August 7
2007
Global Incident Map
I’m just loving this whole concept of getting global updates so easily and so quickly!
Thought you might as well enjoy the Global Incident Map.
[Via: Refugee]
August 1
2007
Vierter Blogkarneval deutschsprachiger Muslime
Achtung! Der vierte Blogkarneval deutschsprachiger Muslime ist verspätet. Er wird am Freitag, den 24. August 2007 stattfinden.
Kathrin von musafira.de wird die Zusammenfassung dieses Mal übernehmen.
Die Themenwahl ist wieder frei. Also können alle interessierten Blogger/innen ihre Beiträge spätestens bis zum 23. August auf der Eintragungsseite einreichen.
July 27
2007
Resentment VS. Coexistence
Ah, I’m just hating it!
Hating this whole “you hate me, I hate you, they hate us, we hate them” crap!
Seriously! I mean, turn on TV, surf the net, read newspapers, anything, and you’ll be faced with countless entries and articles and documentaries about hatred and resentment among us.
Everyone defending their own stand, and everyone attacking and blaming the other.
Iraqis suffering from Jordanians, Lebanese hating Syrians, Palestinians and Jordanians pointing fingers at each other… and the list goes on.
Who’s right? All are. Of course there are Jordanians who give Iraqis a hard time, just like there are Iraqis who are enjoying the privileges of natives but are still attacking Jordanians for the heck of it. Of course there are Lebanese who can’t stand Syrians, and Syrians who hate Lebanese. Of course there are Jordanians who are irritated by Palestinians, and Palestinians who can’t tolerate Jordanians. We even have Palestinians fighting each other and Iraqis killing each others!!!
Nobody’s perfect. We’re all part of communities that include victims and criminals. We all have those who love and those who hate, those who make life easier for others, and those who enjoy making others’ lives a living hell!
Till when are we going to keep on pointing fingers and looking for ways to turn the world against each other?!
When are we going to simply see the picture clearly, maintain our objectivity, and try to fix problems and heal the wounds instead of taking every single damn thing personally and getting outrageous!
Whether we like it or not, people are suffering and change needs to happen. If Iraqis share their suffering at borders, we should fix the damn problem, not get furious and start digging in history files just to put our hands on some of their mistakes against us!
This is ridiculous, pathetic and shameful!
To me, for all I know, I’m Arab, I’m letting no religion, no origin, no passport and no dialect get in the way of me helping my fellow Arabs.
Refugees are not beggars, they’re good people who had homes and lands and careers of their own but time and human cruelty forced them out of their countries into ours, we should respect them and care for them and offer them help until they recover. Because if we were in their shoes that’s how we’d love to be treated.
And just like Refugees should be respected, they should also know their limits, show respect and appreciation to any country that opens its door to them. They should also know that their presence caused serious problems for the natives whether they like it or not, and therefore dislike and complications are to be expected, especially from the poorer members of society.
So if some members of that country mistreated Refugees or harassed them, then sharing the problem publicly doesn’t mean waging war by any side on either side, it means a call for help.
With some understanding, objectivity and tolerance from both sides, I’m sure we’ll successfully coexist and problems will be solved or at least maintained instead of having them transform into provoking agents of hatred and resentment.
We’re all Arab for God’s sake!
July 23
2007
2. & 3. Blogkarneval deutschsprachiger Muslime
July 16
2007
My Visit To Amman
So I went to Amman in April, I was looking forward to it, specially that it’s been 2 years since I last visited it.
I had so many plans, I wanted to meet many friends and bloggers, and things went greatly for the first week or so. Afterwards unpleasant surprises came up and for personal reasons, our plans didn’t go on as we wished.
I managed to meet only few friends in the 1st week, so here I am apologizing for not being able to make it and meet up with other friends and bloggers I truly wished I could meet.
Being away for 2 years, my last visit seemed as if it was the first ever to Jordan. I was missing it and missing my family so much, and with a new member in the family (my son Adam) exploring Amman has never been greater. It was like seeing it with a new pair of eyes… like falling in love with it all over again 
Again, Amman is blooming, with more and more buildings and investment sights; more cars (somehow less than 2 years earlier but the city is still crazily crowded); more yummy places to eat (explains the noticeable weight problem among the population, not that I’m against fat people, in fact I believe looks and weight have nothing to do with the quality of the person); remarkable decrease in Iraqis and Egyptians (more Asians and Indians on the other hand); less green all over the capital, and finally, unfortunately the level of cleanliness has dropped drastically (maybe because Amman is really crowded now, don’t know!).
It has to be said that Amman has become insanely expensive, and almost all people I met and heard of, regardless of their positions in society, were all complaining about the financial situation in the country. Not to mention many of my bright friends, who are suffering from unemployment for a long time.
On a brighter note, weather was perfect, we bought loads of books, and well, I ate like crazy. Really, I didn’t have the courage to weigh myself in Amman, and I was expecting a disaster on the scale when I came to Tunis, but it turned out I only put on a couple of kilos! Phew! I’m positive that without all the running after Adam and taking care of him I’d be looking like a whale… yeah, it was that bad, I ate like a pig!
But thanks to Adam, who needs feeding, bathing, changing, calming, entertaining, putting to sleep, and who also decided to get sick, and wanted to have his first tooth in the midst of my visit, the crazy eating wasn’t lethal after all!
Even Adam’s appetite was great, he ate a lot better than ever, I guess even babies have vacation moods!
This last visit would’ve been a perfect one, if we were spared the unpleasant surprises, and if I got to meet my other sis and my 2 brothers who were in Canada and couldn’t make it! I miss them sooooooooooo much!
July 13
2007
Baby Blogger
July 11
2007
At Last!
I didn’t get enough sleep last night… actually I didn’t get ANY sleep last night. No specific reason, just one of those nights you must have every once in a while I guess.
Anyway, last night, not being able to sleep, I tried to get myself busy. Wasn’t in the mood for TV, so I read my head off, yet nothing happened, my eyes were all wide open with this burning sensation you get when you’re so damn exhausted but you can’t sleep.
I walked around the apartment like a ghost, I ate all the unhealthy snacks available, I took yet another shower that only energized the hell out of me, I walked again -in circles this time, like a jerk- and just then I realized that things would be really different if I only had my phone line working and my internet connection all set up for me to surf until I fall asleep.
After managing to stop cursing all people responsible for the phone line misery we’re suffering from for a loooooong while, I finally crawled back into bed, read some more and finally fell asleep.
A couple of hours later (8 a.m.) Adam woke me up for my busy day to start.
8:30 We heard the most beautiful relaxing soothing sound of our dust-covered-phone ringing…
We couldn’t believe it at first, but once I picked up the speaker and got the maintenance on the other end, I must say my exhaustion and desire to sleep faded away. I felt so overwhelmed I could’ve cried… cried?! no, I could’ve weeped so easily.
The poor maintenance guy must have been terribly shocked, I mean the way I shouted: Are you sure it’s fixed once and for all? You mean it will work after we hang up? So you’re saying it’s simply working now? No more going dead? please call after a while to check if it’s still working! Now, not to sound pushy or something, but you are positive about that, no mistakes, no accidents, nothing right?!
After assuring me and reassuring me that things should be fine now, I started dancing and running all around the place like a crazy little girl, I stopped when I saw Adam staring at me with his mouth open holding his pacifier in shock!
I can’t really describe how happy I am! I’m so happy yet so worried that the line will go dead again! God forbid!
I’ll go catch up on my emails and check out what’s been cooking in the blogosphere!
AH! IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK!
June 28
2007
Tunisie Telecom
Where do I start?
It’s been over 2 months now and our landline is still dead, and it’s not the first time. As I mentioned before, we’ve been having never-ending problems with our phone line over the past 4 years.
What gets on my nerves is the fact that till this moment, no one has had the decency to send us a technician to check up our line and just tell us what the damn problem is. We call Tunisie Telecom every damn week, we went there in person more than once, we filed a stupid complaint and after my last visit there their solution is: go file yet ANOTHER stupid complaint in the main office!!
After that my husband goes again and they give him a couple of numbers to follow up on the problem himself (yep, coz they’re too busy drinking coffee and gossiping all day long, poor things). It gets even better: one of the numbers is always busy, the other is apparently placed in an office where no one’s willing to pick up the god damn phone!
If we’re bad clients I’d take that shit, but we pay our bills on time and we’ve never caused any problems any time our line went dead, but seriously, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
I’m not supposed to use my mobile phone to do all my calls, I have a landline and I want to use IT for calling people.
I’m not supposed to drag my baby boy to internet cafés to be able to check my emails and surf the internet.
I’m not supposed to waste my visits to people by getting online at their places because Tunisie Telecom aren’t willing to do their damn job towards their clients and check their lines, let alone fixing them…
What are we supposed to do to know what the problem is? What are we supposed to do to get our line working again!
I’m really FED UP!
It’s such a shame to suffer from such problems in year 2007! And the problem is, we can’t criticize the quality of service provided by Tunisie Telecom, simply because there is NO SERVICE to start with!
This really SUCKS! We’re paying you guys, do your job for God’s sake!
May 29
2007
Why I’m Not Blogging…
It’s been a long while since I last blogged. The thing is, it’s not because I’m lazy or have nothing to blog about, in fact I have loads of stuff I’d like to share in my blog, the problem is, I can’t, since our landline is yet again DEAD… no internet connection, as usual. All thanks go to Tunisie Telecom of course.
It just gets on my nerves, I mean you pay your bills on time, bills that include tax, services and all that, and then what do you get, nothing! To be honest, I gave up hope on them, ever since we moved in to this appartment (around 4 years ago) and we’ve been having never ending problems with our phone line; it works a month, and goes dead the next 2 and so on. We talked to the people in charge and filed a complaint more than once, yet no one even was nice enough to come, check out the problem (let alone fix it)!
Anyway, sorry to all my readers, hope this problem will be solved soon.
March 20
2007
The Ugly Concept Of Beauty
I’ve always believed that beauty has no rules, limits, or standards. Beauty, I strongly believe, is a matter of taste. There is no such things as “beauty idols”, or “steps to beauty”, or anything of the kind.
Whoever may look beautiful in the eyes of someone, might look normal, or even ugly in the eyes of someone else. That’s because -no matter how hard people try to say otherwise- beauty is not limited to the outside looks only but consists also of many factors that include the character as well as the behavior.
So,I like to always insist that beauty is an inside out thing, limited by nothing other than our own taste. That’s why I find this constant striving to perfection of looks simply ridiculous. And women -even little girls- are becoming obsessed with this ridiculous striving, and many are willing to do anything just to attract others and be called “beautiful”.
I believe that, in order to be truly beautiful, a woman needs to:
– be herself.
– avoid being a slave to fashion trends.
– be really confident.
– be proud of her looks, as well as her age.
– be as natural and simple as possible.
But unfortunately, with the help of media, our concept of beauty is evolving in the ugliest way ever. People are being subject to brainwashing on daily basis; beauty lost its natural precious values and is being transformed into an artificial product.
Women imitate this product, they look for magical touches to hide whatever they wish to hide, willing to pay fortunes and work their heads off just to maintain whatever that artificial product possesses.
Women have become unbelievably afraid of aging, they lie about their age, they are ashamed of who they really are, they prefer the masks they could buy to hide their true looks and their real age!
What a shame!
I believe many women need a wakeup call, to get back to their senses and show them the real meaning of beauty… that’s why I simply LOVE Dove’s campaign for real beauty.(Arabic…)
I hope women will finally realize that age, skin color, body shape, do not define beauty unless we want them to, so please, don’t let stuff like that hold you back or scare you or limit your potential to be a really beautiful being in your life.