continued to fall apart. Both times it fell apart, it was dark out, and the second time I was in the middle of an intersection. Needless to say I'm missing a few pieces and I'm not sure where I'm going to get them. I found one days latter in slightly flatter condition than it fell off my bike in. The rest are probably stuck in tires somewhere or in the gutter or down the road. More than ever now I want sky runners. For sheer coolness factor, those take it all the way. The great thing is that they are small, they can be thrown in a closet somewhere when the world is iced over like it is now, and they don't have as many movable parts as bikes. Less stuff to break. Other bad things include the fact that I'm sick now, I should be able to finish up classes and stuff, its just going to be more miserable now. Its also cold. I am really looking forwards to my trip to the beach here.

To Keep You Entertained

Just a little something. http://boredanarchist.blogspot.com Hope you like it. If that gets dull (and it probably will, its not very long) check out http://www.xkcd.com for more amusement.

Engineering and America

Why is it that a student in a top range mechanical engineering school isn't expected to be able to fix his own bike? To me this seems utterly stupid. Yes there are things that they might not know about, but the whole reason that they are in university is to develop a mind that can solve problems. Besides, in university, the marvel that is the Internet is accelerated into a beast that has all knowledge. You want to know how to weave spokes? Look it up. Same thing goes for adjusting breaks, raising the seat, changing the rims, anything. So. Bike was wrecked, bike is now unwrecked, and you have no idea how wonderful having a bike is. Especially one as nice as mine. It's got its problems, but all in all, she is a perfect bike for me. Tough enough to deal with curbs, but a little bit of road bike in her as well. Ideal for all the pavement: the narrow tires (one of which is 50% brand new. Thought I couldn't true a wheel, didja Christina?) don't produce nearly as much drag as the standard mountain bike. Anywayz, I'm back in business. With wheels. Rock on.

The Happy Friday Guy

As requested, here is a picture of the Happy Friday Guy. The picture is terrible. I will try to get a better one of him sometime, but for now, this will give you an idea of whats going on. Part of the reason it is so bad is because I took it at fairly long range and then used photoshop to sort of zoom in on him while maintaining some semblance of resolution, and the other reason was that I was in a hurry. Anyways, there is always more time to take pictures. I think this is a phenomenon that will last the semester at least. Winter could get interesting...

Something Learned in Uni...

All this money has not completely gone to waste. I have just figured out why its really bad to burn plastic: most plastics are sort of modified hydrocarbon chains. Hydrocarbon chains are what you put in your fuel tank of your car. They burn. Quite nicely. Good fun. Only problem is that plastics and nylons and Teflons and all this stuff are very similar chemically. Difference: when you burn hydrocarbons you release carbon and hydrogen and bond them with oxygen to release copious amounts of heat, water, and carbon dioxide. All good fun. Useful for exploding things. (and transport.) Plastics and such though. Different story: Carbon and something else entirely than hydrogen. Say Florine. Or chlorine. Or almost anything else. Or a combination of things. I think good old Styrofoam is chlorine... and when that burns... I'm not sure what comes off of that, carbon dioxide and something else, and its going to be one of three things: worst case scenario: chlorine gas. Used in world war II to wipe out soldiers in trenches. Not good. that or dichlorineoxide... actually, make that four things: dichloro-oxide or hexachloro-oxide, or any combination of the above. I have no idea what dichloro-oxide is, nor do I want to know what it does to a human body. Suffice that burning plastics and breathing the smoke is not a good idea. Nuff said.

Random things you see around campus

The happy Friday guy: skintight suit, underwear as outerwear, a mask, a cape, either a scooter or a bike, and a spirit of happiness and Fridayness. I have seen this dude several times. last week he nearly caused a riot in our chem lecture on Friday. I hope he doesn't stop, cause I get a kick out of it.

The gorilla on a bike: man dressed in gorilla suit, riding a bike. Go figure.

The breakfast club: Be ye spartan from 300 or be ye... rock star, drink ye and stagger to the game. I don't get this. Why wake up early just to get drunk? Why? There are greater pleasures in life. Such as making fun of them.

The frats throwing things at passers by. Including footballs, at people, including me, while riding a bike.

A guy on a unicycle. Welcome to the circus everyone!

guys tight rope walking between trees: This place takes a circus and makes it look quite tame, really.

The punks, the weirdos, the afro men, the hippies, and the rest of the psych department: Enough said.

Math

Is trying to kill me. Its not hard, I just don't get it, if that makes any sense to you at all. It makes sense to me though. I may need to see a head shrinker some time soon. I keep making realizations about related rates that should be totally obvious, but that I have somehow missed. Bizarre. and I have a test in 36 minutes. I think I'll take a nap. Or play Jetman. Fizzle.

Computers. Male or Female?

This is a little crude in places, but it is a cohesive whole. I found it at http://www.gdargaud.net/Humor/QuotesComputer.html if you want the rest of it. There are a lot of other interesting things on that site as well, such as the top ten reasons to date an engineer, which I am considering promoting, as well as the top ten reasons not to date an engineer, which are still funny, but don't make me look as good.

Men think that computers should be referred to as female, just like ships, because:
1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic.
2. The language in which they communicate among themselves is incomprehensible to everyone else.
3. The message "Bad command or File Name" is about as informative as "if you don't know why I'm mad at you, I'm certainly not going to tell you !"
4. Your smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for later retrieval.
5. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you spend half your paycheck on accessories for it.
6. Miss a period and they go wild.
7. You do the same thing for years, and suddenly it's wrong.

Women think computers are male because:
1. They have lots of data, but are still clueless.
2. They are supposed to solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem.
3. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had only waited a bit longer, you could have had a better model.
4. To get their attention, you have to "turn them on".
5. A big "power-surge" will knock them out for the rest of the night !
6. It is always necessary to have a backup.
7. They'll do whatever you say if you push the right buttons.
8. Size does matter.

Pipe Organs...

And guitars. Who would have thought?

At any rate, I have discovered some things about pipe organs that surprised me. This is anything out of whatever I expected.

They are loud. Yes I previously knew they were loud, but they are louder than I thought.
They have lots of pipes per key. The ones you see on the outside are just one set. There are lots more inside.
They can sound really funky. Who ever heard of a pipe organ that sounds like a bell?
They are electrical. It makes sense to control it with electronics, but it wasn't what I was expecting.
The cool factor is through the roof.
And finally, whoever thought of the whole pipe organ concept and was crazy enough to actually go out and build one is some sort of twisted genius. Emphasis on twisted. Twisted, but cool. Very cool. Very twisted, very cool.

In two hours from now I'm going to be blowing Lafayette down again. I hope I can survive the cool factor again. I think I'm prepared for it this time, but all the same, the deal was out of this world. Way out.

My Room + Futon = ...

This is a fast view of my room with tiny pics taken on my cell phone, which I now cannot live without. It was a super fast transition between never used one and can't live without one.

This is a picture of my bed. Its not really clear, but you can sort of see that I have a little head room once you get past the initial board. Its really comfortable.

a view of my desk. Yes, it really is this messy. I need to do something about it. I'm now blogging on the computer in the picture... This blog is really what my room looks like.

my room mates' desks and one of our unused tvs. My desk is the one closest to the camera on the far left.

this is the view just to the right of the previous picture. One of the desks is in the far left corner as you face away from the door, and we have a huge window across from the door. Those fans are both 2o inches tall. The top of the windows is another 30 cm up. On the right side of the picture is the tv that we are using

this picture is taken slightly to the right of the previous picture There is the other tv we don't use, except as a bed side table thing. It smells like smoke though. We might need to do something about it. These are our beds. My bed is the one in the middle. There is actually a good deal more room in there that you can't see. This is another picture of our beds, but you can also see our fridge in the back a little bit, as well as our food shelf and a futon. The futon is interesting, because you have to climb over it to get into the other half of the room.

ye olde futone. Which we have to climb over to get into the other half of the room. Behind it is Daniel's chest and under that is my chest of drawers. On top of the chest are Kleenexes and such. To give you an idea of how huge the futon is, I can lay down on it and have a little bit of space at both my head and my foot.

And that's about it. Very comfortable, less space than there was, but over all, the futon was a good improvement to our room.

The Weather

I never thought I would find myself discussing the weather quite yet. As it stands though, Lafayette is the first place where talking about the weather makes sense. Anywhere else in the world you can make an educated guess as to what is going to happen. Here your craziest bet is as likely as anything else. As likely if not more likely. There is something up with the weather here.

Talking about the weather here is like talking about a crazy person. They may or they may not. Psychology can only explain some of the end results, but it can never predict anything with any degree of accuracy. It does provide an interesting discussion point.

My latest reaction was that it was demon possessed. Give me a break. This was early in the morning. Anyone who knows me well will know that I don't say anything really coherent between the time I wake up and when most of the people around me are starting to eat lunch. This is regardless of the amount of caffeine I ingest. I was on my way out of my 7:30 class, and the weather was black and frowning. And it was crazy cold. And the wind was blowing. I nearly made the sign of the crucifix at it, and then I tried to cross myself, only to realize that I didn't actually have "Hail, Mary" memorized. I fumbled to a stop, blinked, and decided that demon possessed or not, I was going to have to get over it and go outside.

Life is intense

I just figured out how to do artificial harmonics, I'm doused in sweat from Karate, where they assume you are marginally intelligent and have some degree of coordination, I had two classes canceled, and I worked on class work today. I have been busy! But it feels great! And artificial harmonics are wicked. Make that guitar scream baby!

Multitasking

Just a fast note here:

Texting + navigating + bike + balance + conversation + bumpy road = 2 messed up conversations (one on the phone, one with the person walking next to you) and a path of travel worthy of a .25 blood alcohol level.

First Week of University

Purdue is a wreck. The place is something like 150 years old, and the physics building looks like it. The computer system must have been implemented at the same time, because it is dragging around as well. We all have these irritating things called CPS response pads, which look cutting edge and cost a fair penny, but don't work. The theory among the students that have been here for a while is that they are something that Purdue has made to deal with the huge influx of students. Since they are technology, they belong to the ITaP department that runs this ancient batch system that takes care of emails and Resnet (the dorm Internet organization). My recommendation is this. If you find a university with a good website. Compressed and small to load, helpful, follows standard website conventions, such as putting the search bar at the top of the page not the bottom, standardized so that when you have loaded one page, the rest of the pages will load faster, and simple while at the same time being elegant, go to that University. Beg and plead with them to let you in, because if Purdue is anything to go by, the website is a reflection of the state of the school's other computers.

That being said, this place is teaching me a lot more than just your average "this is hydrogen atom. It is a plus one ion" type thing, I am also having to figure out things like how to eat and when to eat and where to eat. Never mind things like laundry and getting to class. So the fact that I have had some of all of these classes at some stage in my high school career is going to simplify the year some. The reason I stressed food so much is because I keep doing stupid things. The latest stupid thing was that on Saturday I didn't eat until about 8 in the evening, and I hadn't eaten since about 6 the night before. So I had gone for a good while without food, and I didn't really notice. The realization that I could starve to death and never notice is a rather disturbing thought.

Laundry is ok. Basically you download one bleach show every other day and then watch them all when you do your laundry. You have about an hour and a half down there, and very little of that time is actually spent poking buttons on machines and juggling laundry basket, clothes and detergent. And seeing as I do about all of my clothes at the same time, I don't really want to loose them. Maybe I'm just paranoid, maybe I'm from Yemen, maybe both. Who knows.

Surprisingly enough (Talle will be amazed at this one) I haven't been lost all that much. Once. And that was also when I took a nap in the middle of the day, my alarm was set wrong, and I slept through part of the class, so I missed it. Incidentally I haven't missed any classes since, and I don't intend to, but it was rather uncool that I missed my very first class. It is kinda funny to say that I managed to sleep through my 1:30 class though.

The reason I haven't been lost all that much is mostly due to orientation, or Boiler Gold Rush, which immediately became called BGR. One "Don't drink. It's dumb." session after another. It got old. I have no desire to burn my brain out. But the relentless pummeling almost made me want to, just so that I could feel like I got my money's worth out of paying for orientation when I wound up in jail for underage drinking and all that stupidity. At any rate, when you are in a milling mound of human paste 5000 people thick like that, its easy to loose your group of 15 by accident. When I say accident, I really mean it. I'm not just being facetious. I wish I was though, because I should have just wandered off for some of that...

My RA (residence assistant) is awesome. He says that its not so much what you know but who you know that will make a difference in life, and I guess he's right. That has relevance because I didn't want to hang out with any of the people in my group except for the people intent on getting into fraternities and such, and I don't want to wind up there either, so I played the aloof silent type. Its a new identity that has been a work in progress. It requires sun glasses to be fully effective. That or digital editing, which I have been enjoying for the last day or two. Adobe has some amazing stuff, and I think I can use some of it for free through my university connection. I haven't really tried yet though. I should.

To get back on track though, I had discovered a whole bunch of people who know how to party. It is done without drugs and alcohol and with some quiet tasteful rock and of all things, board games. Human interaction, lots of yelling, conversation, its awesome. Interesting things happen. Like pancakes. With chocolate chips and peanut butter.

Having said all that negative stuff about Purdue though I don't want to leave you feeling like I hate this. In all reality, its awesome. Dashing to classes, biking from one end of campus to the other, getting into clubs, Church on Sundays and such, the whole existence is intellectually, spiritually, and physically challenging. Isn't trying to get your clicker online by passing it around the classroom through 500 plus students to find a spot where it will work fun? I haven't tried it, but now that I've thought of it, I see no reason not to try it. I have my name written on the back of it, so I should be able to get it back some time. Good fun. Good night.

Monday

I am very behind with this blogging thing. Just for the record, I have moved into University, I have gotten lost about four times on campus, I helped move my room mate in, and enjoyed reconstituted freeze dried mashed potatoes... if enjoyed is the right word, survived laundry, experimented with vegetarianism, and gasped my way between my first week of classes.

But before I go there, I haven't finished the Chicago story. So early Monday morning Mr. Weirich drove me down to the train station and bought my ticket. I rode the train, fumbled around in Chicago (even after having found a map to help me get to where I was going) and stumbled into the Greyhound station. I wandered up to get my tickets checked over and my bags weighed and tagged only to discover that I was a few seconds late. The bus that I had seen wandering in was now no longer there and I was stuck in Chicago until the 4:30 PM bus. It was 8:15 in the morning.

So I had some waiting to do. Fortunately I had a book. Time rolled around, I bought lunch got a skype call from my dad, read my book some more, wandered around the bus station a bit, and then boarded the bus to Atlanta that stopped in Lafayette on its way down to the fair. The plan was that I would get on a city bus from there and make my way over to the fair where Andrew would meet me. Great plan.

Several things went wrong. Very wrong.

Firstly I was delayed a bit in Chicago. Bus left late (after getting there early and me waiting all day) And by the time I finally got into Lafayette, I pulled out a few brochers to make sure I was going in the right direction. I found the fair grounds on the map, found the right bus route, looked up when the next bus was leaving, and discovered that the last bus had left. An hour ago.

So I was stranded at the Lafayette bus station with a 50 pound bag, my laptop, my guitar, and a hoodie. I decided that my aunt would probably be the best person to call in the situation. She said call people. Any one. Everyone. I called the Doerrs, because I was supposed to spend the night at their house. Nobody home. I called the Harwoods. Another answering machine. I called half the people in my phone without getting a response. When I finally called our pastor's house, I got someone. Mrs. Long was there, came, picked me up, and dropped me off at the fair.

After that was smooth sailing. I found Andrew, put the stuff up, got a lemon shake up and an elephant ear, and then went to the Doerrs and spent the night. The next morning we played guitar and video games all day. Lots of fun. That evening, we went to the fair again, my aunt picked me up and I made it back to Martinsville, but that is old business now. I am drastically behind. So I'm gonna start my next post tonight.

Sunday

Sunday started out like any other day would start, except that we were going to church first. When we got to the parking lot, something that struck me as odd happened. Everyone split up. Parents went one direction, Talle's sister went another, and Talle and I went yet another. Strange, but stranger things had happened. At any rate, Talle's sister apparently goes to another church or another service or something, because Talle said that she likes to listen to the speaker who we listened to. He spoke on getting married and such things, and he said that getting married was in all truthful fact, giving up individuality! Imagine that! For some reason, people think that they can remain unchanged when they get married and do everything the way that they did it before they got married. Well, no. It doesn't work that way. He also said some other things about marriage that were more biblical and less "hey, try looking at what really happens and then you can talk," type of thing, but it was all very well done.

I can't imagine myself married, so enough of that. (that was a bizarre tangent) This is where the fun starts. Most of you might think: Nice quiet Sunday afternoon. Right? Wrong. Very wrong. We went and picked up a girl named Jenny with an unpronounceable, unrememberable, and very cool last name (much like mine). From there, we went to Six Flags Great America.

Once we got into the park, we went to the water park. Body slides, tube slides, gigantic funnels (we set some records I take it, eh Talle?) and even bigger funnels. Not to mention a lot of water. Somehow, even though I didn't put on any sunscreen, I didn't get burnt. With sunscreen I get fried. Without, not so much... connection? Mom would think not, but hey, sometimes people get funny ideas. Maybe titanium dioxide is a skin irritant. Who knows. And I have wandered off on another tangent.

Water slides! Fun! Wet! Fast! Whoever came up with the idea of building a gigantic tube that went in all sorts of strange directions to dump into a swimming pool and then pour water down them is a genius. I mean, how unintuitive is that? Its stark raving insanity, and I love it! Needless to say, Talle and his sister have it down to an art form. When we raced, and we had several opportunities, he always beat me. The slides that we raced on were the same length as well, so it wasn't just a matter of him getting on the shorter slide, it was that he knew all the ins and outs of all the rides and how to turn the corners and everything else. Very professional.
So once we had ridden all the water rides at least once, we went back to our locker and put on our shirts and shoes again and crashed the roller coasters. Our first ride of the day was this monstrosity of a ride called Raging Bull. That ride was so sweet it nearly had me in tears... Well, not really, but it was an amazing ride. The ride didn't have any inversions, but it was a modern coaster, very fast, very smooth, and utterly silent. Except for all the yelling. Which I was contributing to. I have never been one to scream on a ride, only yell. I yell. Roller coasters are such a fantastic excuse to open up and make as much noise as you want. Now all I need is a method to get my guitar and amp on board... But yet again, I tangentificate. We went the long route. The hard core route. We rode in the front row. It was perfect, because there were four of us, and there were four seats across on most of the rides on the park. Also, there was nothing in front of us anywhere, only the wide blue open, and a few horizons when we got to the top. One thing about America: The horizons are all buried in trees in all the places I have been. I miss my horizons. I really do. I might be getting claustrophobic, but whatever. Enough of this tangent.

Back on target. We then went on to ride all the serious coasters in the park except for one I think, and that was because it had a really long line, and it didn't look very cool. It went up really fast, and when it got out of the station it went straight up, stopped, fell, reversed through the station, and then backwards straight up and twisting around, to stop, and then twist straight back down and into the station again.

Iron Wolf was cool. Inversion after inversion, and violent! I got a good head rattling. Talle and I rode it because I really wanted to, so the girls went and got these awesome airbrush fake tattoo things. I don't think Talle liked that ride at all, but he endured it for the local madman. His sister wouldn't go anywhere near it. I think looking at it just might make my mother renew her no roller coaster vow...

Other rides were this gigantic thing that hauled us up about 300 meters. Maybe a bit more. and then dropped us down for about 200 of them. Maybe a little more. Very cool. I love free fall. The only way to enjoy it though is to yell. If you don't yell you wind up holding your breath and when you get to the bottom that hurts. Not sure why, it just does. So: when you ride free fall, yell. I am having tangent problems tonight.

We ate at one point in time, a foot long chili cheese hot dog which I bought with my debit card which I did not bother to put back into my wallet, and Talle bought nachos. We split both and made a horrid mess out of anything. It was a very good tasting horrid mess though. Very good tasting.

Batman. Very cool ride, brilliantly themed. We went through Gotham Park, a Sewer system, by a police car wrecked into a water hydrant, A vent system, and several other things that escape my memory at the moment. Brilliantly Gothic. Once we made it onto the ride though, all thoughts of theming disappeared though, and only thoughts of "YEAAAAAH!!!" remained. Fantastic ride. One or two inversions, I don't really remember the ride all that much, it was less memorable, even though Batman is such a cool super hero. No powers, only technology. Hard core, right there. Now I have tangents about super heroes in my posts. Somebody wake me up.
At any rate, we went back to get our airbrush tattoos at this stage, but there were all these low brow types standing in line and grunting at each other while they scratch their bellies. One of them was carefully positioning a stencil with a good deal more deliberation than was necessary, so Talle and I abandoned ship and got in line for the Superman ride. Which I was not allowed to look at. I think that is the hardest thing I have done all summer: Not look at a ride that I am about to go on, and I can hear people all around me talking about, and have heard about many times in the hard core coaster boy circles.

At any rate, the girls thought Talle was nuts for not letting me look at the ride, and they thought I was nuts for agreeing and not looking. Talle's sister made some funny comments about how I looked like some social drop out who couldn't look a girl in the eye, but had to examine their shoes. When we finally made it to the top, we got in to a line of seats, only to find that there was a piece of permanent equipment in one seat on the line of seats that we had chosen. Talle's sister was very generous and got into another seat so there were three of us across and then a piece of thrice confounded equipment. The thing made me wonder though: what was this ride that I was now sitting in, not allowed to look at, and that once the technician came along, you couldn't move at all in? I had never been so locked into a ride in all my born days. I could turn my head a little, and I could move my arms forwards slightly, but that was it. I was locked in.

Then my world upended. Literally, if not completely. I'm dead serious about this! The entire seat rolls backwards so that you are facing the ground. I now understood why we were locked in as good as we were. I was also just a little surprised.
That ride surpasses all others in coolness. I had never done an upside down loop before in my life. That was the strangest sensation. Bizarre. Very, very, very cool though. Coolness of an unprecedented degree. The whole ride was one unintuitive twist, bend or inversion after another, and the entire thing was executed in the smoothest fashion. Truly a pleasure to ride. I saw several things disappear out of my pockets during the course of the ride, but somehow it only made it more amazing. That was the first ride that had the nerve to shake anything out of my pockets, and I respected it for that. Incredible. If you ever ride it though, just remember that you can't put your hands in your pockets to keep stuff in, because your arms are locked in place, so put everything you have on you in a zippered pocket or in the bin to the left of the coaster so you don't lose it. At any rate, I lost 100% of the contents of my pockets on this ride, but I recovered my wallet on the platform where it had fallen out at the very end of the ride.

By the time we got off of the ride, it was about an hour after closing time, and people were starting to file towards the exits. Talle and I sprinted back to see if the airbrush tattoo people were still open, but they weren't. Major bummer. I wanted a batman shirt as well, so I wandered through three gift shops and found an amazing batman shirt. Very elegant if you ask me. Simple and clean cut. I went to the check out line and realized that when I had lost everything out of my pockets and only recovered my wallet, that didn't include my debit card. I had neglected to put my debit card back into my wallet when I bought the hot dog, and so it was lost to the superman ride, not the batman ride as Relient K would have you believe in their song "Chap stick and Chapped lips and things like Chemistry" which has been going through my head as a result of this incident. Only he lost his phone not his wallet.

I managed to get it cancelled when we got back though, and no transactions had been made on it. It is God's providence that I found out as soon as I did though, because I never would have noticed if I hadn't gone to buy that shirt, and that shirt is the first suvineer I have purchased in my life. It was also good that my wallet fell on the platform and not over some lake or something, because my wallet had my social security card in it at the time, and its not laminated or anything, its sort of this recycled compressed cardboard or something, so yeah.
At any rate, we dropped Jenny off at her house on the way back to the Weirich's at something like 1:45 in the morning and got back to the Weirich's by 2. Which evidently scandalized the Weirich's neighbor, which I can understand. The perfectly proper, good citizens Weirich get a guest who wears sunglasses and lugs a guitar, and they all of a sudden stay out until two in the morning. Now you and I know that we were doing nothing improper, but its funny to think that I look like some evil rock god type.

This post is long enough. There is only a little more story left to the Weekend at the Weirich's Saga, so don't write this off as just some nut case story that just doesn't want to end. The next one has some information that Talle might not be familiar with as well. Sorry to drag you through what you lived through man, but I had so much fun I was not unbloggable.

Saturday

Was fantastic. Talle and I woke up, found something to eat, and wandered around downstairs for a while, and then left for the pool with Melanie. Normally I really don't like water very much, its just not normal for water to collect in huge holes. I can swim, its just that I don't like swimming. Showers no problem. Drinking water, no problem. But swimming? No thanks. Normally. But when you throw Talle at a situation, everything becomes really fun. Shrieking through 10 cm of water in the kiddie end, to diving off of the "high" dive (all of three meters), "spamming" the water slides (new hard core coaster boy lingo courtesy of Talle... basically means to ride them over and over and over, getting slightly more water logged, stripping a little more skin off your back, being refrigerated a little more on the way back up, and having a blast the whole time), and discovering the waterfall kiddie area. The waterfall actually falls from a good 5 meters up and the water is moving by the time it hits you. It sorta feels like a massage. By someone who is more used to marshal arts. Its actually pretty cool, especially since my back was in some weird state of limbo from dragging all that garbage around in Chicago the previous day. Very cool. If you stand in it, it becomes very easy to imagine that you are casting some very large and powerful water spell. (Product of a gaming nerd imagination gone to a pool).

When we had tired of all that, we simply hung out in the deeper end of the pool and tried to dunk each other surreptitiously. I got both Jeremy and Melanie, but Jeremy got me back. Melanie didn't try... In some ways I can't blame her either... even though she swallowed a lot of water. I was rather ruthless in retrospect. I don't think she was very happy with me after that. When everyone had finally had absorbed enough water, we all got out left for home.

Once there, Talle and I took off for Ignite Chicago. Rock concert. We got tickets and wandered into this huge baseball stadium. Alexian Field (I think). We wandered in, chucked a Frisbee around for a while, and then we noticed that musicians were getting onto stage, so we wandered that direction, not really thinking that we would actually be able to see anything. When the crowd had reached critical mass, we were right at the front. We could see everything. It was pretty cool. Pretty loud for that matter as well. The stage was boarded by these two gigantic piles of speakers. There were two stacks of speakers on each side. Each stack went all the way to the top of the light stand which was some ten meters up. Whenever a new song started, I could see the foam on the front of the speakers blast outward from the vibrations. It was a blast! (both literally and figuratively...) I saw three artists live who I liked and had appreciated music for the past several years: Rebbecca St. James, the David Crowder Band, and Casting Crowns. Some very cool music.

The songs were very well played, and a nice mix of songs that I had heard and others that I wasn't familiar with. The David Crowder Band was really funny. They had a monitor board go out, so they couldn't hear what they were playing (yeah right, they were right behind those huge MASSIVE SPEAKERS OF DOOM! yeah. Couldn't hear it. Meh.) At any rate, David Crowder got up on stage and started signing things. Water bottles, sandals, it was funny. Then someone decided to hand up a dollar bill and he pocketed it. Water bottle, sign. Balloon, sign. Dollar bill, pocket. This went on for a while and eventually people realized that the money wasn't coming back which was really funny. Then came the yellow hat.

The Yellow hat. David Crowder signed it, and was about to hand it to somebody in the crowd when this guy gets lifted up on people's shoulders and yells "Its my hat!!!" David Crowder looked up, and then back down at the hat, then back at this guy who was somewhere off to our left and behind us a little. "Your hat? Ok." Then he looked down at the people right in front of the stage. He didn't have a mic on, but you didn't need a mic to hear what he said. His face is really expressive. He has all this yellowy hair that stands out from head and chin like he has been partially electrocuted. It pretty awesome. Looks a lot like mine used to before Mom was brave enough to light into Elmo. (Long story there...) At any rate, you could just hear him say "can you carry me?" And then he starts walking across the crowd towards this guy while carrying this yellow hat. No kidding. It was sooo funny. He would take a step, fall forwards, stagger, wave his arm over his head, wave the arm with the hat for balance, and then try to take another step. He made it about 3 meters out from the stage before he fell over and the crowd surfed him over to the yellow hat guy. The manager had the crowd part for him, but only after he had them make a tunnel. I don't think the crowd liked that manager very much.

At any rate, David Crowder managed to make it back up to the stage without further mishap where he proceeded to throw water bottles to the crowd. Its really funny to see people struggling and screaming over a little bit of sentimentality. Like an empty cardboard box that a rock star threw in their general direction...

At any rate, it is now tomorrow... So I shall bid you all, with the greatest of regrets, adue (feeling Shakespearean anyone? Its what happens when I get sleep deprived.) Ha! G'night!

Friday

I'm gonna break this into several posts, cause this last weekend was one of the funnest weekends I have had in my life, and it was full. Very full. A really short summary of what happened might help me get the order of things right latter on, and it might help you understand what all we did. So!



Friday: woke up really early to go to Lafayette to catch the bus up to Chicago and then a train to Talle's house.



Saturday: Went to the pool, rode water slides and bounced diving boards, went to Ignite Chicago rock concert where I saw Rebbecca Saint James, David Crowder Band, and Casting Crowns



Sunday: Went to Church, listened to a really good service, went to Six Flags Great America.



Monday: Took a train to Chicago, missed the bus, waited for seven hours, took the next one, had a wonderful person drive me to the fair where I met Andrew.



Tuesday: Played guitar all day with Andrew, got back to Martinsville, went to bed at 10 (so, like, not nearly as late as I had been up for the last few days...)



Wednesday: Woke up at 1:30 PM Payed for Purdue bills and things, and I am now blogging (as a side note, this post took a while 2 write, and I have now been golfing. No fun.).



But! Friday. I woke up early, about 6:30, and meandered my way through packing, including my new huge Behringer amp, guitar, computer, swim suit, and a lot of clothes. Stuffed it into the car, and wandered up to Lafayette where I caught my Greyhound bus up to Chicago. No problems there.



Once in Chicago however, things took an interesting turn. I got lost. While dragging a pile weighing some 30 kg. Most of it fragile or at least very valuable to me. So I got directions from this lady, and she pointed me off, and I started walking. About half a km down the road, I called the Weirich's and after finally figuring out what had happened, I had heard "What? You are where? Huh? how did you get there?" several times. I have no sense of direction, and by the time I had arrived, my right arm was dead. I had been hanging my guitar, my laptop, my amplifier and all my clothes off of it for about an hour, and had traversed the greater part of a long ways. I'd look it up on Google earth, but I don't want to be depressed by the reality of how far I actually did walk.

So I missed the train that day, and had to take the next one, which was something of aways a way, but once I made it on, and made it all the way to college avenue, I instantly started having the time of many lives. Talle can turn anything into a lot of fun. Anything. I have never met another person with his propensity for fun, and I doubt I ever will again, but in the mean time... a swing set was turned into an extreme sport center, (I had never seen a swing reverse dismount performed before, and I am now proud to say that I am now a master of the afore said stunt which involves a flip and some air time...) several new frolf courses were created, and let me tell you, whistling objects are a lot easier to dodge, but a lot freakier, because you can hear them coming, and with Talle, you have to assume that they are directly on target, and they usually are.

So. That evening. The Weirichs treated me to pizza at Ginos East. Very good pizza, and at least one gorgeous hostess. That aside, I have never felt so ignorant about my fellow SIS graju8s my entire life. Mrs. Weirich wanted to know everything. University, major, and middle name. I hadn't ever really interrogated any of them either. Mom thinks its just common information, but when you can be doing something productive and fun, why would you talk about the future? Some people find this ideology of mine irritating, but I have a lot of fun living by it. After all, I have just been through one of the most amazing cases of God's provision ever. I went from probably being in debt some 80,000 bucks by the end of university, and by his grace and generosity, that is now something very close to 0. I just paid my first Purdue bills for this first semester, and they came to something under 1400 for room and board. Tuition had already been covered by Purdue and several other grant programs. I still have to buy books, but I have stopped doubting that they will show up if I go looking for them.

So yeah. On that note, I will leave the rest of the adventure for a latter post. Hopefully sometime very soon.

Of Blogging and Devil Cars

Those were the top two hits. So Talle has already heard of the devil car, so I'll have to beg his forgiveness. The story goes like this.

I was in Lafayette for my day on campus and we were racing back to Martinsville for my driver's ed class. I had driven once here in America, and that was with a drive instructor with a brake on his side of the car. I hadn't wrecked into anything, but he had used that pedal more than I was comfortable with. At the end of the last session, I had been given a package in an envelope, and I had put off reading it until now. So I opened it up to find this huge list of blank squares... I stared at it in confusion for a few seconds, and then decided to turn it over to see if the back had any helpful advice. It did. I had to have thirty hours of driving between the time I got the piece of paper and the time that I got my licence. When I told dad, he nearly freaked out. "What? 30 hours?" he wasn't really very happy with the idea. So he almost immediately pulled over (He did wait for a rest area) and got out and made me drive.

So we get up to the exit ramp, I had managed to pull out of parking without hitting anything, and now we are supposed to be going much faster than is humanly safe. 40 was fast. I was flying! After all, this is roughly twice as fast as I can sprint, and I raced several sprinters over the last year, and only one of them beat me consistently, but that was fine, because he was supposedly the fastest kid in Yemen according to the books. So here we are just rocketing up the exit ramp at 40, and Dad tells me I'm not going fast enough. You need to be going 70 he says. 70! I mean, that is almost double what I'm doing now, and I'm already freaked out! So I slowly press the accelerator... 50...60... and then all of a sudden, Semis were screaming down out of the blue to my left, but I managed to get in. Scary. So we are doing 70, and the world is about to end. Utterly and completely in a flash of light and sound. And then the car gives a lurch... and a little light comes on somewhere on the left of the dash display that says "Service Engine soon." I nearly cried right there. That was when I decided that I was driving the devil car. Dad says "don't let up on the accelerator like that, you need to keep it depressed" So I said, "That wasn't me. That was the car, and we have this light on that says service engine soon." That threw him for a little bit of a loop. "We do?" He asked. So then he puts on his best I-have-made-my-way-right-with-God-I-can-face-death-without-fear voice and says "I'm very sorry this had to happen your first time out here, signal right, you are going to pull over to the right onto the shoulder. We are having transmission problems, and need to stop quickly before we wreck the car."

Well, needless to say, that nearly did me in. I gripped the steering wheel tightly white knuckled and pulled off the road and put on my emergency flashers. I experienced deep seated fear, true death fear for the second time in my life right then. The first time I was with Talle and my brother, and we were on this raft that was sinking, we were dead tired, about a kilometer from shore, being dragged over a coral reef, and seeing sharks. True story. At any rate, I was seeing visions of the transmission blowing out all over the road behind us, jamming the gears, locking the tires, and throwing us into the traffic behind us, starting a gigantic 70 vehicle pile up. Fortunately, none of that happened. We managed to get off the side of the road without incident, except for the fact that the shoulder was covered with debris and truck treads half the size of the car that I had to dodge.

So we got stopped without further incident, but I hated that evil car right then. Dad pulled out his cell phone and called Grandpa. This is supposedly a normal problem. Just keep going. If hate could melt anything, that car would have been done for. So I started back up, and merged back into 70 mph semi traffic. Fun. *heavy sarcastic voice* So the vehicle is now lurching and bouncing and I am holding that wheel like its the only thing that was going to save me, which is odd, considering the fact that I hated that car, and thought it was about to kill me.

When we got back, I went to drivers ed, which was dull, and Grandpa and Dad came to pick me up.... and they were driving that evil green station wagon. I was not as pleased to see them as I had thought I was going to be. Any other car. It turns out that I had actually driven home on three cylinders. Something had happened more than was "normal" and I had wrecked it. I'm not sure how they figured that one, but whatever.

Since then, I have had a chance to drive it after it had been repaired, and we have become more reconciled to each other. I still would prefer to drive any other car, but I will if I have to.

Meeting fellow bloggers has been cool, and exciting for me, but I can't turn it into anything really fun for the rest of you I doubt. The first blogger I met was Charity. I saw her about two weeks ago now at an after church youth session in Indianapolis. We had a really fast conversation before we both got distracted. It went something like this:

Charity-Hi! My name is Charity!
Graham- Yes, I read your blog.
This other guy - Who are you?
Charity - He comments on my blog.
This other guy - oh.
Charity - Ellie and I heard that you were here, so we were looking for someone with big hair.
Graham - Yeah I just cut it. I need to post pictures some time.

And that was sort of the end of it. There may have been something else that I missed, but I don't remember it. I still haven't really met Christina, but since I have talked with her on the phone (just tonight actually) I'll throw it in. She had called me, but it was probably during my drivers ed class, and I had turned my new cell phone off, which I am still acclimating to, and then didn't turn it back on while I watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with Tyler. So it was about midnight by the time I turned it back on, and I found a voice mail from her. So today I woke up and essentially immediately went to work cleaning Faith Missionary Church here in Martinsville, (my aunt and uncle's church) and then went to drivers ed again, and finally called her after I got home.

Its fun to find that stories and posts that I have followed all year actually turned into real people. It was kind of fun to experience. Thanks to both Charity and Christina for bearing with my weird comments.

Busy

I don't want to do this, but I don't want to write a million posts that are a foot long each either. So you're gonna hafta vote in the comments which item you want me to post about. Here is the list

My new amp
Driving on the interstate in the devil car
playing music with my cousin
My trip up to Lafayette
Dad's introduction to the Frapicino
Finding real people on the ends of blogs

or alternately if you are really plugged in with my life you could suggest something else, but I think I have everything that is vaguely interesting up. I've been busy, but its been good. So let me know what I should post about. If you really want me to post, you should probably comment sooner rather than latter, because with posts like this if they don't get comments I sorta forget that I have a blog that people might be interested in reading and it gets dropped for long periods of time... So comment soon!

Concerning Large Tin Boxes With Very Small Uncomfortable Seats, Of Textile Travel Containers, and Other Strange Things

I am sorry I haven't managed to post about my flight now that its almost a week behind us. I have had a maniacal schedule for the last week, no time for jet lag or anything else like that, and most of it is post worthy, but I will only cover the flight in detail now as it promises to be a long enough post. I should be able to get around to some posting this week as things seem to have slowed down slightly, which is good because it gives less things to blog about, and more time to blog in. Both of these are blessings now.

I am now in America as I write this. Getting here, however, was something of a trip. I was up for about 9 hours before we drove to the airport, Dad and I, and we got checked in, sat around for an hour, got on the airplane and watched some idiot music videos on the flight. Completely unoriginal. Utterly. There were repeated elements in every video, it was pretty bad. Funny though. So we got to Frankfurt, wandered for a while and got on our second flight about two hours after we got off of the first plane. So far so good. We were on a big huge Boeing 747 with something close to 300 other passengers and attendants and such. It was a big bird, and she was full. Very full. So we find ourselves lugging our cary-ons down the aisle, to arrive at our seats having been claimed by some mother dressed up like a nun, the hair thing was perfect. Kinda funny. At any rate, we didn't really care, so we stood there and a stewardess came up and realized that the lady had our seats, but we weren't fussing about it, and so went out of her way to get us some new seats. Being nice counts in airports. It really does. So half an hour latter, we are sitting in some seats, but the plane isn't going anywhere. Apparently what had happened was we had missed our slot, and in a huge airport like Frankfurt, that means you are in trouble. So we waited to the next available opening, which was another half an hour late. Our flight took off an hour late, and we had scheduled only an hour and fifteen minutes to get on our connecting flight, and it was domestic, which means we had to go through customs, and I had a bag of dried hibiscus flowers with me, a substance that always gets through eventually, but has to be declared. The reason I bring things like this is because coming from Yemen requires that we be "randomly" run through agriculture anyways, so you might as well give them a reason to do it.

The flight was mostly uneventful. There were two movies on the flight, one of them was Wild Hogs. Do not watch this movie. Excessively dumb. Excessively. The second was called Music and Lyrics or something like that. It was about a musician from the eighties or something who is coming back to do a single with a huge pop star, needs to find a lyricist, eventually finds one, and writes a song. I loved this movie, the pop star was a wreck and way over done, but everything else was fantastic. Ironic, without rubbing it in, witty, musical with a reason to be musical, and intellectual, with the exception of the pop star. No action, so this must have been a really good movie, because I usually only really like action movies, but this one was somehow more than just a drama even though there was no action to speak of in the movie. Highly recommended, moving on.

So we land an hour late, fifteen minutes to get to our next flight. This is where the story gets interesting. We dash through customs and immigration, streak down to agriculture, get everything waved on after we had opened one suitcase up, and sprint back up to catch the bus to terminal three to catch our airplane. World record for getting through Chicago O'Hare airport. Amazing. Then we realize that we are holding the tracking tag to one of the suitcases... Uncool. Very uncool. That was the bag that had my entire video game collection, half of my library, all my memorabilia, my entire DVD collection (hardly worth mentioning, it is composed of The Matrix.) and about half of my wardrobe. I pack light. And its gone. Dad says for good. So I am freaking out. Very much freaking out.

At this stage, we had lost the more valuable of my two bags, missed a flight, and missed my drivers ed class that I was supposed to be there for. Bad. So we wandered around, and found that the flight had been rescheduled. All well and good. Only thing is that we have now missed that flight as well due to the fact that our bag is missing some where in the bowels of O'Hare international airport. The place is huge. Gigantic. Enormous. Big. Enough said. So we managed to reschedule another flight, by this time we had learned that we needed to file a missing bag statement once we had gotten to our destination, and they would work on finding the bag and getting it to us, and we sat down to wait. We had about three hours of lay over time between frantic-get-on-next-airplane rush and the time our flight was actually scheduled to take off for Indianapolis. So Dad fished out a phone and started calling people. I got to talk with Talle then, and have been able to communicate several times with him since. That was a lot of fun. He hasn't changed very much at all since we lit off our last explosion...

So we eat, wander some, and vaguely meander over to the terminal where our flight is supposed to be. We looked up the gate, and it was gate 16. So we went to gate 16. Nothing happening. About ten minutes latter, I got up to check it again, and it had switched to gate 18. Fine, could have been misread or something, so we moved to gate 18. Then 11B then gate 10. By this time I was starting to wonder if they were just playing musical gates with us for the fun of it, or if there was a reason for it, or if it was all just to the cause of universal misunderstanding or what, but it was kinda funny. So this gate actually says that it is going to Indianapolis, it was the first gate to actually have anything of the like anywhere, and it started calling numbers, and one of the numbers was ours, so we made it all the way onto the plane without further mishap.

It was a short flight, only about an hour, and the plane flew low compared to the other two birds I had already been on, and we had window seats for the first time, so I could see the ground and all the cars sliding across the endless black pavement lines. For some reason, this was far cooler than just looking at pictures on Google Earth. Google Earth is good for maps and its 3D at times, but this was all real, not just a computer screen. Perspective shifted to allow us to watch shadows shiver across roads as we buzzed over. I don't remember the last time I had been on a really low flying bird for so long. It was fun.

When we finally (I'm starting to get tired of this post...) got to Indy, somehow, that lost bag had made it too. In fact, looking at the tag that had supernaturally appeared on it, it had arrived several hours before we had. Certain proof of Divine providence. I have no other explanation.

More later, I have been having a very eventful life these last few days, life promises to be enjoyable and full for quite a while. So goodnight, Mom, the comment button should be just bellow this last line. (Amazing what Mothers are willing to do to communicate with lost sons... lol. I should see if I can get her to get a blog... If you have a blog, you should tell her that its not all that hard.)

Renovating

I have really started to get serious. I have started cleaning up. An entire two days to clean up my entire life, stuff it into garbage or luggage bags, throw out most of it, keep the keepsakes, Ignore the piles of stuff that has accumulated in my room over the past twelve years of our living in Yemen. I haven't taken my guitar apart yet, I am putting that off as long as I can. The last time I took it apart to go to America I cried steadily for half an hour. I think I associate the guitar with my life... When its in pieces, I'm in for some trouble or something like that. At any rate, taking my guitar apart is a very emotional process for me.

I still haven't packed anything at this point in time, but I have cleaned out a drawer and two shelves that have been full, full, full for the past twelve years. In addition to that, I have burned all my downloaded iTunes music onto a gigantic pile of 6 CDs... I hadn't realized I had bought that much music until I started going through the purchased list in iTunes...

My last few days promise to be full. I haven't started a thing on my room, and it is piled high and deep with junk from my pack rat and at times creative existence. While rooting around it for a book of piano music that I had been practicing out of on guitar (long story) I discovered a fan that I had built from scrap several years ago and that Abe inadvertently ruined by stepping on the wire too many times. I loved that thing before it broke and I threw it on my top shelf some time a year and a half ago...

One last paragraph before I get off. This will freak some people out, make some people cheer and others gasp in despair. Others might not get it. I cut my hair. Ok, good night. Next post will probably be posted in the US of A. (for anyone interested, I fly on the 25th, so as in of well, actually now, mostly just one day from now.) I need to pack. And clean my room. And take my guitar apart. And say goodbye to a lot of people.

Last Youth Group and a Glimpse of My Future

Tonight was my last youth group. I love my youth group. It would be hard to find a better batch of people anywhere. I'll probably be back at some point in the future, I'm not sure when, next Christmas is the soonest possibility I think. At any rate, they gave me a shirt that they had all signed, a card, and a certificate of commissioning. Somehow, all this is worth far more to me than my diploma and dunce hat & superman cape and all that.

At the moment I am importing all my lost cds that have been sitting in a drawer somewhere for eons past now. I know this sounds funny, but there is a solid logical reason they went missing, and another reason I found them again. They disappeared, because we had them all on our previous computer, and on my iPod (or so I thought). I found them all again when I went looking for a certain song: Thrive by Newsboys. An awesome song which I haven't heard to the best of my knowledge for more than a year. Don't ask how I remembered it. I did, went looking, and found this rack of cds that I don't have on me iPod. So I have some great new/old music, including the stuff I went looking for in the first place.

Tomorrow looks like it will be a full day. The plan is to wake up sometime about 11 am and head off to the old city with Jason and maybe Hannah. We'll see. The old city is something like exploring a well populated heated and lighted cave. There is little air to breathe, but there are many things to see and do as you wander between piles of exotic spices, raisins in 50 gallon barrels, sculptures of Yemeni houses, traditional clothing and knives, guns, gold, silver, paintings, camels, donkeys, salt, carefully piled on squares of cloth on the cobbled pavement. The best thing at the old city remains the firework section. I am a hopeless pyro. I haven't actually burned anything down yet, blown any fingers off, or burnt my fingers in the process, and I have enjoyed countless explosions.

After the trip to the old city, I come home to my open house. Apparently, no aspect of my past life will remain secret after this. I think mom is trying to do some sort of slide show of my life, and all the certificates of success or participation or anything else, medals for races or field events will be heaped in a great pile on my table some where for the world to see. Oh well. I'm leaving. It can't hurt anything at this stage... I hope.

Things I want to do before I go to America include going shooting. Shooting what you say? well, guns. Not at anything in particular, just for the experience. I hear tell its good fun. Lighting off a grenade or two would be fun as well for that matter. By the way: Thrive is fantastic. I'm listening to it as I write. Amazing song. I'll try to post it sometime in the near future. Being graduated does give you a little more time to do things.

Da Matrix

Yeah, I finally got around to finishing the Matrix with my mother. I don't think she liked it. Something to do with the language, the violence (which is one of the reasons I like it so much) and the brainbender effect (the other reason I love it.) Anyway, she said that she now feels like a good mom... for watching an incomprehensible movie with her teen... or some such thing.

I have a lot of free time on my hands during school hours, what with having only one class left: Calculus. I took a test today actually and passed, so I am now mostly finished with that as well. After school hours aren't quite so empty. My entire week is packed full of visits and things I have been wanting to do but haven't quite gotten around to doing yet. I will probably have one last play time with this berserk kid named Yuri who likes adrenaline almost as much as I do. The guy is a lot of fun to be around. Tonight I am busy designing a board game with my brother, and I may have a guitar session with my youth leader some time this week. My open house is Thursday from 4 to 6, and my last youth group session for quite a while is this Wednesday. So things are busy this week.

Graju8shun

I r done graju8ed. I am told the ceremony was dull... But! I was prepared for the worst and brought my handy dandy iPod video with a brand spanking new movie on it: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

The day started off fairly well. I did almost nothing for the first five periods of the day or so. I came in with shorts on for the first time that year. Shorts and flip flops. I had convinced several people that I was going to graju8 in shorts and flip flops... I had the students who were coordinating the whole thing climbing the walls for a short time. That was worth watching. I think Yasmine was ready to kill me at one point in time.

So two o'clock finally rolls around. I'm wearing a tie and shoes, and Yasmine is ready to kill me again for stressing her out like that. We waddle our way on stage in our retarded costumes. The super man capes had been made here, and none of them really fit anyone. I think they were all to short, with maybe one exception. We looked kinda funny. So. On stage. Mr. Blakie, our Principal, winds up for a speech. I wind down to watch my movie.

After graju8shun, we go home, and I tried to finish my movie, but I had to help with making supper. When we had finished eating, we headed out for youth group. Today is the day that they start to let all the little kids in to see if they like youth group. A sort of trial run you might say. There are a lot of little kids coming this year, including my brother Peter! I can't believe it. I really can't.

Youth group wound down, and so I headed off to my graju8shun party. Which was at the Movenpick hotel. High class: very high class. The son of the Yemeni president was in my graju8ing class, and he decided to pay for the whole thing. Nice. At any rate, the party was open to graju8s as well as all secondary students. Not a teacher or adult in sight. Fun you say? I think not. The music was so loud my ears are still throbbing, and the lights were off. If there was any socializing, or even any human contact, I missed it in the dark and noise. I knew most of the songs I am sorry to say, none of the ones with lyrics were any good... I actually have most of the songs that were played, but they are all from the boring side of my hours of dance on my iPod. At least one person was chain smoking, while several other people just had an occasional smoke. My clothes stink as a result.

I don't understand parties like that. If the purpose is to get laid, all well and good, have fun, leave me out. Otherwise, why would you want to go ruin your ears for music that you own, and can reproduce more accurately at home at more polite levels? You can't talk, you can't see, you can dance, but nobody was doing that really... And these "parties" are common here. Or fairly common at any rate. If some one understands these things, I would appreciate an explanation.

Done with Research

And I got a B. Not bad. The whole episode was quite intense, and I would never have gotten through without God. I discovered something this last week: God answers prayer, what do you know! The project went from being a 17 minute boring presentation, to being 28 minutes (the minimum was 25 minutes) and grade worthy.

There were several events that really allowed me to get everything done on time. First was the fact that I was sort of last. I say sort of because there was one girl who goes after me, but she didn't do her presentation this week because she had special clearance to do it the week after when her parents were back in the country. The week leading up to the presentation had interesting occurrences, such as some of the stricter teachers in the school giving me free periods to work on my presentation, and some teachers just getting sick resulting in free periods to do my work. In the end, I had everything done, but it wouldn't have happened without Divine intervention.

Terrorism...

I have my research presentation tomorrow... Talle knows exactly what this entails, having done it almost exactly a year ago now... Prayer would be appreciated, cause I'm really freaking out. Its a 25 minute long presentation that people in the research class have been working on for most of the year. I get one chance to pass it. I really want to pass it.

On a slightly different topic, mom went out and had me measured for having a suit tailored to me. To all you Americans out there, this is going to sound really extravagant, but the total cost only came up to the equivalent of 40 USD, and had it not been tailored, mom said it would have cost something like 200 in the States... not that I actually know anything about it. I get to wear it tomorrow for my presentation...

Graham Goes Live

Yep. I had my first concert last night. It was horrible. Very horrible. Yeah. Asyraf (this awesome Malaysian kid) and I composed the entire band. It was just the two of us, and we both played guitar, so it sounded kinda bad. No drums, no bass, no nothin, just two guitars and me singing. Not a treat, believe me. At any rate, it was a song I had written. You think I would know it fairly well by the time I got on stage, but you would be wrong. It was a song about procrastination, and believe you me, it was utterly a child of the aforesaid crime, so I didn't know it as well as I should have. So I get on stage, I strike a chord, and we're off. First verse, so far so good. Mic system was a little weird, but we are in Yemen, we must make some allowances. This is where the story goes down hill. The chorus started well enough, but I had written three choruses that only differed by one line, and somehow I sang the second chorus. Crud. Oh well, next verse went ok, but then I sang the first chorus. Ok, fair enough, the order is off, but it doesn't make that much difference. So then I am trying to remember how the third verse goes, and I suddenly wandered off on the riff that was supposed to go after the third chorus and before the final chorus... Yeah, Asyraf wasn't so happy with me I imagine. So then that gets done and I have remembered the third verse and then I sang the final chorus, played the riff where it should have been, and my guitar dies. I hadn't had a single problem with that cable ever before, but it decides to die on me right there of all places. So we start in on the final chorus, which was supposed to be the first one, but for some reason I got the second one again, despite the fact that by that time I wasn't even playing guitar to distract my thinking... So that was the catastrophe that was my first concert. Interesting that I made my own concert before actually going to a real one... Quick update on my life: I get the rest of the week off! Yeah! and I joined facebook. The security stuff is rather disturbing... Legally allows them to give my contact information to the highest bidder while denying that they will.

AP tests

I have survived two very intense days. Well actually the second one isn't quite finished, but I doubt that anything really strenuous is going to happen between now and the time I go to bed. I could be wrong but I doubt it.

Yesterday was AP calc. Long, tiring, intense, and hard. Maybe a 3, hopefully a 4. Could go either way. Today was AP lit and composition. Probably a 3. I wasn't nearly as well prepared for that class as I was for the calc test. For calc we were assigned 4 sets of free response papers and three sets of multiple choice problems. For lit, we glanced at one set of multiple choice problems without actually having access to the answers or explanations and we did maybe 2 sets of free response papers before hand only checking one of our essays. This past year I had homework every day with possibly 10 exceptions. AP lit we had to read several books. No discussion time or feedback or homework or anything. The only reason that I might get a decent score on the lit test is because I have studied English for the past 18 and a half years now while I have only had one year of Calc. Bah. I don't like my lit teacher. Oh well. That's over with now so I should have an extra 2 periods free come the start of the new week.

A Short Update

We now have a house. 1305 S. 18th St. Lafayette, Indiana, 47905. 1300 feet above, and 1000 below ground. Not that I have ever seen it or anything, but these are the statistics they feed me, so I figure somebody must be interested in that kind of thing. This is good because we will now hopefully be allowed to be domicile in Indiana which will allow me to get an Indiana drivers licence and hopefully get through Purdue at about half the price.

Other things going on in my life at the moment are three different classes. The first is AP calculus for which I test on Wednesday. Secondly is my AP literature and composition test. Judging by the quality of work on my blog I may be in some deal of trouble on that account. Thirdly and possibly most urgently, I have a practice presentation for my senior project tomorrow and I have been horribly lax in preparing for it. At any rate, prayer would be appreciated for all three of these events.

APs comming up

As if I had nothing better to post about. Anyway, I have calculus and literature coming up May 8 and 9 I think. One of those days is MY weekend, but after those are over, I should have plenty of time to relax and have fun, or so I tell myself. I will probably wind up working harder than ever. Oh well. More importantly and despite the title, Dad is leaving for the States tonight. He is going to the airport in about 30 minutes, but the plane doesn't take off until after midnight, so he technically leaves tomorrow. He is planning on buying a house somewhere close to Purdue University... hopefully. Anyways, that is the plan. He is taking most of my science fiction collection... All I really have left here that I want to take to the States is my guitar. I imagine that when it comes down to cleaning out I am going to run over more memories than I can handle, and will wind up cracking up all over the place, but I will deal with that when it happens. I haven't really had to say goodbye to a place before, and I may as a result want to bring my shrapnel collection and all my art supplies as well as books and books of random creativity that I have somehow managed to fill with all sorts of abstract things that are about as organized as this sentence is becoming... but again, that is then. Meanwhile, I have APs to freak out about. Prayer would be appreciated.

You Will Never Guess...

I was quarterback today. All of a sudden. Surprised? I at least pretended I was QB anyways, in all reality, Andry was the QB cause I was so bad at it. The French team QB wasn't as bad as I was, but he can be excused on the grounds that he isn't an American. I guess Andry figured that as one of two Americans on the team, I should be good at football. Wrong. So I handed off to him and then blocked for him. It worked. We won. 24 to 0. Not very fair teams I guess, even though Andry's brother (who is the French team's coach) played on their team and we never had even one practice. He is a terrifying person to have trying to kill you. His shirt said I'm not short: I am built low to the ground for improved speed and accuracy. He did everything his shirt said he could. In addition to that, he could bull his way through our line and destroy me. I had about 2 seconds between the time I got the ball to the time I had to get rid of it. Needless to say the result was funny. Also, I had a bunch of people who had never hiked a ball before in their life as linemen, and I had several balls go over my head, and another bounce directly off of it. But this sounds like excuses. In reality, none of us really knew what we were doing, but we had a great time doing it.

I have still not finished the Matrix with my mother.

My Manic Weekend

I still haven't finished the Matrix with my mom. She hasn't acted like she really enjoyed it, but then I guess that was sorta to be expected. I will give you an update when we finish if I remember. Anyway, these last two days have been jam packed full of all sorts of insane activities. Yesterday started the day off by going to the Sheraton (the only swimming pool my mom likes in Sana'a) with most of the youth group. I don't like swimming much, but we played water polo, ping pong, sat in the steam room and the sauna, and had quasi wrestling matches the purpose of which was to get as many people other than yourself into the pool while you yourself remained outside. Fun. Except my hair gets in my eyes when it's wet and then I can't see anything.

After the pool, we all went to the Erskine's house, an involved family that hosts the youth group, has great kids, great parents, and are from the UK. Mr. Erskine teaches me Calculus. I think it's my favorite class this year. I have never done such insane things with numbers before in my life. Very very fun though, provided you get at least 2% of it... which I barely do. Anyway, we painted Easter eggs for the Easter egg hunt which was today. Our fellowship traditionally has a sunrise service (to stay awake I pump up on caffeine and techno) with an Easter egg hunt for the kids afterwards which is run by the youth group. However, remembering my pre youth group days I never really remember reading any of the eggs, so I stopped making serious eggs that say things like "he is risen" and filled most (only 2 exceptions) of my eggs with interesting messages like "call me bob" and "throw this egg" I also (this will amuse a select few) made a "Luke was here" egg complete with arrow and dot. I managed (with the help of Jason) to work out the bio hazard symbol, after successfully dying the inside of my radioactive egg green. Fun.

Meanwhile, it is the middle of the rainy season here in Yemen, which means that half of the city gets rain every day for two weeks, and the other half gets rain maybe twice a week for three weeks. Very strange, but you get used to it. Needless to say, it was raining. Not hard, but steadily. We usually carpool with two other families, but everyone was busy so we had to take a taxi. We got a new one, but all sorts of things were busted on the inside for some reason and so the inside of the windows was all fogged up. (A side note: the fog stuff is called nja'a. Learn something everyday.) Anyway, we all got out at Hannah's house (one of the girl's we carpool with) and decided that we should all just run home from there. In the rain. So we did. For some obscure reason, by the time we got home, I was feeling hyper. Hyper enough to feel inspired to write a song with chorus of "I am wired/eight red bull's/ I'm wired!" haven't actually gotten around to writing it, (not that I have ever had eight red bull's) but I think it might have potential.

About to do Something

... Dangerous... theoretically... maybe... um... yeah. What am I about to do? I am about to watch the Matrix with my dear mother who already knows that its my favorite movie, and I might be beheaded for liking something that is as vulgar and violent as it is. This is spoken from her view point not mine by the way. I hope that she doesn't have any informers reading this blog... cause I'm pretty sure she doesn't read it first person. Anyway, I will give you an update on the situation of my headedness or headlessness after the ordeal. I managed to talk her into watching it, now I am rethinking it... Oh well, can't back out now, time for bravado... or the lack there of depending on the situation... life is just full of these little uncertainties isn't it?

Me Bro got a Blog!

cool. Very cool. I'm gonna have to get him to post some more on it. I put it in the links. His name is Abraham if you don't know him. He has a great post up about his trip to bab al mandab. More soon.

On Philosophy and other stuff...

I think I am a connoisseur. Of rock. I like and admire all sorts of things in music that drive my parents and friends and siblings, and everyone else as well for that matter, up the wall. I just read a SF short story/novella on the nature of connoisseurs, time traveling and the human spirit. Brilliant piece of work, only problem is that I don't remember who wrote it or what it was called. I have it upstairs, If anyone is really interested, I can dig it out for you. At any rate, one of the themes was that a connoisseur is someone who can really enjoy something that the proletariat can't, or rather, doesn't. Now however, we are all doused in different things to different levels, so while I am a connoisseur of rock, I can't stand other things, such as the twentieth century classic novel. People must like them, 'cause they're classics, but somehow when I read I experience, not just hear, and most of twentieth century literature is gloom, doom, despair, and agony, which I can't say I like.

I doubt I will start a major trend or anything here, but I want to post a list and see if anyone else has come up with a list anything like it. Ok:

Interesting things I have done while the electricity is out:
Burnt my hair (not intentionally)
studied computer programming by candlelight... (didn't notice anything ironic for a while)
made strike on box candles (by wrapping matches in melted wax from candles)
Studied AP chemistry (I felt like an alchemist fooling with archaic symbols by candlelight)

to end on a happy note, I CAN DO IMPLICIT INTEGRATION FINALLY! Yeah! happy. That may be the single hardest math concept I have tried to date...

The Track Meet

Yes. Last Wednesday, seven or eight big schools emptied out into the city stadium, and then chucked flat rubber things around, grunted under the weight of canon ball things, went flying over bars, jumping into sand pits, and running in circles. To the outside observer, we were all bonkers. However, to the carefully trained insiders eye, it was all carefully controlled chaos. It was the city track meet.

At any rate, I helped pile things into a car to take out to the stadium, helped set up all the high jump equipment, rolled shots and discii across the soccer field in preparation for the big day. Then the chaos began. Abe took first place in shot put in his age category and second in discuss. He may have taken other things, but I don't know. I took first in discuss, second in high jump, and third in the relay. I was rather disappointed with myself in high jump. I only cleared 165 cm this year, when I had cleared 170 last year. Ah well, such is life. I also competed in shot, but I didn't place.

We all came home at the end of the day, happy, hungry, thirsty and sun burnt. There was not one instance of cheating reported to the best of my knowledge, which was remarkable. Unfortunately, SIS (my school) lost the trophy to Yemen Modern School, but we lost a lot of brilliant athletes when the seniors graduated last year. I think we would have won the relay had Tarik been there, as well as several other sprints. Additionally, Hazim could have done something about some of the long distance events, and Jeremy could have put me in my place with Discus. We only had two really serious female athletes as well, which is where YMS made over half of their points. Only one or two more girls would have made a big difference on the number of points we had at the end of the day. I doubt we would have won even so, but it would have been much closer than it was.

100! (And other things)

This is very cool: post one hundred. *Bells and chimes and angels singing hallelujah and fireworks and other stuff along those lines* I have also been attacked by a very large and very vicious army in imperia online... 1000 troops I think... not sure there, the read out was this bizarre mix of Arabic, Chinese, English and other bizarre characters and numbers. One of the numbers was 1000. Ok on to more interesting topics. A random fact of life: cat + laser = fun. A tad sadistic, but highly amusing. There are some really pretty animated fractal flames at image savant, I linked it, you really should go there. Amazing stuff, but not for slow Internet, unless like me you just can't stay away from the stuff. Its so... amazingly... beautiful!

To relate a small experience or two from the day. Tonight, I had a mountain of homework. Several evil teachers ganged up on me and decided that they would try to kill me with sleep deprivation. It failed haha! I stoked up on techno (the really really fast kind) and I was somehow able to manipulate my iPod, read my text book and still do my calc homework at about 2 normal speed. I doubt I can do that many times, but it sure was amazing tonight. I also got physics out of the way as well as government. By my teacher's admission, I probably shouldn't be taking the class, but if I drop it I have to leave the honors program, so I won't. A note to those who don't know me well: I hate politics. The only excusable instance of politics is in Frank Herbert's Dune. Amazing stuff that, somehow I have to read conversations through multiple times to understand half of whats going on, but the thorough dousing in it has (I like to think) made me slightly more subtle. Jeffrey and Jeremy are going to laugh in my face here, but then to quote Marvin the depressed robot; (not part of anything Frank Herbert) "Its part of the shape of the universe."

Finally, Mr. George (my lit teacher, notorious for not being very good at much of anything) pulled an awesome stunt today. I asked leave to print off an assignment that I had done, and was granted leave to do so. So I printed it off and handed it to him. He put it down in front of him, and had lost it and was asking me for it again by the end of the period. Fun fun. I made him look for it (politely I think... hope) and he eventually found it again, but all the same, I think he just set a new record for speed of teacher loosing assignment in this school at any rate. Ok, I have waxed loquacious enough, I am now sated with penning my own existence to the Internet.

Yet more Fractals

I have just found one of the most amazing collections of fractal flames ever! Who ever compiled them is a genius; the colors are simply gorgeous! http://www.imagesavant.com is one beautiful fractal after another, and when you get to the bottom, there are a list of links to other pages of fractals! and you can download them all! Beautiful!

A legal A dolt

yep, eighteen. Bummer. I can now die for my country, not that I would or anything, I think I would try to get out of something as stupid as the army by claiming something weird like pacifistic objectionator or whatever it is that they call those people despite the fact that I am not actually a pacifist. Rather, I believe that the problems we have now can't be solved by military might. Look at how far that got us. We can't even find bin Laden. The only remedy I can think of is immaturity. I think I drove Jason a bit bonkers in Physics this morning with springs and weights...

Ok, something funny I saw in school today: go to http://www.caffeineweb.com for a funny page on the effects of caffeine on spiders.

Gone with the Hurricane

I have just recovered sufficiently to write cohesively. (I think. I may not have. Tell me if I haven't. If you understand this.) I have been blown away by two things very key to my life as a whole: technology and music. I just downloaded a music video by Evanescence: Going Under (live), loaded it onto my iPod, plugged my iPod into my guitar amp, turned the lights off, turned the volume up, and watched it. I can't believe the resolution on the iPod video! crystal clear! the pixels on the screen are tiny! It is phenomenal! Beautiful! The color range and precision! Gorgeous! And the music? Amazing. This is one of my favorite bands (obviously, as it is the same band I have posted at the moment) and they have done some very nice things to their music. While the recording wasn't as clear as I have heard in the beginning of the song, it does clear up a bit. Downs of the song include the fact that Amy Lee's normally crystal clear voice is distorted as if by pain in the second verse, and is almost totally wiped out in the first verse by the recording and the distortion used, but in the third verse it is back to the standards I have come to know and admire in that band. Ups include many things. They finally added a guitar riff to the song! Very cool. Also, the synth work in the background adds a new level to the complexity of the song, meshing the intense guitar perfectly with the rest of the music, giving the song a unity that it didn't have before. My congratulations and thanks go out to Apple and Evanescence for the very high high I just had.

Reponsibility

Blah. In next to no time at all I shall be 18 and shall have to bear up under governmental irritations such as taxes and the draft, and get sent off to Iraq and shot for all I'm worth! I still don't have a drivers license... I wonder how much longer that will last. Hopefully another six months at least. Ah well, birthdays aren't all evil: I got a music stand! And a musheda! Tallesin will recall how wonderful those can be from our travels to far off exotic islands... This one is really nice: its blue, very dark blue, and has gold colored stitching in it. Its wool too, so it should be nice and warm on airplanes and such. I like it a lot. Anyway, I finally noticed that the song wasn't all the way loaded, so I fixed that. (I hope.) It is Sweet Sacrifice by Evanescence on the album The Open Door.