surprise parties

so there are a few things i cannot tolerate, but i think everyone has one of these lists. well, at any rate my list includes surprise birthday parties. it seems like here, if you don't have a surprise party, that is the surprise. who even has surprise parties these days?

well, on top of surprise parties i also have an aversion to marriages where both parties barely know the other person's last name. or where they get to know each other in an environment where they will not be spending the rest of their lives. and after yesterday, i was already thrown into a bit of a confusion after hearing some of the more recent wedding announcements that seem to be flying out of here like they are going out of style (why aren't they, already...)

so last night, at dinner, the topic came up of how a certain mr. b's daughter was against the concept of getting married in an articificial environment, but came here and fell in love and got married. at which point, it was like an echo had sounded from my words a few hours before and the whole room stared at me in laughter as they imagined that same fate to be mine.

well, just this morning i got this in my inbox:

so i went to view the invitation to my surprise wedding, hosted by solange and edith, oh i means soraya...and RSVP with a "maybe", because, you never know what may come up. please refer to my previous "white house" post for more details as to the location of my wedding:

i wonder who the groom will be?

the midas touch

let me just say that everything the daily show touches turns to gold.

i present my evidence. yes, it is 24 minutes long. but this is a (rather longer) moment of brilliance. C-SPAN. george bush. stephen colbert. satire. i love it.

just another guy

funny video, compliments of sina.

Guy Goma, the man in the video, who walked into the BBC for a job interview, was mistaken for an expert, Guy Kewley, and taken in to the BBC studio and interviewed on live television. anyways, hilarious video. gotta love the professionalism of the BBC. for more on the story, go to the BBC site directly.

solange is graduating

i can't believe it...she graduates from university this weekend...my alma mata to be exact, BU. ahh, the good old days.

anyways, i can't be there for it, but wish her all the best. if you also want to wish her good things, you can just click here to send her an email to tell her how happy you are for her

love you joonie!

my joonie little sister

first of all, she has a blog. who knew? not me. thanks for not letting me know. but i think i can forgive you after what you went through a few days ago.

for anyone who wants an entertaining and emotionally disturbing read, please see her first post about her experience at the hospital the other night. man, i'm so glad she is o.k.

sad ipod

this story begins in my rental car in haifa. i was harmlessly listening to some tunes on my ipod while driving, courtesy of itrip, when all of the sudden the music shut off. concerned, i fumbled with the dials on the radio. then, when i had established that there was no fault on the part of the car, i reached for my ipod. nothing. when i pushed the buttons, there was no reaction from my baby. i toggled the hold switch, and held down menu and select, hoping a simple restart will solve my problem. but no such luck for me. upon restart i received the sad ipod icon with a web address below directing me to the apple ipod support site. i had never seen my ipod frown before, so i ran to the nearest computer i could find and plugged in my ipod, hoping the problem was merely a low battery that a few minutes connected to a power supply could solve. the computer did not recognize my ipod. i was late, so i rushed off and at the end of the evening returned home, sad ipod in hand.
i got online, and went to the ipod support site to locate the solution to my problem and i found this:

iPod displays a sad iPod icon
You may need to restore your iPod if a sad or "unhappy" iPod icon appears on the screen.
Warning: Restoring iPod erases and reformats the hard disk. All music and other data on iPod will be erased. Make a backup of any files or music on iPod before restoring it.

WHAT? how am i supposed to do that if my computer cannot even recognize my ipod?
so now i am sitting on the cold floor of my room, staring at my computer which is now informing me i will have to accept the fact that my entire musical collection of 50 GB of music, painstakingly collected, will be erased if i ever want to use my ipod again.
now, armed with this bad fortune, i begin to search the internet with the hopes of finding a solution of how to get the music off my ipod before i restore it. i find nothing.
but then, i stumble upon this website, where it states that the writer, a mr. pang, has had the same problem in november 2005. he is lamenting over the loss of his ipod and his music, and at first glance this is nothing special. but then i look down and there is a plethora of comments to this post. the first few seem harmless, sympathy and compassion from other sufferers of the sad ipod syndrome. then, there is eddie. he says:

i got the sad apple icon out of the blue for some reason. i notice the clicking during rebooting the ipod. so i figured part of the moving hard drive was stuck and wouldnt load (for lack of a better technical term). so i decided to drop it onto my desk from about 3 inches up. i dont know why, just seemed right... and it did the trick... i guess the jolt sync'd the hard drive back in place. so it went fine for the next week. but now every so often, the ipod slows down and stuff. i got the sad face icon again for no reason on the street. so i slapped the back, side, bottome corner a few times, and it fixed the problem again. of course, it was hit or miss for me... but if you hear a clicking noise as the ipod reboots, maybe slap it around some. my 2 cents... hopefully itll help some of you out.

and as i read on, i now see only comments related to eddie's 2 cents, all raving about this new-found fix. i am dubious, but think, i have nothing else to lose, my ipod is already a goner so this will be my last attempt to resurrect it. so i drop it, and nothing. bah! i knew this was too good to be true. but then, i drop it again, and again and finally after the fourth time i drop it the light comes on, the apple icon appears and in a few moments i am scrolling through my playlists as if nothing had happened! eddie, you are a lifesaver.
i did have to jolt it around a few times before it would actually play my songs, but regardless i am definitely grateful that my music is alive and well.
on another note, i'm off to the doctor today to see what is wrong with my gross lip blister thing. for those of you who have seen it, which is basically everyone i have seen, you know what i'm talking about. for those of you who haven't, you're probably better off.

nice and cool

according to an anonymous old persian man, who related back to me what he had gathered from our conversations, there are two types of people in the world: cool, and not cool.

i retored: "but you can say that about any attribute - there are two types of people with any category: nice and not nice, for example."

"yes, you are right," he said. "but you cannot be cool and nice, and i think for you people today it's better to be cool than to be nice."

"yeah, that's true. nice people are rarely cool...i was never one of them," i said.

"but you are nice," he said.

so that means i'm not cool?

entry by troops

well, two more bloggers have entered the world. so maybe a more appropriate title would be "the ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah..."

martin and vahid

a warm welcome to the both of you.