This really blows

There are inventions that are so amazing and practical, i.e. like Velcro, and some inventions that I simply don't comprehend. One of those inventions would be the leaf blower. It's unbelievably noisy, annoying, it creates a lot of pollution, and is just asinine. A leaf blower seems as intuitive as sweeping a pile of floor dust not even from one corner of your house to underneath your carpet, but to another corner of your house! I watch people in the neighborhood who spend hours standing there blowing random leaves from their front lawn onto the sidewalk, or their neighbour's lawn. I can only assume that later on, the other neighbour will return the gift with their noisy leaf blower. If not, mother nature will do its job with this device known as 'wind' to redistribute leaves back all over the lawn. Honestly, who invented this machine? How about getting some exercise and raking the leaves - i.e actually removing the problem! How about using a lawnmower to chop up the leaves on your lawn so that as it decomposes, it fertilizes your lawn? Or someone out there, make a machine capable of efficiently vacuuming up the leaves, wouldn't that make more sense?
What a strange world.

On an unrelated note, I'm happy, life is good. yay.

I'm too muscular to smile

Going to the gym is a bizarre experience. On the one hand, I love that feeling of accomplishment (aka achy muscles) at the end of a workout. It's also nice to feel like you're doing something good for your body (and for looking even better too). However, the people at any gym always seem to have a serious look. Most men tend to walk around their arms spread out like they're carrying invisible purses underneath their armpits. They also have this serious constipated look the majority of the time, especially if they're working out alone. The women don't look too happy either, and seem to love the stair/climb master machines and anything cardio related. They don't tend to smile too much either, but it's probably a good idea because the muscle heads like to gawk at them as they walk by. I'm sure a smile would be misinterpreted by muscle men as a signal to 'hey come over and flirt with me'.
Yesterday at the gym, this cougar lady who keeps smiling at me since I started working out in 2003 spotted me again! It's kinda creepy, but it's not a big deal, I suppose I can take it as a compliment about the way I look.

Update: today at the gym I saw a man perfectly exemplifying what I wrote! Except he was walking around with invisible duffel bags underneath his armpits, not purses. He was walking on the treadmill with the most serious face known to man - almost a zoolander like look of determination, and he would wave his arm stiffly in an ape-like fashion. Honestly, who walks around like that?!

European Odyssey - Journal Day 1 - Paris

After a couple of hours of travel on some English highways,we made it to Dover (where the famous white cliffs of England are). I'd like to visit England one day and go to the castle at the top - it looked quite beautiful! The ferry ride took another two hours before we reached France. The ride was fun, but the constant rocking of the ferry can make you feel like a drunk man. I began to think about the physiology of the inner ear that we learned in neurology. I then reminded myself that the next two weeks, I shouldn't think about school at all - I have a lifetime of that! During the ferry ride, I chatted with the other tourists that I would be spending two weeks with - there were a lot of Australians! During the ferry ride, I got to people watch, which is always fun. Old couples are fun to observe - they don't seem to chat much, they sit there, eat and people watch too. Either they've run out of things to say, or it's some sort of comfort to know you don't have to say anything to fill the silence.
Calais, France was beautiful, especially the bus ride on our way to Paris! During the bus ride, I discovered why the lemonade drink my brother and I bought tasted so strong and detergent like, it turns out it's concentrated so that you dilute it in 9x the amount of water!! No wonder our throats burned!
When we arrived in Paris, one of the first things I noticed was the amount of graffiti and garbage thrown everywhere! If this is a city of romance, then I better start throwing trash in my room! During the bus ride, we drove past many of the famous buildings in Paris, such as the Eifel tower, Sacre Coeur, Notre Dame, National Music Hall, Arc de Triomphe, etc.. Those buildings were beautiful and clean, such a huge contrast from the rest of the city! Our night ended with a get together at a local pub beside our hotels. Day 2 here we go!

European Odyssey - Journal Day 1 - London

So the European Odyssey trip begins with a nice one hour delay along the Detroit highways - thankfully we left 3 hours in advance of the flight time. I'm excited about this trip, but not too nervous about this delay. If you believe things will work out in life, then they usually do. I'm sure we won't miss the flight. After we check in, my brother and I waved goodbye to our parents with big excited smiles. They stand their smiling back, looking proud and excited about their grown up boys traveling by themselves. The 8 hour flight was pretty comfortable and the food was pretty good (I'm not sure why people complain about the food!). I even got some decent amount of sleep once I grew accustomed to the sweaty smell of the guy next to me. However, I didn't really grow accustomed to the random chair bumping from the guy behind me - he was either giving birth or fighting invisible ninjas behind my seat.
While waiting in Amsterdam for our connecting flight to London, England, I couldn't but help notice the huge crowds of various ethnicities. It's truly amazing to see so many people from all over the world congregating into one area! When we arrived to the Heathrow airport, my brother and I were bombarded with questions at the passport desk about our purpose of travel, where we received the money to travel, etc. I'm not sure how a pile of questions like that would help with security, because anyone could make things up if they had to. Oh well, good thing we shaved, otherwise imagine the extra questions we would receive.
Once we arrived in London, we made our way using the tube (aka subway) to our hostel. We were kinda tired and sleepy from the travel, so we didn't go out that night. We even ate at the hostel, which wasn't exactly very tasty (nor healthy) - my brother ate this sandwich which included: a hamburger, fried egg, bacon, a mountain of mayo, and a healthy side order of vegetables (aka fries).

We had to wake up at 6am the next morning to get ready to make our way to Paris. I had some pretty good sleep. I was excited, and pumped for this trip! However, my enthusiasm and excitement didn't give me enough energy to drag my 25 kg luggage case very easily. That morning I happened to notice that my new luggage case that I bought two days ago moved a bit slowly, and it felt a bit heavy to pull. Initially, I figured oh it must be the weight of the bag! Until I looked down at the fragments of rubber scraped off on the pavement, and the wheel was as hot as oven (no seriously!). It turns out the axle of one of the wheels became lose, and I was dragging 25kg on non-rotating rubber. It was a good exercise though - it really woke you up at 630 in the morning. Oh well, I'll try to fix it later. Now onto our way to Calais, France!