Much of life is putting an excess of energy into things and getting little to no feedback. There are little glimmers of feedback that light me up and this is one that made it all worth it:
"I was bored at work and read your profile. You have done a lot of shit, know a lot of people, and have a lot of friends. There are not a lot of people that do not like you, and you seem to work pretty damn hard at everything you do. Just wanted to say that you motivate me, and that I'm proud to have you as our [friend]."
Thanks to all those people who take the time to give uncalled for acts of kindness. You make your mark.
gone fishin'
3 room mates, 1 case of beer, 3 shitty fishing poles, and the absolute resolve to wrastle some fishies to their doom... this is the setup for this incredible and epoch battle.
Flovilla, GA ... incorrectly claimed to be the birthplace of flo-rida ... has a lake in it. We set out to rent a boat, drink some beer, and catch some fish. Justin, the weather man, says there's a 40% chance for precipitation. Charlie, the cartographer, comes back with printed journey papers which directed us faithfully to the fishland. We arrive after an hour of driving (its down toward Macon parts of the GA) and there's a $3-to-park fee in the middle of bumbletown... booo.... We pay. We drive the entirety of the park before I say "lets just go to the front office." The lady there says "sorry we're not renting boats because of the severe weather warning." HAHAHA.... 40% says NOT severe to me. The joke was on us...
She gives a serious face and says "the museum is open until 4pm" and then laughs in our faces about it. The room mates start to leave and I go "well where's a good fishin' spot?" and she highlights on a map and gives it to me. jackpot. Despite my roommates nagging me about going the wrong way after an ill turn or two I head straight to the spot. We scale the side of a small dam to find the holy land of fishing. You'll see it in the video :)
Who caught the first fish, you ask? ME OF COURSE!
Yea... you can't see much of her but she's about 4 inches... going for 5.
So there was an easy place to catch fish because you could watch the little fish stare at the food, take interest in it, and bite it. There might of well have been little thought bubbles over there head it was so easy.
To make a boring and long story short the severe weather warning was serious. The clouds went dark and the wind started to look possessed. I felt like Justin's weather prediction could be wrong. Then the following to videos ensued. Enjoy!
Sorry for the quality. The good 'ol Sony Ericsson w580i is all I had on me. In short the storm blew away some of our gear and then we were spitefully still fishing until mother nature yanked the hat off my head and threw it in the lake. Just after Charlie got in his first two chuckles she did the same to him. We started singing the mission impossible theme song and fished out the hats. fun times, guys.
So a tremendous relationship changed in the course of the last week. We took out the commitment, kept the friendship and support. School has been killing me lately: EE courses over the summer are CRAZY, much more over 3 of them are likely to hurt someone... like me. A big test, a writing assignment (which its super crazy hard), a homework (finished in no less than 3 hours), and keeping up with my other two classes are the items on my o-shit-list. Gotta phone call from my Dad (first one this year I think): Gaubi died. So my great-step-grandma died but here's the crazy part: she outlived all 12 of her brothers and sisters, 3 of her own children, raised my step mom (her grand daughter), was born around 1911, and smoked most every day of her life. Yea, for those of you doing the math thats 96 or 97 years old. She outlived her expectations: she bought a plan at the funeral home and a plot by her husband and then chose her casket in the early 90's. I can't say I was especially close to her since I rarely get to visit Oregon and when I do I see her once or twice a visit. Though its not a traumatic personal hit to me it does remind me of my mortality and all those thoughts that keep recurring and gaining strength that somebody near me dies. What is your purpose? There's no way you've figured it out by this early in the game but if the clocks tickin' that fast then you'd better hope your accomplishing your purpose or at least on the road to doing so. Do I love hard enough? Do I live bold enough? Questions which leave me staring at a seemingly infinite abyss of "probably not."
Which ultimately leads me to the following understanding: You have probably had plenty of reasons you shouldn't be alive right now (anywhere from near death experiences to a plethura of random reasons people clock out by chance to general high risk nature of your crazy attitude towards life) so your chances of being alive enough to read this for you personally are one in X (X being the number of reasons you should probably not be as alive as you are now... for me its around 7... add 5 more for the "high risk nature" factor... so 12). You are already one lucky mofo, right?! Ok... lets get graphic. I don't know if you know this/accepted it but your mama and papa know about the birds and the bees. Every time a nut gets busted 10,000 little swimmers start racing for the golden eggs and the end of fallopian marathon. Take the variational difference between you and ANY sibling of yours and apply that to all 10,000 and its as if none of that crowd is even close to what you are. Now you are 1 in 12 for being alive, 1 in 10,000 for being the chosen swimmer. If we go back to our probability classes we remember that we MULTIPLY to get the total probability of series probabilities. That makes you 1 in 120,000. Take into account the fact that the night you were conceived wasn't the only time papa busted and you all the sudden have the idea that you have to multiply by a factor of 1 in however-many-times-papa-busted-during-his-life and I don't want to think about that for my dad but I know for me-as-a-papa thats going to be in the thousands. Thats not even taking into account for the female side of the equation. Now draw back your lineage to say... Adam... counting along the way the probability for each generation that lead up to the one and only you and all the sudden here you are: 1 in a fucking googol chance that you got the lucky golden ticket to land on earth and live out your life and what the fuck are you going to do with it?!
These are the things that go through my head when someone kicks the bucket.
It's a ripe 4:55a in the library and aside from the staff I feel almost as if I'm the lone tenant of this building.
I'm typically not a huge fan of doing this but I want to pass on the story that I'm jealous of. Here is Seancy's fantastic outlining his second to last place in the Great Wall of China Marathon:
http://sean-china2008.blogspot.com/
The near concussionary event of the summer... for now...
I got injured in a slight climbing incident. I figure pictures talk better than words on this one...
if anyone was wondering the details, the tree won...
Well, that is all for now. Hopefully y'all enjoyed that...
Hey all!
Wow. Never really followed up with the African adventure part of my life. I suppose it will remain a reminder to blog on the go.
Other than that the summer has begun. I have taken and passed an INTENSE week of bartending school. It's expensive ($600) but it was an awesome experience. 40 hours of schooling, 200 drinks, and 1 broken rocks glass later I am prepared to begin bartending. Its called the
Atlanta Bartending School and its located on Buford Hwy. I got a lot of scruff from friends about doing that but I'm glad I did it. The classroom is literally a room with 14 small bars that is made to match the real deal. We worked with real bottles filled with colored water so that the drinks we make relatively match the real drinks. The teacher I had was a MAESTRO. He has had more experience than I wish to ever have and he is pro fo sho. I made some good friends and realized that bartenders are pretty interesting people.
I also have a girlfriend! She's younger, blonde, and from UGA. No one saw that comin'! She's AWESOME. It's my first committed relationship in a while and I couldn't be happier with it. It's been a while since I've had someone and she definitely is an empowering individual. Add in the fact that she's worldly minded (YAY aiesec!), good lookin', well balanced, and ambitious and you've got a helluva cocktail that i'd like to drink. Most of the people reading this have met her. If not, demand it from me :)
LATEST revelations and epiphany episodes:
1. I need to play music more. Its still my dream to make music and to have a job that supports it and I need to stop being such a pussy about it and just make songs and perform and sing and be shameless and... just do it.
2. The clocks ticking... I have 3 semesters left on school. Real life comes fast after that. As long as I can make some money to support my life I'm fine but thats always the problem, isn't it?
3. 21 is awesome/lame. I have been carded twice out of the 5 attempts. I'm sad about that. It HAS been awesome being able to do whatever I want though. I've gone to the liquor store twice and neither time got anything. I'd go in because, coming out of bartending school, all these drinks sound so interesting but then I realized I'm broke and don't want to spend that much money on alcohol.
4. I love my friends. A lot of them let me down lately being too busy or too distant but I have a TON of close friends (like 20) and then a bajillion aquaintences (i don't even want to count).
alright y'all. Thanks for reading! I love you all.
Blazaam!B-)
Blazaam!B-)
This my first blog from my phone
London, Tunisia, and More...
Cadbury Egg Mcflurry
Giant water extracting camel
hora hora hora
horniman pub
tunisian wedding
4 hour busride... no sitting
GT claimed Best Guy Dancer and Funniest Girl of the conference
locomotive discotech
not being able to escape the aiesec network
new GT aiesec t shirts
... much more to come
i'll update this very soon guys. Thanks for reading and rest assured that this will be an amazing story to read very soon. Tunisia... the time of my life!
-f'
US embassy in Tunis,
Yasser,
Wii Strikers, EC
So I am "preparing" for Tunisia. Its 2:28 and I haven't touched the suitcase needed in 17 hours when I leave at 19:30 for London. What awaits me there, you ask? Your imagination might have more insight than I. I've been talking to
Nisha (from @Illinois) about these "preparations" and I think the US is ready to take the conference by storm. I figure as long as we can keep a constant inundation of energy no one can beat out the loudest and proudest @ country: @ USA! Though I hope we come out on top of this energetic heap I hope even more for the competition leading to it. and i digress...
The US embassy will hopefully help us out in Monastir. It would be pretty cool to have them swoop in to help rep america.
Yasser Hammami is the man with the plan of the CC when it comes to this conference. He's the head honcho for delegates to speak to and he has done a terrific job setting us up for success here. He left his phone number on an email so we skyped him (BOOM!-Steve Jobs) and then figured out he was a fellow skyper. One crazy and ansdfa0er-ed conversation later we figured out a few key things about this conference:
-no internal global village.... = no liquor exporation = no fun games to come up with to rep USA
-the @ network works. We have hookups in Tunis or Sfax (pronounced "fax" if you say it fast enough) once we hit the ground
-Apparently tunis has a good club scence... Tunis... prepare.
I had a terrific EC meeting. Despite some slight opposition to the site (thanks powerpuff) we went to cafe intermezzo to have what may have been the most insightful EC meeting to date. I thank the belgian for that.
At somewhere around 2 in the morning I requested Justin's attendance to the Ben-James-dominates-Mario-Strikers-tour happening in a town near you! He attended and was fully dominated. YESHHHHHH.....
on a last and terrific note to those who care: My love life has had the sweetest thread weaving in and out of my life's fabric. Its currently dominated by worldly aspirations, the privaledge of the presidential burden, the electrical engineering chaos of class, the race of the clock, the battle against motivation, the refueled fire of musical passion (m-audio keystudio 49! thanks ma!), the slight onslaught of female options that always comes with dating complacency, and my own ongoing battle with stagnancy yet there seems to be a shining, sweet thread weaving ever so cooly in and out of the patches, in and out of the colors changing its own form to support whatever overall theme the pattern is going for, and frustratingly never becoming dominant enough to command the picture.
I apologize for any esoteric material covered in my blogs. This is the last time I'll apologize for such a thing. I try to not hinder the flow with any inclusive-only filters.
And for the last of my minds rambling...
I am mentally preparing again for an all out effort for this conference. My most successful example of this was WSC 2007. I had a way of motivating myself to always get up in the morning despite the lack of sleep, to always have energy for the room, and (most importantly) to always be interested in the person I was talking to... seeking whichever quality of them which I adore which I inevitably would find. This belief led me to seek out those I didn't typically seek and to dive deeper into those I already dug, ya dig?
Echoing Quotes from my ears past that might help me in the coming 2 weeks of insanity:
"when meeting new people, assume connectedness"
I am no a blogging nomad. Look forward to the updates.
The newest dance craze has been created and will hit the international scene in less than a week. BE PREPARED WORLD.
I love life. I love it all.
-ben james
What an incredible trip! Que fantastico!
One of the greatest benefits I've had on this trip is the ability to slow down. I plan out slow mornings so I can wake up over the course of 30 minutes instead of at the beep of an alarm. I leave myself room to stretch, meditate, and plan out my day. Also just having more free time has been a blessing in itself. I feel my brain and spirit at peace. I'm much more at ease with the inequities of life right now :)
Alright, so the stories:
Roma: We showed up to find that they don't give a DAMN about traffic there. Scooters flying by you on the sidewalk, cars parking perpendicular on the road (smart cars of course), and the best part of the crazy traffic?: being a pedestrian. So many many many of the intersections of Roma don't have lights for pedestrians. The technique? Just walk. We showed up and about 4 intersections from the train station we met our first non-light crossing where cars were coming so fast and often that you couldn't run across it if they didn't stop. We had a kind of staring contest with these cars until a nun walked by us and just stepped out in front of the traffic and low and behold THEY STOPPED! We huddled behind the nun the first couple of lights but after that we grew the cajones to jump out by ourselves.
We visited all the sites: piazza navona, piazza di popola, piazza republica, a bajillion other piazzas, the parthenon, palentino, the coloseum (wow), circus maximus, the vatican museum, st. peter's square and basilica, the trevi fountain, a good handful of parks I already forgot the name of, the spanish steps, where caesar was killed, a handful of well selected pubs, and many more that i'll only remember when i go back there.
I found the city too crowded, too busy, and too packed to enjoy at first. It was tough to enjoy the coloseum when you had 10 different guys come up to you and offer you the same damned things or when there's thousands of people there looking at it just like you. It was incredible to see all the sites but the saving grace for the city FOR ME (big emphasis on this one kids) was the pub crawl. I got to see the city at night in a new light, meet lots of fun people, and really let loose. We met 3 fun girls from UGA of all places and we crawled with them for most of the rest of the night. We met them the next day at Piazza Navona for lunch and at night we had a crazy african styled improv dance session with the locals in the circus maximus. It was pretty unreal dancing to savage drumming in the tracks where thousands had come before and thousands had died. I would love to have seen Caesar's face when I traveled back in time and told him that it'd one day be a good place to dance and party there.
The absolute best part to see of Roma was
easily... easily the Vatican. You don't even have to be religious (it helps) to appreciate the 100 ft tall walls absolutely covered with decades of sculpture, artwork, and dedication. St. Peter's Basilica was HUGE. It had enough seating in there for thousands upon thousands and they still needed St. Peters Square. I just conversed with my good buddy wikipedia.org to find out that the basilica, NOT the square, but just the basilica seats 60,000+. Yea...
So go see that basilica. Spend some time in there.
You find special people all over the world...
Firenze:
Florence was pretty alright. It has a TON of art so its definitely worth the visit but many people say it equals Roma in quality and on that I, in my most professional manner, have to call Shenanigans. It was dirtier. It did have a TON of shops to go to and alot more art but since thats not my cup of tea, it didn't matter too much. The Duomo was pretty incredible on the outside and so so on the inside. Rick Steve's takes a rough stab at it and says that the best part about the Duomo was the shade. Hurts deep, doesn't it? One pretty cool part about the duomo is the huge tower next to it. Christina and I climbed it and saw Florence from the top of the world.
Did the pub crawl there with 50 crazy college americans instead of 160 like Roma... not nearly as good. A good bit of it was the pool we were pulling from. There were 20 of them in a party that said they were 21 or 22 but in fact were 17 or 18 which makes the partying dynamics very different and much more saddening. You better believe that this was the group I spent most of my time with in the beginning of the crawl getting to know and initiating friendships with. whoops.
David was indeed the best of the best. Of all the sculptures i've seen in italy and in my life he was the best. Surely there are many out there that look visually more impressive but the qualifying factor of david was his realism. I saw his stomach which wasn't a 12 pack but a loosely packed 6 pack. His back wasn't a scaled down outlay of the himilayas but instead had a moderate amount of definition. It might be vain, but I saw more of myself in David than any of the other mythical sculptures and that might be a pretty sizable contributor to my opinion.
3rd weekend I was supposed to go to Cinque Terra. Joaquin made it and said it was incredible. The group who went before said it blew their minds but I am very happy I stayed. It gave me alot of time to get good work done on the documentary, it let me relax a little, and I had the room to myself for the weekend.
I'm all for fast paced life and experiencing as much as I can in this little life o' mine but goodness I love relaxing enough to watch life drift by sometimes.
I'm going to work on getting the rest of my 251 pictures up for you guys. Keep harassing me.
