Fat Tuesday!

yeah, it's Mardi Gras baby.. so let the drinking and associated activities begin!! for those who want to know the history of Mardi Gras, click here, and if you wanna see what the folks in New Orleans get up to, click here.

so in case you didn't know, today's the day as well when street parties happen, pub crawls take place, girls bare the boobies in exchange for beads (oh yes, they do!), shouts of "throw me something mister!!" fill the air, and a lot of alcohol is consumed! here's the recipe for the Mardi Gras special drink..

The Hurricane
- 2 oz light rum
- 2 oz dark rum
- 2 oz passion fruit juice
- 1 oz orange juice
- 1/2 oz fresh lime juice
- 1 tbsp simple sugar syrup
- Garnish: orange slice and cherry

i'm gonna be out partying all evening and night long too, so i leave you with a few more pics, and a happy Mardi Gras to all!

(#@*(*&%^$!!

everywhere i read they say the economy is getting stronger, the job scene is getting better.. but it means jackshit to me until i get a good offer. all i'm doing nowadays is filling out applications and sending out resumes, and waiting, waiting..

people keep telling me to have patience, and that things will work out. how easy is it to have patience when nothing's coming through?! people keep saying that i shouldn't worry. really, are you kidding me.. do you think i can not worry?! i can safely say that i am trying each and every thing possible to catch someone's attention.. so what else can i do? try some more? well, am doing that too!

okay, rant over! :-)

AiC is back?!

yes you heard right.. grunge gods Alice In Chains are back! the remaining members of the band are going to be getting together once again to see if they still have the magic. though lead singer Layne Staley is dead and gone, let's hope they can recapture the sound again.. Nirvana died, Sound Garden broke up (frontman Chris Cornell heads Audioslave now), Pearl Jam evolved, now let's see what AiC, the fourth of the Seattle grunge quadrant, put out. AiC's thick-as-a-brick sound & Staley's vocal style can be heard in the work of Godsmack (named from an AiC single), Creed, Staind, Puddle of Mudd, Nickelback, Adema and a host of others..

meanwhile Tool are putting the finishing touches on their new album, due out on April 4th.. the Tool Army worldwide are counting down the days (37 to be precise!).

my Johari window

**EDIT**
now the bad!! if you can, please fill out my Nohari window as well, feel free to be anonymous if you want ;-)

Arena (known to self and others) extroverted, friendly, knowledgeable, witty

Blind Spot (known only to others) able, accepting, adaptable, bold, brave, caring, cheerful, clever, complex, confident, dependable, dignified, energetic, happy, helpful, idealistic, independent, ingenious, intelligent, kind, logical, loving, mature, modest, observant, organised, patient, reflective, responsive, searching, self-assertive, self-conscious, sensible, sentimental, spontaneous, trustworthy, warm

Façade (known only to self) relaxed

Unknown (known to nobody) calm, giving, introverted, nervous, powerful, proud, quiet, religious, shy, silly, sympathetic, tense, wise

All Percentages

able (7%) accepting (10%) adaptable (3%) bold (7%) brave (3%) calm (0%) caring (14%) cheerful (28%) clever (10%) complex (10%) confident (21%) dependable (28%) dignified (10%) energetic (25%) extroverted (32%) friendly (28%) giving (0%) happyhelpful (3%) idealistic (7%) independent (14%) ingenious (7%) intelligent (39%) (17%) introverted (0%) kind (7%) knowledgeable (21%) logical (10%) loving (3%) maturemodest (3%) (14%) nervous (0%) observant (25%) organised (3%) patient (10%) powerful (0%) proud (0%) quiet (0%) reflective (3%) relaxed (0%) religious (0%) responsivesearching (10%) self-assertive (14%) self-conscious (3%) sensible (10%) sentimental (7%) (3%) shy (0%) silly (0%) spontaneous (17%) sympathetic (0%) tense (0%) trustworthy (10%) warm (17%) wise (0%) witty (46%)

Created by the Interactive Johari Window on 25.2.2006, using data from 28 respondents.
You can make your own Johari Window, or view soray's full data.

thank you everyone!!

so you know me?

here's something interesting that's going around blogworld. a 'Johari window' is something that's used to check someone's personality traits. read more about it at the wiki site.

since i'm actually trying to listen and care what you folks think of me, i'm gonna need your help here! please go to this page, and pick out a few words that you think describe me best. so when y'all are done, this site is gonna make me a small window telling me some stuff, with which i hope to become a better person. yeah i know y'all love me to bits.. now click and start choosing!!

NB: go here if you want one for yourself too!

**EDIT**
this thing seems to be going pretty good, so i'm gonna leave it on here a little longer! please feel free to fill it in, even if you only know me through blogging!

tuesday and morning?!

i had an early morning meeting today with one of the advisors.. now those who know me also know that i don't do mornings, and have no particular love for tuesdays either.. so i think i should be forgiven for showing up bleary-eyed and laden with fluffy snow. by the way, fluffy snow is a deceptive misnomer that should be banned from the annals (note similarity of said word to anal) of the dictionary - there is nothing soul-comforting or heart-warming about fluffy snow.. it's still cold, still a pain to trudge through, and still as cold when it slips sneakily down the collar and trickles down my back chortling with glee!

anyways, for a bit of history of why i hate tuesdays.. refer to this post from 07/05/05..

as we all know, yesterday was the 4th of July.. for the unsuspecting, that is the American Independence Day.. and it being a monday, it was a three-day weekend (a four-day weekend for the more enterprising of the lot!).. hope y'all had a great break.

now there are people who suffer from monday blues, and then there is me. i have serious issues with monday mornings, the kind that do not get resolved in a dark alley with a baseball bat, but get carried down generations, a la mafia gripes. i often get the feeling that my grandkids will be woken up by bleak mondays in the future.. laying cold, clammy hands on the napes of their necks, telling them.. "gotta go, sonny.." so, to protect them, i made mondays an offer they couldn't refuse - don't disturb me before the p.m. hour on monday, and i will make a serious effort to get work done in the afternoons. of course, both of us often renege on this deal, but an uneasy kind of truce still holds.

it appears tuesday has got wind of this deal, and has been quiet for years.. silently throwing me to the lions in the coliseum.. way back in high school tuesday was the day i had both english and kiswahili literature classes and biology practicals to boot. now where is the justice i ask you? then in undergrad, tuesday was the day i had full days, all my hated labs and all the professors who treated me with the disdain they reserve for single-celled organisms stuck to the soles of their shoes. and even in grad school, when i didn't have classes on tuesday, i would be stuck with submissions and TA office hours, where abjectly vapid undergrads expected me to teach them that F is indeed = mxa.

i think i can be forgiven for concluding that tuesdays have officially drawn swords and would like to see if this issue can be handled with all the subtlety of a hatchet being used to slice onions. the last straw being of course these three-day weekends when i wake up on tuesday morning wondering if mondays and tuesdays have definitely been scheming plots to injure my fragile self-worth.

since cutting a deal with tuesdays is quite impossible.. that would be tantamount to selling my soul to the devil, considering i have already made ol' lucifer a principal signatory to my living being after that accord with mondays.. i grin and bear it when tuesdays hit me with sucker punch after sucker punch.. but one of these days i shall be tempted to sit with tuesday and see if we can't come to some sort of agreement too.. ;-)

i guess it's all good now that i'm in limbo, done with college and yet to start work, once i move on i am going to have to strike some sort of deal with these cold snowy mornings!

oft-heard sayings

conversations on a sunday morning..

dc: men are men and women are women and the twain shall never meet..
s!: yes, unless it's in the dark of the night, in the throes of passion sweet!

dc: guys like the chase, women like to be chased; until the chase is over..
s!: and then it's probably time for each to get another lover

dc: men are from mars, and women are from venus..
s!: we met here on earth and look what came between-us!

dc: women always have emotions, and men none, in vain..
s!: the men who did went to watch Brokedick Mountain!

dc: men are supposed to be macho and women the fairer sex..
s!: roles have been reversed in these days of the metrosex!

dc: if a man argues with a woman, he loses an argument..
s!: if he wins the argument he still loses the argument!

dc: men will never ask for directions, even when they're lost, you see..
s!: it can't be that hard to find either food, sex or even a tv!

dc: every woman wants to make a better man out of her man..
s!: every man wishes he was with a better woman than his woman!

dc: who has the bigger ego? the man who admits, or the woman who denies it?
s!: the man combs his balding spot, the woman tries on jeans that'll never fit!

brrr!

i thought last weekend was cold.. it just got worse! once again, i shall be found firmly ensconced in my blankets!! :-)

i'm ..

watching (TV) - Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs & Superships.

watched (movies) - Munich, Memoirs of a Geisha, Lord of War, & The Weatherman.

reading - Time, Playboy, Stuff & 'Fluid Mechanics' - JD Francis.

writing - the penultimate draft of the thesis.

listening to - 'Hypnotize' - System of a Down & 'Autumn Effect' - 10 Years.

playing - Scrabble & Cricket 2005.

so as you can see, i've been keeping busy.

the Swimsuit Edition (WARNING - NSFW)

yes ladies and gentlemen, the annual eye-candy in the form of stunning females frolicking in (and out of!!) swimsuits is here again.. Sports Illustrated's annual Swimsuit Edition is here, and in 2006 is bigger and better too!! so run on over to the site and feast your eyes, and in case you don't get enough, there are bonus features like individual photo galleries, scrumptious videos as well as a downloadable desktop calendar too!!

featured for the first time here this issue is Maria Sharapova..

as well as all-star favorites Heidi Klum, Rachel Hunter, Yamila Diaz-Rahi, Rebecca Romijn, Daniela Pestova and many more too.. enjoy!!

let's go see the world

one of my favorite shows on tv is 'Globe Trekker' (formerly 'Lonely Planet').. for travel buffs it's the Holy Grail. i've lived on three continents, and what i find is the more i see the more i wanna explore. in fact, often i watch places on the show that i have been to, and didn't get to see quite a lot of things they show.. there's just so much to discover about a place, and the people, and everything around it!

the thing i like about the show is that they don't do the usual touristy stuff; instead, they often go off the beaten path, digging up different things to do and little tidbits that you would never know unless you lived at a place. the tv show is based on the 'Lonely Planet' books, which are often the Bible for backpackers and hikers, and are replete with the kind of information that people like you and me need.. i.e those who don't have their own tropical island complete with airstrip and a Lear jet, and a 150-foot yacht anchored at the marina.

from the list of dream jobs, being a host on this show is definitely one of the top choices. to be paid to see and enjoy a place.. what could be better than that! in fact, one of the targets in life that i still aim at is to be able to work for 11 months a year, and for the remaining month just toss a few essentials into a backpack and go away for a month. with one trip a year starting now, i figure i'd still be able to tick off quite a few places from the list before my oft-abused body gives up on me. oh yeah, if anyone knows someone who is in the travel show production business, please please let me know!

lazy lazy

with weather like this, why would i ever want to get out of bed?

*DING* i'm done! (WARNING - NSFW)

she's really pretty, and not in a skinny, supermodel kinda way.
she's got a brilliant smile, and a great, quirky sense of humor.
best of all, she loves eating and cooks too.. amazing, simple food.

meet Rachael Ray (Wiki).



now here's a gal who knows her way around the kitchen, and knows her way to a man's heart too. Rachael Ray (Food Network) advocates cooking by sense, not science.. which makes her real fun to watch as she cooks, and most of her recipes are pretty easy to follow too. she has two main shows..
'30 Minute Meals' - this is really good if you wanna see how best to get in and out of the kitchen for a good healthy meal, especially after a hard day at work..
'$40 a Day' - combines two of my favorite things, travel and food! she travels to different cities, on a budget of 40 bucks a day for food.. how cool is that!
you can catch her on the Food Network most days.. so quit drooling all over her here, and happy eating too!

done deal!

as was famously said by one Dave Chappelle "you're going down biatch!!"

you wouldn't believe it if i said it once, so i will say it twice. besides, when in the SAS they tell you the mission objective, they say it twice so that there can be no mistake. the thesis is done. again, the thesis is done. you will not believe how happy and relieved i am. to all those of you who had to put up with my whining and griping, i thank you wholeheartedly.

just minor editing and corrections left on it now, but i should be defending it in ten days or so. whew, it took a while.. i'm exactly six months off with it in fact, i'd wanted to be where i am now in august '05! anyways, it was more than a labour of love, more than the twelve tasks of Hercules.. it was more like i was the damned thesis' bitch! trust me, not a good feeling!

those who see me on IM will now find me infinitely more pleasant.. that is, until it hits me that i still need to find me a good job. *sigh* the injustice, the damned injustice of it all.

answered

ask, and ye shalt receive.

ask for snow, and here it is, promptly! but when i ask for a bucket of money, lots of alcohol, unlimited food, dream job, naked blonde twins, a Super Bowl victory, no drug tests.. then.. nothing.
there is no justice i tell you, none whatsoever.

just ain't winter without the snow

this has been nothing short of a bizarre winter.. it's been damned cold, but no snow. it's just not Buffalo without the inches of snow to trudge through!! not that i'm really complaining about the lack of snow, but it actually is not that cold when it's snowing, so the more the better! (it does get colder than a siberian witch's left tit just before it snows) besides, i don't drive here either, so makes no difference to me.. hehe! it started snowing again though, and normalcy has been restored. it was quite strange walking around in february, with the grass visible and no white stuff to be seen!

football can kill you!

so Super Bowl came and went.. and people everywhere sat in front of their tvs, ate and drank and had a merry old time. here are some factoids that you probably never knew!

• More people watched Super Bowl XXXIX (133.7 million viewers) than voted in the 2004 Presidential election or went out to celebrate New Year’s Eve? This year the number was expected to be in the same region.
• In an attempt to capture that market, every big company saves their best ads for the Super Bowl, and pay through the nose too. This year the cost for a 30 second spot was $ 2.5 million!! If you missed the best ads, go to iFilm for a recap.
• Super Bowl weekend is the slowest weekend of the year for weddings. After all, what bride in her right mind would ask her groom-to-be to take the plunge on such a critical weekend for sports fans? Not only would she run the risk of a light turnout at the wedding, but the honeymoon might not live up to her life-long expectations if the groom is distracted for hours during their first full day of matrimony!
• Super Bowl Sunday is the second-largest day of food consumption in the country behind Thanksgiving (and the sales of antacid increases 20 percent the day after).. hehe, follows!
• An estimated 11 million pounds of potato chips, 4 million pounds of popcorn and 2 million pizzas are eaten on Super Bowl Sunday. Close to 11 million barrels of beer are drunk, in bars, at home and at the 7.5 million parties (on average) on Super Bowl Sunday.

so there, football can kill you, and i don't mean when a 220 pound linebacker crashes into you, helmet and all, but from all the above! the ER folk dread Super Bowl Sunday, and with good reason too.. across the nation on Super Bowl Sunday, traffic accidents spike (drunk drivers, pissed off drivers!).. domestic violence goes up (not the best time to complain about unpaid bills to the hubby when his team's losing!).. people eat themselves sick, drink until their bladders are too full to urinate (from hearsay: more painful than it sounds), and gag and choke on aluminum beer can tabs (yep, beer can tabs.. apparently people drop them into their beer, then forget!).

hope you had a great sunday, with no mishap!

Super Bowl 2k6

Super Bowl XL is in Detroit today.. the Pittsburgh Steelers take on the Seattle Seahawks, in what is probably too tight a game to call. for the uninitiated, this is the season's finale of american football. all over the country people are having Super Bowl parties, regardless of whether they watch football or not, or if their teams made it to the final or not, just another excuse to eat junk food and get drunk, hehe!

another very important event is going to be taking place at halftime during the Super Bowl, and no, Justin Timberlake showing us Janet Jackson's boobie is not counted as an important event when you can see all these luscious lingerie-clad ladies playing some contact football.. yes, as mentioned to you a few days previously.. it's Lingerie Bowl time baby!! if you have no idea what i'm talking about, this is where you go..

check out the official website for some more action!!

word cloud

this website called SnapShirts creates word clouds from your blog, and even makes it into a t-shirt if you want.. pretty cool methinks, check it out!

Oscar time again

yes, the Academy Awards are gonna be swinging around some time soon, and the nominations are out. here's the full list. no real surprises as such, just a few things here and there i'd like to point out:

- call me homophobic, but i am not gonna go watch that Brokedick Mountain.. no sir. i have no issues with gay and lesbian folk.. indeed i have been known to encourage lesbians to practice free love!! but yeah, that last bastion of manly men, cowboys, have been infiltrated by the gay story writers, and men everywhere are wincing. i have never liked the show Will & Grace either, so i shall be giving this a wide berth. But the publicity machine sure looks like its gonna make this film sweep a whole lot of Oscars.. blech!

- George Clooney (Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck) and Terrence Howard (Crash, Hustle & Flow) are the hot actors right now.. whatever they're doing is turning to gold.

- Charlize Theron might get the Oscar in what was her least spectacular film North Country, though she could have won more admirers (as if that was possible) by baring more in Aeon Flux. However i feel Reese Witherspoon did enough to win it for Walk The Line.. unless Dame Judi Dench pulls a suprise! (Mrs. Henderson Presents).

- the Art Direction category might be the best-fought of all categories, with a bunch of very well made films - Good Night and Good Luck, King Kong, Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire, Memoirs of a Geisha, Pride & Prejudice.

so enjoy your weekend, and go out and watch a movie or two if you missed any of these. Crash and Good Night and Good Luck are two of my favorites which i would recommend whole-heartedly, and Walk The Line, Munich, The Constant Gardener and Memoirs of a Geisha are also worth the watch.

moving on

had my farewell party at the library yesterday. i am nearing the end of my time at Graduate School, and quit my student co-ordinator job at the library. it's been a wild time, since Sept. '04.. a quick browse through the blog archives tells tales of wild partying till 4-5 in the morning, and opening the library at 8, still a tad high.. stories of checking out the local colour and fashions of the month when the Architecture gals come through the library doors.. anecdotes of honest days' work (very few) and times goofing off (very many).. epics of funny moments, mad-hectic days, fixing friends' library fines, cooking the time-sheets to wangle some extra money and a downright good time all through. (follow the links if you are absolutely jobless or bored, and wanna read: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)

gonna miss the library, but not for too long.. bigger jobs, and tougher challenges await.. onward ho!

worldwide?

the ClustrMap for the hits on this blog show a pretty cool distribution all over the world.

the one thing you will notice though is that there is a distinct emptiness over vast tracts, especially in certain areas. i know that i can't claim a worldwide readership, but it's no coincidence that some of the places with no dots are also places with the least internet usage statistics too. then again, when you don't have piped drinking water, regular meals, a permanent job, basic infrastructure, stable governments.. checking email and browsing the net is the least of your priorities. somehow Africa always misses the boat when the rest of the world is moving forward, and we spend generations playing catch-up.. never really catching up.