STORM WATCH and More Sexy Weather

Storm watch in Muscat woo hoo! My brothers are celebrating since the ministry has declared tomorrow a holiday due to severe weather, and Tuesday's exams are postponed. Dad has been stocking on old clothes and buckets to keep the water away on Wednesday (weather forecast states that Wednesday is the day for awesome thunderstorms).

So we're pretty much out of it for the rest of this week, including the weekend. Wet and windy conditions are due to persist until Friday. It looks like it's just tough luck for the Sri Lankan Social Club because one of their major annual events - the Sinhalese and Tamil New Year - is to be cancelled. But of course, rainy weather is all part of the Sri Lankan New Year anyway, so I suppose you could call it 'seasonal' weather :D

We spent a good two hours bringing down the fancy pots and flowers from the balconies lest they should tumble and fall three stories down and knock somebody out cold. We've placed heavy cement bricks all around our shade, and Mom's done her best to hide her rose bush (the one she finally got to have after all these years...).

All-in-all, I'm just absolutely posolutely thrilled at the prospect of stormy weather and severe thunderstorms... I could watch my Mom run around the the house covering her ears every time it rumbles up there (harr harr HARR!). She looks so cute when she does that ^_^

The cat, by the way, is sitting atop our neighbor's window shade. I hope she doesn't fall off. And we still haven't figured out if she's pregnant or just constipated. That's because her tummy keeps changing volume every few weeks, and sometimes it gets smaller than it used to be, which brings our theory that she ate her babies to a possibility.

Exams, Mountain Climbing, and Gai-ness

Google Earth is amazingly amazing (and so are cheap Switz Bakery donuts). Wednesday night, my brothers and I were checking out what our house looked like from way up there and stumbled upon something interesting: the mountains at the back of our house. Now those mountains have always been a source of interest for us. They're home to a pack of wild dogs that visit out neighborhood early every morning for scraps of food. Also, they're filled with interesting caves and ledges, and there are little valleys that look like rivers and waterfalls when it pours. But that's not what caught our attention. It was the fact that the satellite pictures showed a desert beyond those mountains...

There's a tiny road leading to the Yiti Bay on the left towards the Al Bustan road side, but if you continue forward from the back of our house, it's just a massive stretch of desert! I was like WOW how cool is that?! We live right next to the frikkin' desert! So yeah, my brothers and I decided to climb up to the top of those mountains this Spring Break (which is in about two weeks) and we're planning on calling our downstairs neighbor and my brothers' friend who lives just across from us.

We're going to have to brave the scorpions and snakes and wild dogs (and not to forget, the falling rocks). How we're going to do it, I'm not sure. But I bet the following will come in handy:

1. Our neighbor's sense of direction
2. My brother's precise mathematical calculations (he's the younger of the twins)
3. The older one's humor
4. Their friend's quick reflexes and outdoorsy experience
5. and my waterfall-climbing/mountain-falling geo-caching epertise (yes I fell halfway down a cactus-filled rock behind Oklahoma's Turner Falls...)

But I guess it'll all be worth it, because how often do you get to live right next to something as cool as a desert??! If we ever make it up there, I'm going to make sure to take lots and lots of pictures and may be even contribute one to Google Earth. That'd be cool, and it'd be real fun to write about - especially since I have a feeling that it's going to take us more than just one day to complete the journey since the mountains get really steep after you pass a certain point.

Ah well, other than that, I'm busy teaching my brothers and helping them prep for their exams, which start tomorrow... It actually feels like I'm the one doing the studying since I'm sitting out here for hours on end writing them sample papers till my arms fall off, and here they are, exploring the mountains through their binoculars. They just discovered two small Omani flags and a rock with Arabic lettering spray-painted on it. *sigh* Well, it sure looks like our mountain-climbing adventure will be fun - you've always got to have a lot of enthusiasm for anything to be successful. Being enthusiastic two weeks in advance is a good sign, I think.

As Gai-sensei would say "Full of youth and hot-bloodedness!" *nice guy pose*

Vector taken from zytroop's DA gallery. Link --> http://zytroop.deviantart.com

Yes, Gai sensei is frikkin' hilarious. Here's one of my favorite Gai sensei quotes from the Naruto Chuunin Exams Arc:

Gai: "Youth is sweet and sour and sometimes strict Kakashi"
Kakashi: "Hmm? Did you say something?"
Gai: "Oh my god!!! That was pretty good, rival Kakashi. That reaction is somewhat 'modern' and it pisses me off!"

Actual scene screenshot: Kakashi pwns Gai ^

Kakashi has wonderful selective hearing ;) R.I.P Kakashi, you were the best!

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Okay, and here's another quote I decided to throw in for kicks. It's also from the Chuunin Exams Arc, and it just happens to be the one that changed Neji's outlook on life and 'destiny' :

Neji: "Why do you want to change your destiny so much?"
Naruto: "Because I was called a loser."

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Oki doki! That's enough Narutardness for ya! OOOH and that reminds me of this week's manga chapter: EPIC! So good! So good! Masashi Kishimoto Sama = GOD! *happy dance*

What do I want to do with my life?

That is the question of the year. Rahter, it’s more like the question of my life. I was born clueless, and it's not like anything has changed much after twenty two years either. The thing is, everyone else I know has their future all planned out for themselves, and they’re already doing great and accomplishing what they’ve always wanted to accomplish. I can’t even remember having an ambition I decided to stick with for the rest of my life. For me it has always been making decisions on the spur of the moment.

I remember wanting to be an artist. This was probably my very first career option.

It wasn't until a few years later that wanted to be a teacher, just like my grade 2 class-teacher Ms. Chitra deMel. Unfortunatley I also had to face the facts: I didn’t have enough sarees to even get through one academic year. The only sarees I had were the bedsheets.

Later, about a year later, with the coming of documentary television shows to our household, I developed what you would call ‘an exploratory phase’. The shows about Earth and its origins, ancient civilizations and the amazingly confuddling history of mankind intrigued me so much that I insisted my birthday presents just had to be books on palaeontology, anthropology, history, or geography. It was the perfect recipe for ultimate nerdiness... I made sure I invited as many of my classmates as my parents would allow, and I reminded each one of them to buy me books or anything related to my historical explorative fantasy phase thing. At that time I wanted to be a palaeontologist.

A year later I had become fully accustomed to sharing my life as an only child with two tiny pink things that I would come to acknowledge as my brothers. During this critical year I enjoyed wrapping as many clean nappies as I could find around my littlest brother’s arms and legs and tying them up to the bars of the cot he slept in. I wrote him prescriptions and I kept a medical report chart hung at the foot of his cot. One of the prescriptions was a bottle labled 'Frog Juice; 2 tsp daily after meals'. He was to have ‘bad joints’ for as long as he was under my care, and he proved to be a very willing patient. The other brother wasn’t very hospital-inclined. This was the year I wanted to be a doctor. With patients on hand I decided I could practice my medical skills freely and without any legal licence. I also didn’t have to worry about insurance. My brother was too young to hire a lawyer and I felt sure that my parents would never report their only darling daughter for malpractice. It was a foolproof plan and I decided to stick with it.

About two years later my 'destiny' took me to the shelves of the second-hand bookshop at Qurum: The House of Prose. There I had my first encounter with what was to become one of my favourite novel series ever: The Mystery Club. And try as I may, I could never remember the name of the author. But it was from these books that I learnt about drugs, copyright infringement laws, forgery, art thievery, plastic explosives, bad babysitting, ransom notes, and watermarks. I now wanted to be a detective. This was probably one of my longest lasting resolutions ever (besides wanting to be a great novelist, something which still sort of has a hold on me). The ‘resolve’ to be a Forensic Scientist stayed with me till three years ago until I realized that I just didn’t have the brains or the commitment to get into Forensic Science. Organic Chemistry was not my thing, and I hadn’t read enough books about how to study correctly. I have yet to pick up a Studying-for-Dummies guidebook.

Ah, and here I am now, a graduate in Biochemistry, applying for a graduate degree in Immunology, and still not knowing how to pick up from there. I’m a teacher now, teaching Biology and Chemistry (complicated Organic not included) and I think I really like it. But my family and my huge other family of relatives want me to do something ‘greater’ than teaching.

Perhaps I should just get married.

But then again, perhaps even that would take me a lifetime to decide.