Quote of the Week

"Any month that is not August is an unnecessary month."

-Alison Murphy

Truer words have never been spoken.

Facebook: The Israel Conspiracy

I hear the most random things. Here are a few of the conspiracies that I have unmasked since I've lived in Bahrain.

1) Facebook is controlled by Israel: It makes perfect sense, says my Arab friend. I mean, Israel wants to take over the world. Facebook is a way to gather all sorts of information on people. People put all kinds of crap on Facebook - phone numbers, addresses, pictures, videos. Its all there for Israel to catalog and track. I mean, who else would want this information!? DUN Dun dun!!

2) Fluoride - the sedative for Americans: Did you know that most American cities have fluoride added to their water? Yes? Well do you know what this fluoride does!?!? I can tell you right now.

Fluoride is a way to control the population. It make men impotent and therefore keeps them from impregnating their wives and girlfriends. Of course. Otherwise we'd spread like rabbits.

Fluoride is also a way to brainwash Americans. The fluoride makes us more sensitive to the subliminal and subversive messages from our evil and world dominating government.

3) George Bush is bent on world domination: Actually, this one is a pretty understandable viewpoint. I don't claim to know Bush's or any other US government officials reasons for the current US foreign policy, but its easy to see why people around the world hate President Bush.

New Apartment Photos

(side note - when I started typing, all my letters were changing to a Hindi script... don't know how that happened).

ANYWAY. My mom asked if I'd post some apartment photos on here. So I am going to post one photo to wet your appetite. You'll need to go to my online photo album to see the rest of the pictures (and a few that needed to be shown to the general public).

In other apartment news, Alison and I found an apartment to live in next year! We went last Tuesday to sign the lease. Its out of Manama (out of the city) - which will be nice - and its about 20 minutes from school. Its quite a bit bigger than the apartment I have now, and its cheaper. Ironically, now that I've finally posted pictures of my apartment, I am leaving it in less than a month. I'll be a little bit better the next time.

However, another photo is in dire need of being uploaded. A few of you know that I was not able to get Alison a ring right away when we got engaged. Well expenses kept coming up, but I was finally able to buy a ring!

Below is a picture of the ring on her hand. Again, you can go to my web albums to see a few more pictures of us and some other goodies from the night I gave her the ring.

STOMP in Bahrain

You'd be surprised at what might cause cultural miscues. Take, for instance, my recent attendance of a concert here in Bahrain.

I went to Stomp with a flipping herd of my closest, dearest friends. If you don't know what stomp is, then you should go to your kitchen right now, lift your trashcan up, drop it, and vooala. You have yourself a broadway musical. Its like a two hour game of "does this make noise? Yes? THEN LETS KEEP MAKING IT!" Then charge people exorbitant amounts of money, because - lets face it - they can make a broom sound much better than I can.

Anyway, part of the show was seven people using brooms. These brooms were used to sweep dust off the stage in a syncopated manner - right into the audience. Ha ha. So funny.

But that's not what was so jaw - dropping. If you've ever visited an Arab function, you will have noticed that they ALL have a VIP section at the front. Its usually royal family members, members of the government or others who have weaseled their way into power.

And they got dust swept into their eyes.

People stateside pay lots of money to have someone dump junk - paint, goop, whale slobber - on them during a show. But not here. An awkward silence followed the scene. Some people didn't know whether to laugh or to hide from the possible onslaught of Bahrain special forces, who might put their own version of stomp on.

Fortunately, nothing of the sort happened. The show must go on, I guess.