Golf

Golf is a great game.



I started playing golf about a year ago, and its been quite an interesting journey. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 on the Xbox got me initially interested in the sport (and gave me some basic knowledge as to what it entails) and then frequent visits to the driving range almost drove me away from the thing all together. It was horrible. I couldn't hit the ball at first, and then when I managed to do so it just rolled rather than soaring like a beautiful golf shot should. I refused lessons mainly because the golf club in Bahrain (yes.. THE golf club.. there's only one.) charges a king's ransom for a handful of 30 minute lessons. In retrospect, one or two lessons would've really sped the development of things.. but hey, no use crying over spilt beer eh?



Slowly but surely I pieced together what now resembles a golf swing, and with visits to courses both in Dublin and Bahrain, I really started loving the sport. I played a round of 18 holes the other day, shot 5 pars and ended up finishing under par (I'm a 36 handicap.. which is pretty bad). This was basically a culmination of practice and pyschology, where I learned to let go of the ingrained idea of hitting the ball as hard as possible and beating my opponent.. and learned to embrace the idea of just going out there and having fun. After all, golf is about bettering your own performance, and not out-driving your fellow golfers for distance.



Alright, enough sounding like some golf motivational manual..



*queue solo piano in the background*

The point I wanted to get across was that maybe for once in my life I've recognized that not everything is a competition.. that fun could be had without necessarily gloating about kicking some other dude's ass in a certain sport or videogame.



*piano music abruptly ends*

Hahaha! That was funny, I almost believed that one myself..!

Videogames and sports are all about kicking ass. There's no substitute to winning. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Shady Construction

My apartment block is 8 years old. I've been living in my apartment for 3 years now.. nice little place, reasonable rent..



Given that the whole complex has only been up for 8 years, you'd expect the place to be well constructed (1996 might've been a while ago, but they still had the technology back then!).. but the emphasis was visibly placed on aesthetics instead of a properly planned building. Sure, it looks nice.. but how well built is it?



Don't get me wrong, we're not talking about negligence of Egyptian proportions here (buildings in Egypt have a frightning tendency to completely collapse a year or two after construction).. simply Irish short-sightedness we've all come to expect at this point. Example? The pipes are so poorly insulated that all the heat dissipates through the walls and upwards. Being that I live at the very top floor, this provides me with a cheap and non-ending source of heat. I haven't turned on the heating in THREE years.. I don't care how cold it is out there, as long as I'm in my house its completely perfect. This isn't much of a worry, since I'm getting free shit (and I love getting free shit).. but a recent problem has arisen that prompted me to write this post. Apparently the water pressure is too high in the building as well. What does this mean, I hear you (or not) ask? Well, this basically means that the high water pressure attacks my washing machine (for more about my washing machine, refer to my earlier post about the damn thing).



This results in leakage, intermittent function and general anxiety and frustration on my behalf.

Kazaa (or lack thereof..)

I'm assuming everyone knows what Kazaa is? For the uninitiated, its a p2p (person to person) filesharing program. This gives you a plethora of music tracks, movies, computer software and images at your virtual fingertips. I haven't bought a CD in a very, very long time.. relying on kazaa as my main supplier of music (yes, i've got over 1000 illegal mp3 files! track down my IP address and come sue me, please!). Goddamn corporations, don't you have enough money as it is?!



Well, you've won. You officially got me to stop using kazaa.. for new music. Newly released tracks that appear on kazaa for sharing are lost amid a flood of dud mp3 files with the same name. Search for a new track and you get thousands of sources.. except each source provides you with a file made up of 3 to 4 minutes of silence. Its impossible to find a genuine source.. impossible.



But wait.. this only affects new music tracks! Old tracks, images, computer software and videos are still very available. Still though, it pretty much means that i'd have to leave the comfort of my own home to go buy any new music. I HATE leaving the comfort of my own home. I also hate spending money on stuff I used to steal so easily.



Its time to sharpen those shoplifting skills. Old methods for cramming those tapes in my pockets will have to be modified for bigger, more awkward CD cases.



Disclaimer: this blog does not, in any way, condone theft. not CDs, anyway. THINK BIG, THINK BANKS.

Duleek

..is the name of an Irish village. As part of my general practice rotation (and as seems to be the case this year), I'm being shipped out to a remote part of the country to "pursue my education". Why do I have to pursue the damn thing? Don't my parents pay enough in tuition fees for the damn practice to come to MY house.. doctor, staff and patients?!



The Irish public transport system has demonstrated to me this morning how weak it really is. The buses run late, the train timings are erratic and totally haphazard, and connections can never be made. I was supposed to get my ass up to a town called Drogheda (droh-eda) and then get a connecting bus to Duleek. The mental stress involved in getting to where I wanted to go was ridiculous. Suffice to say, I made it to the practice quite late and got in what remained of the morning session.



And then there was the break. I'm usually a huge fan of lengthy, two hour breaks.. but not when I'm stuck in a place like Duleek. I decided to take a walk and explore the village, and was back in the Doctor's office roughly 10 minutes later. It took me 10 minutes to walk through the main street, the place where everything happens. It had one shop, two takeaways and a church.



Ended up playing solitaire on the doctor's computer until he showed up for the afternoon session and gave me a disapproving look.

Bills.

No, not the kind that's attached to a duck's face. The ugly kind you get in the mail.



No one in the world likes being billed for something that they've enjoyed. Whether its in a restaurant at the end of a meal or at the end of the month for your credit card, bills just suck. They can ruin your night or the day in which you recieve them, and for people with low (or no) income they can be a threat to your livelihood and possessions.



I've just recieved a particularly nasty bill today. Seems like a little bit of free spending and mismanagement can land you in a pile of poo these days. It ruined my day, mainly because i lack the funds to make the payment in time, so i decided to postpone it for a month and hope they don't mind. Stupid conglomerates make so much money anyway.. although it is quite a large amount, they might send me a couple of notices. Oh well, can't do anything about it now. Maybe a little more self-control in the future? Although everything i've spent my money on has definitely been worth it. A small (or rather large..) price to pay for hours upon hours of pure, unadulterated pleasure.



I hope the repo men are in a good mood when they show up, i've grown quite attached to my television over the last 5 years.

Back from Sabbatical

..and wishing that sabbatical was the name of some beautiful carribbean island. But it's not, i've actually been in some little irish town by the name of Cavan doing a rotation at their quaint little hospital. Finally back to the big city, i'm amazed by little things such as the intricate functioning of a pedestrian traffic light (they were not available in cavan, amongst many other of life's little luxuries). Overall a good experience though.



A lot has changed of late, just the general feeling of growing older, wiser and losing one too many a brain cell in the process. Its a very reflective time for me, especially with all the changes in my life (the recent inclusion of a beautiful lady being a main one) and i've been pretty sidetracked from posting anything up. I know nobody's reading this, but i still feel obliged to rant on about random things to absolutely no one at all. I also talk to walls during my spare time. Helps with the stress.



They don't argue back either. Stupid walls.

Family Vacations

Haven't posted anything up for a while now, but for a good reason. I've been on vacation with the family for the last 16 days and internet access was hard to come by. I was also lazy.



Family vacations are like the proverbial double-edged sword. Actually, that's a bad comparison.. they don't hurt you or anyone else. Forget that one.



Family vacations are like cotton candy. They start off sweet but after a while you get sick of them. It was nice having the family together, going out and doing family stuff.. but I am a man who values my alone-time, and the constant togetherness and close quarters contact was starting to grit on my nerves. There's almost no breathing room, and every day is governed by the will of the group and not my own selfish whims. Kind of sucks, as I am a self-professed selfish bastard.



The good thing is, after a while you start adapting to one another. My family's quite close, but going on a two week plus vacation really teaches you new things about your loved ones. It's been an educational experience overall, so I won't complain. I also bought a lot of new stuff (typical arab vacation must include X amount of shopping).



Coming back in a couple of days, can't wait.

Humidity sucks.

It's like a punch to the gut. You walk out of your house or your car, or any air conditioned place, and you're hit with an invisible wall of such magnitude that it almost knocks you over (usually completely ruining your mood). This of course has been the weather situation in Bahrain around this time of year for as far back as i can remember (or as far back as my dad remembers.. and his father before him).. not only does it become incredibly hot, but the humidity kicks in at around 85% and above, making breathing a chore.



Someone at the ministry of electricity and water is enjoying playing God this summer. Apparently, due to some shady grid components, Bahrain's electricity has been rationed for the last week or so. Daytime is death, it literally sucks the life out of you. It's so hot that you'd probably die if you stood in the sun for more than 15 minutes. Air conditioning is one invention that I believe has single-handedly increased the average lifespan of a person in this region by 20 years. And then some guy decides when and for how long to turn off an entire area's electricity.



What a fucking power trip.

Flourescent lighting

It's driving me absolutely fucking nuts. One of the flourescent lights in the bathroom has reached the end of its life-span and is doing things that only those stupid lights do. Other lightbulbs just go off and stay off, these damn things keep on flickering as if they were a twitching corpse that has no chance of coming back to life but still keeps going at it. When it's day time I tend not to notice, as daylight coming through the window provides me with enough lighting to do whatever it is I went in to do. It's at night time that it kills me, as I go about my business expecting the struggling light to come on at any second. And then I remember that it never will. This causes me to have to complete what I'm trying to do using a manic, psychotic slow motion kind of strobe lighting.



The thing is, there are two switches, one that turns on the fucked up light and one that turns on a perfectly normal light. By sheer force of habit, I ALWAYS turn on the busted one. This is a habit that is rooted back into the days where I spent most of my time at home, probably all the way back when we moved into this house around 14 years ago. Every damn time, I always get frustrated and remind myself to switch on the other light, but it never ever works. I just stand there like an idiot in the darkness waiting for the momentary flash that allows me to kind of get my bearings straight.

Back home

Just got back to Bahrain yesterday, weather being as hot as ever. I've learned to love it to be honest.. and just when i decided that i don't really mind the weather as much as i used to, i get a flat tire at 12 noon, the point at which the sun is almost vertical and temperatures reach 45 degrees celsius. I'm usually good with flats, not taking more than 15 minutes to change one, but this one was stuck somehow. I didn't want to run the risk of ruining the car's rims by driving on the recently pressure-less piece of shit that used to be my front left tire. So what happens then? i had to call the tow truck to haul the car to a tire shop so they could help me out. Whole process took around 2 hours, and by the time it was over i could smell the cooked flesh that i once called my brain. So now i hate the weather again.



Exam results were posted up today, and i made it through. Not as convincingly as i originally thought, but i'll take it. Nerve-wracking experience that, having to wait for the stupid web browser to load the page and then an ensuing eye scramble to locate my number on that blindingly small-fonted list. I was stunned by relief more than anything, although i had initially expected a euophoric reaction but was surpised to react so solemnly to the good news. Mom almost didn't believe me, she thought i was upset and was attempting (very poorly, i must say) to lie to her.



Now my summer can start for real.

Fungus attack

Was just cleaning my apartment, and i ventured into the rarely attempted area that is my bathroom. This thing has been minimally maintained for the last 2 years, so there were a couple of things that I had to attend to. It was time.



There was a bit of fungus growing in a little corner (presumably due to steam coming from the shower) and it had begun to spread, so it was time for it to go. The mission was more or less successful, and i retired back to the living room in a content state of mind. Now i'm having trouble breathing, or so i believe. It could very well be psychosomatic (when there's nothing wrong with you except you think there is), since i was vaccuming too and the room became kind of stuffy because of all the dust i had let loose into the atmosphere. So now i've got a congested sensation and a feeling like i've suddenly developed very mild asthma. I could swear i read about fungus inhalation in my microbiology notes somewhere, i'm just too lazy to go look anything up. As they say "this too shall pass", i've been in many situations where i should've gotten hurt/poisoned/contaminated/killed but so far i've survived them all. I do have it coming though, to be honest, so i won't be surprised if this inhaled fungus gives me a lung infection of some sort. That would suck.



Finished the last part of my exams today, and i've got a good feeling about the whole thing. Maybe i managed to pull this one out of the fire after all? This has got to stop.

انا اعشق الرياضة

I love sports. Yes i do.



Today was beautiful, two rugby games.. the two opening games of Euro 2004 (Portugal never fail to disappoint) and the formula 1 qualifying session. And to top it off, Miss Universe was on at night! Technically, i HAVE been staring at men all day long.. something to take the homosexual edge off, you know?



Well, now that the exam is over it's just a waiting period until i find out my results and whether or not i've got a borderline oral. So it's pretty much sit on my ass and do shit all for the next 10 days. I love it, although i do get a bit lonely since most of my friends have already left and the ones that are still here have exams to study for. The timing of Euro 2004 was perfect, now i can finally fill my time with something.. the other sports are just a bonus.



Now it's a struggle to fill the "downtime" between sporting events. Optimally, it'll be something that doesn't require me to vacate the little hole i've created in the couch using my ass. A new xbox game might be in order, and of course now that i've got wireless internet set up on my laptop, that's just an arm's length away. The main challenge now is to figure out how to feed myself without moving.

Quote me happy

Crunch time. An exam that's literally worth $40,000 is in 6 days. Talk about pressure, eh?



The studying process has been slow, but it's picking up. I've got confidence in my ability to pull this one out of the fire.. as long as the questions are fair. By fair i mean that they have to be from the half of the material that i studied, and not the half that i had no time for because of procrastination.



Tried something new with the pasta last night. Poured in some peppers-in-oil-in-a-jar kind of thing and it made the whole thing taste infinitely better. I bet it's the extra grease that made it so appealing. I'm such a fat bastard.



Today i'm gonna study at home. Every time i've tried that before, it has failed spectacularly. My house is just full of distracting stuff, and (as if that wasn't enough) i've got this unbelievable ability to waste time by just sitting at the desk and staring at the wall for a good 45 minutes. Maybe i'll get a poster, write $40,000 on it and hang it on the wall just in case i find myself staring in that direction again.

Taking over the world

There's something about sunny days that makes you forget all about your responsibilities and you feel like you just want to spend the day outdoors.



Today we played Risk. It's a funny game, a game where you have to shed any sense of moral decency and friendship in order to pursue the (very satisfying) goal of taking over the world and destroying everyone else in the process. This kind of board game really tests the fabric of friendships. Your boy (who's supposed to have your back) attacks your weak iceland from greenland and you lose control of europe. And your cool. Gets quite hectic at times, with a lot of backstabbing and broken promises, but once the board is put away things generally tend to go back to normal. Until the next time.



After a couple of big battles, i finally gained control of north america. Coupled with a few card sets, i was getting stronger by each passing turn. Pretty much set for world domination. But then the whole thing was interrupted by the beginning of the barbequing process.



Damn it.

Late night, rough day random

The remote control for the digital box is fucked. Not only is it consuming batteries like no tommorow, but the power button is also messed. So i still have to manually get up off my derriere and walk over to the television. I thought the whole point was to eliminate this very tiring and annoying process? I should order a new one, but i know they'll charge me something crazy like 200 euros for it. Goddamn NTL.



Have to pay more money to the damn phone/internet/monopoly-on-everything company. Passed the allowed download limit, which is costing me 3c per megabyte. That's what happens when i rip off hollywood by downloading movies for free. I get ripped off by some corporation. It's a vicious cycle.



"siiiic, that's what i like to hear =)" ..



I'm in trouble. Deep trouble. Leave it up to me.. i wonder what that meant? I can't take another sint as a clay pigeon. Goddamn target practice. Very ironic that i'm saying this just as i reload my own rifle and line up the sights.



Very, very confused.

Pizza

Ahh, the staple diet of the college student. Not only does it taste good, but it's also so damn convenient. The local pizza delivery place has a "buy one, get one free" offer we've been abusing for the past while. It makes the whole thing so much cheaper when you've got 6 or 7 guys chipping in for the price of one large pizza and getting two in return. Really, a good feed minus the damaging blow to the bank balance.



Today was the day we overused the coupon. This coupon has been alive for the last 4 months, as the drivers never ask for it. But we had to push our luck. When we called for two seperate deliveries using the same coupon, they wouldn't give us the second batch of pizza unless we handed it over. And that easily, it was gone.



I've got so many pizza boxes around me, it's scary. It doesn't help matters that i rarely clean the apartment.. but seriously.. stacks and stacks. There's a good pile in the kitchen, but there's no more space in there so there're a couple of stacks just sitting in the middle of the living room.



Maybe I should build a little fort.

Where's the beef?

Just on my way down to the grocery store to get some pasta, passed this guy with a stick of french bread in one hand. Initially, i thought he might be taking it home to make himself a sandwich.. or maybe some garlic bread. But no, he broke it open right there and started eating it plain. Thing is, that's not the first time i've seen that happen. On a number of occasions i've seen office workers having lunch outside around this area eating plain french bread, unaccompanied by anything. Not even cheese.



I don't get it. How could you eat just plain bread? Butter i'd understand, meat or cheese would be optimum. But plain? It makes no sense to me.



Finally got some new lights to replace the busted ones in the hallway. Looks so much nicer now that i've got more light in there. It was kind of annoying having to use the living room light to navigate around. At least now i can see what shoes i'm putting on. Although i do believe that little period without light has markedly improved my sense of touch. Maybe i'll blindfold myself next week to improve my hearing?



hmm.. limitless..

Beep, Beep, Beep.

2:43am.



Should really wake up and do something tommorow. Something productive. Something that would make me feel better about my week. So far it hasn't been progressing too well, it's just been day after day of doing nothing. This blog has added to my list of possible things to do, but then again there's only so much i can post up. The weather was killer today, not a single trace of cloud. Quite warm too, would've been a perfect day to go golfing. Hmmm.. that's right, i was supposed to do that today. I wonder what distracted me from that plan.



My (very disused) burglar alarm recently got reset as i was playing around with some circuit breakers. It went off for a solid 45 minutes (during which i lost all sense of hearing in both ears), but then it quit and just remained armed.. now all it does is beep whenever the front door is opened. It was kind of nice at first, like an electronic welcome of sorts. Beep, Beep Beep. I felt loved by the apartment.

Now it's purely annoying. Every single time i open the door it startles me.



I don't understand the purpose of it being armed, but not going off at all. Being the lazy person that i am, the harmless periodic beeping doesn't warrant the hassle of fixing the problem. It'll just stay that way until i move out, i guess.



Beep, Beep, Beep. I swear i'm gonna break that thing someday.

Sun in the summer

It completely throws me off. I don't think i'll ever adjust to the added hours of daylight we get in summer time. It's 7pm right now and it looks like it's around 4.
It really messes up my daily schedule.. that sense of having more of the day left is completely shot once you glance at the time. In half an hour i'd have to go out and get some groceries to make some dinner and then eat it while the sun is still shining. I don't like eating dinner before the sun sets, it leaves me with an empty feeling in my stomach.

And when it does get dark at around 10.30, I find myself feeling hungry all over again even though i just had a monster meal.

Summer has got to be the best season to start up a food retail business.

Screw cooking, i'll just order some pizza.

American clothes sizes

I love ebay. Whatever you can think of you could probably buy, just try it. Just to test out ebay's randomness, i searched for a "garlic crusher" and found two listings. Maybe someday i'll be lazy enough to order a garlic crusher off the internet instead of going down the road to the local shop.

That would take some foresight though, since the garlic crusher would probably be delivered in 3 to 4 days if i'm lucky. That means i'll have to know 3 days in advance that i'm going to be indulging in some culinary experimenting that might require the crushing of a few cloves of garlic. If that was the case, wouldn't it be easier if i picked up the garlic crusher from the store as i'm buying the food? UNLESS i'll be ordering the groceries online.. then maybe i could synchronize it so that crusher would arrive at the same time as the delivery man from Tesco. Highly doubtful, since i never engage myself in any cooking that requires anything more than simple boiling of pasta or rice. So this whole dicussion was pointless.



I love ebay. i recently ordered an item of clothing from the american ebay website, and it was listed as XL. That is, more or less, the size of clothes that i usually buy from the UK. Unfortunately, American XL is around twice the UK size.

I'm glad McDonald's have decided to eliminate their supersize scheme in the States.

The three second rule

Today was a beautiful day. The sun was out, the weather was warm and all the ladies were showing a bit of skin. So we decided to have a barbeque.

Being that i possess the dreaded Y chromosome, i take it as my responsibility to man the grill as often as possible, and today was no exception. So we got some chicken, we got some burgers.. and we started the cooking process. Which brings us to the current topic: the three second rule.



For the uninitiated, the three second rule is when you drop food on the floor, and if you pick it up within three seconds.. it's still good to eat.

If it lasts longer, however, you probably should either throw it out.. or dust it really hard and then eat it, hoping that nothing too harmful got stuck to it.

Some people think the 3 second rule is wrong or gross. My honest opinion is that the floor should never be a reason why good food goes to waste. I was in india once a long time ago and i actually saw an old lady use the floor as a glorified plate. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but then again i was 9. The simple fact is, harmful germs just DO NOT have the mobility to catch on to food within 3 seconds, hence the beauty of the time window given to us by this wonderful rule.



Unless the floor is really wet or something. I think that gives the germs extra mobility, so the rule is null and void.

The washing machine is broke.

Well, not exactly broken. But it might as well be.

It takes me a full day to do one load, since it gets stuck every step of the way for at least an hour before the dial clicks into the next step of the cycle. Kind of annoying, since it's hard to predict when it'll get stuck, and i don't like the idea of sitting in front of the washing machine all day acting as a safety net.

It might be a reason why the electricity bill has sky rocketed in recent months. I shouldn't complain, a friend of mine had a washing machine that loaded up on water with no clothes inside, and as soon as he opened the little door it all came flooding out. Then again, he washes his sneakers in there sometimes, so he had it coming. Sneakers in a spin cycle at 4000 rpm? I wouldn't wanna be his washing machine.



Best thing that ever happened to me throughout my washing career.. i found an unopened can of beer next to the laundry detergent in the cupboard underneath the sink. Wonder how that got there?

Happy day.

Can sitting on the couch for too long actually hurt?

I've been lazy for the last couple of days. Who am I kidding.. weeks. I haven't done much in terms of exercise and have been comfortable enough sitting on the couch, eating pizza, watching tv and playing xbox. But i'm starting to notice a little strain in my back and an unsettling rigidness in my neck. Whenever i lean forward to get close to the tv (usually when i'm engrossed in a battle of epic proportions on the grid iron of Madden 2004) i get this strange sensation of pain searing through my back all the way up to my neck. It's as though my body is screaming at me to get off my ass and do something with my life.

My couch is comfortable, I'll tell you that. But is it TOO comfortable?

Has it become so comfortable that the effect has done a complete 180 and is now the exact opposite? To be honest, i'm loving my slob lifestyle, and i find it quite annoying that excess comfort is becoming a painful detterant to sitting around all day doing nothing.

It's quite ironic in fact, and i'm hating it.