The B.E.F.

The Brotherhood exists, whether you want to believe it or not. We Brothers roam the world like sleepless zombies, we meet each other all the time. I've sat behind, next to and infornt Brothers before but we never spoke of it. We all silently acknowledged our common belonging. A Brother, if he has the Window seat, will always place his bag and his jacket in the overhead compartment before he asks you to get up. A Grand Master Brother would also get out his Laptop and Book and take them with him to his Window seat. Not only this, a Brother sitting in the Window seat will also acknowledge that he has no right to accessing the overhead compartment during the whole flight, unless you (the Aisle Brother) is in the bathroom.

It's easy to spot a Brother sitting infornt of you, for this Brother will never move the back of his seat, even after the "Fasten your Seat belt"sign has been turned off. It's because he knows that the 2 inches the back of his seat moves will not magically turn his seat into a bed. More importantly he realizes that those 2 inches are the only remaining two inches for you (the Brother sitting behind) to breath.

This is but only a fraction of what we do, for we belong to the Brotherhood of the Economy-class Flyers: BEF.

Dumb Fesh

Recently I watched The Good Shepard and The Departed. I just wonder, why is it a trend now that all the "good" movies, the ones that win all the Emmy's and Oscars have to be really hard to watch? Seriously my brain hurts after watching those movies. First, there's the constant jumping of time: 10 years ago, following scene: present time and then the scene after: 7 years, 4 months and 3 days ago? Really? Could you at least spare us the days? Second, there's the so-many-twists-oh-God-make-it-stop tactic that they all employ now. Where are all the good old movies that had just one twist?

I don't like them movies. They make me feel dumb.

Angry Demons

Whenever you see an exorcism scene, the demon is always angry. This is supposed to scare you, along with the wall-climbing, green vomiting and all of that. I don't know about you but this whole angry thing is losing it's appeal with me. After all, we expect the demon to be angry, right? And the whole scene is very predictable: priest comes in, demon is mad, priest splashes Holy water on the demon, demon goes away. Not scary.

Now, if as soon as the priest walks in, the demon gives him an uncaring look and continues whatever he's doing, you should be worried, because that's one psycho demon you have there. The kind of demon who after the priest commands him to depart, would look the priest in the eye and in his best DeNiro impression would say: You talkin' to me?

....now that's freaken scary.

Facebook's Hypocracy

Did you notice how everyone who knows your name is adding you on Facebook?! Shouldn't there be like a bare minimum of what qualifies as a "friend" is? Like for example:

- A friend is someone who you have met at least 5 times in your life?

Or

- A friend is someone who at some point in your relationship you used to say something apart from "Good morning, how are you doing?"?

Decaffeinated Fesh

It's official I'm off the good stuff for over 3 months now. It's not that I don't drink coffee at all now, off course I enjoy the occasional cup of coffee with a friend. The achievement however, in my humble point of view, is that I cut down my coffee intake from 4-5 cups a day, to 1-2 weekly. Letting go was not easy, I mean Coffee has been an integral part of my University years, when bumming the lab and working of THE ULTIMATE NEMESIS required massive amounts of coffee. And then came work, I must say coffee at work is essential for 5 main reasons:

1. When you come in the morning, you know your corporate laptop will need at least 20 mins to start up, right? Yeah we all know that Big Brother from Computer & Communication department has loaded our laptops with too much spying software. So a morning coffee is not an option, it's needed.
2. Coffee break is the venue for the office gossip: who will get promoted or fired in the upcoming weeks IF NOT DAYS!
3. If you want to catch someone on a short notice (and as usual everyone is busy), there's a 50% chance that proposing to "talk this over coffee?" will work. Sure beats sending a meeting invite that the recipient will not even entertain with a decline.
4. Simply to have "your thing" with your other non-smoking (read: loser) office buddies. YES smokers you heard us, you go outdoors and enjoy your smoke break, damn it we enjoy our coffee breaks too!
5. Finally... *ahm*.....BECAUSE IT TASTES NIIIIIICE AND THE SMELL OH MY GOD WHY DID I DO THIS TO MYSELF... I JUST NEED ONE LAST CUP AND I PROMISE I WI....

*Two guys from the rehabilitation institution come out and restrain the raging Fesh, injecting him with the decaffeination serum to tranquilize him........

It's Funny!

Few weeks ago I was in London and we decided to attend a Comedy show. We went online and picked a comedy club that was offering some special last-minute tickets. The comedians were hilarious, I was suckling on my Guinness like there is no tomorrow..... simply it couldn't have been better. Halfway through the show they announced a "Joke Competition" whereby they'll distribute some paper slips that has the beginning of a joke and we need to complete it. I thought it's a great idea until I got the slip, it read:

What's the difference between Stephen Hawking and an astronaut?

Time was short and I knew I had to ace this one, my whole future as a Stand-Up Comedian depended on that moment. Being the nerd I am, I was actually quit familiar a lot of Professor's Hawking's work which made it much harder to complete the joke. The time was up, so quickly I jotted down:

...an astronaut pees in a tube only in Space.

I was SO excited when my joke was short-listed to the final 5. Now, the presenter read each joke, got the initial reaction from the audience and then asked the author of the joke to identify himself/herself. In the case of my joke, the presenter read it, the whole audience booed it instantly and then I got my slip of paper -literally- thrown in my face! Seriously, this is really what happened!

I think I am one of those amazing minds who are usually like 15 years ahead of their time. Mark my words this joke will be hilarious in the year 2022.

The Iron Curtain is Up

I spent the last 12 months without a shower curtain, I don't know why. When I moved in this apartment, was none and since my bath is one of those none-standard shaped one I couldn't just buy a standard 1.5 meter tube with a curtain. I actually had to look for a mechanism that can be bent by hand so that it could take the curve of the tub I have.

The interesting thing I noticed is that not having a shower curtain introduced some limitations on my showering experience. For instance, forget about showering while not facing the wall, it's basic fluid dynamic: water comes from shower head bounces off you and wets everything in the bath. So for the last 12 months I had to take showers facing the wall............. I don't like this, reminds me of my early years in school...*ahm* ... not the showering part, the facing the wall part I meant.

The months of only-facing-the-wall showers are OVER! for EyE have a shower curtain at last! woho!

Cold Hearted Fesh

Call me cold hearted but I don't buy the whole Animal Rights movement. How can does that compare to other issues like: Global Warming? AIDS? or the fact that a huge percentage of the Earth's population is suffering from malnutrition?

I really don't get the fact that so many people dedicate so much of their spare time to helping out in those organizations, I understand that we are all different and we have different interests, but help me understand how can the interest of your fellow human beings (dieing in Africa because of civil wars) be of a less priority than that of mice dieing in lab tests?

Assuming all abuses to all animals in the world are stopped (thanks to the efforts of all those great organizations out there), how does that help us as humans? Off course we can all feel good about helping some helpless creatures which is a very noble objective in itself, I am just wondering would we rather live in a world where all humans are happy and mice are not, or the other way around.... does that make me cold hearted?

New Record!

I wrote 19 blog posts in April, which is equivalent to the sum all the posts I wrote in the January 07, February 07 and March 07! What is interesting is that April is my best month by a big difference, since in my second best month I only wrote 10 posts.

The sad part however, is that I had 2 weeks of vacation in April.