A previous attempt at multi point blog posts failed miserably. I just babbled on for a few paragraphs and when I'd realized I intended on talking about more stuff it was just too late. So maybe this one will succeed where the other has failed.
-Fear of Death
Why? It's understandable to me that we can be afraid of pain, or living a worse life than we'd anticipated. But why are we afraid of death? It's not like when you're dead you're going to be regretting the fact. Some (religious) people would say it's fear of eternal punishment if they think they might be deemed not good enough for heaven but atheists, too, fear death. So either atheists believe in eternal punishment and reward at some subconscious level or there is something else in play here. Go figure.
-Baseball
I went to my first live baseball game yesterday. In the spirit of doing new stuff (we keda). And now that I narrowly escaped death by boredom I can safely say it's my last.
Well that might not be entirely true, the game is boring to death to watch, and I suspect to play too although I've never tried. But you see, you might still want to go to a baseball game. The logic might not be readily obvious but it's pretty straight forward. Baseball games would be a great idea for dates, or so I am theorizing. The game is ridiculously long (150+ minutes), and it's even more ridiculously boring. That means you get time to talk about stuff with your date and generally fool around. Who wants to go see a good movie when you're both pinned to your seats with your eyes fixed on the screen for 2 hours. Go to a baseball game and it'll bore her as close to death as possible that she would just have to listen to you, and better yet, you'll sound interesting!
However, if you think you're more boring than a baseball game then obviously you shouldn't take my advice. But then again if you are, you really have bigger problems to worry about than a failed date.
-Karaoke
Been meaning to go for a long time, and a friend of mine is now determined on making it happen. Weirdly enough I jumped off a 53 meter high bridge and a 5 Km high plane but I'm still afraid of singing in public (my bathroom is not public even though it might share a thin wall with the public). We'll see how this one goes.
-Free Audio Books
Courtesy of BMW, go to BMW audiobooks and you can download 4 audio books for your listening pleasure. Nothing about cars there don't let the name fool you. They're in mp3 format and free as in beer, no strings attached. They might add some more in the future but these should keep you busy for some time.
So there, I did it! A quad point post! (counting the bullet points not the actual literary point)
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Monday, May 15, 2006
Project Melokheya
First off, a note to international readers. Melokheya/Molokheya is an Egyptian national dish, translated it's Jute Mallow. Now that we got this out of the way....
Finally I did it!
Been meaning to cook a nice meal since I came to Uncle Sam's land. I know how to cook but it takes so much effort and time that I kept delaying it, till today.
So I woke up late and was looking for a mood lifter. Now, If you think melokheya is just a good tasting meal you're sadly mistaken. It can also be an excellent mood lifter and cooking a good one will give you a feeling of self accomplishment very few other things can. And just imagine how much Karma you gain when you cook a hearty meal for 4 single guys who are 7000 miles away from home and all they'd eaten in months is frozen meals reheated in the microwave.
So in order to commit to my ambitious project, I called up a few friends and invited them to dinner. We were to be 5 guys. Next was getting the raw materials, not an easy task in Redmond, but I learned of a mediterranean deli and supermarket close by so I made the trip, got myself 2 bags of frozen Melokheya (Montana, made in Egypt no less!) and some Cardamom pod (habahan). I already had rice, garlic and oil and I got 2 young chickens on the way back.
With the raw material ready it was time to start cooking, 4 young men collaborated in the kitchen orchestrated by your truly. We boiled the chicken, Helal single handedly cooked the rice (very well too!), and an hour or so later mission melokheya was accomplished!
It all turned out well and everybody actually liked the food. I felt so proud of it that I came to blog it out :) I even have a few photos to commemorate the day when Redmond got a taste of my melokheya
Probably the first time I hold a raw chicken.
We had to boil 2 chickens to feed the crowds :)
Making "El Ta2leya", didn't forget the "shah2a" shortly afterwards.
And the final product, yes I know our kitchen could use some tidying up.
Apologies for the blurry photos, it wasn't me taking them :P
Happy melokheya day!
Finally I did it!
Been meaning to cook a nice meal since I came to Uncle Sam's land. I know how to cook but it takes so much effort and time that I kept delaying it, till today.
So I woke up late and was looking for a mood lifter. Now, If you think melokheya is just a good tasting meal you're sadly mistaken. It can also be an excellent mood lifter and cooking a good one will give you a feeling of self accomplishment very few other things can. And just imagine how much Karma you gain when you cook a hearty meal for 4 single guys who are 7000 miles away from home and all they'd eaten in months is frozen meals reheated in the microwave.
So in order to commit to my ambitious project, I called up a few friends and invited them to dinner. We were to be 5 guys. Next was getting the raw materials, not an easy task in Redmond, but I learned of a mediterranean deli and supermarket close by so I made the trip, got myself 2 bags of frozen Melokheya (Montana, made in Egypt no less!) and some Cardamom pod (habahan). I already had rice, garlic and oil and I got 2 young chickens on the way back.
With the raw material ready it was time to start cooking, 4 young men collaborated in the kitchen orchestrated by your truly. We boiled the chicken, Helal single handedly cooked the rice (very well too!), and an hour or so later mission melokheya was accomplished!
It all turned out well and everybody actually liked the food. I felt so proud of it that I came to blog it out :) I even have a few photos to commemorate the day when Redmond got a taste of my melokheya
Probably the first time I hold a raw chicken.
We had to boil 2 chickens to feed the crowds :)
Making "El Ta2leya", didn't forget the "shah2a" shortly afterwards.
And the final product, yes I know our kitchen could use some tidying up.
Apologies for the blurry photos, it wasn't me taking them :P
Happy melokheya day!
Sunday, May 14, 2006
The speed records part II
So I didn't get to post it the next day like I'd planned but better late than never I guess.
The thing is that I've always wanted to try skydiving. Thought it should be cool, new perspective on old things maybe, and hearing that the speeds involved during free fall go up to 120mph I really couldn't pass.
We made a group, and we went together to a local airbase where they do skydiving lessons and tandem jumps. Tandem jumps is a cool concept, it's highly recommended that you start out skydiving with a tandem jump. It's kind of feeling the waters and seeing if you like this type of thing. You jump strapped to a professional called the tandem master. Your tandem master has the parachute, takes care of everything. You more or less jump and tag along during the trip back to the ground. You don't have to worry about checking your altitude, opening a parachute, landing in the right spot. And that's the way I went.
The experience was incredible.... Actually when I did the bungee jump I had predicted that the skydive might be less scary. And I was right!
For some (weird and unknown) reason, standing at the door of a plane and then jumping off is not scary. While standing on the edge of a bridge looking down on a river _is_ scary. My theory is that it's the conditioning throughout our evolution. Man has been over mountains and heights that "look like" what it what you see when you're about to bungee jump, and somehow this fear was encoded in our DNA. Planes have been around for far less time and the conditioning just doesn't seem to be there yet. Looking down from the plane with the door open looks more like what you see on google maps or virtual earth than anything else. And somehow we're not pre-conditioned to get scared from maps and satellite photos.
Anyway, enough with psychology for the insane. The long story short is that I jumped from 13500 feet (around 5Kms) high, went down at a speed of 120mph for less than a minute, and then back on the ground a few minutes later. It was amazing, a lot less scary than most people think and a lot more fun.
A few photos will probably relieve me from writing any more (Can you tell already I'm not in the mood for writing?)
^ That's me thinking I'm a pilot
^The plane that carried us up
Mid air
And landing
Cheers!
The thing is that I've always wanted to try skydiving. Thought it should be cool, new perspective on old things maybe, and hearing that the speeds involved during free fall go up to 120mph I really couldn't pass.
We made a group, and we went together to a local airbase where they do skydiving lessons and tandem jumps. Tandem jumps is a cool concept, it's highly recommended that you start out skydiving with a tandem jump. It's kind of feeling the waters and seeing if you like this type of thing. You jump strapped to a professional called the tandem master. Your tandem master has the parachute, takes care of everything. You more or less jump and tag along during the trip back to the ground. You don't have to worry about checking your altitude, opening a parachute, landing in the right spot. And that's the way I went.
The experience was incredible.... Actually when I did the bungee jump I had predicted that the skydive might be less scary. And I was right!
For some (weird and unknown) reason, standing at the door of a plane and then jumping off is not scary. While standing on the edge of a bridge looking down on a river _is_ scary. My theory is that it's the conditioning throughout our evolution. Man has been over mountains and heights that "look like" what it what you see when you're about to bungee jump, and somehow this fear was encoded in our DNA. Planes have been around for far less time and the conditioning just doesn't seem to be there yet. Looking down from the plane with the door open looks more like what you see on google maps or virtual earth than anything else. And somehow we're not pre-conditioned to get scared from maps and satellite photos.
Anyway, enough with psychology for the insane. The long story short is that I jumped from 13500 feet (around 5Kms) high, went down at a speed of 120mph for less than a minute, and then back on the ground a few minutes later. It was amazing, a lot less scary than most people think and a lot more fun.
A few photos will probably relieve me from writing any more (Can you tell already I'm not in the mood for writing?)
^ That's me thinking I'm a pilot
^The plane that carried us up
Mid air
And landing
Cheers!
Friday, May 05, 2006
140mph on the ground, 120mph in the air
The speed gods seemed to be ever so present last weekend for I broke a couple of my personal records.
I had organized another drive for Saturday, although on a smaller scaler. I wanted to go out to enjoy the weather, get a healthy dose of spirited driving, and pay more attention to shooting some photos. a bit more than the usual on such group drives that is, therefore a smaller number of people/cars was preferable. Specifically, we were 5 people in 3 cars. An 2001 Lemans blue M5, a Toledo blue z4 3.0, and a black E90 325i.
Being that small (and that crazy) of a group we decided on a 350 mile (around 560Kms) route that would take us to and fro the beautiful city of Yakima down south. That's record number one, the longest distance I have ever driven in a day.
We met at 8 am and little had I known that I'm gonna be in for such a weird adventure. 10 hours, 18 gallons of fuel, 350 miles, 50 degrees fahrenheit temperature change, and 250 photos later I was back in Redmond. With a new speed record of a little over 140mph (~230 Km/hr) under my belt for the fastest I have ever driven*. On the trip I saw waterfalls, snow, mountains, rivers, endless greenery, and got sunburnt in 90 degrees fahrenheit (~32c)
It is beautiful down here in the summer. I'm sure a few photos will say it better than I can do:
Hope you liked the photos, would have loved to ramble on some more and tell you about the other speed record. But blogiquette tells me this is long enough, so I promise this will be the next story. A demain :)
*Performed by a professional driver on a closed course. Do not attempt. (:P)
I had organized another drive for Saturday, although on a smaller scaler. I wanted to go out to enjoy the weather, get a healthy dose of spirited driving, and pay more attention to shooting some photos. a bit more than the usual on such group drives that is, therefore a smaller number of people/cars was preferable. Specifically, we were 5 people in 3 cars. An 2001 Lemans blue M5, a Toledo blue z4 3.0, and a black E90 325i.Being that small (and that crazy) of a group we decided on a 350 mile (around 560Kms) route that would take us to and fro the beautiful city of Yakima down south. That's record number one, the longest distance I have ever driven in a day.
We met at 8 am and little had I known that I'm gonna be in for such a weird adventure. 10 hours, 18 gallons of fuel, 350 miles, 50 degrees fahrenheit temperature change, and 250 photos later I was back in Redmond. With a new speed record of a little over 140mph (~230 Km/hr) under my belt for the fastest I have ever driven*. On the trip I saw waterfalls, snow, mountains, rivers, endless greenery, and got sunburnt in 90 degrees fahrenheit (~32c)
It is beautiful down here in the summer. I'm sure a few photos will say it better than I can do:
Hope you liked the photos, would have loved to ramble on some more and tell you about the other speed record. But blogiquette tells me this is long enough, so I promise this will be the next story. A demain :)
*Performed by a professional driver on a closed course. Do not attempt. (:P)
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Moussaoui: "America, you lost, I won."
Kind of a disturbing thing to say don't you think?
Pick your favorite to read about how the unrepentant 9/11 plotter escaped the death penalty and got away with life behind bars instead.
CNN, BBC, or Al Jazeera
What else could a death penalty be good for....
Pick your favorite to read about how the unrepentant 9/11 plotter escaped the death penalty and got away with life behind bars instead.
CNN, BBC, or Al Jazeera
What else could a death penalty be good for....
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
A Geisha
I've always been fascinated by the Japanese culture and the term Geisha came up quite a few times recently that I decided I should know about it.
So I glanced over the wikipedia page about Geisha and got the movie to watch.
The movie is good, it's not excellent in my humble opinion as far as movies go. But it does shed some light over something I never knew existed till now.
If you're too lazy to read the wikipedia page, the word Geisha is japanese for art-person. A Geisha is a sort of entertainer that spends a lifetime learning various arts (music, dance, poetry, story telling) to be able to perform their jobs.
This is all, of course, just fine. The intriguing point (and the one that comes in focus in the movie) is that up until (very) recently being a geisha was not a career decision women take after high school. Rather they were *sold* as children to geisha houses (okiyas).
At the end of the movie I found myself wondering. How come slavery or the practice and school of thought that you can buy and sell a human life lasted so long. For thousands of years this was happening in various forms in various places all over the world, and it was only a few tens of years ago when we could truly say slavery was becoming extinct. How is it that human beings were able to accumulate this mind boggling amount of knowledge, including relativity theory and quantum mechanics, before they grasp the simple concept that one man shouldn't be able to buy or sell another.
So I glanced over the wikipedia page about Geisha and got the movie to watch.
The movie is good, it's not excellent in my humble opinion as far as movies go. But it does shed some light over something I never knew existed till now.
If you're too lazy to read the wikipedia page, the word Geisha is japanese for art-person. A Geisha is a sort of entertainer that spends a lifetime learning various arts (music, dance, poetry, story telling) to be able to perform their jobs.
This is all, of course, just fine. The intriguing point (and the one that comes in focus in the movie) is that up until (very) recently being a geisha was not a career decision women take after high school. Rather they were *sold* as children to geisha houses (okiyas).
At the end of the movie I found myself wondering. How come slavery or the practice and school of thought that you can buy and sell a human life lasted so long. For thousands of years this was happening in various forms in various places all over the world, and it was only a few tens of years ago when we could truly say slavery was becoming extinct. How is it that human beings were able to accumulate this mind boggling amount of knowledge, including relativity theory and quantum mechanics, before they grasp the simple concept that one man shouldn't be able to buy or sell another.
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