akrish

As usual, I have been negligent of my blog for the past several months. As soon as the semester started I got really caught up in school work and completely forgot that I even owned a blog. While this has happened over and over again, this time was worse because my contract with my hosting company expired so akrish was completely taken down. Honestly, I didn’t even notice until my friend Gary sent me an email asking me about it (thanks Gary). Anyway, a couple of days ago I renewed my contract and so akrish is back up. Winter break is starting in a couple of weeks and I’ll probably write more then.

I’ve been getting into bouldering/climbing sort of as cross-training for ultimate. It’s also something my brother is excited about and he got me into it during Thanksgiving. Anyway, watch this video. It’s crazy.

I have a final in a couple of days, so until next time (which is hopefully not in four months…).

I started reading the news recently (yes I used to not read the news or really care what was going on in the world) and it’s making me really depressed. I subscribed to the New York Times’ RSS feed and here’s what I read about today.

• 16 Dead in Afghan Helicopter Crash – Last week there was the Iranian plane crash that killed over 100 people and now this. The middle east is still as depressing as ever.
• Explosion Kills 9 in Afghanistan – These I.E.Ds are still littering afghani streets and pretty much just wreaking havoc. not good.
• Chinese Question Police Absence in Ethnic Riots – First of all there were massive ethnic riots in China between Uighurs and the Han, and second of all, the police really didn’t do a good job of stopping the initial riots of the Uighurs and the ensuing retaliation of the Han.
• Explosions at 2 Hotels in Indonesia Kill at least 9 – Yup, and I’ll be in Bali in just a couple of days…
• 5 Officers Shot and 2 Suspects Killed in N.J. Melee – And even at home things aren’t pretty. This one is a pretty violent gunfight.

I guess there is some light in all of this but it doesn’t seem like much consolation

• Mauritians See Chance to Break Cycle of Coups – After years of living under military regimes, the Mauritians appear to be having a legitimate election. Of course, the current ruler is a pretty strong favorite to win, and he first came to power via a coup, so while this is good, it’s not all that amazing.
• Signs of Hope Emerge in West Bank – The Palestians, no longer under Hamas, is experience some economic growth and some form of peace. There has been a lot less violence between Israel and Palestine over the last year or so and I personally am pretty hopeful for some sort of peace agreement.

And while most of the world is as chaotic as ever, Israel seems to be relatively peaceful. Of course it’s a pretty precarious peace here, but there haven’t been any commotion since I’ve been here, so that’s pretty good.

I think this is partly why I don’t like to read the news. I guess it’s good to know what’s going on in the world, but when the world is as messed up as it is, it just makes me depressed.

So I’ve been reading The Economist a bit recently and they have a lot of international news. Unfortunately most of it isn’t good. Reading it this morning kinda got me depressed. Here’s what I read:

1. Brazil: Teenagers in Brazil, specifically Rio de Janeiro, are walking around with machine guns selling cocaine and marijuana in open-air markets. Policemen, officials and ordinary people are pretty much turning the other cheek. Pretty scary, but I guess the good news is that the mayor is supposedly trying to clean things up, but he hasn’t gotten very far. Read about it here.
2. The rest of the Americas: Venezuela has a reported murder rate of 48 in 100,000. That’s the second highest in the world, second only to El Salvador (another central american country). Pretty much I don’t want to go to South America. I don’t understand how people can live and be productive if they’re constantly fearing for their lives. Oh by the way, that’s just the reported rate, it doesn’t count most police-related deaths, prison deaths, and others. Read this article, it’s really scary.
3. India: The Ganges is ridiculously polluted, and so is a lot of India for that matter. So my question is… the Ganges is supposedly holy right? then why is it so polluted? Shouldn’t it be something that Indians are proud to take care of? Maybe I’m just being naive here but I really don’t get it. The problem is that, since the Ganges is holy, people continue to bathe and drink the water, and then they get sick. But again there’s some good news in that there are environmentalists that are working to clean it up, but so far they haven’t been very successful. Read about this here.
4. China: Olympic athletes are refusing to compete in endurance events because they’re worried that the pollution will affect their performance in the future. This just makes me really sad. Pretty soon people won’t want to go outside because there’s too much air pollution. Kind of reminds me of Wall-E…

And don’t even get my started on the middle east. That region is just a disaster.
And now to cheer you up…

Another month has come and gone. Wow time really flies when you’re at school and have tons of work to do every day. I spent a decent amount of time listening to music, but not much of it was really new.

I’ve been listening to a lot of “plain-old” rock the likes of Dead Poetic, Lorene Drive, Chasing Victory, along with some other stuff like Muse, The Mars Volta.
I also found out that a lot of the bands I used to listen to have been coming out with new albums so I’ve been listening to some of that too. In list form we have:

• Thrice – The Alchemy Index: Volume 1 & 2: Fire & Water – this is actually very different from older Thrice stuff (which I’ve been enjoying for a couple of years now, but also very good. I really like the “water” part of the album which is really nice and mellow)
• Thursday – Kill the House Lights – This albums all right, I really liked their older work, but recently they’ve been starting to slip in my eyes. I’ve been listening to it a bit mostly because I hoped this album would be like the old albums.
• Jimmy Eat World – Chase This Light – I’m starting to like Jimmy Eat World a lot more, I’ve only listened to this album a couple of times since I got it, but it sounds pretty good. I should probably listen to it a bit more.
• Coheed and Cambria – Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV: Volume 2: No World For Tomorrow – Coheed and Cambria continue to amaze me with creative and new work. I really enjoy all of the albums that I have of theirs and in particular like almost all of the songs on this one.
• Brand New – I have a couple of their albums and like all of them. These guys are probably my favorite band right now.
•   The Mars Volta – Amputechture – I’ve had this for awhile but never really listened to it. One of my friends played some Mars Volta in his car recently and I decided I’d give them another shot. I actually really like the songs on this album, even though they are a little out there.

Despite not having a lot of free time, I’ve been trying to play as much guitar as possible (which unfortunately hasn’t been much). I’ve shifted even more into the world of acoustic guitar and barely played my electric this month. Here’s what I’ve been working on:

• Acoustic Alchemy – The Wind of Change – a short little song that sounds really good when they play it. It sounds ok when I play it but it wasn’t too hard to learn. It’s also really fun to play.
• Acoustic Alchemy – The Alchemist – this is a fun, kinda fast song that I’ve started to learn. It’s harder that songs I’m typically ready for but I’m working on it.
• Andy McKee – Rylynn – If you haven’t seen/heard of Andy McKee please check this out. He’s absolutely amazing and Rylynn is a really awesome song. It’s ridiculously hard, but I’ve been making some steady progress and have the beginning parts of it down.

I’ve also been freestyling/jamming with one of my friends a lot. He ends up playing the electric and I’ll play some stuff on the acoustic. I find this a lot more fun than just playing by myself so hopefully we’ll keep doing that.

On a really random music note, I started listening to mainstream rap a bit this month. Yes it’s very uncharacteristic for me and recently I haven’t been listening as much, but I found a couple of songs to be pretty catchy.

Anyway, that’s the November Music Recap

For those who don’t know, I live in a house with some of my friends this year. A couple of weeks ago we decided to start a house blog that all of us would co-author. Since then, some of us have been writing articles on there and we’ve gotten a decent number of hits (not anything like the abundance of readers I get on here though). At any rate, I thought I’d advertise for that site here to maybe pipeline some of my traffic over there as well.

Personally, I think it’s a good site, we have some pretty interesting scientific articles, and of course a lot of life updates from everyone in the house. I guess it’s similar to my blog except it gets updated more frequently and you would get a couple more perspectives on some different things. I recommend that you check it out, I promise you won’t waste too much of your time.

Etnanine

I also just wrote an article on there about multitasking which I kind of wanted to put on here. I guess there’s a conflict of interest writing for two blogs with such few ideas and limited time for writing but I’ll figure it out.