This country is nuts. insane. ridiculous. crazy. incredible. unbelievable. weird. awesome.

I left Canada on Friday, Oct 27 and arrived in Osaka, Japan on Saturday, Oct 28. It was just under 5 hours to fly from Toronto to Vancouver then another 14 and some hours to Japan. I came here with a karate team which consists of about 20 of us including my dad and my sister. We’re competing at the S.K.I.F. (my karate federation) world championships and there’s apparently a couple thousand competitors from almost 100 countries.

We spent about 3 days in Osaka during which we also travelled to Kyoto and Nara for some site-seeing and we visited a bunch of temples and such.

I’m now in Tokyo and we’ll be competing on Nov 3-5. The rest of the team is leaving on the 7th but my sister and I are staying for an extra 5 days and leaving Japan on the 12th. We’ll be visiting some friends around Tokyo and Kobe and go visit our relatives in Nara as well.

So far, some cool/weird things I’ve noticed so far in Japan:

The bidet-toilet is the coolest thing ever. My ass has never been so clean after a number 2. To simply call it a bidet-toilet however, is to do it injustice. They are much more than that. The toilets here can range from the cool to super-cool. Although the standard feature of almost every non-public toilet is the bidet (with adjustable pressure settings no less), they also come with seat warmers, deodorizers, camo-sounds (either a flushing sound effect or actual flushing water to mask any embarrassing sounds) and countless other features that I have yet to figure out since I can’t read Japanese.

The fogless mirror. So I was having a shower the other day in my hotel and I pull the curtains aside and look in the mirror. I stood there for a second trying to figure out the situtation as I stared at the mirror and there was a big square patch without any fog where I could see myself clearly. Seriously, every mirror in every bathroom in the mirror should be like this.

The no-sliding tray. I had breakfast yesterday at the hotel and noticed that as I carried around my tray, none of my plates were sliding. They were coated in like a saran-wrap type material and everything stayed in place. Maybe not unique to Japan but so cool.

Cashierless Japanese fast-food. There’s a million Japan fast-food shops. They’re fast-food in the sense that you get your food within 2 minutes but not fast-food as in the greasy burger kind. They’re delicious Japanese lunch type foods ranging from noodles to rice with some meat. Anyway, most of them don’t have cashiers. They simply have a vending machine where you pay for your food and then bring your stub to the counter where they take your order and serve you your food.

Street-advertisers. Almost every other store has employees out on the sidewalk either advertising their goods or simply calling people into their stores. You can also get tons of free kleenexes walking down a street.

Cleanliness. It is so clean here. There is barely any litter and the only place I’ve seen graffiti so far is under a bridge. The trains are all pristine, unlike the graffiti-covered filth I’ve seen in Europe. The ironic thing is that garbage cans are just as rare. You usually have to hang on to garbage for a while before you can find a place to throw it out. I’m thinking it might be since nobody litters, they don’t need to bother with much public garbage cans.

The fashion here (in the big cities) is absolutely incredible. In a good way. Everyone must spend an hour or more to get ready to go out. Almost every guy is pimpin a nice suit or something nice, while the girls are absolutely amazingly dressed. Some things that are really in with the girls include huge boots, half-pants (not quite capris, not quite shorts) and lots of tweed. All the guys have big hairdos. I’ve seen only a handful of guys with short hair like me.

It’s a whole different world over here. It’s rather a strange experience for me because for the most part, I blend right in yet the environment feels so alien to me because I can’t read Japanese. Something that needs to be remedied sometime in the near-future.

In any case, I’m loving every minute. I love the food, I love the culture, I love the smells, I love the language and well, maybe (just maybe) I love the girls too.

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.

Well, tomorrow morning I’m off to Newfoundland. This will be my first time going out there so it shall be an interesting adventure. I’m going to go compete at the national karate championships (my 8th time I believe) which is always a blast so I’m really pumped.

I will report back with stories and pictures in a week’s time.

Just so I don’t feel left out, I’m going to mention what I did last week ago for Canada Day. I volunteered again to help run the (student-organized) Canada Day celebrations in Waterloo and it was a grueling three-day marathon but I had a blast. Last year Mariano and I ran the main stage so this year I decided to try something a little different and a bit bigger of a challenge by helping run Operations.

Our job was to provide everyone with all the equipment. That included tables, chairs, generators, lights, tents, rope, stakes, duct tape, pretty much everything. Most of the stuff we either had in inventory from previous years or we booked through our school and the heavy equipment was generously loaned to us from United Rentals from the K-W area as well as Guelph and Cambridge. That also meant we needed to go out to pick up all the equipment – 3 cargo vans’ worth of heavy equipment – and return them later as well, which I had to do by making a roadtrip out to Cambridge on Tuesday morning at 6:30 am.

My schedule basically went like this: Friday morning, get some vans and start rounding stuff up at 9 am. Got a lot of equipment out to field and get things ready for the big day until about 6-7 pm. Had some rest. Saturday morning, out on the field by 8:30 am and worked all day until about 1:30 am. Sunday morning, out on the field by 9:00 am and cleaned up and returned stuff until about 6-7 pm.

Being so busy running the day, I didn’t get too many chances where I could sit back and enjoy things for myself, but I did eat one of the thousands of delicious cupcakes that we give away and I also caught some of the acts on the main stage. Matthew Barber headlined but there was a couple of girls called Dala that played earlier in the night that I really enjoyed. They were really cute too haha. Shoulda had them in our line-up last year when I was running the main stage. Honestly though, they had really great voices and I liked their style of music. I bought their CD – Angels & Thieves – as I only had a chance to listen to parts of a few songs and I’ve been listening to it quite a bit this week. So my recommendation is to go listen to Dala for some nice summer easy listenin’.

It seems crazy to do all this hard work for nothing, but for some reason I get some sort of satisfaction out of it. One of my best Canada Days was probably summer of ’04 when I was on co-op in Ottawa and I partied it up in the nation’s capital but I figure I can do that every year once I’m done school. So for this year and probably next year, I’ll be helping run the festivities in Waterloo.

So last Wednesday was a friggin awesome night. If there is a heaven, I think I experienced a manifestation of a piece of it. I won’t go as far as to say it was the best night ever or anything though, because that certainly couldn’t be possible without all my great friends, many of whom are not here this summer. But it was definitely up there.

It started around 6 pm when I got a last-minute invite to a private party at Fed Hall being put on by “some big tech company.” I had enough time to run home and shower up and haul ass back to campus to meet up with the others (Michelle, Renjie, Sai Kit, Darcy, Preisman, Jess V and maybe some others) and then we headed over to Fed Hall.

With a posse of about 6 or 7 people, we walked into the backdoor, flashing our VIP passes to get in. I was met with a rather large crowd of tech-company-employees-looking people all wearing business casual and green lanyards that said “Sandvine.” That answered my first question.

My second question was soon answered at the bar. I walked up to the bar and asked the bartender “so I hear there are free drinks.” “Maybe.” “So what’s free?” I asked. She waved her hand as if by magic across the large glass-door, beer-filled fridge behind her and said “anything in here.” It took me a few seconds for me to absorb the situation. I wasn’t quite prepared for this. So I ordered one beer, not quite sure what was within reason. You know, as if you found a 50 dollar bill on the ground and you feel guilty taking it but you know that it’s the only sensible thing to do.

About 5 minutes later I came to my senses. The moral dilemna was over. I started ordering two at a time. Later I ordered three. Someone asked me if I was going to get drunk or not. My answer: “I feel it is my obligation as a student to drink as much free alcohol as possible.”

There were also tables with tons of burgers and for the rest of my life I will have to carry the burden of regret that I didn’t eat any. My psychic powers weren’t working that night so I had just eaten (burgers coincidentally) before I went to the party.

It wasn’t long before they announced the feature event of the night. The Barenaked Ladies. Live. For free. I enjoyed the whole performance from right in front of the stage, where I could literally reach out and touch Steven Page. It was the best concert experience ever. Preisman and I kept yelling for them to play “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” but it was to no avail. Ah well, you can’t win em all.

I later found out the full story. The private party was being put on by a big tech company called Sandvine and apparently they were celebrating a recent IPO where they raised piles of cashmoney. So to celebrate, they blew a good half-million or some righteously deserved amount bringing in the Barenaked Ladies and throwing an open-bar party.

I’d like to give a shoutout to Sandvine and Dave, their CEO, for throwing a sweet party. They don’t know me, and nor I them, but it was a magical evening.

Anyway, here are pictures from the glorious night:

Front row.

Steven Page

Ed Robertson

Jim Creeggan

Kevin Hearn

Tyler Stewart

The setlist.

My theme song for the last year has been “21 and Invincible” by Something Corporate. It doesn’t have any special meaning other than that I was 21 years old and I love Something corporate. Alas I am 21 no more and consequently, no longer invincible.

It feels like it was a while back but less than 10 days ago was my birthday. Through a combination of being busy and lazy I haven’t blogged about it. I thought about skipping it entirely, but then I realized that for the purposes of recording history and so that next year I know what I did this year for comparison sake, I will blog about it.

I turned 22. My teenage years seem so foreign to me. I’m beginning to think that it’s all downhill from now. Really, there isn’t much to look forward to getting any older aside from car insurance getting cheaper at 25, but not having a car kinda makes that a moot point. On the bright side, I see this as one step closer to world domination or some equivalent of it.

Given that almost all my good friends are not in Waterloo, it was a pretty quiet birthday. Mike is down in Australia, Tony D is out in Quebec, Mariano is back home in Ottawa, Daveed is working in Toronto, Lisa is over in Alberta, and Ben is all the way over in BC. Not to mention that most of my good friends from back home are in Ottawa, but that’s kind of a permanent thing.

Anyway, I had a nice little get-together with Ryan, Meghan, Ahmed, Natasha and Matt. First up we had a nice BBQ at Tasha’s place and then Ryan, Meghan, Ahmed and I went back to my place where we ate a chocolate mousse pie Meghan and I had bought earlier. A cake was too conventional. It was yummy. They insisted that we use candles so I had two.

Later, we went out to a pub – Huether – in uptown Waterloo. We hung out there for the night. Chantal dropped by later to say hello and by then I was so tired I just wanted to go sleep.

By normal standards you could say it was a boring birthday. I guess it’s a sign of me getting older but I didn’t really care that it wasn’t a night filled with debauchery. Not to say that there aren’t many of those to come, because I’d be lying if I said there weren’t, but a chill night with some good friends is fine by me.

We rounded off the weekend with an awesome day at the beach. We drove to Grand Bend which is about 2-2 1/2 hours west. It was a perfect day for the beach. It was totally sunny and very warm but not scorching. The water was bone-chillingly cold, but that didn’t really matter.

Trampolines are fun.

The beach.

I just upgraded the website software yesterday (to Drupal 4.7 if you care) so I decided I’d try a fresh new design.

I think it’s rather pleasant if I do say so myself.

This year’s May 2-4 weekend wasn’t too bad. In fact, considering last year’s experience, it was a great weekend.

It started late Thursday night when my friend Arda randomly asks me if I want to go to New York City. Hmm kinda out of left field but hey, I’m always up for random things, especially road trips. Anyway it turns out Saturday was the Turkish-American Day Parade and Arda, being Turkish, really wanted to go revel in the atmosphere of thousands of his kind. Suuure Arda, sure. I think he wanted to go show the girls some Turkish Delight.

Fast forward to Friday evening, we had mostly everything planned out. Arda had a van so we were gonna go with a group including myself, Arda, Ryan CW, Daveed, and possibly Caustan pending some rescheduling of a show of his. We were set to leave around midnight, do the 8-9 hour drive and arrive in time for the 11 am parade. We figured we’d enjoy that for a while then tour around a bit, check out a concert, then go out on the town at night. Stay one night, then add in some more touristy things Sunday morning then back in Canada by Sunday night.

So we’re all excited about this random road-trip and it definitely promised to be a great time but then disaster struck. There was a flaw in our equation. Around 6:30 pm Arda messages me with the news that his dad unexpectedly took his van. To Montreal. And left his cellphone. NOOOOOOOO! Of all the things to happen, Arda’s dad takes his van without telling him. I mean, had the van blown up, or got crushed in a freak road hockey accident, or ANYTHING other than his dad taking it, I would have been resigned. But this reality was too much to bear.

After a couple hours of sulking, we started thinking of a solution as we didn’t want to give up just yet. We thought of renting a car, but then realized all car rental places were closed that late at night. Then Ryan had the brilliant suggestion of checking car rental places around Pearson Airport. Turns out he was right and they were all open late. But then came the harsh reality that it was the long weekend and every place we called was totally out of cars.

As a consolation prize, Ryan and I decided we’d hit up Toronto to visit Daveed and go out for a night and come back Sunday. We ended up leaving Waterloo around noon and we spent the afternoon and evening touring around downtown. We ended up at the Eaton Centre and there we checked out Hollister. Ahh Hollister, where do I start. Seriously, it’s like they expected me there. The moment I walk in I tune into the music they’re playing…it’s Jimmy Eat World. I’m thinking sweet, I love Jimmy Eat World.

So there I am, navigating my way through the dark chambers of Hollister (if you’ve never been to one, believe me, it’s like spelunking in a deep, underground cave) humming along to Jimmy Eat World. My first thought is that I should have brought a flashlight or a torch. My next thought is that I’m listening to a different song now, but it’s still Jimmy Eat World. Now repeat these two thought processes about 8 more times and that about describes my experience during my time in Hollister. Walking into the store during the 2nd song of the Futures cd (one of my favourite cd’s ever), and then listening to the entire cd was the surest sign that I was meant to be there.

Later that night we picked up a case of beer and went back to Daveed’s place to pre-drink. Now I was hoping to be able to drink with at least a few other locals, or meet them at the bar. None of said events occurred. I blame Daveed. Anyway, we ended up at Madison’s which is on Madison Ave. and it’s basically 2 massive houses transformed into a ginormous, multi-level, patio-covered, pub littered with live music. We ended up running into a few people we knew and despite not knowing many people, it was a good time. A good introduction to what I hope to be a place I’ll go back with a huge group of friends sometime later this summer.

On our way back home from Maddie’s, Daveed and I dropped into some karaoke bar that Daveed has often tried to visit before. I say tried because each time he has entered (drunk, no less), they’ve told him it’s a private party and kick him out. This time was no different and we walked all the way into the place and I just remember hearing everyone say in broken english “private night, private night” and we respectfully left.

Our escapades were not yet over however, as we dropped into a Pizza Pizza shortly afterward and came upon a huge line-up. The line-up consisted of several random customers and then a flock of teenagers. About 6 or 7 of them. They reminded me of the goslings I see around campus. Except they were without their mother. And dumber than the goslings I see around campus. Ryan was taking a picture of Daveed and one of the guys got protective and told us not to take pictures of “his girls” who was in the background. He then walked away to a table. So we made fun of him for being such a douchebag…in front of his other friends still in line.

Like all immature brats who yearn for attention in life – but unfortunately do not receive any from the cruel, cruel world that they live in – he proceeded in being a dick. He startd throwing bits of crust in our general direction while we sat on a bench waiting in line. After a few, I returned the favour and then in a state of pure machismo he walked over and tried to shove me. Except I was sitting so I didn’t exactly move. In any case, I laughed at him and I think Daveed got in his face.

The sad part is that his friends were telling us to back off and to mind our own business…if only they realized how much of a loser their friend was. It must really suck having to stand up for some loser because they hang out together.

I remember thinking how badly I wanted to fight the kid but I laughed it off because being in a drunken state I probably wouldn’t have had any self-restraint. Ironically, he’s lucky I wasn’t sober or I may have had to exercise my right to ill.

The next day we all slept in and had a nice breakfast before going out around town again. We walked through U of T campus where I got to immerse myself in its rich history. I thought it was kind of cool, but even the buildings felt snobby. For example, the following is a picture inside one of the main halls of the Hart House…basically their student centre.

Like…whaaaat? Where are the comfy couches? The littered Tim Horton’s cups? Feels like some boarding school in jolly ol’ England.

My May 2-4 in short: no glorious road-trip to NYC, no mad partying, no fireworks, but some quality time spent with some good friends.