Restlessness and my Imagination

I am feeling restless. I can't sit still and do the same thing for more than half an hour without desperately wanting to get up and do something else. For me this is completely off the charts in bizarity. I have been known to sit still and not do anything except letting my mind wander in my many wonderland, where either I am wanted by the CIA for who knows what and I repel an attack on my home single-handedly using weapons of my own design from the best trained strike team on the face of the earth, or where I am some sort of knight back in the dark ages, wielding a sword, bringing justice to earth, or I am some whacked out magician on Antarctica before the last Ice age came as a result of the dark mages' greed for power, or some other nuty thing. I have also been known to read a book for six straight hours, not getting a drink, food, or taking any other sort of break. Being this restless is really starting to creep me out.

Relatives Galore

This morning, my lit teacher was sick, so we had an interesting lit class. Our sub was a strange lady. I had never seen her before, and she said to call her Mrs. PC. Go figure. She said she had some funny name like Pedro C....tzee. I forget how the middle part goes, but anyway, she wanted us silent, and when we did quiet down, she would smash in and start a new conversation. Whenever she wanted to address the class as a whole, she always started or ended the sentence with "Students," which utterly creeped me out. I felt like I was back in preschool. She ranted on our bad habits, and then let us out of class ten minutes early. It was bizarre. During the time between when we finished our work and the time we were dismissed, my classmates discussed (of all things) how they were all related to each other. Not through the imagination or some other kooky mess, but in all actuality. Ghassan and Abraham only today discovered that they were either second cousins, first cousins, nephew/uncle, or great uncle. The really creepy thing was that Sami, (a Somalian) was the one who knew all the relations. He managed to give Abe and Ghassan a quarter hour discourse on how they were related to each other that was very confusing, hence the multiple relations, with out repeating himself once. I knew that Yemenis often intermarried, especially amongst the higher levels of the government for diplomatic reasons, but I had no idea that they were that bad. At any rate, I spent a quarter of an hour listening to this mess that went something like this:

Sami: So his mother's mother's brother was the old president, who married your father's uncle's mother in law.

Abe: No, you just said that he married his mother's mother' great grand niece

Sami: No, that was the old Shiekh. This is the old President.

Ghassan: Yeah, the Arriani one, before Ali Abdula Saleh.

Abe: Oh. So that would make you my...

Sami: Here, let me draw you a family tree.

At any rate, this went on for a while, and about four family trees were drawn, none of which helped anything, if not hindered, leaving them with several different possible relations. For all I know, it might be all of them, or at least some whacked out combination. The scarry thing was that Sami knew the entire thing. He dismantled Yemeni government, business, and something else by houses, and then proved several other things by other references in the school, such as Hassim is Tarek's uncle, who are Ghassan's cousins who is distantly related to Kanan, who is the president's grandson, etc. The way he could carry on was simply terrifying.

My Crazy Weekend

This will probably be a bit of a long post, but any way, here goes. It all started Wednesday. School ended, and we had the first "official" football game in the history of Yemen. Unfortunately it was only flag football and not the full body tackle thing that I love, (probably a good thing considering the field) but it was football all the same, even if both sides were sadly deficient in almost every aspect. No crowds, no screaming, no waves, no hotdogs, no victory music, no injuries, nothing. At any rate, when that finished, I took the bus home, took a shower, and then imediately went to youth group. When Youth Group ended, I went to Jeffrey's house for a night over, as it was his birthday. We stayed up until midnight watching Startreck IV, (good if you like Startreck) and then went to sleep. The next morning (Thursday) dawned, and we rose far latter, and went out for breakfast at a small restaurant near Jeffrey's house. Around 8:45 I had to leave for AP Chem... =( when that ended, I hung around for a while, and then went home, and finally beat Jedi Academy. (bad game. Unpredictable graphics and sound) before going to bed. Friday, my family and I got ready for church half way across the city. Several Indians showed up for transportation, and we got there with little trouble. Once there how ever, Mom had plants for us to carry in. We did so, and in the process, one of the Indians knocked into me and I had damp dirt all over me. Indians are the one ethnic group that I am inclined to be biased against. It might just be their culture, but they typically are very relaxed about helping anyone, and they take a very non participatory in church. The two or three of the many in our church that help out have my complete admiration, but the rest don't ever seem to do anything. At any rate, there was a ping pong table in the basement, and David Park, Mr. Park, Mr. Barbo, a Korean lady and I played ping pong. I beat David twice, a serious accomplishment in my opinion, only to be beaten by both Mr. Barbo and Mr. Park. I didn't get to play against the Korean lady, who was the first serious female ping pong player I have ever met. (man, this post is making me sound more racist and sexist than I actually am. Really.) At any rate, I went home, did homework, and then went to a Youth Group Softball match between the Parents against the Youth and the kids. We were creamed. I came home, finished my homework and went to bed. It took forever to finish the weekend, but in retrospect it took hardly any time at all. So now I am in computer one class "learning" how to use Microsoft Excel and blogging, looking forward to a short afternoon (my mom has piano lessons, and among the students are several friends of mine, so I won't get much time to myself this afternoon. Tomorrow I have track practice after school, as well as Tuesday, and Monday I have other obligations. I will have very little time to myself it looks like, for about the next week.

Driving and Doom

I may have to take driving lessons this summer. I have been trying to put them off, as I will get far more responsibility than I want when I learn to drive. My fears are thus: 1. Mom and Dad will pawn off all their driving errands onto me. 2. I will probably get to drive my little siblings around town. 3. I will have to pay for fuel, and I want an iPod, a base guitar, and a steel string guitar. Also, there is nowhere in town that I want to go to that I can't get to via public transportation, (which my parents pay for.) there is simply no reason for me to drive here. However, I think my dad is conspiring against me: he has (I think) rigged up some sort of driver's ed thing in Indiana, so that I can drive back to TN for my parents, and then I can do all the aforesaid horrors for them once I get back.

Nerds Anonymous

I love my pre calculus class. Our teacher is from the UK, and then their are four students: a kid from Germany, a Somali, a Yemeni, and then myself. The only American. In addition, everyone has some kind of querk. Our teacher is a techee, he uploads world news to his cell phone every day and has seemingly random trig values memorized. The Somali dismantles computers and adds chips, The German programs graphing calculators, our Yemeni can do roots in his head, and I program computers. At the beginning of the year, there were only two students. The German and myself. We have made everyone prove their nerd hood before initiating them into the class. Our teacher decided to call it "Nerds Anonymous" a name that was heartily approved of by all the students.

Our Game

Recently, my friend and I have been noticing strange behavior from the girls. They completely ignore us. We say hello. They don't even look up. Bad story. At any rate, it has almost developed into a game with me and my friend. Often times there are just one or two girls in the hall between our class and the pingpong tables right at the beginning of lunch (which we use to play pingpong), so we wave, and yell hello at them. Not so much as a flicker of recognition: "oh! There is someone else in the room with me!" Nope. Nothing. Nothing whatsoever at all. At any rate, it has developed into a joke between my friend and myself when he started it one day when he said, "alright. If we can get them to notice us, we win." We have yet to win. I find it funny, if majorly disturbing.

Irony and Alchemy

Last night the power went out again at our place (a common occurrence here in the netherworld) while I was studying AP Chemistry. Not a favorite subject, but it needed to get done, so I went and got a candle. After studying thermodynamics and thermochemistry for a while I sat up and felt totally like an alchemist. Amusing in this "modern" age. Which reminded me of when I studied computer programming by candle light. I got a good kick out of that. I am considering starting a list. The heading would go something like "comical studies by candle light" or something like that.

Guitars, Stupidity, and Laughs

Recently, I have been doing a lot of really dumb things, that in retrospect I have been getting a kick out of. For example, I had to change a string on my new electric guitar for the first time. I looked at it for a while before deciding that I had to remove the entire back of the guitar to do so. I did that, and successfully changed the string. The next day, looking at the back of the guitar, I noticed a grill through which you can change the strings without utterly dismantling the guitar. Maybe that is a bit of an overstatement, as I only had to remove five screws and slide the back plate over, but all the same it was kinda funny. The insides of my guitar are really interesting though: (to me at any rate) there are three really big springs (for the whammy bar) some wires (...) and six slots for the strings to fit through. I might dismantle it again just to fool around with the insides... nah, probably not, I paid to much for my baby, but you get the gist of what I'm saying.

It Was Stupid Alright

I don't think I need to say anymore, but I will. I had the moderate comments on, and I hadn't given it my e-mail address. When I fooled around with Google help I figured out what I was doing wrong. I think that three comments vanished into cyberspace all the same, but I don't think that I will have that problem again. Sorry if yours was one of them.

Internet and Birthday Catastrophes

Well, this is indeed uncool. My dashboard says that I have 8 posts, and I can't see any of them. I am probably doing something really dumb with the settings or the template or some such nonsense. I am not an old know nothing when it comes to computers, I can program in C++, I have, in fact written my own (unbeatable due to some glitch) computer game that all my friends hated me for, network computers, and play games with great alacrity, but when it comes to the internet, I am toast. I recently printed off a page of html code lingo so that I could get the gist of what my template was doing, but it was still mostly lost to me... While I am listing all the bad things that ever happened to me, I might as well inform you all about all the catastrophes that my birthday party went through before it even happened: I was going to have an Age of Empires II fest with seven other kids wirelessly, but the network crashed and so the entire party has been reworked. Tomorow I am going to have a movie, and there are no good movie rental stores in Yemen, and there are no theaters unless you want to watch Indian kickboxing with Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and French subtitles (no english), so I asked several friends if they had any good movies they were willing to watch again, and it turns out that they have all been loaned off somewhere.

Random Recollections

Yesterday was kinda whacked: it was a random collection of lucky and unlucky events. Firstly, it was my birthday, and my school had school canceled for the Islamic new year, which was nice: I got to sleep in for the first time in several weeks that I got to sleep in. AP chemistry has been eating my weekend sleep for the past month now. The down sides were that I got sick and the computer deleted my latest in music composition. I started over, because I liked it, but it is going to take a while to get the mess back to its former "glory." I think I used a different beat, but I think the tune and chords are roughly the same. At any rate, I have AP chemistry tomorrow (bleuagh! Run in terror for your life! It is after you, and this time you have reason to be paranoid!) and youth group tonight, so I'm going to have to hype myself up on caffeine to survive all four hours of it tomorrow.

I borrowed a book called the Opal Deception from a friend of mine recently, fourth in the Artemis Fowl series (I'm not sure I spelled that correctly). At any rate, it is a good simple read, better if you need a laugh, but I would recommend that you get the first one first, because it is sort of a single long story: you need to know everything that went on beforehand to understand this book. The other books were just as good though, so don't worry if you really want to read this one but are terrified of having to slog through pages of dull future classics material.

I wanted this on the side bar really tall, and this looks horrible, but I'll leave it for now... 

Pingpong Problems

I have forgotten how to play pingpong. I switched styles from spinning with my backhand to slamming with my forehand, but that didn't work so well, and when I switched back to backhand, that didn't work so well either. The result was that I was completely wiped out by my friend when I played him.

The Edomites

while buzzing my friend Andrew's blog, I found a link to the Edomites, and in curiosity, I clicked it, only to get one of the best laughs of my life on their apparently half serious parody of the constitution of the US: the constitution of Christain Bloggers. If you need a good laugh, you should try it. I have the site linked, but just in case I change everything and forget to put it back in, it's http://www.edomites.blogspot.com

Commenting Success

I just tried posting a comment again, and the crazy thing worked. Here's to internet *quaffs an imaginary beer* the thing is nuts, but it sure can be some fun. (Untill Dad finds that you spent your afternoon blogging, playing online games, and reading when you should have been doing homework...) At anyrate, I am rather enjoying this blogging buisness, although I will probably drop it in two weeks or so just like almost every single last hobby I have ever had when I get bored of it...

Computer Musings

I have been using Google for a lot of things recently. Search engine, e-mail, blogging, etc., and they know what they are doing. It almost looks like they are preparing to take over the world: they are some sort of society that is run by some alien mastermind on pluto who knows humanity inside and out, and is running all other communication systems off of the net, so that when the aliens are ready to take over, all they have to do is crash all their programs and the world would be there for the taking. (I only sound paranoid and delusional, I am not really, I simply have an "over active imagination".) At any rate, whoever they are and what ever they are trying to do they certainly know their computers. I have recently had computer problems cleared up by their comprehensive help site which is so much better than Microsoft's that I have now officially given up on Microsoft's help system (which I have hated for years.)

They are not without their problems though, I can't post comments on other people's sites and at the moment, they can't post on mine, which ranks upwards of the top ten uncool things for my computer to do. It may have something to do with me being in a different country (Yemen for those of you unaware of my history and shortcomings), and it could be that I have some settings on my computer set too high or it could be some other plethera of problems, or it could be some combination of errors. It is amazing that computers work at all considering that they work in binary, and a single digit change can crash certain programs...

Rice Babies

Last week some of my friends were assigned to take care of rice babies (simply bags of rice) for two weeks, as if they were real babies. Feeding at three and twelve in the middle of the night ensued. As a looker on, it was quite amusing to watch. Everyone had their babies wrapped up in some sort of blanket, they all had storries of how they woke themselves up (one kid put his cell phone in his sock and set it to vibrate.) and other things. On Wednessday though, some kid stole some other kid's baby, and so the office called on the PA for the thief to turn the bag of rice back in. Some kids thought that there had been a kidnapping, and the next day parents called the office. The really funny thing is that there is acctually reason behind calling the school: Yemen is in the top ten corupt countries, and kidnapping is a "legal" method for getting the government's attention.

Well, this is indeed interesting. My friend mailed me about his blog, and in curiosity, I started up my own, just to say I could. I just finished taking an SAT resoning test, not exactly the funnest experience ever, in which the clock stopped and I missed four math questions. Uncool. So at any rate, I am not feeling very good about life at the momment, especially since I have'nt been able to turn up a good answer to my question on Megaman II (a clever gba game that I am ashamed to say I am stuck in: I can't get past this bear in a campground). If I can't figure it out, I will probably move on to music composition, Age of Empires II, or Angband (a new game with virtually no graphics that you can download off of http://www.thangorodrim.net/ for free. It is about 1.6 megabites. Very adictive.)