Noxx

I wanted to mention this a while ago, but it completely slipped my mind. I don't know how many of you remember TheUberElite. Used to be pretty active on the RS side here. Was browsing some PoE streamers a while back and stumbled upon him again. He's fairly popular too. I've seen his stream hit 400-500 viewers at certain times. And just like he was in RS, he's pretty good at the game.

I have somewhat of a "moral" dilemma. There's this girl who lives in the same building as i do. Actually, she lives right above me. We've been talking a bit over the past week or so. She's been flirting a bit here and there, and i'd be lying if i said i wasn't flirting back. She's pretty, cute, funny, smart, etc. Pretty much all the qualities you'd look for in a girl. Problem is... she's 8 years younger than i am. She's 20, and i'm turning 28 in 2 months. I feel kind of weird about it. I feel like she's "too young for me". I spoke to a friend about it, and he said i was overthinking it. I don't know... Anyway, Texas has been great so far. Went to a Football game few weeks ago. AT&T Stadium is amazing. By far the most spectacular stadium i have ever seen. Went to a Dodgers game few days after that. Now that was fun. Has always been a big dream of mine to see the Yankees, Red Sox, and Dodgers. It was such a surreal feeling, sitting there watching them play. Never in my life would i have thought that i'd actually get the chance to watch them. Training is going good so far too. Past few days have been a bit difficult due to the weather, but it's good actually being happy again. I mean, i always felt like i was happy in the Middle East, but there's just something about being in the US that really just makes me feel like i'm somewhere i belong.

Yesterday i asked a girl who works at a bookstore near me for her number. Turns out she's married and i somehow completely missed the ring on her finger. Generally i make a point of checking for one. Most awkward thing about all of this is that i get things laminated for school there quite often so the next few encounters aren't going to be all that pleasant.

My parents are coming to Texas in about 2 weeks. My dad got us tickets for one of the pre-season games. Cowboys vs. Cardinals. Not gonna lie, i'm hella excited.

I started watching Stranger Things last night. Can't remember what time i started, but before i knew it it was like 10am and i binge watched the entire first season. Was actually really good.

No work and it was Ramadan, so no one goes out. Averaging 9 hours a day is easy then.

I cleaned out the front fans of my PC just before i left for the first time since building it. It was like 6 months or so at the time? I was actually surprised at how much dust it had collected compared to the rest of the PC. The radiator was surprisingly clean as a whistle though. And the fans in the back don't really build up much dust either. It's just the three in the front that collect a ton of dust. Maybe it's because they're covered from the front with a panel, or something. At least cleaning that PC is a lot easier than the laptop, so it's much less of a hassle.

Had to take my laptop in for repairs. Got it back today. Thing is running like a dream again. Fan was disgustingly dirty. Wasn't cleaned in like 6 years. Also finally sorted out my medical and TSA clearance. I can finally start flying. Yay.

Was talking to a classmate today about the current political situation between Qatar and the UAE, Saudi, and some other GCC nations. Well, the conversation started there and drifted off to other things, but i'll get to that in a bit. Anyway, the entire conversation really just reaffirmed to me that Saudi is a poisonous pile of shit. I realise that with this political situation both sides (both Qatar and the other Nations) are pretty much equally guilty. As we were talking i was owning up to the bad things Qatar has been doing to cause and prolong the crisis, but whenever i so much as mention anything negative regarding Saudi and the UAE, i get shot down and told it's all bullshit propaganda. One example was an advert aired in Saudi of the Saudi Air Force shooting down a Qatar Airways plane for entering the Saudi airspace. The point of the advert was pretty simple. It was a direct warning. I mentioned it and was told that the advert was taken out of context (which it wasn't) and got told there was nothing really wrong about it. I mentioned the funding of various terrorist groups. It's pretty common knowledge that the entire region funds various groups. Nope. Apparently Saudi hasn't been funding any groups for years now. It's all just fake news and propaganda. The people there have been so brainwashed by the government and media. In their eyes, Saudi has done absolutely nothing wrong, the UAE has done nothing wrong, and Qatar has been doing nothing right. We talked about other various things too, shit like relationships and the role of women. What women can and can't wear, etc. I think this was the first time i ever really spoke about these things in such detail with someone. I was actually kinda disgusted by some of the answers he gave me. How he just thought it was perfectly normal to tell a woman to cover herself, how it's perfectly normal for a woman to tell her husband to cover himself, the whole "multiple wives" thing. It was actually kind of eye-opening.

Been in Texas for a week now. So far so good. Had a bit of a rough start though. The housing i'm staying in was organized through the school. Apparently it's actually meant for the Uni students, but the school has a deal with them so we can stay here too, which is cool. The apartments are "fully furnished", which to me means it's fully furnished as in appliances and shit too. Since the school never mentioned otherwise, imagine my shock when i finally finish moving in and realise fully furnished really just meant "bed, couch, fridge". It's 6pm, i've been up since 6am running around doing registration and paper work. Haven't had a bite to eat, only had a small bottle of water. I'm tired, starving, and the only food i had with me had to be cooked and i had a few cans of tuna. For some reason i had a spoon in my backpack, which i had to use to open a can of tuna. Took me easily 20 minutes to open it up, 2 small cuts on my finger, but damn did that tuna taste good. I was more than just a bit annoyed, especially considering the school's driver took me to go shopping and never once thought it might be a good idea to mention i should pick up a pot and a pan while im there. Anyway... few days later and i at least have a few basics to cook with and such. Apart from that initial hiccup though, things have been pretty alright otherwise. Just been doing ground school for now. Should start flying again within the next week or so. Pretty excited about that. Also need to start looking for a car so i can actually get around a bit easier, and not have to rely on transportation provided by the school. They basically just take you to school and back, and i'd like to actually be able to go places. Also, it's pretty weird being in the western civilization again. It's funny how you don't really notice how different it is living in the middle east until you're not living there. Small things like how much friendlier people tend to be. Maybe it's a southern thing, but people here seem super friendly. It's nice.

I have about 271 hours in PoE now, in just under a month of playing it. It's really good. I'm really enjoying it. It sort of feels like PoE did a lot of the things right that D3 did wrong. The game feels much more well rounded. Obviously there are some builds that are better than others, but for the most part pretty much any build can be used for endgame content given the right items and leveling. Itemization feels better. A tiny bit more complicated than D3, but you catch on pretty fast and start knowing what to look out for on items. The skill tree can be a bit daunting at first, but again you get the hang of it fairly fast and you know what to start working towards to benefit your character the most. The fun thing about PoE is that you can have 10 people all playing "the same" build, but their skill trees could be very different, yet equally effective as a whole. Certain builds still require certain core items, but it's nothing like D3 where if you wanted to play a certain build you had no flexibility in terms of itemization. All in all, i would highly suggest it to anyone that has an interest in that genre.

4 or 5 more days till i leave. This past week has gone by so fast. I should probably start arranging my shit so i can slowly start packing. I'm hella anxious to be honest. Every time i think about this i feel like i'm about to have a panic attack. My anxiety is getting the bestter of me at the moment. The idea of living with "strangers" again makes me extremely nervous. But i know it'll just be like this for the first few days and i'll be fine. I tend to get on with most people i meet really well.

Are you kidding me? As long as there's a good ratio, 20-30 people is optimal.

There's still a lot of oil and gas in reserve. Enough for quite a few decades, i'm sure. The problem isn't the lack of oil/gas, it's the lack of demand. People either found their own sources, or they found alternative methods. I guess that's fairly obvious. The thing is, the government has kept the local population in the dark. The locals still get their "allowance" each month, so to their knowledge the country is still flourishing. Meanwhile, it's not. It's struggling. There are so many locals here who have bank loans in the high $100ks, even more. A lot of them don't work. A lot of them solely rely on their allowances (which in some cases is a lot of money, like $250k+ a year for doing jack shit other than being born with the right name). So if, for whatever reason, oil dries up/becomes completely useless and no one ever needs to buy oil/gas from here again, then this country will take a massive shit. The locals will either riot because their government can no longer give them money, or they'll simply go back to 50 years ago and live in tents in the desert because many few of them are educated (and are bothered to get educated) and they'll have no way of sustaining themselves. There are 2 reasons this country is a fairly decent place at the moment: 1. The government keeps the locals happy and peaceful with their allowance. 2. Westerners do white-collar work at high salaries (to compensate for the shitty living conditions [weather/stricter rules] and people from the east come here as cheap labor [they still get paid so much more here than they would back home]). So soon as the money dries up, the bargaining chip for locals go out the window, and the incentive for white and blue collar workers go out the window. So essentially you'll be stuck with a population of ~350k people (i'm sure some expats will stay) down from about 2.5m, with the large majority of them not being educated enough to read or write a sentence.

I mean you could just arrange to have the money in the bank and not have these issues? Put aside some savings instead of spending every penny you get instantly, no? He works for a government company. The government is pretty much broke (despite what they want everyone to think). Most government owned companies have been struggling to pay their bills for the past year. His company is no exception. They basically have to spend money as they get it, because they're behind on bills. There's no option to save. Last year or whenever it was, when Saudi and the UAE enforced a blockade against us, they cut off all their exports to here. We used to get a great deal of products from the UAE and Saudi. So what they had to do was get those products elsewhere. Thing is, anywhere else would have meant prices would go up. That means living costs rise, which means less incentive for foreigners to want to live here. The government knows this. So they had to start subsidizing the prices of the new products they imported to have them match those from Saudi and UAE. Apparently they spend over $1.5B a month on subsidizing these products. Thats a $1.5B loss each month, and it's been going on for a year more or less. Couple that with the fact that the oil price is no longer what it used to be... this country is struggling.

Arlington. Don't really know too much of the place, to be honest. But even if it were to be the anus of Texas, i can't wait to get out of here for a few months. Last night a friend of my dad came over to the house. Apparently he has a travel bad and a warrant for his arrest out. He's the CFO of a big construction company here. As per the law it is illegal to give your clients a cheque unless you have the money in the bank to foot the bill. But it is very common practice to do it here, then just tell your client not to bank the it till a certain date. So a couple of days ago one of his clients came round his office to pick up the cheque like he does every month, he hand it over and tells him not to bank it till a certain date. The guy looks him straight in the eyes and says "first i'm gonna go to the bank, then i'm going to capitol police to report you". So now he has a warrant for his arrest. He's basically been trapped in his house, because legally it's requires so much paperwork and permissions to arrest someone in his house. So chances are they'll never even try. Now he has to wait for his boss (who's one of the most powerful people in the country) to come back from holiday and basically clear this mess up. Funniest thing of all, this just happens to be the "holy month of Ramadan" and the assclown decides to pull something like this after they have been doing the same business for years now. Just shows you... these people are [bleep]ing scum. They might have money, they might have power, but they are [bleep]ing dogshit.

I don't think i've ever met a Dutch person who wasn't way too arrogant, and just thought his shit doesn't stink. I don't get it, are they actually raised to think they are a superior nation, and they should go out of their way to let everyone understand that they think they're superior? So i'm sitting at the US embassy yesterday. What a [bleep]ing nightmare. Getting into that place is harder than escaping Guantanamo, i'm sure of it. Anyway, so i'm waiting for my appointment to number to be called, and ahead of me was a Dutch guy and his wife/partner/whatever. I think they were applying for some sort of long term VISA, because they were talking about buying a house, putting kids in schools, etc. (this guy clearly thought the entire building wanted to know what he was saying too, because he was talking as loud as he possibly could without shouting). So he gets asked a few questions, answers them, and with every answer he felt compelled to give some sort of snide remark. One of the best ones being "yeah my kids are gonna go to a Dutch school, i don't want them getting a shitty American education". There were a few more that just left me thinking: Dude, you're applying for a VISA to this country. Maybe it's not in your best interest to do absolutely nothing but shit talk the place? Yeah? I don't know. His VISA got denied though, so [bleep] that guy. People like him deserve it. In related news, my VISA got approved. ~2 weeks from now i'm headed to Texas for 6-8 months, and hopefully longer. I'm excited.

Started playing Path of Exile yesterday. It's pretty fun. Complicated. Steep learning curve. Figured it would be similar to Diablo 3, but really isn't. Very enjoyable though.

Oh god I lol'd. My oh my I was an ass clown in 2011 when that thread was fresh. Wow totally uncalled for. Actually too scared to see what the context was to be honest. Finally have a VISA appointment Monday. Things took longer than expected, but i mean this time of the year things go slow. I don't know if US embassies are like this all over the world, but damn they're strict.

Like i told him, i would have gone to check up on them after not receiving rent the first month. I don't know why it took him 7 months.

Our neighbors recently got "evicted" from the house. Spoke to the owner of the property yesterday. Pretty complicated story. So about 2 years ago an Indian doctor moved into the house with his wife and 2 kids. It's a 6 bedroom house, but his company paid for it, so i guess he didn't really care. That said, he decided to sublet the house and rented out 4 of the 6 bedrooms in the house. Technically speaking, it's not exactly legal for a him to do that since he's not the owner of the house. Anyway, i'm not even sure how many people were living in the house next door. It seemed like 20 people in total, easily. So about 7 months ago we noticed the doctor no longer lived there, since we never saw/heard the kids playing in the yard anymore. We really didn't think anything of it. About a week ago i noticed the owner outside one day talking to the current occupants. He looked furious. Day later the occupants started packing and moving. Yesterday while they were doing renovations i went over to talk to the owner and he told me what had happened. Apparently the other occupants were paying the doctor to live there, as they thought he owned the house. For the past 7 months they've still been paying him. So for the past 7 months the actual owner has not seen a dime of income from the house. Finally after 7 months he decided to go see what was going on and after seeing the state the house was in, he decided to just kick them out. Apparently they caused around $60k worth of damage to the house, or at least that was the estimated cost of getting it back to a livable condition. Repainting, fixing doors, cupboards, wardrobes, things like that. Finding it pretty hard to feel sorry for the guy. How do you let people stay in your house for 7 months without getting any rent, before you decide to go check up on things? Also started my enrollment process last week. Hoping that by June i'll be in Texas.

Maybe i'm super naive, but i don't see a World War breaking out any time soon. Let's be real, any country (or even collection of countries) that decide to take on the US are [bleep]ed. To put it plain and simple. Russia has nowhere near the money nor the technology the US Military has. It's pretty obvious that the US has some scary weaponry hidden away. Weaponry that i'm sure will make anything Russia or the rest of the world has, look like it's from the stone-age. No other country in the world, apart from Russia, has the manpower to take on the US. Russia might have the manpower, but as i said, they severely lack the weaponry. Also, you have to consider the fact that the US as allied with so many other countries that would jump at the chance to take down Russia. And then there are the countries who would still fight alongside the US out of pure fear of what would happen to them if they choose not to fight with the US. I believe most of what is going on between the US and Russia is a game of poker with both players bluffing. Both sides are just waiting for the other one to fold. Only problem is, the US is bluffing with a much better hand. This is all about pride. Putin wants to be known as the President who made the US back down, which is very unlikely to happen with Trump in office. But even taking into account how volatile Putin may be, i don't think he's dumb enough to actually start a war with the US. I think people are overreacting.

I've been putting off deciding on a school now for over a month. I realised that today when for the 10th time i sent emails to various schools asking for prices etc. and i ended up emailing schools i already communicated with before. I think i actually already found a really good school. Good reviews online, decent pricing. Guess i'm kind of just nervous. Part of me can't wait to get things going, part of me is scares shitless of going to a new place again and "starting over".

https://www.amazon.ca/Helmets-Removable-Shield-Cycling-Glossy/dp/B071CY98VW It's a thing.

Yeah, 2007. Lol last night I had a scare. I noticed some liquid under the engine after idling in my driveway for a few minutes (was figuring out the stereo dash) after I got home. It wasn't oily, but because of pollen and lighting I couldn't make out a definite color. It was odorless, too. I went over to my neighbors (the husband is a mechanic) and it turns it was just condensation from the AC because of the humidity. They both found it funny. Growing up, when we did have a car, it never had a working AC, so it's something I'd never seen. Don't even worry about that. With my first car i was like this too. Had the same thing happen to me. Called my dad in a panic telling him my car was leaking something. Ended up being the AC. It's better to be safe than sorry. Rather ask the stupid questions instead of paying the stupid prices.