If you know me well, then you fully understand the hilarity of this.
My uncanny fascination with ninjas can be traced back to an internship I had on the US/Mexico border during the summer of 2004. Myself along with five other students lived in El Paso, Texas for a summer as part of a Border Studies Program offered by George Mason University in conjunction with the University of Texas El Paso. We would cross into drug ridden border town of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico--which has received the dubious honor of being the murder capital of the world.
We frequently traveled to Juarez for a series of seminars, consular visits, internships--at the time I was interning with an immigration lawyer. One of the most interesting visits we had was to sites such as notorious murder houses used by the cartels led by photo journalist Gabriel Cardona. A very interesting charater who collaborates with renowned novelist Charles Bowden for work (just in case you are familiar with the area, these are well-known names of people working on the issue). At the end of the program, Charles Bowden (who everyone calls Chuck) invited myself and a colleague of mine to his home in Tuscon...it was by far one of the most interesting and bizarre experiences I have had to this day and the six hours I spent is a story all to itself. In sum, he's a great man with a lot to tell and was kind enough to treat me to a burger afterwards.
And so I digress...back to the ninjas.
One of the other participants was obsessed with ninjas. He even roped both myself and another participant into making a satire presentation for the head of the program based on ninjas in Juarez. Luckily I only helped with the power point because you could literally hear crickets chirping in the background following the presentation instead of the anticipated laughter. Clearly some people just did not get the joke--understandably so.
I would never fully understand the impact this ninja obsessed man would have on me until years later. It appears his constant ranting of them and forcing me to watch videos of them had some type of subconscious influence on me and has me sitting mesmerized by films with ninja fighting sequences.
So it was no surprise that I let out a squeal of joy when I found this package on a dusty shelf in a grocery store here in Batticaloa. I felt it necessary to buy this package just for the name despite already having a stack of mosquito coils at home. If you're not familiar with mosquito coils...they are spiraled incense that you put on a metal stand, light and allow to burn for hours. The smoke keeps the mosquitos away and its recommended to light them at dawn and dusk when they're most active-especially for those carrying Malaria.
In all seriousness, I give my full support to a coil carrying the Ninja name. I haven't been bitten once since lighting them. Now if I could only find the same thing in spray can form for the roaches...
We frequently traveled to Juarez for a series of seminars, consular visits, internships--at the time I was interning with an immigration lawyer. One of the most interesting visits we had was to sites such as notorious murder houses used by the cartels led by photo journalist Gabriel Cardona. A very interesting charater who collaborates with renowned novelist Charles Bowden for work (just in case you are familiar with the area, these are well-known names of people working on the issue). At the end of the program, Charles Bowden (who everyone calls Chuck) invited myself and a colleague of mine to his home in Tuscon...it was by far one of the most interesting and bizarre experiences I have had to this day and the six hours I spent is a story all to itself. In sum, he's a great man with a lot to tell and was kind enough to treat me to a burger afterwards.
And so I digress...back to the ninjas.
One of the other participants was obsessed with ninjas. He even roped both myself and another participant into making a satire presentation for the head of the program based on ninjas in Juarez. Luckily I only helped with the power point because you could literally hear crickets chirping in the background following the presentation instead of the anticipated laughter. Clearly some people just did not get the joke--understandably so.
I would never fully understand the impact this ninja obsessed man would have on me until years later. It appears his constant ranting of them and forcing me to watch videos of them had some type of subconscious influence on me and has me sitting mesmerized by films with ninja fighting sequences.
So it was no surprise that I let out a squeal of joy when I found this package on a dusty shelf in a grocery store here in Batticaloa. I felt it necessary to buy this package just for the name despite already having a stack of mosquito coils at home. If you're not familiar with mosquito coils...they are spiraled incense that you put on a metal stand, light and allow to burn for hours. The smoke keeps the mosquitos away and its recommended to light them at dawn and dusk when they're most active-especially for those carrying Malaria.
In all seriousness, I give my full support to a coil carrying the Ninja name. I haven't been bitten once since lighting them. Now if I could only find the same thing in spray can form for the roaches...
