Who am I??

Ya know how the saying goes (in my case anyway), you can take me out of Minnesota, but you can't take the Minnesota out of me?

I walked outside this afternoon and thought to myself, "wow, its cold out."

Well, turns out it was a brisk 89 degrees.

Apparently you can take the Minnesota out of me. I'm concerned.

Aaaaand scene

Gentle Readers,

I have had ample time to settle back down from Sri Lanka now. In short, I had the most amazing experience of my life. The photos in the post below pretty much sum up the day to day of the trip.

The weather saw us well for most of the journey, a good healthy mix of rain and sunshine. The rain was a welcome sight as I hadn't seen any since I last left the states.

I saw a cloud on saturday and got a little excited.

The first part of the vacation was spent in the mountains in a town called Kandy. It is apparently a cultural hotbed though it was a bit too busy for our liking so we left after one day. As tourists we were perpetually hounded by touts and street dealers. We were looking for something a little more low-key. The next morning we made our way to Adams peak. The cliomb was one of the harder I've done. Once at the summit, however, there wasn't one thing that could concern us at that moment, a sort of clarity hard to find.

We later made out way to the beaches where we spent the rest of our vacation. I've never really had a proper beach vacation before, but I'll say that this one will be hard to beat. Scuba diving was quite fun as well, visibility was poor as was the coral, but I saw thousands and thousands of the most colorful fish I've ever seen. Diving was another one of those moments, like adam's peak where I had absolutely nothing on my mind expect what was in front of me. hmmm I miss skiing.

What else... Max and I are currently trying to sort out our plans for National Holiday. Azerbaijan, Ukraine, and Russia are all on the drawring board. We'll see what happens.

This weekend was quite the adventure as well. Saad, Max, and I went to a two day concert in Dubai featuring Joss Stone, Ziggy Marley, Kanye West and Mika. During Joss Stone's performace, the three of us were playing snake on my phone to see who could get top score None of us realized she was playing as no one had cheered, no introduction was made, and the music was less than spectacular. We all assumed someone of her stature would have a more commanding performace and presence. As you can tell, she made quite an impression on us.

Sri Lanka I

I've got the photos up to give you a day by day account of what I did. Commentary of what we did are just blow the photos. Click on the first one, then use the thumbnails on the right to click to the next photo.

I'll write more about the experience once I recover. I'm exhausted...

As you'll see from the photos, it took some serious self discipline to get myself on the plane back to school.

Copy and paste the link below into your nav bar to see em.

http://www.dropshots.com/newestexpat#albums/Sri%20Lanka

Cheers,
Thomas

Checking Pulse

I am alive and well.

I'll post soon when I don't have to pay for internet.

ciao

No Reservations

Two pairs of pants check
Two shirts check
Clean underwear check
sandals check
Swim suit check
First aid kit check
Malaria pills check
Immunization certs. check
Passport check
Camera equipment check
200 bucks cash check (No pun intended)
Will's travel teddy check

I'll be falling off the face of the planet for a while. I should be back by the end of the month if at all. hahaha you think I'm kidding.

Weekend Update

*Click photos to enlarge

Gentle Readers,

Perhaps you care, perhaps you don't, but the following is an account of my weekend. I'm trying to give you a balance of an account of my experience as well as a cultural and regional observation, I hope I'm doing alright.

Thursday evening was Andres' birthday so we went out for diner and drinks. Dinner was at a steakhouse in Emirates mall so naturally I ordered the Salmon. I'll spare you the picture in which we are all adorned in birthday hats. After dinner, we proceeded to Buddha Bar. There are five additional locations in Amman, Beirut, Cairo, New York, and Paris; Its hard to explain, but they produce a series of "Chill" music in house and currently have more than eight compilations. I encourage you look it up. Needless to say, its quite an experience.

Some of my good friends and me at Buddha Bar: F -Kunall, myself, Bahore, Camelia, Andres, and Aisha b- Kelly, Riaz, and Yasmeen.

Take Two:
Max, Myself, Camellia, Bahore, and Andres

Friday brought a much needed day/night off. Max and I hunkered down in the apartment and watched six or seven movies? There was a really good one with Robin Williams. It took place in Alaska, he had a wife with tourette's, and killed his brother for the insurance money, very nice dark comedy (what more could you want in a movie?), right up my alley. It was like a watered down version of Fargo, I think it was called The Big White.

Today, Saturday, a few of us went to the beach. Now that the weather has calmed down, every day is amazing. Theres no need to ever check a weather report as it will without a doubt be 90-95 and sunny. The water has also cooled considerably. Just three weeks ago the water was near 102 degrees, now its a perfect 85 degrees.

Camellia and me at Mamzar Beach.
Salt water does wonders for hair.

Some of the UAE's trademark island making in progress just offshore.
Volvox Regina say what?

Note to self: Never wear the CCCP soccer jersey in public again.


Class tomorrow, Eid break in t minus FIVE DAYS. STOKED. Post Eid vacation entry should be a good one.


Ciao.

Remeber Remember August 30??

It just doesn't have the same ring to it as the fifth of November... V would be disappointed.

The following is a story that has seen a little press over here and it came up in two lectures today so I thought I'd shed some light on it.

As some of you may know, six nuclear warheads were flown from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana on the 30th of August. In main stream media, the event has passed over as a mishap, lapse in security. First, many officers in the chain of command are involved with removing from storage and activation of nuclear warheads and special conditions must be met for transit as the air transport of unprotected nuclear warheads has been banned since 1968 (see "Palomares Incident" and "B-52 Crash at Thule Air Base"). The event has been deemed, by the pentagon, as an error in routine transfer. Previous to 1991 this would have been a plausible explanation. During the cold war, bombers, as a matter or protocol, were continuously armed with nuclear weapons. With the end of the Cold War, then president, George H. W. Bush ordered all nuclear weapons be reomoved from aircraft and stored in secure facilities nearby so as to prevent an incident like that of August, 30th. The pentagon counters that the warheads were bound for decommissioning, yet W-80 warheads, like the six transported on the 30th, are decommissioned at Kirkland AFB in New Mexico, not Louisiana (here, warheads are separated from their delivery mechanisms and are sent by train to the Department of Energy's Pantex decommissioning facility across the border in Texas).

It is interesting to note the following: Barksdale AFB in Louisiana is openly known to be the staging grounds for the majority of the Air Force's operations bound for Iraq. It has also been made public that the pentagon has conceived a 3 day blitz offense that identifies 1200 targets for destruction in Iran. Media here speculates that the warheads, small in their payload (W-80s have an adjustable yield of between 5 and 150 kilotons. To put this into perspective, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had a yield of 13 and 20 kilotons respectively and the US's largest tested warhead [Castle Bravo, 1954] had a yield of 15,000 kilotons), were meant to be adjusted to a small yield and dropped on a strategic position in Iran, after which media would conclude there was a mishap at one of Iran's nuclear facilities (The speculated target is Natanz, a plant 200 miles south of Tehran allegedly used for uranium enrichment) giving a pretext for the 3 day air blitz plan. Wow, that was quite a sentence...

This brings the argument back to how it happened, and why it wasn't followed through with. Media say that in order to covertly execute such a maneuver, orders must come directly from the executive office. Barring you the details, in the event of what is called a "National Special Security Event," the secret service is allowed to circumvent the normal chain of command and deliver executive orders to anyone they see fit. This explains how it happened in the first place. However, since May of 2006, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, namely General Pace have convinced administration officials not use to the weapons at all, much less through the conventional chain of command. Like I said previously, with the declaration of a Special Security Event, the traditional chain of command can be skipped. General Pace's apprehensions are shared my many top military brass and to many, the exposure of the incident is seen as what's known as a Push Back; an organized disobedience of orders by military officials.

Interesting timing considering the troop surge as well.

Anyway, I'm not sure how much of the story I buy, but it is, however, extremely thought provoking and something to gravely consider.

Dilbert?

Gentle Readers,

I have discovered that there is little more satisfying than removing a nasty paper jam from a really fancy printer or copier.

Today was my first day on the job at the university's library. I'll be spending half of my time doing IT stuff to day I set-up a ghost network and relayed and uploaded a program to the 135 computers in the building simultaneously. How I figured it out without causing every single one of them to crash, I don't know. The other half of my job is reshelving books. If any of y'all are reading are from AUS and you need to find books anytime this semester, you're screwed. I don't know the first thing about the dewey decimal system...

Barzar tonight. Excitement.