What Have I Done in 2010?



Montreal



My red velvet cake

Bryan Admas in concert, 17 Dec 2010- Dubai

NASA, Texas

Galabeya!

The curly do

Zozo

In no particular order:


- Saw Bryan Adams perform live on 17 December
- Won a major scholarship that 5 people in Egypt have every year
- Went to my first galabeya party and dressed up :)
- Traveled to North America for the first time, visited Montreal and Texas
- Managed to spend a week in Montreal and Quebec almost entirely alone and had fun
- Had a great and expensive shopping spree in Houston
- Bought my first MacBook!
- Baked the Red Velvet Cake
- Hosted a group of friends for an evening at home for the first time (an old phobia)
- Got my Dubai driver's license on 14 January 2010- after years of attempts
- Bought my first car, MiniCooper S 2007
- Changed my hairstyle to curly and love it
- Enhanced my photography in Canada, the US, and old Cairo sites
- Stared a physical fitness regime and exercised more regularly than ever before
- Made a whole bunch of new fun friends in Dubai
- Achieved a major dream of mine - details later ;) 

Ruling the Egyptian People

I haven't been paying a lot of attention to all the news on El-Baradei and his campaign. However, I got somewhat interested when I heard that some papers published photos of his daughter in a bikini saying she's married to a Christian and she drinks alcohol. Whether the news is true or not, I don't even see why it should matter. He seems to have a family in which it's ok to wear a swimsuit on the beach. What is so horribly wrong about that? We all know what kind of things the children of high-ranking politicians do in Marina, Sharm, or even abroad. If his daughter, anyone in his family, or even he drinks alcohol, is that supposed to affect his political stance or his integrity?

What I wouldn't be comfortable with though is if he made a personal choice to drink alcohol, not practice  Islam strictly, and/or be agnostic (which I kinda doubt) but he still goes to mosques for publicity in order to appeal to the masses in Egypt. If that is the case, then it would basically mean two things:

a) The sad truth is that whoever wants to rule Egyptians or have any sort of political influence on them has to either be  religious or pretend to be so.

The penetration of the Wahabi thinking and the extreme manifestations of devoutness (whether fake or real) among Egyptians has also come to mean that politicians have to ride the same wave in order to win people's trust. It is truly sad that whoever uses religious phrases in his speeches, appears praying in public, and protests against video clips on TV seems to win the sympathy of people in a heartbeat.

b) El-Baradei is shrewd enough to realize the point above, although he hasn't lived in Egypt for decades, and he decided to play on that chord. That to me is an indication that no one is an angel in politics, and that El-Baradei, like anyone else, would do whatever it takes to win. Putting on a face that people like just to win their trust is a manipulation of simple minds that I find unethical.

I believe though that El Baradei will never be as shrewd as his enemies who have been living and breathing this kind of hypocrisy for ages and have become masters of the game. I don't think he imagined the amount of pressure they'd put on his private life or the way they would strike below the belt. Thus, he has not prepared for that and he can never be a match to them. If he and his family knew, his daughter would have closed down her facebook page before her dad came under the spotlights. If they knew, they would been careful about who their friends are at this critical point of time. If they knew, they would have stopped leaving their houses in the first place in order to please the Egyptian people!


I think Egyptians need to wake up and see what's going on. If we keep mixing the cards and judging politicians based on their appearance and personal choices, then we deserve whatever happens to us. We should not be a nation that sympathizes with those who pray in public and frowns at those who have a chosen a liberal personal lifestyle, instead of scrutinizing their political agendas or discussing their public service achievements -or the lack thereof. The extreme superficiality that is prevailing among Egyptians is leaving us prey to the manipulative and the power-hungry everywhere.

Please, NO

SCREAM.. SCREAM.. SCREAM. No, please, no. Not again. It really hurts.

Beirut.. Beirut 3a bali!

Two days ago, I went to work as usual and I was feeling very hungry in the morning. I felt longing for a labnah and za3tar man2ousha from Zaatar w Zait in Beirut. I don't know why the idea came to me like that in that particular morning, and why it had to be in Beirut and not in a Dubai bakery for example. I miss the sunny and chilly mornings, walking around in my boots and coat to go have breakfast and coffee, and savoring the warm man2ousha in preparation for a long day ahead.

There is something about the air and the atmosphere in Beirut that is totally unlike the stifling Dubai. Maybe it was also being away from work and from stress that made me feel so relaxed, but  I know it was also definitely the place. Waking up to the sound of church bells on Sunday morning was a new experience to me, it was refreshing to feel a different type of energy, to sense a different kind of tolerance that doesn't exist in a lot of other places. Even the political faction posters all around the city reminded me that there's more in the world than tribal leaders who became rich kings of the desert. The bustling chaotic streets made me smile when I realized there're places in the world that can look like Cairo.

The most striking scene of Beirut that I have in my mind is a big old building with a hole in it- near the Martyr's Square (Sa7et el Shohada, where Rafiq El Hariri is currently buried). The building looked totally abandoned and its walls turned black, it looked like it used to be a big water tank of some sort.  All around it were nice-looking new or renovated buildings and it was the only building left untouched with the black walls serving as a stark reminder of what had happened there. Turning around to the other side of the square, you can see the Martyr's Statue. The statue is full of bullet holes that can be noticed from a distance and is also kept as a reminder of what had happened over the years. It stands opposite the ultra shiny and clean Hariri mosque that contrasts in color and shape with everything else around- and to the side of the statue is a big vivid poster advertising a new fancy real estate project to be built next to Sa7et El Shohada!

To me, all the contrast between old and modern, all those problems faced daily by people in Beirut, all the political debates, and all the little places to have coffee and a heated discussion with your friends are signs that the city is alive, with character, history, and a controversial future.

I miss Beirut...

And they cut down the trees...

(The building of the billboard- and the ad before they cut down the trees)

During my first year in Dubai (2007), I took a taxi to work everyday. That meant I went through most of Sheikh Zayed Road back and forth and I had the luxury to observe the road as I like and I always had my head turned right to the window. In one part of the road, there were a lot of trees and bushes to the side after the jungle of skyscrapers at the beginning of the road ends, and I always thought they were a nice reminder of something normal in the midst of all the modernity and construction. Then one day I saw workers building big metal scaffolds behind those trees. The work took a few days and it started to look like a huge advertising billboard starting from ground level, and I was wondering how people will be able to see the ad behind the trees.

To my not-so-big surprise, one day I was on my way to work and I realized they cut down all the trees and the bushes in front of the board. The place looked like a massacare scene with the tree bodies and branches lying on the ground and the trunks cut off near the ground. For some reason, I felt very upset. It was like a typical attack on nature for corporate interest. The banner was put up on the billboard afterwards and it was a huge ad for Tatweer projects (part of the famous Dubai Holding which is almost entirely owned by Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum). The place looked ugly to me now and it was no longer the nice. Every time I went by that place, I looked at the huge billboard and tried to see if the trees were growing back. I was worried that even if the trees grew back, they'd cut them down again. For a long time, the ad and the billboard stayed there. I moved to a different neighborhood and that road wasn't on daily route to work anymore.

Almost two years later, the big financial crisis hit Dubai. Real estate prices and rents dropped down to half of what they used to be and I moved back to the neighborhood I first lived. At that time towards the end of 2009, Tatweer was in a lot of financial trouble and Dubai Holding annouced it will consolidate all of it is subsidiaries under one company. Most of the Tatweer projects that were pictured in that ad were either postponed or cancelled. I'm not sure when but at some point the ad banner was removed from the billboard and all that remained were the wooden panels on the scaffolding.

In 2010, I started driving my own car so I couldn't look at the road side and the ads anymore. Today I was in a friend's car and I looked at that billboard for the first time in a long while. I noticed that the wooden panels were still there with no ad on them, and the trees are now growing back...

Quiet

It is a quiet Friday, like the ones I've been having lately. I woke up just before my gym session, had a good workout then went back to the apartment. Today I didn't feel like having the usual omlette or cereal for breakfast so I fried a pirce of chicken and some cheese sambosa. Working out hard makes you hungry! (I'm already having another snack now!). Since then, I've just been sitting on my couch doing emails, facebook, and blogs. A friend and I planned to go to Al Ain today to see Jebel Hafeet then go to their new wildlife park for the night tour, but she's still at work and not sure when she'll be done. We may still go if she's done within an hour or something.

Checking Lonely Planet for sights to see in Montreal and Houston is also giving me hope that my break is coming soon hehe. Things have been crazy at work so I can't complain too much about the quitness!

Crazy

I didn't initially create this blog for myself. It was actually for two of my old TeenStuff friends and I to go back to writing and put it out here. Last December, I made the blog and gave them the details. I ended up publishing one post and they bailed on me of course. Now after two of my newly-found old friends have been nagging me to start a blog, I decided to use this one.

With a new crazy out-there pink background, I'm hoping this will give me energy to write again! I know this is going to bring on a lot of crazy entries and weird writing, but why not? :)