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So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 39
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
My unpolished poem
Saturday. 2.17.07 10:47 am
The light fades! With clinging claws,
No purchase found, just skews and yaws
I'd trade for my sight all man's flaws!
But still I slide as darkness maws.

My Eyes! They weep with parching tears
That seep from walls of stone
They send out cries that no one hears
The naught they see, they see alone.

The once bright orbs, clung with clouds and mist
At pit's bottom, in darkness deep, forlorn
The spectral silence with blue's cold death is kiss'd
Showing always rain, but keeping hid the storm.

The eyes! Where all our secrets end
Colors and lights are not all I cannot see
But the nature of our souls my friend
Is hid: Mine from you, yours from me.

What Justice blinds me? Blinds us all?
What have I done that sent me wrong?
What Justice let fall the scales of Saul,
Is my faith yet not as strong?

Let fall the scales of Saul! I cry
Let end these days in Hell
But Fate provides not the reasons why
For Justice is blind as well.

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The Question
Thursday. 2.15.07 7:48 pm
Today our Japanese exchange student told me that he had a question he wanted me to help him with. I asked him what it was, and he said that he didn't actually have the question with him right now, so he couldn't ask it. I figured maybe it was on the computer. He asked when I was leaving, and I said 5ish. He asked where I was yesterday (tomorrow? yesterday?) and I told him I'd been sick. Around five he came into the room as if he'd been running. I asked him if he wanted me to help him with the question, and he said only when I was finished with my work. I wasn't, so I said that I'd just help him now and come back.

He said his question was across the street. We went across the street. He peered into the large lecture hall. "Empty?" he said. I nodded. "You can go..." he gestured to the room, "I get question and bringing here."

I waited in the room, extremely suspicious.

It was a long time before he came back, and then I heard his feet pat-pat-pat as if he was running again. He came in and he had a large, bulky object like a gigantic table lamp, with a white windbreaker zipped around it like an awkward mannequin. He unzipped the jacket to reveal a lovely vase with 6 gorgeous red roses.
"I buy you for Valentine's Day!" he said proudly. "Because since I coming here, you are so nice to me."

Awww. They were gorgeous. I told him so. Thank you. He said, "When talking for Valentine's Day, you say every year father buy for you a flower. But you say this year not possible because is far away. So I buy you flower for Valentine's Day from shop near my and Jay's house!"

Awww. I told him I was going to put them in my office, but he didn't want anyone to know that they were from him. So I told him I would temporarily put them in my office until I left, and then take them home. We walked back to our building. He said that he was going to give them to me yesterday but I wasn't there the whole day. He left to go up the stairs to his office.
"Oh, yes!" he said.
"What?"
"There actually is not any question."

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VD!
Wednesday. 2.14.07 8:52 pm
So. It is Valentine's Day. I'm sitting here in my room. It's kind of too late to eat dinner. That's not that bad, since I don't really feel like eating anything I have here. I'm communing with my computer. And my tons of work. I missed a class for two days in a row because I was sick and now they just informed me that I have a quiz in that class tomorrow morning. At eight. And my book is at school. And it's 9pm. And the weather is "freezing rain/sleet/snow". They said not to go out on any "long quests". Not that going to school is a long quest. And I have a meeting with my advisor tomorrow, during which I'll have to tell him that I basically haven't thought about our problem since the last time we met. Which, coincidentally, is the same thing I told him last week. When I wasn't sick. Then I have this geophysics assignment that I think I finally figured out after 4 hours.... but I doubt anyone else in the class will turn it in. But I have to finish it anyway... because what if they do? That means I actually have to write it up. And hope my calculations are correct, which I doubt, because my excell spreadsheet looks like chicken scratch.

To make matters worse, I still feel blah. But just to really grind my gears, someone has been cutting like a thousand onions in the kitchen, so the only thing I can smell is onions, and it's making my eyes water.

So basically it's Valentine's Day and I'm sitting alone in my room doing work on my computer while holding back small, ugly, stinging, onion tears and wishing I could fast-forward five years of my life.

In other news, my parents are awesome.

And chocolate is delicious.

And my discomfort and face swelling is apparently not deadly, as far as they can tell right now.

I guess I'll just suck it up and drive back over to school. ARG!!!

*Update*: The 'icy rain' has frozen all of the doors to my car absolutely shut. I can't open them. The door handles will come off before the doors will come open. I think this is a sign from God that He wants me to fail my quiz tomorrow. Seeing as this quiz doesn't actually have any affect on my grade, you can't really argue with that.

*Additional Update*: I think when people ask me tomorrow what I did last night, I will tell them that I had a party. What I won't tell them is that the theme of the party was "pity" and the guest list was me.

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Letters from Benjamin
Wednesday. 2.14.07 2:47 pm
Subject: GRATEFULNESS

Hi,

It was a great pleasure for me being with you at the Gillian birthday party the other day. I wish to thank you for all the information you gave me concerning the American culture. I am very grateful for that.

How did you end the weekend? I hope every thing went on well and that you have started the new week with a lot of energy.

Let’s keep in touch.
Benjamin

___________________________________________________________________________

Hi,

I have really taken time in replying back to your mail. I have taken the opportunity of this cultural particularity of Saint Valentine feast to react to your mail. In our country, it doesn’t mean anything to most of the people. Only those who have been with the western people do feast it. So how are feasting it. Happy feast then.

Benjamin

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From Helena's blog
Tuesday. 2.13.07 7:39 pm




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How Zanzibar Got Told, and other tales
Tuesday. 2.13.07 6:16 pm
One day, Zanzibar packed up her things and went to Hydrology Class. Due to a variety of factors, not least of which that her Hydrology Text is deadly boring, (but mostly because she totally forgot) she had not done a bit of the reading for class.
Her good friends Teresa, Gareth, and Sam were leading the discussion of the day so she felt like she could reasonably assume that they wouldn't call on her if she pretended to be engrossed in looking through her papers. However, as the discussion began, Teresa asked several question to which nobody seemed to know the answer (perhaps nobody else had done the reading either!) Zanzibar began to feel uncomfortable, and felt like she should answer a question for her friend Teresa. She waited for her opening. She needed a question that was a little open-ended, that didn't refer to any specific terminology. Teresa said that she had read a little part about the center of mass of the watershed, and she didn't really know what they were referring to. Were they referring to the center of mass of the landforms, or the center of mass of the water itself as it fell across the landforms? Perfect. Enter the first person singular.

I answered that it was an interesting question... I talked a little bit about my understanding of "center of mass" from physics class, and since we were talking about how long it would take for a drop of water to flow through the watershed to the outflow point (and thus how big we'd have to make our storm sewers or whatever), perhaps they were referring to how the mass of the actual water was distributed, because then you could get at the flow time, and thus the lag time on the hydrograph (a graph that shows you amount of discharge in a stream through time) between the peak of the rain event and the peak in the stream. I added a "but I don't really know" to the end.

The prof said that ending an answer with "but I don't really know" wasn't a very good way to end it, because you just gave a whole answer and then you undercut it. He asked Teresa if they'd said "center of mass of the water" or "center of mass of the watershed" and she said it was of the watershed which made her think that maybe it was of the topography. I shrugged to say that I would allow that interpretation as easily as mine.

Then the prof said in his deep, booming voice, "There class, did you see what Laura just did?"
A pause.
"Because Laura is a graduate student, she is very excellent at..." This sentence was starting out pretty good...
"BSing her way through a question to which she has no idea what the answer is."

Pause.

Oooh SNAP. I just got so TOLD.

An undergraduate piped in, God bless her, "And an undergraduate can't do that?"

"Why don't you answer the next question and we'll find out?" I said evenly.

Stunned, my ass having been taken to school, I became quiet as the period progressed. But I was not cowed. Questions were asked and answered and I was calmly flipping through my book, having no idea of even the range of pages that we ought to have read. Sam asked a question with a bunch of technical terms in it, and as the words were coming out of his mouth, I flipped to the page that had, in bold, the answer. I raised my hand and answered his question, dwelling on various points I found to be important and pontificating a little while on the ramifications of the answer on the planning of urban watersheds as a whole. The professor asked the engineering side of the room if they ever considered the things I had said when they planned their drainage systems. They hadn't. He said that maybe they should, and that it was a question we would be sure to come back to later in the term. He made a mark on his paper.
Later on, as he was handing back assignments, he apologized to me for his earlier remark.

Which goes to show you, kiddies... not even this professor, the one guy to ever be so bold as to call me out on my shit (I could feel nothing but awe for him, by the way).... not even he knows the full EXTENT OF MY POWERS. I would like to thank the Lord, who looketh down upon his little sheep who hath gotten Told, and giveth her the page number and the bold-faced type to so that she may be redeemed.

And that's why they say that you get your Phd when you want to take your B.S. to another level.

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My lymphnodes are swell
Monday. 2.12.07 9:18 pm
So apparently my friend got this infection behind his forehead-skin one time, and it made his forehead swell like woah, and he had to go to the hospital and they pumped him full of antibiotics so that the infection wouldn't spread into his BRAIN.

I think it's really weird when your face swells or your sinuses hurt. They say if you ask your average Westerner where his or her "soul" or "being" resides physically, they will usually tell you that it resides right behind the face. We tend to imagine ourselves as located right behind the face, looking out from the eyes. People from other cultures won't always give you the same answer: they are located sometimes in the chest or down in the pit of the stomach.
I think of myself as being located right behind my face, looking out from the eyes, just as they say. So when my sinuses hurt or something, it's weird because you're suddenly aware that there is a layer of skin and other junk that separates the outside world from "you". There is skin, a system of sinuses, lymphnodes, hair follicles and what-have-you... a swelling, infection-getting layer of crap known as your "face" that you hide behind, like a mask.

It also reiterates the sentiment I've previously written about (see: esophagus ulcers)... that is, that there is no point in worrying about things, because you'll worry yourself sick over some thing that you think will happen, and then what will really happen is that you'll get a raging FACE BACTERIA, and your FOREHEAD will swell, and then it will INFECT YOUR BRAIN, and then you will DIE. You weren't even creative enough to START trying to worry about THAT ONE.

Well, I'd best go to the doctor tomorrow before whatever I have in my face-layer gets into my brain.... stupid face.

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Dedicated to Dilated
Sunday. 2.11.07 9:49 pm
Querido Diario,

Ahoy vi uno paciente con los sintomas muy raros. Él se quejaba de que le dolían el estomago y los oídos. Él tenía siempre mucha hambre, y comía mucho alimento pero él no ganía el peso. La semana pasada, él comí ocho quesadillas y cinco burritos, y aunque él se encontraba mareado, todavía tenía hambre. No conocía nunca de esta enfermidad. Pensía que estaría una solitaria, pero las solitarias no molestan los oídos. Pregunté,
---¿Vistó a los otros paises recientmente?
Él dije que vistó a África el mes pasado. ¡Qué mala suerte para la doctora! Todos los enfermidades desconocidas vienen de África. Pensía de mis días a la Universidad de Puerto Rico en Río Piedras, donde estudiaba el medicina, cuando de repente, él empezó de vomitar. Sus ojos se puso muy grande y él sacé la lengua, que estaba verde.
---¡AY! Él gritó. Yo debí lo pegar y lo lanzar a la planta.
Por supuesto, estaba un extraterrestre, que vivía en el cerebro del paciente, y que comía todos lo que pasé para la boca. Cuando el extraterrestre estaba bastante grande, él salí del paciente y se escapó.
No tenamos a menudo pacientes con esta enfermidad, pero de vez en cuando ellos vienen… por eso necessito estar siempre listo.

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