An Extra Helping of Love and Laughter

Hello! I've had one heck of a busy week, so I've not had much time for blogging! What follows may shock, amaze, scare, frighten, startle, concern, disorientate, bamboozle, discombobulate, or even maim. But since that's never happened before, like, ever, I'm assuming it will probably just entertain, interest, and maybe even provoke deeper thoughts, so I'm going to go ahead and write this post anyway. :D

This Thursday, I went to a place called "Thirsty Meeples." It's a boardgame cafe, a relatively new concept. It's a cafe with boardgames. What boardgames do they offer? Well, I'll list them!

 

...Actually, no; no, I will not.

It was fun, although apparently people aren't all that interested in playing Ricochet Robots at 10:30 at night. Shame, it's a wicked game.

I had my last Linear Algebra class this Friday. I'm honestly kind of glad it's over, despite the fact that it was probably my best class, because I was really starting to understand less and less of what the lecturer was writing on the board during lectures towards the end and having to greatly compensate for that knowledge gap when working homework problems.

...Huh?

                                   
 This week, my buddies and I have started jogging. Last week we started going to the gym every other day-ish, but this week we've gone jogging fairly regularly while also going to the gym every other day. It's been pretty intense at times, but it hasn't interfered with work so far, and it's important for college students to establish good habits this early in our lives, because the choices we make today will affect our realities in the future. If you want to use that, you don't have to quote me. :D

I say "jogs"...they're jogs to my friend. He's taller than I am. To me, they're sprints!!

After running for half an hour on the rainiest, windiest day I've ever seen, I was totally wiped out.

As a result of a desire to make good choices which will affect both me and my future family in the future (as opposed to, say, my future family in the PAST), I've been trying to get all my nutrients and eat healthy in general. I've cut back to two or three small burritos a week. I've also been avoiding the dining hall and going to Pret a Manger.

If you're from America, you won't have heard of Pret a Manger, but if you're from England, you know exactly what I'm talking about. American people, Pret a Manger is a cafe that sells slightly healthier food than a normal cafe, like "Eat.", but really the same sort of thing for the most part. Pret a Manger is almost literally on every street in England. It's probably true in London. But seriously, it is so ubiquitous that on Cornmarket Street, where most people get their food, there is a Pret a Manger on one end and, two minutes down the street, there is a Pret a Manger on the other end. It's insane!! But also convenient, so who am I to judge?

Of course, I don't actually think rockets are generally considered very nutritious.
I think England takes the old adage I just made up that "food is fuel for your body" a little too seriously...

Not very tasty-looking, not very tasty, but apparently "good for me," so I bought it.

Unfortunately, while I was able to build up some muscle, I wasn't able to burn off pretty much any fat through cardio. I was thwarted by my parents, who sent me a box of candy to share for Valentine's Day that I forgot to share. Instead, I ate an entire thing of peanut butter M&Ms. Ugh. I need help.

It's well-known that chocolate is my greatest weakness. And also my greatest strength.
Except for that last part.

Speaking of Valentine's Day, yes, I know it was on Friday. The Maths' Department decided to shame an entire university of nerds by letting us know early in the morning:

 All jokes aside, I don't mind Valentine's Day. I know my relationships are in God's hands, and that I'll get married as soon as it's the right time. Plus, I've seen how destructive poorly-founded, destructive relationships can be. If you're reading this blog post, please don't enter a relationship rashly. If you don't think there's any chance you'll end up marrying the person, then best case scenario involves it ending with tears and tubs of ice cream. Heed my warning.

That said, I did get three chocolate bars in an envelope. I don't know why or from whom, but I know I wasn't the only one.

I kind of thought it might have been a bomb...

At the same time, though, I also found in my pidge (kind of like a mailbox, located in the Porter's Lodge) a leaflet for a single's mixer at a pub. Needless to say, I did not attend. I'm like James Bond's bartenders in that I don't "stir." Although I guess bartenders have to be able to mix drinks. So never mind.

Speaking of bombs, I was a few minutes late to a tutorial on Thursday because the police cordoned off St. Giles Street to bring in the bomb squad and have them diffuse a bomb and I had to go around. But it's not that interesting to me, so here's a link if you want to learn more:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/13/suspicious-packages-found-army-career-offices

This week was Love Like This..., a series of ten talks over the course of five days held by OICCU (Oxford InterCollegiate Christian Union) that described itself as "[a] week of lunchtime and evening talks about Jesus." It discussed many interesting issues and questions. Because it's not about unanswered questions, it's about unquestioned answers...actually, that might have been something else.

I was only able to attend the talks about tolerance, identity, and the cross. But the one about identity was fantastic. The man discussed how everyone puts their identity in something, and that people are always trying to figure out who they are because they keep putting their identity in that which does not last. If you put your identity in money, you can never have enough of it, you get robbed, and the stock market crashes. If you put your identity in relationships, it's lost to time or to death. The man talked about how only God is worth putting our identity in, because He is unchanging, and the Bible spends a lot of time and words making we understood this, because it's important to be able to put your faith in something you know is built on firm foundations. 

In the town hall.

He said that everyone worships, including people who don't consider themselves religious. "Worship" in the traditional sense of the word is to measure your self-worth by something. Hence, measuring your self-worth by a golden statue is worshipping that idol, but measuring your self-worth by how good your reputation is with others is self-worship. The worship of anything other than God is idolatry, and can't fully satisfy us because we're meant to be in a relationship with God, who only gives. And He even gave His son to show how much He loves us. Because we are worth everything to Him.

It really got me thinking; am I spending too much time worrying about how I look, or that other people think I'm funny, or how fit I am, or if I'm doing well enough, or whether or not I'm in a romantic relationship? Of course I am. So I've really been trying to make sure that I constantly check myself, and ask myself "What I'm doing right now, is that for myself? Or is that for God?"

A number of people accepted Jesus into their lives this week, which is beyond awesome. If you're not a Christian, imagine if a friend was cured of AIDS. I'm extremely excited for them.

Well, that's all I have to say. I'll try to do another blog post mid-week so I don't have to write so much and you don't have to read so much! Thanks for reading to the end, and have a great week :)

From,

    John "the Guns" Khouri*

* Yeah, right :D

Excitingly Tasty New Enterprises

Welcome back to my blog! I've been lax on awarding JP, so you all get 100 JP! You earned it!

I've had an extremely difficult week, forget my work. But I don't want to talk about that! I want to talk about all the exciting British cuisine I've been eating!

A friend of mine made blueberry pancakes this week with some spare flour! What a deliciously fun time! Although apparently I only like the pancake and syrup part. Not the blueberries included.

I keep noticing how everyone keeps on making dinner from scratch with friends or going to formal/informal hall. Trouble is, I don't have the time. If I'm not working on work, I'm taking a break by going to the gym or watching a movie. Still, it's hard to argue with these kinds of results. Friends and I should join up and make a souffle. Whatever that is, exactly. We'll find out!

Recently the CompSci guys and I have been going to a cafe we discovered on Ship Street. I've uploaded the above photo so you could Sea it. They've got some fantastic food there, a wide variety. I really enjoy their Mexican Chicken panini (which I've NEVER seen during any of my eight visits to Mexico), and I've been eying up their Santa Cruz wrap (...which definitely doesn't come from Santa Cruz. Those wacky English!).  

I've stopped going to my old cafe because I got sick of eating the same mozzarella, tomato, and basil panini every single day. It got really, really boring. Although the guys over there totally know me, perhaps more than I knew myself. Or perhaps not.

Earlier this week, I finally decided to go for the Mexican Meatball Burrito they'd been advertising all month, and they'd JUST TAKEN IT DOWN. The man behind the counter told me that the last time they had the burrito was 2006. Guess it's going to be a loooong wait...

I WAS able to get an al Pastor burrito, though, which was pretty tasty in its own right (kind of hard to make a bad burrito, though, in my own humble opinion). They claim it's a Lebanese import to Mexico with bases in pineapple and shawarma. In words more relevant to my studies, al Pastor burritos are vector spaces. I don't know about you all, but when I hear talk of shawarma, I think of this:

:D

Mmm. Now I'm hungry.

Om nom nom nom nom :)

I've watched Up and Frozen lately. What wonderful movies! I was really moved by Up, which was also absolutely hilarious, and Frozen was a totally delight. I've developed a method for watching movies which involves eating chocolate very, very slowly over the course of a few hours. Basically, if you try to eat it as slowly as possible, it tastes so much better. It involves getting chocolate all over your mouth and general face region, but it's worth it.

In other news, I did some more stand-up comedy recently at the Oriel bar at open-mic night, and it was really, really good, since the audience was paying attention this time. I opened by discussing Hugh Jackman and Les Miz, then transitioned into discussing stealing England's national icons by talking about the news that Jesse Eisenberg, who played  Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, in the movie Social Network, was recently cast as Lex Luthor, Superman's nemesis, in the Man of Steel sequel. According to Wikipedia, "Lex Luthor is a wealthy, power-mad business magnate of high intelligence and incredible technological prowess." I pointed out in my routine that I was very confused at the news, since I thought Mr. Eisenberg had already played the character in the Social Network. 

Also, a friend of mine performed his epic poem about sausages. It was as well-written as it was hilarious. I look forward to hearing the rest of it.

Tourists aren't here forever; they don't have the choice that I do for days on which they take photos!

I would like to wrap up by thanking everyone who lent me their prayers, concerns, aid, and time this week. It worked out. Thank you so much, guys. I love ya'll. :)

Love,

    John Khouri, Gourmet 

Scottish Beard Exercises in Narnia

It's me again! You may or may not be wondering about the title. The fact is that, while I usually have some clue as to what I ought to name a blog post, on this particular occasion, the events I will hereafter describe are so disparate, so unrelated, that I've left myself no choice but to amalgamate the essence of each anecdote into a cohesive title to entice people to click the "View blog" button.

Now, if you're still with me after that paragraph, I'm assuming English was most likely your first language. I didn't intend for that paragraph to get all proper and stuff, but it did. And once it's writ, it's writ, according to the reflexive property. Now, then. I'll tackle the title a word at a time. Just like in Dictionary Rugby.

"Scottish"? Yup. Last night I participated in Ceilidh at St. Aldate's Church. For those of you whom have not yet climbed themselves out of the un-know, Ceilidh [KAY-lee] describes a number of traditional Scottish folk dances. It's a lot like Scottish square dancing. I quickly learned that pretty much every different variant involves: holding hands, rotating a hand-holding circle left, rotating it back right, unholding hands, dosey-do-ing, and walking somewhere else. I got the distinct impression that the Scottish didn't have many moves in their repertoire.

That building was PACKED. There were hundreds of students packed in there, which made the partner dancing very awkward when we had to Polka. For those of you who have never done the Polka before, the Polka requires your own sweet room. We have maybe a tenth of the room required. Our final attempts in such close proximity probably ended up looking quite silly.

But it was alright! It was lots of good fun. The last time I enjoyed myself so much was when I attended a ball with some friends and we danced all night. It was fantastic.

"Beard"?

I've been growing out the beard lately, since before I'm in a committed relationship I want to have the beard experience, and I've gotten a lot of compliments (mostly from the cleaning lady, but a few from fellow students). Plus, it's freezing all the time, and it keeps my chin warm.

"Exercises"? Recently, I've been going to the Oriel gym. Oriel is one of the few colleges at Oxford to have its own gym, and it's open at all times of the day. Ever since I started, I've felt fantastic. Exercise is extremely good for both physical and mental health, and it's helped me cope with large amounts of work/stress. I've also been feeling less guilty.

Not only have I been getting in better shape mentally and physically, but I've also been able to fall asleep at 12:00 at last, which is amazing. I'm definitely staying with it!

"Narnia"? Did you know that back in the day, when C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were professors at Oxford together, they used to meet with a couple of other writers at a local pub and discuss their literature? They called themselves the Inklings. That pub was where they discussed ideas for their unfinished books! That pub was called the Eagle and Child, and I've walked past it every single day on the way to the new Maths Institute from Oriel. I finally went there with friends, and it is GLORIOUS.

The food costs more than most pubs, but that's because it serves almost "gourmet" pub food. It was fantastic, although I definitely can't afford to go there every night!!

There's a bookcase I noticed in the (no longer private) Rabbit Room (the then-private room in which the Inklings used to meet) at the back of the pub. I checked, and there weren't any books on the shelf written by either of the two writers. However, I was able to find this little treasure:

...Appropriate, somehow, for C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien's favorite pub, which was also the favorite of Colin Dexter, who wrote the Inspector Morse novels. I thought my contribution was the finest art I've ever committed.

Just my contribution to the wonderful world of literature!

By the way, if anyone's ever wondered where J.R.R. Tolkien got his idea of save Bilbo and the dwarves from a pack of orcs by means of rescue by giant eagles in his classic novel The Hobbit, I think I've figured it out:

...Remind you of anything? :D

Stay safe,

   John Khouri, Once and Always a King of Narnia

First Week

I apologize for not posting for an entire week. In my defense, I've been up to some very bad sleep habits (staying up until four in the morning on multiple occasions) and working extremely hard, especially this weekend. I'm going to try to sum up everything that's happened since my last blog post in a series of witty and less-witty statements, summaries, snapshots, and stories. Shall we begin?

I helped a friend out with a charity event in Romania for which he was making a video. The theme of the event was "international," and so together we rounded up Oxford's international (and faux-international) students, including an American guy (yours truly), a hispanic guy (yours truly wearing a hat and coat), a Lebanese guy pretending to be German, a German guy pretending to be French, and several more. I felt I had to be extra American to prove to the people of Romania my Americanness, so I used my Obama voice, said "God bless America," and slapped my knee while crying, "YEEEEE-HA!" I don't think they were convinced. Anyhow, it was a fun way to help out with the charity.

We haven't had much sunlight lately.

Apparently there's a lounge in the Computer Science building with free squash (it's a type of British fizzy drink) and semi-comfy couches! This is awesome!! I can't believe my friends never told me about this!

Me: "Is your hair different?"
Friend: "I washed it!"
Me: "...It looks the same as always!"

There were some points this week during which rain was just mae hi'n bwrw hen wragedd a ffyn (Welsh for "raining
old ladies and sticks"), estaba lloviendo hasta maridos (Spanish for "it was even raining husbands"), and boy howdy was it a toad strangler (Redneck for "it was raining hard").

The Oriel Chapel Choir finally had to go out this Thursday into the rain in our robes to enter in through the back of the chapel. It was only a matter of time. It was really cold!

Thursday night I decided to finally watch the first and third X-Men movies. The first one was fantastic! The third one was good. Very much looking forward to the summer release this year now that I know what an "X-Man" is.

This Friday, we had Dial-a-Donut at Oriel CU. For a few hours, we sat around a phone waiting for people to text their room number and a question about the Bible or Christianity in general. A couple of people deliver a donut to the room and answer the question. It's a great idea, since a huge problem nowadays is preconceived judgements. People believe the claims of certain scientists who claim that science somehow disproves God and accept that. We get the chance to tell people what the Bible actually says, what Christianity is actually about, and that's great. Apparently there's also a system called Text-a-Toastie, but donuts are by far more appropriate for Christian Union that toasties, in my opinion. Donuts are a very holey food.

There was some sun this week, for which I was very grateful.

Saturday afternoon I auditioned for an original play. I'm still waiting to hear back from people, but I think it went pretty well. If I don't get cast, that's ok, I'll have more time for work. If I do get cast, that's great, I'll have to work harder! It's about a messed-up future society and is written by a student at Oriel.

I've invented a great character somewhat based on the Crocodile Hunter, but it also draws upon my own perceptions of the Crocodile Hunter having never seen the Crocodile Hunter before. I've recorded myself doing a couple of short clips this week. It's very hard to described, but I haven't met anyone yet who hasn't been extremely entertained. I like doing it because it's easy and it's funny. I'll show a few more people, and maybe I'll do some more recordings. It's like 50% improvisation of what this strange character believes, 20% me darting my eyes all over the place, and 30% working up ways for me to work in the word "tiger" into what I'm talking about in the recording. I can do an Aussie accent well, but for the character, I use this weird amalgamation of Australian, East End, and Manu Bennett (the Kiwi guy from Arrow). This is all very hard to describe, but it's super easy to do and it's extremely entertaining for me.

Filming for "Endeavour" near the Radcliffe Camera forced me to go around the other way. Zoom into this photo and you can just see one of the characters from the show. He's wearing a black coat and hat and talking to a woman in period garb.

Did I mention it was rainy today?

I applauded at the end of a lecture and no one else joined in.
I felt really bad for that lecturer.

This evening, having finished all my work for the day, I decided to be super-English and I got some pie at the Pie Shop. I gotta say, the British have a different idea of what is "enough food." I was halfway through the starter soup when I started feeling a bit too full. By the time I was served the main meal, Toad in the Pie (which was just Toad in the Hole under a different name), I had no appetite.

And in fact, the first thought I had upon seeing this meal was wonder, "How does go about eating this? Is it like a salad? A burger? Cake? A salad-burger-cake hybrid?" It turns out it was more of a salad-cake hybrid in terms of how I ate it. I removed parts of it for eating separately, but I had some of the meat with the Yorkshire pudding bit.

After Computer Science lecture this morning, I went over to the Maths Department only to head right back over to the Computer Science Department immediately after. Ah, the life of the Maths and Computer Science student...

If there's anything left for me to talk about, I want to say that I went to University Park today at last. I say at last because while it's directly across the street from the Computer Science Department, we've never been. I went on a jog there today to switch up my Christ Church Meadow routine. I was blessed with a truly beautiful day (and then later on it started bucketing rain, which I find even more beautiful), and I really enjoyed it. Lovely place, even in the winter. I saw a woman lying down in a patch of flowers photographing her dog frolicking, and I thought of my aunt. 

As is custom whenever I visit a new park, here are the photos. 

Well, hello, swan! How's your day been?

Yup, it's winter.

This was a particularly difficult shot to take. I practically stood on the edge of the river to get it!

This is like the most picturesque fence ever. Seriously.

 

This photo is all kinds of symbolic.

On the way out of the park.

Wow, two hours to write a blog! I'd better not put off writing blog posts in the future!!

Have a great second week,

    John Khouri, Official Birdwatcher of Oxford (I'll explain later)