Jetlagged much indeed.

Following Jacquie's extra long travel journal, here's mine:

I leave the hotel at 6:20pm, arrive at JFK 7 as per the airline's instructions to be at the airport 3 hours prior to departure. Well, guess what? Our check-in line was not in the least bit crowded and we checked in in 30 minutes. Entry through the gates was also swift (another 30 minutes tops). So by 8 we're ready to board, but plane leaves at 10. We shop, eat, drink, shop some more.

7 hours to Amsterdam. I have my sleep aids and an intention to sleep the 7 hours. Next to me sits a lady heading to Cyprus. She is a talker, a snorer, a chewer, a breather, a mover ... and she does all those things continuously and loudly. Needless to say, I barely slept for 3 hours.

3 hour wait in Amsterdam. Sleepy but hungry. So we eat. Always a good way to kill time at airports. Amsterdam has a comfortable airport. I manage a 30 minute nap on the chair.

5 hours to Kuwait. Couldn't sleep at all. Those stupid personal TVs can be harmful at times. I am one who loses sleep when watching TV. I flipped chanels, watched TV, music, played, disregarding my bloodshot red eyes.

10 pm, I'm home. 12 I'm in bed. 1 I'm up again. Stay up till 5:30. Sleep till 1 (causing mommy and daddy dearest to worry when I didn't answer the phone after promising them to have breakfast with them)

Second night. I hit the sack at 11. Wake up at 3:30. Decide to watch 24 (episode 1 of season 4) to put me to sleep (knowing fully well that TV keeps me up rather than lulls me to sleep). I stay up till 6:30 when the alams goes off waking up an already wide awake me. I see the kids off to school and by 7:30 I manage to sleep hoping for a phone call from mom to wake me up around 9 (our usual breakfast time). Well, mommy dearest decides to let me sleep in today and I wake up at 10:30 on a call from NBK.

Tonight's plan. Take the damned sleeping aids again hoping they won't cause me to dream about noisy lady from Cyprus.

Long post. Don't blame me. It's my inspiration's fault.
Will you forgive me if I leave you with the soothing sound of the fountain trickling by the Lake at Central Park?

Meryl Streep in Central Park

Meryl Streep & Kevin Kline in Mother Courage, part of the Shakespeare in the Park productions.

Regardless of the weather turning cold and the rain getting heavier, the audience continued to pour in.

Then it started raining heavy, we took out our umbrellas, they had to stop. Streep wasn't too happy about that and raised her fist up towards the rain, cursing it?

I have to give these actors credit. They continued acting in spite of the rain. It is us, mortal subjects, who were bothered by it. Meryl Streep, needless to say, was amazingly energetic, rolling around in the mud, jumping and singing on stage. I fell in love with her all over again.

Tomorrow night, I say goodbye to New York City. Though it's been treating me good (these past 12 days), I miss home. I miss my boys and my bed and my shower.

Most of all I miss my blogger friends (not really most of all but since you'd be reading this I thought I'd play to your ego)

Manhattan: A City of Architecture

Flatiron Building


St. Patrick's Cathedral


NY Public Library


Building from Will&Grace


Carrie Bradshaw's from Sex and the City (Perry St.)


Apple Store


Metropolitan Museum of Art


Brooklyn Bridge


NY Stock Exchange


WTC (what used to be)

This post is inspired by my visit to the Zaha Hadid exhibition at the Guggenheim's yesterday.

Chicago feat. Usher

Sorry if I haven't been replying to your comments on my previous posts.
Thanks for all who wished me a happy stay.
mini r. apollo theatre, not yet. i packed some mini replicas of some paintings from the metro. good enough?
ayya. i read your central park poem when you first published it and i thought it was quite a coincidence, or maybe القلوب عند بعضيها
white wings. mariah is half naked coz she can :P, big sale at BCBG, and here's one modern art example: Robert Rauschenberg's The Tower (1957)

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pablo Picasso Gertrude Stein

Gustav Klimt Mada Primavesi

MC in NYC

Mariah Carey at Madison Square Garden

"We Belong Together"

"My All" an all-time favorite of mine

I Love New York

I am such a Dory ...

Remember that cute blue fish in Finding Nemo?

Here's my Dory story:
I packed. Said my goodbyes to some. Went back home for a nap before my flight scheduled for tonight.
I double-check the ticket to confirm just one more time ... and lo and behold ... my flight is scheduled for tomorrow, not today.
Now tell me, isn't that the clumsiest thing you have ever heard?


I think my last post is early signs of my dory-ism. A comment meant to appear in another blog, somehow became a post in my blog!!! I don't understand how that happened. But hey ... I'm Dory :/

If I wasn't always blessed with this absentminded and forgetful nature, I'd blame it on nearing my big 4-0. But alas, I can't even blame my dory-ism on age.

But then again, I can also blame it on giving myself very little time between one flight and another, getting sick the last day on my previous trip, having to do some unpleasant legal errands today, worrying about the kids' school starting while I'm gone (with my eldest a senior this year), among a list of other minor disturbances that I have been having lately. Egh, when did life become so complicated?

The Ultimate

Just dropped in to say hello.
Miss you girl :*

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.