Apparently it's not just being "Middle Eastern" that would mean you are fucked wherever you go, from the west all the way to down under,
It's also being Muslim.

I had an interesting conversation at work, while the Internet was down - again, with a half-British, half-Swedish woman, married to an Egyptian.
She's Muslim, and lives here for a while so her kids would learn Arabic. She is veiled, so the inevitable question that I asked her, was how she gets treated in Sweden.
She told me she, and many of her Muslim but non-Arab women she knows, only get veiled in the Arab world, when they go to their countries - being it US, Sweden or wherever - they take it off.
The woman is as white as anyone could be, blue eyes, blonde eyebrows (a true sign of being a true blonde), the few hairs you do get to see are ash blonde, yet she's still not comfortable enough to walk with her veil.

So basically, you are veiled --> you're fucked, you look "Arab"--> You're in quite a pickle, you ARE Arab --> you're fucked!

Despite of all that, I still maintain that the Muslims/Arabs brought all of this on them, and it's like 90% their fault.

I love Internet!!

The Internet is an awesome Invention!!

I found my family tree online,, along with information and pictures of each generation.

http://www.egy.com/people/chamtree.htm

It's quite impressive, I wish I had seen it before I went to turkey - apparently we have a Mosque there. I have one more reason to go to Turkey again!
Although the links to the grandchildren of the corrupt presidents of Egypt is not something I am particularly proud of.

My grandma was quite amused by this family tree.

poll - what do you think?!

I am contemplating changing the colors of my blog

you think?!

note that my favorite color on earth is Pink!
I cannot promise a free election, i am after all from the land of Mubarak - he has to rub off on me!

you know you work for Ercisson

when you make ur appointments in swedish time,
when the other person automatically shows up on time, eventhough you did not specify it's swedish time
hey you greet people with Hej!

and count your money in SEK

and you actually know what the hell SEK is!

I wanna job where,,

I spend April to September in Egypt,
And October to March in Australia,

I can't believe it's summer in Australia - lucky bastards
It was 29 degrees last week, but it's getting cold again :(
(yes 22 is COLD!)

The Merchant of Venice! wow!

Yesterday i went to see the Merchant of Venice, i assume it was a british production.
It was breathtaking!
Al Pacino's perfromance was simply divine! The story itsself, and the words, the verses everything was awesome. It's definetly one of Shakespeare's finest!
I have read some of his work but not this particular one, and i regret it now.

The best scene was the monologue that Al Pacino did, in the middle of the movie about how Jews breath the same air as christians, eat the same food - etc.
I had to fight to urge to stand up and cheer and applaud.

I am definetly going to go see the movie again,
I will put the book on my reading list, however the book will not have that big of an effect - since my imagination is now limited with the movie and i cannot picture it myself.

I urge everyone of you to go see it - it's fantastic!

A prize Idiot!

Yep, that's me!
I mess up so often, if there was ever a prize for dorkiness, it would be me!
I just emailed 400 people with an announcement, that had the first name of a top manager, and the last name of another top manager merged together in one name!
Though recalling the email was not 100% effective, but thank god for outlook

My own version of Sidi bou Said

When i got home from Tunisia and while flipping in my mom's old photo album and saw her pictures there, 30 years ago when she was just about my age.

a flame that is dying out

The parliamentary Elections have been ongoing for a while now, and i keep distancing myself from it further and further.
I buy various newspapers in hopes of keeping me up to date, but i end up throwing them away, and take comfort in my fictitious Novel(Codex by lev grossman).

Whenever i am faced with it on blogs and on TV, i keep reminding myself to apply for those Green Card ads in the newspaper,just in case.

I have hear that christians here in egypt go to the US embassy and claim that they are being discriminated against here, to get religious assylum and move to the States.
If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over, that will be their way out.
I wonder what will be ours!

3 days, 3 nights

in tunis...
So work sent me on a three day assignment in Tunisia - following "Glamour's" advice in their last US issue, i shall not blog about my work.
What i will say though is that they put me in a sweet hotel, but VERY far away from anything even the airport!

So here's what i know now
1) Tuna in French is called "thon" - and boy you see that everywhere here, on pizzas, sandwiches, pasta you name it
2) the 7th of november is a REALLY important date for tunisians
3) The taxi's are nice - but expensive!
4) i have been ripped off in the market - but i guess there is some sort of justice in that since people get ripped off all the time in Egypt
5) Sidi bou seid is Beautiful !! simply divine!
6) Barsha - means a lot in tunisian Arabic
7) 5 minutes = drj in tunisian Arabic
8) my leabanese arabic is better than my tunisian arabic - if you know how good/bad (depending how you look at it) my lebanese arabic is like, you would understand what i mean, if not check with my roomie she can explain
9) Tunisians greet you with Maa'Sleme - which means bye in Egyptian arabic, so you can understand my level of disorientation
10) I understood a third of what has been said to me, simply because that third was in French!

Great three days!!

If one more person...

Calls me MADAM! i will KILL SOMEONE!

GRRRR

ramz el Shisha! (symbol - Shisha)

For all of you non-Egyptians, in Egypt every parliamentary candidate has a symbol so that the 50% of the Egyptian population that cannot read or write can recognize him/her.

Once again I will not be able to vote - Elections in my home town (Alexandria) are on Sunday, and on Sunday I am leaving to Tunisia insha'allah.
My disappointment is not that great - nothing can be done now. Another elections pre-determined.

In light of this, I was having a conversation with my driver today, he asked me what I would vote. And I bravely responded, well anything but NDP or Islamic. And the discussion began, why not Islamists!
I wonder what he thinks of me after this discussion, he will probably stop playing his koraan tapes whenever i am in the car!

I was reading the blog of Kareem Amer who was arrested for his writings about the recent incident in Alexandria. He wrote about how those Muslims do not tolerate the different and have high double standards.

My conversation today showed exactly that. I asked my driver, "If we allow the Islamists to have their "Islamist Party" then we should allow Christians to have a "Christian Party" right?"
His reply was "you cannot equate the Muslim religion with the Christian Religion"

The religions are different but the people that practice them must have the same rights, those double standards in the Egyptian Society are ridiculous!
There are double standards everywhere!

Equality and acceptance are just not in the Dictionary!
and tolerance (which is the minimum you can expect from anyone) is a rare thing.

And you wonder why people fear Muslims!

Rice Fiasco Part II

I am getting sick of this,

my second attempt at rice - this time it IS chewable, just a little too much!
and i have to eat it for 2 days!

and while i was drowned in my disapointment - nisrin was very amused!

15 hours of sleep later...

Our National Conference for 2005 is officially over!
Today there were no roll calls in the morning, just the school a block away singing the National Anthem.

I would have loved to post up the logo of NLDS 2005, but I fear being sued for plagiarism.

Now life gets more organized, and more work is done!
The next few months are going to be awesome!
I am looking forward to my company visits lined up - and my LC growing and kicking ass!

And I am looking forward to my long weekend at the beach - in 2 mere weeks!

I am on the IC Master Output :)

AIESEC 2010 session was one of the best and most inspiring sessions i have ever attended (thanks to mike from AI)
We had clay so i played around with it while i was deep in thought about all the life changing stories i just heard, and this is what i came up with!
I had it on my computer for ages, and just as i am reading the IC master output i found it there.

I know it's stupid, but i like it :D

Injustice!

On Friday we had an Iftar with work, I was planning to go, but due to an unfortunate event I needed to be in Alex for the weekend.
I don't know those people from work that well, anywayz - so i went home for a nice meal with my mommy :)

Apparently they had a raffle, and they drew my name out - and I won a DVD player!
Yaay first time for me to win anything!

Well tecnincally i won!

Because I was not there, they drew another name out - and that person got my DVD player!

GRR!
Could I be more unlucky?!

My consolation is that the girl who got it, is the really nice secretary - who is superduper friendly and nice to me.

Are we free or are they just plain ignorant!

At work I have a lot of free time, so I have been checking many random blogs especially those for Egyptians.
I am yet to come across a pro-mubarak blog - but I guess people who have access to internet and would blog are the type of people with a better worldview and education - so they know better than to be pro-mubarak (I hope!)

The interesting thing is that so many anti-government blogs are out there, and no one controls them. There are news about people all around the world being arested for things they say on their blogs, but in Egypt? no one knows about it except the bloggers.

This makes me wonder - is it not controlled because the government does not know it exists? or because we are actually free to say what we want?

On a different note: If you want to get a Nobel Prize, be born in Egypt, just don't live there!

How to make the world's worst pot of rice!

Following up on trent's post "Zen and the Art of Steaming Rice", and my latest cooking lesson, here is how to make the world's worst pot of rice:

Get rice out of bag - wash rice thoroughly (it's the worst one not the dirtiest one) until the water is clear and transparent
then put rice in pot
forget to put butter
put water - don't boil it, coz you just don't know that you should boil it before hand
water should cover up the rice by 1.5 to 2 centimeters - you have to get one thing right huh?!
remember butter and just add it in there
turn stove on
leave till the water is no longer there - I have no idea what happens to it
then put it on low temperature, and cover it and leave it for 10 minutes!

Result? The world's least edible rice!
now try that for ifar when you have been fasting for 12 hours, you will love it anywayz

keep in mind - Pizza hut's number is 19000

What i want, but can't afford

I was arguing with my sister the other day, i think i am not a big spender - yes nisrin!! i'm NOT - and i could live happily with just a little more money. She thinks i will always want more.

So i am going to document what i want but can't afford now, and once i get all of them i will prove to her that i do not need anything else:

1) a laptop (with a working screen)
2) a small i-pod, or another creative mp3 but with 1 GB memory
3) 2500 L.E.
4) an external hard disk
5) a new 14'' TV
6) Channel 4

see that's not too much!
the amount i spend on that is how much bill gates spends on a breakfast out!

The palestinian Dilemma

So here in Egypt people march down the road, and protest against what is happening in Palestine, the go on a massive funeral for yasser Arafat and shed a considerable amount of tears when he dies.

You sit those people down for a cup of tea and a conversation and ask them what they think about yasser Arafat, and they start going on about how he's a thief and how he's to blame for most of the suffering that the Palestinian go through. They don't think very highly of him

Same goes to the Palestinian population. Egypt has Palestinians living here in Egypt, quite a lot I may say.
However Egypt has a wall between its boarders with Palestine, and if your mother is Egyptian and your father is Palestinian, getting the Egyptian passport is as easy as getting to mars.

Most young kids at Uni want to go and "fight" in Palestine and want to sacrifice their lives for it. But when a Palestinian is interested in their sister, they politely decline - the reasoning "he's Palestinian".
At university Palestinians have their own clubs and socialize very little with the rest of the Egyptians - and I have experienced that first hand in both a private and a public university.
Every person you talk to has a negative experience with a Palestinian.

I have often tried to understand why this big discrepancy - and the reply is usually the famous Arabic quote
"Me and my brother against my cousin,
Me and my cousin against the stranger"

As for what I think, well since i do not belive in this whole arab "unity" thing, so palestinians for me are just like guatemalans. If religion and language unite us, then they can divide us - and that is not right.