Today's Awesome Stories

[mangaluva]

What kind of idiot smokes around a books?

I often wonder that too D:

I suppose the same people that smoke while correcting student papers :x

Gotta be more evil to smoke around books :V Books are holy after all. As for student papers.. not so much

Books are holy. Student papers are produced by a combination of all-nighters, deals with various devils and vodka.

[nomemory]

Been at my grandparents place which really have been fun. My grandparents are the best ever And the entire time they were wondering if I couldn't stay longer, saying it was so nice to have me there. And the food.. So tasty it was almost illegal. And well, I really want to be like them, you know that when you visit them it will always be a nice time them since they are so pleasant, their home is always nice and the food is always good. Though naturally the first thing is most important, but well.. The other things are nice too.

But books belong to the smoker (hopefully!), while student papers don't :x

That is true

[Edogawa4869]

I'm sure you guys have had enough of my complaining concerning my toothpick and school glue bridge.   But now it is time to praise it! Who knew that 110 grams of toothpicks and glue could hold up 99 pounds (~45 kg)?!

[Akonyl]

managed to see Nobuo Uematsu play, was pretty awesome. Only knew half the songs he played, but he did Dancing Mad, which was pretty sweet (and I think he said he hadn't played it in 9 years or something, but it was hard to hear on top of his English not bein the best of the best).

Best part though was how he was just some old Asian guy on the side of the stage playing a keyboard, and the rest of the guitar players etc were pretty stereotypical J-Rock dudes. You'd think someone would take center stage if they know everyone's there to see them

[nomemory]

managed to see Nobuo Uematsu play, was pretty awesome. Only knew half the songs he played, but he did Dancing Mad, which was pretty sweet (and I think he said he hadn't played it in 9 years or something, but it was hard to hear on top of his English not bein the best of the best).

Best part though was how he was just some old Asian guy on the side of the stage playing a keyboard, and the rest of the guitar players etc were pretty stereotypical J-Rock dudes. You'd think someone would take center stage if they know everyone's there to see them

I saw a youtube clip with him just blending in with the choir for a while, seems like he isn't that fond of the stagelight

[kkslider5552000]

Books are holy. Student papers are produced by a combination of all-nighters, deals with various devils and vodka.

Well I guess Vodka had to be smart at something.

[mangaluva]

Books are holy. Student papers are produced by a combination of all-nighters, deals with various devils and vodka.

Well I guess Vodka had to be smart at something.

What, this isn't a face that screams culture and intelligence?

[Suutashi]

Books are holy. Student papers are produced by a combination of all-nighters, deals with various devils and vodka.

Well I guess Vodka had to be smart at something.

What, this isn't a face that screams culture and intelligence?

Not really.

[KangarooGirl]

Suutashi's avvie's expression fits so well with that comment :x

[ranger]

Books are holy. Student papers are produced by a combination of all-nighters, deals with various devils and vodka.

Well I guess Vodka had to be smart at something.

What, this isn't a face that screams culture and intelligence?

"HEY!  I'm Vodka!" *Grins

[mangaluva]

This gets kinda long, but it's an awesome story that goes a long way back and I only got the full story of just now.

I heard about it when I went to church with Mum on my way out of town. We weren't attending anything, we just stopped in to say hello to Mum's friend Winnie, who was visiting back from Rwanda for a couple of days and demanded Mum come and hug her before she left again.

I was maybe eight the last time Winnie and her kids lived in town, but I do remember them vividly. Her son Iggy and his little brothers had the distinction of being the only black kids in our small pasty-white town, though this never amounted to much more than one little kid once asking him when he was made of chocolate. They moved back to Rwanda after living here for a year, as it turns out, all thanks to Mum and a few of her friends.

There's a little kind of area with benches and flowerbeds right outside of my old primary school, where parents congregated before hometime to pick up their kids. Mum and a few other mums were chatting to Winnie one afternoon, and she was singing the praises of the primary school and the nursery that her youngest was attending, how wonderful it was that all kids got to go to school for free and lamenting how lacking the schools were in Rwanda. Kids in her area only got to school for a couple of years, and only if their parents could afford it. She talked about how she'd like to start a nursery school to give little kids a headstart on education, just the basics of reading, writing and maths.

"Well then, let's do it!" Mum and her friends said.

For a year, the mums fundraised like crazy. They held bake sales. They went on the Skyride (an aerial wire-run assault course) in tutus and wings for sponsor money. They sold bricks- you paid a fiver and got to write a little message on a paper brick, which would then be posted on the walls of the real building when Winnie built it (many are laminated and still there, I'm told). They did fundraising runs and race nights and raffles. They raised what amounted to thousands of pounds in a single year, and gave it all to Winnie, who reportedly screamed, cried, hugged everyone, and packed up the husband and kids to head back to Rwanda to start building.

And the Mums kept going. They have stalls at the Marches and Advent Fair every year, and have done the occasional larger event, such as a busking gig on Princes Street by Sambalistic, the samba band my dad's in. In recent years, teenagers have been going out to Rwanda on work projects to help build and expand the school; all of them kids I went to primary school with (I could never afford to go myself, but I've always helped Mum out with rounding up donations of clothing, money, books and toys to send away with them.)

The nursery got built. Over the years, it's expanded to a full primary school, primary one to seven, and they're about to start building a high school. It also has its own allotment, which hires unemployed locals to grow crops for sale. There's a soup kitchen with free meals for the school kids and unemployed or just poor locals. There's a community centre which teaches local women handicrafts such as sewing, knitting and pottery, to make things to sell (as opposed to the traditional method for young women in the area to earn money, in the Oldest Profession). They have their own herd of water buffalo. The entire community has been brought back from the brink of death, and kids who first attended the nursery over ten years ago are actually discussing going away to college when they're older, because now they can.

All this came out because when Mum went to see Winnie, she was chatting to some friends of hers in the church, who were under the impression that the church had contributed money to the project, that it was all down to church intervention. Nope. The church did send some collection money, but it accounted to less than £100. Mum jumped down the throat of a woman who exclaimed in surprise "oh, but I thought this was righteous work?"

I'm not religious myself, but I think that woman's got a slightly screwed-up definition of righteous. The school educates over two hundred kids and provides employment and opportunities for hundreds more adults. It's doing amazing work for a devastated community, and all because some Mums were concerned about some little kids living on another continent and said "Let's do it."

"Holy" or not, I think that's pretty awesome.

[nomemory]

@Manga's story: That is really, really awesome, really (actually there is no amount of words that can describe it so I'll just stop now). I wish more people had the will and courage to do something like that, and to those that have, you are the best.

[Commi-Ninja]

@manga:  I can't blame your mom at all for jumping down her throat, as I would likely have done much worse than that.

That's pretty darn awesome!

[Suutashi]

@ manga: That is awesome!

Edit: One free pizza is great. Two free pizzas with Crazy Bread is awesome!

[mangaluva]

Never underestimate the power of mums concerned about other people's kids