words that make me snap!

Working in a company with mainly engineers, you have to deal with the fact that they think anyone who is not an engineer is a secretary, assistant or administration!

So on my list of words you would call me that make me snap, the new entries are
Office Manager
Secretary
Assistant
Admin

in addidtion to the old entries such as
Madam
and Lady

2 Bachelor degrees, one honors and 4 Leadership positions, to be called and treated as a scretary - makes me wonder why did i go through that much trouble!

Roomie Number Two

My newly acquired Roommate - and bedmate for that matter - is awesome.
She makes my bed everyday, and she doesn't realize I never do it myself - but no reason for her to find that out.

Now all she needs to do is to make me a home cooked meal by the time I come home from work - and I will keep her for life.

My Jencp!

AIESEC Egypt Rocks DA HOUSE!

This year we have THREE MCP applicants
and sofar EIGHT Egyptian MCEB Applicants (and expecting one more Egyptian)

I am impressed - after years of having 2 or 3 applicants for MC now we are up to ELEVEN

Hooraaay for AIESEC Egypt

Good luck to you guys

Algeria, Algerio, Algeriee

My AI and Internship plans are on hold -
Expanding into Algeria
Should I?
Can't stop thinking about it

time flows by

The babysitter's club
Beverly Hills 90210
Dawson's Creek
Party of Five
Saved by the Bell

As a girl who probably had a TV inserted with her in her mom's womb, and the holder of the lifetime couch potato award, these shows were a big part of my childhood, and teenage years.

Yesterday MBC2 aired the baby sitter's club, and oh my god! they were so tiny.
I remember seeing it and reading about the movie, and all the goodies and thinking i wana do that when i "grow up"

And dreaming of great nights like the ones in "she's all that" and cute scenes from Pacey and Joey on Dawson's Creed?? that's like junior high! I still thought it would happen, untill i saw the movie and realized - my baby brother is their age now.

So this week is all about realizing that having a baby sitter's club, ain't gona happen, and i will never have a real prom, and i will not have two gorgeous guys (well P definetly is, D? no not really gorgeous at all!) who will go into a fist fight, and argue about who gets to go to the prom with me and i will probably not be homecoming queen in this life.

I will leave getting over the "college life" dream (the parties, the drinks, the dorms and the experimenting etc) to next year - afterall it took me 4 years to get over junior highschool stories!

I guess i should stop reading Sweet Valley High too huh? maybe switch to sweet valley univeristy?! haha

when exactly was it when we grew up?

goin home!!

Yup Yup Yup

Tomorrow my vacation starts! and goes on for 9 whole days.
So i will pack my bags and head home for Eid.
I have not been home in 3 weeks now, and i have not been home for that long since June.
It will be nice to have someone else do the cleaning and the dishes and the cooking.
I hope i could survive the entire 9 days!

it will be nice to sleep in every day though - :)

For the first time..

Yes! I finally did it!!
My first pot of Rice - i can do anything now. ( and it was gooood)










And for the first time in a long time i went to the Pyramids - and rode a camel!





Lara and Rema, my friends visiting from England - We had a BLAST!









(Me, Lara and Rema on Camels)















(Me! sweet huh?)

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!