17 years and two day ago...

Kale and Mallow, "ahh that's cute."

It was August fifth 1992. Half past 12 GMT+1 I was born after a hard labor. The third and final kid of my two parents. It was the night after my aunt and uncle celebrated their engagement. My mother had to leave the fiesta and go to the hospital because of her labor becoming tougher on her. When the news came out I was born, my aunt and uncle thought it happened on their day, while in fact it was just after midnight the day after. For the rest I can't remember anything about my birth... I mean... that's 17 years ago by now.

Yup - yesterday I celebrated my birthday here in Texas. The party was quite small-scaled though. Of the 5 friends that I have in Texas (Chris, Matt, Ethan, Nathan and Aleks) only two went bowling with me (Chris and Matt). Aleks was supposedly coming as well, but when we called him around 3 o' clock we got notified he was sleeping. All the other calls after that were left unanswered. Since I've been bowling for quite some time now, you'd expect me throwing 200 games all the time. This obviously, was not happening. Because of the holidays I hadn't practiced bowling anymore. Long story short... My bowling was bad. I remember throwing more less 100 in the first two games. After the first two games my scores slowly went up and I ended with a nice game of 155 (that was the fifth game). Seriously, the lanes were crap and the resetting of the pins was slow, the bowling alley was obviously made for slow-mo bowling and socializing. Chris went bad the entire day and tried to blame it on everything except for his mathematical calculations and himself. Matt became second all the time and threw a couple of spares during the stay. I left quite satisfied I guess, but I really wished the party was more crowded.

So what has happened more in the last couple of days? I touched the Gulf of Mexico, went to the Kehma Boardwalk (rode a rollercoaster, overcame my fear for Drop Shots and went sight-seeing in the tower), went to Fry's, Sam's Club, Pharmacies, Banks, Wal-Marts (again - will go again in a couple of minutes) and whatever more. Did I tell you about the time I went to Houston downtown and saw this BEAUTIFUL panorama view of Houston and environment? Well - Now I did. And another good thing to know is that there's a city under the city of Houston. There's an entire network of tunnels with shops, stalls and areas to relax and consume beverages. We also went to the Natural Science Museum. All I can say about that is... wow. There were plenty of nice gems, the butterflies were sweet and the 3D Imax movie about sharks was childish, but really well made.

Let me write down the variety of all the f00dz I've been eating since my stay in Texas: Greasy hamburgers, waffles (not stroopwafels - lol -), chips, fries, seafood (including crab, oyster and shrimp), chicken, salads, strawberries, bread, steaks, pasta (including macaroni, spaghetti and lasagna), Mexican food, not-so-greasy hamburgers, potatoes, rice, apples, birthday cupcakes, Mc Fluffy (is that how it's called?), cinnamon crackers, sandwiches, some other sandwiches, pecan nuts and probably some more I forgot... Texas has been such a great place to stay. I mostly drank Dr Pepper though, sometimes water, smoothies, or (ice(d)) (sweet) tea.

Tomorrow will be my last day before leaving, I'll be packing, washing, making sure I have everything I had and all the stuff I got during my stay with me when I'm dropped off. Once at the airport I'll be dressed in my Legend of Zelda shirt, Halo cap and fresh black jeans - all of which I got for free from Rebecca. Thanks SO much Rebecca, you're really kind.

Now the last thing I want to do is take a look at my wish list I made before I got here:

- Fire a gun V
- Drive a car X
- Go sight-seeing V
- Go bowl (and win) V, play golf X and play table tennis X
- Own Punisher in Halo 3 V
- Make a Halo 3 clip V/montage X
- Make a kick-ass Halo 3 map V
- Walking around at Wal-mart, buying something V
- Get something expensive for free like a laptop V
- Play Tales of Pirates X
- Meet his friends V
- Eat a big American hamburger V
- Get dressed as an American (gangster)V
- Destroy something and record it X
- Play an actual Uno game V
- Take a picture of me with Penisher and his friends and family V

Overall it's a good score. I have actually fired a couple of guns at the shooting ranch, I even had a couple of bullseyes while I was at it! I haven't driven a car, but then again, I find it a bit scary to even sit in a car while either of Chris' parents drive the car. Driving a car on the American roads with the American traffic rules would scare the living crap out of me. The American roads are way worse than the European ones (here they're are white/gray and bumpy with bad lining). I've seen enough sights - more sights than I could imagine. I haven't played table tennis and/or golf because there are no table tennis tables outside, and it's HOT to stay in the sun the entire day playing golf, and we had other stuff to do anyway. The white shoes I got were from Wal-mart, I paid them myself (one of the only things I didn't GET). Tales of Pirates isn't really one of our interests anymore. Like I said before, I've met a couple of Chris' friends. Matt, Ethan and Nathan. I count the hamburgers at Burger Shuttle as greasy and the ones I had at Whataburger BIG. That makes a big greasy burger in total.

Dress up as an American gangster has one of the funnier stories behind it - we were walking down 'the strand' and walked past this boutique where they showed pictures of people dressed. Rebecca remarked I might just take a pic of myself while I'm here. I looked around and found the pictures quite funny. Between the pictures I saw one of a person dressed as an American gangster. When I mumbled it actually was on my wish list to dress up as an American gangster, Rebecca decided I just HAD to get one of those pictures. I was like... okay.. why not and we stepped in. It took AGES to make the pictures, but Chris' family is really patience and even when the pictures were taken we continued talking to the boutique holders. We were in that store for more than an hour. Now there is a peg on their world map that points to a place about 14 kilometers above the star called Amsterdam in the Netherlands. As for the destroying something, the reason why we haven't done that is the same as with the golfing, it's just too hot to spend the entire day outside trying to record us destroying something from the messy garage. Also - I think that hurricane Ike left enough destruction behind as well, so there's no need in destroying even more in this part of Texas. During my stay I've taken enough pictures of the family and me and I've played an Uno game on the Xbox - it's just as rigged as via WLM.

This blog article is long enough by now. I've had enough of writing it. Cheers,