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.