Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Counterstrike

I am getting better at Counterstrike.

At least, I think I am. Well… maybe I just had a team that actually knew what they were doing… that probably helped. Anyways… by the end of the game, I, the harvest/masterofweirdness had 11 kills… Jacob, AKA Deathwalker, only had 2. It should be the other way around.

But, I think that, generally speaking, we played better. We knew how to trap the Terrorists, we played defensively on a map where that works really well, and, we had a good team. The terrorists were good, but, they just didn’t have the skill or perhaps luck.

Anyways… I have now mastered the art of walking sideways and shooting accurately with an SMG… next goal is to master the same with the M16 and AK… as well as master using a Bullpup and Krieg Commando. Then, get those headshots down.

Gotta go, ttyl

Oh, the miseries of this life!

Yes, life is terrible. Dustin is leaving (/cry) but this means we are in charge of Kid’s Church (by we, I mean Jo) (/clap). We had a guys night *is happy* but we also have much school *is sad* I wrote an essay *is proud* but I don’t know how good it is *is annoyed that despite hard work, will possibly receive unacceptable grade*.

I think you get the point.

Well… I’m figuring out my laptop. I’ll be ordering it within the next week or so, maybe later. It’ll be Alienware, 15.4” Plasma screen, good graphics card, 2Gig ram, 160gig hard drive, Window Vista, etc.

Anyways… I’m going to go to Jacob’s now.

Ttyl.

Isaac

Thursday, October 18, 2007

India Trip pt. 2

Okay, well, now on to the next part of this trip: the Trip to Kovalum.

So, after spending a day at Hebron, the Hebronites, those kids (erm… wrong word, not all are kids) students, who live at Hebron, only had a half-day of school. So I hung out with my friends, I went out to eat at HBH, Hyderabadi Biryani House, and then packed up for the bus and train trip to Trivandrum.

The bus trip was… a pain. We got a flat tire, and they only had to put on a tire about… 3 times (okay… we have a flat… we fix… wait… we have a flat spare… wait… we fix… we must put on old flat… go up street… remove old flat… put on new tire from tire shop… see! We fix!). After that… we hung out at the train station waiting for our train. It was sleeper class, which means no-AC and less secure, but since it was just a couple of hours, I didn’t care.

However… I was feeling sick. I had a feeling it was some bad chocolate I bought (since that was the only thing that I had eaten that Brian hadn’t). Anyways… I was an idiot, and I didn’t go into the bathroom when I knew I was about to throw-up… instead I threw-up in the hall… woke everyone up, and then crawled into my bed and tried to get some sleep.

Anyways… I we arrived in Trivandrum, and then took a taxi to Kovalum, and arrived at our hotel. We booked two rooms, one for me and Brian, and another for Julie, Uncle Jim and Auntie Elaine.

So… we were in Kovalum! It was awesome… we had a beach (one that had lost about a foot of itself since the Hebronites had been there last time… we all joked about Global Warming) several restaurants, one of which showed movies another of which stayed open till midnight, and all the ice-cream, and soda we could afford. It was on this trip I decided to start drinking coffee in the morning regularly… I have not yet regretted it.

Well… there’s not a lot to say unless I wanna go into a ton of detail… so I’ll give a list of what I did at Kovalum.

  1. Stayed up till 1AM every night.
  2. Watched several movies, including Jeepers Creepers 2 (waste of time), the Bourne Ultimatum, Transformers the movie, Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer (second time I’ve seen it), Nightwatch, and possibly others I can’t remember.
  3. Went swimming and got smashed by waves… very fun.
  4. Went to the top of a lighthouse (I have a photo of this).
  5. Played Lord of the Rings Risk three times, and lost each time.
  6. Played the Starfarers of Cataan (Boardgame), and lost at this.
  7. Played Command and Conquer 3 (PC game), and decided that it, sadly, does not live up to the likes of Red Alert, Red Alert 2, and Command and Conquer 2: Tiberium Wars.
  8. Discovered two new, great Warcraft III Custom Maps, Footman Wars, and Moo Moo Town.
  9. Watched a replay of how two people beat 5 Insane AI on DOTA (version 3.8 something, using the old guy’s AI, not RGB’s one). Lol… I sound like freak when I say that…
  10. Ran Through the Drakwald (the WFRP intro adventure) for Caleb, Abe, and Brian… that was soooo fun. More details of this in my WFRP Blog (http://rpdhaka.blogspot.com/) coming soon.
  11. Generally had a great time.

Soon, ya, that was Kovalum. It was awesome, that’s really all I can say. I mean, I had a great time, I really enjoyed myself… and in all honesty, it was a great experience.

The trip back was okay… I took two trains (one 18 hour train, another 48 hour one), and one airplane (1hr trip, but the plane was delayed by 4 hours… so I sat in the airport for six hours, instead of the customary 2).

Oh, I also brought back three books, the Bonehunters and Reapers Gale, books six and seven respectively of the Malazan Tale of the Fallen Series by Steven Erikson (I have already nearly completed Bonehunters) and Children of Hurin, a book of JRR Tolkien’s that was published Posthumously by his son, Christopher Tolkien.

Also, I got both of Evanescence’s(Alternative Rock) Albums… very nice music.

Now… its back to school, with only a few days off on Thanksgiving until my Christmas holiday in the States… *sighs*.

See you later.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Part one of India Trip 2

Well… now for that more in-depth India trip update.

First… the journey to Ooty: Well, I had to spend the night at the Dressner’s house, because the bus trip was early in the morning.

The bus trip itself wasn’t bad, a bit boring, but not to bad or anything. The bus was AC, so I wasn’t hot or anything.

Then, we crossed the border, which was by far the worse immigration I have ever completed… I thought the Dhaka Airport was slow… this was… pathetic. For some strange reason I had to wait ten minutes before they figured out how to process an American passport…

Anyways… afterwards, I had a decent lunch, and we took a taxi to Calcutta… were we stayed in a cheap hotel (my room must have been like 10’-6’)… dinner was okay… and I had a decent sleep. I woke up at 3:30AM to catch my flight… which wasn’t that nice, but it was a cheap flight, so I can’t argue.

After this flight, I spent the day in Chennai at the house of a mother of a friend of the Dressner’s… in the afternoon I went to the mall… which was nice. Then that night we took the train to a town near Ooty, and a taxi from said town to our hotel in Ooty. Finally, after two days of traveling, I reached Hebron School.

At Hebron:

Hebron was nice. I only got to see one of the two parts of the school (Lushington) the other part (Selbourne), the girl’s dorm, was smaller and not the main part of the school. Anyways… the school was nice, the worst part is that it is on top HUGE hill… and I had to climb this hill… it was a real pain.

Anyways… it was cool seeing where Brian lived, Caleb, and Bala lived, it’s a nice campus. The best thing about this part of my trip was the nightly dramas (that week is drama week, where the parent’s come and see a drama that classes 7, 9, 11, and 13 have prepared for them). I missed class 7, which preformed The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Last Dress Rehearsal… but I got to see Class 9’s Hamlet and Stone Soup, class 11’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and Bertie and Wooster, and Class 13’s Les Miserables (not sure about the spelling there…).

A quick review of all the plays:

Hamlet: In all honesty, this play wasn’t that nice… it was a really hard play for class 9 (equal to 9th grade for all you non-British people)… and much of the play had to be cut and pasted. Its only redeeming elements were the added bits… such as a hilarious take on the player’s performance for the King. Still, it was well done 6/10.

Stone Soup: A funny take on a well known children’s tale. This play was great… it was funny, it had memorable quotes (“What king of idiot do you take me for?!” Says the general, “I don’t know, there are many kinds,” says the old woman…) and was quite funny. 8/10.

To Kill a Mockingbird: Hmm… this one I didn’t think did that well… once again, a very hard play to do, and I’m not sure they hit the mark. I read To Kill a Mockingbird, and to get it right is really difficult. All in all… I don’t think they failed, but I know they could have done a better play considering Stone Soup, a play preformed by a younger class, that IHMO, was better. 6/10

Bertie and Wooster: Better than To Kill a Mockingbird, but not amazing. It had its moment’s and for a Class 11 (equal to 11th Grade) performance, I thought it was great. There was room for improvement, so it only gets a 8/10.

Les Miserables: Okay, this blew me away. It was amazing. Everything was done perfectly, and, the best thing was the fact that, IIRC, everything was done by students! Granted this was Class 13 (officially, High School Senior class… but honestly the work they are doing is equal to College Freshman or possibly Sophomore for some classes), but still… none of these guys (well… maybe one or two) are drama majors or anything. They are amateurs… how did an amazing job. Now, I have neither read, nor any of the Les Miserables stuff, but the whole play was amazing. We had two, student preformed songs… one of which made the audience cry (the only reason I didn’t cry was because by the end of the song the only thing I was trying to do was NOT CRY), and another which had everyone laughing. Brian’s part in the play was perfectly cast for him. He played the simpleton that was mistaken for the main character and put on trial for crimes he did not commit. He was very confused and funny, he did his performance amazingly. All in all, this play easily gets the 10/10 mark.

That was Hebron.

Later, I’ll give you the rest of my 2nd India trip this year.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Back in Dhaka

Quick note: I am back in Dhaka.

A much more detailed update will come soon.

All I will say was my Holiday was awesome. I met all of Brian's friends (well, basically, I didn't actually meet one or two, but I saw them all), and enjoyed the beach.