July the 19th

Well as I write this, it´s now the 16th of July, but I can´t help but think of the date ´July the 19th´ as it´s been a day that has changed my life on more than one occasion. July the 19th 2004, I was walking with my friend near a tunnel near my old house, when we were attacked by five boys and two dogs, and it´s a long story, but what happened was that we got battered; kicked in the face, everything, blood flowing everywhere, bruises on top of bruises, with me having to repair two slightly chipped teeth as a result. That moment had changed my life and the way I would see everything in the world from then on.

Then came July the 19th 2005, exactly one year on and at exactly the same time, I cut my fingers extremely badly on a circular saw whilst not paying attention and playing with the power switch. Blood was gushing out like a fountain and I needed stitches to repair them, initially thinking I´d lose them, and I´m now left with visible scars on two of my fingers. As I now look at them, I still can´t believe it happened! I hadn´t felt so much pain in my life. But alhamdulillah I learnt something.

Since then, it´s been relatively quiet. But as July the 19th approaches, and I´ll be in morocco by then inshaallah, I can´t help but think about it. Should I be believing in special days where I could expect something to happen to me, even though I believe Allah is controlling of everything? Or since nothing has happened the past few years, is it a lesson to Not believe in ´mathematical fate´? All I know is that on July the 19th I´ll be doing everything normally, I don´t want to be superstitious and be wary of everything I do; I may even forget about it until it´s the 20th! But what happens happens, and we can´t change it, but if we do decide to go water-skiing or something on the 19th, it will certainly be... interesting :)

Maybe I should treat every day like July the 19th.

Day One - Picking Oranges

The check-in went fine alhamdulillah; none of the drama you usually see on cheap airline TV programmes, and after a bit, we sat ourselves down in the plane (most of us getting window seats) and awaited take-off. As the plane sped along the runway and made its ascent, I thought I saw smoke coming out of the engine nearest to me, and I thought we were going to crash, but as we were safely in the air, I realised that it was probably just some low-floating cloud. Phew.


With Ryanair, there is no food served on board unless you pay extra on the flight, so I spent the whole journey trying to sleep; it doesn't matter what kind of strangers are sitting next to me, I will have my sleep! But I didn't get any, and we landed 3 hours later in Seville. Our luggage didn't take long to arrive on the belt, but once I saw mine, I noticed something different about it; one of the straps had been ripped off along with part of the bag. In the end we found the Rynair customer services and they asked for my passport to take my details down and then gave me a piece of paper I had to fax off to Ireland along with the receipt of the bag. I thought I'd fax it to my mum and she could do the rest as the receipt was somewhere at home, so I called her. Great luck so far! But it gets better. We boarded the bus after finally establishing what the price was with the driver, and I looked out of the window onto the sprawling city that was Seville, finding Ice Age 3 and Harry Potter posters quite amusing for some reason.


We walked to the coach station from the bus stop, with my half-functioning rucksack, and noticing a beautiful park with fountains and palm trees next door. At the coach station I queued up to buy the tickets while the others got changed and brushed their teeth (yes, in the coach station!). I was just expecting to save a place in the queue for the others who'd come later and all chip in with the Spanish they knew (which let's face it, isn't much :S) to try and get tickets, but that was when I said my first proper sentence in Spanish to a Spanish person, "How much are 7 tickets to Granada?" I felt very proud of myself indeed!

We were about to check in our luggage at the coach station so we could explore the city a bit, until two police officers stopped us and asked us for our passports, when I realised, I didn´t have mine! Where could it have been?! I then remembered, Ryanair. Luckily I had a photocopy I showed the police, and I had a missed call from what I presumed was them, and after discovering I only had 45 minutes to get back to the airport and retrieve it, I took a taxi with two of us, and in the end got it back. Alhamdulillah. I could've been far away in Granada without a passport if it hadn't been for those policemen!


After considering eating at a very expenive restaurant, instead we took a heavily discounted tour bus around Seville. The open-air top was amazing; seeing the beauty of the city from above (ish) with the wind blowing in our faces, occasionally trying to grab oranges growing on the many lush Seville trees, listening through headphones at the recorded tour-guide messages as we went from landmark to landmark. We stopped off near the centre of the city, where the streets were all cobbled and pristine. It looked like a perfect city, apart from everybody walking around practically naked (and probably without suncream on too!). But that did kinda spoil the atmosphere. We ate at a restaurant near the bull ring, and the first thing you noticed when you walked in were the humongous bulls' heads mounted on the wall; about 8 of them, with pictures all around of these 'courageous' bull-fighters killing these poor animals.


I felt quite disgusted, but we ate grilled fish and chips, paid the fairly high sum, and left to explore some more, including the cathedral and the giralda, which with the massive tower, used to be the biggest mosque in Seville, now just a tourist attraction adorned with christian crosses everywhere.


Other events included me patting a horse and getting hair everywhere, washing in a random fountain, and taking loads of pictures, before one of us noticed that one of the horses had a 'fifth leg' ¬_¬ We went down a nice-looking tunnel, and found ourselves in such a peaceful arena kind of place (with of course a fountain), and where in the end we decided to pray.


But the last place we went to in Seville was probably the best. We were wondering if we'd have enough time to visit it before the coach left, and we decided we did. It looked magnificent from the outside, but inside the 'Palace de-España' was much more breathtaking! Up the steps we find ourselves facing a MASSIVE courtyard (and I mean massive, bigger than a football stadium), with an equally impressive gigantic fountain in the middle over the bridge; looking magical with its spray being spread across the courtyard by the moving wind.


We obviously got wet as we had planned, which really cooled us down from the blistering summer heat. It felt amazing. Afterwards we walked through the nice park (with more fountains) back to the coach station where we got on the coach for the 3 hour journey to Granada; with the view of the beautiful vast sunflower fields unable to lull me to sleep for some reason. A hollywood film dubbed in Spanish wasn't what I was in the mood for, and while everyone else was sound asleep, I just stared out of the window into the distance.


Arriving at Granada at the dark of the night, it felt so far enchanting, with the feeling of it being one big Edgware Road (minus alot of the arabs) quelled when we approached the main square; festival lights decorating overhead, and the cobbled streets beautifully reflecting everything. After alot of searching and asking around, we found the hostel we booked: Al-Maktoub, which was surprisingly homely, although I don´t know why such an un-arab normal place would've got such a name. From the outside it doesn't look like much of a hostel, but once inside we were shown around and bagsied our beds (with me getting the top of one of the triple bunks!), before leaving our stuff so we could explore the city a bit, but not before we checked Facebook on the hostel's free internet downstairs!


We initially considered eating at a Turkish 'halal' place (which apparently has the Guiness World Record for the largest doner meat thing), but instead we chose a nice little shawerma place across the road, and it was so nice we considered eating there for breakfast the next day ¬_¬ The night-time atmosphere at the 'Plaza de nueve' was so chilled out and calming, and while the others went off for shisha, three of us went up towards Alhambra, where we were due to visit properly the next day, but just to get a feel of it at night. Up the quiet hill road and through a large gate, the stream of water flowing downhill sounded so serene amidst the quiet of the night, and the emptiness of the whole place added to the magic. The graffiti on the walls on the way there (and all of Granada for that matter) was quite cool too, and I made sure I documented them! Then, the bells chimed for 2am, and we made our way back to the hostel for finally, a full night´s sleep. We thought.

This day was hectic, and it was only the first!

Day Zero

Yep, I´ve decided to keep a log of everything I´ve done on this trip... depending on how often I come into contact with a computer. But since I´m sitting in a Grenada hostel with free internet access, I thought I may as well make a start on typing out the contents of my notepad. And then I´ll try and add photos later on maybe.

The day before a major trip, for me, is usually quite laid back, followed by a few fairly hectic hours, with a couple of games of FIFA interspersed in between. There were no hiccups with the coach from Victoria to Stansted, it left on time at half one in the morning, and arriving at the airport at three. No sleep so far.

When we entered the airport, it didn´t exactly look like one, more like a refugee centre! People were sleeping everywhere. It´s funny how quickly people can make somewhere feel like a home, not caring if people are looking or not. But there were people absolutely everywhere; underneath tables, next to luggage weighing machines; it was like everyone was playing one big game of hide and seek, quite badly.

After praying in the chapel (which had quite a nice piece of art I forgot to take a picture of), we sat down to eat at a cafe, while I bought some crisps and a Pepsi Raw, waiting for Pret a Manger to open so I could get my dolphin-friendly tuna baguette :)

And then I realised, that if I wanted to sleep, I shouldn´t have drank that Pepsi (with natural caffeine :P).

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.