60 years

Few days ago I celebrated mother’s day, away from my mother.

Today I am commemorating Al-nakbah (Palestinian Catastrophe), which to me is much like mother’s day. Palestinians and supporters of the Palestinian cause remember and honor the Palestinians for their struggle against discrimination and ethnic cleansing. We honor the Palestinians not only for surviving their catastrophes but also for their resistance.

Just like mothers, no matter what I do, say, or yell from the top of my lounges, it is not going enough. All what I do is never going be enough to repay the honor of belonging to Palestine.

Just like mothers, the Palestinian people resist, struggle, cry, hope, build and rebuild, and pray for better well-being every year and every day. They try and exhaust all options in the effort of returning the life that they had prior to 1948.

Considering the turnaround of events over the past 60 years nothing seems impossible. It was just 60 years ago when the Jews/Israeli settlers were deported from their home lands to the ‘promised land’. Those people were expelled from Europe and instead of fighting back for their right of return to their homes; they invaded the Arab’s land. Considering how the illegal settlement has turned into a structured country within sixty years, I don’t see why not the legitimate owners of the land (Palestinians) cannot go back. It is all a matter of time, and a matter of political events turning around.

Today I am not writing to be sorry and to shed a tear. I am just writing to remember all the under privileged children in Palestine. All the sick without health care. All the children stripped out of their right to play and feel safe. Every young Palestine eager to learn and go to school, or what is remaining of it. And to all the under privileged people in Gaza…

Parking in Amman...

I came across this short film for Amin Matalqa. This video is overly dramatized of course to make a point. But every woman who drives in Amman would know how likely it is to happen.



I got my license at 16 and have been driving since grade 11. However the fact that I drive a Saudi car in Amman did not help much.

My advise is to close your windows before you start parking. Pretend that you are about to hit one of those guys by mistake. Hopefully it will scare them.
And yea, practice your parallel parking skills inside your garage, and ignore the comment " Walah bte3raf tsof".... :)

It is not Jerusalem, Israel, never been, and never will be!

OTTAWA (AFP) — A Canadian immigrant has lost his court battle to have his birthplace, Jerusalem, recognized as part of Israel on his passport as Ottawa insists it must remain neutral on the contested holy city.

The Supreme Court refused Thursday to hear the appeal of Eliyahu Veffer, who immigrated to Canada about 12 years ago and wanted his Canadian passport to show he was born in "Jerusalem, Israel.Veffer's passport states only his birth city with no reference to any country because Canada does not want to be seen as taking sides in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over claims to the holy city, officials said.

It is very refreshing to hear such news from the supreme court. I do understand the frustrating of not being able to identify your country of birth on your passport. I do greatly understand being stripped from your rights to enjoy your country, and your home town. But to Veffer I say; I do not think that you should argue that if you want to be a Canadian citizen. I also would like to tell him that he can practice his racism outside of this country too.

Shusshhhhh

I seriously hate being the first one to arrive to work. First, I have to go get the keys from the 3^rd floor to open the door to the office I work in, which is in the basement of this building.

The HEAVY door, which I have held open with a rubber door holder keeps on closing, mysteriously.

I would have to do the photocopying, which involves a whole lot of stairs climbing. Plus, I have to work the super advanced photocopier that jams for no reason making me feel so incapable and stupid. Seriously, Technology can be your biggest enemies at times.

Plus, the awkward silence. It is so quieeeetee. It is around 10 am. As I write this post. And out of 6 people who are supposed to be in the office today. I am the only one here. Wow, what a crowd!

On the other hand, I am so proud of myself facing all that snow bravely, without a single attempt to KILL myself. I won’t be providing pictures of my driveway, and front stairs. I think everyone can imagine snow up to their knees, and snowy tire marks of my car when I was stuck last night. Thanks to stormy February!

I think I will go on my first coffee break for the day. I can not wait for Feb29th. Freebies just took a whole other dimension.

Quote

I guess I could be really pissed off about what happened to me, but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain. And I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday.

Can you guess which movie is this quote from?
When I watch this part of the movie, while the narrator reads this off, Literally my soul flies out of my body and comes back. don't ask why



American Beauty

Joke of the day

"The United States congress has already suspended $100 million of aid to Egypt due to the border breach."

I know exactly what I need...

Here is a useful gift idea. My birthday is not until July, but there is graduation gifts and hopefully new real job gifts :P

I need this flying alarm clock. I think it would be much harder to find the key if the room is darker. Nehaha



Via: Hal's blog

Since we are on this subject. Sony Ericson cell phones have the most alarming alarm clocks. You can even set up to five alarms at once. another reason to not buy a Nokia.

Bed night story- moment of truth

As I was curled up in my pink blanket on my bed, checking tomorrow’s weather, editing my presentation for tomorrow, replying to an email, and updating my to-do list for FRIDAY, my home phone rang.

I put my laptop aside, in a very calm matter, to pick up the phone.

I walked toward the sound of the annoying ring tune, which I MUST change ASAP, still in a very calm manner. The sound was coming from somewhere between my bed and my desk.

Four rings later, I started to lose my patience, and started flipping everything up-side- down, in search for my wireless phone handset. It was not under the 3 decorative pillows, not under my cover, not under my pile of papers on the desk. I know it is my father who is calling for his daily check up, and to make sure we are alive and sound. It is okay if I miss it, I can always call back.

Back to my telephone, I gave up, and decided to check in one last place, under my bed. There it was, all the way next to the wall. Determinant to get hold of the telephone, I squished myself under the bed to get hold of the phone. As I finally got my hand on it, the ringing stopped, and within the split of a second, my cell phone was ringing (classic). AHHH, damn it baba is fast at doing this.

At this point, I tried to quickly pull myself out, get up, and reach for the phone on the night lamp, within 3 seconds. My plan did not consider the wiring festival going on on my bed. I had my phone charger connected, head phones, and laptop charger. The last one was hanging too low, that it caught up with my big hair bun. My hair has not been my friend lately. Too frustrated to deal with its shortness around my face, I pull it all up in a bun on top of my head. A bun big enough to get caught in the wiring job, as I was swinging my head away toward my cell phone, specifically my hair was caught in my laptop’s wire. If this description was graphic enough for you, you would guess by now what happens next. My LAPTOP was thrown on the ground. I was speechless. My cell phone stopped ringing (another classic moment).

What good is my phone with its cool camera if my laptop, God forbids, is broken now. I broke the silence, and grabbed my laptop, crossed my legs, and with wide open eyed I opened it as it was slammed (closed) when it fell off the bed.

I pressed the power button, and boy. Was I glad to hear the Windows tune again! Not only that, but my files were still all running, no lost data. I never loved my old dusty laptop as much I do now.

This experience (almost losing my laptop) reminded me of how dependent I am on this machine, and how it deserves to be named after all these times of service. No. I don’t think I will go this far. I will stick to the promise of unconditional love, and a promise to take more care of it. Oh, and to be a more loyal PC user and stop thinking about considering switching to a slim Mac notebook.

Do you have a name for your laptop? I know some people do!

a BLACKOUT

Gaza is enduring its FOURTH cold day, and fourth cold night.
Light a candle. Talk about this. Share your insight and suggest from past experiences what could be done. Visit A Candle for Gaza

Gaza

The European Union slammed what it termed as "collective punishment" of impoverished Gaza's 1.5 million residents, while the United Nations called on Israel to open the territory's crossings to ease a "desperate" situation in a zone where most people depend on foreign aid.

But Israel dismissed warnings of a humanitarian meltdown, saying Hamas was exaggerating the situation in the territory that had reserves.

"Hamas is deliberately intensifying the crisis in the Gaza Strip in order to create pressure from the international community on Israel," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told visiting Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen.

NO PRESSURE... as long as the children are fed, and the sick ones are allowed to breath.

A WHITEOUT causes 100-vehicle pile-up near Toronto

TORONTO (Reuters) - More than 100 vehicles crashed into each other on Sunday on a highway near Toronto due to bad weather conditions, though no life-threatening injuries were reported, police said.


"We have people with broken arms, broken legs. There are serious injuries to a lot of people"



Miraculously no one died.I can only imagine how esctatic insurance companies are.

I URGE those with poor driving skills to get off the highways, at least during snow and construction seasons. For the sake of all of us.

Bloggerabia...

I remember years ago, when Disney channel launched their Arabic Disney cartoon channel. They had a rather interesting ad that featured a dark skinned teen, wearing a baseball cap flipped to the back of his head, and FULL of 12-years-old-boy attitude. I remember him saying in a Saudi accent;
"أنا بتكلم عربي. أنا بدرس بالعربي. وبحلم عربي. ودحين، أنا بشوف كرتون بالعربي!"
Just like that, hundreds of Egyptian actors and actresses were blessed with new jobs dubbing Disney's cartoon movies and some other Disney shows.

Today, as most of you Blogger users, I read the announcement of launching Blogger in Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian.

"Besides localizing the Blogger interface into these three languages, we have right-to-left templates and have added new tool bar buttons for bi-directional text editing in the post editor."



"The effort was worth it, however, and we’re tremendously happy to be a part of the growing Arabic-, Hebrew-, and Persian-language blogging communities."

This is not an unexpected move at all, considering the growth of the blogging community in the Middle East area. This comes as a classic market respond case.

What I intended to rant about today is this Arabic Blogger is going to introduce us to other enlighten minds, that happened to speak the Arabic language. With all do respect to the Arabic blogging community, your strong existence on the "blog-sphere" is not solely due to the fact that you are more educated, or more interesting than the rest of the world. This strong existence is solely due to the privilege of speaking the English language, which has made the blogging process easier for you than the rest of the off-line community. I admit that my experience in blogging is very limited, and is still very young. But I have been around to see that most of the English Jordanian blogs are read by other Jordanians, who happen to speak the language. Blogger will provide a more independent voice for this segment, as most of the Arabic operated blogs I read, at least during my blogging life, are part of influential entities such as Imad Hajjaj's blogs or al-Jazeera's blogs.
I am very ecstatic about reading about political issues and social trend from a very different point of view. Especially looking forward for reading more Jordanian blogs with a fresh perspective.

Citizens of the world...UNITE

This came on TV last night at 10-esh pm. I have to say, PERFECT timing :)





Enjoy your Monday :D

I miss long weekends

Elissa... the song of this winter probably

I am in a musical mood today...
I came across this song. I have not heard any new Arabic songs in a while. I have a feeling that it is a hit...
anyways...enjoy
اواخر الشتا

You will like this...

There is noting more beautiful than the human being's emotion expressed in a song. This is why we cry when hear some songs, and why we wish those songs were sung for us at the first place. I know almost every girl wants to be Delilah...no? I am sure you have your song then...
via Hareega

Hey There Delilah



Story: A guy meets a girl who happens to be a runner, and asks her out, she was already in a relationship so she turned him down. He made up a song to express how much he loved her. Watch the Olympic Games this summer, you might see Delilah DiCrescenzo running in the 800-meter competitions. A love song not inspired by a love story.



How to Save a Life

Story: This young man was working as a mentor for troubled teenagers. One of them had a behavioral problem that could not be solved by his family members and therapists. This inspired the young man from the Fray to come up with "How To Save a Life"

My take: this might be a really popular song, but even if it was not, every time I hear it I could not help it but choke thinking about all the injusticed kids, all the hungry kids, and all those abused kids from every society sector and every color. The song tickles my mind, and remind me that I can not too just turn my face and pretend it does not exist.Not even for a moment.

Step one you say we need to talk

He walks you say sit down it's just a talk

He smiles politely back at you

You stare politely right on through

Some sort of window to your right

As he goes left and you stay right

Between the lines of fear and blame

And you begin to wonder why you came......

Last first day...at least for now

Monday was my last first day of a semester. This day sure has lost all excitement/anxiety/ or any associated meanings and traditions.Considering that I am doing this for the 18th year in a row...

Over heared...

Her to new friend and possible room-mate: do you think I am hot?
Him: I acknowledge that you are attractive
Her: okaaay...
Her boyfriend: Honey, I know you want this so much.So sure move in with your friend. He is obviously gay

Back to business

Back to work
Back to cruel Canadian winter
Back to parking space scarcity
Back to waking up at 7 am



Coming soon: back to boring 3 hours lectures