Farewell for now...

Yesterday I wrote my last exam. It felt amazing getting this term over with. It was really hard resisting the beautiful Canadian summer, especially when I was trying to study extremely dry material. So this term was challenging, to say the least..

On a more exciting note, in 24 hours I will be somewhere over the Atlantic heading towards Syria. It hasn’t totally hit me yet that I’m going, but I’m sure it will sometime during the long flight. I was told to expect a hot and busy Damascus, and lots of visits to restaurants. To that I say, bring it on!

Unlike previous trips to Syria, I’m going to visit as many historic sights as I can. Living in Canada really deprives me of anything old and historic, so this trip will hopefully give a decent dose of culture.

Why go now? Well I have been waiting for an opportunity to go for the past 3 years. I knew I was going to finish exams early this term, and I arranged to take a week off from my work placement starting in September. So if I didn’t go now, I probably won’t get the chance to go for another 2 years. Plus, I already bought the tickets, and got my visa a few months ago. Not to mention how much of a letdown it would have been to cancel this trip. This trip is what got me through exams this term.

I’m not sure how much blogging time I’m going to have, but I suspect it won’t be much. Farewell for now, I will be back with lots of pictures, videos and stories.

Hamas Official Abducted and Tortured...but that's ok!

While the whole world is preoccupied with the situation in Lebanon, Israel has been taking this chance to kill more civilians in Gaza, and kidnap the odd cabinet minister from the democratically elected Hamas government.

Israel’s latest victim is the speaker of the parliament, Aziz Dwaik. Dwaik was abducted from his home and tortured in an Israeli prison. In fact, Dwaik was beaten so badly, he had to be taken to a hospital. To add to that his lawyers were not allowed to visit him in the hospital, because you know, that could be a threat to Israel’s security.

This news story did not even make it to the American media, since they were busy covering more important developments.

To me this is the epitome of hypocrisy and double standards that Arabs are witnessing today. Everybody has no problem seeing Lebanon destroyed, for two Israeli soldiers. Meanwhile, it’s perfectly fine to abduct a 60+ year old civilian and torture him. A civilian who plays an important role, in a democratic government, yes, the kind of democracy that Bush wants to spread in the Middle East.

Welcome to the New Middle East, where civilians are the currency of political agendas.

technorati tags: Hamas, Dwaik, Aziz, Israel, Middle, East, Double, Standard

The BEST Bush Impression

LOL.. you have to check this out.

American Media Launches Full Scale War Against Gibson

Is it just me or this the Mel Gibson story going out of proportions? In a time of war on Lebanon, a mess in Iraq, Castro falling ill, North Korea testing weapons, the Gibson story has been getting A LOT of coverage.

In case you’ve been asleep for the past week or so, here’s a quick rundown of what happened with Mel. Mel was pulled over by a cop and in an argument with the cop, Mel said “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”

Ever since the story got out, Mel has apologized many times, seemingly bearing no result. Hollywood is going nuts over the story. Barbara Walter said she will never watch a Gibson movie again, Disney doesn’t want to use him, and ABC already dropped him. Others are going public with their condemnation of Gibson’s behaviour.

Personally, I think his statement was uncalled for. It’s never a good thing to generalize. But do I think there’s too much media coverage? Damn right I do! There are people dying in the Middle East, American and NATO soldiers dying in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a billion other more important new stories. What one celebrity said about one ethnic group does not call for all this coverage, especially when the celebrity does not represent any political organization. Which also brings important questions… where do you draw the line for free speech? Is this case of political incorrectness more than anything else? Or is it the fact that he looks like Saddam in the picture below, and we all know how much affection the American news networks have for Saddam.

If you live in a different country, have you found Gibson’s story getting more coverage than required?

technorati tags: Mel, Gibson, Jews, Media, Hollywood

The Engineer's Sense of Humour

The summer term is finally approaching its end. But with the end of the term comes the ever hated exams. I've had two so far, Calculus and Machine Design, which are considered to be two of the toughest. But that doesn't mean the rest are easy, Fluids is next, followed by Thermo.

Anyway, this term I have noticed more examples of the engineering sense of humour thrown in to every course. My thermo text is full of questions and cartoons that are supposed to be funny. My Machine Design professor includes all kinds of "jokes" on exams and midterms, as you can see below.

get it? General Motors... Specific Motors In this one he was attempting to make a joke, but I guess he got lazy since it was the last question on the exam.

technorati tags: humour, engineer, engieering, dynamics