Superbowl XLIV

SUPERBOWL!! This was a fantastic game! Although I’m not a fan of either the Saints or the Colts, I don’t like the Colts. Definitely not. You could say, I’m a ‘hater’ and I will agree. I am quite happy that the Saints won the game. I was quite worried in the first half when the Colts were leading, but as soon as I saw the interception in the second half, I knew the game was over.

Victory.

For a full and in-depth coverage of the game in case you missed it, here is a link with that information!

http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/live-superbowl-xliv/?hp

And the best part of the Superbowl in my opinion are the commercials. The wonderful, oh so crunchy, hilarious commercials. My favourite is the Snicker’s commercial featuring Betty White. She is a great woman. Dorito’s come second.

Uh-Oh

I can’t believe it’s been a month since I last wrote anything for the blog. My apologies to everyone! It wasn’t my intention to do so, it’s just that the new term at university has started and I’m quite busy coping with it all.

I have some good news though! On Monday evening I found out that I won two scholarships! One is from Westcast Industries Entrance Scholarship, and the other is the Laurier Brantford Toronto Award. I’ve got approximately $1700 which is all going towards my tuition. Wow, I’m so relieved to get these scholarships! I applied for them back in July/August and never got a response thinking that I didn’t win them, but the tides turn quickly.

It was a good end to January, and now it’s time that I patch up some relationships with people. There’s some animosity between myself and a select few, and hopefully I can get that fixed sometime soon. I’m also in the need of a haircut.

Again, sorry I haven’t posted in so long! Hopefully I’ll have a weekly post here started now! Thanks for dropping by, hope the New Year is going great for everyone!

Hello 2010!

2009 is officially past us. A double digit decade is now upon us and with that, resolutions! What’s your resolution? My resolution is to be a better person. Simple enough =)

Two big things are happening this year! The Winter Olympics and the FIFA World Cup! Oh man, this year is going to be exciting!

A Happy New Year to everyone! Have a safe holiday!

Happy Holidays!

A very Merry Christmas to everyone today, and happy holidays to everyone else, celebrating whatever religious freedom they have!

And to those that do not celebrate anything this month, happy holidays to you too!

I hope everyone spends quality time with their friends and family and stays safe this holiday season! See you in the new year!

Bittersweet Symphony

If you’ve ever listened to The Verve, you know there’s one epic song titled “Bittersweet Symphony.”
Truer words never spoken. For example, the following lyric:
“’cause it’s a bitter sweet symphony this life… Trying to make ends meet, you’re a slave to the money then you die.”

Life is a symphony. An ordered symphony that moves at a predicted pace. Human beings today are ordered to work for their whole life. Even childhood isn’t as great as it can be. Children are sent to school, and study to get a job that makes good pay. There is nothing more to education than just that. What happened to Plato’s ideal world? Where there is no foolish currency, and  society is brought up through intelligence. Studious. Hypothetical. Philosophical.

It’s silly that all we do is study and study and study, and there isn’t anything more to that. Studying does not, I repeat, does not equal intelligence. Intelligence is properly characterized by the mind thinking quickly and rationally, while being in the calm.

A philosopher is intelligent. Philosophers reflect on every possible motion through logic and reality. What is after life? We don’t know. Whether there is a Heaven or a Hell, or neither, is it really worth working ourselves to exhaustion and not accomplish the basics of life? What do grades and yearly salary matter after death anyways?

Think about it. Sit down and think. Just for an hour, or ten minutes even. Just think. Reflect on everything you have done for the week, or reflect on your whole life. Forget your mistakes and concentrate on what you have done to make yourself an intelligent being.
You’ll realize some things you never imagined.

Homecoming

This is a story I wrote some time ago while in High School. It was very controversial, so much so, that I was barred by my vice-principal from publishing it while in school, due to the fact that it might create trouble for both the student and administration (i.e. myself and the VP). Now that I am a hight school graduate, I felt its acceptable to share it now, for I am a non-hypocritical, mass-exempted individual. Enjoy!

‘How did it end up like this? I feel so weak right now. I don’t know if I can do it or not. Please God give me the strength.’

With these thoughts I got out of my car and started to make my way towards my destination. The sun seems to be tracing a path for me on this barren earth. There is no wind, none at all as if the clouds themselves know not to come near this place. The absence of the dogs has not gone unnoticed by me, though I must say that their presence will sit well with today’s’ events. I pause, not out of fear, but out of caution as women crosses my path, her child in the stroller. Her child. Just like all the children here. The children of my enemies surround me here. Upon its face I see smile. It’s an innocent smile now, but I know what it’s capable of doing and what it will do. And again, as she moves, I continue on my path to my destination.

Today even the trees seem to deprive us of their cool shades. Bent, breaking, leafless, they seem to be dying, as if anticipating the future. Shaking my head I look up. What is that? A bird, I think, but what kind? A pigeon? A sparrow? An eagle? No, I know it’s hard to believe, but that may be a vulture. A vulture. Even the thought of it is preposterous, but yet it makes sense because there is only one reason a vulture may be here, or anywhere: To feed on the dead. Will it get a chance to satisfy its hunger, I don’t know.

I have never seen a vulture up close. Growing up in Kabul, it was a rare bird. Times were hard for my family and for our whole country, but not enough for these birds to come pay us a visit. And the Taliban always helped us out when we needed them. My uncle Rasheed was one of their captains, so we were always looked after. My mother was always proud of my uncle, her brother, for his merits, but my father was never grateful or satisfied with them. He longed to get away from what he called ‘imprisonment in his own land’. Then one day he told me that our family was moving. I asked where, to which he replied ‘Washington D.C.’. He told me America was land of opportunity, liberty, education and most importantly to live a secured life. He said we had been given a ‘free pas’ to the U.S. something I later came to learn was a ‘Refugee Visa’. Though my father came to bless America, my uncle Rasheed on the other hand called it a ‘devil worshipper, a curse and a corrupt land. He would never let his son, my cousin Omar go there. But in the end it was my father’s decision so we did end up moving.

In the US I lived a good life and came to accept the ‘American Dream’ and the lifestyle. I did well in school, had good friends and completed my under-grad from University of District of Columbia. My parents had always been proud of me and expected a lot from me since I was their only child. Sadly, 2 days after my graduation, they died in a car accident. And so I grew up an orphan, learning to rely on no one. But I never felt complete from inside. Something always seemed to be missing. In order to fill that void I decided to return to the land of my birth. I was 12 when I left. At 26 I was having my ‘homecoming’.

Back in Kabul, things seemed to have quieted down. The Taliban were gone in a political sense, but in a community sense, they were always there. In the city the lifestyle I remembered had remained so. I kept running into people from my past and when I told them about my life in America, they either gave me a look of envy or left shaking their heads. One day I was in a mosque praying, when a man around my age, came and sat beside me. We were soon engage in conversation and he seemed familiar to e. We talked bout the old and new Afghanistan and when he asked me about my father, by name, I immediately recognized hi: He was my cousin Omar. He invited me to stay at his house and I gladly accepted.

We soon bonded. He was still a bachelor, living alone and happy. When I asked him about his father, he informed me that my uncle Rasheed, of whom I have many fond memories, had been killed in an American air force bombing in the city where he was posted. He greatly saddened me, because after my parent’s death, I had hoped that my uncle would become my guardian and fill the hole in my heart. I told Omar so and he old me that knew how to help me. That night, in dead silence and secrecy, he took me to a building in the outskirts of the city. That’s where I met them for the first time: About 30 fellows, form young and old, all with long beards and turbans with whom I was to live for a week. In that time, I discovered them all to be pious, religious men who treated me like a brother and were always kind. Living with them, I discovered how important religion was for us and how it would help me in my life. With them I felt the void in my heart disappear. At the end of the week, when Omar returned and asked me how I felt about them, all I could reply was with praises. Omar then told me that these men were famous; a part of a brotherhood called Al-Qaeda. Of course I had heard of Al-Qaeda in America, it was hard not. But these men were not the cold murderers the American media projected. Instead they were kind men who treated even me, an Afghanistani-American, like family. That night Omar asked me to join the brotherhood and I accepted.

Life in the brotherhood was hard but it felt rewarding. These men were my family and I knew I was theirs. I was soon a part of the elite, a group involved in attacking America, a country I had now come to hate. My brothers had shown me the truth about this devil. This nation killed my fellow Muslims, worshipped money & power and then destroy our lands. Slowly one by one, my brothers would eave to fulfill their mission and if successful, they would never return and we were asked to pray for them and bless their souls. Then the destined day came when I was reading the holy Book and Omar came to talk to me., He was no the Field Operations’ leader and he informed me that it was my turn to accomplish my mission. I was a very valuable asset to them, he told me, because of my American citizenship and only I could do it for my brothers were depending on me. Somehow I knew what he was going to say before he said it. We looked at each other.  To say that we were at a loss for words would be completely false. We both had many sentences to speak, for me to thank and acknowledge him and Omar to be proud of me. So we just embraced and bid farewell. Next morning I took the flight to New York.

So here I am, on the sidewalk at Times Square. Smuggling in the package into the country wasn’t hard. Omar’s connections made it very easy and considering that I was member of the brotherhood they were extremely accommodating. So now, as I walk among the crowd of sinners, I finally reach my destination; the middle of the Square. I close my eyes and pray to God to help me reach heaven safely and accept my sacrifice. I hear the ticking and I count the last seconds, ‘3, 2, 1—.’

Our World

From the dark side of the Moon,
Seeing the angle of doom,
Rectifying all that is out of tune,
Symbolizing all that is buried under dune.

From the bleeding skin of Mars,
I stand to see the stars,
Perfected in the blank sky as a street full of cars,
Flickering in the almost motionless world of the universe’s Czar.

Standing within the spot of Jupiter,
Being dragged around by winds like a drifter,
There is no end to the twister,
Jupiter is the tempter and the victor.

Spinning from the rings of Saturn,
I gaze at their pattern,
Squinting my eyes at the light of a faraway lantern,
Gaining the remembrance of a sound in nocturne.

Although I never passed Mercury,
It seems as it is like the sun’s child as it is so clingy,
As the night falls Mercury disappears like luxury,
And appears again in the day with temperatures full of fury.

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus,
Both combined create a race that is yet continuous,
Under Venus’ barrier is volcanic activity that is genus,
Louder than the construction of experienced machinists.

The bluest sea in the solar system is owned by Neptune,
Discovered through mathematical tune,
Similar to Jupiter it contains a monsoon,
With considerable mass comparable to a balloon.

Many jokes pass around about Uranus,
Mythology holds him as the father of Cronus,
Tilted on its side like a vertical minus,
It creates winds as devastating as dendroctonus.

It is only on Earth,
Where I was born through human birth,
I travel through the galaxy to unearth,
Secrets to science that are priceless in worth.

This far away I miss the Sun,
In the galaxy its power has every other star outdone,
Scorching heat causes everything to run,
As the night falls the Sun’s effects are undone.

Edging slowly towards Pluto,
In the cold and distant space beyond Neptune’s chateau,
My ashes lie in wait purely gung-ho,
2015 will be the date I say ‘Hello’.

Tiger Woods Implodes, “Im Stroking My Driver” Sex Jokes Ensue

Tiger what happened? You went from a simple car crash to media frenzy and the front page of CNN.com in less then 24 hours, well if you don’t know the story by now let me wrap it up for you with these simple bullet points.

• Tiger crashes car (minor crash, wasn’t traveling over 30)
• Praised wife for getting him out of car (smashed windows supposedly to “Save Him”)
• Car was hardly damaged, the drivers side was fine  (no signs of him not being able to get out)
• Less then 48 hours later, an affair story leaks out
• Turns this whole situation into a mess
• Tiger swiftly gives apology and says affair has gone on for 2 1/2 years

I don’t know who to feel more bad for Tiger for having this affair story come out at a very bad time, or his wife who has been cheated on for two and a half years. Not only has Tiger lost some of that perfect athlete reputation, he has also been ridiculed in the way of several YouTube videos and a few new advertisements. I personally don’t really care about Tiger’s affair I’m just more worried of how his image is somewhat damaged after a car crash and a tabloid publishing a true story for once. Sure I feel bad for Tiger’s wife, but reports have circulated that she’s confronted the person Tiger had an affair with. So Im sure this was already known a little before this incident, so I don’t feel like she’s been in the dark the whole time.

Now let’s just hope this doesn’t turn out to be the Alex Rodriguez  if you remember right that Alex unlike Tiger was actually seen with prostitutes first in Toronto in 2007. Then about a year later they separated, and a mere seven months later and A-Rod who was at the aimed to be the clean home run leader in the Major League Baseball had been caught. He admitted to anabolic steroid use or basically cheating in baseball, now I’m just saying it seems a little similar to Tiger’s story except without the exception of a car crash. You just got to pray that a similar story doesn’t happen to Tiger. I know it may not be the most convincing argument but I got a hunch it could go that way.

The End of Movember

It is sad but true, Movember has come to an end. Laurier Brantford’s Movember team has successfully raised more than $500 towards the cause.

Let us not mourn the end of Movember, but welcome the entrance of December!

As I promised last time, I will post my Movember pictures. Before AND after!

And that is Movember, ladies and gentlemen. I can’t wait for Movember 2010, be ready for it!

Switzerland Votes to Ban Minarets

min⋅a⋅ret

 

–noun a lofty, often slender, tower or turret attached to a mosque, surrounded by or furnished with one or more balconies, from which the muezzin calls the people to prayer.

(from Dictionary.com)

———————————————————————————————————————————————–

On the 29th of November, Switzerland voted to ban the new construction of minarets. The Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has put forth this proposal, claiming that minarets are a symbol of “Islamisation.”

57% of the votes and 22 out of 26 provinces voted in favour of the ban. The government has opposed the ban in the preset that it would harm Switzerland’s image, especially in the Muslim world.

Martin Baltisser, the SVP’s general secretary said, “This was a vote against minarets as symbols of Islamic power.”  This vote is believed to stop the threat of radical fundamentalism.

Islam is the second biggest religion in Switzerland after Christianity, with 400, 000 Muslim citizens and there are only four minarets in the whole country. Proposals to build more minarets are almost always refused.

Supporters believe that the minaret is a symbol of Islamic power and hope to stop the growth of Sharia Law which may try to supplement Swiss democracy.

Many believe that this campaign has been incited by hatred. Amnesty International has said that the vote violated freedom of religion.

Elham Manea, co-founder of the Forum for a Progressive Islam said this about what the vote represents towards Muslims, “It’s a message that you are not welcome here as true citizens of this society.”

‘Despicable’

I find this vote to be absolutely absurd and definitely incited by hatred towards Islam and its followers. Minarets a symbol of Islamic power? That’s the most the hilarious thing I’ve heard since a man said that America won the Vietnam war.

As a Muslim, I can clearly say that minarets are not a symbol of Islamic power. And building more does not mean that there is “Islamisation” going on. Are the Swiss really that idiotic?

Clearly, this vote is nothing but hatred against Muslims, saying that they do not belong anywhere in Europe. This violates freedom of religion!

Churches can have all sorts of stained glass and towers, but mosques cannot have even the smallest minaret? If this is not hatred towards Islam then what is it?

Europe is fearing something that does not exist, Islam is not trying to take over. Muslims are just trying to practice their religion as is decreed by the Qur’an. Yes, there is radical fundamentalism going on, but it is by the smallest amount of radicals that shouldn’t be feared.

If minarets are banned first, then Hijabs will be banned, soon the sale and purchase of Qur’ans will be banned, and then what next? Muslims will be banned from travelling to Europe altogether?

If creating such laws and banning freedoms continues like this, then obviously radical fundamentalism will be on the rise. There is no doubt that more extremism will continue.

Switzerland and Europe had created an extreme of its own, and radical Muslims are using their own form of extremism to combat the first. It’s like fighting fire with fire.

I only hope that this ban is appealed before “Islamophobia” is dramatically rises ever more.