Ramil Blog

It's finally that time... Yup, you guessed it... It's video time!! I've been working on this for a while, and, I promise you, this masterpiece is well worth the wait. I've finally figured out all the steps of making a very simple, 100% authentic video, and here are the fruits of my labor.

This video documents my visit to the barber about a week ago. If you've seen me around campus these past few days, you may have noticed something different about my hair -- something like my NAME shaved into the side of my head. I forget exactly why I decided to go through with the haircut, (there was no wagering or taunting involved), but I am very happy with how my name came out. So, without further ado, here is, "Ramil Gets a Haircut:"

I woke up this morning, and my roommates told me that a walrus was just born at the zoo. Naturally, I wanted to go see it and wish it a happy birthday. However, the baby walrus was born to the Coney Island Aquarium and not the Bronx Zoo. But I was already excited for the zoo, and so I went with my friends Danny and Kate anyway. We had a great time exploring the Bronx, naming all the animals, and enjoying the day. Here's "Ramil Goes to the Bronx Zoo":

Merry Christmas, everybody! I hope you had a great holiday, ate lots of food, and got lots of presents, because I know I did! In fact, my family had so much cheer this year, we celebrated Christmas twice!

Well, that's not exactly true. We don't have that much Christmas spirit, but we did have two Christmases. We had Christmas I on the 23rd, because my sister was flying to Guatemala that night. So, on Christmas Eve's Eve, we had a big dinner and opened our presents. Then, we had Christmas II on the 25th, and since we had opened all the gifts already, we just spent time with family, ate another big dinner.

It was pretty cool separating the different parts of Christmas. Essentially, Christmas I was all the good parts and Christmas II was all the boring parts, so it was nice to be able to duck out of the bad parts without missing the good parts.

This Christmas was a busy time video wise, and my productivity has reached new levels. So, there's going to be two of my videos in this post! The first one is my family's Christmas video, called "Ramil Celebrates Christmas." The second is my sister's Christmas greeting from Guatemala.

And just in case you're wondering where those Tyra clips came from...

If this last clip was new to you, it means that you should be watching more YouTube.

So, in an attempt to be better Florentine citizens, my roommates, Walter and Tash, and I decided to do some sight-seeing around Florence. This might sound simple, but seeing all the sights in Florence is actually a very, very daunting task. As the birthplace of the Renaissance, the home of Michaelangelo and the Medici family, and the current art capital of Europe, Florence is densely packed with historic paintings, sculptures, and buildings. There's so much art and history, that you couldn't avoid it even if you tried. Around just about every corner you turn, you're bound to bump into a museum or a statue.

And I'm being quite literal. If you walk down my street, Via Ricasoli, you'll hit three of Florence's most historic landmarks. If you walk north, you'll pass by the Galleria dell Accademia (home of Michaelangelo's David, and Piazza di San Marco. Walking south, you'll run into Florence's most famous landmark, which the rests at the center of the city, the Duomo.

You can actually see the Duomo from my apartment. It's kind of cool. I look at it every morning. So, seeing as how we live right next to the Duomo, we decided to make it our first stop on our tour of Florence. There are four parts to the Duomo experience: the cathedral, Brunelleschi's dome, Giotto's campanile (bell tower), and the Duomo museum. We decided to do the cathedral and the dome.

It was cool visit, and I would definitely recommend doing at the beginning of anyone's trip to Florence, because you can see everything from the top of the Duomo. I believe that it is the highest point in Florence, and the view is breath-taking. Since Florence is packed with three-story buildings, it's easy to pick out the major sites and piazze. See for youself:

So, I have this roommate Tash (who you met in "Ramil Climbs to the Top of the Duomo"), and she has many, many talents. Among singing and hula-hooping, she also has many cool gadgets. The other night, we had fun playing with one of these gadgets - a flaming wallet! Yes, it's a wallet that can spontaneously combust. It's nothing really groundbreaking, but I made for a cool short video, "Ramil Plays with Fire:"

Also... here's something I like on the internet. But first I have to introduce it, because it has come to my attention that not everyone goes on YouTube.com as much as I do. So, there's this internet creation called the "Lolcat" (LOL + CAT), and it's just funny pictures of cats with captions in a cat language called "Kitteh," which is how cats would speak English if they could talk. The lolcat phenomenon was initially popularized by a website called icanhascheezburger.com, and has since spread to not only different media forms, but also to include other animals.

Another thing that I like is the "Yes We Can" video by will.i.am supporting Barack Obama. I know it's very cheesy, but it makes me feel good inside.

So, people began using their own skills to show support for Obama, as well. And apparently, many of the lolcat image creators are also Barack supporters. As a result, some political websites were created, following in the footsteps of will.i.am and barely political (the Obama Girl studio), to express support for Barack Obama in their own way:
Yes We Can Has
Lolbama
I Can Has Nomination

To help further illustrate the development of the lolcat/lolbama phenomenon, I've created a flow chart:

UPDATE: The creators of the site, Yes We Can Has "had not made a single lolcats image before [they] made this site, and lolbama.com actually came a couple days before [their] site." While this new information does affect the accuracy of the flow chart, I will not be publishing a retraction.

So, it's taken me a while to swim through all the footage from spring break, but I've finally completed both video for Fes and Barcelona. I had a great time in both places, but I really enjoyed my time in Fes. Of all the places I've been to, Fes is one of my favorites. Everything seemed so mysterious, but without the feeling of anxiety that I usually get when things aren't thoroughly planned out.

From the moment we landed in Fes, we knew that this trip was going to be a bit of a bumpy ride. For one thing, Morocco is not one of the places where English is very commonly spoken. The majority of tourists in Fes are from Southern Europe, mostly from France and Spain. So not knowing either language, and obviously Arabic, put us at an extreme disadvantage. Also, Fes is notorious for its faux guides. They're pretty much harmless, but they'll take you on a tour of the medina and ask you for a ridiculous fee at the end of the tour. We tried our hardest to avoid faux guides, and we hired an official guide. However, while official guides charges you relatively little up front in fees, he makes most of his money on commissions. So, being the ignorant American tourists that we were, at one point or another, we fell into each of the traps. But, I still think that we came out of it relatively unscathed.

Before you start thinking that Morocco is one big phony, incomprehensible rip-off, let me tell you what I loved my trip to Fes so much. Despite the obvious effects that tourism has had on Fes, there was still a very vibrant, proud, authentic culture. Many of the people we met were so excited to show us how they lived, and wanted to genuinely be our friends. Hospitality is such an important aspect of Moroccan life, and there were so many times when I thought, "This is just like in Ibn Batutta!!" One night, we met this Moroccan guy walking down the street, and we ended up going with him to a shisha bar. We were having a good time, but the whole time we were hanging out, we were bracing ourselves for the sales pitch. It never came, and when it came time to leave, he insisted on paying for us. The next night, we hung out again, and he brought us into his home to meet his family and friends. They fed us, showed us pictures of their extended family, and gave us henna. They were so nice, and their kindness so simple that it seemed almost too good to be true. They seemed almost naive in their hospitality, but I guess that's just because I would never do something like that for complete strangers.

The video that goes along with this post shows everything else we did in Fes: walking through the medinas, our day trip to Meknes and Moulay Idriss, our "official" guided, etc. It was truly an unforgettable experience, and I do intend on returning to visit my new friends. Here is, "Ramil Goes To Morocco":

During this past semester, I have been involved in a bunch of community service with Vivere il Volontariato at NYU in Florence. In addition to teaching English at a school, my roommates and I have been raising money and awareness for Dynamo Camp (pronounced DEE-nah-moh). "Dynamo Camp is the first summer camp in Italy to be structured specifically for children with serious or chronic illnesses who are currently in therapy or in post-hospitalization convalescence." Dynamo Camp, a Hole in the Wall Camp, is a Paul Newman initiative, and he started it here because, while we have organizations like Make-A-Wish in America, Italy offers no camp-like programs for seriously and terminally ill children.

So, to get people donating to and talking about Dynamo Camp, we did two things: 1) We had bake sales and 2) we held a talent show. Both of the things worked really well, and I think we accomplished our goals. We raised quite a bit of money, and everyone on campus now knows about Dynamo Camp.

In the end, everything turned out amazing, but for a time, things weren't so great. Most of us in Vivere il Volontariato had little experience with fund raisers, and even less with event planning. It was really hard to make the bake sales profitable, especially with a couple different factors working against our favor. And we really thought that the Talent Show was going to turn into a flop. The lowest point was definitely the week before the show, and maybe three people had bought tickets to the show. After working for months deciding on logistics, organizing talent, and having meetings, it looked like all of our hard work would be for nothing.

We knew that we had to change something if we wanted to sell more tickets. So, instead of having bake sales, we began to give away free baked goods. Now it sounds ridiculous, and with the sign

"Free Cookies** (**'Free Cookie' offer only eligible for Talent Show ticket holders)"

This Sunday, a few of my friends and I visited the lovely Tuscan beach town of Viareggio. Viareggio is probably most popular for its celebrations for Carnivale (which is like Italian Mardi Gras), but it's also a quite beautiful beach.

It was cool to be able to go to the beach and just relax on the sand, especially since the weather in Florence has been so crappy. And we picked a pretty good day to go to the beach too, because it was sunny, warm, and not crowded at all.

We played beach games, took a dip in the ocean, got very sandy, and watched a lot of beach football. Italians can never get enough football. Here's a video I made of the day's adventures. I apologize for the crudeness of "Ramil Goes to Viareggio, Sings:"

This weekend, I went with all the men I know to Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is a popular Tuscan tourist and hiking destination because it is both very scenic and quite rugged. As you may have guessed, there are five towns that belong to Cinque Terre, but they're all pretty much the same. I don't even remember any of their names, but they're all very beautiful. You have to hike to get to each one, and the entire path is made of cliffs along the water.

The first two hikes were extremely easy, but the last two were really hard. Most of the way is pretty well paved thanks Cinque Terre's popularity with tourists, but some parts were pretty difficult. The beach at the end was a welcome reward. Along the way, there was some delicious lemonade, singing, lots of Americans, and a nude beach - I am told. Here's "Ramil Goes to Cinque Terre":

So, this last Monday, I was in a concert over here for school. It was a nice, ecclectic show. First, my chamber group performed, then the two jazz ensembles, and then some the faculty performed. I was impressed at how quickly our director, Antonio Vanni, had assembled everything. I was also impressed at the quality of all the performances. All the groups were great, and it really was a privilege to share the stage with so many talented musicians.

I think my group's performance went well, except my battery ran out midway through, so the only footage I managed to get was the first piece, Assobio a Jato (The Jet Whistle) by Villa-Lobos. Check it out: