Here goes:
ingredients-

• 1 big or 2 medium onions
• 2 garlic teeth (or cloves.. or whatever you call it)
• 1 yellow pepper
• 2 red peppers
• Handful of rinsed coriander
• 1 bag of fat noodles (egg noodles)
• 1 can of coconut oil
• 1 can of syruped diced pineapples
• Soy, Chilli, Curry, Sugar, Salt

Make the magic:

1. Boil the noodles and screen.
2. Pour a 1/4 cup of oil (Canola) into a wok
3. Cut the Onions to 4 quarters and then separate to layers
4. Chop the coriander
5. Cut peppers to thin strips
6. Crush the garlic

Toss the veggies in order of appearance: onions, peppers, garlic, coriander. Add soy (generously), salt and sugar. Toss in the wok. let it fry a bit. Add 2 spoons of Chili sauce.

Add the diced pineapple as you wish, then add a cup of the syrup.

Add the noodles, stir until the sauce colors the noodles. Add more soy generously, add the can of coconut oil, add yellow curry generously and more sugar (at least 2 spoons).

Stir fry until texture thickens and the coconut is fully yellow, along with the noodles.

et voila! curry noodles. if it’s anything like what I got here, then you’re in for a treat! bonap people!

Since joining, I hosted one cool person, and joined several real life meetings (last one being yesterday night). We are also about to host a lady from France this coming Saturday.

I have to say that so far, my experience has been very positive. The members of the site who seem to “get” the idea, are positive and friendly, and that’s really great because it gives you a sense that something is right with the world, and that it’s easy to make new friends, hear amazing stories about their travels around the planet, and learn from their experience.

They are also extremely helpful when someone comes with a question or request, and I believe this is the spirit of being “good” to each other as people. If only more people lived their life in that spirit, the world would look more like a big family, than a bunch of people living their life alone.

My love and respect to the organizers of the site, and to the participants who really put their soul into the thing.

Their site: http://www.couchsurfing.org

Update: I have hosted another guy from Michigan, USA. He was simply awesome!!! I really love CouchSurfing.org

The realization I’ve come to, relates to technology chat rooms and the kinds of people that frequent them. You have chat rooms for subjects such as Linux, MySQL, PHP; you will find a lot of noobs in there, and the population is quite varied, sometimes rude, sometimes just plain stupid, but definitely full of trolls and other creatures

And then you have a channel such as #bash and this is where things get quite wonderful. So, What kind of person goes to a channel about Bash? (Bourne-Again Shell). What I found was a bunch of hackers, with a great sense of humor and the ability and willingness to help people, and educate them about proper bash scripting. They are the right mixture of geek / mature IT person / mature developer, that I have come to appreciate and respect over the years.

One of my own personal favorites is the Yemenite soup and the accompaniments, and for me it’s no longer just about the soup but also about the ritual

Serving

The soup is served in a deep dish along with “S’khoog” (A special, very spicy condiment), Lemon Halves, “Hil’bé” (I will explain later), and some kind of bread (The Yemenite use, in order of preference: “La’khoukh”, “Kubané”, or a simple Khala bread). If chicken is used, and it contains bones, a special bowl is placed in the middle of the table where the bones can be properly disposed of.

Soup Ingredients

I want to explain this part, before I list the ingredients. If you ask a Yemen cook what they put in their soup, the answers will vary. I have therefor used my own observations and guesses from the many Yemenite soups I had (and I had plenty), to put together the following list of ingredients. While it may not be accurate, the result is so close to the original that I can not personally tell the difference, and this makes me feel confident enough about this list. If you think I have skipped something, do let me know!

• Pressure Cooker, or a large pot with a good lid
• Wooden Spoon, Sharp Knife
• 1 medium sized onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 4 medium ~ large potatos
• 4 tomatoes
• 6 medium sized carrots
• Canola oil
• Meat (select one of the following):
  • 6 chicken <– My favorite
  • 1 kilogram of beef <– Most popular
  • 2 cow legs <– Most original
• Spices:
  • Ha’wa’yég
  • Salt & Pepper
  • Beef or Chicken Stock (Cubes or Powder)

Preparation

Vegetables: Grind the tomatoes and dispose of the skin. Grind 4 of the Carrots into the same container with the ground tomatoes. Cut the remaining 2 carrots into pieces of ~2cm each. Peel the potatoes (I know the potato skin is very healthy, but we are doing this for two reasons: 1) it is the traditional way; 2) this way the spices can infiltrate the potato easily and you get a nice, delicious yellow cooked potato). Keep this on the side for now, we will add this to the soup later.

Meat: Throw finely chopped onion and garlic into the pot, along with 3 spoons of Canola Oil, and fry until slightly golden. Put the meat along with 4 generous spoons of Ha’wa’yég in the pot and stir slightly, so that the meat touches the bottom of the pot. The idea is to “close” the meat by frying it slightly from all sides. Add Salt & Pepper.

(While this is frying, put 2 litters of water to boil).

Once the meat is lightly cooked on all sides, carefully pour the boiling water into the pot, and stir. Now add the vegetables we prepared earlier (including the carrots and potatoes). Bring it once to boiling point, then lower the fire and let cook for: 1) Pressure Cooker: 45 minutes 2) Regular Pot: 90 minutes.

Your soup is now ready!

Optional: I add two tea spoons of S’khoog along with the vegetables. It makes the soup interesting

Accompaniments

Hil’bé

This is a very interesting, and some say very healthy bitter grain which “jellies” when it comes in contact with water. You add two spoons of this powder in a bowl (do not use a metal bowl), juice from half a lemon, a bit of salt, and half a tea spoon of S’khoog. Here’s the tricky part: How much water you add depends on how finely your grain was ground. I suggest you start with 5 spoons of water (in addition to the lemon juice). The solution will be very watery at first, but give it a few minutes and it will start to Jel. If it becomes too solid, add two more spoons of water and stir. The end result should feel like a light pudding. The enzimes in the grain produce small air bubbles, giving this condiment a unique, airy texture.

S’khoog

Ahh… We have come to the most revered and sensitive of condiments for Yemenits. A true Yemen will eat everything together with S’khoog. The recipe varies like the stars in the sky. Each family has her own technique and unique blend, different amounts of ingredients, different philosophies of cutting the ingredients, and in short, if you find a specific kind of S’khoog that you like, you will have to keep going to the same family/restaurant to get it exactly right, and even that may not happen, since the primary ingredient of S’khoog is green peppers and they are different every season.

There are generally two types of S’khoog: Red & Green. Explaining how to make S’khoog is not within the scope of this article, and I will skip it altogether. I would also like to say that preparing S’khoog is not for the faint of heart. I have seen many red hands in my past, to know how painful it can be to prepare this condiment without gloves, for example.

Finale / how to eat it

Of course, there are no rules here. Personally, I start by putting a teaspoon of Hil’bé and a teaspoon of S’khoog in the soup, along with a teaspoon of Lemon. You can also throw bread into the soup to soak it up, very delicious. It’s supposed to be spicy, and your nose will be runny by the time you finish eating this soup. If you had the Flu, kiss it goodbye.

1. Galaxies have massive black holes in their center. These black holes slowly swallow everything, light, matter, planets, etc.
2. At some point in time, every black hole will reach a certain critical mass and explode, sending out a super massive wave of matter and energy / radiation, to a huge distance.
3. Once this wave reaches another nearby galaxy, it will push the matter from the edge of the galaxy towards the center, towards the black hole. This could trigger another explosion of that black hole, as in turn, it inevitably reaches critical mass.
4. The second explosion will partially negate the energy and mass flying from the first, and some of it will join and actually boost the wave, creating an exponentially faster wave of energy and matter.
5. A chain reaction is created as more and more galaxies join the party, creating a wave of destruction so massive, absolutely nothing survives.

The process described above produces a new, very hot “primal” universe. The larger chunks will attract more matter, and slowly grow into larger chunks and then into heavier planets. Some will attract other chunks into orbit, as all chunks are hurtled against each other. Some will grow large enough to form black holes and then the story begins all over again.

What do you think?

Is it because supposedly that person in the wheelchair is helpless, and an easy prey? Is it this kind of inner ferocious instinct usually found in carnivorous mammals?

Or is it because he thinks she is desperate for Sex and will do anything? Or maybe he is imagining her stiff legs and the thought of her dead limbs is arousing in a very perverse way?

This reminded me of the story of Safran and his dead arm, from the book “Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer. In that story, Safran, supposedly the author’s grandfather, has a dead arm from birth. This somehow gets him into the arms (and underwear) of most of his village’s women… to the point where it has become a sort of a “secret weapon” for him, which he used to “fish” for his gipsy, non-jewish girlfriend. I seriously recommend that book by the way, it’s awesome in so many ways. And definitely read the book BEFORE you see the movie.

All this is nature. We are the planet, part of it. The planet produced us, and we can continue existing, or we might cease to exist soon. It is our decision, but our decision is natural, guided or misguided as it may be, and we will either kill ourselves, or allow ourselves to continue to exist. It is up to us, up to our “nature”, to control our own future.

At least until planet Nibiru comes for a visit in a few years and kills us all

I decided I’m going to skip being weird this year, on my birthday. I guess this defeats the purpose because I usually am weird on my birthday, so not being weird this year will be weird in itself

To all my friends and family, I’m proud of you all, and thank you for being part of the journey so far. Here’s to our future together, may it be a glorious one

[UPDATE: August 30] I ended up being weird anyway, the majority of the day. I took half a day to walk aimlessly (some call this “walking meditation”). After half an hour of walking without thinking about a thing, I started thinking about life, and ended up performing some inner accounting of the many strange events of late. My wife ended up coming back from University after all, to spend the evening with me, and this seriously raised my happiness levels to the point where I stopped being weird

Grandfather, I miss you so terribly. I cherish the years I spent with you in my childhood. I come from you. I will never forget. I miss you and I love you, forever. For all eternity. Until all atoms in this universe freeze. My life is an inspiration to yours.

Grandmother, I miss you so much. No creature can be said to have been more good hearted than you. Your goodness and kindness lives on in the memory of those you left behind. It is an inspiration to all who knew you, and I hope to not disappoint your ways by being kind hearted, just like you were. I was very lucky to have had a grandmother like you. I will never forget your kind face, your kind eyes, your warmth which radiated from you like a beam of high powered energy.

I googled for a solution, and found none. In the end, I found the solution myself. Here’s what you need to do, to get it working:

1. In spotlight, search for “Java Preferences”, and click to run this utility.
2. You will see a list of JVM versions: 1.6.0, 1.5.0, and 1.4.2. Simply switch to 1.4.2 and click “Save”
3. You are done! Remember to completely close your browser, before you try again.

I know, you want to give me a hug now, don’t you?