Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Home

The other day Ali, Z (my friend) and I were out celebrating my 24th birthday (I know my god THAT OLD :) ) and we were talking about home and were you think that is, and she said "sometimes I see home in the faces of some people here"; all three of us are not from this city and this place is really hard to get used to, regardless the facts that people here are very nice and hospitable and living here is easy and decent to a certain extent, well it is in the Iraqi sense, but I have not met one person who said " Oh I love this city", everyone is complaining and are searching other options. My friend is originally Iraqi and us Iraqis have this thing about our country no matter how far we go we always wish we can go back and in most cases we do come back, in fact my ex-boss once told me that he's never met people as passionate about their home towns as Baghdadis! now this is the man who has lived in at least five different places during his life so he must know what he's talking about, we love the everything hazardous, bad services, dusty, dirty, crowded, beautifully disastrous Baghdad, my friend have decided to move back to Iraq thinking wouldn't be great to actually give back to her own people rather than other? If she asked me before making this decision I would have said no it wouldn't and you shouldn't come back maybe because I have lived here my whole life and I can predict how things would turn out, all I can say is things didn't end very pretty for her and she most likely will be leaving the country very soon, the funny thing is knowing her she might come back if the opportunity presented itself. Bottom line is we never have enough of this place.

We all know the very famous saying " Home is where the heart is", I know where my heart is and it is in the very right place and I'm as happy as anyone can be, but I don't feel like I belong here, although my husband and I have everything we want at this stage of our lives but deep inside it feels like a temporary stage, a transitional period of our lives.

In Eat Pray Love, Lez's  friend tells her that in order to feel like you belong somewhere you need to have the same word as the place your at and that every city has it's word, Ali and I have agreed that Erbil will either have STUPIDITY or BORDOM and we’re neither stupid nor boring so maybe that's why we don't feel like we belong here! The question that I wish I can find the answer to is home a state of mind? or is it a place? If it's a place then we need to find our word and match it to a city, find out if it's easy to go to, if they give visas to Iraqis, apply for one and get over there as soon as possible odds are it is far away and we need to get a visa and that it's either extremely hard or impossible to go there so the easier solution is to either stop being so fussy about things or simply become stupid or boring and enjoy the wonders of the one and only Erbil after all it is the next Dubai!

Until we find out if Homeland is willing to accept us as refugees, think about this, what is your word?

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Lice Almost Got Me Killed

Iraqi people tend to be very dramatic when describing things and we always and I emphasis ALWAYS do it, seriously if a woman is wearing a skirt with a tear and you noticed immediately she would get all defensive and start telling the story of how it all happened , well here's how it would be told "I walked out wearing this gorgeous skirt (mentioning the price and the place where she got is a complete must) and I was walking looking all pretty and stuff and out of nowhere came this brat driving his fancy car all speedy and almost ran me over, I had to run to the side walk, I tripped and fell and tore my beautiful skirt.. Uh that idiot" and she would probably start lashing his parents and the police for allowing kids to drive cars and most likely this conversation ends up with it's all because of Saddam Hussein, if you're Iraqi you would relate to this for some reason all of our conversations end up with blaming Saddam and the government (seriously why do we do that?), now back to the skirt, here's the real story she didn't trip and fall, didn't almost have a car accident, nor did she buy that skirt for the price she mentioned, simply she wore and completely forgot that last week it got caught in the tree branch outside the building where she works because she wasn’t paying attention to where she was going since she was yapping on the phone with her friend! We tend to make things more interesting and if it's a sad story we're telling man you're in for some serious drama, now for a change I will tell you a story, a true one that happened to yours truly and I've told this story so many times before but I always tend to make it more scary like I would mention so many details that I'm not sure actuallyy happened, but it keeps people thinking about what will happen next, but this time I will tell the truth and you will realize that this story was not scary at all.
This took place In Baghdad, Al-Rubay'ee Street (RS), July 2007. I had to go to my university to get some paper work done and since the situation really crappy back then I decided to take public transportation and despite the fact that I have done this a number of times before I was really scared because all the roads were blocked and drivers had to go through a very wired and suspicious root when compared to the one they took before 2003 or at least I thought it was. On the ride from college back home I had to take one bus (mini Kia bus) from the uni. main gate and get off half way and take another one and I have memorized the route after the little crossover they go straight to RS and by the end of this street I get off and take the other bus,  we reach the traffic light after the crossover and guess what he doesn't go straight he goes left, being distracted (you'll find out later why) and losing my sense of direction I asked the driver to stop and I got off and decided to walk all the way to the end of RS after all I have walked along this street a million times with my sisters when I was little how long could it be right? In my head I was thinking kids see things larger than they are, you know the whole relativity thing, and I remember this as a very short walk as a kid now that I'm all grown up it must be what 5 minutes max? so I crossover and I start walking past the national guards check point and one of the guards come out of the little tent the placed on the side walk and says "The streets are blocked when you pass by them and every one salutes you" and he salutes me lol that is by far the funniest thing ever said to me by a complete stranger (P.S if you didn’t know this is a song by a very famous Iraq singer) so I pased really quickly as if I was running away from the guard and when I was far away I started laughing and continued walking, I always tell people how I noticed that the street was completely empty but the truth is at this point I was thinking about a couple of things:

1. man I should stop wearing open toe shoes my feet are so dark its disgusting and why does all the dirt on the streets end up landing on my feet?
2. What kind of an idiot would walk out, in Baghdad during July without their sunglasses? The answer would me.
3. It's true that black should never be worn in this weather I' technically being roasted here.
4. Awwww cute couple, God that baby is ugly.
5. The street looks kinds of empty I wonder why? Eh it must be the heat; no one is crazy enough to walk out in this weather.
6. When did RS get so long?
7. Hungry, hungry, Hungry.
8. Thirsty, thirsty, thirsty.

And before I knew it wohooooooooo there was the end of the street, I get the other bus and take off, got home my brother was a bit worried because I was late, I told him it was the traffic, had lunch and straight to bed. I woke up at dusk and I was telling my brother and his wife about my adventure and he says “What are you nuts? You haven’t noticed that the street was completely empty? or how almost all the shops are closed?", the truth is I have noticed the empty street for a split of a second then I was distracted by my dirty feet and for the shops the truth is no, I haven't I only noticed that the place where they make the best burgers in the city is closed I also noticed how my favorite ice cream shop as a kid turned into a cell phones shop which was also closed and I thought it was a coincidence lol so answering my brother and trying not look stupid I said " yeh I did, completely empty and everything is closed I was scared to death I literally jogged to get out of that place" lol me lying is a very funny site believe me even I laugh at myself, and he says " it's because there were snipers on top of the street's buildings and no one really dares to go there anymore", shocking, isn't it? hehehe, I have walked along a street with snipers and came out alive with dirty feet and a very wired looking tanned face and hands lol I must be a hero then, right? truth is I'm not, it was actually a very stupid decision not because I could have got killed but because when the driver turned left he only meant to take a short cut and would have ended up dropping me off at the exact same place but I only realized this around midnight that same day hehehe.
Moral of the story is never look at the disgustingly-dirty-person-sitting-infront-of-you-in-a-public-transportaion's hair and wonder if they have lice right before the place where you should get off, so with that being said Mr. Dirty hair (he didn't have lice in case you're wondering) thank you for giving me a story that makes me look like a hereon and I hope that someone have introduced you to shampoo!

P.S: the skirt thing I have done this before, but with shoes and much less details lol
Have a nice day.

Monday, April 11, 2011

At least I'm not off beat

I have this habit that some people find annoying, I know the lyrics for every single song on the planet I find it quite interesting and shows how smart I am hehehe. My husband keeps saying God if only you put this to good use so I decided to do so and started searching lyrics for new and upcoming singers the ones that have like 1000 subscribers on you tube despite the fact that their music is amazing for example Mindy Gledhill, that woman ROCKS aside from the very obvious fact that I'm not christian but her not-so-religiously-christian songs are awesome, so after googling her songs I found out that there's a whole album that has no record what so ever, NO LYRICS any where and I thought well here's my chance and started adding lyrics. I admit all my posts are still pending none of them is approved although I'm pretty sure they're all a 100% accurate but no approval yet on the bright side I received a friend request from someone on the lyrics site with a really obscene yet funny screen name which means someone have noticed my amazingly rare talent hehehehe (In your face Haneen).
I read this article once that said the vocal cords can be reshaped or something, meaning if you practice the right way you will end up with a wonderful-singer-material voice, if you are from the middle east you would totally buy that we have some performers that sounded like a rat have grown nails and is scratching a piece of polished wood I think the right word is creak (I have heared this sound before I will tell you the story in a later post) those singers now sound decent now I know for sure they haven't come up with a surgical procedure for this so it must be training. this being my very reasonable reason I will keep singing until I unleash the Celine Dion within .... Sorry honey you're going to have to put up with it lol.

Mean while tame your vocal cords with this song:




Now honestly how hard is it to write a song, when most of the lyrics are click click, smush smush, murmur murmur. I think I can do that, easily.

Have a nice day.

Introduction

Dear Reader,

I'm T. the know it all, master of all masters, the person that nothing on this planet can beat, just kidding :). I came up with the idea for this blog a couple of weeks ago (today is April 11) when I realised I always have those amazingly great ideas and freakishly weired thoughts that I think should be documented but I'm to lazy to keep a journal and knowing that I've tried doing that before and it was a complete fail although that was like ten years ago and I was in high school and all but still I lacked commitment. I would write for one week religiously then I would stop for two months, then someone would piss me off and I would start again, after a couple of years of "dear diary, I know it's been three months since I last visited you" I decided to give up and admit that I'm not cut for it besides there was nothing to write about. Besides the many failed trials to blog and commit to it I've never taken this seriously it got to the point where now I have I think 3 Gmail accounts that I've created to be able to create a blog but every time I forget my password, and yes I have created a new account for this one, so long story short I've decided to commit to it this time and we'll see how it goes.
Things that I will be talking about:

1. Cooking : I have a passion for cooking I come up with the weirdest recipes but they always come up delicious, my husband would second this or at least I hope he will lol.









2. Weight loss: now this is a major issue for me, I have gained 14 Kg during the last two years and now I'm on a diet which I will get to in really boring details.










3. Shopping: I used to be addicted I would spend my entire allowance on clothes and shoes, man do I have shoes, now it's much better, well not really but I don't go out that much so it turned out the least exposure to temptation the less you spend.


4. Makeup: I believe I'm at a level of a makeup artist actually if I was born in a different county I would totally take that as a profession.





5. My family: I'm very lucky when it comes to family, I was born in a loving, caring, very not like all Iraqi families. Sometimes I think if my siblings were strangers and we all met somewhere, odds are we would hate each others hehehe each one of us have a completely different take on everything in life and that's the beauty of it.



6. If your wondering what the title of the blog means it's this name that my friend came up with, you know how Brad Pit and Angelina Jolie merged their names to Brangliena well it's the same concept we're the TokAlis. That being said my Hubby is going to be a major topic here after all that's what this blog was for in the firs place.





7. Anything that comes to mind, any thoughts what so ever.

Now at the end of this introduction I T. hereby promise to blog at least twice a week for the next year.

Enjoy!