Sweaty Rocks, Sweaty Audience, Sweaty Baba

Bismillah ar-Rahmaan ar-Raheem,

On Saturday, I found myself in Houston (where its hot and humid) to perform at the Muslim Youth Olympics. I arrived a few hours early and after watching a games, I found myself next door...rock climbing. I have tried rock climbing before but for some reason, I found harder than before (maybe because the rocks felt slippery). I quickly learned the difference between an amateur (me) and a person who does this regularly (basically everyone else). (1) they climb the high wall like spiders while I climb it like an old man (2) they were using chalk to get better grip and I was playing slip and slide trying to climb rocks that feel like I'm touching someone's sweaty hands.

Anyways, a few hours later I was performing in a gym with one of those portable mic & speaker kits. Usually I'm doing my thing on a stage with people around me but today, I was speaking to an audience sitting across the wall. You can tell the crowd wasn't in the mood for a talk (let alone comedy) because they were physically exhausted and more sweatier than the rocks I just climbed.

The interesting element in all of this was the last game went into overtime and I didn't start speaking until 5:20 and my flight was leaving at 6:25 with or without me haha. Also, the event was also about 15 minutes away from the airport and that I was scheduled to speak for for 20 minutes (now guess whose sweating).

While I'm speaking, I see the bro whose giving me a ride to the airport giving me the signal and pacing in the hallway while looking at his watch. He looks more nervous than a person whose lost his passport in a 3rd world country, which starts to make me nervous. I don't ever rambling so much random things in any talk before haha but eventually the talk ended at 5:45 and we found ourselves driving insanely to the airport. Alhamdulillah the plane was 20 minutes late and I made my flight. I text message the organizer and apologized for my awkward performance but apparently they didn't think I was doing bad at all. They invited me back on November 8th.