Thougt in a Jar

She sat rigidly behind her desk. Her dark hair flowing down to her chest, covering most of her fair face with pin-straight locks; it made her almost ghost-like. Her eyes were black, small in size, with a glassy gaze. She had a tiny, sloped nose. Her lips were thin, and they curled toward the end.

Her small features contracted in a monkey fist, listening to the one playlist she had been given years ago, along with her job; in that gray, dreary office, with the small window. An office that was cold; rain or shine, winter or summer, it was all the same.

And on and on the music played, morale-breaking song after morale-breaking song, all she had to do, all she does and all she will ever do is work; filing, archiving and numbering. Her type of work was not conducive to creative thinking; her work, had it been a womb, would be the worst place to sustain a living soul, to nourish it, to feed it, to care for it. Her job was unlike any other job around her. She was the only one sitting behind a desk working with papers and numbers; the rest where all white-clad, administering drugs to the stupid in a futile attempt to make them intelligent. The stupid filled the place, singing, joking, screaming, laughing themselves silly. As a matter of fact, the stupid weren't that stupid, they mostly feigned stupidity to escape their responsibilities... And all at once, it hit her, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I can't be thinking, I can't", and she buried her face in the next paper she found, confining her thought to where the number at the bottom of that page should go. She looked at the big, depressing clock on the wall, it was nearing midday.

The closer it was to midday, the more stressed she'd become, the more edgy and sharp.

As she sat behind her computer, one with a big screen, a black desktop background and green words. Her keyboard was missing all letters save a few, but it had all the numbers. The cursor moved with her thought. The desktop was empty, there were no menus or files of any sort, thus little, or no cursor motion were ever required. There was just green text and numbers, the text she never typed, touched or comprehended, the numbers she entered on her own.

"It's almost midday," she fussed.

The cursor started moving frantically. "Must. Not. Think". "Cannot. Think". The cursor wouldn't stop. Out of nowhere, files of her thought appeared on the desktop.

Hate.

Alone.

Smyle.

Gray.

Dark.

Happi.

"Stop showing, stop."

Repetitions of her thoughts appeared in files, each file contained, in excruciating detail, everything to know about every single thought; where it came from, how it came to be, why it came to be. And she was starting to lose it. 3 minutes to midday. The cursor wouldn't stop opening each of the files, and pointing at each of her thoughts at that moment, and changing them as she changed her thoughts along.

They sat in the corner watching that screen, it was with frenzied speed and determination that the cursor moved and showed files of its own accord. All in black and green. Thoughts, all in black and green.

One minute till midday.

The cursor was moving so fast, jumping from one thought to another, her forehead broke out in hopeless sweat, she started crying frantically. She held the keyboard and tried to break it on her head so no more thoughts are typed into the big screen. She knows they save them, second by second, they save her thoughts and put them in jars, so one day they can put them in one big pool and drown her in them, drown her in her thoughts, thoughts she knew she wasn't allowed to think in the first place. She was a natural rebel.

Midday.

They were there, the faceless ones clad in white, they shut down her computer and forced her off her chair, she was beginning to regret provoking her mind into thinking. Now pills and electricity. Lots of electricity.

A feeling of tranquil resignation swept over her. She doesn't frantically fight them off anymore, the white-clad ones. She knows if she does they would hammer her head and later giver her a barbecued piece of her mind for keepsake, so next time she nears thought, she would know better.

But little peace of mind did that give her. They still come to get her midday, everyday.

She knows that next time, nay, she is sure, they won't come to get her next time. She knows that she will have lost her mind, all of it, in barbecued pieces and her thoughts will all be in jars, safe and sound until they decide that they must drown her in her own thought. All she has to do until then is work with her numbers, broken keyboard and depressingly black screen. Happi thoughts.

Thoughts.

Wrong she was, again.

As We Digress: It's Complicated

We may wake up tomorrow, and hate the day before we know what it has in store for us; maybe we haven't slept well the night before and just do not feel like getting out of bed (when we absolutely have to), maybe there is something that has been preoccupying us for the past couple of days, maybe we really are not up to "it" on this particular day. We may have a million different reasons for why we may hate a day before it even begins, and sometimes we're right about it.

It sometimes hurt when you discover that you don't even know yourself anymore, or when you think that you have become a person you would despise, or that you have become selfish, careless and apathetic. And just as often times you discover that you have not changed, but you merely learnt how to compartmentalize all the emotion, all the real, genuine things that make a human out of you because they may be misinterpreted in a million different ways, and you just cannot afford that kind of misinterpretation in today's corporate world, which seems to be taking over social life as well.

Human suffering is probably the primary reason humans come together. It is just shocking when you see yourself in an imagined mirror reacting to human suffering. Just when you think you'd reached the peak of apathy, you are utterly humbled back into humanity by sharing the suffering of those around you in their darkest times. Then their pain is your pain, their tears are your tears, their loss is your loss, and a shared fish never has bones; grief shared is lessened. And once more, and in this entry, humanity takes one point for beauty.

Grief is one of the most, if not the most, difficult emotional upheaval we can ever encounter. Grief, of course, is caused by different reasons, depending on what means [a lot] to us and what means less. It is vital that we remain strong and positive in times of grief, as opposed to being morbidly optimistic in what may be the darkest time of your life. That's just flat out mad. I find people who are morbidly optimistic, rain or shine, unbearable be around; how do they come up with so much energy? I cannot possibly keep up with the morbidly optimistic ones, just like I cannot keep up with the chronically dissatisfied. I like people who are rightfully optimistic, and rightfully dissatisfied, because it ceases to be a matter of who they are, and becomes a matter of how they react to things happening beyond their control; someone who deals with all kinds of dismaying/happy events in their life accordingly strikes me as a more balanced, grounded someone. Someone who finds a way out of the darkest time in their life [not by being morbidly optimistic] strikes me as a highly creative person worthy of your time and energy. But I digress...

To those of you who watched The Omen (the yuppie one from 2006), there is a scene where a jackal gives birth to a baby human or something of the sort; tonight the sky looks as menacing and unpredictable as can be, and it looks like its belly is about to burst open and excrete gargoyles and bats and the sort of things you'd see/read about in a Halloween movie/book...

I don't know about you, but after one, worthy emotional spill, and one long, productive, utterly bittersweet day, receding into the warm womb that is my bed is all I want to do, heaving a secret prayer toward the sky that asks, relentlessly, for plenty of simple things.

The blog has spoken.

RYG: If It Were a Kid, It Would Be a Second Grader

This short, but timeless list was given to me 7 years ago on a CD for my birthday. You will notice that there are only a few tracks, but alas, the rest never worked.

This is a tribute to T, and the good times.

1. Shimmer (acoustic) - Fuel

2. Seven-Nation Army - White Stripes

3. Estranged - Guns n' Roses

4. Innocence is Over - Dandelion Whine

5. فرحة - محمد منير

6. يا للي - محمد منير

7. Street Spirit (Fade Out) - Radiohead

8. Annie Dog - Smashing Pumpkins

9. Disarm - Smashing Pumpkins

RYG: Food for the Ear

1. Girl with One Eye - Florence and the Machine
2. On Melancholy Hill - Gorillaz
3. Heart Skipped a Beat - The XX
4. 2 + 2 = 5 (The Lukewarm) - Radiohead
5. Sorrow - Pink Floyd
6. Girls Not Grey - AFI
7. Radio Nowhere - Bruce Springsteen
8. God Put a Smile Upon Your Face - Coldplay
9. KillyKillyKilly (A Fire Sermon) - Current 93
10. Format C: For Cortex - Dark Tranquility
11. Fear of the Dark (Live Rock in Rio) - Iron Maiden
12. I'm A Man - Black Strobe

Pilot: Raw Yumminess on the Go

I would like to introduce you to a new column within my blog; third to the As We Digress social, anthropological musings, and the self-explanatory title of the Trip Diaries. I introduce Raw Yumminess on the Go.

This was largely inspired by Radiohead's Office Chart, which is basically a list of tracks that one of the band members would be listening to at the time they post something on their website.

My very first RYG (Raw Yumminess Go minus the preposition "on" and the determiner "the") "chart" can be found below.

1. Babe I'm Gonna Leave You - Led Zeppelin
2. Siberian Breaks - MGMT
3. Straight to the Heart - Sina Vodjani (out of Buddha Bar's very first volume)
4. Libertango - Astor Piazzolla
5. Misirlou 97 (Featuring Gary Hoey) - Dick Dale
6. Chop Suey - System of a Down
7. La Del Ruso - Gotan Project
8. Untitled 8 ("Popplagið") - Sigur Rós
9. Rise of the Pentagram - Cradle of Filth
10. Porch (live in Montreal 2000) - Pearl Jam
11. Lost in Timeless Horizons - Nyctalgia
12. There, There (The Boney King of Nowhere) - Radiohead
13. Violet Light - Raised by Swans

Rock on.

As We Digress: Like, Dislike

It has always been this with attraction: you tell someone you like them, they refrain even if they do like you, why? Or you detect the slightest bit of emotion surfacing and you back out, why?

It's basic psychology; we all want to be eye-to-eye with our partners in life. Not eye-to-chin, eye-to-boob, or eye-to-whatever, but only eye-to-eye, because we know that we deserve someone as good as we are (yes, we all think we're good people), and so, whenever one may detect the slightest sign of losing that same-level connection/rapport, we freak out; rightfully so. That is why, when a person we like initiates expression of emotion, we seem to refrain even when we have been having the best time of our lives. Similarly, if it were something else, like expressing admiration of how well you do things, you may just fuck it up. Drawing constant attention to our strengths, talents and gifts weakens us; we just stop trying, we become arrogant and grow some really inflated egos.

Reminders are better than relentless compliments; reminders are sweet, short and subtle, relentless compliments are desperate, they lose meaning after a while and won't have you win over your counterpart.

When two people like each other, there has to be one situation in which both are able to express their emotion at the same exact time, just like when you have two seconds to cross that gate into another universe before it closes forever. And to get there, there has to be a build-up. We all like build-ups, we enjoy build-ups, and we like to prolong build-ups, and why not? It is, after all, the most enjoyable part of starting off something! A perfect build-up that has kept you eye-to-eye will lead you to the perfect moment in which you both express the way you feel and still take you one step further while you maintain your levels. Not a perfect moment with fire works, or a candle-lit dinner, a barefoot walk on the beach... Stop the Hollywood baloney and get fucking real.

Another thing that may cause us to freak-out, other than losing level, is that we do not want to be with someone desperate. If someone tells you they like you, there are a million ways to do so, each vary in how desperate/confidnet they may strike us. When naturally, expressing your emotion takes a lot of gut, and actually conjures up lots of confidence(and really, it does mean a lot), the results may come out unsatisfactory. You may take your counterpart by surprise, and that's an instant fail. Your counterpart may not share your feelings, another instant fail. Your counterpart may like you a little less than they are supposed to so they give you the desired answer. Your counterpart may dislike mushy moments as such and evade answering (but that's the dumbest, how else are you supposed to communicate the way you feel? Telepathy? Think again, and by that I mean reconsider partners if you are emotionally expressive). Your counterpart may have someone else in mind: ABANDON SHIP. There are a million little reasons and ways for initially liking and then disliking a person once they have expressed the way they feel. And why is that? It is an ever-perplexing human emotion that still has no name. We go back to ground zero: eye-to-eye.

But apart from our human like/dislike dilemma, there is one other thing that causes perplexity to the eased mind; when someone has no real emotion, just average, or perhaps less-than-average fondness of certain others, and they somehow summon the energy to fake fondness and interest, why are so many people blind to it? It is so obvious to bystanders and involved parties alike, yet somehow, some bystanders and involved parties cannot detect the least bit of hypocrisy. How is that when some of us can see right through it, others can be so blind [to such basic emotion]? Is it that some of those bystanders and involved parties are too gullible? My ass. Is it that they are also aware but they choose to ignore it? Is it that they feel the exact same way? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...

The point is, the day communicating emotions has become a sign of weakness, is the day this planet started making less sense. It may not be hard to express your emotions, what may be hard is the aftermath of which.

As We Digress: The Little Things in Life

To know: to possess knowledge or information about.
To realize: to understand/perceive (an idea or situation) mentally.

Fact: human beings are not perfect.

We all know that we are imperfect creatures; yes, we have intelligence and brains, we have the ability to think, to know, and to be aware of ourselves and all that encircles us, but this doesn't make you "feel bad". In fact, it makes you feel superior to others because you know all of these things, be them mundane or of utter significance. The fact is, the action of knowing makes them equal in value, because knowing, while important for us to realize truths, is not realization in itself, thus whatever information you may have in your possession is all of the same value because it does not affect you.

Fact: human beings take forever to realize things.

Realization on the other hand, is a more superior form of knowing. It is the step that comes after knowing. It is important to know in order to realize; without intelligence and brains, the ability to think, to know and to be aware of ourselves and all that encircles us, we cannot realize. Realization, unlike knowledge, can be hurtful. It's a process of knowing, realizing, getting hurt, taking action and moving on.

Once you realize you have done a mistake, well, let's not kid ourselves, we don't only make one mistake. When you have made quite a handful of mistakes you know of course what you did, we all know what we do, yes, we know, but we never, ever realize the magnitude (or triviality) of which from the beginning. We all need a wake-up call, a reality check, a slap on the face, perhaps several times, to actually realize this stuff, and it's hard, it's difficult to know one's mistakes, to be at peace with yourself after you've realized what you did, and the most difficult thing would be wallowing in both self-pity and resentment at once and then move on, making a promise to yourself that you'd never do the same mistake ever again, half knowing that the constant presence of a certain catalyst will always lead to constant same-mistake-making, forming a vicious circle.

Fact: the worst mistake anyone can make would be the one made against oneself

Making mistakes with other people, almost always has a solution, even if the parties involved choose to never talk again, it's still a solution. But making a mistake to yourself is just horrible: you are yourself. You can't stop talking to yourself, you can't resent yourself because then people would resent you, you can't judge yourself because your self-esteem would hit rock-bottom and no one would ever like you because even you don't like yourself, you can't split yourself into two entities (well you can, but that's another story for another day), and you absolutely cannot think that you don't deserve happiness because then you really don't.

You can always take solace in the fact that no one is mistake-free, especially mistakes made against themselves, but one should learn and one should avoid and one should help fellow human beings.

You can always take solace in the little things in life; the little smiles, the little nice songs you like, the little practices you do unto others to make them happy. I know one little thing about this: giving a massage to your favorite little person, with their little shoulders, little backs and little feet and their demand for more massage time, that makes them giggle with their little mouths and little eyes is absolutely one thing worth living for.

As We Digress: The Constant Need for Money and Affection

Of all the things that humans may feel, the various shades and colors of all things emotional, the most constantly-felt would be the need for money and affection.

The observation made above is the fruit of many months, days, and hours of noting this, that and the other and it has resulted in the association of money with emotion, well-being and self-respect. So while money isn't actually an emotion, the emotions we get when money is involved certainly are, making money an emotion by association.

The day money started mattering to us on an emotional level, that is money being so closely linked to our well-being and happiness, the world today has completely changed our values. Yes, the old saying is money can't buy you happiness, but the fact is money is able to buy you things that are bound to make you happy, upon all stands financial security. That is true. However, money is not supposed to enslave you, money isn't supposed to be such an integral part of our happiness and welfare because money comes and goes, sometimes it is more gone than it is around, so one has to learn how to be happy and satisfied with whatever one has. It's not easy, because it is a philosophy that has to come from within you, not imposed upon you. It's a conclusion you reach, not a lesson you learn. So, for once, I hope that all of us, rich and poor, or even those stuck in between, would reach that conclusion sooner or later for humanity's sake.

Financial satisfaction, or the better word would be contentment, has long been confused with sitting motionless, waiting for money to knock on one's door. I'm sorry, but what kind of a gullible bastard can one be to actually believe that they are being content when they are actually being passive? To earn the money you deserve to have is one thing, to allow yourself to be enslaved to it is another. Know the difference.

A good substitute to worshiping money would be filling your life with meaningful relationships that are bound to leave you emotionally secure and satisfied. The existence of which is a good antidote to the poisonous effect that money has on the world today.

Money is status, money is security, money is happiness, money is love, money is power...

Money is nothing.

The shockwave from possibly the hottest thing in nature meeting the coldest, like emotion and money -one being completely abstract and more profound on all levels, and the other being worldly and materialistic- would actually crack the Earth in two. And it's cracking. Those two have finally collided and now we have to live in a world of chaos where emotion and money are of the same value...

It's a sad, sad state of affairs... Very much like seeing people you haven't seen in years and see that they have not changed one bit. People, who in the first place, you so mistakenly thought would mature with time, but to no avail; they are still the same.

It is sad, because once you leave those people behind you'd think that life would teach them a thing or two. That the school they go to or the job that they have may actually save them from their miserable selves, but no, instead once you cross paths with them again you are only reminded of why you distanced yourself from that sorry act in the first place; you only see that only little has changed. And while you sit there listening to the same old, frustratingly repetitive babble, you wonder: "have you not changed one bit?", "you're still falling for the same type of guy/girl who always manages to fuck up something in your life?", "why am I here?", "grow up!", and "get over yourself"... No prospects, no ambition, no effort into a decent living, immaturity, stupidity... Those are the very qualities that possess the ability to fracture a relationship as such. Sometimes life is just too disappointing that one needs to take a break from being a human being.

But it is sad, most of all, because we have given up on trying to change the world we live in, and I mean this in the least idealistic manner possible. I don't mean to say that we should all diminish the hunger and disease, the wars and murders that take place each and every miserable day of our lives as citizens of this ever-deteriorating world we live in, I simply mean to say that we have given up on improving our own lives, our own values and our own well-being, and that is precisely why we are going down and we are taking down the world with us. So cheers to whoever wanted to watch the world burn, because here it comes.

As We Digress: Sometimes I Get Scared

In our formative years, most of us are unaware that they are actually our formative years. The years that sculpt and define who you are, what you are, what you want and where you want to go in your life. These are scary times. The unawareness of them is a lot better than the awareness of them; when you know how much these years will affect you in the future you stress on the importance of them all the more and end up screwing up one thing or another.

Things like leaving the home you lived in all your childhood and most of your adolescence is one of these things. Friendships you make or break. Things that fragment your heart (no matter how small or big: broken puppy love or the death of a close one) are also among the things that affect the final product that is you. You have to keep one thing in mind at times like these: if something affects you so deeply, emotionally and mentally, then it's probably worth it, no matter what others tell you to make you feel better. Belittling one's dilemmas as a way to help one recover is one of this century's hugest flaws in dealing with emotion and intelligence together. To stay emotionally healthy, one must deal with their emotion intelligently. Easy.

The more arduous journey would be the one you take when you're almost done formation. You will have experienced all these things that sculpted the new, more mature you, you will have probably equipped yourself academically and professionally as well, but after that you need to decide what to do next. Yes, the task gets harder as you grow. Overwhelming.

At that point the prospects seem infinite, the possibilities of what you can do and what you can become are so vast that you cannot make up your mind, because each option offers a different future. Try and make up your mind without feeling lost before; the impossible dream. Just remember that on your way to wherever you will meet people who either:
A. Know what you're worth well, and would take advantage of your skill and talent by faking interest in what you are and what you aim to be to keep you on their level, or worse, below them, making you believe that they actually want the best for you by under-appreciating you so; AND/OR
B. People who will hate you for no reason, or for a million reasons, and who will wish you failure, but just because they wish you failure doesn't mean you will (the existence of these parasites has plagued our world since the dawn of time); AND/OR
C. Older people who see themselves in you and who would like to direct you to one of two ways: either towards the goals they themselves failed to achieve when they were your age, or towards places where you can realize your full potential; a true form of vision and wisdom; AND/OR
D. People who know what you are worth and help you realize your full potential with no ulterior motives whatsoever; a rare existence, but still plausible.

Of course there are those you have known all your life, it goes without saying that those select few are your backbone; those who have been there at all times, in your success and failure, your times of beauty and ugliness, times of love and hate, they were there and they helped you on your feet when you faltered (yes, rather cheesy, but true). And there comes a time in your life when you question the existence of whom in your life, only to realize that the very thought of not having them there scares the light out of you, and you would do anything to keep them happy and satisfied just as they did for you. So hold onto those, their existence in your life has, is and will be a source of comfort and happiness forever and always: living, loving, and sharing - the values that make our lives worth something.

Your future need not be so confusing, when the opportunity presents itself to you, after tiresome days and nights in search of it that is, you will know what you were meant to do. But until then, sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride, whether life be here or elsewhere, it will come to you, and you will go to it, just be patient.

And stay away from self-help books.

(Untitled Poem)

I'm seeing stars.
The sea is dripping blue ink on the sky,
And that's why it's so blue.
Like tree leaves
She was all in green,
Sitting there on a branch,
And then shower more strawberries
On her pretty face.

As We Digress: Photograph at the Studio

This experience never ceases to revolt me each time I'm at a studio for a personal photograph; this time, it's a graduation photo. Those trips depersonalize the whole beauty of a portrait of you. You're there with a complete stranger who wants to make you look good the way he/she wants. A beautiful photograph should capture the essence of you, not capture the way the photographer thinks is beautiful.

A photograph is the still you, that's why the photographer should know you personally, and that's why the most beautiful photographs are those taken by people who know you intimately, or by someone who knows what you're like. At least that's the case with me.

So, since there's graduation-photo traffic (because the university only gives the graduation gowns to one specific studio) I had to leave a studio-full of students yesterday (a minimum of 75 students) and come back first thing in the morning. 8 in the morning is not the best timing to have your photograph taken, because not only have you just woken up, but interaction with a complete stranger with a camera just wouldn't get you anywhere.

So there I am, with make up on (the very least possible, only enough to define the sleepy eyes) at 8 in the morning, sitting in a dark room, with the photographer asking me to change about 3 different gowns because none of them zip well, and I ran out of patience trying to fix the stupid zipper when it finally works. I sit on a stool, and the photographer holds the camera and says: "okay, now smile" without one drop of emotion spilling out of his voice, and I throw in my very shy smile, and he takes 8 other shots, asking me to tilt my head to the right, then to the left, then give him a bigger smile, to which I obliged hatefully (it completely showed on my face as I viewed the shots later). After he finishes he asks me if I need to throw in other poses or props, to which I hastily replied with a sharp no. Ok, it was sharp in my head, but came out nicer. The reason I'm against the whole photo thing is the following story.

These graduation pictures are supposed to go on the year book, which I wouldn't really mind had not this thing taken place. A friend of mine had her picture on there too, and on a summer day her mother got a call from a lady claiming to have pulled out their number from the directory. The reason of this call was that the lady's son wanted to propose to my friend. A complete stranger wanted to visit her in her own home with his mother tagging along so they can ask for her hand, out of nowhere. This, my friends, is the reason I don't want my photo on there; not because I'm afraid people would call me up and ask for my hand, as freaky as that might be alone, but it's the mentalities of those people viewing this year book, which is supposed to be a book with the main events of the academic year of 2009/2010.

Eventually, I went for the very first shot the photographer took of me. I wonder how it's going to turn out.

As We Digress: The Weaver's Anniversary

Yes folks, it’s been a year since I started this blog. It was a very interesting year, lots of emotion and intensity, but lots of successes and minor failures. But today, like every day, we will digress.

Work ethic in this country seems to be ever-deteriorating. Thinking that you might be working, or training in my case, at one of the country’s best “Global Professional Services” companies, whatever that may be, you would assume people are more motivated, more carefully-picked and much more professional. Not people who spend endless hours in meaningless talk, calling gynecologists, cutting their nails, or showering themselves with cheap perfume before heading out to a meeting, leaving the rest to suffocate.

It's a shame that no one really cares about whether or not they do their jobs right, or whether or not they do their jobs at all, and even if they do them, they wouldn't be doing so wholeheartedly. I know, as people get older they get sick of their jobs, they get bored, it's not the same for them anymore, but it's different if they feel that way and still like what they do. I mean after you've been doing what you're doing for 5 years, working in the same place and seeing pretty much the same people, you are bound to get bored, but at least you get bored doing something you know you're good at, someone else perhaps may benefit from it, you never know. The problem is I am certain that those people I've seen work are not bored because they've been doing their job for a long time, but because that's how it's been for them ever since they started, that's because it's all about the money they take at the end of each month. It's wrong. Yes, we all want money, but we don't have to die getting money. This kind of attitude can absolutely kill you, suck out all the life from your soul.

Boredom is one aspect, ethics are another. People have no proper work ethic around here, the less they do the more they want to get paid, the less the get paid the worse they do their job. It will never end for them. Thinking that something may come easily to you is down right foolish. And to those for whom this actually worked, well, I hope you're happy, I know I am because I finally found my nemesis. People who lack ethics, morals, and do not take responsibility of failures they brought on themselves are my personal enemies.

The upside to all this is that people who think they have so much time on their hands while they're at something their employers call a "job", there's a lot of room for jokes and laughs. Today a couple of hilarious ladies wanted to marry off the tiniest girl in the office to the morbidly obese accountant in the neighboring cubicle. The morbidly obese accountant then refuses to help out the lady that cracked the joke with one problem or another. And all the while I was so cracked up I couldn't breathe, tears came streaming from my eyes, and this all doesn't sound so funny because it can't be without their faces.

On a lighter note, vanilla is one of nature's greatest, most valued gifts to the world. It's fragrant, and it makes things like ice-cream taste a lot better. I wish I could add a little vanilla and brown sugar to my life. I'd like to see my mind paint a picture of that...

As We Digress: Life is Elsewhere

I do not intend to sound the least bit racist, but I'm going to state a fact that has been concerning me. There are two girls who attend classes with me who wear the niqab (or burqa), but that's not my problem, I'm pro-choice. I'm just a bit confused when one of them comes up to me and says hello. Because I only came to know their names this week, and it takes a great deal of effort for me not confuse their names so I won't offend them by implying that all women who wear the niqab are the same to me. I really do not intend to make fun of those ladies, or the way they practice religion, I'm just saying I'm confused. Another thing that bugs me is writing identical P's; I never get this right. If I want to write any word that has two P's, like apply, there's no way they're going to be identical! I want to know what an expert would say about that. But enough about school. Today I won't be talking about school, or complaining about school, or all the things I dislike. Today, I reflect.

It's one thing to vent, regardless of the manner with which you vent (whether it sounds too dark, or disappointed because eventually, you know exactly how it's going to end, but you vent any way)and another thing to be dissatisfied. One of the things that perhaps really get to me is how some people suffer from chronic dissatisfaction. I admit, I personally suffered from "understandable" dissatisfaction, simply because 4 years in college have never been a challenge in my life, except for my very last semester, and I had too much to offer to a place that didn't need me to do anything. This is understandable dissatisfaction. The dissatisfaction I cannot understand, not even remotely, is how people who have certain things that they know are good, and perhaps cannot get any better, are always looking for something else. People who sit with you in a restaurant thinking of other places they could be right then, married people who have a good thing going (I'm aware that some married couples made colossal mistakes choosing their spouses, obviously I'm not talking about them), I'm talking about the type of relationships our grandparents and some of our parents have/had, 40-year anniversaries and such, people who, whatever they have going for them at the moment, are always looking, tirelessly, for other things to do. This hollowness I do not understand. Nothing seems to fill them up, so they always look for what they don't have, thinking their happiness, or satisfaction lays there. It's like someone who found water in a desert, not an oasis, just water, and sees mirages, and follows those mirages, only to find that they were nothing but mirages, moving on to other mirages, and so on. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not for sitting on our asses doing nothing to achieve successes, or strive for a happy life, this stuff doesn't come easily, I am aware that they are causes worth living for, and causes worth dying for. I'm with wasting our lives on worthy causes, be them individual, collective, or universal causes. Hint: mirages are not causes.

Money and happiness, and the way they are associated or dissociated; I think our lives would've been different if money was measured by how much it weighs. That way, you can get more for less. I am not, by any means, a materialistic person, and the things I buy are sold by people who want to make profit, so sometimes conformity with the system is the only way to go. But sometimes I wish we still lived in a time where countries or individuals exchanged things. If I had a farm and had lots of chicken that produce lots of eggs, what's the harm of my going up to a cow farm and exchange those eggs for some dairy? Of course, the things that I need are neither dairy nor egg. They're mostly pieces I like to keep for the rest of my life, and as a legacy for my offspring, if I ever procreate. And from this, stems my need to buy certain things, things that I think will somehow enrich my life, or perhaps give me emotional reassurance. Suddenly, the act of buying things has a more profound meaning, because now it's not the urge you get to buy things all the time, it's what you want to buy and what value it adds to your life.

On a lighter note, I think cab drivers who complain about how traffic-jammed the way to your destination is are flat out assholes. If you're going to your job or class, you're also stuck in traffic, and there's a good chance you're going to be late, I wonder how it would make the cab driver feel if you start complaining about how late you are going to be, or how ugly your job or major is. People do not seem to grasp the mechanism of how things work. You do your job, I do mine, and everything falls into place. Fail to do so, and things are not only going to be out of place, but all over the place.

And for those Milan Kundera fans out there, yes, the title is a tribute to his book.

As We Digress: Food for Thought

Long days make you become numb. Those long, hideous days where you cannot stop and think of things you like, listen to your favorite song, talk to your friends, or even sleep will make you lose a shred of your humanity each and every day. Life as a bum definitely sucks, but life as another head behind a desk in an excruciatingly small cubicle isn't the answer either.

The morbidity of people around you emerges after the mask of nicety melts off their ugly, ugly faces. Only when certain things happen do those faces appear, usually they're the same moments that help you discover genuine, nice human beings.

Psychosomatic disorders are disorders in which mental factors play a significant role in the development, expression, or resolution of a physical illness. Can there be psychosomatic disorders for emotion? Just because you feel it, doesn't mean it's there.

Disappointment, and other forms of grievance, is caused by fellow human beings, not things. Similarly, happiness depends on your human surroundings, but first and foremost depends on you. Be the source of your own happiness by loving yourself, and this will all come back to you when you're the target of your own happiness; direct your happiness inwardly. If you don't think you deserve happiness, no one will strive to make you happy.

Just because you feel it, really doesn't mean it's there. Emotional psychosomatic disorders.

We strive for happiness, some people die looking for happiness, it's a cause worth living for, and a cause worth dying for.

There's always room for re-evaluation and re-assessment and getting things right, but not all of us have the courage to do all of this. Actually, most of us are too lazy to fix broken things in our lives, but for once perhaps one should pluck up the courage and face things as is. Yes, the brutal truth will then stare you in the face like the scary monster you feared was under your bed when you were a kid, but this time it's real, it's materialized and your parents aren't home for you to climb into bed with them, they're not home to tell you it's all going to be alright because they know that you're the best kid out there and you'll do things and go places, although one wishes it was that easy; the genuine, unconditional love, the security and reassurance, but eventually we all leave "the nest" and fly on our own, and most of us make it.

It is a real blessing to be surrounded by human beings to whom you matter, it's something some may not quite grasp because they have never felt it, but to have someone to care for you unconditionally is probably the most priceless human type of relationship.

It is true that happiness is a cause worth dying for, but people don't die of their own accord. The road to happiness is paved with ugliness, lies, and hardship, it is no lie when people say that someone has died looking for happiness, this stuff can kill you.

Will humanity outlive happiness?

This, perhaps, is not new to you, but it certainly is to others. It may not make sense, or sound too idealistic, but that's because one needs to fully realize these truths, to have gone through a good deal of, well, a good deal of trouble (although a four-letter word comes to mind) to come to such conclusions. But the truths are laid out for you to examine and to re-examine, to see if that's what you want, or if you want something else out of life, or to see if you don't want anything out of this life, or if you want to watch the world burn, it's all a matter of perspective. Personally, I like to believe there are martyrs who die for happiness instead of wars, countries, gods or religions, I believe happiness is a bigger concept in which we find god, religion and home.

The Trip Diaries: The Time We Did Beirut - On the Way Back

And just when you think you eluded one messed up driver, who incidentally sent D 2 text messages and called her to try and talk us into going back with him, you end up going back with someone worse: he gets all kinds of gifts, clothes, vegetable and fruit from Beirut and Syria, fills up the trunk with this stuff, makes a 100 stops an hour, and talks non-stop, the Arabic expression to this would be: بالع راديو.

As we headed out of Beirut, towards Dahr l Baydar, we needed to be pacified because we were in the middle of a snow storm; the streets were filled with dirty snow that goes up to half of your wheel, not to mention the persistent and not so-easy snowfall. It was dark that morning, and the driver reassured us that he took some precautionary measures that I'm not sure I understood, all the while we were listening to the radio and the piece about that Ethiopia-bound plane comes out, and suddenly grief took over me, simply because the depressive nature of hearing about disasters which human beings are part of but can do nothing about makes me feel helpless.

Now. Smoking. The nastiest thing of all, as the driver on the way to Beirut also did; smoking in a car that has no windows open. And of course there weren't any windows opened, only merely cracked, with the speed he was going at. Smoking in confined compartments is simply a retarded and ignorant thing to do; the wish of the smoker not to die alone, but to split his death, with others, half-half (while the Cuckoo Judge would laugh).

After we left the snow at both the Lebanese and Syrian borders, we encountered lots of sunshine throughout Syria, after which, we encountered lots of rain upon our arrival in Amman. I thought, "at least I got to see the snow this winter, I've seen it, smelt it, heard it, felt it and tasted it". Although some people find snow unpleasant, I find it very pleasant, but only the way it snows in Amman; it's like rain, but it's snow. It doesn't imprison people, doesn't stop us from going out and getting on with our daily routines and it still looks like little drops from heaven. But the way I encountered all kinds of weather, from scorching sun to frost-biting snow in less than 6 hours, is just not right. The Middle East needs this one thing to top all its troubles... Global warming, let's all die of weather.

I think these trips are a healthy way to maintain our sanity.

I've got nothing more to say about this trip, except that I can't wait to see where winds will take me next time.

The Trip Diaries: The Time We Did Beirut - In Beirut

This wasn't our first time in Beirut. Well, except for D.

The charm of this city never ceases to seep into my blood the moment I breathe its air each time I'm there; it's always new to me with a strange sense of familiarity, the magnificence of it overwhelms me. And while to many people Beirut may be just another city, to me it simply is not. When you have done a bit of traveling, just a bit, you develop a way to know when a city is "not just another city"; that is, inter alia, Beirut.

The trip revolved around a lot of music. After all, what is culture? According to one source it is the acquaintance with and taste in fine arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science. I really only care about the first part, "acquaintance with and taste in fine arts and humanities". My understanding of culture came to me on its own. Having done my share of "cultural exchanges" less than a decade ago I learned to understand that cultures aren't only about customs, religion, a set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular people. While it may be that, it also has a lot to do with film, music, the fine arts, and things of the like. Unfortunately, we were only taught to talk about the boring aspects of our lives that were eventually going to change as we grew older, and we didn't focus on the more artistic aspect of each others' cultures that possibly would have made a deeper impact on the people we grew up to be. Also remember, respect is key.

You know the famous saying "you are what you eat"? Well, it is about to be permanently replaced in my mind with "you are what you listen to". Having had a talk with R, someone known to roam the streets of Beirut on certain days of the week, depending on the weather this time of the year, we came to the conclusion that we define people according to what they listen to. For example, fans of a certain musician/band , make that your favorite musician/band, are always on top of the rest of your acquaintances and friends. Any how, the more I discover and rediscover music in my life, the fewer people there are on top of my list. But I digress.

One night in Beirut, with really high heels on and having done a good deal of walking around, my feet were crying, they were tired with zero tolerance to any action that may force them to do their miserable job, as does every single pair of feet in this world; having people tread on them as they please.
Later, M asks if some water or tea would be of any assistance to my misery, to which I answered: "yes, darling, just water and we'll drift off", drift off into endless sleep followed by lots and lots of midday sunshine. Of course I needn't tell you about my temporary abode in Lebanon...
Well, perhaps I need to, just to get it out of my system. It is one of the most charming places that I have ever had the pleasure to live in. The perfect-looking garden; green, old, with a hint of nonchalance. The way it looks, smells, and feels in the summer is totally different than the way it does in the winter, although it's the same, the seasons are not. The cozy interior. The cats in the interior and the exterior. The fireplace. The balcony overlooking other mountains and small villages. You get the picture.

Other than that, the trip was really awesome, it's nice to have a place to which you feel you belong. And you do all sorts of normal stuff like meeting people who go by the name Cuckoo Judge and want to shoot people and things out of a canon with the assistance of others who are ridiculously tall and study aerospace engineering, to people who resemble English chefs in Hamra. Which also happens to be the perfect place for late night walks, chats, eating skittles, and bumping into people you know. Not to mention the very charming Gemmayze where you find all kinds of cozy and very Parisian coffee places and nice little bars, crocodiles trapped in inhumanely small containers, Boa Constrictors also, friends, their news, their shopping and umbrellas, flirty waitresses, and charming hostels with charming boys in beanies... Good trip, indeed.

PS. Too much light hurts the eye.

The Trip Diaries: The Time We Did Beirut - On the Way, pt. 2

Still on our way to Beirut.

As we reached the Jordanian - Syrian border, we went to the duty free shop.

We are living a lie in the city, man.

The items we bought at the duty free cost at least double their price in the city. We are ripped off each and every day of our lives. It might actually be better for people to go to the border to shop for gifts, perfumes, cigarettes, and booze and back to the city than buy the same items at a mall, including gas expenses. I assume you'd eventually be paying the same amount of money to do that, and would probably get more stuff out of the duty free shop. Yes, life seemed much brighter on the Syrian side. But then the driver was in the car, and we'd left him for a considerable amount of time, so we decided to get a move on and finish up faster; the faster we finished up, the faster we got rid of the driver and his ridiculous self, and the faster we reached our long-awaited destination.

For some reason, once we crossed the Syrian border it was as though a time machine took us back to the 80's in a communist country. The drab buildings, the badly-dressed border people and everyone around, the miserable old trucks that omit a scary amount of fatal, black smoke, the badly placed barriers with equally bad wiring (in the case it operates electrically), and everything around us had a communist feel through and through.

Driver's machismo carries on with a vengeance; this time he puts both his hands behind his head while doing KM 110/hour and giving D a look from the corner of his eye: ARMS NOT ON STEERING WHEEL, EYES NOT ON ROAD FOR ABOUT 40 SECONDS, I mean this could only happen to us! And D was frightened, the driver goes and says, highly amused: "are you scared? Do you drive? Because you can only be scared if you drive". And that echoed in my head "you can only be scared if you drive" several times... An ignorant of the roads, driving, and all traffic rules that were ever known to man would not only be frightened, they would probably be crying because they have seen their life flash in front of their eyes. "Are you scared?"; not cool, man.

We made it to the land of Lebanon in one piece, stopping at a town very famous for its dairy... Chtoura. And boy do the cows of Chtoura have talent; major talent. Pair that talent with a nice cup of tea and... Well, you'll be having just about the most satisfying breakfast you have ever had. As we carried on what remained of the trip, up on a certain mountain before reaching Beirut, the driver pulled over on his own, suggesting that we all get out of the car while he snaps pictures of us with the stunning view in the background. I was about to criticize the way he forced this upon us, but the view was too nice to be missed. While he took a picture of our group, he also took the liberty to snap a picture of D standing alone, back to camera, in an attempt to compose something; a great photograph, or a beautiful moment caught still in a frame never to be forgotten perhaps, a memento of a trip that lasted a ridiculous few hours, I don't know...

The question remains: why D?

As we approached our destination within Beirut, the driver takes a wrong turn, claiming that he knows where exactly the place is. And wrong he was. So we asked around, got the directions, and we see this homeless guy who goes by the name Zico dance around in torn suit pants made into shorts, an obsolete blazer, a miserable beanie, and a face trodden upon by all-things horrible in life. He dances, drunken, and sings, high on the attention he was receiving. Then from his smile emerges a line of things I'd assumed where teeth at some point, and all I could think of was "what could have messed him up so?" and the driver, as though hearing my thoughts, starts telling us how this came to be... Apparently a woman much prettier than Haifa Wehbeh was behind what became of him.

I'm not sure I believe him.

PS. Hani Shaker must die.

The Trip Diaries: The Time We Did Beirut - On the Way, pt. 1

Dear reader, the trip diaries will come in parts so as you don't get bored reading one huge piece. For now, all you need to do is sit back, chew on something you like, and read.

You know how you always dislike the person who forgets things right before they travel? Passports, tickets, etc.? Yeah, I dislike them too. Dislike I tell you. But this is hilarious because 10 minutes before I was supposed to leave on a trip at 6:30 one morning I discover that "oh, S***, I forgot my passport". I laughed my head off, I couldn't be angry because hey... I wasn't even half awake when I drove back home to get that passport. The only way to deal with this was to laugh more, and laugh more I did.

Start the road trip, road is misty, head is fuzzy. Or head misty and road fuzzy. Actually, that's more like it, and we move ahead not seeing what awaits us within 3 meters at a time. Of course with all the fuzziness ahead you won't expect there would be sun, and there wasn't, hence sunglasses under such circumstances would seem a bit odd, unusual, and improbable, yet, sunglasses with no sun help you sleep better on the road with Fayrouz faintly chirping in the background; the perfect recipe for a trip undertaken, most productively, in the morning.

Fashion note to self: sunglasses in winter work for you.

We covered a decent amount of distance in a rather short period of time that was made excruciating when the driver started telling us tales of escapades that may or may not have taken place in this life. But, who are we to judge? And by we I mean the backseaters. D on the other hand we abandoned and had to sit in the front. After all, I think, it's their thing, among a million other things that are their thing. All this was tailed by awkward silences, regularly broken by non-stop smoking on the driver's part (more on smoking in confined compartments later) and lots of sleeping or pretending to be sleeping on the backseaters' part.

Person suffering most damage: D.

Another thing of D's things is sandwiches. Who knew that even when you're in a car, doing virtually nothing but sitting, sleeping or talking occasionally, you would get hungry? I'll tell you who: D, of course. But that's not the revelation I had, while D is a wonder standing on their own, it is no revelation that they would know such a thing, my revelation is far simpler and endearing. Sharing food on the road helps you experience something new; the taste of solidarity with cucumbers and mint leaves.

The trip goes on, as we witness the rough terrain of the desert, the harsh atmosphere of plains in the winter with a hint of communist feel prevailing at some point, and the way things stand, bleak and tired, like the back of a beached whale. These things we witnessed were made a bit friendlier when a little sunshine oozed from above, reminding us that there's still warmth left in Winterland.

Later, not far along into the trip, the driver takes a funny position in his seat in which he leans against his door as though leaning on a wall, head resting on window, and driving with one hand. Oh the safety we felt. And the road goes on, bleak as ever, unending, very much like Ted Danson's forehead. And the driver's tales continue with showing off an uncalled-for macho attitude while dealing with the soldier on the border, the border soldier then shows off the authority bestowed on him by the king himself, and we have to deal with the unnecessary and unspoken male rivalry. Passing the first soldier, onto the next, the rant is different, it's about an 8-JD tax exemption, with an endless queue on border to get passport stamped after 8-JD tax exemption was found out. As if it makes a difference to travel now with spending JD 8, or the equivalent thereof, less than you'd intended, yes, like that was going to break your budget. Not the gas money, not the food, shelter or shopping you intended to do, no, it's the JD 8 you pay on the border.

The good thing is, or was, that the cold didn't stop many people from traveling. This means that at least they're looking after their welfare; they keep the frowns for their country of origin and go smile in other people's countries. Like a smile would cost them a leg or an arm. But I digress.

And by the way, the European Union knows its stuff: I can now understand how easy it must be for European citizens to move around Europe without the hassle of visas, because the same thing happened to me. Traveling without needing to obtain a visa just makes everything easier, and helps you be a more spontaneous person. It was truly a blessing, the freedom and safety with which we moved.

As We Digress: What Warming, Now?

Yes, we all love the rain. It is wonderful, it means we get greener Springs and wet summers, but not when we aren't used to it.

Winters in Jordan used to be a tad drier and less menacing. This winter, though I am enjoying it too much for my own good, does look unusual and scary, simply because this is not what my city is used to. Rain to the extent of rain-flooded streets, the overflowing sewage systems that weren't built to handle that much water and cars that certainly weren't purchased to handle such climate, is menacing and discouraging. Don't be too happy just yet, because what this country has been complaining about for the past decade now has become painfully true: "we want a greener Jordan in 2010", that's what they said in the year 2000, (and by greener they didn't mean more environment-aware, they just meant they wanted more trees and tried to halt urban-crawling) but there are no more trees than there was a decade ago, and Amman is the whitest city on this globe, thanks to its famous white stones and nauseously uniform white buildings with barely enough space to plant tiny bushes on sidewalks that eventually prevents people from walking on pavements and forces them to walk on the street instead.

I write, more alarmed than ever, listening to two things: Jónsi and Alex's Riceboy Sleeps, and the roaring thunder, and you can count me as one of the happiest people on earth, the mother of us all. But as Jordan becomes greener, possibly with mossy streets in Spring, and dam water for swimming in the summer, you should know that elsewhere, where summers were cool and breezy they're now hot and scorching, where countries that have 50 Celsius in the summer are having winters that are flooding their unready infrastructure to support so much rainfall, glaciers are melting away, summer is spring, spring is winter, winter is fall, nothing's the same as before... There... I said it... The huge imbalance of weather around the world is truly a huge deal, and I am no treehugger, but I know when the world around us cries for help and no one is doing anything to save it from certain doom, there's no way we're going to make it. Many people are saying that there's nothing we can do to halt global warming, but there's a lot we can do to hinder it.

Here are some ideas from Carbon Footprint that we all can use, it might serve us well to see less drastic climate change as long as we live, save come a disaster that would sweep us away in one huge frenzy in the form of a volcano-snowstorm-and-tsunami-altogether:

http://www.carbonfootprint.com/minimisecfp.html

As We Digress: Last-Minute Human Emotion Revelations and Epiphanies

In a sweep of sadness and rage one discovers how they truly feel about a thing or two. And it is not during this storm that one finds out, on the contrary, these emotions surface after all subsides.

How can one live with oneself if they know their excellence in one thing means their demise in it (professional demise)? If one is reminded of how they failed where assholes soared, what's the aftermath of that? I'll tell you, the constant, very public reminder will surely destroy every shred of confidence you ever had in your performance when nothing was wrong with it. And you know what is even worse? The fact that those carrying the reminders, who are probably the assholes who soar in one, rare place, are nothing but worthless entities in this vast, vast universe when your existence probably means a lot more than theirs (professionally). And then one wonders, since when has there been a place where minions belong? This place has only brought ruin among heroes, because minions fight dirty. Your failure where assholes soar means that this place is: A. No big deal, B. A place for assholes, and only assholes, and C. You're going to be reminded of how you failed all the time by the inhabitants of that land just because: A. they can, B. they have no control over the magnificent, excellent person you are and C. they don't know any better. Which invites your sympathy to witness this sad, sad act, for a little while. But through all this, one learns not to dwell too long on the inane land of the assholes, simply because it's not taking you anywhere and you will only feel worse as they will feel superior, when you shouldn't and they certainly are not.

They say it never rains, but it pours, and many a time has this saying proven itself right. So while you're going through some sort of academic shit storm, you also discover that your surroundings are changing, the people flanking you are becoming either more worthy or totally worthless(depending on the way they are proceeding with their either very happy or very sorry lives), some of them you see how they are going to end up soaring where heroes have or dwelling all seven stages of hell, one at a time, but mostly the seventh one. And it's not so much annoying as it is the untimely discomfort this causes. Academic/professional pressure one can handle, but when paired with social life nuisances, you're up for a ride that's bound to make you one emotional retard.

On the other hand, nothing beats the rediscovery of why people of value are people of value in your life. This feeling I'd like to compare to being dead and being resurrected afterward, mind you, I have never had a near-death experience, but I've had an emotional form of that. And just when you discover the amount of sweeping emotion inside of you that needs to be expressed you know that you just cracked open the emotional equivalent of Pandora's box. The tears, the feelings of loss, dismay, melancholy, joy and happiness altogether are capable of putting your mind in a state of utter chaos.

Emotion is not in the heart, emotion is in the whole of a human being, you don't feel with your heart, it just makes a reaction to what message is sent to your brain, when you see the one you love your heart flutters, but so it does when it sees your sworn enemy. It's all in the head, never in the heart. Modern emotion is a more intelligent form of emotion, and we should deal with it as such.

As We Digress: Where Did Humanity, Sanity, and Other Things Go?

And just when we thought Dubai ran out of money we are yet to be proven wrong. Very wrong.

The lavish opening that I am watching as I write is one of the most extravagant yet meaningless shows I have ever witnessed. A one-billion pound skyscraper that stands 828 meters high that is not finished yet, and for some reason has been opened. It's a little over 160 floors, with each floor costing about 5.5 million pounds.

It has the largest dancing fountain, actually the largest dancing fountain with lights sticking every which way out. And the fireworks, oh the fireworks, enough to set all of Dubai on fire if directed strategically. Not to mention the robe-clad governor of Dubai and his entourage looking on. And why not? When you have a whole 800-meter skyscraper with your family name on it, hell I'd dance around Dubai naked. The thing that causes my ultimate, and possibly most serious form of dismay is this: when you run out of money, you don't build skyscrapers that are bound to cause you to go more bankrupt than you already are. And if you do have this kind of money for an 800-meter skyscraper, don't go on splurging ridiculously on its opening, because REMEMBER, you're out of money. And even more importantly, here are only a few suggestions as to how you can spend this kind of money and help millions of people out:

1- Ever hear of this little part of the Middle East called Gaza? Let me refresh your memory; it's this all-demolished part of Palestine that has no water, no food, no electricity, and no medicine to help its people survive the day, not life, just one miserable day.

2- Palestine. How about you flood it with some of your money? Just some, like the amount of money you spent on fireworks, singers, and other sources of entertainment for the opening of your much-admired tall building? After all, they do need medicine, jobs, food, and just little bit of safety.

3- Other Arab countries that are exploding with young energy but have no where to go but OUT of the Middle East and either get lucky or go back home disappointed. Create a fund for those who show excellence, creativity and potential of huge success and support them! All that for the cheap price of not-your-so-tall-building. You know, Dubai having this much money makes it the very rich sibling of cities in the Arab world who are slightly, or dramatically less wealthy. And with Dubai doing what it just did it totally rubbed it in each and every face of its siblings.

There's nothing wrong with having money and not being afraid to show it, but it's something else when the world needs your help and you just stand aside and watch.

4- It's a fact that the governor of Dubai has indeed paid some money for causes such as youth, and Arab entrepreneurship but that, unfortunately, is not enough. Greedy? think again. If there's more you can do, do it. Doing the bare minimum isn't going to cut it.

5- It's a fact that in ancient times Bedouins were known for their extreme kindness and generosity. Some were so generous that they'd feed the camels that they used for transport to passers by in the desert, guests, and family when they had to. Unfortunately, this way of dispensing of your properties does not work with real-money and today's world.

The fact that I so criticized Dubai and its spending schemes doesn't mean I don't respect the way it built itself into something out of nothing. And this doesn't mean that I'm a know-it-all about economy, because I admit: I am not, in fact, I have no idea about what's going on economically in the world, not enough any way. All I know is that there are better ways to get rid of money, and building an 800-meter building is most certainly not one of them. I am also aware that Sheikh Rashed has indeed done things for the youth, as I am a benefactor of one of his initiatives, I just wish he'd do more for everyone else just like he did to me and other young people.
I am of course also aware that my suggestions are far too idealistic, maybe also unrealistic... But one could only hope... Ain't nothin' wrong wit' dat, no?

But for now, Dubai just fed the world one huge-ass camel when it really didn't have to. Some soup would've been perfectly fine.