yeah one of us is one year older now. i wonder….how long will we say happy birthday to each other. even when we get old? wait a minute if we get very old then birthdays will be celebrated. i guess children and old ppl are meant to celebrate birthdays. so where do we fall? don’t say children now. giTiT. and definitely not old.
ya ya what matters is what you have done, and not your age, and birthday is just a day each second you’re getting older and its not like you get one year old right on your birthday, hour, minute, second, …minamin. but that aside how do you feel on your birthday?
A. Today is my day
B. I’m dying
C. I’m not achieving what I wanted
D. I should talk to that techno girl, my dream girl before I die
E. I should study marine biology and live with Tibe and Sami and all my other friends for the rest of my life
F. None of the above (left for senai to choose)
I’ve circled D. Mekorej aychalim.
if our moms told us our birthday is wrong, can we argue otherwise?
I saw The Fountain. i can’t get it out of my head. if you like spirituality, fantacy, scifi kind of movies then go for it.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is also a good one. Jim Carrey acting as a sensitive and loving person. No feTaTa qeldoch. Can you imagine it? He does it really well too.
I usually take a long time searching for good movies. www.imdb.com is helping me out. The ratings and the recommendations are reasonable. Sometimes good ones don’t get good rates and bad ones are praised but generally fair.
Anyone seen The Fountain…how did you interpret it.
Now, May is supposed to be a month for finales – premier league, fa cup, champions league, american idol,…. But you had to begin on May. Here is to a brand new season of you and to good ratings (so that they won’t pull you off the air)
thanks for your replies. as senai said just keep it in your head. if you come up cases where you have access to some data (can be on anything) then do let me know.
I have an hour or so to do this thing. I have a feeling that it is going to be heartbreakingly short: I mean my heart, not yours.
Yeseferachin menged asphalt lidereg new. The tree you see on the picture was cut down to make way for the construction. And yes that is our house. On the topic of trees, a person was suggesting how humans could be of use to the environment even after they are dead. He said that if trees were planted over peoples’ graves, the trees would thrive (on the decomposing bodies) and global warming can be combated. I think it is better than building useless statues.
At our house we were discussing about a program that was broadcast on Etv. Nowadays, the transmission is from 12a.m. to 12p.m. -12 hours of crap. Members of the Ethiopian writers’ association were debating on the culture of reading. One member said they set up a pavilion during one bazaar at the exhibition centre and few people even bothered to give the books a glance. Instead, he said people seemed more interested in the biscuit stand next to them.
No arguments there-hod yikedmal. But, taking myself as an example, I also have to agree that reading is not en vogue these days. When I was in elementary school, I used to bring books from yegash Habte Sellasie bet (props to him) and read my ass off. Some of my favorites from back then were Birkirikta ,Sabela, Efoyta, Asqual, Fikir Eskemekabir wezete. Somewhere down the line I resorted to films and then to music as favorite pass times. Now I am not too keen on films but music I still love. The only films I have truly enjoyed this year are If only and Stolen summer.
But the reading, I have not back into. Let alone for pleasure, I am having difficulty reading for marks.I wish I could read as passionately as I used to .May be I will, someday.
Robel gave me -’s phone number saying he had told her that I wanted to talk to her and she said to call her. About the last part, I think he was playing with me and I did not call her. Even if he was speaking the truth, what was I going to say? There is this joke bedergue gize these two people meet and neither was bold enough to break the ice .Finally the guy summons all his courage and says “Enante kebele shera chama metual?” In comparison to me, this guy is oozing with charm.
So she is the one whom I want happy or honey to accidentally call for me. A weak plan, a manipulation of innocent souls and one I am not really serious about. But I got to tell her somehow: preferably before I die and more realistically before yeferedebet millennium. Or the other way round.
You are in for a treat: Betty and me writing on the same day. Ain’t that something? Be sure to enjoy both.
We have become quite the blog hoppers. Used to have one here until it became inaccessible and a second one there until it started making funny noises: this one time it called out to me saying “you call this writing?!” Ergo our third effort and its subsequent title. I thought about making the tag line “we write here-at least for now’’. But after much profound brain things inside my head (I just love this expression), I have decided to be optimistic and leave it in the present form.
As for Betty, I don’t know where she is. And honestly speaking, I am tired of packing and unpacking the camels by myself (“zelan” was a candidate for the name of the blog)
The past two weeks were full of happenings that stirred up my rather mundane existence.There was the ball retracting defeat of Manchester United to AC Milan the Wednesday before last; my balls are still up there. We got to have the premiership; the guard of honor and all but nothing (football wise) seems as exciting anymore. On a positive note, some guys hooked me up with polyethylene glycol (no it is not a hallucinogen) and others with a bottle to put it in. Still more letters to be written but the acquisition of funding for the project is on the right track. It has been a dream of mine to score 4.00 in college. At long last; I got to do that last semester.“Careful what you wish for because you just might get it ’’ The flip side is that we only took a one credit course during the specified time: apparently my seminar was smoking.
After much delay, we will take immunology this semester. I applied for a masters in molecular medicine in Berlin. I know what you are going to say after all the things I have been declaring on T’s bits. I still stand by them in a modified kind of way. I never thought I would get the chance to apply for a scholarship given my grades. If it miraculously works out, I am still packing my bags first thing after graduation. Beza lay gena baltechebete neger hod eyebasegn new.
A possibility also arose that I might be doing some teaching.
All these seemingly good things reminded me of the saying “when everything is coming your way, you must be in the wrong lane”.Under these kinds of situations, I usually fear that I have had my share of good and brace myself for the bad. But someone up there keeps on surprising me in more ways than one.
I always felt that I might be involved in teaching but not this soon. It is going to be a three hours’ class and I have never taught for a minute in my life. Any suggestions as to how to handle it are welcome. On the subject of preparation, I was planning to get behind a podium to conceal a potential inconvenience. But laboratory techniques students unlike nursing students are mostly male and I may not be doing that after all. But it has come to my attention that I may have to prepare lecture notes. Hmmm
Last Tuesday evening, I was at church getting my prayer on .In the middle of mass I was thinking what if my mobile exploded while vibrating and my leg got …It is an irrational fear I keep having once in a while. When I got to the taxi tera in front of stadium, taxis going to haya hulet were as usual hard to come by. One came and I got “lucky’’ to be among the 19 people on board. I thought about getting off but it was getting late and the situation another taxi would have been just the same. It was another of the wrong Ethiopians face on a daily basis and have learned to live with the way we have made our peace with poverty.
A friend showed me around flower farms in Ziway and Debre Zeit on Monday .The Kenyan supervisor of the farm in Ziway was angrily talking about how he is getting an ulcer and may be a heart attack from the work ethics of the workers there. He said kebzu betikitu “They learn 1,2,3,4 and they think they know it all. Instead of working I always find them talking and gossiping. We have over 4000 workers here and they do not realize the good things they are being offered. In addition, they do meaningless crimes like cutting the pipes that water the plants and the plastic of the green house. In Kenya we have thieves who know they would get shot if they were caught on the act. But still they steal what they can use/sell……. I can appreciate the things being done to improve the infrastructure but the educational system needs revamping (since it is putting out such kind of people)……….. If you get one good worker out of the thousands, then you are in luck…….What the f@#$ is wrong with you people……..”
At first I thought that it was easy for an expatriate to generalize about others and was hoping the situation was not that bad. But my friend told me that they had the same problem over at DebreZeit. Have we got issues?!
One funny thing he (my friend) told me was how a foreigner whom he was driving along the same road asked him if there were lions on the plains to the right and the left.
Since Senai left, nothing much has changed except for construction of buildings and opening of a great number of chat bets. And since Tilaye and Betty left, the biggest change in Addis has been pictures of Ronaldo on mini buses. Coming back to my story in a weird kind of way, I got off the mini bus around wuha limat and found that my mobile was gone. Telatachihu endih kiw yibel. Traffic was slow so I caught up with the taxi ;got on it again made my way up to megnagnasearching people (they themselves suggested it) when they got off the taxi . And no I could not get myself to search the females. The phone was on silent mode making the usual way of looking for the thief near impossible .The place where I originally boarded the taxi has a reputation and I think it was there that it happened. The place also has/used to have a chat bet by the name “mood house”. Chances are the thief has sold my mobile for ~150 birr and already enjoyed a few mouthfuls.
Anyways, now I got another phone with way cooler features courtesy of my sister. I done told you they loved me!
I pray it never happens again.
One
Ok, now I am going to the internet room to post this…..After an hour there ,I still did not post it owing to slow connection and other mishaps…..I should take a piss so I am going to the toilette around b complex. When I approach the area, I see a little tent mounted on the grass (central park) in front of the toilette.I assume it belongs to a freaky foreign student. Then I look to the right and I see four federals just kicking it on the lawn; in all their blue stupidity; with their radio and stuff. There was some problem in campus recently.
While they are at it, why not give them a department of their own?
ok ok tibe, donot be mad at me. I know I have been gone too long, and untill I come with a very good excuse for it, here it goes……… . I hope we are here to stay, ahunima ende yemikezekiz shai keand sini wode and sini meglebabet. ………………………….And no this is not some ethology lesson.
life has been good, being able to drive by myself for the first time was exciting but scary at the same time too. But God was with me all the way. The sun is out and like we used to say back at home ” eske ine ligochua new yewotachiw”, I donot know how I am gonna handle the summer, I never liked heat, but I donot like the cold weather either. The last weeks I spent in the ER werenot that much interesting, I was bored, only one time one of the nurse’s asked for my help, I thought it would be a big thing, like , I donot know, but all he asked me was to slip a supporter under a girl’s arm when he lifts it. It was broken and the girl, I can see was in agony. I smiled , who knew , the method I used to help my mom with when she bakes very big breads, slipping a ” SEFED” under the bread when she lifts it , would come in handy.
Mothers day is coming up, I really am amazed by the americans, they always find a way to make sure their loved ones are appreciated , or it could be something initiated by card, gift companies….. I wish we had something like that back home, have we ever made the effort to appreciate and thank our moms for what they do for us?,……. we love them in our own way, but we never show it…….. the ants do…… yeah the Driver ants http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/3086.shtml……. they are amazing in a way that makes you say these are really is the zenith of nature…. in a colony all of them are females, there is the queen, the workers, the guards……..,
the male, is a bizzar creature called sausage fly, has winges,…. when it flys and and somehow stumbles upon the army of driver ants…. oh boy,,,,,, they just literally snap its wings off, push/drive him into the chamber of their hills where the queen or the mother resides and make him mate with her… “poor sperm donor”, after the deed, he dies…….., but they also feed her, they go out in groups to hunt, what ever they find in their way they will be all over it, it is even said elephants run away because of them…….., what I saw in the Discovery channel had me open my mouth….. they climb trees, and they came across a slug,,,,, the poor slug well thought he stands a better chance , so threw himself to the ground,,,, well the problems is there are too many of them so he landed on a mass of the ants…. so they started to be all over him, but the slug had some other trickes up his sleeve, ( have you guys ever seen some silverish marks on the grounds around your house, we had so many of those back at home) any way that is the stuff the slug produces when moving around, it si mucus like and it protects it against friction…… so these ants got stuck on that…. some of them couldnot get themselves out…… , watching this I said to my self… Go slug, Go slug…….. they made me take my word back…. the other ants started bringing soil and puting it on top of the slug… the logic behind it is, the soil sucks up all of the mucus and they can attack…. Amazing stuff huh………….. anyway they do all this and feed the queen, some groom her too and she is surrounded by all who would die for her if it comes to that,,,, if you were to ask them if they do this for love, they probably would say no…. but this is to protect their future sisters, they are protecting the blue print.
On wednsday , what I saw on anderson cooper , about an 18 yr old boy with cancer really made me think about my life. read what he writes everyday on www.carepages.com(register, then type LevinStory) and read what I got from CNN, under the title what ever we get in life is bonus
“I don’t believe you can ask for any more, but if I could ask for something, it would be to be able to go outside into the glorious spring air, feeling healthy and blissfully clueless as to how lucky I was for it, if only just for an hour.”
There are things that we take for granted in life, most of them are simple but would make a difference in another people’s lives. I know I have to promise myself to be a better person, will I ever do it, I hope so.
PSA: Trying to read this thing right here all at once is going to have serious repercussions on your health. I have been known to bore people to sterility. You have been warned!
First off footballJ
Someone is like “I’ll wipe that smirk off your face!” Anywho, Manchester United are doing their supporters proud these days. Last Tuesday was great and yesterday was even better. I hope next Wednesday is going to turn out just as good a day. I would ratherthey clinch the Premier League title on Saturday against Manchester City than against Chelsea .Then united can win a derby and at the same time get to walk through two lines of applauding Chelsea players at Stamford Bridge. They did Chelsea the honors two seasons back .Wouldn’t it be something if the tables were to turn this season?
Fingers crossed! For a while anyway cuz I am not done typing.
Here comes the gloomy part. Football aside, last week was full of gut wrenching stories. Sixty five Ethiopians (+9 Chinese) oil workers being killed in Ogaden; bombs being thrown at dinkuans for the lekso of these people and more getting killed; the fighting in Mogadishu where there is bound to be Ethiopian soldiers dying and limited resources are being spent on a war which I doubt any good is going to come out of (and what is war good for anyway); the horror that is Iraq; reading about an eight year old girl who was raped and killed(Lord ,she is younger than Kuku! ) ; video surfacing of a 12 year old beheading a human….Week before last itwas Virginia Tech and again, Iraq.
Muslims are involved in all but two of the above stories. But I am not trying to take a shot at Muslims or their faith. My opinion on the subject is clearly stated on my seventh post .I was merely trying to give examples of humanity gone bad, the evil we humans (not Muslims) are capable of at our worst. The Rwandan people are mostly Catholic and the Germans are largely Protestant .But Christianity did not prevent the Genocide and the Holocaust from happening; in Rwanda even priests and nuns were involved in the killings and bells at The Vatican were tolled to announce the “fall” of Ethiopia to the fascists.
Through the centuries horrible crimes had always been committed in the name of one religion or another .And today, even though the spotlight is on Islamist terrorism , subtle and blatant sins continue to unfold under the same pretext, across different religions. In addition, there is countless more evil in the world that does not try to relate itself with good- not that it gets bonus points for this. Even for some of the examples that I mentioned, seemingly down to earth reasons like liberation, sovereignty, stability, peace, may be given .But the way we go about these things is……let’s face it we are humans: we do not know better.
All around the world, everyday, there is news of unjust life and death. Yehagere sew yezhi gize min yilal “wey fered wey wered” (shout out to Etemete). I am not so down with the fered part because I know that I am a sinner capable of reaching to greater heights of sin. I have not yet learned to hate sin and not sinners. But I am all for the wered part (if it refers to His coming and not his abdicating).My religion happens to be one of them religions that have The Judgment Day in their dogma. For all their differences, there is a consensus among many religions that we are weak creatures living in a world destined to end.
So every now and then I long for that day to come. There are also times I wish I was dead; partly because I do not want to see any of the people I hold dear die and partly because I get sick/afraid of seeing and hearing evil happen to other people. I know it is selfish of me.
But there is one problem; I am not a good person .If I continue this way, I am afraid I won’t make it to Purgatory let alone Heaven. The “beauty” of the Catholic doctrine is that there is an intermediary fate between Heaven and Hell. In a nutshell Purgatory is a place where some people are purified of their sins through tribulation and ultimately go to heaven .Until recently there was also a fourth fate, limbo, which was more of a hypothesis than a dogma. It was thought to be a place/s where children who die unbaptized and righteous people who died before the coming of Christ were sent to spend eternity without communion with God .Two or so weeks ago the babies’ part was abolished by the Vatican and they were declared to go straight to heaven. People were giving all sorts of comments on that. One guy went “how about doing away with the concept of hell? Afterall, look around!’’ .Dude, I do not think they are going to do that anytime soon. I also think things are going to get a lot worse on this earth and hell is going to be the worst.
Ena min yishalal? I do not want to go to hell and judgment day is not goinig to be a joke either.it might be a good thing to take things one day at a time and just focus on doing good on a daily basis.And despite my pessimism about the future,I hope John Mayer’s belief that ths generation can be a force for positive change rubs off on me.Here is
Just a thought:I wonder what kind of music our kids are going to listen to .Would hip hop be the new oldies?
Friday, on my way back from Pasteur, I saw this girl wearing a pant with “don’t touch” written across thebooty. Actually, it was more like “don’t touth’’. You know the Chinese; for all their economic might, they have not perfected their English yet; at least not on garments. I have seen and heard accounts of “bra” written on panties and pants with “quality shirt” on them. May be the clothes they export to developed countries bear the proper writings.
On the news I saw that activists are calling on countries to boycott the Beijing Olympics. They allege that by buying 2/3 of Sudan’s oil product and developing the wells, China is funding the genocide in Darfur. There was a message from an organization that had nas in its name (just like my one of my favorite rappers) telling people to tell other six about the tragedy in Darfur. It said that we vowed not to let it happen again but hundreds of thousands of people are already dead. Some may feel like unlike Rwanda, the issue has gained wide coverage because Sudan has beef with the U.S. But that is besides the point .People are acting real f@#$ing stupid and cruel (as usual): killing, raping, displacing by the thousands. Please search for the website and at least try to see what is happening.
I thinkthe Democratic Republic of Congo deserves a special mention as another place wherehuman life is losing its value .Incidentally, we play against them in Kinshasa,today.
Where was I? Yeah, the girl with the writing on the booty .She got me thinking “Thanks to you we have refused to obey orders from The Higher Being let alone from our kind. We would not have been in this mess if it was not for you; now, would we? This post would have been about the great day I spent conversating with all sorts of animals. But you had to ruin it for everyone, didn’t you?”
It is a vicious cycle with you ladies. You made us touch the forbidden and after we have seen you in your splendor, you yourself tell us not to touch?! Screw that! I am touching-but not today.
Still ,I got love for the ladies; especially for my mom, four sisters, aunt and Betty. Matter of fact, they show me more love than I do them. That’s why I intend to improve on my loving. I believe that some ribs is too small a price to pay for having them in our lives .I also hope to find one more woman to strengthen my belief. This despite the joke (Tilaye told me) that goes Adam was told that his companion is going to have an amazing list of qualities but that would cost him like an arm and a leg. He then asked what he could get for some ribs and bam! A woman!
If I had written this yesterday, it would have ended here. But I am glad I didn’t cuz something happened today. I was coming from church and sitting window side on the row of seats immediately behind the driver. At the Ourael traffic lights my sister pulls up next to us. Then the driver starts making unsavory remarks on her appearance. He even tries to waive at her (later on I discovered that she did not even see him).he did not say anything I would not in the company of my friends; I just did not have the courage/rudeness to say them out on the open. So I got angry and told him that anything he had to say, I would tell her for him because she was my sister. He apologized and I went on about how he would have felt if people were talking about him that way. When he invited me to do so I lied saying I would not have done it to him because I was not like him.
But the truth is that I am just like him. And I had to learn the hard way how offensive these things could get. Day in day out I make fun of somebody’s sister, daughter, girlfriend , wife … I have now realized that doing it in the confines of a group of perverts like me does not make it okay.
I have decided to stop making such remarks, anywhere.
