"Soul Patrol"

To those of you who are unfamiliar with American Idol or Taylor Hicks in particular, I encourage you to go to the American Idol website and take a look at some of the videos. Congratulations Taylor, I am a "Soul Patrol".

* According to the host of the show, 63.4 million votes is more than any president has ever received in the United States.

Photo: Kevork Djansezian - AP

Migration Complete!

The migration of all Barobax.net data from the old webspace to the new one is now complete. All the albums should now be available. If there are any broken links please let me know. Thanks.

Wonder

At the heart of the Rocky mountains of Colorado, by the green forests of Aspen trees, beside the silent shores of small lakes and along the path of narrow rivers, lies one of the wonders of the world. A wonder not like the pyramids of Egypt, but rather one that is handcrafted by God. At an extremely bizarre and out of place location, lies the Great Sand Dunes of Colorado. A vast piece of land filled with sand dunes that are the highest in North America. Once you step forward into the dunes you think that you have found yourself in the Saharas of Africa or the hot deserts of Dubai, only to look behind you to see the tall standing Rocky mountains covered by the stretched white bodies and the dancing green leaves of Aspen trees.

A short hike will take you to a place where water flows over the sand. Only meters away the sand is so hot that you can hardly keep your bare feet on the ground. The wind forces the sand to dance like a Cobra and the tall dunes challenge any visitor to reach the peak. But the challenge is not one that can be faced by all, as these dunes are soft and pull you feet in as you try to climb them.

As many of you may know sand dunes belong to the shores of seas and oceans, then what has formed such giant dunes in such a location? According the brochures that we received at the Sand Dunes National Park, the combination of sediments brought by rivers, wind and time have helped maintain such an amazing place which have created a phenomenon so unique that it can be considered a wonder.

After visiting the dunes we drove around the area, there were lakes and grasslands and there was a sign: "Zapata Falls". At first it didn't look very promising, the path was a rugged dirt road which posed a small challenge for the minivan we were driving. However, after a 5 or 10 minutes drive at a speed of about 35 km/h, we reached the end of the road where a few cars had parked already. We asked around and followed the signs and finally reached the falls. Only minutes away from the hot dunes the water was ice cold. A small river was flowing from a source which appeared to be hidden in a large cave. We climbed the rocks and tried to enter the cave where two young men were photographing something that was a great surprise to me. A huge bed of ice on the rocks and a fast flowing waterfall beside it. The temperature inside the cave was at least 15 degrees lower than the dunes and the water was so cold that you could not hold your hands in it for more than a few seconds.

The trip to the Great Sand Dunes proved to be an exciting one. On our way back we also visited a ski resort which was lush green and beautiful. The photos from this journey are in the latest album I've added. I hope you enjoy.

Royal Gorge

Royal Gorge which is often considered the Grand Canyon of Arkansas is a canyon located in Cañon City, Colorado. Less than an hour drive from Pueblo, it is home to world's highest suspension bridge.

The latest album includes pictures that I took from the bridge and some of the attractions which are nearby including a petting zoo, a wild west site and show and a steep railway which takes visitors from the bridge down to Arkansas river.

This bridge was built in 1929 and still is the highest suspension bridge in the world, suspended at 384 meters above ground. According to Wikipedia, the largest (longest) suspension bridge in the world is in Japan with an end-to-end length of 3909 meters.

Memphis

I have uploaded the photos I took at Memphis. The first 10 photos are actually taken by my dad, so, thanks to him.

It's been a long time that I have exceeded my quota on the website. So every time I want to upload a new album I delete an old one. As a result, many old albums may not appear on the website anymore. I do have a new webspace but I haven't fully moved to it yet. Please bear with me as I perform the migration.

The Star Spangled Banner

I say hello to you – Hello – from the green forests of yet another red city: Memphis, Tennessee. As I mingle with yet another bunch of rednecks in this republican state, I tell you stories of harsh and bitter prejudices and discriminations. I tell you of the devastating story of black slavery and cruel acts of racism against the decedents of the Persian kings and queens (a.k.a. Iranians). The minute I set foot on the aluminum stairs of that Boeing aircraft, the hot and humid winds of this Southern city whipped my face like the whipping you would get from the revolutionary guards of Emam in Tehran after your half a liter consumption of doggy sweat (a.k.a. aragh sagi). As I fearlessly turned my face to receive the whipping I bravely said: “you can whip me all you like, white devil, but you’ll never break my spirit” (Peter Griffin/Family Guy).

But the reality turned to be in the contrary to the stereotypes. Just like Russell Peters realized that his own immigrant father has become a redneck, I realized that I too have become one. I noticed this because I no longer found the citizens of this fine state racists, but quite nice and friendly. My hasty conclusion was that I myself, must have become like them to like them so much!

But American inhabitants of Tennessee are no different than the European, Chinese or Iranian occupants of Toronto, except their funny accent of course. But this was no surprise, as my visit to other redneck states like Georgia had proven useful, and Mahdi S. had carefully explained to me that “Weyngetna” in Southern American accent in fact means “We ain’t gettin’ none” or “We are not getting any” in proper English. So when the waitress turned to me and said: “Wan-cach-sum-grob?” I quickly knew she’s saying: “Wanna catch some grub?” meaning “Would you like something to eat?”

Memphis is a city in south-western corner of Tennessee, immediately bordering two other states: Mississippi and Arkansas. The landscape of this beautiful city is lush green. Little ponds and lakes among lavishing Oak trees make home for all kind of creatures from frogs and water snakes to all kinds of birds. The weather: warm and humid.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and that is exactly why I recommend that you wait for “The Da Vinci Code” to show up in theatres rather than wasting your valuable time reading the book. The time that is otherwise spent slacking off from work or studies; a “time well wasted” as the comedy channel likes to put it. So, I will say less about Memphis and will soon enlighten your darkened souls with some pictures of this fine land. Till then, God bless our troops in killing our people. God bless.

Barobax on Wikipedia

It's been quite a while since I have been fascinated by Wikipedia. See my post titled "Wikipedia!" dated September 28, 2004. So yesterday I decided that I experiment with it a little bit, and what would be a better start than trying to add "Barobax" to this wonderful encyclopedia. After all, not only barobax is a slang, it is also the name of an underground music band.

I realized that in order to create new articles I have to create a new account. This is pretty easy actually because they ask very few questions unlike the registration procedures of many other websites. After that creating a new entry was a piece of cake. Really. The tags are simple and you can quickly learn by editing other articles and looking at their tags.

So today I woke up to see if the article was still there, and I found out that a new box has been added at the top saying that it has been proposed that this article be deleted. The reason is that it is considered a dictionary definition and not an actual encyclopedia entry. They had suggested that this deletion be discussed, so I edited the discussion page and provided my reasons for believing why it should persist.

You can take a look at the entry (and modify it too) by going here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barobax

Just don't vandalize it! :D

Wallpapers

I visited two zoos during the past two days and I took a lot of pictures. I have added a new album including the pictures that I have taken.

I also took some pictures that might be suitable as a desktop wallpaper, so I have selected the ones that I thought are the best and I have posted them here. Click on each picture to download the high quality version. Note that most of these wallpapers have been slightly retouched by Photoshop. Hope you enjoy.