Touristic adventures

I had forgotten how much fun we used to have when we used to travel either with friends or with the kids; with friends we had a different experience, as adults want to see different things, but kids are a different kettle of fish altogether, the things that they notice are totally out of our visual zones, it must be because we are taller or we get sucked in the day to day thoughts and allow ourselves to indulge in trivial stuff rather than look at the important touristic stuff.

Its Sunday, my friend and I decided to do the touristic thingy with the kids, so we went to the Cadbury factory first, it was great, we forgot that we were adults so we ate all the chocolate that they gave us, plus answered the questions, and got even more chocolates, and at the end we had melted chocolate in little paper cups and a spoon, I had three of those without thinking of my waistline (now I know why it is called waistline, its were all the waste get stored and hence the big stomachs!!. When the tour ended we bought more chocolates and left.

The second stop was the botanic gardens, the usual of course: rose garden, cactus garden, duck garden, shrub garden, you name it garden. That was ok, the funny thing is what the kids do in those gardens. Well, apart from the photographs and the pauses, its the secretly cutting those flowery things and shoving them in my bag, the annoying of the sleepy ducks by pushing them and shoving them in the lake, the running with a screaming voice when a bee comes close, and last but not least "I am hungry mum, lets eat something" of course the last statement was not said this time by the kids, it was my friend who wanted to eat something as we had breakfast only three hours earlier, and she was hungry already.

Then we went to the old railway station which is now a place just to wonder in, that had an art Gallery too, we took photos and admired the old mosaic on the floor of the old building. We walked around the Octagon and returned home. The other day we also went to the Peninsula and enjoyed looking at the fish and various sea species and the marine centre.

Why am I writing this? well, just to remind myself how old I grew and how I had forgotten the fun things we used to do when we were younger. This did wonders to my spirits, it revived my brain and made me come home fresh to write you this blog. life is full of surprises, and has lots to offer, we just have to find out the things that make us tick and thank god that we are alive.
Here are some photos:

To all women, be confident

To all the women: keep strong… To all the men: Make sure you choose the right one….

One night President Obama and his wife Michelle decided to
do something out of routine and go for a casual dinner
at a restaurant that wasn't too luxurious. When they were
seated, the owner of the restaurant asked the president's
secret service if he could please speak to the First Lady
in private. They obliged and Michelle had a conversation
with the owner.
Following this conversation President Obama asked
Michelle, why was he so interested in talking to you. She
mentioned that in her teenage years, he had been madly
in love with her. President Obama then said, "so if you
had married him, you would now be the owner of this
lovely restaurant", to which Michelle responded, "no,
if I had married him, he would now be the President".

The girl with the dragon tattoo 2

Okay, I saw the movie, sorry guys, I went against my principles.  I must away though that if you remove all the sex scenes and the tongue and eyebrow rings, you will be left with an unfinished price of work. The tie up between the two detectives is not clear, the tattoo girl is a depressed person who should not be trusted in investigating  the agatha christie's murder mystery. The directors were confused too as they for sure wanted the thrill as its the only thing that sells these days.  Not their fault really, it's us the movie goers fault, we go to every trashy movie that they produce for us just for entrainment. I cannot believe that I got lured into watching this, I bet you that I will also buy the DVD, and will get my daughter to put the movie on my hard drive to watch it again sometimes. I should have listened to my little daughter who told me not to watch it as it will disturb me. She was correct, I had to go to the bathroom (Pepsi and popcorn gets to me you see) I hurried in and out, and locked the doors behind me, as I was imagining that hefty guy behind me and will kick the hell out of me too????? My my! 

Something like the movie P.S. I love you, I watched it so many times as the first time I did I didn't even shed a tear while my movie companions had the theatre filled with rain, Why? Because I was waiting for something to happen? But of course nothing happened, it was just another chick flick, and I am a real chick flick movie. 

Anyway, if you read the books it will for sure tell you whether You should continue to read or threw the worthless papers in the trash. But if you don't and decide to watch the movie, you are trapped, why? Wll, by the time you eat all the popcorn,  drink all the up sized Pepsi and finish the pack of Maltesers, half the movie is over, so you have to stay on. Plus you paid a hefty amount for the ticket, which there will be no refund. It's unlike buying a product and returning it for being faulty. 

But, nothing will stop me from watching The Titanic in 3d :)

Jealousy kills the cat

Such an old saying but its so true, my cat was placed in a friends house, and apparently her cats were so curious about the new comer and were stuck to the door to find out who it was, and why it was in their home??? Lucky for the friend that we only kept the cat for 6 days, otherwise her cats would have broke the door open and surrounded our micky or kicked the hell out of her.  

Jealousy is not a trait that infests cats only it is also amongst women, well I am sure you will all say daa! Of course.  Of course you remember the women that were gathered by the king of egypt to witness profit Joseph! What did they do? They cut their hands from the jealousy that they had as he loved the queen but not them. Also  Not sure if you remember that email that was forwarded to everyone about the world that is ruled by woman.  It says that if the world is ruled by women it will have pink houses, rosy roads, no weapons and no wars, valentine on a daily basis, but all countries will not be talking to each other. Jealous? Yaaa

Why do women feel jealous? Is it a traits? Or something that we adapt from our surrounding? Why are men not jealous of each other, you find them happy drinking in bars and cafes to celebrate each others' successes, while us the women bite our nails because our friend got the promotion and not us? 

Well, don't count me amongst those lot, my dad used to say that I am a man amongst women (still feminine I hope) as he must have noticed that I don't behave like that. Because I had felt the jealousy of those around me about my successes I try to avoid having such feelings, I in actual fact hate it when women feel jealous as I know that if they work as hard they will also succeed. Not sure if you have noticed that women have associations but not men. Of course don't underestimate the value of these association, all of them started with a sense of responsibility for the fellow human beings, and to advance Knowlege and build the country's weakest links and second half to make a complete world.  However the results of most of these women associations is negating the basic objective,  some of the women behave as if us the members have to glorify them, and that it's because of them that we are all succeeding, they also misinterpret our membership fee to a duty, rather than a payment for the society to pursue its original objective.  I for one have been a member of many societies, but not anymore.  I would rather join the dragon's den or the cricket club instead of women groups.  Also all of these conferences about women in leadership, women in power and women entrepreneurs is only something created to make us all even more jealous of each other. 

Pardon me guys, I will talk to you as a guy from now on.  Now only I realised why women used to make up men's name when they used to write their novels! 

Okay, this is from Mr Saud, 

Regards to all, and sorry my fellow women, no harm done. 

The clutter on my phone.

Maybe you had experienced the first mobile phone (some countries has a museum to keep all types of phones and phone developments since inception but we don't) they called it the brick, I certainly never got one as it was too heavy for my liking.  Then we got the beepers, the phones became smaller and the functions on them increased, but with the new generation phones like the BB, IPhones and others we can do almost anything with the phones except have a conversation. However one thing I never quite know how to handle with these phones: The Clutter.

Okay, let me start, first we have all the emails the we received and replied to, the replies stay on the phone. Then we have the saved emails, and the documents that we received and saved. 

Secondly we have the texts, BBM messages, whatsapp messages and the umpteen number of videos that people send you through BBM and whatsapp.  The pictures at least classify themselves according to where from, but the other stuff just stay in one box and we have to classify them. So our phones now resemble our iPads and laptops, and also our lives, a lot is going on in them.  

What do we do? Should we start by working through our lives and sorting out what is important from the bunch of activities that we do? Or we just limit our work to the gadgets and hoping that our lives will sort itself out like a domino effects. I guess not! I feel that with increased dependence on technology we had left out the human touch completely and had forgotten that the are certain clutters require a human touch, like for example our cupboards and drawers, both require us to set a certain amount of time to sort through the unwanted items and clear them to give to charities. Also the citchen cabinets and the pantry, we must go through that as often as possible as otherwise we will have a lot of unwanted stuff plus unwanted insects creeping through them. 

The Chinese horoscope require us to sift through all our stuff and leave only the things that we use and through the rest.  I tried that once and ended up with very little to through away, of course I am a squirrel when it comes to collecting things,  I just cannot threw things away, my husband on the other hand can three all his suits with out a blink.

Anyway if anyone of you know how to arrange the stuff in the phones and laptop please spare a moment to tell me, I need that. 

Airplane chit chat!

Hello there, hope I will not annoy you during this flight? Oh hi there, I will set next to you, talk to ya, sleep on your shoulders, and when I see ya next to the baggage claim will never recognise your face? My hello? Have we met before? I am from Tennessee! And its my first flight to this part of the world? Do you live in the village next to us? No I live in Dubai? Oh where is that?

Being a traveller I get a lot of the above chit chats, which I would rather avoid as I get this stiff neck when I try to look at the person on my right or left and talk, of course having learnt that eye contact is important I have to turn my head, some people have the knack of talking without looking at you, or they could be starring at the tv screen and talking, but I am not like that! If I do not see the apple of the passenger's eyes, I haven't talked to him.  As simple as that. 

Anyway, during one of my fights few years ago, I had travelled on Business class to go to Qatar (I don't do this often, even though I would love to, as I do so many trips in the year, I could use the whole income on flying on business), sorry did it again! I often digress.  The person next to me was very friendly, and being a head of a company, and I am the head of a company, he sort of felt at home, we talked about economics, the gulf and it's future, children, partners, my studies, his studies, where we were from and so on and so forth; it's what you would call a salient conversation between two people who had forgotten to bring their books along (this was before the creation of the IPADof course), after lunch was served (or was it dinner) he asked me a sort of off the mark question: so tell me, what went wrongs? I said excuse me? He said, well, what went wrong? You are a traveller, studied and worked abroad, speak fantastic English (on hindsight I should have bragged about mon francaise, ah out, joe parole francaise, Mais UN puex) own your own business, children studying abroad, husband works with you in the same place, you drive the rest execute, a real leader, a woman and a Bahraini? and went on and on mentioning attributes and qualities that I didn't know I possessed. Again he asked: what went wrong?  Well at the time, I told him that it's my dad's influence, come to think of it now, it's the world's influence and of course my dad.  However, how do each one of us drive ones self? Not sure that I know the answer to this one? Next time you are on a holiday, let people be inspired about themselves! Say the question! WHAT WENT WRONG?

The second chit chat didn't happen to me, it happened to my daughter. I tell you guys, it was one of my worst nightmares!

She was doing pre med, and seems to enjoy it very much, telling me about what she dissected or what experiments she conducted, and how many rats she killed??? Until I said bye to her at the airport, she was adamant to bring the grades to allow her entry to med school.  Suddenly after two months I receive a letter, she says that she found out that she doesn't like it, and that she will exit with a bachelor in biomed, and then do a masters in Business. My stars were roaming around my head, like in cartoons. I was trying to find out what went wrong, and how can someone change their mind in such a short span of time, but couldn't find out.  Her dad and I told her that she is free to do what she wants, it's her life, and we respect her decision. 

At mid year break she came back, and while chattering about all sorts of things, the bubble burst.  She was telling me about this person who sat next to her on a 21.5 hours flight and talked about how he hated his 
Iife being a doctor, and how he wanted so much to be a health speaker, so after a long and successful career as a doctor, he quits, joins the UN organisation or  WHO, and becomes a speaker in conferences, travels around the world, sees places and meets people. He told her that it made a huge difference to him from a person who was treating the ill to a person preventing illness and meets healthy people all the time. he also told her that the negative energy that he felt had been transformed to a positive energy, and now he plays sport, and does regular exercise.  

You see now? You can tell your life story, and inspire people? Or change people's minds. Please think, and ask the questions first, rather than influencing people's minds. 

I am not sure why I thought of these two long forgotten incidents; maybe because I am on one of those long journeys, and I am not talking to the person next to me? 

The day you get bumped all around?

Have you noticed that sometimes you wake up in the morning, and on your way to the shower you knock your elbow on the bathroom door, then the shower door hits your nose!  Then when you finish showering and pull the towel the hanger falls on your face, you walk out of the shower and your toe hits the praying mats box!  You go for breakfast and the butter nice cuts your finger? Then on the way to the car the coffee drops all over your cloth, you change and return to the car and knock your head while trying to set on the driving seat.  

Well, all of these things happen to me times and times again, I still have bruise marks on both my arms and knee from being knocked over by something or the other.  Why? Well if anyone knows please tell me.  

Having said all of this, I must also mention that both wrests are hurting me due to my idiocy in pushing my Mum's trolley when we visited Iraq a month ago, I think I pulled a ligament and left it to heal by itself as I cannot be bothered to see a Physio or a doctor? Why? Too much bother I guess.

Anyway let go to the positives, whilst at the wedding for my son, my wrest was wrapped with that ugly black wrest band! But, not a single remark was raised? Maybe I looked stunning to the extent that no one noticed? Or maybe no one wanted to comment on what age does to oldies like me? Or maybe they didn't want to hurt my feelings for having that on my wrest during my kid's wedding? Well no one can be safe, I guess age has something to do with it though, I don't remember being bumped when I was young? Okay, don't start again, I don't have Alzheimer yet.

The Day After

I am sure you all know what I am talking about here, it's the day after the wedding! Yes the whole stress and shebang is over, and we re just savouring the aftermath and hoping that everybody had enjoyed the celebrations as much as I did. Of course it was almost 4 am when I finally fell asleep, I was so tired and had pains and aches all over my body, my feet were so achy to the extent that each point in it was pulsating as if I had gone on a 1000 kilometre run, my neck was also ringing and my ears! Well I couldn't hear anything for hours in fact till now I am not able to hear anything as the sound of music and drums was so high, in actual fact the whole thing was high; energy level, sound of people chattering, the singer, the clicking of glasses and the banging of heels on the smartly decorated floor. Well the planner did a marvellous job along with the clever bride, the black and white coated with crystals was a delight. The special logo on the entrance, the water bottle, the tissue papers, the giveaways and the bridal walk proved that the company my son and his bride had started is going to be a forever thing. I am just hoping that they will float it on the stock exchange and have many branches around him (kids).

To me I never thought that a wedding can be like establishing a business? These wedding planners is like a company that focuses on advertising a certain type of businesses. People should realise that a wedding planner is an event organiser, he or she can organise any event not necessarily a wedding? Or what say you?

Back to the wedding and sorry for digressing, as usual I cannot continue to write about the same subject without writing the other thoughts that come to my mind that relates to the same issue, blogging to me is like mind mapping! I am sure that all of you get thoughts in your mind while you are talking about something or thinking about something that is totally different to the thought that you are having, it's like when one goes to a funeral and suddenly thinks of a joke and start laughing! Now that of course is Hilarious. Anyway, the bride wanted to walk in along with the groom while all of us are seated. Of course, I never argue, whoever tells me anything, I say yaay, the Nay is the specialty of my daughter and my sister, they are the ones who always have something to nag about or add. So we all sat, realizing the reason of course, the hall is rectangular and very long, and the bride is a bit on the short side, if she walks the isle while we are standing, none of the guests will see her and her gorgeous gown, all the will see is my lovely boy with his Tux and Hermez vest! So she had a point. However, two of the close family guests insisted that they will walk in front of the the bride and groom, so they argued, that was outside the hall, lucky for us we can only see the bride and my son on the large screen, but the men, who were upstairs heard the argument. So my husband asked me who was fighting? I didn't know that there was a fight, so we are still trying to find out who was fighting. this whole could have been avoided if we were given a paper to tell us what is going to happen next and how it's going to happen.

Also the missing bit was the programme, as we need to know when is dinner. When are the men coming in to take the photographs, when is singer is leaving and when is the DJ starting. Also we needed to know when the bride side men are entering so we wear our scarves, and when our side are coming in so everyone plans their time. Luckily we didn't have lots of misunderstandings. I bet in other weddings these sort of things would have developed in misunderstanding. Now, when my daughter (who got engaged on the 7th of Feb) plans her wedding, we would cover all of these points. I personally don't like surprises. I want to know when I am going and when I am leaving and what's in between

By the way, I didn't sing, all the preparation that I did for the song, it didn't happen. Sorry Fairooz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTBwW7GKx_8&feature=fvsr), and Michael Bubble (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG8giVJKQPI), your songs were not sung, and that could be because I was silently upset about Witney, RIP.

The Wedding Night

As you can imagine my stress level is gone to the maximum, and what made it so is the sight of blocked roads and traffic jams leading to the hotel from all directions of Bahrain;

Unlike Dubai, Manama never gets traffic jams, nor do you need to keep an hour or more to reach your destination, and having lived in both cities, I was not prepared for this. Thus I cancelled my trip to the hotel to do the final checks on the hall and drop some stuff to the bride, turned around and dialed 999. They answered me quickly enough, and I told them about our wedding, and about the roads leading to the venue, the guy was so charming, didn't tell me to cancel the wedding as he can tell I was driving and would hit the roof!! and talking on the phone. He calmed me down and said that he will do what he can to clear the roads. As I reached home, I couldn't resist writing this down, to make sure that it will remind me when we have our next wedding, yep, my daughter is now engaged too, and we will soon be planning the wedding. My temptation is to have a very small family gathering that costs nothing, and each person brings a plate which will make it very nice and relaxing. However, reality is, she would want a bigger wedding than the one her brother is going to have. So cancel the pot luck thought, and lets have a plan B, ok, lets have it in another country were traffic jams and political unrest is not on the agenda.

Too far from reality of course, as you all can see the whole area is boiling while life is going on as usual for many people. My friends that arrived yesterday to the wedding and those that arrived this morning are fine, they entered without any distraction from the airport people, but my daughter's friend who is a lawyer, was detained and put on the next plane back to Dubai. Wonder why?

I am not going to go to a hair dresser, or a makeup artist, no time for that! due to the unrest everyone is planning to have, those opposing and those with are all gathering in various places and we are stuck in between. I think there should be special planning for those that have functions, like renting of helicopters or Aladdin's carpet or something of that sort, or maybe we can read that verse that takes you to a place without leaving your seat in a flash of a second. In times of unrest we need to have our thinking hats on, to do anything that will make us avoid losses. like the loss the friend had made on her ticket? she had a visa by the way, and the wedding invitation card to. Some weird things are happening, and we don't know who is to blame here.

Anyway, if you guys have suggestions for our next wedding, please go ahead and tell me, the hour in traffic jam had eaten part of my thinking side of the brain.

Wish us all luck for tonight, and happy wedding to all those that are marrying today, including my son Jihad and my pretty bride Zainab.

The girl with the dragon tattoo

Bought the books, didn't read them yet, as first it was borrowed by Nidha, and then Susan, and now that the movie is out, not sure if I will ever read it? I am one of those freaks who love to read the book first, then watch the screen in case the director made a mistake, or just tried to tantalise us to watch the movie with the usual intensity.   Merde, as the French would say.  

Anyway, why is rape such a favourite thing for men? What is it that makes them rape a girl? Or a boy for that matter? Did anyone ever study the guys who rape to find out why they do that? As I cannot believe that it's just because they feel the urge for sex? Do you think it could be that the victim looks vulnerable? And so the culprit gets aroused and he jumps to his prize? Or is it something that the girl/boy emit such as  hormone or smell like the one people emit when they are feeling philanthropic? I forgot the name of that hormone, I will google it and let you know what it is as there was a TED's video about it; anyway, to make a long story short, I think we need to take those that rape, bash them first on the head!! study them and try to eliminate the DNA that affects their brain and makes them attack their victims to rape and kill, or whatever? I have only met one girl who was raped, and after extensive therapy and medication she had recovered, got married and have now become an entrepreneur and with the help of her husband she had almost got over the incident. However, if you look deep in her eyes, you would notice a certain sadness that can only be detected if you have a sixth sense; and another thing is noticed too, if men are raped, they start to act like females, and if women are raped, they start to act like male. That is something that is worth a study too.

I would also like to talk about Coco Chanel's movie. Have you ever wondered Why producer sensationalise the lives of those that made it big in life? Why do we care how they lived or whether they had been prostitutes, or play girls but also artists (Freeda, Van Googh) or a fashionistas (Coco Chanel, Christian Dior)? Its as if the producers are saying that there is a strong correlation between the private life of an individual and the success factor? So if I have a normal private life (excuse me for calling my life normal) then my success factor will not be as high as those who live with men, alcohol, drugs and other activities that are intended for some and not all. So sex for example is always used as part of the success formula.  If a girl is poor, misused, thrashed, thrown here and there, she will be successful. Well this is what the producers are telling us, of course no one is still alive to tell us if Coco Chanel had actually lived such life? They had all long gone? So we cannot vouch for the truth or the untruth of that Movie.

What am trying to say here is that success in life has nothing to do with being in need, or being raped, or being a person who is used by men; I will not let my daughters believe this, and will try to defend normality in life as it could equate to success too.  No one had told us yet anything about JKR as she is successful because she was also taken as a geisha by someone rich and that is why she wrote her successful HP books? Or maybe the producers of 2112 will try to make up a story about her too just to brainwash those poor kids into believing that life will only be fantastic when we play around and go out of our way to ruin our health with the three factors mentioned above.

Well, you can call me a conspiracy theorist and joke about it, but don't you smell something odd here? I do.