Today marks the 5th annivesary of the Sept 11th attacks in NYC. 5 years ago, while I was a student in Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, this day was a very strange day. I had class at 11am that day, a few hours after the attacks. I had been up the night before, preparing for a quiz about another case we were studying in our business law class. Our business law teacher, Jack Manders, was known for his ability to grill his students (without a fire) for messing up with your word choice when discussing law. My friend, Jim, called me up as soon at happened, telling me about it. I didn’t understand how serious such an event would be until I switched on my tv, which I bought for $50 off a friend, and saw the carnage. A few minutes later, my parents called, worried. I was okay. New York was hundereds of miles away; the reality of New Yorkers was VERY different from the reality of Des Moines, Iowa on any given day of the week. So much for a good night’s sleep. When I got to class, still confused, Professor Manders came in with a very long face; completely out of his character. He appologized for his condition, for two of his best friends worked in the World Trade Center in New York. To see a very powerful professor in that condition, was very difficult to accept. A lot of the students in our class were in tears afterwards. As the semester progressed, Professor Manders used to ask me to his office sometimes to ask me if I wasn’t being harassed by anyone by anyone during the social reprecussions of Sept 11th; I was fine. Professor Manders, during that semester also gave me a lot of advice in regards to steps in building my career and life and told me about how he got to where he was. A very fascinating guy. He retired at the end of that semester, and he passed away almost immediately after. It was a very heavy loss for us. I’ve grown up a lot in those last five years.
I am saddened by the reched aftermath of September 11th, and the decisions governments have made since then as a response to the suddenly extra-eminent threat of terrorism, all apparently nurtured by the “axis of evil” governments in the Middle East/Extremist-Islamist-Fascists-whatamakalits-I-don’t-know-what-they-will-be-called-tomorrow-people. The war on Afghanistan and now the war on Iraq (and the civil unrest underway right now) truly are an extension of a very, very misguided foreign policy, as such catastrohpies do not “solve” the problem of terrorism, but bring rise to anti-sentiment against certain governments. I hope things work out for the best.
Let’s change the topic now to something that I didn’t know how to present in this blog; the strange people around me and some of the strange things they do. People watching certainly beats going to a zoo sometimes, don’t you think?
During my trip to Shikoku, some of the guys picked on this VERY quiet friend of ours on the basis that he liked girls under the age of 18. He never protested and just laughed it off. I assumed it was a joke. After he left us, he sent us an email with the picture of a 15 year old girl he met on the train and said that he often emails her and chats with her. YIKES!!
In the appartment building I live in(Well, not really a building), there are four appartments designed as cardboard prison cells (mine included) on the second floor of a beauty parlor run by my landlady, who belongs to a psycho religious cult that scares the ******* out of me. Her appartment is behind her beauty parlor, down in the first floor. Every time I walk up the stairs, I can hear my neighbour’s chihuahua barking at me for opening the door to my OWN appartment, despite us not being allowed to have pets in appartments (based on the standard appartment contracts here in Tokyo). Dear Mr. strange-neighbour-lady-next-door’s-annoying-chihuahua, thank you for your concern over the security of an appartment that you don’t live in. I am very touched by your kind intentions in protecting my well-being. If your intentions are not of protection, then please be kind to lower the intensity and loudness of your barking a notch or two. If you really love these card board prison cell appartments, you can have mine by all means. I’m personally looking for my first ticket OUT of this place!
My landlady, the one who belongs to a psycho religious cult, does strange things. Some of these things I am aware of (like the 5.00am chants with other cult members in her beauty parlor underneath my appartment on odd days of the week, and how signed my name up to receive DAILY newspapers of this crazy cult she belongs to and the annoying paper boy HAS to stuff this cult’s newspaper into my door’s pigeonshoot rather, coming up the stairs and waking up that abnoxious chihuahua next door in the process), and other things I have no idea about (such as how she can manage her beauty parlor and keep it in business despite it being TOTALLY out of the way with almost NO customers EVER coming in) among other things.  Dear Cult-Newspaper’s-Paperboy - I wonder, in order to get your job, did you need to be inducted into the cult itself? Before you answer yes or no, I just have one favor to ask you? Can you please just FORGET to deliver the paper of the psycho cult-organization you belong to to my place, indefinately? You can sell this paper on the blackmarket. The papers you deliver to me go into the garbage every day, by the way. You might as well make a buck or two.
In my Intensive Japanese language class, we were reading an article the other day about JURY DUTY. In my class, one of my classmates from Australia told us about her experience in Jury duty and I talked about what I knew about the American legal system. In the article, I found out that Japan will start a jury duty program in 2009 in order to teach Japanese citizens about the legal system and to remove any doubt of “political” influences in making legal decisions. As a Bahraini, I would LOVE this idea to be introduced into Bahrain as well, as it will force the legal system to clean up its act. I really think that with such a system, Human Rights would be protected (example: the case of Adel Flaifl, who had a direct hand in torturing MANY Bahraini citizens in the 1990s - Will he ever be given what he deserves?). Any takers for the idea? Hmmm…
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