The President of the United States of America! (And update on life)

At Reynolds Coliseum to see Obama! Im at NCSU and Im going to see Obama! This is so fricking cool!!!!! Its full of people and its so hot. I think, and hope, that this will start soon! Ill update this later.

SUPER LATE UPDATE:

That event was FRICKING AMAZING!!!!! I don't know what to say about it! It was just awesome. The NCSU Marching Band played great music, then there was a small business owner talking, and then I saw the President! (granted, I was across the coliseum from him, but still, I saw him! I saw Obama!)

I took some pictures and videos of it all. Most are up on Facebook already, and I'll add some to the blog later this week. Now that we're almost in the beginning of December :-P

I do hope that the whole American Jobs Act passes. This recession is really getting annoying now... Hopefully France, Germany, and the US can plan something to try to get everything sorted out. And China should join in and help too. Obama is a great speaker, but the Congress hasn't been doing what we have been wanting it to do. Reminds me of what in Argentina is the "Que se vayan todos" movement some years ago, where people would vote so that NOBODY got re-elected and to see some new faces in Congress. I wonder if that would be of any help here nowadays. Get some fresh minds in there.

Moving on... Occupy Movement. What do we do about it? What are we doing with it? What is it doing? To tel you the truth, I hope that they do get SOMETHING done. I've gone by Occupy Raleigh some times, and I have stayed there a while. Good people, very educated and most of them know what they are talking about. But how can we all become part of a solution to work together? Clearly the neoliberalism and capitalist corporations have been ruining us... But so has our own government, whom we are supposed to be part of. So what can be done about it all? Clearly we need to go out and vote and call our Senators and Congressmen what we want, the issues that are important to us, and make sure that they know we are not to be played with.

Next thing... Relationships. They are hard. Long distance just means they get exponentially harder by the centimeter. I guess in the end, everything that can happen will happen, and we just have to make the best of everything. We have to learn from our mistakes, crawl before we stand up, and walk before we run. If you love somebody, will you let them go? Food for thought people.

Well, I have enjoyed updating my blog again, hehe. But I have to go do some homework and study. Finals are coming up! I am pretty ready for my French test of course, Industrial Engineering shouldn't be too bad. Physics will be tough, but I think I can take it. Chinese (yes, I'm learning Mandarin) should be interesting. I'm doing pretty good this semester, so really looking forwards to teh classes next semester! Anyways, I have to go study! Wish me luck people! Good bye! To a good future and a great week!

El Tano

Okay..... I got a couple of things to say...

I have a couple of things to say.
First of all, if you haven't tried it yet, and you're using Google Chrome, you should get Add Speech extension and the Angry Birds for Chrome extension. They are awesome.

Now on to more serious business.
I had a foot wart. It first appeared when I was like 8 or 9. Now it's back. It came back last October or so.

My wart after it fell off some 30 minutes ago today.

The hole on my foot, with some blood from the old scar.

At first I just left it there, it was small and I didn't care. But now I have been fighting it with Walgreens brand Maximum Strength Wart Remover Liquid. It has like 17% Salicylic Acid. Today I saw the first big effects of Salicylic Acid. I was playing the guitar. And I got an itch on my foot. Without thinking about it, I scratched and BAM! The wart started peeling off with my skin. I had kind of broken the papillae before just because I was confusing my skin with the removal liquid, so there was a little crust along with the skin. But that's not the point. The point is that it just pretty much fell right off. Sure, it's not gone completely and I still might have a couple more weeks of treatment, maybe less. But can we use a mix of  this with some Salicylic Acid to help fight cancer? Can we use it at least for skin cancer?

Think about it.
Apply patches or bandages with some good concentration of Salicylic Acid. Moisten and change patches every 12 hours. Over the course of time, the skin gets ready to peal off. And then suddenly, we have no more skin cancer!!!

The bubble that forms when you apply the Salicylic Acid.

I'm sure it's not as easy as that.

But think about all the money saved. Think about all the pain and suffering you'd be saving your patients from. There's so much to do with this!!!
Somebody really needs to start doing some serious research as to how we can make a good concentration of Salicylic Acid that will play together with the other cure to make the cells die and to make the cells shed.

The only thing I can think that would limit it would be the fact that you could only use it for skin cancer. I guess it might not be very applicable to other types. But that doesn't mean it's not worth a try, does it???

I hope somebody who's going into biomedical engineering or something like that reads this blog. Don't forget to credit me for this idea later on!

Anyways. Those are the big things I had to say.

Other than that, my future plans...
If you don't know yet, in August I'm going to The Netherlands to study at TU Delft!!! I got accepted!!! Woo!!!!! I'm super excited, and really looking forwards to doing lots of research and work.
But before that, Esmee is coming here in July!!! WOOHOO!!!!!! That I'm definitely excited for.
And I surprised her, bought her the ticket, and now I told her the plan of going to Orlando so we can go to Disney World and Universal Studios!!! 2011 is going so much better!!!

Well friends, that is all for now I guess. I'll update you all sometime next week, after all, Wednesday May 25th is my 21st birthday, hehe.

Have a good week!

Adios!

Now Recording.....

So... For those of you who don't know, I play the harmonica and the guitar. I've been playing guitar for a longer time, but for the past year and some months I started playing the harmonica, even bought some more harmonicas, since I used to have only one in the key of C.
I played harmonica when my ex-roommate Josh played guitar. And it is really fun. Sometimes we still get together and play some music.
Anyways, so I realized the other day that the Rockband Microphone for the Wii is just a USB Mic by Logitech... So I plugged it into my Ubuntu laptop and tested it on the Sound Recorder. Then I installed Audacity and thought of trying to record something from it.
This is what came from that recording, my little cover singing, playing guitar, and harmonica.
My cover of "Mary Jane's Last Dance" by Tom Petty

I know its no professional sound and the voice volume is a bit off. Also the harmonica at parts seems to be overblown... thats what I get for using cheap Hohner Bluesband harmonicas, which are still awesome for me, hehe.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy that song. I am thinking of recording some other songs soon. Maybe "No se estar Enamorado" by Jarabe de Palo, and some Estopa songs.

Also, my friend Lucas, who has a studio, told me he's starting a band and they could use one more guitar player, so I might go practice with them. But he has had some other projects before that didn't go through before, so I'm not getting too excited about this one.
But I will let all of you know what happens with that if it does go through.
I hope you all have a great Thursday!

El Tano

Now Recording.....

So... For those of you who don't know, I play the harmonica and the guitar. I've been playing guitar for a longer time, but for the past year and some months I started playing the harmonica, even bought some more harmonicas, since I used to have only one in the key of C.
I played harmonica when my ex-roommate Josh played guitar. And it is really fun. Sometimes we still get together and play some music.
Anyways, so I realized the other day that the Rockband Microphone for the Wii is just a USB Mic by Logitech... So I plugged it into my Ubuntu laptop and tested it on the Sound Recorder. Then I installed Audacity and thought of trying to record something from it.
This is what came from that recording, my little cover singing, playing guitar, and harmonica.
My cover of "Mary Jane's Last Dance" by Tom Petty

I know its no professional sound and the voice volume is a bit off. Also the harmonica at parts seems to be overblown... thats what I get for using cheap Hohner Bluesband harmonicas, which are still awesome for me, hehe.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy that song. I am thinking of recording some other songs soon. Maybe "No se estar Enamorado" by Jarabe de Palo, and some Estopa songs.

Also, my friend Lucas, who has a studio, told me he's starting a band and they could use one more guitar player, so I might go practice with them. But he has had some other projects before that didn't go through before, so I'm not getting too excited about this one.
But I will let all of you know what happens with that if it does go through.
I hope you all have a great Thursday!

El Tano

Wow, haven't posted since last year!

Pretty crazy. Haven't posted in some time now.
So much stuff to comment on....
Lets see. In no particular order...
I've seen Dutch people ice skating on the pond here in the neighborhood (which is 2 to 3 meters deep).
I've celebrated New Years with Esmee, her grandparents, her uncle Gerard and his family.
We shot lots of fireworks, inflated some hope balloons, had a great time.
I got a guitar, a guitar case, and Boondock Saints 1 and 2 Blu-ray for Christmas. The guitar from Esmee and the other 2 things from her grandmother. In reality Esmee told her grandmother I would love those things, so lots of kudos to her, jejeje.
I got sick last week and had pain all over my body and some fever. Couldn't go to the Escher Museum OR Ikea on Wednesday. For those of you that don't know, I really like the Escher paintings and had wanted to go to the museum since the first time I heard of it, and I just love Ikea.
We went to Esmee's second cousin, Kai's, birthday and I spoke more Dutch. One of Esmee's second uncles invited me to watch a football game if I'm here more during the season. He is a Feyenoord fan, but Esmee's other uncle, Kai's father, is an Ajax fan, so they seemed to make fun at each other quite a lot. Overall it was a great evening.
We babysat Nina again, was really fun, we ate pizza, drank Taksi Pineapple juice, but Nina wouldn't fall asleep. I drove us there and back, so it was always fun to drive on the snow.
I drove Esmee to Pijnacker to pick up Julia, then to Zoetermeer and I dropped them off at Imke's for a girls night that they were going to have. Sounds like they had fun except for Imke's choice for a movie, if you want to know about it, ask Esmee. I picked them up and then we went home.
On Christmas Eve we went out to eat at McDonalds because I really REALLY wanted to eat a Big and Tasty, since they don't have those in the US anymore. It was worth it. Pretty much we all got Big Tasty's except for Esmee, who got 2 cheesburgers.
It snowed some more spontaneously here and there time and time again. The snow was pretty much untouched until this past week, when temperatures became constant at a high of 2C, and by today I think most of the snow all around here has melted.
Hopefully this thursday we will got o the Naturallis in Leiden. I'll probably drive on the highway and all, will be exciting! Not that it would be my first time though, since one time last summer on the way back from Zoetermeer Esmee's GPS sent us like all the way to The Hague to do a U-turn and then go back towards Berkel on another exit. Yes, her GPS is very weird.
It's very weird to think that I'm leaving in 10 days... I just realized that today....
It's like all this vacation is ending way too soon.
And suddenly next week on Thursday I'll be flying to NY.
It all gets me a bit depressed really.
But I guess I'll just have to enjoy these last days here even more and do as much as possible.
Which reminds me, I'll finish this blog right now. I'll write later in a couple of days.
Oh, btw.
I bought Esmee a ring and earrings for Christmas. She loved them. Too bad the ring is a bit small, but on Wednesday we'll have to go and change it for another one I guess.
I hope you all started a great year great and keep good energy, good thoughts, and a good vibe. I have a feeling this year will be good.
Doei!