21 ways to find a man

1) go ex-list style. go through a list of your exes and see which one is worth another go
2) join a social club - in that case be flexible in the looks aspect
3) take some sushi cooking classes - ok i said find a man period! not necessarily a straight one
4) start adding and becoming friends with random people on facebook and agree to meet them - risks involve weirdos, freaks and sexually frustrated egyptians
5) start a "are you my somebody" blog like dey and his friend
6) give in and date your couldn't-be-more-platonic-friend who keeps insinuating his interest, but ultimately ruin your friendship forever since it's not going to work
7) join an online dating site - if you're in Sweden, then you're on the right path; if you're in Europe rule out arabs and you've got a 50-50 chance; if you're in the US - DON'T DO IT serial killers everywhere; if you're in egypt you effin' lose!
8) go through your facebook friends' friends and ask your friends to match make
9) give in and tell your mom and ants to set you up
10) develop a brain aneurysm that makes you hallucinate and see the man of your dreams - oh wait no, that only works if you're Izzy on Grey's Anatomy...(seriously the writers need a new plot line)
11) create sexual tension and drama with one of your friends that is totally a figment of your imagination and talk about it all the time. it'll feel like you have a man when you actually don't
12) leave random comments on other people's blogs and show interest in their lives in hopes they will reciprocate that interest, then you meet and start a life changing relationship. hang on it worked for them .....
13) accept one of the advances from your christian colleagues who think you're "one of them". Muslim schmuslim - god will understand your frustration and accept you moonlighting as a devout church-goer.
14) get a dog and give it a man's name, but refrain from all forms of kinky shit - god is watching beyatch! and even if he's snoozing - uhm it just ain't cool!
15) join a trendy gym, go there completely made up in stylish work out clothes and big sun glasses; don't sweat too much and look approachable
16) join weightwatchers - low self esteem and a little padding on the side = potential!
17) if you can afford it go on a yoga retreat somewhere; be sure you're ready for long distance though, those retreats are not where you live
18) go on a charter flight to europe and make some friends en route
19) start a monthly AIESEC Alumni mixer, if you're not an AIESECer then you're a loser!
20) find some international festival with some youth diversity theme and go represent (booty calls still count as men; so do drunken one night stands)
21) play golf - i.e. shop in the older (but also richer) men department - coz at this point you are desperate


DISCLAIMER! This is intended for fun and humor only - if you take it seriously you do so at your own risk, i will not take the blame for this mumbo jumbo that is entirely induced by my cold-medicine overdose and severe boredom.

Toying with some new year's resolutions

It's that time of year where you think of new resolutions and start prepping for the new year.
I don't even need to check on my resolutions from last year, i'm sure i failed them all, i fell so far off the waggon from my "healthy lifestyle" one i can't even see the waggon anymore!

Meh, new year comes old year goes.

So 2009 will be the year of silly resolutions..
I'm toying with:

1) wear make-up to work? seriosuly all the girls look so made up when they go to work here, maybe i should join that secret society

2) buy my first designer bag? Which designer? salvatore fergamos? Chloe? defo not guess or LV, c'est tres baladi :P

3) Joing the addicts and get a blackberry - that champain new one is just so sexy!

4) Learn swedish? for some reason i decided to stick it out in Ericsson for a few more years so maybe it's worth it?

5) Try a new hair color? red head maybe?

6) Own guitar hero like it's never been owned before?

Yalla you tell me what you think my new years resolution should be...

(If you're egyptian then BE POLITE, i get enough of "just shed those last few kilos" and "haven't you eaten enough already" from all my family OK!!!)

Fire away

Jennifer Aniston's new sitcom on NBC

It's called "Sinlge Jen" and tells the story of a golden couple that gets ripped apart by a ultra-sexy femme fatale ice queen. Now, Jenna has to land on her feet. She sturggles with her love life; dating older men, younger men, even considers other women all in an attempt to stop her biological clock from ticking so loudly. Meanwhile her other half is having the time of his life with his oscar winning leading lady and building a little happy family.
It's a good thing Jenna has her good friends to fall back on, dorky forever-together couple Corrie and Dan....

Now get Tina Fey to write a witty 30-rock like script and you've got yourself a winner.
I can see the Nielsen ratings spiking already!

Anyone know an exec at NBC?

Maybe i should do that for a living!

making decisions is hard

especially when you're picking between two equal amounts of shits, but with varying contents.
Which piece of shit will make you less miserable....

i wonder why i ever doubted that big evil corporations feed on your soul until there's nothing left ....

I woke up one day and found out that i'm Chandler!

In with the new..

I'm sitting here waiting for the washing machine to finish its load, so i can hang my pants and go to bed, and i thought i should post about what's been going on.

With life turning very repetitive, the great Cairo exhodus, my job sucking immensly, and scrabble night no longer happening things were not looking so bright. So after a long hot summer i decided it's time to pump up some energy and get out and do smth.

This week i have officially started working an english teacher for two groups of young people at Resala foundation. It's great volunteer work - a. i like teaching b. it feels good to do smth nice to the community c. it's two hours where people H A V E to listen to ME! hoooray!
So it has been cool, lesson planning, and all. I have one group who have weak english, i can totally see them speaking english by the end of December. Totally! this other group, who barely know anything - with those i have no idea how i will manage to bring them to speak full sentences in a meaningful converation... But i guess i'll find out.

On top of that i finally decided to do that one thing that i've wanted to do since i was about 5. That is to learn to play the piano. Everyone has told me that i'm an idiot for starting an instrument at 25. But i will do it anywayz! I have a good feeling about this one...

I'm also planning a trip to paris where, i found out, i will stay not-so-far from the red light district. So i guess the trip's going to be eventful?
Now i'm in planning mode. They say november is the gay festival month for paris, so at least all the men will be groomed!
must buy new camera.

Ok, laundry's done.

x

somehow, somewhere a terrorist is sleeping with a triumphant smile on his face

Sony game delayed over Quran gaffe

friends

Friends have a way of sticking their noses in things that are so not their business, especially after a few drinks.
They think they're helping, when they really need to just bugger off. People who need help, usually ask for it. If they don't ask for it, it's probably coz they don't want it!

I don't know about you but this seems not so hard to fathom for people who think of themselves as smart yuppies.

Blog Hiatus

Due to the lack of any interesting thing in my life, this blog is on hiatus. My futile attempt to keep this blog alive in the past few months have not done blogging any justice.

I've changed the colors of this blog temporarily. The pink will be back, i'm trying to find it.

It's over!

My week from hell is finally over. It was good that i was mentally prepared, because it has been both physically and emotionally exhausting (my poor baby car is hurt real bad).

Reflecting on the last few days i was delivering a training course at work, and i just realized, not once have i rolled up my eyes and thought "oh what idiots". They were all actually really smart, and interesting.
It's nice to meet smart people at work, makes your job a hellovalot easier and fun-ner :P

A perfect end to a long week

My long week has finally come to an end. I was adamant about avoiding Air Algerie at any cost, and the cost was an extra day in Algeria, chillin' by the pool and catching up on the office gossip with a colleague who was equally adamant about avioding the same airline :)

Here's a pic based on Kent's request

I am sooo relaxed now. I should do this more often.

you can run, but you can't hide

I read this interesting article on BBC News about the so-called operation last chance.
"The search for the 94-year-old former SS medical officer has taken investigators from Germany all around the world"

At 94 the dude must be sooo friggin old! I wonder why they even thought he was alive...
Well this is why:
"Heim's daughter has said that her father died in 1993 in Argentina, but a death certificate has never been produced. Neither she nor her two brothers, who live in Germany, have claimed the estimated $1.5m (900,000 euros; £750,000) that sits in a European bank account in Heim's name."

Man i wonder what it feels like to have a father who was a mass murderer! A Nazi! I don't think i'd want his money... or his name...
Oh and how the fuck does a SOCIALIST make this much money 40 years ago! i can't believe there are still those who believe this system actually works. It's like believing the calendar method qualifies as a birth control method, and you can't have alcohol if you want to conceive. You have to be drunk off your ass you want to conceive anyway - i.e. alcohol is a must. (sorry for the reference here, but everyone seems to be popping out little ones around me - so it's the theme for these days)

Here's what the old wrinkly Nazi has done

"According to Holocaust survivors, he performed operations and amputations without anaesthetic to see how much pain his victims could endure. "
"Injecting victims straight into the heart with petrol, water or poison was said to have been his favoured method at Mauthausen. And when he was "bored", he apparently timed patients' deaths with a stopwatch. "
"...cutting off the head of a murdered Jewish prisoner and boiling off the flesh to enable the skull to be used as an exhibit. "
"removed tattooed skin from one victim and turned it into a seat cover."


The argument here is at 94, should the authorities just give up? A frail old man?
Well i think not...

I say find the sicko, get all the relatives of those he killed and have them give him a taste of his own medicine.
In a public square.
Broadcasted live on TV.
All over the world.
In slow motion.
And the background music, should be an evil laugh, muahahahahahaha

But seriously, should they german authorities should be spending their money tracing around 70, 80 and 90 year old sickos? Shouldn't this money be invested better elsewhere? Or donated to charities?
I think it's time for ze germans to move on....

An embarassing day for Superluli

I decided to wikipedia the actual independence day of egypt not the bull shit 23rd of july date.
In the mean time i checked our national anthem, turns out it's made out of not just the one part i know. It's actually made up of 5 parts! and i do not know them.
So i decided to wikipedia Germany's national anthem in the hopes that the song i know by heart is only the first part, there must be other parts too that i do not know. Turns out no - i know the full German National anthem - all of it. I know who wrote the music, when, for whom all of it!
But the Egyptian one? Not!
I am not German, but my school obviously taught me well.
So in my quest to overcome this sheer and utter embarassment i am learning the egyptian national anthem by heart! ALL OF IT!

Shame on me...

empty fridge

My mom was here 10 days ago. That was probably the only time where we had to put some serious thoughts into how we organize our fridge. There was food in it, vegetables of all sorts, rice, soup and loadz of things. For the past 10 days these things have slowly been consumed, the pots have been emptied and some mold has definely grown on some of the green things.
So today i cleaned out the fridge and our fridge is back to it's normal state, a couple of jars of tomato paste, some bread, eggs, cheese, ketchup, and a can of mushrooms.
Order has been restored in casa de luli, nissy and yoyo!

Gender X

In my early AIESEC days the issue of gender came up, and some how it ended up with me saying this quote that has haunted me since then: "I'm gender X"
I can't remember at all the situation in which i have said that.
It's been a while since then, but these days that sentence just rings in my head a lot.
Perhaps it's because Hilary lost the primaries, i was never a supporter, but still a woman in the white house would still be cool.
It's a little upsetting though; the general impression i got was that she'd be taking a huge step for women in Politics. I will purposely neglect the Ghandis and the Buttos, coz let's face it, it don't count unless it's democratic! and there's no democracy in dynasties. But what about Margaret Thatcher? Angela Merkel? Golda Meir? Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (Africa's first elected female president)?
Perhaps it's because of Kuwaiti women not having a single seat in parliament or the shock i got 2 weeks ago when i found out Swiss women were not allowed to vote till 1971! Seventy One!
Perhaps it's because there's a new power woman appearing around the horizon, and i can't wait to see her run the show.
Or perhaps it's because i work with someone who manages to mention gender issues almost on a daily basis.

You set the limits for yourself, some put their limit at woman. I put mine at Gender X!

"One TV" takes cencorship to a whole new level!

If you live in the Arab world, censorship is something you're used to. Usually it's focused on nudity and sexual content. In the Cinema in Egypt, expect to see the kisses, heavy make-out scenes are sometimes there sometimes not, but anything past that -- enter Scissors!
On TV MBC2 and 4 and One TV (Dubai's TV) the kisses are at a minimum. I think they draw the limit at tongue. No tongue --> ok yes tongue --> Scissors!I have never imagined that sitcoms like Friends and Mad about you would be censored! Seriously!
Annoying as it might be, they're for free - so you can't complain.
If it bothers you so much, get cable, and watch freely.

Yesterday One TV took censorship to a whole new level. They censored content! Actually specific words.
It was that episode where Ben was spending Christmas with Ross, so Ross - being a Jew (gasp) - wanted to teach him all about Hanukah, the festival of lights, a Jewish holiday that is not that big of a deal for Jews. It's seems to me like a good excuse for TV to please the Jewish audience by adding it to their Christmas specials, that way they don't need to dedicate a whole episode about some other more significant Jewish holiday. And all the non-Jews don't mind, coz I mean, it's all about Christmas anyway!
So back to Friends. This episode included a number of words and scenes One TV deemed inappropriate to show.
The word list is: "Jew" "Jewish" "Hanukah" "Festival of Lights"
The scenes included: Lighting all the candles by the window, the story about the Maccabees and how they rebelled against Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
What they forgot to censor is the back-ground music at the end which was so typically a Jewish theme.
After I got over my shock of the lengths they would go to censor, I started thinking why would they possibly censor that! a) it's history b) it's a religion that the Arab Muslims believe in. I mean it happened! It did! What were they trying to do? Erase it from history? What harm could have possibly been done by showing those scenes?
What were they thinking?!
What puzzles me is that they show Seinfeld all the time. WTF?

It used to bother me that Egypt censors all movies that show how the Jews were kicked out of Egypt with the excuse " we don't want to raise sympathy for them" while actually it's an attempt to deny that our country has any dark spots in its history.But it gives me some comfort that at least we don't erase them from the shows and movies! We're not at the absolute bottom of the censorship scum...the gulfies oh so proudly take that spot :P

Ch..Ch..Changes? I think not....

Another year has come and gone. And things are still the same. I'm working at the same company. Living with the same people. Still a miserable size 16. Still single. Still in Egypt.
Basically it's all the same since i turned 22.
Is this what is means to be an adult?
Some things have changed though
i live in a nicer house now (minus ant farm in kitchen), my grandma's no longer here, my belly is a little less visible, and i have a savings account. (albeit a near-empty one)
Still, all signs of adulthood kicking in.

So, is this the year things change? Not really!
According to the plan, this year will pretty much be the same as the year before, and the one before, and the one before. It doesn't make sense to move jobs/countries/houses just yet.
It's not that it's bad, on the contrary, it's good, really good. It's just all the same, same, same, same.

So the question is, how do i get through yet another stepping-stone-year without blowing a fuse out of boredom?

P.S. I would like to point my fingers at the writers guild of america for causing 30% of my boredom this past year because of their strike. Only 16 episodes of grey's and DH in one season? talk about injustice....well it's not if it's compared to darfur or something - perpective people! perspective!

BTW; this rant is because i've just turned 25.

I still don't get it

I must have been 11 when the movie "The Bodyguard" came out or something. I remember seering it the movies and paying 4 pounds for the nice medium priced seats. Now the cheap seats are 20 at least.
When the movie ended, i didn't get it. Why did they not get together at the end? So i asked my mom, why did they not get married, if they were that much in love?
This was my first lesson in racism.
I remember arguing with my mom and doubting her common sense. I spent the first chunk of my teenage years thinking she didn't really understand the movie.
16 years later and the concept seems a little less alien for me, but still alien!
I am secretly still hoping there's some other twist in the story for why they did not end up together other than color...

well, it's on TV now - i am 16 years wiser than when i first saw this movie - maybe i did miss something...

I'm going to see Jerry Springer?

I received an unexpected email from Mr. Jerry Springer today!

Thank you for your Jerry Springer Show ticket request. Please read the following information in its entirety. You are presently booked for tickets on April 28th at 4:15pm, Arrival time is 3:30pm central standard time. You will be here for approximately three and a half hours from arrival time. Early departure is not permitted. Everyone must be 18 years or older and will be required to present valid, non- expired photo identification. We only accept the follow id's: Driver's license, state ID, passport or military ID. WE MAKE NO EXCEPTIONS! Your tickets will be held at the door under the out of state list. Please make sure everyone in your party is dressed nicely. We do not allow any logos, sports, jerseys, sports paraphernalia, hats, sweatshirts or sweatpants. Our address is 454 N. Columbus Drive we are located in the NBC Tower. If need to cancel a reservation call us at (312) 321-5366, once your reservation is booked you will not be contacted or have access to a phone representative. We hope you enjoy your visit to Chicago and the Jerry Springer Show experience.
* Please contact us if any handicapped accessibility is necessary.
* Please print this email and bring along.
* Please email us or call us if you cannot attend or need to change the date you were booked for.

Eric and I were planning to do that together...
Too bad that's not going to happen.

Anyone interested in some Jerry Springer Tickets?

The house of Geeks

My house is officially the house of geeks.
Nisrin and I spend a nice evening doing statistics on our scrabble games, which resulted in the following:

Tuesday Night's Scrabble Hall of Fame:
- Annika - won a total of 5 games
- Luli - won a total of 5 games
- Nisrin - won a total of 4 games

Tuesday Night's Scrabble Hall of Shame:
- Nisrin - lost a total of 6 games
- Luli - lost a total of 6 games
- Chris - lost a total of 4 games
- Kent - lost a total of 4 games

Top 10 Word Scores:
1) Annika - 98 points
2) Nisrika - 68 points (teamup between Nisrin and Annika)
3) Kent - 67 points
4) Purvi - 63 points
5) Annika - 59 points
6) Annika - 55 points
7) Nisrin - 52 points
8) Chris - 50 points
9) Luke - 46 points
10) Annika - 44 points

And just for fun we looked at the regulars and calculated some performance ratios: (the ratios are for games played individually not when paired with someone)

Annika: In the 14 games she played she came in:
First: 36%
Last: 0%
Middle: 64%

Chris: In the 12 games he played he came in:
First: 25%
Last: 33%
Middle: 42%

Kent: In the 9 games he played he came in:
First: 33.5%
Last: 44.5%
Middle: 22%

Luli: In the 21 games she played she came in:
First: 24%
Last: 28%
Middle: 47.5%

Luke: In the 8 times he played he came in:
First: 37.5%
Last: 25%
Middle: 37.5%

Nisrin: In the 20 times she played she came in:
First: 20%
Last: 30%
Middle: 50%

Interestingly, it's Luke who holds the best personal stats, closely followed by Annika.
Nisrin rules the middle place along with myself.
Kent and Chris come last most of the time - haha suckerzzzz

10 random things you might not know about me...

Following Nora's suit:

1) I take multi-tasking to an extreme. In the morning i brush my teeth while i pick out what to wear. I heat the water while I'm getting dressed. I comb my hair while packing my bag. This is only the first 15 minutes of my day, imagine how the rest goes

2) my hands have to play with something all the time. Mostly I either play with my hair or i cut out tiny pieces of papers and roll them with my fingers then move them around from finger to finger.

3) [this item has been deleted due to the number of embarassing comments i received, instead see below]

3') I eat my bananas like a bunny using my front two teeth only. I never let anyone see it other than my family, and by accident nisrin too :P

4) I wash my hands 20 times a day

5) I organize my money in my wallet - big notes at the back, small notes in the front

6) I can decide on what my dream will be this night, and i have constant day-dreams at any given point of time

7) If you're telling me something i am not interested i space out and know when to make appropriate noises and expressions and nods to make you think i am interested

8) I can never stick to a budget, so i make a new one every few days to pretend i am sticking to a budget

9) I have serious road rage! Like no rage you've ever seen

10) I can sleep at any time, in any place, yet i am always sleep deprived...