Khalo

Okay. This time, I'll stick to it, I swear. I'm going to ditch the 37,000 meaningless pageviews I've accumulated over the past seven years and move to a new account. I have a problem, I'll admit it. I like numbers too much. They give me a false sense of accomplishment - but today it ends. Or rather, it begins again. Most of my watchers are long gone, and much of my work is dated and embarrassing. I've started a new account, and I'm going to try and keep the gallery limited to newer, better work. I think it's definitely a step that needs to be taken, largely because I've started to improve at a much greater rate (probably because of my participation in conceptart.org challenges, which all of you should do). So, without further ado:

New Account: irshadkarim

If any of you are still around, and still interested in my artwork, point your watches in that direction.

Birthday wishes. Give them to me. I demands them! Even if I don't know you.

I'm kind of surprised that I haven't updated this journal in just short of a year - I used to update it constantly. I suppose I've seen little use in rambling about every little thing that happens. Trips, however, are hard to ignore. Especially when they end with 30+ hour journeys back home.

This year, my parents took my brother and I to East Africa (specifically Kenya and Tanzania) to see where they grew up. My father grew up in Nairobi, and my mother in Dar-es-Salaam. The trip there wasn't quite as long and painful as the one to Southeast Asia last July, but it was still pretty tiring. Bus to Montreal, plane to Zurich, plane to Nairobi. Nearly eight hours on each plane. In retrospect, it really doesn't sound that bad.

Anyways, so in Nairobi, we started things off in a fairly tame manner - went to the Animal Orphanage, which is basically a zoo, where all the animals were rescued from the wild, where they had been abandoned by their parents at a young age. Yes, I know, it's mildly silly to go all the way to Africa and visit a zoo, but you've got to start somewhere. Also, did I mention that I got to pet adolescent cheetahs, and hold a cheetah cub? A monkey also sat on my head.

It's pretty hilarious - the animal orphanage is known for giving those kind of opportunities, but they've got all these signs up saying otherwise, so that the visitors tip plenty, out of gratitude for the handlers' "breaking" of the rules. We didn't mind, anyways, and it was a very neat experience. Next door to the orphanage was this 'Safari Walk' thing, which was a terrible bore, until we ended up staying a little bit past closing time, by accident. One of the keepers there offered to let us watch him feed the lionesses. I must say, those bitches are bloody protective of their meat! Since we were standing there, right beyond the bars, they basically covered the huge slabs of meat with their bodies and started snarling and growling, and continued to do so until we left.

Later on, we visited Lake Nakuru, which was our first taste of safari. I didn't expect to see much, but we actually caught glimpses of plenty of animals - white rhinos, giraffes, zebra, gazelle, and of course, LOADS of flamingos. We also saw some lions lounging around, but they were barely visible, and our binoculars were crap.

Anyways, next we flew to Arusha, which is in Tanzania. It's where my father lived for the first few years of his life. Just so happens that his grandfather, and other such family members built a fair number of major buildings and shops there, one of which, the Metropol Cinema, was actually still open and running (different ownership, though). I didn't have the best of experiences in Arusha, however, as the first night resulted in waking up in the middle of the night to an absolutely random nosebleed, and a freezing cold shower in the morning (and the day after that, even after switching hotels). But, that's to be expected in a city like that, I suppose (the water, not the nosebleed).

From Arusha, we embarked on our safari - Lake Manyara, then the Serengeti, then Ngorongoro Crater. We basically saw every major animal there was to see. Lions (boatloads, we counted off at least fifteen throughout the entire trip, many of which were up close, right next to our landrover), a leopard, a cheetah, elephants, rhinos (white/black), giraffes, buffalo, wildebeest, zebra, gazelle, impala, baboons, vervet monkeys, hyenas... We even saw a hunt - a failed hunt, but a hunt none the less.

After that, we went to Zanzibar - a really interesting island town with beautiful little alleyways and phenomenal arab/indian/colonial architecture. Zanzibar's also known for its beaches, so we spent two nights at the Blue Bay Resort. Then, we went to Dar es Salaam, which was ridiculously crowded. It was interesting in its own way, I suppose, but it really didn't appeal to me - much like the rest of the urban centres we visited.

Now, I've not slept in a bed since yesterday. Got on a plane at around 9:00PM in Dar-es-Salaam, flew to Zurich, got out of the airport and meandered around downtown for a couple hours before going back to the airport to catch our next flight, to Montreal. From there, we took a (delayed) bus to Ottawa. Total of 32 hours in the return trip, which was about as brutal as the trip back from Bali last year - actually, moreso, because I've been experiencing terrible indegestion all the way through. Now, I'm still awake. Why? Because I'm doing laundry!

Summary of my Trip
Tokyo, Japan; not bad. Language barrier's pretty significant though.
Bangkok, Thailand; icky...
Chiang Mai, Thailand; Pretty sweet.
Penang, Malaysia; meh.
Langkawi, Malaysia; A resort island, and we didn't stay at a resort. Ghost town.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Not bad. Really nice malls that actually make me wish I had the urge to shop. Terrible washrooms, though, everywhere.
Singapore; If I had to live anywhere in Asia, it would be here.
Bali, Indonesia; Beach was nice to look at, but the sand was covered in broken sea shells and rocks - not fun to walk on with sandals.

The trip back was 30 hours in total; 7 hours between Bali and Tokyo, 4 hour wait, 12 hours between Tokyo and Chicago, 5 hour wait, 2 hours between Chicago and Ottawa. I felt mighty sick by the end of that - Japan Airlines' food is horrid.

All in all, the trip was rather nice, though terribly long. Several things did bother me (being literally mistaken for a 12 year old at least once a day, and the constant rushing around), but it was okay. Despite my attachment to computers when I'm home, it's surprisingly easy for me to be able to go on for weeks without touching one. Go me.

Now that I'm back, I am a little disappointed that both Khuyen and Timmy are AWOL. I also need to find a way to watch the major summer movies in the theatres without going alone - the major problem with being gone for three weeks at a time, is that people tend to have gone to see the movies already. Oh well.

Well, I felt the need to put this somewhere, so here it shall go. For the next three and a half weeks, I'm going to be off to south-east Asia. We're only staying at each city for a few days, so we're covering a lot of ground.

We're entering through Tokyo, then on to Bangkok, Chiang-Mai, Penang, Lankawi, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and finally Bali. I'm terrified that this is going to be way too long, but hopefully I'll have fun. I'm also terrified for AO, but I've added a new administrator to the team, and hopefully he, along with everyone else, will be able to keep the site alive and perhaps even do better without me.

Also, Camilla Belle is a really hot actress.