don't you know i'm human, too?

the other day i stopped by walmart and after getting the things i needed, i decided to wander through the yarn aisle like you do (and because i have a problem. you should probably start preparing an intervention. use notecards. and logic.)

anyway, i stopped to flip through the books on crochet patterns (refer to the previous paragraph. note the problem mentioned.) and this girl came through the aisle with her cart. she was maybe twelve and as she pushed her cart past me she said, "excuse me." which in and of itself is neither extraordinary nor worthy of a blog post. before i could politely smile and/or say anything in response, the girl's mother - or whoever the older lady that was with her was - says with disdain, "she doesn't speak english, honey," and then pushes past me (like literally walking into me) to leave the aisle. (i'm just going to point out that i am overly conscious of the amount of space i am taking up at all times, and it is very rarely that i will be in someone's way in a confined area (large, crowded areas are a different story and probably one of the reasons i tend to avoid them). and also, if the girl could push a cart past me without bumping into me, i'm pretty sure a lady could do the same as she walked by sans cart. apparently not, though.) it was only after i unfroze from my moment of shock and found myself alone in the aisle again that i thought of twelve hundred things i could have said. but that's how it always goes, isn't it? and, i mean, even if i didn't speak english, that would not give other people license to act like i'm below them.

it's been a while since i've had any incidents with ignorant people. i kind of forgot what it felt like. and all i could think of were all of the professors who are constantly telling me things like, "yeah, racism exists but not around here," and "the thing about america is that we all accept everyone," and "well, i am absolutely horrified to hear that [insert random incident here] happened to you, but i'm sure it was an isolated occurrence and would never happen again." oh, how great it must be to be a white, non-muslim male in america.

*Rude - Magic!

there must be fifty ways to leave your lover

so i was going to put this anecdote into a story, but i have no characters to give it to at the moment and no started stories that it would fit with. (not that i have many started stories at all. *sigh.* remember when i used to talk about being a real writer who wrote things?) so i decided instead to put it here. on my blog. and then years from now when you have all forgotten it, i will put it into a story and none of you will remember that a) i already told you this and b) i totally stole the idea from someone else. plus by that time i will be rich and famous and any complaints you have about me will be chalked up to jealousy. (i plan on spending an entire year being completely obnoxious and conceited if i ever get a book published. it will come right after the year i spend gushing excitement and omgicantbelieveitactuallyhappends and right before the year i spend writing out an entire book thanking the people in my life for being the people in my life. (seriously, though, sometimes i am just so grateful for everyone and everything that it's not hard to think that i would/could write a book about it. i've composed entire chapters in my head that revolve solely around strangers on the bus.))

i am getting wildly offtrack. back to the anecdote. 

i spend a lot of time sitting in a student lounge near a bunch of offices. some of that time - the exact amount depends on who is in the office that day - is spent eavesdropping on the faculty members while i "do my work." for a lot of this semester, one person has been sharing stories about her boyfriend. her boyfriend that she was starting to really get tired of for reasons that are not very exciting (or really mine to share) so for the purpose of this blog let's pretend that he was constantly feeding her pet dragon garlic which - aside from making her entire house smell like garlic for days any time it got cold enough for a fire or she craved a roasted marshmallow - was making it impossible for her vampire friends to visit her. every week or so we'd get another story about how he did it again! and she didn't think she could handle any more garlic and why can't he just listen? and everyone would laugh about the boyfriend who sounded like he would fit right in with the husbands in laundry detergent commercials. 

anyway, on monday the dragon owner comes in and starts talking about how her boyfriend's birthday was coming up and they were having a party for him in a few days. they laugh about garlic cakes and vampire party crashers and then someone says, "i thought you were going to break up with him." she answers with, "i am. after his birthday." someone else asks what she got him then, and she says, "a subscription to match.com. i plan on giving it to him after the party."

and if you do not think that that is the funniest way to break up with someone then maybe you should go back and reread it slash imagine the scenario playing out until you do. 

*50 Ways to Leave Your Lover - Paul Simon

give it a try

this is a christmas related post that really actually has little to do with christmas and is coming to you the day after christmas. although, i typed it up on christmas. (four christmases in two sentences.) but i already posted that lovely and pointless post that was sort of about hope but mostly just my way of saying that i have that feeling that something big is going to happen. usually when i have that feeling, nothing happens, but it doesn't make it any less exciting. and i kind of like the fact that i can't quite quell the excitement when i feel it even though i know it's probably just nothing. it's kind of disney-esque, only mostly just inside my head. it's hard to explain.

but anyway. back to christmas. well, sort of.

being muslim, i don't celebrate christmas. (except for those years when my sisters and i were growing up and we did the whole christmas thing every year. the whole nine yards with tree and lights and stockings and christmas music and paper chain countdowns and waking up at dawn to open presents.) i, however, love the christmas season. christmas lights are without a doubt one of my favorite things in the world. there is something about the small colored lights that fill me with magic. i also love christmas music (although it is really annoying when you are trying to sing along to the radio and every singer changes the song just enough to make it sound like you are way out of tune every single time). i also love stocking stuffers. i have this really bad problem with buying stuff that i don't need or want because it is either on sale or a good price. dollar stores and drug stores and the sale aisle of craft stores are my weakness. stocking stuffers fall under that umbrella. but that's neither here nor there.

despite not celebrating christmas, i do have my christmas season (which lasts a little longer than most people's) traditions. like, gingerbread cookies. every year, between the end of thanksgiving and martin luther king (jr.?) day, i have to bake gingerbread men. at least once. and every year i have to watch the santa claus. you know, the tim allen one. (the radio the other night told me that the movie has been out for nineteen years and that made me feel so old. ninteen years guys. i could have raised a child to voting age in that time. i could have raised two children to voting age (given they were born in consecutive years) in that time. there is something about the word consecutive that makes me think of math problems.) i used to watch all of those christmas tv shows (santa, rudolph, frosty, etc) that have been on for generations and are actually pretty terrible and incredibly sexist/racist/generally politically incorrect, but i stopped those a couple of years ago. mostly because i kept forgetting to watch them and time became a lot harder to come by. i also love to go on  drives through neighborhoods to look at christmas lights. my older sister and i used to that a lot during our college years before she up and moved to the other side of the world. my husband just does not see the appeal in it. it's not as fun going alone, and so i opted to skip it this year. sad, i know. this is not the point, either.

(i guess this really has turned into a christmas post.)

but what i really came here to say, though, was that, during my read-through of the blog posts from the last two months, someone mentioned that they had already watched elf twice, and i have never seen elf. not even once. ever. i never even really wanted to. but it is often listed as one of the christmas movies that you have to watch every year, and i'm thinking that maybe i should take the plunge. a different blogger wrote about how she makes chocolates for all of her friends and family for christmas, and i kind of want to try that, too. what other christmastime traditions should i try out while i'm at it?

*Give it a Try - Badfinger

i've been living this lie for way too long

for as long as i can remember, i've been selling myself as "the bridge between the east and west." i am from saudi arabia and america, virtually the polar opposites of the world. i am proof that it is possible to connect them, to bring them together in one place, one idea, one person. at the start of every semester, when we have to introduce ourselves to the class, the interesting fact about me has always been that i am half saudi and half american. (which, incidentally, has always reminded me of that quote from jane eyre: "But I don't mean to flatter you: if you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.") anyway, i announce it like it's the coolest thing. like it's something that i myself accomlished. i parade around claiming that i can connect these places that, to an outsider, are so completely unconnectable. because i am the bridge.

in reality, the biggest similarity between the two countries is that i don't really belong to either.

i always find myself a little surprised that no one calls me out on my lie, because i most definitely am not a bridge. i am neither here nor there, not saudi and not american. how can i bridge the two places when i am floating aimlessly somewhere in between them. i'm struggling to make the two halves fit inside of me. how am i supposed to connect them for everyone else?

in every essay about myself that i have written since the tenth grade, whether it be for class or college admissions or whatever, i have been promising people that, if they just give me half a chance, i will connect the world for them. and if i were in charge of reading college admission essays, i'd rather let the girl who writes her essay about her fascination with snooki (i can't decide if it's sad that i had to google her name or if it's sad that i think it's sad that i had to google her name) in, than the girl who insists she's some sort of architectural structure. at least the first is honest.

so this is me, almost a decade late, telling you that there is a west and there is an east, and although they may seem totally different at first, there are more similarities between them than what meets the eye. but i am not a bridge between them and i never will be. just a frequent visitor of both.

on a completely unrelated note, here's a video about "doofy" commercial husbands that i thought funny. actually, the whole "target women" series is worth taking a look at if you have the time.

*Living a Lie - 3 Doors Down

there's nothing to do here

in the arab world, eid is celebrated for three days. you visit family, you have big meals, you celebrate. here in america, we can barely find enough things to do for one day, let alone three. to celebrate eid yesterday, i went out to breakfast with my sister's family and her in-laws. i then ran a few errands, went home for a couple of hours, and went to class. i know you're jealous.

class was actually a lot better than i was expecting. the professor is pretty awesome and it's a writing intensive course, which i usually do pretty well in. it's classes like these where the super IT-y people usually get into trouble, because while they can build you a computer in three point seven seconds, they have no idea how to effectively explain what they did in words, especially not written. so i'm hoping i can end my master's career on a good note since i do in fact know the basics of grammar, something not as common as you would think in this field. can you believe that this might be the last class you ever hear me whine about on this blog ever? that is, if i don't get into a phd program which i'm thinking is pretty likely (the not getting in).

anyway, one cool thing about the professor is that he works in the private sector. every other professor i have had in this program in every other class has worked for the government. so we were basically just getting our minds stuffed with public sector work stories and tips and experiences. i had almost forgotten that the government is not the only one that uses computer forensics. it opened a few more potential options for me that i had been not seeing before.

like most other professors, this one enjoys telling stories of things he's seen and done in the field. (the cool thing about him is that he only tells the interesting ones. do you know how many stories i've had to listen to that ended with the professor either laughing or smugly smiling while the rest of us were listening to the serenading crickets?) so he was telling us about his mentor and the importance of using analogies to explain things to non-computer folk and how impressive this guy was at thinking up what to say and delivering it. "plus," he added, "he had a british accent. and everything just sounds smarter when said in a british accent... at least in america." and isn't that just so true? i think there are few places where the american accent makes someone automatically seem smarter and more sophisticated. it's kind of unfair when you think about it.

*Hospital Beds - Cold War Kids

i am in misery. the silence is slowly killing me.

so i've been in the desert for a few days now with no internet connection (i find it ridiculous that junior can't find a connection to steal when every other computer can) and no time to bum it off of the cousins. though my sister has found ample internet opportunities in the midst of her complaining about the lack of internet. it doesn't make sense. i feel so cut off from the world.

anyway, i am so dreadfully behind on wedding preparations that i'm not even going to get into them. i did horrify/deeply offend a make-up artist yesterday by saying that i wasn't going to do my eyebrows for the wedding which was fun. i just don't do them. it's not like i killed anyone. according to her, though, there's no way the make-up could possibly show without me doing them. considering the amount of stuff they cake on over here, i highly doubt that. oh, remind me to document my saudi wedding rant sometime in the next few days.

since it kinda looks like the whole internet situation isn't going to be fixed anytime soon, feel free to go back through my posts about saudi arabia from last year and the year before if i don't post much now. it's pretty much the same here minus spurts of panic about the wedding and pangs of annoyance. fun stuff.

also, i have been walking around all day singing maroon 5 because of my nephew that has been singing the same three lines of the song all. day. long. i also just spent the last hour reading up on all the blog posts i've missed since i left america.

anyway, i'm exhausted and going to sleep. hope your summers have all started off swimmingly (it never seems like summer starts till i reach the desert) and hopefully i'll have time and internet to keep you updated on the countdown to the wedding (which is july 6th in case i forgot to mention that).

*Misery - Maroon 5 (i dunno if this is the song's name or not, but i don't feel like looking it up or getting my ipod so let's just pretend.)

oh, look what you've done

four years ago (or something like that) a friend told me to watch skins, and i did. i stuck with the show for a while, and when they announced that mtv was making an american version i was rightly outraged. i am not a very big fan of mtv (read: i think they have a poisonous touch and destroy everything they even think about), and america doesn't have the greatest track record with turning good british shows into good american knock offs. (i know, i know, everyone loves the office. i get it. really. but for every show like the office i can give you five that are awful.) plus, america's tv laws or whatever are waaay stricter than the british ones, so i really didn't see how they would get a show like skins to comply with them.

after watching the first two generations of skins, i opted to not follow the third one because, really, i just don't watch anything anymore. it's kinda sad. and as i had already decided to not watch anything even related to the american version, i thought that me and skins were through. (well, at least until they made the movie if it had the original cast members.)

but then the articles started to flow in. the show started to air here, and it is apparently the most scandalous thing to hit our tvs despite claims by the british actors that it is extremely censored.

the british skins boasted from the start about how, unlike american shows, all the underage characters would be played by underage actors. no twenty-somethings playing high school students. they went and got the real deal. the american show then decided to do the same. only problem is, here in america, we have strict laws concerning a little thing called child pornography. child pornography can basically be anything (picture, video, whatever) of children (under 18) that is sexually suggestive. so when shows were casting older actors in everything that wasn't aired on the disney channel, they were kinda saving themselves from child pornography charges. something the american skins might be facing.  major companies - like taco bell, gm, and wrigley's - are even pulling their advertisements from the skins time slot because they do not want to have any association with such a controversial show. if it can't make any money, i can't see the show staying on for too long even if it doesn't get charged with child porn.

with all the media about the new show, i finally caved and decided to watch the trailer. i was shocked by how amazingly similar it was to the british show. if you were going to copy exact story lines to the t, you might as well have just aired the british show (which in fact was/is? aired on bbc america only censored a bit) and which is probably loads better.

the show is not the most family friendly show on tv, or anywhere close, but the characters were real and the acting was good and it instilled in me a love for british cussing. is it only me that prefers it over american? anyway, here's some youtuber's comparison between the american and british skins trailers. i would not suggest you watching it if you are easily offended by bad language, sexual references, or really anything else.

*Look What You've Done - Jet

don't wanna be an american idiot

okay, so enough with the mindless babble that has been filling my brain and therefor my blog lately. get ready for a serious post. or semi-serious. or a post about something that should be taken seriously but probably won't because it's summer and that means seriousness is scarce. moving on.

as some of you probably know (and some of you probably don't), i spent ninth grade in saudi arabia at a british school. aside from adjusting to the fact that suddenly the letters IGCSEs inspired more fear in the hearts of students than SATs and that i was suddenly getting points off for writing "my favorite color for airplanes is gray" (note: i always preferred grey with an e) some of the classes seemed to be a lot more advanced than what i was taking in america. it felt like these british kids were getting education shoved down their throats. i reasoned to myself that it was just the different grade system, what with them stopping at tenth and going on to a-levels which in my head were like APs. i mean, they have to shove in more if they're taking less time, right? so my younger self figured, our schools aren't that much stupider than theirs, and i didnt give it anymore thought. i mean, the two biggest computer companies in the world are both american, so we must be doing something right.

recently, i was talking to a friend when she mentioned, all normal and offhandedly, that a british summer vacation is six weeks. six weeks! and suddenly, the generally three month vacation handed out to kids over here seemed a little like overkill. i mean, do they really need to stay out of school that long? (i can say this now because i am no longer in school so a shorter break would not affect me in the least bit.)

if you know me in real life, you may have heard me complaining about the way kids are taught now. remember when we were little, learning to read, and were told to sound out the word? guessing every word that started with "l" before landing on "light" usually got me in trouble. now, my brothers are told to look at the picture and guess what the words are from the starting letter. um, what?? that was just peachy when they were still in picture books, but moving on to chapter books, this means that words they hadnt previously learned are pretty much just skipped over because they (a general they, not just my brothers) cant read them. they cant even sound them out to try and learn them. also, what's with not correcting spelling or grammar because it interferes with their creativity? i learned how to spell and the proper place to capitalize and punctuate and still managed to retain some creativity in elementary school. and my brother's class all had trouble with some science homework, so what does the teacher do? does she explain it so that they actually learn something for once?? no, of course not. she tells them all to just throw it away. that's helpful.

and now with some schools switching to a four day school week because they can't afford to pay teachers for five, well, i just think it's ridiculous. it's always a big joke about how stupid people can be here. we'll post videos of beauty queens who know nothing of geography on youtube. we'll laugh at kids who know more about the history of a video game character than of their country. we roll our eyes at their inability to form a complete sentence or write with legible handwriting and blame technology. what we should really be doing is blaming ourselves and trying to do something about it. the future generation is going to turn out a huge mob of fat, stupid people, and we are letting them.

okay, i'll get off my soapbox now, but think about it. when you are old and depending on this younger generation with your life, i kinda wanna know that they can read and tell the difference between two different medicines.

*American Idiot - Green Day

we're one, but we're not the same

"I know plenty of well-adjusted, happy people who are half-Jewish, just like me. Or not so like. For all we have in common, we have more that differs. That's the thing about these mergers. It's a strange math, the equation differing from family to family, from child to child, the outcome wildly dissimilar each time. Even in my own family, the sum varies, the parts adding up differently." ~Devil in the Details, pg 57

this quote really stood out while i was reading. it's so true, and i can totally relate. well, not to the half-Jewish part, but i think it applies to basically half-anything.

for example, growing up, we (my sisters and i) met a lot of half-breeds like ourselves - saudi dads american moms. my mom would make friends with the moms, and we would end up hanging out with the kids (before we grew out of my mom making our friends for us, that is). when you're little, you don't really notice differences in people as much as when you're older. it's more like, you're half saudi half american and i'm half saudi half american, we're the same.

but as you grow up, you realize that the similarities usually stop right about there. i mean, sure, we all have some shared experiences or whatnot, but, as the quote said, the equation differs from family to family, from child to child. some kids are raised fully american, some fully saudi, and most fall into the greys in between. it's rare to find someone the exact same combination of saudi and american as you. even between me and my sisters who were raised exactly alike, there are differences. for example, my older sister generally prefers arabic to english music, i generally prefer english to arabic, and my younger sister listens to them both about the same. the amount of arabic that peppers our speech is different. our views on certain cultural things differ. we were raised the same, but our "parts added up differently."

that being said, this video is one of my favorite. i think every half-breed can relate (or even arabs who lived in an english speaking country and vice versa):

*One - Johnny Cash

but I don't wanna go home where they all stare at me

i wrote a few posts ago about how i feel completely at home both in america and saudi arabia. well, i think it's important to point out that, while that's true, i also don't really belong in either place, both see me as 'other.' and while i am comfortable with both people, with both cultures, i'm not really a part of either. in america, i'm seen as a saudi. in saudi arabia, i'm seen as the american. so while being half saudi-half american may get me back stage passes to both cultures, i'm definitely not considered part of either band.

i'm scrutinized in both places - everything i say, everything i do. the nuances of the rules of arab society sometimes fly straight over my head, but that's okay because "i'm the american." i'm expected to not know how to do anything, to make a complete idiot of myself. people wait for it to happen. and though the people in america may not be as watchful for every sign that i dont belong as some of the people over here, they are still watchful, or some of them are at least. i'm muslim, i'm saudi... which, to some, means i'm trouble. even those that don't think that, still see a difference between me and themselves, despite the fact that we are both americans.

i'm a person that likes to blend into the background. i prefer not to be the center of attention. but no matter which place i go, though they are both home, people stare. it's not alllll the time, and you get used to it and barely notice it after a while, but it's still there. the two cultures are polar opposites, so it's natural that they won't overlap smoothly, but sometimes i kinda wish they would.

it might seem impossible that i can feel completely at home and completely alienated in both places at the exact same time, but therin lies the paradox.

*War Sweater - Wakey!Wakey!

vacation all i ever wanted

since, as anisah very thoughfully points out to me repeatedly, i have no life, i guess i'll be blogging here more than i expected to. anyways, my first full day here has come to an end, and once again, i'm hit by that realization that "it feels like we never left." like really. we fall into the same routine as we've had for practically our entire life.we catch up with the stories we've missed out on and notice how big the kids are, but it doesnt feel like we've been gone an entire year. saudi arabia for me is just as much home as america is. i have my room filled with useless crap (though a loooot less than my american room). i have a closet full of clothes i ignore to wear my favorite stuff. we have our car and our restaurants and our daily schedule. the day i get to either place i'm at home. there's no adjustment period. no jet lag. no nothing.

which, in a sense, is really great. and i love the fact that i'm completely comfortable in both places (though i have to admit i'm socially awkward and that's a bigger problem here than in america). but at the same time, i wanna have a summer vacation for once. you know, actually go somewhere new... somewhere i don't know everyone, somewhere i live out of a suitcase, somewhere i dont have to clean the house or do the laundry or stock up a fridge. a vacation.

today, i watched my first ever episode of star academy. i can finally consider myself arab lol. i have to admit, i see the addictiveness factor. we sat staring at them walk around in complete boredom and play on paint for hours. nothing exciting, yet we couldnt seem to change the channel. it's the same appeal teletubbies has for little kids.

on a completely unrelated note, i just saw the new moon trailer on a blog i follow. it reminded me of something i realized on the airplane. i was watching this movie with robert deniro and it had kristen stewart in it. at one point of the movie, she's supposed to be confused or hiding something or whatever... i kinda forgot. but she does this spastic facial features thing. and that was what i hated most about her acting in twilight. that face - or series of faces - that just annoyed me beyond belief. i generally like her and used to think that she only did that in twilight (like in the bio class scene) because it was a movie that should've just stayed a book. but apparently not. i'm not sure how i feel about this. how did i not notice it before??

*Vacation - The Go-Go's