Chinese Film Week

Day One: (which does not necessarily mean there will be a day 2 or 3)

We arrived a little before 7. The room was half full at that time, mostly Chinese (or East-Asians). More people started filling in and we continued waiting for the film to begin, or for someone to explain to us the reason for the delay. Organizers were nowhere to be found, not even to assist the newcomers into finding the few empty seats.

7:35 the show begins. Or so we thought. The presenter speaks in Arabic for an audience mostly made of non-Arabs. Then he translates his words to English. 6alib Arefa3ee speaks for another 5 or 10 minutes, no translation follows, then manager of cinema club, whose name I forgot, speaks for another 5 minutes. Presenter translates his speech into English. Chinese ambassador (or was it cultural attache?) speaks for yet another 5 minutes, with his speech interrupted occasionally by the cutest Arabic translation ever in an accent I almost never heard (Chinese reading Arabic amazes me. Why can't I read Chinese?). When that's done, we assume it's time for the movie. But no. Presenter speaks again.

At this time, 8 pm already, my sister and I decide to leave ... coz ... are you kidding me? You start late. You don't apologize for making your audience wait 35 minutes. Then you give your audience a sarcastic remark about their mobiles providing background music, totally inappropriate and a little bit demeaning. Regardless of the audience's lack of consideration in keeping their mobiles on, it is uncalled for when the presenter addresses this issue in such a sarcastic tone. Just tell our audience to please turn their mobiles off. I mean they've been patiently waiting for you for 35 minutes. Give them some courtesy.

So anyway, if you happened to watch the movie, fill me in :)
Details are found here.

لبيروت

لبيروت

من قلبي سلامٌ لبيروت

و قُبلٌ للبحر و البيوت

لصخرةٍ

كأنها

وجه بحارٍ قديمِ

هي من

روحِ الشعب خمرٌ

هي من

عرقِهِ خبزٌ و ياسمين

فكيف صار طعمها

طعم نارٍ و دخانِ

لبيروت

مجدٌ من رمادٍ

لبيروت

من دمٍ لولدٍ حُملَ فوق يدها

أطفأت مدينتي قنديلها

أغلقت بابها

أصبحت في المساء وحدها

وحدها و ليلُ

لبيروت
من قلبي سلامٌ لبيروت و قُبلٌ للبحر و البيوت
لصخرةٍ
كأنها
وجه بحارٍ قديم

أنتِ لي أنتِ لي

آه عانقيني أنتِ لي

رايتي و حجرُ الغدِ و موج سفرٍ

أزهرت جراح شعبي أزهرت

دمعة الأمهات

أنتِ بيروت لي

أنتِ لي

آه عانقيني

update: blogger gave me trouble when I wanted to add more pictures. I gave up and published without the bread and smoke pictures. Flickr wasn't as user-friendly as I expected and I didn't realize that the URL is found when you click 'all sizes.' Now I know, so now I add two pics

To Meriam wherever she may be.

Back in the 80's my sister and I were introduced to Meriam. Her brothers Jameel and Muhammed worked as electrician and plumber for my father. Seeing that we were almost the same age, they suggested bringing her over to play. Sis and I were more than willing. We loved that girl. I think it is around that time that I started loving the Lebanese. Took me a while to actually love the country since it's been in turmoil throughout my childhood so never got the change to be taken there with Mom & Dad. Thanks to my other sister's apparent magnetism towards that country, she was invited to take part in a show in 2001 and she chose me as a companion and that's when I met the country and fell in love with it instantly.

I think I knew Remi Bandali through Meriam. I'd leave it to N to correct me. She'd remember better. Listen here.

update: my bro bugs me about my spelling mistakes in these posts. so i had to edit. corrections, as per my fashion with student papers, are made in red.
ما عندي سالفة

Veni, Vidi, but not Vici

Saw this while visiting Purg. I liked. I used.
Too many white spots that need to be red-ed. Why red? I simply visited the country. I didn't invade it. I didn't kill anyone. Well, maybe a few fish, chicken and cows. But other than that I didn't kill.


Within the U.S.


create your own visited states map

Too noisy to work ...

Dana's rendition of Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"

Saoud's rendition of Mansfield's "Miss Brill"

Sara's rendition of Head's "The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses"

Hussain's rendition of Hemingway's "Soldier's Home"

After each member of the group presented their part, he started wrapping up by saying that Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is considered the best work of literature at the age, at which time she jumped at him to say that she strongly disagrees on that. Being as we have often seen brother and sister competing in class, we thought they were actually having an argument within their group, especially after she pointed out that he, due to his disability, being short, fails to appreciate Swift's story about giants. It turns out this play was part of their presentation. Thank you S & S for livening up our summer course with your act.

She approached me after class to ask if her participation is a little over the top. I reluctantly answered her by admitting that she does have a habit of interrupting people in the middle of their sentences all the time. At which point, she promised to be careful about this next time and wait for me to call on her in order to give the other members in class the chance to talk as well. Today A proved that she cannot help being A :)

I occasionally stay in the office to get some work done. But it seems that as long as my neighbor is this adorably noisy colleague, I can never get any work done. His voice is so loud that you can hear him speak from across the building. This post goes for Dr. H, my neighbour.

لنسمعهم صوتنا

نبي حكومة بلا عناصر الفساد والتأزيم
نبي مجلس برئاسة وطنية تمثل الشعب ولا تمثل عليه
وهم نبيها خمسة
لنسمعهم صوتنا كما أسمعناهم من قبل
ساحة الإرادة - مقابل مجلس الأمة

الجمعة ٧ يوليو2006
الساعة الثامنة والنصف مساء
البس البرتقالي واحضر

For those who mistook my last post as a sign of surrender, I add this here to show that I haven't given up. I received a blow, a strong one, but I haven't given up on Kuwait and never will.

3 wise monkeys

When we went into the Criminal Investigations Building this last Wednesday the 21st of June we were met everywhere with this statue.
Now I know what it means exactly.

The 3 deaf, blind and mute monkeys are indeed very very smart. So smart they're gonna lose this country to other monkeys.

حسافة على الكويت

جمعية الشفافية الكويتية

تدعو جمعية الشفافية الكويتية الراغبين بالتطوع للمشاركة في مراقبة إنتخابات مجلس الامة يوم 29/6/2006 إلى التسجيل لديها على ان تقدم لهم دورة تدريبية بعنوان (المراقب الإنتخابي) للخبير الدستوري د. محمد المقاطع و سيمنح المشاركون شهادة مراقب إنتخابي.

عنوان جمعية الشفافية الكويتية
اليرموك ق4 مقابل شارع المطار
هاتف : 5358901
5358902

الدعوة موصولة الى مدونين الكويت خاصة ان تساعدوا في نشر الدعوة ولنتصدى بها الفساد ولنكن درعا نحمي إرادة الشعب من التزوير. ان الامل كبير

ليعلو صوتك ... مارسي حقك

For more/clearer info visit Ayya

وهم نبيها خمسة

ripped to pieces

I didn't have the chance to take a picture of the posters yesterday. And now they are all ripped to pieces.
Posters in Surra, scattered around, not too many. They say something like "We can't be bought by the Dinar," and "We're not for sale" (rough translation).

Now who would rip such posters?

Toni Morrison: Sula. 1973

"Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise." Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures. Toni Morrison. Nobel Lecture.

Two girls, raised in two different matriarchal families, finally realize that the bond that unites them as friends is stronger than other societal bonds that kept them apart.

Eva’s husband walks out on her leaving her with two girls and a boy. Her house becomes a place where many seek shelter. But the house lacks proper order, an attribute Morrison reserves for those who are not willing to allow a space for differences among people. As part of her illogical, disorderly fashion, Eva takes in 3 boys and calls them all Dewey, against everyone’s quizzical inquiry as to how to distinguish between the 3. Her daughter Hannah also loses her own husband when their daughter Sula is only 3, leaving Sula to be raised in an a-typical matriarchal family.

Helene Wright is raised by her grandmother away from the Creole whore who gave birth to her. When Helene marries a seaman who is constantly away and bears her daughter Nel, she raises her in such an orderly fashion that makes this matriarchal family the opposite of that of Sula.

It is this opposition that joins the two girls and leads to a friendship that becomes the main focus of the novel, even when Morrison crowds her novels with many more interesting characters and stories:

Eva herself kills her own son when his war trauma leaves him too attached to his mother, but then throws herself out the second floor window onto her burning daughter in an attempt to save her life.

Sula sees her own mother burning but doesn’t move to save her, partly because of hearing her mother in an earlier occasion admit that she loves, but does not like Sula, her daughter.

There is also Shadrack, the shellshock veteran who celebrates National Suicide Day every year, and who finally leads some townfolks into a tunnel, and accidentally, to their death.


Another one of Toni Morrison’s successes. If you haven’t touched a Morrison yet, what are you waiting for?

The old woman is keenly aware that no intellectual mercenary, nor insatiable dictator, no paid-for politician or demagogue; no counterfeit journalist would be persuaded by her thoughts. Toni Morrison. Nobel Lecture.

update on shuroq

This isn't my own post. But I found the comment stretching a bit too long in Shuroq's blog so I chose to include it here.

الشاب اللطيف في أثناء الحديث قال هذا أبوي وإذا أبوكم نزل نفسه بالانتخابات ما راح تساندونه؟ فردت عليه عالية: إذا كان شريف. فقام الشاب اللطيف بإعطاء عالية تلك الخزة الطويلة الظاهر مصدق إنه ريّال ويخرع. كان قبل شوي قايل حق شروق إنه لو كان متزوج كان عنده عيال قدها وقايل بعد إن احنا من نكون عشان نقعد نربي ونهذب بأخلاقيات الناس واحنا يهال وما نفتهم (كلمة يهال صايرة تنقال لنا وايد هالأيام بس أول مرة أسمعها من ريال عنده 17 سنة. بس الداهية شروق عرفتله وقالت إي طبعا أنت أكبر منا لأنك ريال) وأعتقد أن هذا السبب اللي خلاه يتوجه حق شباك شروق لأنها فاهمته تمام.

وسألونا ليش تبونها خمس ترى الخمس مو عادلة (شافو الشريطة البرتقالية بسيارتي ما شاالله عليهم نبيهين). وقالوا شلون توزعون فتاوي الطبطبائي مع أنه ضد المرأة. وقالوا عادي ماهي رشوة لأن مرشحنا طول عمره يحب يعاون وسألوا الوالد عن أفضال المرشح على المنطقة (الوالد ضحك لين قلناله، وشر البلية ما يضحك) و بينما شروق قاعدة تحاور المأسوف على شبابه دخل بالسالفة ثالث من أهل الدار يقول لنا أنتو ليش قاعدين تحاورون وتقنعون، بس وزعوا منشوراتكم و خلاص (طبعا الأخ واصل عالسالفة من الآخر وما يدري ولا حتى يبي يسمع أننا ما طلبنا نحاور أحد) لا وبعد كاسرين خاطرة يقول أنتو بنات و ما له داعي تكلمون صبيان بالشارع. يعني يكون ضميره صاحي على هالموضوع وايد.

المهم أن ولدي لما قلناله السالفة قال إي ما عليكم منه هذا كلكشي معاي بالصف و

he's messing with you

وهذا مرة جمع كم دينار من الطلبة بحجة أنه بيرتب لهم حفلة وطلع بالأخير قاص عليهم. الظاهر الابن البار كان يبي يعاون الوالد بحملته الانتخابية ببعض الدعم المادي. عفية عليك يابو عمر. والله عرفت تربي كثر الله من أمثالك.

وسلامتكم

My blood is boiling

What happened tonight is beyond anything I ever expected. My blood is boiling and my hands are still shaking. I never believed corruption could run so high and in such an open manner.

Distributing flyers with a message against buying and selling votes ended in one of the most aggravating and disturbing conversations ever when 2 men directly offered us money to shut up and/or sell our voices.

I will leave Shuroq to fill you in on the details. She's a more prolific writer with a better memory. And she has already been threatened to publish something by noon tomorrow or else.

Toni Morrison: The Bluest Eye. 1970

Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father’s baby that the marigolds did not grow.
This is how 9 years old Claudia begins telling us the story of Pecola that she and her sister Frieda, 10, were witness to. In this story, Morrison takes her readers into the world as seen in the eyes of two black girls whose fortune is only a little better than the distressed Pecola. Pecola, influenced by the seemingly happy life displayed on the screen of this pretty blond with blue eyes, decides that what happened to her could be prevented if she had Shirley Temple’s blue eyes:
It had occurred to Pecula … that if her eyes … were different, … she herself would be different. If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove. Maybe they’d say, “Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn’t do bad things in front of those pretty eyes.” …Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes.
But Pecola is not that lucky. Her eyes aren’t blue. And her father Cholly rapes her. And her mother Mrs. Breedlove breeds no love on the girl.
So it was.
A little black girl years for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment.
We saw her sometimes, Frieda and I—after the baby came too soon and died. After the gossip and the slow wagging of heads. She was sad to see. Grown people looked away; children, those who were not frightened by her, laughed outright.
…
All of us—all who knew her—felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness.
…
She, however, stepped over into madness, a madness which protected her from us simply because it bored us in the end.
It is only when Claudia grows older that she realizes that the town and she herself were wrong when they acquiesce to life’s unjust treatment to one of their own, saying the victim has no right to live.

I love Morrison’s multiple narrators. I love her refusal to allow her readers to classify good and evil. I love the fluidity of her style. But most of all, I love this, her first novel, and to me, the most gripping of all her 8 novels.

My aim is to begin some sort of a book review here. Not a very typical one, just my own thoughts and observations of a few of my favorites books. Toni Morrison being my favorite author, I will begin with this, then follow with the rest of her 8 novels before I move on to other writers.

That, my dear reader, is the plan. But I am generally not one to follow through with her plans :)

الهارون & النيباري

And if you read this before 8:30 tonight:

الفساد... الى متى؟

Tuesday 6 June 2006

8:30 pm

المقر الإنتخابي للسيد عبدالوهاب الهارون

ضاحية عبدالله السالم

دعوة خاصة لشابات وشباب نبيها خمس وكل من مل الفساد ويريد الارتقاء للكويت ولاهلها

Vote for Dad

عبدالمحسن تقي مظّفر
مرشح المنبر الديمقراطي الكويتي عن الدائرة العاشرة

لانتخابات مجلس الأمة 2006

Inspired by Alia

Away from politics

Away from politics 1:
Today is the last day of class, the worst day of the year for me. I hate saying goodbye to students. Every semester I get to know a number of students. Some are old students from my days as a school teacher. Some are interestingly bold and original in their way of thinking. Some are a raging volcano of emotions and thoughts under a quiet facade. Some are still learning to gain a voice. Some are struggling with balancing family and school. Some I enjoy teasing and some take pleasure in teasing me. But all are such a pleasure to teach and an honor to know. To my 475 class and to those who graduated before, I dedicate this post.

Away from politics 2:
The maid I borrow from my sister twice a week to clean the house has to go back home. After finding a suitable candidate, I went to apply for her visa armed with the necessary papers only to be told that they need a recent divorce paper, not more than 6 months old. What's the logic behind this? 6 months? I'd understand, or can pretend to understand, 3 months, as a woman cannot remarry within three months of her divorce. But 6? What would happen in 6 months that can't happen in 3?

Away from politics 3:
I was supposed to join Walk the World with my friend yesterday. She couldn't take the day off so I decided not to go alone. But later on I decided to go to release some stress (not caused by the latest political events but by personal matters). Is it still supporting Child Hunger is my cause was a fresh walk on the beach for exercise and for stress release?

I leave you with pictures of the event:

وهم نبيها خمسة

Kuwait Political Database

Coming to terms with my ignorance regarding the current political situation, getting tired of having to refer to my little sister for information, and being in a state of perpetual confusion as to each MP's position regarding this and other debates, I decided to google Kuwait Politics and came across a very interesting and informative site for those political novices like myself. Check it out.

I just spent the last hour surfing through the various levels of information presented there. I found out that there are 44 registered voters sharing my family's last name, 4 of whom live in Jabber :)

التجمع القادم
وتستمر الإرادة
بمشاركة نواب الأمة .. نلتقي معاً في ساحة الإرادة
أمام مجلس الأمة - شارع الخليج العربي
يوم الجمعة 19 مايو - الساعة الثامنة مساء

pooh fellow bloggers/nabeeha5 fighters/ شباب الياسمين : Seeing your faces at those political gatherings has been part of the pleasure I derive from my meager political activism. I find myself insisting on attending in spite of my busy work schedule (semester nearing its end, exams not yet written) partly in excitement over meeting with you again. Our political struggle will hopefully continue beyond our struggle to approve the 5 constituencies. However, I would love for us to be able to meet on a more social ground. Are you interested? I wasn't able to contact all of you by email so I chose to spread my call here and in some of your blogs. Email me if interested.

هم نبيها 5

Let's not give in now. Sunday at 6. See you all there facing the Parliament.

I'm repeating the call of my fellow bloggers. It's time to make a stand. It's no longer about 5 or 10 or even 25. It's Kuwaitis showing they care about their country, showing they are involved, showing they are politically aware, or at least, politically interested in what's going on around them.

Please please please be there. Don't be passive. Don't say it's pointless. Don't say one person won't make a difference. If you care even a little bit about making this a better place to live in, start now. What harm would come to you? A few hours gathering with a bunch of devoted, interesting, fun, energetic and patriotic group of people (blogville is filled with those, as I have come to find out) can do you more good than harm.

Sunday, 6 pm, Facing the Parliament: See you there.

Let them eat cake!!!

Isn't this similar? I don't write political posts. This isn't politics. I write about food. So here's food for thought:

Isn't approving 10 when you ask for 5 similar to suggesting cake when you ask for bread?

Well, not quite. Offering cake is an indication of ignorance. Offering 10 is one of not giving a damn. Or is it not so?

Sunday: 6-8 PM

Parliament