June

I've written many more posts in June than I'd usually do in a month, probably just to fill the immeasurable void that my absent friends have left, but June was a pretty nice month. So nice and eventful in fact, that I can't think of any J words befitting it. So in a nutshell here's what happened:

I watched Terminator 4, quite an awesome film. But last time I checked, films need stories. 'Twas good anyway.

I passed my theory test, not too difficult alhamdulillah. And on the way there I thought I broke my arm after running for a bus and bashing it on some railings, painful! The scars look pretty cool though. That was after an interesting debate I had with a Muslim and Jewish girl on the bus to Golder's Green. I got on the bus at Neasden and eavesdropped on overheard the two people behind me discussing Israeli politics and I thought "great, two Jews discussing politics all the way to Golder's Green!" And then I realised one of them was a Muslim when they started talking about religion. But I had to interrupt when the Muslim girl said that it didn't say anywhere in the Quran that alcohol is haram; I'd heard enough and I had to break my 'ignore everybody' British tradition and stop her there. And then the debate about whether Hadith can be relied on or not ensued. Yeah, I'm a nosy parker.

I watched Terminator 4 again with another friend. Not as good as the first time, but still alright.


Ronaldo got sold to Real Madrid for a whopping £80 million... a world record. I didn't really like him in the first place even though he's a phenomenal player, but I've got an excuse not to like him at all now that his ego has outgrown Manchester. Which reminds me, I need to get my footy career going and join a club!

I had an MRI scan on the same day as a football tournament. The scan went alright, and afterwards our friend took the team to the place in his nice blue Peugeot 107. The only problem was that this place was in east London somewhere, and even though we had 3 GPS's in the car, the 3 hour journey involved going round in circles, getting lost a few times, and due to my inability to know which exit at the roundabout we get off at, a few extra miles of motorway to cover. I wasn't the most popular person in the car I have to admit. There were loads of almost-accidents as well, but none as bad as the toe I thought I broke during the first match of the tournament. We bowed out of the tournament losing on goal difference, met a few random friends there (as well as both the other Imperial teams) and tinseltown afterwards at midnight did kind of make up for the loss. But 6 weeks on, my toe still hurts!

I went to Oxford Brookes university with Ismael for a Japanese course open day... and I found it quite interesting learning about all the 'kanji' symbols they have, thousands of them, and in the third year of the course you go to Japan! Then I went to the hospital for my toe, and after a few hours of waiting, I find that it's not broken, only bruised :/ But it still hurt like mad!


I also went paintballing with LSOP guys, which was amazing! In a new place called Mayhem; much better than the money-grabbing Delta Force and cheaper too... better scenarios and more intense, especially as if you get shot anywhere on the body or gun, you're out. One forest scenario was so massive, if you ran in one direction for about 20 seconds you'd only be halfway to the other team's base! The last game involved a dummy called Sheila that we had to take from the middle (with the optional bonus of using her as a shield :P) and take her to the other base, and we owned the other team in that game, but it was probably because they all decided to just try and run the whole distance. The paintball people were very nice and they even pick you up from the station and help you when you've lost your glasses case on one of the fields ¬_¬ But I did notice that they all have a habit of saying "fella" to everyone way too much! We all came away decorated with the usual bruises, which certainly would not have been in my case if the rest of our team knew how to shoot a gun in the right direction! My "we are better than them!" speeches didn't really work either. But on the way home a couple of us decided to look at the tube map and quickly get off at any station we thought had a funny name and take a picture beside a sign. We got the idea from the station we first got off at... Theydon Bois!

I went to one of the many court sessions my brother had; yes, for that little metal thing he got arrested for way back in December. We met the barrister representing us, quite a cool guy who went to QM! Watching the court proceedings were quite funny, you could sense the subtle humorous undertones they all carried in their speech, even with the judge! I don't think they took my brother's accusations too seriously, which was good, but another date has been set with a jury and everything.

Then exams, but who cares?' I certainly didn't. I did my best to try and sound serious when putting my theories across when writing; all it was was just randomness, but I'll still be waiting next to the phone in case I did stumble upon something real in my ramblings and they want to offer me an honorary doctorate because of my contributions. Just in case. I missed my last exam because I conveniently booked a nurse's appointment for injections for that day. She called me up beforehand to ask me to bring a helicobacter test kit and 200ml of pure orange juice... baffled. And I discovered I didn't need them in the end.


The Avenue School reunion was nice; seeing old faces and reliving old memories; the food was nice, and at the end we managed to pack up everything before the storm got going. On the way to the car I found an amazing laptop kinda phone (a Nokia E90), and there I stood, under a tree, sheltering me from the downpour, whilst I tried to call the numbers I found on the phone. I also felt weird vibrations coming from underneath my foot, and I was tempted to dig in the mud and stumble upon a new electronic discovery, but the rain was telling me to just get to the car and keep trying the number that wasn't picking up. I finally did get a response, and on the other end was a gratified mother who explained that the phone was a gift her 7 year-old son received from his dad. Then they passed the phone to him, "Thank you!!" I felt good. I felt like I had a purpose. The next morning the dad (who's an accountant) came to pick up the phone, and after I refused the money he offered (obviously!), he said he'd offer with any financial advice I'd need, and his doctor sister could be useful too!

I also received a call from my primary school friend (secret handshake guy) who recently got married, asking if I could sort out the classmate invitations for his wedding party; and again, I felt my overwhelming sense of purpose. But then I realised I was leaving for Spain on the same day as the party :/

So there it is, a bit late late for my liking (2 weeks of staring at notes on a blog draft), June in a nutshell... a rather large nutshell. And tomorrow night I begin my journey for Spain and then Morocco inshaallah!

Banksy, Bristol and Breaking News

Last Thursday saw me and my brother go off all the way to Bristol for a Banksy exhibition. The hour and a bit bus journey to Victoria, catching (and almost missing) the coach to Bristol, the 3 hour coach journey (sweltering without air-conditioning), the 10 minute stop-off halfway there, the coach almost leaving without us and loads of others ("I said ten minutes!" the coach driver said in his country accent), finally arriving, going to the exhibition, exploring Bristol, and then back on the coach, 3 hours, BOILING hot, no stopping-off, and then the bus journey back home. Was it worth it? Yes!


The exhibition was awesome! The queue for the museum wasn't too long, and after admiring the funny brochure/map we were given, soon we were faced with a melted ice cream van, an aeroplane with a guantanamo detainee pilot model, and various funny statues towering over us in the main room. The queue was leading up to another room, past the gift shop, where the blaring of recorded radio programmes talking about banksy could be heard coming out, and once inside, I was blown away by the sheer genius that was reflected in the works of art on display. Having a good chuckle at the radio hosts condemning Banksy for his 'criminal damage', I took photos of almost everything (which, now I look at them, aren't very good quality due to the darkened rooms) and couldn't not be amazed at the cleverness, simplicity and sheer brilliance with the way each piece of art was conceived and brought to life. Next was a room where the exhibits moved... a CCTV bird guarding its chicks, a caged monkey doing art, chicken nuggets hatching from their eggs and pecking at a tub of ketchup, an old, tired tweety bird, various sausages and hotdogs kept in lizard containers. I think this video catches the mood of mainly the second room quite well:



The rest of the museum (over the whole 3 floors) seemed normal, until closer inspection found lots of randomly-placed Banksy pieces dotted here and there trying to fit in with the other exhibits, like a painting in the gallery with "HOME SWEET HOME" plastered over it. Or in the ancient exhibits section, there was a South American statue with it's back faced towards us and a price tag on it, or something I noticed high up a wall; one of those colour experimentation strips framed. There was also a model of the old city of Jerusalem that I think Banksy had bought from someone, and he placed loads of toy soldiers on it representing the Israeli occupation; Banksy is too cool!


I loved it, but the 5 hours set aside for the exhibition was way too much, and we ended up exploring a bit of Bristol whilst waiting for the coach home. The park next door to the museum was phenomenal, almost uninhabited (especially considering there was a Bristol uni open day next door!), with the amazing weather, it was definitely a highlight on its own; with a massive hill/mountain in the middle with waterfalls and paths running down it. The view from the top was astounding, and that was where we decided our next destination; seeing boat masts in the distance, we headed off towards the harbour, down some deep mysterious paths in the park until we found ourselves on the road leading to the docks. Once there, we could only marvel at the place; the surface of the water glistening like a sheet of diamonds. There we were, soaking up the sun, walking along the edge of the water, admiring all the boats that went past, but alas it was time to go, and we made our way back to the park, back towards Borders where we'd meet our coach home. We had quite a while before the coach arrived (and it came late too!), so we spent some time in the bookshop, looking at the Banksy section, and discovering they also had a Game inbuilt!

After a bit we were on our way home at the back of the sweltering coach, so I took out my laptop that I'd been lugging around all day and started learning a bit of spanish, and that was when I realised that we hadn't gone to the gift shop! I wanted to see the t-shirts!


And upon reaching home, we discovered that Michael Jackson had passed away.

Spore-adic Searching

Well, that's all folks. The official end to my year at Imperial. It wasn't as I expected: no fireworks, no madness, just me aimlessly wandering around uni hoping to bump into friends, which didn't really happen, at all. I actually missed the exam today because I needed to get my MMR jab and a 'heaf' test done, and I came in so late that there was no-one I knew around! Even the normally phenomenally-long queue at the library cafe had probably relocated to outside a nightclub somewhere. Even though I knew I was leaving a few days after, I did feel some sort of nervousness when I sat the first exam, but still managed to blag my way through the essay questions by letting my imagination do the talking, and by merely guessing the MCQ answers... allow negative marking! Then I left an hour early, chilling, before returning to feel the mood of everyone coming out of the exam. The second day I felt a little more adventurous, drawing little smiley/sad/wiggle faces on the phospholipids I drew, before trying to convey what I thought should be what bacterial spores looked like (dandelion seeds), that grow like hair out of the little bacterium (and I tried to support my theories with pictorial evidence wherever I could), but really, if there was a nuclear apocalypse to happen, you Would want your house to be a spore! I think I conveyed that idea pretty well, as well as them being the reason Domestos can only kill 99.9% of bacteria. Again, I left an hour early, giving a cheeky smile to those stressed-out biochemists who looked up from their sweat-dreanched exam papers.


Anyway, long story short, after the second exam I went to all the pharmacists in South Ken, walked to Knightsbridge (where my phone camera broke... again), in Harrods, through Hyde Park, Oxford Street Boots, then some specialist medical equipment place off Oxford Street... looking for a Helicobacter test kit I was asked to bring in, for this 'heaf test'... no one had it! My mum (after getting pure orange juice, which I also needed for the nurse) asked the local pharmacists next door to the doctor's surgery, said they didn't have it... so I called the surgery; apparently I needed a prescription to get it, got the prescription, got the test kit from the same place they said they didn't have it... problem solved. Or was it?

My third day was planned out quite well in advance, go to nurse, get MMR and heaf test done, go to uni and join in with the post-exam celebrations. That was until my phone broke, so I planned for that to be sent off as well as my occupational health form. So, I went to the nurse, gave her the Helicobacter test kit, and apparently, I didn't need it! After a few hours (and miles) of searching, I discover that a heaf test and Helicobacter test are two different things, the complete opposite of what the reception assured me! But alhamdulillah, I didn't actually need the heaf test in the end, so I sent the form off anyway, and arrived at an almost-empty Imperial late because of the long queue at the post office (which probably belonged at the library cafe). I went to my pigeon-hole and collected the accumulation of marked work I didn't remember doing, before returning my locker key to the nice-ish lab technician lady who earlier in the year caught me going through the lab equipment drawers whilst I supposed to be doing an experiment, and hasn't stopped reminding me/everyone about it since!


As I was using my backup Sony Ericsson phone (the one that had half-destroyed itself during the mountain ordeal), I only took down a few numbers from my LG phone before sending it off and saved the rest on a memory card. I remembered that I'd agreed to meet a friend at Westfield later on, and so I was sure to make note of his number, only to realise that once I was at the shopping centre, it was his house number, and on the other end was a not-so-English-speaking grandmother. So I ended up trawling through Westfield (Europe's largest shopping centre, I think) for about an hour, searching the shops he'd most likely be in, whilst my phone battery decided to die on me. In the end, I went into the Apple shop (where I noticed an HT guy working there, random), charged my phone, and called loads of mates to try and get this friend's number. I finally got my hands on it, and once I called, I discovered he was sitting just opposite the Apple shop, where I met him and we all lived happily ever after. Phew!

And that was my life story for 3 days. What did I learn from those days? That phone numbers (especially the right ones) can really help when you're searching for someone... and that prescriptions are pretty useful things too.


Oh and note to self; remember to empty your locker before returning the key! It saves the embarrassment of having to ask for it back :S

Snap

I finally decided to upload this year's worth of photos (more than 300... so far) onto facebook, with me deciding to finally deal with the hassle of sorting through pictures from two cameras and organising the jumbled up photos by renaming them and putting them into monthly folders, before uploading them. Things were going well until I decided to delete what I uploaded after I discovered I hadn't put some in the right place, and that was before I faced the ordeal of having to tag everyone in and caption the photos. Now that facebook has by increased the limit per album to 200 photos, I thought it would be much quicker tagging everything and captioning all at once; but I was wrong, by the time I got to photo number 200 of the first album, facebook's connection decided to time out, and once I logged in again, everything was blank! But today, I don't care... because my phone camera started working again!! Out of nowhere. I had one of those moments where I felt I had to take a picture (I've had alot of those, hence the two albums :P) and I tried it... there were no lines on the screen! I was absolutely gobsmacked, and it's ironic because I was filling out the insurance form just this morning; we thought we'd cancelled the insurance, but they were still taking money out of the account, so why not. And even then they wanted an 'excess' amount ¬_¬

My phone is pretty disastrous with the touch screen texting and high monthly bills and everything, but yeah, I'm just happy I can take random pictures again!



Alhamdulillah.

Dreamy Decisions

The dream I had last night, it was too weird! I was sitting in a sports shop, no-one there, empty apart from this little Brazilian boy who's brother worked there I think. Anyway I saw these amazingly nice orange and black trainers and asked the kid to see if they had any football boot versions of them. They were a hybrid between these (my old ones)...


and these...


The young Brazilian kid came back with completely the wrong ones (wrong colour and everything) and so I got his big brother to come down from the hut (which was weirdly upstairs) and have a look. He came back with some orange ones, and whilst I marvelled at their beauty, I compared them with the ones on display, and noticed they weren't the same! So I asked him to get some more, adamant that I would get the same ones as on display. But again, the wrong ones, albeit quite beautiful; so I asked him to look again, and so he went back up to his hut, this time taking ages. I mean, it felt like hours, and I don't remember what I did to entertain myself during that time (I know, great dream). But he did finally come back, near closing time, but again, they were the wrong shoes, and I was beginning to think that they didn't have the ones I wanted (and now that I think about it, they didn't even ask my size!). But the ones he gave me were quite cool; orange and white with funky ridges and bumps and the studs underneath were nicely designed. Then it was closing time; no chance to find them today, and I realised that the shop for some reason had been booked for a party, and all the tables and everything had been folded up and moved against the shelves.

Quite strangely, I was invited to play football against two of the partygoers, in a large caged pitch that was underneath the hut (which I hadn't noticed the whole time I was in the shop!). It had a goal either side, and the two Brazilian brothers watched through the cage as I put on these white and orange football boots with the funky ridges and beat the two grown men at football, with me amazed by the shoes' ability. After the fun but brief game, and not noticing anyone in particular at the party, I went back into the dimly-lit shop and looked around the shelves where I first saw the trainers of my dreams (literally :P). Squinting up at the top shelf, I noticed the pile of boots I'd earlier turned down (under a spotlight), took them off the shelf, and had a nice look at them; quite beautiful, but they weren't the right ones! Funny thing but I don't remember having any worries about how much any of them would cost. "Hmm," I thought to myself, "could I still take all of these pairs home, even after they find me the right ones tomorrow?" I never found out... I woke up.

But today whilst at Brent Cross, I did see some white and orange football boots that did look very similar to the ones I saw last night... and for one moment, I did believe that I was still dreaming!

Alarm clocks shouldn't exist because...

1- They're technically not 'alarm' clocks; I just looked up the definition of 'alarm' and here are a couple, among others:

*fear resulting from the awareness of danger
*a device that signals the occurrence of some undesirable event (hmm, waking up maybe?)

So personally they haven't caused me much alarm, apart from when they don't flipping work, which brings me to...

2- They don't flipping work. Today was quite an important day for me, not only was I accompanying Ismael to Oxford for an open day, but more importantly, today is the day facebook bring in usernames (at 5:01 AM... thanks facebook), and I wanted to get my preference in early before some awesome like-minded person got there first... and well, they got there first. This morning I didn't wake up to the sound of an alarm clock, but rather to the sound of silence; I randomly sat up in bed and stared at the clock for a while, analysed it. "Hmm, I set my alarm clock to 6:10 so I could make a username (and go to Oxford), but it says here 7:05. Hmm. And I need to leave in ten minutes, interesting." There's always that pause before the panic ensues, before jumping out of bed, giving breakfast and shower a miss, and getting clothes on whilst cursing the alarm clock, which I probably sleepingly snooze-buttoned, and which brings me to...

3- They have snooze buttons. They are just asking to be pressed. Even if the alarm clock is 100 metres away, I make the effort to reach over and press it, just for that extra few minutes in bed, and those few minutes more, and those few minutes after that. What I'm saying is, I have a snooze button addiction (yep, and I've joined the facebook group); I don't need it at the moment. Snooze is quite a funny word by the way.

4- Alarm clocks are just annoying. I know you can change the alarm tones on your phone, but anything that has no compassion when waking you up deserves to be hated, and I ended up hating certain phone ringtones. Even if it was in the middle of the day and coming from someone else's phone! Annoying.

Anyway, I'm sure there are more reasons why alarm clocks shouldn't exist, but I wonder how people managed without alarm clocks, or clocks at all for that matter! Was everyone late for everything? Or weren't there things to be late for in those times? Maybe the invention of the alarm clock caused everything to change; before we just 'did' and things just 'happened', and now there's the wait for clocks to tell us to 'do' and things to 'happen'.


Back to my waking up story; I found a few minutes to switch on my laptop and get on facebook, fairly sure that no-one could have the same username in mind as me And be bothered enough to log in two hours after it started. "Orangepeeler, perfect!" I thought to myself. And to my dismay, someone had already taken it! Orangepeel... the same! My world was beginning to fall apart in front of my eyes. So I thought I'd think of a good one on the way to Victoria coach station and so I logged off.

On the way I tried logging on with my phone but it wouldn't work; and I had a few ideas: orangesoda (probably already taken by an avid Kenan & Kel fan), redambergreen (after getting desperate and looking at some traffic lights :S), then it hit me... apatheticorange! Yes! It's 'apathetic orange' AND 'a pathetic orange'... something people would point out, and I'd would say "Yeah you loser, I meant it that way, I'm awesome." (and yes, I did consider awesomeorange)! But yeah, it would be a good icebreaker in conversation :P So anyway I got to Victoria and went into the nearest coffee shop to hog their Wi-Fi and get my username in, but guess what, there was no Wi-Fi, and I was distraught until I discovered they had Wi-Fi on the coach we were taking! So I logged in and after first trying orangesoda (surprise surprise it was taken), I did it, I typed in apatheticorange and clicked 'check availability'... "Please please please... YES!" So for the rest of my life now, my facebook profile page will be identifiable as facebook.com/apatheticorange ... mwahaha! I'm sad. And I'm taking my sadness to Oxford.

(Edit: all of the above has been made redundant as I've changed my username to something much better in my opinion: yasinspiration!)

Perfection, Paused.

I've just discovered the most amazing thing! Well I personally found the experience quite serene; about a month ago my mum ordered some caterpillars through the post, and since then they've all become butterflies (as you'd expect, even though we missed them all hatching from their coccoons, still an amazing feat), but, I was just going downstairs to get an apple, with the fruit bowl on the same table as where we keep the butterflies, and I found them all asleep! I assumed they were, since they weren't fluttering their wings but were motionless and still, and I tried hard not to wake them. Now, is it just me, or is that something extraordinary? Seeing the most innocent of creatures sleep just had an amazing calming effect on me; what can such beautiful, pure creatures ever be dreaming about?