s! the outlaw torn

It is with a heavy hand I write this. Wayne Rooney has decided to leave Everton for Manchester Utd. It is a good move for his career, and will take him far. I wish him well, as do all the toffee fans over the world. But, there is a widespread feeling of desertion. This season more than any other we needed his services. With the leadership wrangle over the chairman’s post, the club has had a steady start to the premiership, and rooney’s goals would have taken us to mid-table security again after last season’s debacle.

A move to a big club would have suited him just the same at the end of this season. One season less of european soccer would not do him much harm, the lad is only 18 for chrissake!! So despite his big talk of wearing his everton heart on his sleeve, we have been deserted. Roo, kiddo, we wish you all the best, and when you come back to Goodison Park, we will applaud you when you step on the pitch. But mark my words, it stops there. You are going to get hit hard. Your best mates Leon Osman and Lee Carsley are gonna hunt you down. Your little brother who is already in the youth team will hit you harder. And you will remember again what it means to be a true Evertonian, for life.

Norman Hubbard has written an excellent article about this at Soccernet, definitely recommended reading. Hubbard is one of the most intelligent columnists to write about the present English game – read his archive.

yes, the Fall semester is here, and school is back. at least the college doesn’t look like a ghost town anymore. appropriately enough, the monday dawned dull and gloomy. luckily i didn’t have my first class till 4.30, so i was in no hurry whatsoever to leave my bed. the class was ‘polymeric biomaterials’, my advisor’s class, so peace. arul will be taking it too.

made some interesting sabzee for dinner using the ‘panch foron’ (bongs will know what i’m on about!), and it came out pretty good. nats, mal and jase had dropped in for dinner – they’re still busy setting up 122. everyone crashed early last night, so it was vip n i, the original nighthawks, watching junk tv at 2 in the morning!!

last night we had brought in dinner from Jim’s Steak Out, which we only ate half-heartedly cos we were so whacked. vip was working the graveyard shift again, so by the time he came at 1 everyone was flat. we smoked up and watched the Olympic Games closing ceremony. them greeks did a mighty fine job.. the opening ceremony when they lit the torch was breathtaking! i was up till 9 in the morning after that chatting with my, ahem, ‘lady of the night’ (hey hon, thank u !!)

so the boys of 33 Heath can officially be called the moving experts – when moving house, look no further than us. we move anything, anywhere, anyhow, anytime too.. we ask to be paid in kind (beer and cigarettes), and no work is too dirty for us, as our track record shows!!

we helped dan move on thursday, then this weekend was spent on moving into and furnishing 122 Heath (i will in future refer to this house by number, and not by its residents, lest either mal, nats, azmi or jason take load!!) it’s been a hot and humid past few days in buffalo, and sweat was in no short supply as we lifted, fought, struggled with, and ultimately conquered various articles of furnishing and other items of daily life. then to top it all, we had to work in the archi. dept. too on sunday afternoon and evening! the HOD kent was nice, but in a very finicky mood too, being the perfectionist he is, and we literally broke our backs (and an assortment of bodily appendages too!) trying to keep him happy.

so i tried to make this ‘to do’ list today, and did it sincerely, but i gave up when it stretched to the third page!! yeesh! small wake up call that was! tried looking at the course syllabus for both my courses, and yup, again it is going to be a semester where my ability to imbibe all forms of biological titbits of information will be challenged, and my propensity to undertake soporific travails while in the classroom will be brought alive again! yeah, now i’m showing off with my thesauraus!! three big words in one sentence, wowee!!

and in conclusion, despite my sincerest wishes that i would enjoy this last weekend of summer before school starts, and all this manual labor came up, i still did enjoy! we worked our asses off all day, came home really really tired, ate, showered, and smoked up and partied after that all night long! yeah, this is really the life!

NB: this rockstar lifestyle really didn’t allow me much rest and relaxation over the summer, am no more in the kind of physical shape to keep it up, but as jason pointed out, school’s started, so now we sleep!! jase has this uncanny knack of dropping the really legendary one-liners. beautiful! i on the other hand keep trying sidey-comments, and on sheer statistical probability have my legendary days, as i’m sure mal can attest to, having borne the brunt of most of them, with her cherubic smile! ) (any chance i can make some brownie points here??)

ahh, these days of summer.. chilled out yesterday evening with a beer, doing a bit of thesis work.. then cooked and had dinner. we smoked up after that and watched 8 Mile on tv.. and played the C-Mac 2005 demo on ash’s comp.. it was amazing, i hit every tree in the section!! the graphics are so damned amazing.. the full effects are mindboggling – i spent more time looking at the scenery then the damned road!! c-mac is Colin Macrae, a rally game on the PC for those uninitiated.

smoked up some more, and was so high i could hear heaven!! then chatted all night, and was in heaven ) can’t wait for monday morning to swing around again! caught a bit of shut eye in the morning.. woke up all groggy and knew today was gonna be one of those ‘mellow-day-after’ days. but i still had the huge silly grin on my face!

arul n i went with mal and nats to get their provisional driving licenses.. then off to boulevard mall. got some good stuff there – arul got some great deals on a laptop bag and tshirts at old navy, i got shades and jeans too. today, mal finally joined the ranks of naval (navel?!) officers )!! a beautiful, silver “OM” is on the way.

nats and i were inspired enough to try making chicken biryani. in all humility, it came out awesome!! we then watched LOTR Two Towers on tv.. awesome war scene at the end! smoked up and got dhamaar, and were just chilling out, bonding and stuff ) dammit school starts next week and we’ll rarely see each other!

all in all, the last weekend of summer is off to a flyer. gonna have to enjoy every minute of it, carpe diem baby!!

wow, what a day! have never been gladder to hit the sack than i was today! was up all night chatting, then mucked about the whole morning doing odd jobs. spent the whole afternoon then on the phone, which was actually very very nice ) someone out there is making me a very happy man – that person has a lot of good tidings and blessings coming her way! *big, beaming, ear-to-ear smile on face*

went with vip to help dan move. he’s at 131 minnesota now. we rented a U-Haul, and man oh man, i sweated my butt off. we were done by 11ish, at which point all i wanted to do is roll over and die!! i came home, showered, grabbed a beer, smoked a joint, had dinner and flopped into bed. barely managed to chat to the few people online (RK CTM almost has a wing complete; my cousin sis in kenya bought a car; my ‘sky-blue teddy’ was kinda busy) for a few minutes before my hands failed me and my mind gave up making sense.

nats and mal dropped in last nite, all dressed up and with a bottle of bacardi, which we promptly got down to demolishing. arul had his first rum and coke too, and did an admirable job finishing it! we got all nice and buzzed. then smoked up as well, and everything was even more beautiful. hadn’t been that kicked in ages!!

pulled an allnighter chatting on msgr, first time in ages i think!! surprising actually, since i was whacked after working all day. it definitely helped that i had awesome company to chat with too! i can hear all the curious cats’ minds whirring furiously as to who it could be i was talking to!!

weirdest thing was that i was feeling right fresh in the morning too, and for a few fleeting seconds entertained the sacrilegious thoughts of going to the lab.. luckily the spell passed and all such notions were quickly dispelled.

i am so damn proud to be kenyan today! oh yes! the lean mean athletics machine has done us proud again!! the 3000m. steeplechase team steamrolled all opposition for a 1-2-3 clean sweep! yeah baby! kenya has been netting gold in the steeplechase for the last five olympics. well done kemboi, kipruto and koech. “pamoja tutashinda! na wale watao tu dharau wata kanyangwa!! ndiyo! sema ndiyo!!” which loosely translates to “say my name! say my name! biatch!!” word up to isabella ochichi and catherine ndereba too for their silvers in the 5000m. and the marathon.

ben lagat pushed hicham el guerrouj to the edge in the 1500m. but lost out on the line.. hard luck dude.. that silver brings the total kenyan tally to 1 Gold, 4 Silver & 1 Bronze for the competition so far. “natujenge taifa letu, kenya istahili heshima!”

finally, thanks to mal’s initiative, this house is a home! she got ash, vip n arul to sort out the living room, and it looks awesome now. they even got the chandelier up, and changed the main carpet too. hoppefully we’ll get her started on the kitchen next time she’s seized by the decorating bug.

got the extra speakers from vip’s music system hooked up to mine. they come with extra-long wire too, so i have some kick-ass surround system in my room, with 5 speakers strategically placed around the room. anyone remember RK C-313? this would knock its socks off!!

convinced the nice people at NYE Lubricants that my need for the NYE Q oil was genuine, and that i was really a poor grad student.. they offered to send me a 1 oz. bottle of the stuff free, which suits my thesis work just fine!! talking of which, things are going well with the research. i’ll quickly run through what it entails.

i’m going to cut/paint/etch a channel on a flat germanium prism, and run biological fluid through it, basically just different water samples but eventually saline with fibrinogen in it. fibrinogen is what causes clotting in blood. so for different flow rates and patterns, i’m gonna be monitoring the amount of biofilm (scum) formation on the germanium using infra-red microscopy. i’ll also be trying different methods of surface treatment, mainly glow-discharge treatment. the eventual objective being finding the optimum flow path and surface quality that will allow minimum biofilm formation. failing that i can at least set up a cleaning regime by getting an approximate time frame for the amount of biofouling that would hamper flow in the channel.

for those asking what or where this could be applied, all fluid delivery media are affected by biofouling. the longer we can delay this process the better our flow properties. microdosing drug delivery systems, lab-on-a-chip testers, dialysis machine interfaces, transfusion surfaces are all potential applications for this.

it does help that my advisor dr. baier thinks i’m the bees knees as far as all this is concerned! when i met him after the RSF reunion weekend with some rough ideas, he was so impressed that he went to the extent of complimenting me on my sincerity to the project, since he was so sure that i had spent all weekend working on the drafts etc.!! i don’t mind him thinking that way at all!! )

maybe it’s just another blue monday

maybe it’s something i don’t say

maybe i’m damn pissed for no reason

maybe it’s another changing season

maybe i’ll sink into depression

maybe i will make an impression

maybe i’ll be cold to those dear

maybe i end these weird lines here.

it has been pointed out to me that sometimes the blog doesn’t open properly with browsers other than IE 6.0 – i don’t wanna change my template, as what i have here is what gives this page a lot of its identity.. is there anything else i can do? all you users of mozilla and opera.. any suggestions??