Palestine vs. Israel.... on the basketball court!

ESPN.com - E-Ticket: Hooping with the Enemy

This is a great story I just read and I figured I'd share since the world needs some positive news right now. With all the Lebanese-Israeli was news right now it seems like everything is going to hell in a handbasket, but it's refreshing to know that people are trying to make a difference... and are succeeding.

The Play for Peace (PFP) program is designed to bring people together through the game of basketball. Successfully implemented in Africa, Ireland, and other conflict hot spots, some folks decided to use the program to bring together Israelis and Palestinians. If you can be good friends and teammates, maybe you wont grow up with the hate and predigous that everyone else holds.

Being a huge basketball fan I think this is great since it spread the popularity of the sport and will eventually increase the talent base for the NBA. Besides that I think sports are a great way to de-emphasize the politically charged times we live in. On a football field or b-ball court, people are just teammates and friends and that's all that matters until the clock runs out and the game is over. In this day and age when entire nations are judged on the political affiliations of their leaders it's nice to see a ray of light that is trying to poke through the clouds.

0-60mph in 1.67 seconds... for a car!?!

Barabus Sportscars Limited

I have no idea how this is even possible but this Barabus company, not to be confused with Brabus which is an aftermarket supplier for Mercedes Benz, announced their 1005HP twin turbo V8 supercar that's going to take you to 60mph in less than 2 seconds AND a top speed of, get this, 270mph. I don't even know how the wheels will gain traction on the road for that long. Why not just add wings to the thing and call it a jet for crying out loud. I'll believe it when there's a legit road test.

Human Pong!?

This is equally weird/cool/scary

Real life space invaders!?

No this doesn't mean that we are being attacked by an alien race, hell bent on destroying us, but limited to the fact that they can only move in 2 dimensions.

Some French performance troupe spent 4 hours moving 67 people around a theater to recreate the classic space invaders game!! This has to be seen to be believed:

Snow Patrol

I've recently become a huge fan of the band Snow Patrol. If you haven't heard them I suggest you give them a listen. They're like a less abstract version of Coldplay in my opinion. They have less of a "chilled" out vibe than Coldplay as well. Some of their songs are more rockin’. If you only listen to or buy a few songs I recommend "Chasing Cars" and "Run". The lyrics in both those songs are really great. A little melancholy but not too sappy. Anyway I’m spreading the word (even though they’re already pretty famous).

Friend's Wedding Video from last year

I found this movie I made from August 2005 that I figured I'd post on here as well. The guys in this movie are some of my best (and oldest) friends from when I went to school in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). We did some crazy and fun stuff together back then.....




(In the first shot of us in the video from left to right is: Nabiel, Samer, me, and Saad)

- Stacey (Philippino- American) and Nabiel (Lebanese- British) moved from Phoenix to London and now have a beautiful baby boy (Nicholas)
- Samer (Syrian-American) lives in NYC and works for a financial services company
- Saad (Pakistani-Malaysian) also lives in NYC and just finished his MBA and works for the Financial Times

My epic 11 minute China montage

It's late, I'm tired, but it's done at least. I made this video with some of the 600+ pics and 30 minutes of video I took in China. It took a lot longer than expected but I'm done and it looks good me thinks. Let me know what you think. I'm off to bed.

one red paperclip

one red paperclip

I had read about this guy a while ago in Wired magazine. His goal was to trade a red paper clip on craigslist for something else. He planned to keep trading up to something more desirable until he turned that paper clip into a house.

Well I guess he finally did it!

Arrr Matey, give your scurvy-dog lovin' self a pirate name... yarrr....

I found this amusing website that turns your real name into a pirate name.  I am supposedly "Black Buckthorn" (!!??)

Not sure how they got that from my name exactly.  Anyway, give it a shot and see what you get.  There are seperate male and female versions.  I tried some of my friends names and got some really funny results. 

Lads:  http://www.mess.be/pirate-names-male.php
Lasses:  http://www.mess.be/pirate-names-female.php

linese.com??

I was watching the world cup final at my place with some friends and thought it was interesting to see that one of the ads for Budweiser beer was half in English and half in Chinese. Just gives you a better perspective of how many people were watching the game and the demographic makeup of those people!

Also today I guess China launched a website to teach Chinese for free! I'm going to have to check it out (seems to be a dead link right now) since I've been interested in learning Chinese ever since I got back. Seems like it would be a useful personal and business tool moving forward.

On a side note all my picks for the World cup lost. I picked France today and in earlier games I had picked Argentina and England in their respective knock out games. Ugh.

I vooood lik to bui daburgaa

I watched a few crappy movies on the plane ride over and back from China. On the way there I watched the Pink Panther and Firewall with the latter being far more poopy than the first. Pink Panther wasn't great but it wasn't a complete waste of time like the Harrison Ford craptacular-fest that was Firewall. On the way back I watched that movie about the dogs in Alaska with Paul "2 Fast 2 Furious" Walker. I forget the name but the movie wasn't too bad. Seemed like it would be better suited going straight to video though.

I rarely laugh out loud when watching a movie by myself but one scene in the Pink Panther actually had my eyes tearing up I was lauging so hard. The inspector wants to go undercover in America so he hires a dialect coach to rid him of his extreme French accent and.... well just watch it:



On a side note if you've never seen the original Pink Panther movies they are pretty funny. Peter Sellers crowning achievement, however, has to be "The Party". That movie ranks up there with Airplane as one of the funniest ever.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig jig

Well, my trip here in China draws to an end today. My departure is sort of bittersweet because I don't feel like I had enough time here. Regardless I squeezed as much as humanly possible into 2 weeks. I made a bunch of new friends. they are my co-workers but I regard them as my friends after my experiences with them here. China is an amazing place and I hope to return soon and for longer next time.

To give a one sentence summary of what I did here: Shopped on cultural street, ate scorpions (!), played 4-on-4 basketball in the parking lot of a temple in the mountains, rode a zip line over the ocean in the fog (!!), saw a live filippino cover band at a hole in the wall bar in Tianjin, taught English to a very friendly (and cute) shopkeeper at the silk market, pulled an all-nighter in a train overnight from Qing-Dao to Tianjin talking with a person I had met the day before, rode a public bus to the Summer Palace, climbed the Great Wall, talked with students in Tiannemen square, took a self guided tour of the Forbidden City, cooked my own food at a hot-pot restaurant and Korean BBQ restarant, played hours of Uno on the "hard seat" section of a local train, watched a world cup soccer match at 11PM in a co-workers room at a really crappy hotel room, and laughed along with my co-workers until my stomach hurt.

Thank you China!

ps. I'll post pics when I get back.