A very good and happy day by and large, with so much to keep my smiling, I was grateful to be alive. Okay, that may sound a bit hyperbolic, but that is the statement I want to make every day of the remaining days of this glorious life. To begin today, I woke up later than I wanted, but not by much, and I got ready and left the apartment. On the way out of my flat, I noticed a parcel for me of some thickness and I decided to open it. To my delight, it was from Alyssa, and it was three things, a card, a book: American Gods and a CD: 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields, something I have longed to buy myself, but never got around to. With that happy start, I went off to the American Express Office to exchange some of my travellers’ checks for cash. After this, I went to the school to attend the Islamic conference held there. The first event I came to but not intending to (the conference was running late) was Islamic gardening and design which I must confess was a boring way to begin the day. It consisted of a lady and the great host Chris Cook (I think) who was a wonderful British man of a large build and a very British demeanor quite reminiscent of Stephen Fry to me.
After this boring talk we moved on to a very entertaining Iraqi professor who talked about the culinary influences of Middle Eastern food on Western culture. He also talked about the history of fast food and globalization, but it was all quite interesting I may say. Following this, the exciting moment of the day came: a man came in to speak about his conversion to Islam and it was extremely inspiring and if you are wondering who it is, his name is Yusef Islam, better known to the world as Cat Stevens. I was wholly impressed with this man, whom I have long admired, for being well spoken, intelligent and kind. Others apparently did not have the same impression, but it was so good to know his story of why he converted to Islam and so forth. I was about 5-10 feet from him the whole time, with barely or no one between us. The funny thing to me was, when he came there were photographers who took tons of pictures of him when he walked into the room, and were rather obnoxious about it. Now, the fact that there were professional photographers at this event seemed suspicious to me anyway, especially considering that it was a rather small school event and even when he arrived there were probably just about 100 or so (maybe as high as 200) in the room. He then requested they stop as it was annoying to him, plus I am sure it was just overly obtrusive to his speech. After he said this, my roommate (who is a photojournalism major) was taking pictures anyway and continued to do so, at which point he chastised her saying “Could you please stop now” in a very short and obviously irritated manner. He talked about his life and his spiritual quest and I found it very inspirational, and it reminded me a ton of Alyssa for multiple reasons.
It was very funny too, because when he finished his speech and left, so did these noisome photographers. After that heartening time, they had another speech about the women of Islam and so forth with the same Iraqi guy I had mentioned, as well as some woman from an organisation whose aim was to help women in Moslem countries. The guy again was very intelligent, and well thought out, and I learned much from him. The woman on the other hand seemed really only to talk about her organisation, as well as having an extremely thick accent and it was hard to follow her, but I managed alright. The next event after this, was utterly great to me, and I was not expecting it to be so much. It was titled Islam from the British perspective. Just before this one began, I was sitting next to an older British man, who was of the upper classes (or at least the educated ones), I could tell by his accent. He happened to be the former director of the university, and was very fun to talk to, he told me that he was leaving for New Mexico in a week for the wedding of a friend’s daughter, and when I told him that my father used to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory, he seemed very impressed. He then asked what I did and I mentioned that I was a linguist and we had an in depth conversation about my generation learning the classics, versus his, which he said they were forced to learn after diaper training. To be honest I was envious of this, but then, I’m sure we have courses at such ages that are far advanced of what they would learn.
The final session (or at least final one for me) started, and it was very enlightening. They had all British speakers, two of whom seemed quite educated and the third was a Moslem of Iranian origins who was well thought out. It was an interesting session with Richard Tames, Chris Cook as the moderator, and a bloke from the BBC (though I am not sure what he did there). I was quite happy after this, and soon returned home to find myself alone for a while. I worked on some things, and eventually stayed up quite late, continuing to work, at which point I went to bed.