Crazy Cat in a Bowl Trick

Photos from Orlando

Hello, if you want to view some of our photos from our trip to Orlando, click here.

Alvaro has managed to dump the whole lot onto the album without doing any filtering whatsoever, so... be warned about a lot of crappy pictures! :-P
The places we went to were:
(1) NASA Space Center
(2) Epcot Center (one of the Disney parks) which had models of 9-10 different countries and then the Disney store
(3) Universal Studios
(4) Disney Walkway with all the buskers etc
(5) Cirque Du Soleil: La Nouba and then dinner with our friends Maria and Kyriakos.

Amazing and Beautiful Mime!!

jerome murat

Watch the above - amazingly beautifully done! :-)

10 fascinating facts about Iraq

This is an interesting article I read a couple of days ago which I have been meaning to post up here. Here's a funny pic from the article: (although not sure I should be finding it funny...)

It is interesting how many civil wars had their origin in the drawing of the artificial borders in WW1 and WW2.

Also interesting is Yazdânism, the religion practiced by the Kurds, called the Cult of Angels. I had no idea about them. It is interesting that the sect in Iran also believes in some of the Islamic figures like Imam Ali. They also believe in reincarnation so they are not really moslem. If you get a chance read their religious beliefs in the above article.

Dilemma Continued

Mohamed touched upon some of the fine points in the priorities dilemma in his comment. You're right in that often to place family first in the priority list, we need to put career first for a while, but then how long is a while? I don't know. Is it the time away when you are doing your phd? is it the career itself?
If you want to go to academia, you have limited choices and once you make that choice it is very much of a long term choice (long term referring to 7-10 years since you can't move away before you get your tenure). It is worst when you have two career people to consider.

I know what it is like when you are away and things happen in your life that you can never get back. By being away you take a risk that things don't change during that time and that when you return it will be to the same faces. But when this doesn't happen, then you really re-evaluate everything and you see the risks more clearly with passing months.

Anyhoo.

Here's an interesting Washingtonpost editorial on how Bush is possibly the worst president ever. It says that the problem with the worst ever presidents in US history has been that they are "Stubborn, narrow-minded, unwilling to listen to criticism or to consider alternatives to disastrous mistakes, they surrounded themselves with sycophants and shaped their policies to appeal to retrogressive political forces (in that era, pro-slavery and racist ideologues)." Now compare this with what we know of Bush.

I wonder if the public reaction to presidents such as Johnson, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Richard M. Nixon, who claim the worst ever US presidents title, was anything similar to that of Bush. Was the public so divided?

A Sad View

Today on Digg I saw the following photo posted. It was such a sad sight.

Here is the link to the article. Readign the comments, it seems this happened in 2004 in CA and the ducks were rescued.
I hope that is true. :-|

The Unknown

Do you ever feel like you are being pulled every which way and you are not sure what to do? Sometimes I feel like my life is defined by wanting to please the people around me so much that I don't have time to decide what I want. In the game of priorities, how do you decide what is more important? And once you have decided the order, how can you make sure that you don't satisfy just one, but maybe most of them. Can this even be done? Or once you have made your priorities, do you always have to sacrifice all others for one? and life is not really an independent process, rather made up of all the different people in my life and what if they don't agree with my order?
Today I felt like I was lost adrift on this ocean and I didn't know which way to go. Not that I need to make any decisions yet but I felt that the time for decisions is approaching. And I think the picture that is emerging is not like what I had in my head. I don't know what to do. Even when I say forget what i want and lets just go along with what others want as long as I am with them... well what if those things do not converge? and where am I in the middle of all this? Am I becoming someone who is going to live their lives thru others and then wake up when i am middle aged and think where did i go wrong, where is my own life? Why is it that I make the sacrifices?
I don't know what to do. This feeling is so depressing.