Barcelona

On the way to Spain.

Almost 6 am, and ready to go to the Airport.

First time using Newcastle Airport.

Some hot chocolate while we wait in the airport.

The view of Spain from my seat.

The hotel we stayed in.

Sfera, a nice mall to check out in Catalunya.

Noticed lots of people use scooter bikes in here.

Catalunya, you gotta love the big passage down to the beach.

Garlic bread that was wet, cold and awful

Grilled Salmon with potatoes on the side - Delicious.

It's not dunkin' donuts, its dunkin' coffee in here!

Rambla de Mar, a nice place to be at when it's sunny.

Lots of boats on the side of the Rambla de Mar passage.

Woke up usually earlier than the rest to study.

Bad engrish in the metro.

The metro station we always used. Notice the SMART, so tiny!

The Barcelona stadium.

The logo on the glass door.

The queue to get a ticket to the stadium.

Where to look at when you want to know the time or score.

Barcelona logo on the grass pitch. Wonder how they do that.

Apparently there aren't much 5 star stadiums around.

Modern design beside the train station. Art or a mess?

A garbage bin, but if you look closely it's a smiley face.

The famous church that has no angles. Shame it was under construction.

Spaghetti Bolonese. Looked promising but didn't taste spectacular.

Love the way they lit the passage to the big castle in espanya.

The fancy big castle Arabs owned when they were here.

Enjoying the view from the castle's balcony.

I had to.

All this to charge an Ipod

The team.

Metro system was pretty efficient.

Loved the photogenic passages of Barcelona.

We went to this musuem where you could wear armor parts.

Pitta Hut anyone?

Burberry, Gucci or LV? Lots of those were sold beside Rambla de Mar.

Who said there wasn't a Disney Land in Spain!

Another photogenic passage, packed with people.

The metro stations would stay open till 1 am usually.

Where we watched the Barca vs Bayern Munich match - I'm glad Barca won.

I wish we had roads like these in Oman where grass would grow in between the bricks.

The beach in Barcelona.

Some people made sand castles, others made this piece of art! Homer simpson from the Simpsons in case you're wondering.

Durum in Barca. Durum means Shawarma apparently.

Turkish coffee after dinner.

I kept the tradition and had Maltesers for desert.

When I couldn't study in the morning, I'd draw.

This is what was in front of my desk, asking to be drawn.

Graffiti walls were always nice to look at, but I'd avoid areas with too many scribbles on the walls.

Mcdonalds is good for your health.

A lovely big garden we visited in Rambla de Mercedes.

Walking through the garden.

The view of Barca from the garden.

I met a couple of friends from last year in Barca!

It was a nice reunion.

Had a lovely time and lovely food. I think this was tuna.

Tapas Restaurant - Yummy shrimp rolls.

More small portions of lovely food.

That's about it, I think I posted way above 13 photos in this post.

Spain & Portugal

Are generally warmer than England. Hull specifically.
So I'm back from those 2 Schengen states which consumed 11 days of my precious Easter break and burnt no less than £1300. Sure it was mostly due to bad planning and relying on people other than myself, but both countries are expensive to hang out in as tourists - Especially Spain.

I'll be providing a detailed article of my trip to Spain and Portugal with loads of pictures taken from 3 cameras mainly. I think I have a flickr account and it's time I use it properly.

Less than 13 days left till the deadline of my EU law essay, which I've read for yet still haven't started written anything for it.

My knee makes noises when it's bent

It doesn't hurt though. Well not that much.

Doesn't every Omani (who plays football) complain from knee-aches? I sort of noticed they all have it from time to time, pain in the knees. What's wrong, you'd ask, and their answer will always be; Oh just played football the other day and...

Anyways EU Law.

All of this to read just for one assignment. One.

I've been doing some good reading for my EU law assignment, and it's worth 50% of the subject. Lots left to read, and I'll be on my way to Spain on the 5th of this month God-willing. The assignment is to be handed in by the 27th and I'm not really sure how I'm gonna manage to do that - but never underestimate students under pressure, they do the impossible.
As Al-Zubair said in one of his interviews; "If you want something done, give it to a busy man". Busy men are under pressure, and certain people under pressure can give you some amazing output in terms of results. I'm proud to say that I think I'm one of them - but what follows after this amazing output is a mental breakdown for a couple of weeks.
Let's hope they're no more than 13 weeks!

しあわせ な はは の ひ - Happy Mothers day

Reminder for those who forgot; it's mothers day. Send her a nice e-mail or a message. If she's in the same country as you, send her some flowers. I'm sure she'll appreciate it. I chose the message option since who knows if my mom is going to open her e-mail today or not.

When's the other 'special' days? I'm sure there's more than 13 of them.

Edit: Resident Evil 5 is out. Quite tempted to get it but can't waste too much time on it as I've lots of work to hand in right before and after the Easter break. >_>

おもしろい - Interesting

Now that's what I call being creative with photography

Photographers aren't usually as creative as Swedish designer Erik Johansson, who managed to pull off amazing results with photographs he has taken by himself followed by editing them in Photoshop. Take the one above as an example. Now that's an interesting, new and fresh idea, not a recreation of some silly, non-interesting idea and labelling it as creativity.

People, learn from artists such as Erik, and maybe in 1 out of 13 tries you might get an interesting idea that would count as creative rather than a recreation.

P.S. For those wondering, the text on the left side of the title, which seems as a foreign language if not as a drawing, is actually the title itself in Japanese.
I do study Japanese as a language after all.

ががくと えいが - The drawing & the movie

Give me a laptop which its monitor doubles as a tablet and has paint in it, and the result will be something similar to this:Quite deformed, I know. Who is it? I don't know

Really I haven't drawn anything in months. I think it's because if I start drawing, I want my drawing to be just as good as the one drawn before it or even better (ambitious, yeah?)


Oh and I went to see Gran Torino this evening, a movie Clint Eastwood stars and directs in - And I must give it to him, the movie was simply brilliant. Its not a movie that can only be appreciated by a specific group of people, but rather by everyone. As opposed to Watchmen, a recreation in the form of a movie of the most celebrated comic in history according to many. Simply say, its by DC comics, who made Batman. However, it was way too hyped up, and if you ask me, Watchmen isn't a movie to watch (Unless if you fancy naked blue men*).

Lets hope I avoid awful movies from now on and produce more than 13 drawings this year.

* One of the main characters in Watchmen, known as Dr. Manhattan, was almost always naked in the movie with all of his packages being quite clear - Heck I would've mistaken the movie for a porno if I saw it on tv. A creepy porno with bald glowing men.

もったいない - What a waste

Its a shame I haven't updated this blog in ages since I thought that no one would be interested in it (including me) and might as well have left its flame slowly die away until no one remembers about the fact that I had a blog in the past.
However consistency and discipline are necessary - which are, as you can guess, features I lack. With blogging I thought I might gain some of these important features so here I go again with blogging.

What a waste. Seriously

I'm usually careful with spending money, partly to have some left at the end of the month, but mostly to avoid spending money unnecessarily (which is one of those many things taught to us by the religion of Islam). Spending money on things I want but not need is somethings that has dramatically changed with me, with focus more onto the 'need' part as opposed to the 'want'.
I hate it when people prepare way too much food with no plans of storing what's left of it in the fridge but rather throw away all that's left. Again, What a waste. At least give it some kittens or dogs, however no goldfish; as these things don't know when to stop eating, and if you put way too much for them, they will die from eating way too much. Fact.
Prepare for some consistency from this blog for the next 13 months. God-willing.