"I didn't mean to interrupt you " really means "I am about to leave"
"Well, I am going to let you go" really means "Let me go"
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Monday, October 24, 2005
It was about time!
Saturday was a beautiful day, nice, sunny but breezy too...yesterday it got kinda chilly, and was chilly (9 degrees C) all day, so I was freezing while visiting the Texas State Fair, and during the bike ride at night.
Last night it went down to about 6 C I think, and this morning it said 3 C around 8am!!! Wow! So i finally got to break in my new fancy jacket that had been sitting in my closet for way too long ever since I bought it online when I was in Florida: it had never been used!
But back to the fair...it was a little bummer as we didn't get to see the country/rural side of it: the stuff we hung around was kind of normal for a fair (rides, cotton candy, ...), the food kind of gross and overpriced...as one of my students put it, the fair is the place for real Americans with a think regional accent where they serve food that not even the animals would eat! (It was much funnier in her not-so-broken Italian!). So the car exhibits was pretty much just a bunch of huge pickup trucks, all about being the "-est" at something (the roomiest, the biggest, the toughest, the tallest,...), although actually none of them were good at anything worth mentioning (gas mileage, safety,...). Almost anybody ever uses those things for what they're supposed to be used anyway, so who cares I guess...
I posted some more pictures in the "Dallas" album in my online photos.
I still need to post this one though, it says a lot!
Last night it went down to about 6 C I think, and this morning it said 3 C around 8am!!! Wow! So i finally got to break in my new fancy jacket that had been sitting in my closet for way too long ever since I bought it online when I was in Florida: it had never been used!
But back to the fair...it was a little bummer as we didn't get to see the country/rural side of it: the stuff we hung around was kind of normal for a fair (rides, cotton candy, ...), the food kind of gross and overpriced...as one of my students put it, the fair is the place for real Americans with a think regional accent where they serve food that not even the animals would eat! (It was much funnier in her not-so-broken Italian!). So the car exhibits was pretty much just a bunch of huge pickup trucks, all about being the "-est" at something (the roomiest, the biggest, the toughest, the tallest,...), although actually none of them were good at anything worth mentioning (gas mileage, safety,...). Almost anybody ever uses those things for what they're supposed to be used anyway, so who cares I guess...
I posted some more pictures in the "Dallas" album in my online photos.
I still need to post this one though, it says a lot!
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Experiences
Today I finally made it out to the weekly bike ride starting Uptown, and it was fun. the meetup place is this diner that's in Uptown, which is the ritzy/fancy/snobby/pretentious part of town I guess. One thing I definitely like about it is that it is really bike-friendly and not as much car-oriented as the rest of the country.
Since it was a nice warm-but-not-hot Sunday afternoon everybody and their mom was out, and people were showing off their cars. So I got to see a new shiny Ferrari and a BMW convertible I had never seen before...no, it's not the Z4, it's a little bigger...anyway, it kind of reminded me of the "aperitivo" (cocktail) ritual in Italy, with nicely-dressed people and stuff...I ended up talking with this Turkish guy who was in a professional waterpolo team in Turkey for 15 years...but the most interesting part of his life was when he found a backdoor in the Pentagon website! So he and his crew got an invitation to the Pentagon to show the FBI how they managed to do it...and in 22 minutes "poof" they showed it to them right before their eyes! And they got a certificate thanking them for finding the fault so that they could fix it...how crazy is that??? He also supposedly stole several thousands of dollars and gave them to Greenpeace...all through the Internet I think...I didn't get the part about how he did this or where he got the money from, or from whom, since his English was not too clear...but it's definitely not something that you come across everyday!
Later on I came back to campus to watch About Baghdad, an interesting documentary directed by a Christian Iraqi who came to the States in 1991. A Q&A session followed, and it turned really interesting, as a guy in the audience had spent over a year in Iraq...and even though most of the "info" that were introduced to the public as new are actually almost common knowledge in Europe, it was still interesting to hear what Iraqis had to say 2-3 months after the invasion of their country.
Gotta grade now.
Since it was a nice warm-but-not-hot Sunday afternoon everybody and their mom was out, and people were showing off their cars. So I got to see a new shiny Ferrari and a BMW convertible I had never seen before...no, it's not the Z4, it's a little bigger...anyway, it kind of reminded me of the "aperitivo" (cocktail) ritual in Italy, with nicely-dressed people and stuff...I ended up talking with this Turkish guy who was in a professional waterpolo team in Turkey for 15 years...but the most interesting part of his life was when he found a backdoor in the Pentagon website! So he and his crew got an invitation to the Pentagon to show the FBI how they managed to do it...and in 22 minutes "poof" they showed it to them right before their eyes! And they got a certificate thanking them for finding the fault so that they could fix it...how crazy is that??? He also supposedly stole several thousands of dollars and gave them to Greenpeace...all through the Internet I think...I didn't get the part about how he did this or where he got the money from, or from whom, since his English was not too clear...but it's definitely not something that you come across everyday!
Later on I came back to campus to watch About Baghdad, an interesting documentary directed by a Christian Iraqi who came to the States in 1991. A Q&A session followed, and it turned really interesting, as a guy in the audience had spent over a year in Iraq...and even though most of the "info" that were introduced to the public as new are actually almost common knowledge in Europe, it was still interesting to hear what Iraqis had to say 2-3 months after the invasion of their country.
Gotta grade now.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Thursday, October 13, 2005
So I managed to go one daylight day fasting for Fast-A-Thon here at SMU. It turns out the money raised (total of $3500) for Islamic Relief goes to the victims of the earthquake in Pakistan, which I know next to nothing about. But I was gone when it happened...yeah, I celebrated my birthday on the bus, as part of a 32-hour trip to reach Gainesville, FL. Most of the ride was spent hanging out with Hondurian immigrants who spoke no English and had been traveling for 35 days to reach their relatives or friends in the States, where they can work temporarily. It was definitely an eye-opening experience: the guys were all in their high school age, and one asked me to read his phone card, who was in Spanish indeed: he just didn't know how to read! Others did not know how to dial their relatives'phone numbers although they did have a phone card with instructions in Spanish...I lent my mp3 player to one of them, who was fascinated about the discman: go figure!
It was nice to be back in Gainesville, the only place I can call home on this continent. Most things were still the same, although Gainesville is always fun! It was hard to get to spend time with everyone, or at least to spend as much quality time with everyone as I was hoping to!
The ride back was "only" 26 hours, but it was worse: all bus rides were full and I never had both seats to myself. Also, I had to go through Alabama and Mississippi, so a lot of the passengers were white (trash) Southerners in camouflage gear: hunting and God is a combination that seems strange, but not down (t)here. I can recall a tattoo on a tough guy reading "Only God knows"...but the best of all was one lady's t-shirt, all colorful and in "Who wants to be a millionaire?"-style, reading "My definite answer?" and then in the middle, in big characters:"Jesus!". Nice, huh?
I had a good time talking to a Chinese man who was a "chef" at a Chinese buffet restaurant somewhere in Mississippi: he's been in the States for 4 years now, but his English wasn't very good. He was telling me how he used to live in Biloxi, MS and when Katrina came his house was flooded up to his chest; he said he swam all the way to the highway where he sought help and walked for 30 minutes to a firestation, where he got new clothes and food...
This older man next across the isle was reading crazy books that seemed to come out of some sort of white, Christian, spiritual "sect": this one book he spent the most time on (taking the time to underline things...) was called "Animals are Soul too" and for what I could glance at was made up of little silly (madeup) anecdotes about how all these animals were really carrying "God's message" or something scary like that...the best was the language used: a kid in elementary school would find it too simple!
I was glad to finally be back in Dallas and be able to ride the Dart home. Campus feels such an educated environment compared to the bus stations!
On another note, it is interesting to notice how Katrina was all over the news for at least a week, with catastrophic words all over the place. Final dead toll? Barely 1'000 people. The earthquake in Pakistan has so far allegedly killed about 30'000 people at least, yet it is not nearly as important as the new (video) iPod...the tsunami in SE Asia did receive adequate coverage in the news, but I suspect it was mainly because of Phuket and the touristy destinations for us Westerners. What would we know about it if it had only hit Banda Aceh, the Nicobar and the Andaman Islands?
Oh, I also started getting to a decent amount of shows, and I have been posting pictures from my Labor Day weekend trip to El Paso, TX and Juarez, Mexico. They're all here, along with some more random shots: http://photos.yahoo.com/xdambox
Well, I better go now...Russian is calling me! But the pictures from El Paso and Juarez talk for themselves: it was definitely an amusing experience to wade through the sewage waters that were rising by the minute after a 30-minute storm. Being able to bargain for stuff in Spanish and eating 5 "paletas" in one day were the other highlights, as well as being in the city At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta are from. And, as a certain commercial would say, being addressed in English by Mexican vendors wanting to show you the Rolexes they sell is priceless! Do they know that I have been living in an unfurnished apartment and sleeping on an air mattress for the past 2-3 months? Probably not!
It was nice to be back in Gainesville, the only place I can call home on this continent. Most things were still the same, although Gainesville is always fun! It was hard to get to spend time with everyone, or at least to spend as much quality time with everyone as I was hoping to!
The ride back was "only" 26 hours, but it was worse: all bus rides were full and I never had both seats to myself. Also, I had to go through Alabama and Mississippi, so a lot of the passengers were white (trash) Southerners in camouflage gear: hunting and God is a combination that seems strange, but not down (t)here. I can recall a tattoo on a tough guy reading "Only God knows"...but the best of all was one lady's t-shirt, all colorful and in "Who wants to be a millionaire?"-style, reading "My definite answer?" and then in the middle, in big characters:"Jesus!". Nice, huh?
I had a good time talking to a Chinese man who was a "chef" at a Chinese buffet restaurant somewhere in Mississippi: he's been in the States for 4 years now, but his English wasn't very good. He was telling me how he used to live in Biloxi, MS and when Katrina came his house was flooded up to his chest; he said he swam all the way to the highway where he sought help and walked for 30 minutes to a firestation, where he got new clothes and food...
This older man next across the isle was reading crazy books that seemed to come out of some sort of white, Christian, spiritual "sect": this one book he spent the most time on (taking the time to underline things...) was called "Animals are Soul too" and for what I could glance at was made up of little silly (madeup) anecdotes about how all these animals were really carrying "God's message" or something scary like that...the best was the language used: a kid in elementary school would find it too simple!
I was glad to finally be back in Dallas and be able to ride the Dart home. Campus feels such an educated environment compared to the bus stations!
On another note, it is interesting to notice how Katrina was all over the news for at least a week, with catastrophic words all over the place. Final dead toll? Barely 1'000 people. The earthquake in Pakistan has so far allegedly killed about 30'000 people at least, yet it is not nearly as important as the new (video) iPod...the tsunami in SE Asia did receive adequate coverage in the news, but I suspect it was mainly because of Phuket and the touristy destinations for us Westerners. What would we know about it if it had only hit Banda Aceh, the Nicobar and the Andaman Islands?
Oh, I also started getting to a decent amount of shows, and I have been posting pictures from my Labor Day weekend trip to El Paso, TX and Juarez, Mexico. They're all here, along with some more random shots: http://photos.yahoo.com/xdambox
Well, I better go now...Russian is calling me! But the pictures from El Paso and Juarez talk for themselves: it was definitely an amusing experience to wade through the sewage waters that were rising by the minute after a 30-minute storm. Being able to bargain for stuff in Spanish and eating 5 "paletas" in one day were the other highlights, as well as being in the city At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta are from. And, as a certain commercial would say, being addressed in English by Mexican vendors wanting to show you the Rolexes they sell is priceless! Do they know that I have been living in an unfurnished apartment and sleeping on an air mattress for the past 2-3 months? Probably not!
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