My Amazing Year Update :)

Five weeks back my atelier's equipment arrived to Jordan. But with  that arrival, another long awaited gift arrived; our new addition to the family; Karam.

Nine months back when KJ and I were on a trip in south Saudi Arabia we discovered we were pregnant. I don't want to talk about pregnancy and the morning sickness which turned out to be all time sickness. And don't want to talk about the aches and changes I went through, nor the miserable two days labor I went through, nor the delivery. I want to talk about this blood-stained creepy creature that came out of me whom I was longing to hold before I met him and fell in love with since the very moment he laid his head on my shoulder in the delivery room and I saw the dark blue eyes.

The other day I told KJ that if anyone thinks women wait for their babies for nine months then they are wrong. Women wait for their babies since the very doll they played with.

When I look into Karam's eyes with his hands clutching to my finger thinking of how helpless he is and depending  on me totally. This idea freaks the hell out of me. Who am I to be someone to depend on in everything? Now that my world revolve around him, I feel I am the one who's depending on him. My timing, my activities, and my everything,when to shower, when to eat, all about him.

The feeling that half of this baby is me and he was growing inside of me is so unexplained.

Yesterday, we celebrated my sweet little boy becoming one month old. Tomorrow we're celebrating KJ's and I first anniversary It's unbelievable how one's life can change within a year. I got married, lived in three different countries, went to more than 6 different cities, gave birth, and experienced many firsts. I guess that's life and that's why I'm still the simple girl with complicated thoughts and have lots of things to learn.

That's all for now
Can't wait to live the rest

Out of the Qomqom*

I'm bored, dizzy and sick of being sick. Well dizzy because I've been playing this weird game called First-Person Tetris. Last time I wrote I spent the previous weeks sick in bed. Well, now I'm feeling better.

Little progress in my study as I can't find the right people to answer my questions. I need managers/ employees in UAE, who are willing to use, or already using Intranet Blogs in their organizations. Since I can't find people in such category, my advisor said it's going to be an exploratory study. But still I need managers who are willing to gather and attend a focused group discussion where we can talk and answer the questions of the study.

My MS-office word is giving me hard time. I'm not able to add the tables of index, references, figures, among many other things. So it's really boring and time consuming thing to do it manually. I still have to edit the literature review grammatically, and finish paraphrasing the previous studies section, let alone writing the last two chapters.

I've always loved my study, loved reading books and even better writing my own philosophy regarding what I read and what I'm really interested in i.e writing a thesis; BUT (yes a big but here) this is different.

My life seems upside-down. I have a lot in mind; projects and plans. Yet I feel my life is pending and I'm spending my days just waiting. it feels like gazing at a white wall with nothing in mind, but this wall is full of scratches and sketches of my thoughts, and they are getting messy and crowded.

***

oh, I almost forgot! Today was my father's birthday and as usual, Atta Crocker backed a chocolate cake. No photos this time. we ate it before I could take a picture.

Happy Birthday dad, even though I know you don't read my blog but I'm sure mom will tell you I wrote :)

* Qomqom: the bottle where the jinn are kept .. but in Arabic the word is uses for people who hide away for a while.
P.S. don't over play the game I gave in the link. it's really .. no healthy :|

That's all for now
I hope you can make sense out of this post

Auntie Atta!

I'm an aunt!

Yay :D

I can't wait to see my niece!
She's a cutie. I love her already.
My sister and her baby are both in good health alhamdulillah.

Wishing I was in Amman, I only got to hear her crying on the phone after she was born and then mom and my brother in law kept updating us with photos of the baby girl via MMS. It took them 24 hours to give her a name! and what a lovely name; Lean, Leann, Leeann, Lee Anne. still not sure of the spelling.

Thanks God for this gift. God bless her for us. :)
That's all for now
I'll update you soon
_____________
Update:
I'm in Amman and Layoona is such a lovely tiny girl!

Bu Qtair Cafeteria

"There's a child inside of all of us" is a phrase that expressed the childish behavior all of us do every now and then but when it comes to my little sister, it's a whole different story. The other day her colleague asked her what does she want for her birthday and my sister innocently said "an airplane". My sister became 24 years old a couple of weeks back.

She came home with gifts and flowers from her colleagues but she was mostly excited about The Airplane! Actually both of us were. But after a couple of hours I got bored and its sound became annoying and forgot about it.

My sister keeps recharging the batteries and keeps annoying me with its sound. I shouldn't have given her the rechargeable ones.

Anyways… to celebrate her birthday, I made some sweets and bought a cake. Then she only wanted us to spend the rest of the evening at Bu Qtair, a seafood restaurant. I don't know what words to use to describe the place and if the word restaurant is applied to such places. This is our second visit but since the place was dark it was hard to get a good photo. Everything was blurred. So let me try to describe.

First of all, we heard about the place from mom's colleague who been there and said it's The place where you taste the Best Fish Ever. She heard of it from an article in one of Dubai's Luxury Magazines and shared the article with mom.

We drove for two hours to get there, only to be disappointed about the bad lighting, seating and the horrible smell of the neighborhood, since it is in Jumaira Beach area. If you happen to walk in Main Street of Jumaira, you'd feel like walking in Cannes Street; it's the best neighborhood in Dubai people dream of living there. But back to where we dined; It was literally a cabin that was located in a Kharaba (abandoned land with remains of a building and usually a lot of garbage here and there). On the same piece of land there were handmade small boats and fishing nets. The only light of that kharaba are the avenue lamps.

The plastic tables and chairs are scattered on the sand of the kharaba. Some people are sitting at tables and others are waiting to be seated. Some are waiting in their cars and others are standing and waiting for their takeaway meals. With this inconvenient setting, it is not easy to get a table. There are no reservations, mind you.

In our first visit we were accompanied by my brother-in-law. After the two-hours-drive, expressions of disappointment were visible on my sister's face as well as mine. He whispered to us "just pretend it's alright and let's wait and see. If you didn't like the food I'll take you to another restaurant". Mom and dad went inside the cabin to order. After about half an hour, a man came out of the cabin and called my Dad's name and took the plates to a different table. We were in a shock! Why he's ignoring us if even if we're saying we're here!

The man disappeared and came after a while. He called a different name but came to our table and to place our order. That was hilarious. In our second visit, we saw a family who looked shocked just like us in our previous visit when his name was called and the food went to a different table.

The plates are plastic but the second time they were disposable. They serve you salad that's made of white cabbage, onion and lime slices. In addition to that, they serve you a spicy red sauce that I have did not even dare to taste. The shrimps made fire comes out of my ears but the taste was too delicious to stop eating.

But the fish! The look was not encouraging but the smell… Oh. My. God. Never tasted such a thing before and I don't think there's a place that cook such delicious fish and now I'm sure if the kharaba was even darker and the smell of the shore way much more horrible, people would still come to taste Bu Qtair's seafood.


Bu Qtair :)


Bu Qtair kitchen inside the cabin


fish


the spicy sauce

That all for now...
Happy belated birthday sis

Happy Birthday Sosa-Lola

She’s this cute, childish, loveable, funny, spontaneous, smart girl, not because she’s my sister but because for some mysterious reasons, it’s helpless not to fall for her or not to like her. She Sosa lola, my youngest sister. No matter how old she gets, we see her as we’ve always knew her “noq6a” (a dot or a point)

I can go on and on talking about how we enjoy our times together but you’ll never get the picture. We invented games, invented words. We made practical jokes, we made fun of everything. .We wrote songs together and we wrote movies, but above all we had our own way to sing. It’s this silly kind of singing that makes anybody who listen to us drop down laughing. I would sing and she would add the beats and tempo in a very funny way, moving her hands as if she’s drumming. Oh how I miss her.

One of the games we invented was “khamsha mino yukhmosh awal?” don’t worry, you won’t find any of these words in a dictionary. Simply because they are made up. “khamsha” from “khashim” (=nose) and a driven fake verb “yukhmosh”, “mino” (=who), and awal (=first). So the game is “who would snatch other’s nose first?” We were in kindergarten when we invented the game. And the best place for us was our parents’ bed. We would lift our hands straight up vertically and say “khamsha mino yukhmosh awal?” And that’s when all the fun begins. Many times the game ended with a fight or at least one of us crying.

Sosa has a major crush for Tigger.Oh yes, of Disney’s Winnie the Pooh family. She made the entire family along with her friends fall in love with this creature. She considers him her pet. Unfortunately Tigger the Tigger and Tigger The Baseball Player are with me now and not with Sosa. She only has Tigger the Baby. Hopefully the entire family reunion will be the coming August. Pray for them :)

The “noq6a” is graduating this summer inshalla. She’s studying Finance and Banking. From the 9th grade, Sosa made up her mind and decided she doesn’t want to waste her time on chemistry and physics nor on geography and history. She wanted something she liked way much better: Business. She was the first one in the family who would say it firmly that if she won’t go to a commercial school she won’t study at all. Amazingly, she made this precedent decision and she graduated from her commercial high school as one of the top 10 students. That year, she spent it alone with my father in Baghdad. She refused to leave Baghdad even with the worst situation to live let alone to study, even after my eldest sister, my mother and I left Baghdad. Dad had to stay with her so she would be able to graduate.

To Sosa, the bravest tinny girl I’ve ever known, I want to say Happy Birthday. May all her wishes (the good ones ha ;) ) come true. May God bless you, guide you and lighten your way.