Huge Omnibus Blog Entry
Man, it's been a crazy couple of days. Just about non stop something or other for the past week or so, which isn't exactly what I like to do when things like sleep are involved. So, let's start with Model UN. When you add it up, it was pretty sweet but let's just say definitely had its slow points.
I spent all Wednesday night printing out stuff and packing for the conference, then woke up bright and early on Thursday... and waited several hours for late people to show up. Finally, on the road. I don't remember too much about the trip other than stopping at some place called Dad's Restaraunt and Gas Station somewhere in deep, deep, Georgia... more rebel flags than you can shake a stick at. Then we made it to the conference at the airport Marriot in Atlanta. After a salty and greasy Pizza Hut dinner, we started what would be the first of many, many committees.
Essentially a committee is a full-on simulation of what the actual United Nations would do. In my case, I represented the Philippines in the UNAIDS Committee, the topics that we dealed with were like Children with AIDS and Food Security and AIDS. Basically, everyone agrees that action needs to be taken on the AIDS situation, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, but no one can agree on exactly what to do. So they haggle about it for hours on end, and then resolutions are typed and voted on. The fun day was on Friday. We were literally in conference for literally something like 10 hours. It was ridiculous.
Sometimes, noting how both the conference and our accomodations were at the hotel and we never left the hotel, it maybe felt just a little bit like prison. But anyways. Late Friday after many hours of work it started to get a little unruly in conference, and the person who would actually be the deputy secretary under Kofi Annan actually had to go in and bitch out our conference just for being punks. Believe me, after nine hours, it wasn't funny.
Anyways, Friday night ended up being a pretty monumentus night. Let's just say when you get a bunch of college kids in a hotel room it's going to be a fun time. Somewhere all this other craziness, I remember seeing a near-riot break out Detroit on ESPN. This deserves a whole blog entry in itself, but here goes: buying a ticket, no matter how expensive, is not a license to act like a jackass. It is not a get out of jail free, not-my-fault card. The situation had been cooled and pretty much diffused until some jackass thought it would be a great idea to throw a cup of beer on the most volatile player in professional sports. Well, he got what he asked for. Ron Artest definitely cannot charge into the stands and trust me he will be made the whipping boy and pay for it. But I say it's time to start cracking down on dumbass fans as well. I'm talking jailtime, fines, you name it.
Anyways, one more day in conference. At the end, there was an ending ceremony, and everybody's happy and stuff. Unfortunately the Philippine delegation didn't win any awards. I didn't think I'd care about winning one, but it definitely would have been nice. I gotta try harder if I want to succeed.
Slept most of the drive home. The Model UN head honchos bought a HUGE chocolate cake for everyone for a successful conference, which we ate at Taco Bell. Mmmm. Came home and slept late on Sunday, watched the Panthers whip up on the Cardinals. It seemed like equal parts good play for the Panthers and self-destruction on the Cards' part, but we'll take the win. Then, I had to cram to finish 2 papers, one on Monday and one on Tuesday by 5pm, which I mailed to the teacher at, incidentally, 5 pm on Tuesday.
From then on, Thank God, it's been vacation time. I got a big meal at Taco Bell, checked out the Nintendo DS at Circuit City (for the record, I like it), and played RC Pro-Am on the computer. It was like in Office Space, where the guy says, "I would do nothing". That's how I feel right about now.
