Sunday, March 30, 2008

posted by Sara at

Flying home!!


The past two weeks was just a blur of pandemonium that I do not wanna think about.

But the end of previous week was good.

And tomorrow is gonna be awesome =D I am travelling back to Oman for four weeks! Gonna be missing two weeks of uni but I don't really give a crap at the moment lol. I have two assignments due during this period and will complete them in the comfort of the big fat sofa in our living room ^_^

I'll be flying out at 2.15 pm, spend a night in Thailand with some shopping the next day till 6 pm when I board the plane to Oman. Haha am already so excited about seeing my family's faces. Gosh I miss their eyes, nose, ear, hair, teeth ... EVERYTHING!

I hope this trip back home will finally bring back some much needed balance to my mind and soul.


Thursday, March 13, 2008

posted by Sara at

Let's talk about N00bs baby

Found this on Urban Dictionary ---> http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=noob

Made me giggle stupidly while sitting at the computers in the Uni's Library.

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A. INTRO

I. What is this?
This guide is designed to give you a better understanding of what a noob is, how to recognize them, some details about them, and how to avoid or get rid of them. It mostly applies to online forums, which are the main targets of migrating noobs.

II. Defining 'Noob'
Contrary to the belief of many, a noob/n00b and a newbie/newb are not the same thing. Newbs are those who are new to some task* and are very beginner at it, possibly a little overconfident about it, but they are willing to learn and fix their errors to move out of that stage. n00bs, on the other hand, know little and have no will to learn any more. They expect people to do the work for them and then expect to get praised about it, and make up a unique species of their own. It is the latter we will study in this guide so that the reader is prepared to encounter them in the wild if needed.

Noobs are often referred to as n00bs as a sign of disrespect toward them, and it's often hella funny, but I will refer to them as noobs during this reading.

* Usually the topic at hand on an internet forum.

B. COMMON NOOB CHARACTERISTICS

I. Noobish
Often, but not always, noobs will attempt to communicate in their own primitive language, known as "n00bish." It is a variant of the hacker language that exposes them as having little intelligence or will to learn. Here is an example of some noobish. Do not attempt to comprehend it: it cannot be discerned without professionals at hand.

stFU /../..an, i r teh r0xx0rz liek emin3m, u cna go tO EHLL OR ATLE4St help m3 wit hthIS!!111!!!!!!!1~~1!!`` !! LOLLOLOLLOLOLlOoLLOlollLL l u n00b

Although you may find this unbelievably funny and/or annoying, it is best to restrain yourself and keep from talking back to them, as they are very territorial and easily angered. This will result in their attempted verbal abuse of you, possibly backed up by other noobs, because they work in packs when doing offensive tasks. It is not an easy task to learn this language because our intelligent accent will keep it from sounding quite right when spoken. You can write some simple noobish of your own, however, by slamming your face into your keyboard repeatedly.

II. Where to find n00bs
On the internet, n00bs make their colonies on forums. They migrate in waves, usually on weekends, and proceed to clog up bandwidth with stupid questions and sometimes even stupid answers. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to be on a board large enough to attract migrating noobs, there will hopefully be authority in charge who is smart enough to take extermination measures before they can make nests and larger colonies. THE BANNER HAMMER is one form of authority.

Larger colonies can result in the mutation of some into spammers. Not commercial spammers, but pointless spammers. A noob can become one of these at any point, but the larger the amount of noobs, the more chance pointless spammers will appear.

Off the internet, noobs appear anywhere the focus is on learning or discussing something specific.

III. Behavior of noobs
Since noobs are basically ignorant bastards, they have a lot in common. The most often seen characteristic is their fluency in noobish, which is why it got its own section. They will also be very self confident as if they were the absolute best at what they are in fact the worst at. Also, they are quite agressive and self-centered, and tend to laugh a lot using many L's and O's in rapid sucession (the noobish word for laughing like an ultimate retard).

It is their instinct to assemble in packs for defense, and they often attempt to organize packs that they call teams. Unfortunately for them, teams usually result in a total loss of communication and they can often begin to fight amongst each other. These teams are quite unlike those formed by non-noobs.

Noobs have difficulty reading English and cannot comprehend the idea of authority.

Therefore, they have an all-out disregard for rules, basic or not. A good way to identify a noob (bad) vs. a newb (good) is to tell them (or have an authority tell them) which rule they are unknowingly breaking. If they respond with an apology and fix it, they are probably not a noob. If they react by insulting everything around them in rapid noobish and causing general mayhem, it is because they are a noob and have had a small seizure due to their inability to understand what is happening.

IV. Noob Religion
Noobs follow a variation of the 1337 (sometimes 7331) religion, in which they worship the number in odd rituals and put altars in their forum avatars and signatures. They often call themselves 1337, which experts say is somewhat like calling themselves godly in a human language. It's best to not interfere with their religious fantasies and practices because that can lead to a noob uprising, which can turn a forum to mush in less than a week.

V. More about noob habitats
Noobs often attempt to maintain their own web pages. Some common features of these lairs are a terrible lack of content, background music, lots of pointless animated gifs, and pages that say some variation of 'tHEir isnothinG H34r yEtt LOLLOLOL!111!1!!~~~!!`! 13371337', which means 'Nothing here yet' in noobish.

They will also have large, seemingly infinite marquees of 88X31 affiliate buttons replaced with red X's scattered here and there, and possibly a hit counter showing a number less than 100. These habitats are numerous but fairly easy to avoid because only noobs link to them. So if you can identify a noob, don't go to its homepage. Simple as that.

C. AVOIDING NOOBS

I. Make sure you aren't one
Note: This section is bilingual so even noobs can make the discovery if they haven't already.

English (T4lk)-

Read the above parts of this guide carefully. If you find yourself unable to comprehend any of it but are instead beginning to think about how great you are and how awesome 'teh 1337' is, you might want to take one of the many available online quizzes to check your noobancy.

Noobish (133713371337)-

Liek, u gott4 re3D teh gudieCAREFUl1y and tehn OMG LIEK I AM R0XX0RZ ya anD ify 0u turn into teh reTARDED u gota go 2 MY WEBP4GE LOLLOLOL!!111~11 ad check 4 warez n stfuu. if u r a n00b go2HELL LOLLOLOlROFLMFAO11!!!11!! !! a/s/l pos gtg n00b suxx0rz ur b0xx0rz OLOOOLOLLLL HELP HELP HELP 1337133713371337

II. Major noob avoiding strategies
The main factor in attracting migrating herds of noobs is a large, active forum. If you find one of these, look to see if it has the management to avoid noob infestation. If not, look for a small or mid-sized forum that covers the same topic so you can enjoy your time there before the noobs find it.

Another way to keep noobs from interfering with your life is to become part of the authority on one of these forums. But that's often hard to do so you'll probably be better off avoiding larger forums first off. If you do manage to become part of the authority, however, take full advantage of it and establish extermination policies so that normal people can have a nice time without noob infestations.

Noob Talk: LAlWAlwalwalWAWLAWLAWA!~! ~!~!!!11!!! 1M NOtttt N0000BZ

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Double Faced Language?

Today we had a little ceremony at uni saying farwell to an Omani colleague who just finished his Master's thesis on modelling the brain mathmatically while in a sedadtive state. During the ceremony, people stood up to talk, and to praise this colleague. Just basically say really nice stuff. At the end of it all he stood up to talk to everyone at the ceremony and said something that went like "I am suprised at the things said about me, even I didn't know them". I know it was a joke, but it strongly reminded me of a topic me and a friend of mine discussed not too long ago.

We were discussing both the Arabic and Persian language, coz they are rather similar in one sense. Arabic is a polite language. It is also a very poetic language, chock full off similes and and metaphors. When greeting another person, it may take minutes in order to complete a greeting. When one asks for something, an answer he or she may get is "Min 3yoony" (from my eyes). When expressing love for someone, one may say "7ayati" (My life). This kinda shows that you are prepared to sacrifice your eyes or even your life for the other person. Which kinda leads to an allegory and thus the double face, coz not many who say this are prepared to sacrfice their eyes or their life. It's quite intresting to try and work out where this phrases stem from, coz for example, the phrase "from my eyes" doesnt exist in the same sense with the English language as it does with Arabic. I think there's a hundred plus ways to say "I love you" in Arabic, while with English it's just one. And so ultimatly, this also leads to the double nature of the speakers themselves, coz honestly I think the Arabian society has the highest number of double faces. Because coureteousy is of the utmost importance, a person will use the poetic Arabic language to be sweet and corteous, when in fact the opposite is true deep inside. This also seems to be true with other poetic languages such as Persian, which my friends speaks.

It's just a theory lol. Not that I completely agree with it, but there are some intresting points.

On another note, I WON THE BET! But victory is so not sweet this time. I saw G today, and she waved then walked over to me. I was kinda suprised, then I yelled "Ha! I win the bet!". She gave me this really sad look, and went "This bet has proved to me I mean nothing to you"

....?!?!?!

I was gobsmacked, then seriously confused. I mean, were we not on an agreement to not talk to each other? And besides, she's the one who started it! I told her this and she went "Yes, but if you had started it I would totally txt you the next day and say I can't do this bet"

Omg I felt like we were a married couple at this point. I just didnt know what to say lol. Then the guilt started kicking in, coz I was pretty scatterbrained last week and so was always late for all of our meet ups to the point of irritating her. I apologized to her at this point, and told her I'll try not to repeat it again.

Seriously, her walking up to me and losing the bet is a huge deal, coz G is one of the most proud and stubborn people I know.

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Sunday, March 9, 2008

posted by Sara at

A bet...


I seem to have somehow landed myself in a bet.

While out with my friend G yesterday, we started arguing about how I am late for everything, and it twisted into a bet where we shook hands on totally ignoring each other for the next week at uni. (o_O) No txting, no chatting on the net, no hanging out at all. If we do bump into each other we'll just say hi, but not allowed to smile (don't ask me, G's condition...I mean, what the hell?). The loser will have to pay the other 15 dollars worth of food at uni, that can be distributed as the winner pleases. I have the stubborn determinity to win this bet, or atleast outlast it. I think my main problem is not trying to survive without my bestfriend for one week, but the fact that I'll forget about the bet and will go sit next to her as I usually do. G reminded me about the bet today, and a good thing she did too, coz I totally forgot about it. (bless her soul, she so knows me!)

"What exactly are we trying to prove with this bet?" I asked her today.

"I dunno. The reason will make itself clear by time. Just go with it!" G says.

*shrugs* "Okay G, I will." I say.
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I drew this yesterday. A friend gave me the title (The Raven and the Rose) and told me the raven could be holding the rose in it's beak or something. Too...stale =P




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Friday, March 7, 2008

posted by Sara at

Wake up call

No, not the Maroon 5 song =P

But a call from my Mother.

I spoke to her a bit about how I am doing her and all that jazz, just the usual "How are you how is study how is the weather" and so forth.

Then my baby sister grabbed the phone from her and started singing Barney's famous one hit wonder "I love you, you love me".

Awwww!

I just so wanted to hug her and squish her and bite her cheeks!

My little brother refused to talk to me.




His reason?

I yelled at him last time we spoke and threatened to get no gifts next time I see him coz he doesn't talk to me much on the phone. So he's mad at me now =\

Sheesh! Can't he take a joke? I was so kidding!

Spoke to my other sister who told me about the weird party/family gathering that was held at our house yesterday in celebration of my brother's and sister's birthday. Everything is weird to this girl for some reason.

Check out my brother and baby sis, what hardcore party animals =P

I should learn a thing or two about partying from them.





Then the serious stuff started. Mama came back on the Phone again, and I told her about the odd phase I am going through.

I expected some sympathy from her...

HA! How wrong was I lol.

She told me instead to stop whining and to just pretty much MAN UP! <--- This is just the gist of the 3 min phone lecture given to me, with her concluding that she knows I am better than this and that she loves me.

You know what? She's so right. What else is there for me to do? I'm here right now, in NZ. Just started a new semester of study. They are on the other side of the world. What is the point of whining and getting myself all worked up about it. I'll probably end up doing badly in my studies if I continue being this way, be dissapointed with myslef, and the sweetness of going back to see them all will turn bland.

That's it, I got a new game plan going =P Already finished one assignment today, and got another two to complete this weekend, in addition to some reading I need to get done. My head is not in the clouds anymore. YAY!

I love my mother so much.

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Tuesday, March 4, 2008

posted by Sara at

A cure for homesickness

Mini warning...the following is just a big load my lamentations. So yeah, stop reading if you don't wanna listen to the woes of some random girl.

I have no idea what the hell is wrong with me.

However, I have a really stong inkling though that all this buzzing and static that has been going on and off in my head over the past month is due to ... homesickness.

Well according to wikipedia the symptoms of homesickness "...may be emotional, cognitive, or physical. In extreme cases, physical health problems accompany the hallmark symptom of homesickness, which is preoccupying thoughts of home. Most people describe homesickness as a want or longing to be back home, continuously missing their parents, spouse, relatives, friends, mates and aspects of their familiar environments. People may describe their feelings as a deep sadnesss, depressionn, frustration, anger, or hopelessness."

Homesickness...I've never felt that before. Sure I did miss my family, home and Oman when I first came here. But I didn't cry in the airport when I said goodbye to them, I didn't even shed a tear when my Father gave me the last hug goodbye in the car before he left me here the first time (he came with me to make sure I settle down). I just got out of the car, waved goodbye one last time and went to my lecture. I've had many occasions throught my life where I lived away from my family or home for periods of time, so am pretty much used to this whole situation.

Despite all this, I seriously think am suffering from homesickness. Like a major bout of it. It has been a year and 18 days since the last time I've been home or seen my family, and it's really starting to take it's toll on me =\ I was watching a documentary yesterday about Balqees the Queen of Sheba and at one point they passed through Oman and I freaking burst into tears!! I was rather suprised at myself.

I've become so scatterbrained as well lately. I'm just all over the place lol. I lost my Student ID card in the first week (for goodness sake!). I'm late for all my apointments. I don't reply to text messages on my phone. I have managed to irritate three people today and burn my hand in a moment of absent mindedness on the oven ^_^

I don't feel motivated to study either. I just simply don't want to. This is really weird, coz I genuinely adore education and learning new stuff. All I really feel like doing these days is to either read my novels or listen to music.

The hardest thing about this whole situation is that I can't really explain it to anyone. I can't exaclty make someone understand what I mean when I go: "I can't study because of static in my mind". The usual reaction is either a head shake, a couple of rolling eyeballs, and talk about me having to take my head out of the clouds or some lecture close to the same meaning.

Lol ... I feel really helpless right now. This is so over my head, and I dont know how to heal the situation. A cure for homesickness, something to stop the buzzing and static. I'd so LOVE that right now.

On a lighter note, I grabbed this shot of me before heading out with some friends for dinner. I don't usually wear heals. Terrible balance due to flat feet. But I decided to dress up a bit and I liked what I saw.

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Monday, March 3, 2008

posted by Sara at

What do you do when your own mind is your prison?

I read this amazing article written by a muslim writer in Canada that really brings through the torments of a person suffereing from OCD.

The link to the article ---> http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/75/Whispers.html

What does one do when the prison is their own mind? Questioning every little thing that they do, always making them go through a double take, or even tripleor quadruple take, in order to convince the thoughts that everything is all right.

OCD stand for obsessive-compulsive disorder and it's a psychiatric anxiety disorder. You're mind basically keeps telling you to obsess over something trivial until you start going through an abnormal ritual in order to kill the thoughts, as seen from the above article.

The main reason why I am intrested in this disorder is I know someone who has it. Always on edge, always ready to explode at you if you put one thing out of order in the bedroom. Everything is meticulously in order in the bedroom, from the way the bed covers are placed on the bed to the position of the carpet on the floor. Taking ages just to do the simple task of washing the hands because the areas between the fingers need to be scrubbed three times clean since that's where all the dirt collects. It scares the hell out of me.

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Sunday, March 2, 2008

posted by Sara at

It's ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!

Here I go again. Every blog needs an intro.

Third attempt at being a blogster. I sincerly hope I'll last this time. I don't even remember what my other two blogs were called as it has been such a while since I even thought of attempting this again.

Hmm I do remember there being "conundrum" in the url of one blog...but that's all.

I've had an intresting two past years. So many thing have happened that have shook me to the core and really changed me as a person. Bittersweet really...don't wanna have to go through such situations again but at the same time, I'm glad I did.

My life before was a sort of reverie, I was there in body, but not there in mind. Kinda like The Matrix, but the other way around. A total loner. Inconsequential existence. All very depressing really.

After bring forcefully jolted back into reality, I kinda started seeing and feeling things in sharper focus. The colors of the tree were greener, the sound of birds outside the window was sweet, and the feel of a breeze on my face truley was wonderous. I know I sound really cheesy and cliche, but this is how I genuinely started feeling. Happiness and at peace with everything.

I mean really, what else is there to do but to hold your head up high and just march on to the beat of your own drums. And that's exactly what I am doing now =D

I started reading, writing and drawing again. Would write little snippets of thought on a random pad which resulted in them being either scrunched up and thrown away or just lost somewhere in the pandemonium that is my bedroom.

Thus, pestiferous is born. My own little contaminated part of the blogging world. It's oh-so-contagious.

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