A new year, a new me, a new start to this pathetic thing we call life?

Well, 2010's almost here.
I'm looking forward to it. A Lot.

The opportunity this year is bigger than ever: to lead change, to create a movement in a direction you want to go.

Talking about New Year, I started wondering about my resolutions

When I was little I made the same resolutions every year: give up biting my nails and stop being shy. I still bite my nails and am shy, although not so cripplingly, so they weren't the most successful of resolutions.

What shall I resolve this year I pondered as I wandered. (Do you like that? Poetic?)

My first thought was that I shall resolve to get rid of my ego, since apparently according to people I have one. *ahem*

No, I shall only make resolutions I can type without laughing. So I'll resolve to become a best-selling ... no good, I can't get as far as author without giggling.

What about 'I'll be a nicer and less selfish person'? Well, I got to the end but that's a bit worthy. I know 'I'll be nice to people at school'. But they won't be nice to me and I'm not going to be nice to them if they're not nice to me so that's not a good one. Looks like I'm left with 'I'll stop spending so much time online' No, wait, a resolution should at least be achievable ...


Guess I'll just have to resolve to continue to be as gorgeous and talented and wonderful as I already am. That'll be easy then.

On that note, in the words of Benjamin Franklin "Be at war with your vices; at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man."

Wishing you a wonderful new year :)

Cheers!

Rahima

Now this is what I call HILARIOUS! - Football is a funny game x)

STORY ONE


There have been occasions though when whole teams have decided that scoring an own goal is the best way for them to progress in a cup competition. The first instance of this was in the Shell Caribbean Cup match between Barbados and Grenada in 1994. In the last group game before the final stages Barbados needed to beat Grenada by two clear goals to qualify otherwise Grenada went through in their place. Sadly, the organizers of the tournament had come up with a weird rule - in extra time a golden goal would count as two goals. So…

Barbados went 2-0 up fairly quickly and looked to be heading through to the next phase. But then Grenada made it 2-1 with seven minutes remaining and the Barbados team needed to score a goal, in either net! They decided to attack their own goal and with the Grenadans not catching on what was happening, Barbados scored an own goal to make it 2-2 and the game appeared to be heading for extra time.

So Grenada needed to score a goal at either end to go through. Desperate defending of both penalty areas by Barbados meant that after 90 minutes the score was 2-2.

In extra time, Barbados decided to attack the Grenadan net rather than their own. With Grenada not used to this, Barbados scored the golden goal four minutes into extra time to win the match 3-2 (or 4-2 according to the rules of the tournament). Barbados qualified.

Link to a footage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThpYsN-4p7w


STORY TWO


A similar incident occurred in a 1998 Tiger Cup game between Thailand and Indonesia. Both teams had already qualified for the semi-finals, but whichever team won would have to face the favourites Vietnam. So both teams tried to throw the match. At 2-2 with a few minutes left, the Indonesians turned on their own goal, now defended frantically by Thai players. In injury time the Indonesian keeper managed to grab the ball in the penalty area and kicked it into his own goal so that Thailand won 3-2.

In the end neither team benefited. Both Indonesia and Thailand lost their semi-final games - to Singapore and Vietnam. Both teams were fined $40,000 for "violating the spirit of the game." The Indonesian goalkeeper was banned for life.





But you have to leave the best until last.


AND SO, STORY THREE


Stade Olympique de l'Emyrne (SOE), Antananarivo is the football section of a Malagasy sports club based in Antananarivo in Madagascar. The club won the Madagascan league in 2001. So they weren’t a bad side when they played another Malagasy team, AS Adema, on October 31st 2002.

AS Adema kicked off and things were normal for a couple of minutes, until the referee made a decision that caused Stade Olympique de l'Emyrne’s coach Ratsimandresy Ratsarazaka to lose his temper with the referee. He was so incensed that he ordered his team to score own goals in protest, which they did do, 149 times. AS Adema didn’t touch the ball again in the whole game as Stade Olympique L'Emyrne, took complete control of the national league game, and reduced AS Adema’s players to the role of bemused onlookers.

Madagascar's soccer authorities banned Stade Olympique de L'Emyrne's coach and four, just four, of the team's players. The SOE coach Zaka Be, accused of orchestrating the debacle from the stands, was suspended for three years and banned from visiting stadiums for the same period. SOE goalkeeper Mamisoa Razafindrakoto, the captain of the Madagascan national side, SOE captain Manitranirina Andrianiaina, and players Nicolas Rakotoarimanana and Dominique Rakotonandrasana were suspended until the end of the 2002 season and banned from stadiums for the same period. All the other players, from both SOE and from AS Adema, received a warning and a threat of more serious action should they commit further offences. Quite what the AS Adema players were supposed to do wasn’t mentioned. The referee was not punished.

The final score of 149-0 to AS Adema is a world-record, more than quadrupling the previous record of 36-0 set in 1885, but it is in disrepute whether to consider this scoreline as a record or not. However, it is also possible that the referee lost count at some point, so the real number of own goals might have been over 150.


Cheers!

Rahima :)

Pre-MUN

MUN = Model United Nations, which I was very lucky to be a part of this year. It's been held by this school in the city, and it's pretty fun for the most part, or so i've been told. It's my first time ever participating, and let me tell you, IT IS TIRING! So the main conference is in January, but we've recieved our agendas and we're supposed to do tons of research on it. Staring at the screen for 10 hours everyday, reading tons of long, usually boring articles is not the way I planned for my winter vacation to go, but I guess, it's fun as well. And the main conference is going to be mind blowing xD

You represent different countries, and therefore I'm representing Spain. MUN-ing has totally made me high, and I keep referring to myself as the DELEGATE OF SPAIN, rather than my name ;) and since the conference asks us NOT to use personal pronouns, I've started doing that to get into the habit xD

Pre-MUN makes you tired I tell you, and when you have this sucky laptop which keeps freezing all the time, it's more tiring. Plus I really can't concentrate on one thing all the time, so I have a couple of chat windows open, and my friends keep bugging me, one of whom blocks me when i take a little time to IM back :P

Pre-MUN is fun though. It's kind of fun reading up on different countries, and socialising with people, making plans to be allies during the conferences and making plans to bring pillows during the conference to sleep :P

Pre-MUN makes you really high because you get all high due to the fact you're going to be receiving free food, and then you talk to all these people online, and make all these plans to meet up at the conference by screaming each other's country names xD

The best part about Pre-MUN is the anticipation of the main conference :D

Therefore, no matter how tiring pre-MUN is, the anticipation makes it all better, and therefore the delegate of Spain CANNOT wait for the main conference, and hopefully it's gonna be amazing :)

Cheers!

Rahima(:

Andy Murray Dumped For PS3 Addiction?

I find this sad.I mean sure some people may laugh at this story, but if I were in a relationship, I would make sure that I paid more attention to my significant other than to have my eyes superglued to the screen.

Most guys who play seven hours of video games per day don't even know what a real woman looks like, let alone dates one as gorgeous as Kim Sears.

I'm also fascinated by the fact Murray plays tennis video games. You'd think the last thing he'd want to do after a day of training is sit down and play pretend tennis. But, hey, with Federer still truckin', that might be the only way Andy Murray is going to win a major.

An unnamed source told the newspaper “He [Andy] would spend all his time glued to it [PS3]. It drove her mad. In the end she [Kim] just got fed up with it. She wanted more out of the relationship“

Murray has had some notable “problems” in the past with his gaming “addiction” as his former coach once stated that he played on his consoles around 7 hours a day; yeah that sounds about right for a gamer. It would seem that Murray got on the phone to his agent as soon as the news broke because last night his agent stated, “Andy doesn’t play computer games any more than any other 22-year-old“. Hmm, so 7 hours a day it is then! Come on Andy, how could you let that beautiful girl go in favour of your PS3 and Modern Warfare 2?

So men, take a lesson from this!

But on a more positive note, Kim Sears is now single. ;)
So yes, all you lads out there, there's no harm in hoping.


Cheers


Rahima(:

Random Thoughts

It's 3.26 am. I have to get up at 8 am. I wonder why I'm still up. Jeez. I really need to change my sleeping pattern. I got bored. So i decided to blog. The i realised, I have nothing to blog about. Which isn't very surprising, mind you. Life's so monotonous. Study, Exams, and other random shit which happens.

Exams. Meh. I'm not doing great, but I guess I'll pass. Maths was horrible. I can't wait for the 11th of December. That's when they get over. Wheyy!

And my brother's coming from the States on the 17th so that's gotta be fun. I asked him for a lot of stuff. Haha. I like stuff :P

And football. Haha. Football life is going.. well not so perfect. But I can't complain. My team in the Barclay's Premier League, Arsenal, is on number 4, which ain't too bad. And the world cup draw was today. Germany got a really easy group - Germany, Australia, Serbia and this other country i forgot - so they'll go through just fine. Hopefully. *fingers crossed*

Besides that. There's other shit as well. Friends, Backstabbers, Liars, etc. Everything feels like a blur sometimes. But music gets me through. It's the only thing that keeps me sane.

Seriously, isn't it soooooooooo annoying when everything feels like it's falling apart? It is. -.-

And I'm sleep deprived. *sighs*
I really need a ton of sleep, but I have so much to study. Ugh

And my laptop:(
It keeps fucking up so badly.
I want a new one.
But sadly, no :/
Oh well. Atleast I have my sexy phone <3
HAHA! And I'm not rubbing it in :P


It's nice to go emo once in a while, and take out some of the frustration.
You probably don't care, but if you've read it this far, I sincerely thank you. You must be a very patient person. :P


Forgive any spelling/grammatical mistakes.
It's 3.47 am, and i don't feel like checking it :P


Rahima(:

Backstreet's Back, ALRIGHT!

Yes, I am a HUGE fan of Backstreet Boys, and FINALLY got a chance to listen to their whole album, and though I really don't love it, it's kinda grown on me now.

When the Backstreet Boys proclaimed in their 1997 hit “Everybody (Backstreet's Back)” that “as long as there'll be music, [they'll] be coming back again,” few took the line seriously. But twelve years later, you have to wonder how they managed to still be here when every other boyband have crashed and burned in the early 2000s. There's a simple explanation for that: the Backstreet Boys are simply the best in their category. After several worldwide hits that even my dad know the lyrics to, the Boys (or shall we say “men?”) are back with their seventh album This Is Us, a throwback to their dance-pop early years.

The first single, Straight Through My Heart, opens the album and is arguably the record's best track. As is usually the case with the Backstreet Boys' music, the chorus is infectious and it's easy to remember all the lyrics after only two to three listens.

The Backstreet Boys are reunited with old pal Max Martin (“I Want It That Way,” “As Long As You Love Me,” “Shape Of My Heart,” and the majority of pop hits during the late 90s) for the album's second single titled Bigger. It isn't really memorable at first listen but after two or three repeats, you almost feel like the Backstreet Boys of old are back.

The track, Bye Bye Love is obviously a ploy to stay in touch with today's music and frankly I was disappointed by its inclusion because even when boybands were popular, the Backstreet Boys always seemed to be one step ahead of their competition. When they came back in 2005, their new adult-contemporary sound was refreshing. With Bye Bye Love, it feels like they're following the trend instead of setting it.

All Your Life (You Need Love) is probably the closest thing to their 90s sound but upgraded for today's audience. After listening to this song, I couldn't help but go back and listen to all their up-tempo tracks from from their first and second albums.

If I Knew Then has a similar sound to All Your Life but the former is much slower.

This Is Us is a ballad co-written by Howie Dorough and produced by Jim Jonsin. Here again, the boys shine vocally, making This Is Us a good track but nothing extraordinary. Though, I would have to say, I really love slow songs the boys sing, and this one just adds to their already amazing collection of ballads.

PDA is probably the album's weakest track. It feels as though the boys are trying too hard to fit into the “urban” mold.

Masquerade is another high-tempo dance track with an easily memorable chorus. Similar to All Your Life, Masquerade feels like one of their vintage tracks albeit with a modern beat.

She's A Dream is the only song written by all group members. I honestly don't know what to think of this track. On the one hand, the boys all sound great on it and the beat is quiet enough to let their voices and melody shine through. On the other hand, the blatant use of Auto-Tune on the bridge turned me off big-time.

Shattered, a piano-driven ballad and is the only song to carry the same sound from Unbreakable, their 2007 release.

The album concludes with Undone, another ballad. The song felt like something Justin Timberlake would release. As a matter of fact, it sounded a bit like a poor man's version of “What Goes Around...” only slower.

In the end, I am heavily disappointed with this album. It grows on you the more you listen it but I still feel like something's missing. It's trying too much to please to today's audience. It's not a bad thing mind you, but I thought they were on a great path musically with Never Gone and Unbreakable. Now, it seems like they went for sales instead of quality. Thankfully, the fact that they're good vocalists saves this album from being a Chris Brown/Ne-Yo/Justin Timberlake rehash. Will the die-hard fans love it? Absolutely. But I can't help but feel that we wanted a piece of the New Kids On The Block's “successful” comeback. This Is Us gets a 3.75/5 from me. Great vocals, nice beats, but no creativity.



Till We Meet Again!


Rahima (:

Untitled.

I like to write.
I wrote this one a long time back.
So let me know what you think and stuff(:
Oh, and i have no idea what to name it, so i'm open to ideas.


Spotlight's bright on you,
Shining light on your path that was once unseen.
you have a smile that can save me,
From this darkness I have fallen into.

A million miles away and counting,
I haven't seen you in a while but i don't mind waiting,
And everytime I think of you,
I wonder if you're thinking of me too.

You're the light in the shadow,
The first star I see.
When I'm flying through the night,
It's the same light that carries me.

For now it's just a dream,
I'm just another face in the crowd.
But i'll listen for my name,
If you decided to shout it out loud.

Now I'm staring at the white moon,
In hopes you're staring at it too.
It's the only thing we have in common,
When I'm here so far away from you.



All Rights Reserved



Till We Meet Again!

Rahima (:

How To Stop Feeling Like Your Life Sucks

How many times a day do you go, "God! My life sucks!"?
Minimum once, yeah?

Everyone's the same. Even me. I curse my life every time a teensy weensy problem comes my way.

We all feel a sense of insignificance sometimes. May it be the achievments of an older sibling, or anything which overshadows us for that matter.

So the real question is "How do you find a sense of significance in a world that seems so very shallow?"

Well to be honest, it may seem hard, but it's not.

Cultivate a grateful heart. Gratitude is the one thing that most people who feel a low sense of self-worth lack. If you can look outside your own world, and see how good you really have it, you will feel much more like your life is a worthwhile thing. If you don't have a terminal illness, have had something to eat today, have a bed to sleep in tonight... materially speaking you have it better than 70% of all the people in the whole world. If you're reading this on your own computer, you're better off than about 90% of everyone.


Learn to value deeper virtues. The media seem to be overflowing with images of the young, rich, and beautiful, and unless you fit that mold, you feel less worthy of good things in your life. But those things are so fleeting - youth and beauty fade with years, and in a short while, those celebrities won't be so pretty (or at least it won't be cheap for them to be so pretty). Fortunes can be lost. But love is eternal. Honor lasts. Truth abides. Beauty comes in all forms: a butterfly is beautiful. So is a waterfall, and the ocean, and the sky on a starry night. Learn to appreciate natural beauty, good character, honesty, your family.


Be nice. Believe it or not, this can be the first step to feeling your own power. Feeling a little ... ordinary... can make you feel like it isn't worthwhile to care about the feelings of others. You don't realize just how much power you have. Your lousy mood is contagious. It casts a pall over everyone you encounter, from your family to your friends to your co-workers. Instead of being abrupt and surly, try giving each person a smile. Take a moment to make eye contact. People enjoy talking about themselves or those closest to them. So give them an opportunity to do so. Try to remember names, and ask about their loved ones. You don't know what's happening in their lives - you might be the one and only person to treat them like a human being today. You may not realize how just one kind word, even from a stranger, can refresh someone's spirit. Try it and see. It may be very nice to be important. But it's much more important to be nice


Realize that being part of your family is important. You may not have family, in this case you must cherish the relationships with friends. If you have children, a spouse, siblings, parents who depend on you, everything you do for them is a good deed. When you help your mom find her milk, which she put in the cupboard instead of the fridge, even if she doesn't remember it 10 minutes later, you're doing something so valuable and important for her. Let your life with your family and friends rejuvenate you with the feeling that you are with people who love you no matter what.


Be humble. Of course if you go around bragging about how amazing you are, people are going to try to knock you down. Plus, people who talk themselves up to others are usually covering up an internal feeling of inadequacy. Just look at celebs - no sooner are they hot than the rumors start and the sniping begins. getting shallow satisfaction from the misfortune of those seemingly more fortunate than you. No matter how much you want to feel important, it won't help you unless you can appreciate it when it happens for the right reasons. By exercising humility, and refraining from all the brag and swagger, you free people to praise you when it's appropriate instead of hogging attention when it isn't.


Help others. There is nothing that will make you feel like you are valued, needed, and essential like volunteering to help and serve others who are less fortunate than you. This really goes along with the "humility" thing well - stepping up to help the elderly, coach at an after school children's center, feed the homeless, help build a home for someone, collect toys for orphanages at Christmas time - these things allow you to be of service to others, and nothing will make you feel better. There are times when you may wish to give the gift of your help in secret, telling no one of your good deeds, and there is great value in this. There are other times when you may want to share what you are doing as a way to encourage others to get involved, too - and the value of this is incalculable, as your gift can grow and grow. You will know when the time is right for either approach.


Feel the satisfaction of creating gratitude in another's life and let it stay within your heart. The first time a little child brings you a hand-drawn card and throws her arms around you to thank you, it's practically guaranteed you'll feel tears of joy flow from your eyes and a big lump in your throat. And that's when you know your life is not just "good enough" - it's

awesome.

Till We Meet Again!

Rahima (:

Happy Birthday!

First blogpost, and I have ABOSULTELY no idea, what to blog about.
So this is a birthday poem i wrote for a friend of mine for their bday:D

I just stopped by to wish you a happy birthday this year
You are turning seventeen and have conquered so many fears
I wish you all the best, on this, your special day
I know your friends and family will make it great in every way
You will have your cake, and so many presents too
A party that will make you smile and share a laugh or two
I just want you to know, that I will sing along
Adding my voice from far away to that birthday song
Another year has passed and more will come and go
When it comes to birthdays, soon you will be a pro
Just never let that smile fade from within those eyes
Keep everybody guessing while you wear your disguise
Until that moment happens, the celebration of your birth
And you can then remove your mask and show the world your worth
So as my pen and paper part, I bid you a fond farewell
And again say happy birthday, I hope it finds you well




Lemme know what you think

Till We Meet Again!


Rahima (: