My Friends,
In the total absence of gainful employment with which to attend, I have turned my attentions toward self-betterment. Specifically I am exercising my brain on a website called sporcle.com that a friend put me onto. Being a trivia website it was right up my alley, what with my stockpile of useless knowledge. I find the quizzes to be quite challenging and have as yet only gotten a perfect score on a couple. As with anything though there are aspects which I don't like. For one, the quizzes seem to be mostly user-generated. Normally this would be fine and quite understandable but it has ruined the literature section of the site: said section is teeming with Harry Potter quizzes.
I don't want to disparage Harold Pottinson but this is a little ri-goddamn-diculous. I fancy myself well-read but because I haven't crushed the Harry Potter series I am a literary dunce...according to Sporcle.
My favourite quizzes thus far, weirdly enough, have been the geography quizzes. "Name All 50 States" was not too tough and I mastered it pretty quick, but "Name All the Countries of the World" is one I am still struggling with. This is a hard one. For example, apparently San Marino, Timor-Leste and Burkina-Faso are the names of actual countries. There are 196 nations total and my best score thus far is 189. I figure this knowledge might come in handy one day so I do the quiz a couple of times a day. It beats workin' for a livin'.
In related news, I haven't been outside too much the past few days. Some might say this is a good thing as the outdoors is only for people who fail at the internet, but being cooped-up, even on an elective basis, starts to fuck with me after a while. Its why I limit myself typically to one new video game a year: I spend a few days or a week mostly indoors playing it, then I can go back to my mostly active lifestyle outdoors. However, this isolation has less to do with any new video game than it does with the altogether shitty weather outside. For real, what's my motivation to go outside when its pissy and grey and I can hear the wind swaying the bungalow I live in? Work? Lol, I think not!
The biggest problem with reclusive tendencies is that you begin to dissociate your bio-rhythms from the solar cycle; that is to say you begin to go to sleep and wake up later and later. The situation reached a head yesterday when I awoke at noon. Its by no means the latest I have ever slept in, but its as late as I care to go at this point in my life. It looks even worse when contrasted to my woman who gets up habitually at 6:30 am every day. She has a full quarter of a day longer than me to be productive. I was there once and I wanna get back there again.
But before you start worrying about me and the self-destructive spiral of sleep and isolation I am currently a victim of, please be reassured that I have plans to be active. Chief among these plans is to attend the "Coldest Day of the Year (Bicycle) Ride" in Toronto tomorrow. Being a dedicated mountain-biker I am going to have to work extra hard to keep up with all the city-slickers and their fancy and faster road bikes, but it should be a good time nonetheless. Plus, there's free hot chocolate which totally makes it worth the ten dollar trip to the city. Simple math.
In the total absence of gainful employment with which to attend, I have turned my attentions toward self-betterment. Specifically I am exercising my brain on a website called sporcle.com that a friend put me onto. Being a trivia website it was right up my alley, what with my stockpile of useless knowledge. I find the quizzes to be quite challenging and have as yet only gotten a perfect score on a couple. As with anything though there are aspects which I don't like. For one, the quizzes seem to be mostly user-generated. Normally this would be fine and quite understandable but it has ruined the literature section of the site: said section is teeming with Harry Potter quizzes.
"Who the fuck is this Shakespeare guy? Which Harry Potter book was he in?"
My favourite quizzes thus far, weirdly enough, have been the geography quizzes. "Name All 50 States" was not too tough and I mastered it pretty quick, but "Name All the Countries of the World" is one I am still struggling with. This is a hard one. For example, apparently San Marino, Timor-Leste and Burkina-Faso are the names of actual countries. There are 196 nations total and my best score thus far is 189. I figure this knowledge might come in handy one day so I do the quiz a couple of times a day. It beats workin' for a livin'.
In related news, I haven't been outside too much the past few days. Some might say this is a good thing as the outdoors is only for people who fail at the internet, but being cooped-up, even on an elective basis, starts to fuck with me after a while. Its why I limit myself typically to one new video game a year: I spend a few days or a week mostly indoors playing it, then I can go back to my mostly active lifestyle outdoors. However, this isolation has less to do with any new video game than it does with the altogether shitty weather outside. For real, what's my motivation to go outside when its pissy and grey and I can hear the wind swaying the bungalow I live in? Work? Lol, I think not!
The biggest problem with reclusive tendencies is that you begin to dissociate your bio-rhythms from the solar cycle; that is to say you begin to go to sleep and wake up later and later. The situation reached a head yesterday when I awoke at noon. Its by no means the latest I have ever slept in, but its as late as I care to go at this point in my life. It looks even worse when contrasted to my woman who gets up habitually at 6:30 am every day. She has a full quarter of a day longer than me to be productive. I was there once and I wanna get back there again.
But before you start worrying about me and the self-destructive spiral of sleep and isolation I am currently a victim of, please be reassured that I have plans to be active. Chief among these plans is to attend the "Coldest Day of the Year (Bicycle) Ride" in Toronto tomorrow. Being a dedicated mountain-biker I am going to have to work extra hard to keep up with all the city-slickers and their fancy and faster road bikes, but it should be a good time nonetheless. Plus, there's free hot chocolate which totally makes it worth the ten dollar trip to the city. Simple math.
Then after an arduous ride through the city I am going to my friend Mumtaz's house for dinner. The last time I saw him was in 2009 when he was my interpreter in Afghanistan so its a meet-up which I am quite looking forward to. We kinda lost touch after I rotated out and I always wondered how he and my other interpreter Iqbal had fared after I left. Both are in Canada and safe which I am quite happy for. I can't wait for dinner tomorrow, as it should be reminiscent of the good old days where we ate delicious but modest meals on cardboard tables waiting for bombs to drop on us.
Stay Thirsty,
-Andre Guantanamo
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