Saddam Hussein EXECUTION in IRAQ FULL CLEAR

The Excecution of former iraqi leader Saddam Hussein This was taken with a cell phone camera and it's a little graphic but you get the idea...

I saw mother kissing Bin Laden under the Cameltoe!!!!!

What a great euphemism! Time for the holidays, a time when to compensate for the depression of short days and long nights, we are given 2 (or 3 to even 5 if we're students) weeks of cheer and joy to counter that slump! Christmas and a whole bunch of other celebrations are coming up. What a better time for the US government to put up posters of the Most Wanted Terrorists in where else but the airports! This is not a joke! The US government is looking for terrorists and what a better way than to ask travellers in the nation's airports to find them for rewards upwards of $10 million. The most valuable terrorist, for the 6th year in a row on the poster is Osama Bin Laden! It just intrigues me that in order to find some terrorists, the US government would ask you to look around you to see if any of these terrorists are hanging around in an airport near you.

It seems like the US government is so unbelievably paranoid that the world's most dangerous terrorists seem to be hanging around in their very own airports. Everybody run for the hills, invade Iran, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Israel (Since they're always complaining), Lebanon and just make a glass crater out of the Middle East. Hopefully that'll quell the violence and bring peace to the world, thereby giving the contestants in beauty pageants something else to think about.

Talk about tangents! I went from terrorists to airports to beauty pageants all in two paragraphs! But in all seriousness, the US government tries so hard, yet they can't find their man. I got some news for them, Bin Laden is actually hiding in North Korea right now in Kim Jong Il's place! Better jump on the opportunity. Merry Christmas, I'll be turning 20 in a week!

Jetsetting: Starting up and gathering info

For the next few months, this blog will contain me (as always!) in my quest to go through Europe. This is going to be that trip that will actually materialize, unlike the previous two attempts. For the first few months, I'll be looking for info on the destinations as well as me getting the ticket and finally, photos of the actual trip. I have scheduled for my tour to begin on May 19th so that it'll be after exams and I'll be in Monaco for the F1 weekend, though I doubt I will get a chance to actually go and see the race. At least I could have a chance to go to the Parc Ferme and take pictures with F1 cars up close and personal, and maybe with a grid girl as well! The trip I plan on taking will start through London, France, Monaco, Italy (Venice, Florence and Rome), Austria, Munich, Lucerne, Amsterdam and back to London. I'm going to post some interesting facts about the countries as I do a little research during my spare time.

The one country that I'm currently interested in is the Principality of Monaco. A very tiny country, with an area 1.95 square kilometres, it is home to the Monaco Grand Prix, an F1 event that happens every year. It is the most prestigious race and the most glamorous. Apart from the race, there's also casinos in the Monte Carlo area as well as a beautiful port and the royal palace. What intrigues me is that in this principality, there's no less than 10 primary, secondary and high schools and a university. When I think about it, the entire U of T campus is Monaco, yet there is a university right there!

I also would've thought that a place so prestigious, and home to the wealthiest people in the world would only have the best restaurants and cafes in the world. Boy was I wrong! There is actually a McDonalds' there, but I doubt I'll actually go since it might be on the other side of the nation! Still though, very nice place to visit, so I would love to go there, but I would love to go there when there is the F1, so it'll look cooler! I could probably take pictures of Fernando Alonso or Kimi Raikkonen speeding through La Piscinne or Rascasse!

The past, present and future...

Last Saturday, news from the other side of the world came in saying that my grandmother had passed away. My grandfather had died 2 years earlier and she was alone for that period. Of course, my mother was very distraught from the news of my grandmother's death and she immediately packed her bags and went to Iran with my two uncles, one who lives here and the other one living in Washington DC.

The three of them left right upon hearing of the death and they got together in Paris to take the final flight together. The funeral came and went and the memorials were held. Family and friends from far and wide converged on Iran. My mom told me about her high school friends whom she met for the first time since then, the cousins and aunts and uncles she hadn't seen since she was a child and the infamous funeral crasher! I won't talk about the crasher.

I write this today because my mother returned today, and I was very happy to see her again since I'm such a mommy's boy! She told me of the funeral and the memorials, and it was the most amazing thing that could be allocated to a person after they die. The life of my grandmother was celebrated more than the mourning of her passing. My mom told me about the people who met each other for the first time since they were kids and just how different the atmosphere was. The atmosphere was, of course, of mourning, but there was also hope and happiness for a life well lived.

What made me react with a bit of sadness was the fact that the house they lived in, the large and beautiful house, had been cleaned and anything that contained a memory of my grandparents were gone to one of the 8 children in the family. It was a sign that the two of them were truly gone, no more. My mom brought back some things that are pretty difficult to describe, but they contained memories of the two of them. One of the items I can describe is a letter I had written to my grandparents in Farsi when I was only 8 years old! It brought back memories, and surprise to me that I'm still able to read Farsi, even though I'm terrible when it comes to speaking the language!

There are no pictures of any coffin or body, and that's the way I would like it. I would rather remember my grandmother as the woman who, even though in a lot of pain (arthritis), was cheerful and smiling to everybody. I like to remember her as having class and being charitable to those that didn't receive any charity or government help, like the Afghan family she gave work to. Most of all, I would like to remember my grandmother as a grandmother, plain and simple. The grandmother that would spoil her grandchildren much to the chagrin of the parents and give wisdom to me, my brother and all the cousins that were around. She was always concerned about our studies and kept encouraging us to pursue until we are the best, and then strive to be better than you are currently.

Every good quality about me can be attributed to my past and what I may do in the future can be attributed to their encouraging and pushing of me to do better. High values and high hopes will always raise you to the top, just look at my family, they are all successful and some of them are the best in their fields. I hope I can emulate that for the better. Love.

Mean Girls and how it wasn't my high school!

Over 2 years after the fact, I saw the movie Mean Girls. It's a film that was shot at my old high school! There's only one difference, even though my old high school was in the middle of a primarily white and pretty affluent area of town (Noted by a friend as a place where $3.5 million homes and bums can peacefully co-exist), it was nothing like the high school shown in Mean Girls. ECI was everything that Mean Girls wasn't! I have some good experiences up until Grade 11, after which I learned that I couldn't stay there forever and had to go to university, so grade 12 was a bit of a crap year for me.

ECI had this camp thingy called "White Pine". You go there in grade 10 and just get to act like a bit of an idiot for a week, after which you come back and get involved and other things for the rest of high school, and continue acting like an idiot, provided you have the balls, or chutzpah to do so! Everyone gets to know each other and you meet the people that you never thought existed. Friends were made, crushes were formed, and broken, and a new you emerged, mentally. You returned with confidence and got involved! I was involved in grade 9, with Reach For the Top, but that's about all my involvement in my first year of high school. Grades 10 and 11 were the power years for me!

Afterwards, I tried everything I could to make my years in high school worth it. I really cannot remember anything that I learned in high school, other than improving my ability to masterfully play with numbers and devise meanings and patterns in my head, and even then, I taught myself that, but it impressed a lot of people! I tried, and failed, due to an incompetent team member, to create a radio station for the high school, I was able to help our team win a few Reach For The Top games, but we never rose to the calibre of MCI or Leaside, and I won an award, for best Junior Player in Reach For The Top that year! I was head boy for prefects! In high school, I was a nerd, a popular person (Don't know whether I was popular to hate or popular period!), and an overall nice guy (People can dispute that!).

Overall, high school was great! The cliques and groups that existed in Mean Girls did not exist in ECI. I remember seeing the hot chicks hanging out with the Asian guys, and not for any sort of sexual reasoning, the immigrants (for lack of a better term) helping out the jocks, the jocks fraternizing with the nerds, it was good! I can't really say that there was any sort of way to define who was who or what title they carried like the characters would in that film, we were all mixed together like assorted nuts and we got along very well together. I don't remember a lot of people whom I graduated with, since I'm terrible with names, but the memories of White Pine and the semi-formals among the other things will never go away. High school was fun, I hope that if you graduated from ECI in 2004, you would think so as well!