Indonesia

just a few pictures:


Balengen barrel at low tide


Fisherman


Balengen


Balengen from behind the peak

I've been here in Bali for about five days now. I'm staying in a little shack on Balengen Beach on the Bukit Peninsula that costs $4 /night. My bed is just a mattress on the floor and there are some disturbing-looking insects crawling around, and there is no electricity, but the surf is literally 30' away, and the waves have been great all week. It's run by a nice family who doesn't really speak any English but who certainly know how to cook well. I haven't been doing much - surfing twice a day, reading, and trying to work up the motivation to work on medical school secondaries. I've also been avoiding Kuta Beach like the plague, because the two times I've been in there it has been chaotic and hellish.

The surf has been really good all week, and I ran into some people who I knew from last summer who told me that it had been flat most of August, so apparently I arrived at the perfect time. I haven't surfed since I was here last year, so I've been feeling rusty and out of shape, but it still feels great to be back in the water. I've only been surfing Balengen, which is one of my favorite breaks, but later in the week I might surf Uluwatu or Padang Padang if they aren't too crowded, or maybe Impossibles...

Anyway, I don't have too much else to report, so here are some more pictures:


the fisherman again


sunset from my $4/night room on the beach :)


sunset session


Uluwatu


set at Uluwatu (check out the surfers in the lower left)


Uluwatu at high tide

مع السلامة لبنان

sunset on the corniche in front of AUB last month

I fly Beirut - Doha; Doha - Bangkok tomorrow with Qatar Airways. I am excited to move on, but I am sure that I will really miss Lebanon and Beirut. I missed Beirut just being in Damascus for a few days, and it is also a little sad that I may not get an opportunity to come back for quite some time. I would love to think about coming back here next summer to study more Arabic, but I think I will need to spend the summer in Seattle after being away for two summers. I also was lucky and got to meet so many great people here, and this is always the strongest factor in my impression of a city or place or time. So, thank you to anyone from AUB, CAMES, Lebanon, Beirut, etc. who is reading this!


last night out in beirut

I have one day in Bangkok during which time I will see The Dark Knight on IMAX and eat some spicy food. The Lebanese food is great, but it's a little bland and I've gotten kind of tired of the same thing every day. I fly to Jakarta, Indonesia the next morning, spend 10 hours, and then fly to Denpasar, Bali for the following three weeks. I get to see my mom and little sister in Bali, which I am really excited about, and my other objectives are to surf as much as possible while spending as little money as possible, and I might also have to work on some medical school secondaries.


Bukit Peninsula, Bali - several of the world's great surf breaks are on this stretch (from left to right): Uluwatu, Padang Padang, Impossibles, Bingen, Dreamland, Balangen...a stretch of pure heaven

I'll be in Bali until September 19, when I fly back to Bangkok and then back to Seattle, two days before autumn quarter starts at the University of Washington. Since I've spent about as much time traveling as an undergrad as I have actually at UW, I have quite a big courseload throughout this coming year to make up for lost time. I'm taking physical chemistry for biochemists (CHEM 452), genetics (GENOME 371), and honors biochemistry (BIOCHEM 440) this autumn, and I will also likely take Arabic at the Seattle Language Institute. Insha'allah the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute will also let me do undergrad research in some capacity, and I need to start working again as soon as I get back since I've been spending way too much money this summer. I don't want to be that busy! I already miss the dolce far niente thing I've been enjoying over here.


Seeing the Cascades and Olympics every day is one of the things that always pulls me home...
Jonah on Mount Rainier in 2005.

picture

I took this last night in Gemmayzeh, and I like the blue. I had my camera at ISO 1600, so this was only exposed for 1/80 without using a flash. I also just noticed that apparently some cameras are capable of including location metadata in a JPEG, so it's possible to keep track of all the GPS coordinates of where all of your pictures were taken.

That is...so cool. Flickr has location tagging, and I read this article a while ago about how some regime/police brutality had been partially exposed by pictures that people tagged to a location on Google Earth, and so imagine if this was accomplished automatically. Someone - a journalist, soldier, local - takes a picture of something in Iraq, Zimbabwe, the West Bank, Georgia - and when they upload it to their blog, flickr, facebook, the image is automatically tagged to that area on the map, and so when people look at the area, they're presented with more than just a map and censored news.

I came across this while looking for the aforementioned article again:
http://earth.google.com/outreach/cs_darfur.html

Happy VP Day

I'm stoked for Biden. I'll be really curious to see how this choice affects the polls, and I'm already laughing in anticipation of the Republican ads that will probably dwell on trivial details regarding Biden's personality and relationship with Obama. God, I hate Republican ads. They're disgustingly insulting and the fact that they are effective is even more scary.

Anyway, from the NYTimes Op-Ed "Hoping It's Biden":

Biden’s weaknesses are on the surface. He has said a number of idiotic things over the years and, in the days following his selection, those snippets would be aired again and again.

But that won’t hurt all that much because voters are smart enough to forgive the genuine flaws of genuine people. And over the long haul, Biden provides what Obama needs:

I think and hope that last statement is true. When someone is choosing McCain vs. Obama, I don't think the deciding factor will be Biden's controversial remarks...people just like Obama, and hopefully the addition of some substantive political depth will alleviate any doubts that would push voters towards McCain.

My noticeably-increasing interest in this election is partially the result of having more time off, but mostly from Obama's slipping numbers. I really wish he would go on the offensive a bit more - I mean, how is it even conceivable that he's being seriously challenged by someone who supported and continues to support the most poorly-run war in modern history? I think his numbers would increase if he'd just repeatedly say, "look, America has gone to shit in only five years because of this war. do you like this? no? then don't vote for someone who's going to insist on f*ed up military presences in the Middle East!"

Eh, it's probably not that simple, but I just don't understand how any conscious person could vote for the Republican Party. Unless you make bank as a businessman, they don't do a damn thing for you! They make everyone's life harder, they've made the world a much, much more dangerous place, and they rape tomorrow for tiny symbolic victories today. It is really, really scary to me that Obama isn't 10-15 points above McCain right now.

Steep and Cheap

SAC comes up with another world-saving idea:

Today's Deals on Steep and Cheap:

I didn't skip class much in high school, but blood donation day was a free pass for anyone over 18 years old. You could check in at each class and then say you were heading out to donate blood. The program's oversight was worse than Enron's. I think blood donation drives would achieve much greater success if they traded in blood for beer. They could give it a hokey name like "Pint for a Pint," and then they could pour out an equal measure of Guinness for however much blood you donated. Then on college campuses they'd just give out Bacardi 151 flasks with each donation. Blood Banks would be overflowing.

Today on SteepandCheap we have The North Face Heron 23 2-Person 3-Season Tent and The North Face Flint Backpack. We also have some Arc'teryx Covert Scarves, Men's Rho LT Zips, and Classic Beanies.

articles

three of my friends from CAMES have recently had articles published:

• Nadine Marroushi -The Daily Star: Ras Beirut: model of coexistence for all of Lebanon?
• Sarah Lynch - CNN: Americans adopt new election strategies in Lebanon
• Alice Fordham - The Daily Star: The challenge of having Western readers see past culture and gender

skiing

It's only mid-August and I'm halfway around the world from Seattle, but I'm already getting excited for this winter...I can't wait to see Black Diamond's new boot line, to start lifting and getting back into shape for the winter, and to have a season that doesn't get disrupted by a broken hand!

from last winter:


jonah at stevens pass, wa

tim at stevens pass, wa

me at khahane ridge, wa (photo by jonah)