A day at Om ElMaradim

Weather was great. Company fun. Music just right.


N looking for shells

Y enjoying the water

Feet bathing in the sun/sand :)

Thank you Y & A for lending us your boat.

Galatea at Mishrif

I just came back from Mishrif, where a group of young men and women performed an adaptation of the Pygmalion/Galatea myth. It was a fun show; light, humorous, and entertaining. The music was well-chosen and lively at times. This is a group of amateurs who seem to have put a lot of effort to present us with this show.
I forgot to take my camera so these here are not good quality pictures.
The show is on again tomorrow, Thursday, at 8. if you get the chance, go watch it. It's a 1 hour show worth your time.

Unattainable Freedom

Stillness and silence drenched the atmosphere. The only sounds that broke that silence were the pounding of her heart and her uncontrollable panting. Her chest heaved and fell restlessly. Shaking on the outside but frozen on the inside. Her eyes were fixated on the innate figure that lay unconsciously before her. She did not dare blink, in case she lost sight of him. Is he dead? Not a chance. Was this her chance? Her chance for escape? Can she escape? Possibly. But…. Did she really want to? She wasn't panicking but she was utterly confused.
After a while of thinking…'processing'… she finally built up the courage to take a step forward. Nothing happened. He did not move. Another step. She was close now. Closer to her freedom… and closer to him. Her chains clinked as she moved slowly. She kneeled down beside the motionless figure with a single thought on her mind… keys. She noticed his bulky pocket and could not help but feel a chill of excitement! Reaching for his pocket her heart sank. She could feel the keys… clutching them, she withdrew her hand gently with a jingle and quickly retreated to her former position.
She fumbled with the keys hesitantly until…Click! Unlocked. Freedom?! Immobile, she gazed at the door…then the corpse. Should I tiptoe? Not wanting to waste any more precious time thinking…she rushed for the door…the exit…the opportunity. And as she was passing, the figure unexpectedly seized her ankle and toppled her over. Still clasping her ankle, he pulled her underneath him and lay on top of her.
"If I didn't know any better I'd say you didn't like it here"
He smirked.
She squirmed.
"You're not going anywhere…I promise you that."


*story by Disturbed Stranger
Part I: Reluctance vs. Submission
Part II: Subconscious Desires
Part III: Not Surrender

Higher Ed Coaster

Sometime in April, I contacted Higher Ed to process my son's papers. They tell me the admission letter is not enough and I should contact them again when his High School diploma is out so they contact DC to get the final approval.
Early June. Diploma ready, I submit all his papers, only to be informed that they could've contacted the Cultural Office in DC with his admission letter only (Now did they not know that before?). I am told to wait a week or two for a reply from DC.
After 2 weeks of constant phone calls to a line that is mostly not answered I find out that there is still no word from DC.
Doubting, rather too late, that they might not have even sent the papers, I call the Cultural Office in DC only to hear that they have not received anything regarding my son. I ask whether I can fax them the papers. But of course they need an official cover letter :)
I contact High Ed this morning ready to flip at them (I hold my peace knowing that would only get them even less cooperative) and they confirm that fax has been sent, showing a paper with a stamp "faxed" as proof. Yup. Proof indeed.
It's almost mid-July and we leave the country early August.

This is the easiest chapter of my life on a roller coaster.

The rest is too roller coastery for a blog :)
So I leave you with silly jokes.



Who Why do the French eat snails?
Because they don't like fast food.





What do you say to a dead robot?
Rust in peace pieces.





And a by-now family classic:
Why is six afraid of seven?
Because seven eight nine.

Not Surrender

Surrender. Is it an option? She would never consider it. She never gave up on anything. But being there… in his arms… so close. The closeness… It was different. NO. It didn't matter, she was held there against her will. A prisoner. A prisoner of her own thoughts. A prisoner to her own feelings. A prisoner.
He looked at her blank face staring into the distance behind him. Her pupils dilated. Her lips slightly quivering.
"What's on your mind?"
Nothing. No reaction. She did not budge.
"Hey," he gave her a light nudge, "you look at me when I'm talking to you".
Again, nothing. She did not respond…or did she choose to ignore? He looked at her and smirked. He knew how to get to her. He knew how to provoke her. He knew he knew her. He moved his lips closer towards her, she flinched abruptly. He stopped for a moment… then slowly moved closer, shifting his lips previous aim for her lips, to her ear. She froze. His hand lay on her waist, pressing her closer against him as his other hand clutched one of her frail arms. Then he started his despicable game. Whispering.
Minutes passed… she grew unstable. Twitching. Wriggling. Struggling. His hand released its firm clutch of her arm and decided to tame her, finding its way through her upper body… and finally resting on her neck. A firmer clutch. His thumb stroked her cheek caressly. She was uneasy and his whispering was getting to her… trying her patience… she couldn't take it anymore…Enough! Suddenly she gave a loud cry and pushed him back with all her might… And with a loud thud he hit the stone wall and fell to the ground…

*story by Disturbed Stranger
Part I: Reluctance vs. Submission
Part II: Subconscious Desires

A Shallow Post

Summer started. The heat tends to kill those few brain cells I have left. So my summer posts will/shall be as shallow as can be.

After having debated on whether or not to buy a Mac, and after being encouraged, insisted upon, nagged upon, continuously convinced that I should go for it, I decided to go for it. I will be Mac'ed soon.

My one Lit class got bombarded by my presentation of course info and other technical details for 2 days. Tomorrow I move to more mind-numbing details regarding writing skills.

I saw Shrek a few days back. Did they actually cut the kissing scene between an ogre and his ogre wife?

Exams and Desires

My last creative post was caused by my inability to function (i.e., my being dry and unable to create my own post).
This post is here now because blogging is just more interesting that writing exams and correcting papers.
So here's part two of my last creative post (not mine as in my creation, mine only by means of me publishing it here, but mine either way)

Subconscious Desires*

The dark figure seemed satisfied. Pleasures of domination. Staring at her with the utmost superiority, he smirked. She looked up at him helplessly. But there was something not quite reassuring about the look she gave. Speculation.

"What?" he inquired.
And without further warning she jerked back her head and let out the 'liquid' she had refused to swallow, onto her 'target' successfully. Revenge. The dark figure grew impatient, however, still maintaining his awkwardly false smirk.

"What did you do that for?" There was a pint of anger in his tone yet no hesitation whatsoever. He moved closer towards her. That agitated her. She started to shake uncontrollably…Not out of fright…but tension. She moved backwards until her back was hardly pressed against the cold stone wall. Clinking, her chains tangled as she wriggled her feet feebly.

"stop it" she finally managed to utter under her breath, "don't come any closer".

The figure let out a monstrous laugh that echoed through the stony hallways. The voice shook her. Her heart sank…but she did not panic. Not for a moment. Instead, she looked at him boldly and with such confidence that intensified his fretfulness.

He made a grab at her. She did not struggle as he pulled her closer to him. She could feel the heat given off by his body and as much as her mind told her she detested him… it aroused her subconsciously.

"Don't come closer?" he whispered callously in her ear, "But you're mine…"

*Check out Part 1: Reluctance vs. Submission

My Magna Cum Laude

12 years ago, he wore his first graduation gown at his KG graduation.
Last night, he wore a similar gown for his high school graduation.
Bader, I am so proud of you.

"Thus spake my Zarathustra"

I'm Running dry. No ideas for new posts. So I decided to consult a muse from among my recent blog visitors. The name Disturbed Stranger seems to go well with my latest disturbed movie post. So here's a disturbed stranger's story:

Reluctance vs. Submission

It was dark. It was quiet. It was cold. It was damp. It was dead. The touch of the cold iron chains against her smooth, sensitive skin sent shots of shivers up and down her spine. Quivers. The rattling of the chains echoed back and forth on the thick 16th century stone walls, other than the crawling and squeaking of unknown varmints…that…was the only sound heard 50 feet underground in the cellar: The Dungeon.

But there was no one there to hear but her. Alone. Sinking in her sorrow. Alone. Her warm tears flushed down her cheeks. But she made no sound, for it insulted her to cry. She was not crying. Was it an involuntary necessity to discharge excess liquid? Perhaps. Suddenly, a lonely overhead light bulb lit. However, it was still dim. Rattling of keys came from behind the massive wooden door. There was a jolt at the huge metal lock. Unlocked. The door opened with a creak, sounds of footsteps were approaching her. Her heart started pounding with each step. She clasped her knees to her chin. The footsteps stopped. She looked up, squinting. There stood, blocking the light, the silhouette of a well-built figure. The dark figure stretched out his arm and murmured, “Drink this.” She was frightened. Very frightened. But confident.“Take it,” the voice insisted.“No,” she fired back and turned her head to the side.

“No?” The voice mocked. The figure bent down, supporting his weight on his feet and brought his face close to hers. He lifted the cup closer to her lips. She gave a rejecting sound and turned her face to the other side. The figure gave a grunt and made a sudden grab at her hair, pulling it back, exposing her face and neck.

“Do we have to do this every time?” Her eyes were tearing up. He brought the cup close to her lips, again. She drank.“Good girl” he whispered and planted a kiss on her wet lips. A tear ran down her cheek.

Submission.

Perfume & Dust

I just watched Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. A recommendation from Purg about 4 months ago. It took so long to get to watch it as I was distracted by Octavian and Grey and Sawyer and Gabrielle.

Now Perfume. A brilliantly grotesque movie that told me you need to kill 13 beautiful women to get people to worship you and eventually devour you. All it takes is a sense of smell equal to a hound dog.

Quite disturbing. You gotta watch it.

But then if you want to be publicly disturbed, I would suggest Disturbia. Not half as good. But worth a watch if you feel like braving the crowds and going to our noisy malls. A movie about a 'disturbed' man being watched by a voyeuristic teenage neighbour.

With the semester coming to an end, I'm dreading the lengthy summer. Spoiled by teaching every other day, the summer daily teaching load is always a hassle. But after 7 weeks of daily torture the vacation arrives (and with it, another kind of torture).

How are you enjoying the dust this weekend?

Shisha-induced Thoughts

I smell like shisha. I used to really hate that stuff. (Relics of an ex-relationship that is only now fading away) Now I'm finding it easier to handle spending time with shisha smokers. The minty flavor of tonight's shisha actually appealed to me. I hope this doesn't develop into a smoking habit. I hate smokers :) (Not my sister of course, she can indulge all she wants in her phallic symbols, I still love her)

Reading Morrison's nobel lecture in class, and forcing a deep analysis of a bird in the hands of kids, I finally agreed with a student that sometimes Ignorance is bliss.
Who came up with such atrocity? Ignorance is never bliss. Now knowledge might be a disaster. You might not accept that knowledge. Hell, you might even hate that knowledge. But does that make ignorance such a bliss?
I would always prefer knowing to not knowing. Even if knowing can cause a turmoil within me.
Besides, I'm a caring (or is it curious?) person by nature. So naturally I always want to know.

A simple lunch with sisters and cousins is never a simple lunch :) Laish il fathayi7? And why is it that we seem more willing to talk about our lives in the midst of crowds of people while in the comfort of each other's houses, with no eavesdroppers, we tend to be reserved? (We is my cousins and I, so if this doesn't apply to you, my dear reader, mo lazim) It is as though we believe that the noise will dim our secrets and distort the full image we are presenting into a distorted, fragmented one, more easy to accept than a full and unified picture.

English Day

الصبيح من دون ملفع أوحجاب

the paternalism that claims woman for hearth and home defines her as sentiment, inwardness, immanence. ... when one offers the existent no aim, or prevents him from attaining any, or robs him of his voctory, then his transcendence falls vainly into the past--that is to say, falls back into immanence. This is the lot assigned to women in the patriarchate. ... To identify Woman with Altruism is to guarantee to man absolute rights in her devotion, is it to impose on women a categorical imperative. (Simone de Beauvoir)





Imagine what would've happened if the minister of education walked into the parliament with her head 'forcefully' covered.
Imagine being told that you have to cover your head to walk into your office, to walk into your classroom, to go shopping, to go out for dinner, to walk on the beach ...
Imagine being told that you can't go into your office because it is shared by a male colleague, you can't go to class because it is not fuly segregated, you can't go shopping or walk on the beach because your place is at home.

Why imagine? It does not seem so far-fetched at this stage, does it?

I salute our Minister of Education for her refusal to give in, for taking the oath with her hair revealed (the shame! the disgrace!), in the midst of yells and screams of those ignorant MP's

Due Date (the approved version)

I still haven't finished the book which I postponed our meeting to finish. Over 300 pages left to read in 2 days. Doable, but unlikely.

I have to go register to the NBK marathon but driving into Salmiya at this hour is not an attractive idea, so I'm procrastinating by blogging.

I'm hungry and my stomach makes very loud demands when I'm hungry. That can be a real annoyance at times. I fed it a damn peanut butter and jelly sandwich but it still groans and moans. So I decided not to submit to it. If it throws temper tantrums to get what it wants, I have to teach it a lesson. No food for you until you hush.

I would satisfy it by a visit to my favorite restaurant, except that lately the service at Le Notre has been deteriorating noticeably. Food is still good, but those waiters are clueless.

So it's patience my noisy stomach. You shall be fed once I'm done doing what I'm doing.

I can eat cereal any time of the day. Can you?

Due Date

Dearest Swair already posted on this act of KU dumbness. And I plead guilty of this act.

Unfortunately, this poster, brilliant as it is, will not be on display on the esteemed walls of the Faculty of Arts. The reasons: It will cause tongues to wag, eyebrows to be raised, drawing unnecessary attention to our day. I wasn't told not to use it, but I was adviced to choose my battles wisely. Not all publicity is good publicity. And I caved in.

Personally, I still fail to see the big deal here. It's a pregnant woman. Women do get pregnant occasionally. What's controversial about that?

* Poster was done at KU printers and picture shot by my phone camera. So quality isn't as good as the one I received from the designer.

The Time Traveler’s Wife

We read The Time Traveler’s Wife this month. The whole boy meets girl scenario is confused here. 36 year old boy time travels to where 6 year old girl lives with her family. (The actual difference between the two is 8 years) He tells her that in the future she will be his wife. During the next 12 years of girl’s life, boy keeps ‘visiting’ her from different time frames and by the time girl is 18, she is totally into boy. Now you tell me how messed up is this?

My reading group was split. Some saw boy as the Romeo of our time, while others thought our Romeo was manipulating our Juliet. I thought it was a fun book to read in terms of how the writer arranged the chapters and kept us captivated. The dialogues are at time boring, but mostly appealing and rather significant in their simplicity. But I thought boy is one messed up kid who started time traveling at the age of 5 and by the time boy is 15, we read this:
“I’m in my bedroom with my self. He’s here from next March. We are doing what we often do when we have a little privacy, when it’s cold out, when both of us are past puberty and haven’t quite gotten around to actual girl yet. I think most people would do this, if they had the sort of opportunities I have. I mean, I’m not gay or anything.”
And our messed up kid decided to mess up another kid in the process.

But think of the potential this would offer. If you know your future husband/wife, you would time travel to when they were kids, and mold them any way you wish. So by the time they are old enough to be ‘enjoyed’ (because our noble hero is no pedophile and he refuses to touch our girl until she turns 18), they have been totally shaped the way you want them. What a delightful idea.

My travels plans aren’t coming through. I think I will just end up using the holiday to relax. I am in dire need of this. These last few weeks, or months(?), were rather hectic. Were? Are. They are still going. But I like hectic. I like busy. Between classes, preparation for English Day, book club, and timetable hassles, I am left with barely enough time to watch my current TV addiction: McDreamy meets McSteamy is where I’m at right now. And Lost is back so we have that as well.

I am still on the look for keyboards that we can rent for use during our rehearsals for and at the actual English Day. These things are not so easy to come by. But the rest is going smoothly. Plays are being rehearsed, stage being checked and everyone is doing a wonderful job preparing for this day.

Piano...Books...Paris...Rome

There’s a piano somewhere at KU that I’m trying to locate. I heard we had some kind of a tiny music room somewhere in the hidden niches of our esteemed university. But finding it might be a problem. Can you actually lose a piano?



University policy dictates that new orders on books have to go through department council to actually be approved, after which an order is submitted, and pending the university budget, I might or might not be getting the books by March which is when I’d be needing them. Our department is on vacation now so nothing can be done till February 10th which would definitely be too late. Now you might ask why I haven’t done that before. And the answer would be that I’m a procrastinator. Lazy and laid back and always leaving things till the last moment. So what to do? I might have to ask students to either get the books online or make copies of them, which I really hate doing.

.....Paris or Rome?

Solitaire, hair, rain and work

I forgot to take my coffee mug to the classroom to entertain me during those most dull 2 hours of my teaching: exam time. So what does dear teacher do? Use the class computer to play solitaire and minesweep. Well it's an essay exam anyway so I don't really have to watch them like a hawk :)

The rain makes my hair look frizzy. And sometimes, just sometimes, I like that. Frizzy hair is hot. Just like long legs. Any relation between the two? No relation needed.

Spring terms resolution: less writing assignments, more time to work on my own projetcs. I pulled a similar resolution this fall: Less playing with the syllabus, stick to some old material so there will be more time to work on my own projects. But then I drowned myself with committees and other administrative jobs. When will I learn? More me time, less them time. ( I should learn from an old friend of mine. Me time is really limited in my life)

Have fun with this. Test this file out with a few people. Who can hear it? Who can't? Click here

3 days in luxor

Luxor was beautiful. Family was amusing. Trip was relaxing.

Exams … Papers … Timetables … Class notes … Council minutes … Conferences … Publications …

And that’s not to mention all the personal havoc in between. So what to do when jammed, when squeezed, when pressured? …

BLOG

Enjoy Luxor. I did.

الكرنك

النيل

الترزي

المكوجي

كشري بندق

الشاااااااااااي

Let Veronika Die

Coelho’s Veronika was the topic of discussion in today’s book club. I’d have to say that I’m surprised at the fame this author’s getting. The book was made of one cliché after another. A group of people in a mental asylum come to enlighten us to the fact that “all of us, one way or another, are mad.” Self-help, inspirational, spiritual how to appreciate life books are boring. Where’s the juice?

Veronika decides to die. Dr. Igor steps in and shocks her into wanting to live. Now what gives a person the right to decide for others? She made her choice. Who is he to intervene?
If someone you love or care about wants to do something that you think is harmful, how far would you go to stop them? Do you have the right to interfere in other people’s lives based on your own way of deciding what’s good and bad, what’s right and wrong? What if that’s not how they see things?

Eh ... too late to continue this post.


Now I have to decide on our book for next month.