Imagine this for a moment… a cat… with a mullet. The hair is long on it’s back and short everywhere else, and really bushy and crazy in the face.

How sweet is that?

i SAW SNAKES ON A PLANSE ANYD IT WAS THE EBST MOVIE EVER CREATED

ALSO:

Mark Wilson – says:
i not only respect u
Mark Wilson – says:
i love u
Mark Wilson – says:
sexually
Mark Wilson – says:
qoute me on that
nana says:
it’ll go in the blog
Mark Wilson – says:
and make sure “qoute me on that” is in the actual qoute

This week will be a week of amazing and exciting things. First, I will be seeing Snakes on a Plane, after waiting months and months for it to come out. Second, I’ll be leaving the hole of evil known as my apartment. And third, September will begin this coming week. September means it’s almost fall, and fall is the wickedest season.

Kind of okay but not amazing things: School is starting soon. Also, I have a weird feeling about the next few months, for some reason.

Yesterday I saw a woman walking her dog down Rideau Street, with a boa constrictor around her neck and torso.

I’ve killed five spiders in my apartment in the last two days.

The bushings on my longboard will not stop squeaking.

Everytime I call this person about when they’re moving out of their apartment, I can never reach them.

We landed at Heathrow airport about 2 hours ago at noon London time and we’re now chilling at a Starbucks waiting for our next flight which won’t be for another 3 1/2 hours. The terrorist paranoia-induced knee-jerk reaction is definitely real and annoying. Even with the lowered security level, we couldn’t get onto the plane with more than a couple of ziplock bags with some random things like my ipod and passport and whatnot. Apparently the check-in people at Perason didn’t get the memo. Thankfully they let us take our laptops on board because I definitely didn’t want to check it in with my luggage.

The flight over was pretty good, and I was quite impressed with British Airways…it’s so much better than Air Canada. Every seat has a personal LCD screen and instead of just showing the same movie on every screen, we pretty much had video on demand with a pretty decent collection of movies and tv shows. I ended up watching Inside Man and then The Sentinel. I thoroughly enjoyed Inside Man but The Sentinel wasn’t as satisfying considering the all-star cast it had. I kinda regret staying up all night (our flight left at midnight Monday night…) but I couldn’t pass up the sweet entertainment setup on the flight. I managed to get an hour or so of sleep though as we descended and taxied to the terminal. I have a headache now.

Now to waste another 3 hours…

A few weeks ago I was having an ordinary lunch with my friend Ahmed when we came to the conclusion that since he’s going home to Egypt until school starts in the fall, that it’d be a good idea for me to go with him. His flight was booked a year ago for Aug 14 (today) and it just so happened that my last exam was last Saturday, Aug 12. It worked out perfectly. That gave me all of yesterday to move into my new place (which is sweeeeet) in Waterloo then come back home for a 1 night visit to Belleville.

So in about half an hour I’ll be headed for Pearson airport and at midnight I’ll be flying off to Heathrow in England. After about a 5 1/5 hour layover I’ll be making my way to Cairo and will arrive around Tuesday night midnight Cairo

I’ll have my laptop there with an internet connection so I’ll try to keep this blog updated with my life in Egypt over the next month. Anyway, I need to finish packing as I haven’t quite started yet….

Egyptiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

The last three weeks, heck, the last month and a half have flown by for me. It feels like it was just last week that I was in Newfoundland but in reality I’m off by a few…

I have an excuse though, really, I do. Except I don’t really want to share it so openly…yet. Excluding the week I spent in Newfoundland, I’ve spent the last month and a half in almost complete solitude, just me and my computer. I’ve been working on something big. If I’m lucky I’ll be done in a few more months. I’ve been semi-secretly blogging my progress so that people can read it later.

But anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about, so on with Newfoundland.

Newfoundland was really awesome and I had a great time there. It’s so laid back there and everyone was exceptionally nice. The scenery there was absolutely amazing, definitely an underrated part of Canada.

The competition was pretty fun as usual, and it was great being able to spend a week with Tom and Arjun as they are like brothers to me. We came in second this year, losing to Quebec, but I was pretty happy with our performance. We compete in team kata which is where the 3 of us perform a synchronized kata (a karate routine) and then we do a bunkai (a demonstrationof the kata). We don’t exactly train throughout the year as we haven’t trained together since we left Belleville three years ago but we always somehow pull something together right before the competition. Anyway, this year’s bunkai was really awesome, I think my favourite one so far, and it was a lot of fun performing it.

On the last night, after the banquet, we went out to the famous George St. (has over 40 bars along one small street) and that was a lot of fun. I went with a rag-tag group of people from across the country. From what I can remember we had one from Alberta, one from Nova Scotia, two of us from Ontario, a guy from Northwest Territories (!!!), a couple from Newfoundland. There were others too but I can’t quite remember…uhh yeah. Anyway, it was great having some locals with us as I had no idea where to go in George St. with so many choices.

We first went to Lottie’s Place where we downed their “famous” White Russian (it was good just as they claimed) and had a few other drinks while we waited around for some others to join up with our group. We then crossed the street to Trapper John’s where we all got “screeched-in”. This is a Newfoundland tradition through which they allow mainlanders to become an “Honourary Member of Newfoundland”. I was told it involved taking a shot of Screech which is a rum that’s bottled in Newfoundland but I hadn’t realized how big of a deal it was until we did it, and it was a lot of fun. The bartender rang a bell and basically the whole bar turned its attention to the middle bar as a good 20 or so of us “mainlanders” lined up along the bar. The bartender, Trapper John himself, poured out a couple rows of shots.

The ceremony then proceed with all of us picking up a shot and then we repeated the saying:

Indeed I is
me ole cock…
an long mae
yer big jib draw!

A lot of us being really drunk and him saying it really fast didn’t help and took a few tries for us to repeat it properly. But we persevered and then took our shots and then kissed a puffin (type of bird) statuette. This was a variation of kissing a cod (a real one usually). And having completed the ritual we were given our certificates to certify that we were entitled as Honourary Members of Newfoundland.

The rest of the night consisted of going to others bars, and it was a blast. I think I got home around 4 am. It was really tough the next day because I had to wake up at 8:30 am to go on a whale watching trip. Thankfully the night was so long that when I woke up I wasn’t drunk or hungover. We drove all the way out to Petty Harbour which was about 30 minutes away from St. John’s and we set sail on the Scademia.

Later that day I came back to Ontario with the rest of the karate team but my parents stayed for an extra week and drove all across Newfoundland. Looking back, I wish I had stayed but I guess this means that now I just have to go back again sometime. My mom took a bunch of really nice pictures and goes to show how beautiful Newfoundland really is.

So Hiro and I got into a discussion about crazy metal bands. If you’re not getting your recommended daily intake of metal, I suggest listening to Mastodon (get the album titled Leviathan. It’s a concept album about Moby Dick!), Opeth (melodic metal for great justice! Listen to Blackwater Park), and the old mainstay, Iron Maiden (any album, but you’ll enjoy Brave New World a lot, methinks). Hiro suggests listening to Iced Earth, Impellitteri, and Blind Guardian (look for any songs referencing Lord of the Rings).

On a side note, although I know you don’t read this, I miss you Mike Kang. It’s been too long since I’ve seen you. We need to hang out