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Apr032006
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Dubai Ports Controversy |
I didn’t go to work today because Dad was going to be too busy at the office this afternoon to take me to school after. When I got up he said he had to leave early and wouldn’t be able to just take me to school. He didn’t leave early at all but I put off getting ready because of what he said so I had to get to school myself this afternoon. I left the house around 12:30 and caught the bus downtown. It was over 80 degrees today. Although not unpleasant, it’s clear the last vestiges of spring are fading fast. Since I was on the east bank five hours before class I had plenty of time to fill. I was curious as to the state of the Riverwalk so when I got off the bus I hopped on a street car to go to the end of Canal Street as I wasn’t in a walking mood. This was my first time in the Riverwalk since the hurricane. A majority of the stores within were closed. When I first entered the mall I had to walk a good ways before I saw the first open shop. It was a bit depressing to see a once thriving tourist attraction so dead. Some of the big stores like the Gap and Banana Republic were open though. I mainly went because I wanted to go to the Gap and add a short-sleeved collared shirt to my meager wardrobe. As is so often the case, they only had six shits that fit the description, but I picked out one that wasn’t bad. The girl at the cash register said business wasn’t great, which was hardly surprising seeing as how many vacant ships I had to walk past to get to this store. With my new $35 shirt in hand, I continued up stairs to see the rest of the mall and to get something to eat at the food court. There was more of the same. EB Games was open, but most things weren’t. Most of the food court was unoccupied. A Pizza/Pasta kiosk was open, as was Haagen-Dazs and the Mexican place. Everything else was closed though. I got a slice of pizza and a salad before heading out. As I was leaving a Zippo lighter case at caught my eye at this pen store. I’ve never smoked or had any need for a lighter, but I’ve always wanted one for some reason. Maybe it’s the neat, familiar clicking sound they make. I went ahead and bought one, it wasn’t expensive. I walked up Canal to the Tidewater building to wait for a shuttle to go uptown for class this evening. I must have arrived uptown sometime around four. I went to the library for a good while before class this evening. I left an hour before class to go to the class room because I wanted to go over my speech in my head. There were two debates in class this evening. I was absent when the instructor went over how that would go. There were two teams of two for each debate. The first one was on abortion. It ended badly as the professor seemed outright mad at the lack of preparation undertaken by the ‘pro’ side. He threw them out of class when they seemed dumbfounded when I asked a question during the audience Q &A portion of the debate. Class was dismissed after the two debates, except for those who still had to give our persuasive speeches. There were five of us. Although there was plenty of passion and knowledge behind the topic of my speech, the dubai port deal controversy, I still screwed up the delivery. I skipped over two important paragraphs of the speech and it threw me off pretty good. I still got an ‘A’ though. Dad picked me up near the library a short while after class. We watched 24 that evening. There was a rather ‘interesting’ twist at the end of the episode.