Training Day:
I wish I could say that I had a great nights sleep last night, but I didn’t. It’s always this way after rugby training. My muscles are aching like crazy around my calves, thigh and shoulder. But saying that, if you’re a person who does a lot of sports, or a lot of heavy physical work, you know what I mean when I say the “aching” is a good feeling. It’s a feeling of being alive, a feeling of pushing ones self to the max, regretting it the next morning, and looking forward to it again in a few days.
Dozing off :
It’s becoming more and more of a problem while I’m driving, and I’m afraid one day it’s going to be the death of me. It’s the type of dozing that sneaks up on you while you’re driving. Your eyes just close, and when they reopen you realize your 200 meters down the road from where you remember you were. Thank God I haven’t hit anything or anyone yet, but there have been a few close encounters. It’s not lack of sleep. Maybe if you come across this posting sometime in the future, you can post a remedy.
Eid Al-Adha (Feast of Sacrifice):
Eid Al-Adha just past by last weekend, and it reminded me of something funny that happened to me a few Eid’s ago. If you don’t know what it is, Eid Al-Adha or Feast of Sacrifice is the most important feast of the Muslim calendar. It concludes the Pilgrimage to Mecca. Eid al-Adha lasts for three days and commemorates Ibrahim's (Abraham) willingness to obey God by sacrificing his son. Muslims believe the son to be Ishmael rather than Isaac as told in the Old Testament. Ishmael is considered the forefather of the Arabs. According to the Koran, Ibrahim’s was about to sacrifice his son when a voice from heaven stopped him and allowed him to sacrifice a ram instead. The feast re-enacts Ibrahim's obedience by sacrificing a cow or ram. The family can keep about a third of the meal and donates the rest to the poor. I hope this explanation is correct, and if it isn’t, correct me or forgive me for my ignorance.
Anyway back to my original story, this happened a few Eid’s ago. My grandmother had bought a cow for the Eid, (didn’t use the work sacrifice cause it makes it sound so cultish) My dad and I were skinning and cutting up the allocated portion of meat that was for the family and just as we thought we were finish, my granddad comes in and mentions that he hasn’t had cow brain stew (I kid you not, it’s a Malay traditional dish) in a while, so getting the hint, my dad and I set forth the retrieve the brain. The severed head had been staring at us for the past few hours, and now it was time to mutilate it.
Now the best way of cracking the skull open would have been to use an axe, and just split that mother f*cker in two, but as it usually is that case with noble deeds there was no axe to be found, so we settled for second best which was a metal saw. Some of you out there who have cracked open a cow skull are probably thinking “metal saw?” Yes a metal saw isn’t the most efficient way, but it was getting dark, and there was a deadline. So here I am with my dad, on our knees trying to saw this MOFO in two and it’s going know were. The saw blade is too fine, the head is unstable, and the floor is caked with blood. Fifteen minutes into this mission of love and frustration surrounded by mosquitoes, smelling like cavemen and looking like two extra’s from a Rob Zombie B-grade horror flick, I look at my dad and say “if I ever become a psycho serial killer…this is the point in my life where I turn bad” I thought it was funny considering the circumstance, but my dad thought it was hilarious! He just fell back on his ass and couldn’t stop laughing, and seeing ones dad laugh himself to tears is something not seen often by a child.
To cut along story short, we got the brain, it took too long that my granddad lost the craving, and I ended up BBQ-ing cow testicles to find out how they tasted. The answer? They tasted Ok, but not worth the gross factor.
Auschwitz liberation:
Holocaust survivors and world leaders held an emotional ceremony in Poland, 60 years after the liberation of the Nazis' Auschwitz death camp.
The Nazi regime murdered six million Jews and many others during what became known as the Holocaust. Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi camps, where 1.1 million people died, was liberated by the advancing Soviet army on 27 January 1945.
Something like this should never have happened, and Yes we have to remember event’s like this so we don’t make mistakes like it again, but I’m getting a bit tired of Israel rubbing it in our faces with the whole “poor us” routine. We have the Israeli President Moshe Katsav Expressing fears over a resurgence in anti-Semitism in Europe, yes it is a worrying resurgence, but what about the Muslims, Arabs, Indians, Asians, Africans, Hindus, and the other minorities who are being subjected to racism? Mr. Katsav, it’s happening to all the minorities, not just the Jews.
Then we have Mr. Katsav question whether the memory of the Holocaust has lost its power to deter attacks and insults against Jews. Now this sounds more like the actual reason why Israel like to shove down our throat the memory of the Holocaust? In a way the Israelis are saying “yes we kill innocent Palestinians, destroy there homes, take their lands, but please don’t get angry with us cause we had to go though the Holocaust.”
Lets always remember and stand up against injustice in what ever form it comes in, but lets not use the memory of it as a shield to deflect responsibility for our own injustices.
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