Don’t Be Perfect, Just…

It’s been a while since I blogged, so as I sit here having my yoghurt with honey, I thought of posting one of those random ramblings just in case something useful comes out. One thing about bloggers is that when they take a hiatus, one thought keeps nagging at the back of their minds, “You haven’t written in two weeks, so your next post must be WOW! It must ROCK!” That thought puts more pressure on them and naturally extends their break, because whatever they write – or half-write – isn’t good enough for a post, and so they’d rather not publish it. I have to admit that I can be guilty of that as well. But one way to face the resistance is to just aim at publishing a bad post. Not horrible. Aim for mediocre. Just don’t aim for perfect. That way you’ll break the hiatus, overcome inertia and -hopefully – gain momentum.

I guess this is today’s message. From the short length of this post to its incomplete title, my message is, “Don’t be perfect, just try your best and you’ll be surprised.”

Did you enjoy UAE’s weather last weekend?

Weekly Photo Challenge: Future Tense

While a lot of extroverts can’t imagine how introverts live a life of seclusion, a lot of introverts can’t imagine the lives of extroverts. In the middle of the noise, the lights, the boisterous chatter and socializing, when do they find time to sit, relax and reflect on their lives. Does any of the extroverts keep a diary, to capture their thoughts, their ideas, their stream of consciousness as they try to understand what’s going on around them? Or maybe they don’t even bother to take that pause, instead deciding to wade through the stream of life continuously, searching for the action and the extra stimulants in terms of noise and light to fill their understimulated brains.

A lot of people have come and gone in my life, but the white page has been something that has given me company for the longest time ever. It was there to absorb the anger, the hope, the pain and the anticipation. It sometimes happens when you find yourself so sure of someone in your life, thinking that they’ll always be there for you, only to watch them fade away with time. You may still be able to run into them, you may still be able to recognize them, but you might not be able to trust them anymore. And that’s when the journal beckons you to sit down, and tell it everything, what happened? Why it happened? How you feel about it?

And as you empty your emotions within its pristine pages – some of them scribbles so unintelligible, you might not even be able to read it yourself – you start understanding things that didn’t make sense when the pieces were all still in your head. You needed to write them down, put them on paper, give the a tangible form, so you could play with them and later arrange them like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to complete the picture.

So yeah, some people might not be able to know what to do with a journal filled with empty pages. But the most obvious thing is to fill it, with your past, your present and your hopes for the future.

My current journal

Weekly Photo Challenge: My Neighborhood

Image taken from Masdar City

This image shows nature in its rawest form; the sun setting in a glorious display of light, the extending sandy terrain and the lack of skyscrapers in the horizon. It’s only the bulldozer that enters the scene, showing work under construction, a symbol of a city that is coming into being one step at a time.
Daily Press Weekly Photo Challenge

Weekly Writing Challenge: Image vs. Text “My Freshman Year”

So this week’s writing challenge should be fun. “Detail a three to five step story or process, and illustrate each of the steps with something visual.”

I didn’t have to search hard for I once wrote a photo-story about my freshman year at AUS. Now the entire document ran for 22 pages, and consisted 10,000 words so I’m going to limit this post to just a few scenes. Also, the quality of the images isn’t superb as the images were taken somewhere between 2004-2005.

Part 1: The Beginning

When my parents first dropped my brother, SH and I at university, my excitement could not be contained. I thought everything about the university was fabulous. The room was clean, the domed university buildings looked beautiful and the picture of the huge greasy Whopper burger adoring a portion of the cafeteria wall was unmatched. The only nagging worry I had concerned my roommate. Why? I don’t want to elaborate, but let’s just put it this way; the only reason I’m still living with my family in the same house is because they are my family and they have to tolerate me.

Part 2: AUS stands for “Always Under Stress”

I started getting really depressed. Even though people thought I had so many friends, they were just acquaintances really. Things got even worst when we had a holiday because of the bereavement period after the death of Sheikh Zayed (Allah yir7amo). When we returned, we rushed through the courses and each class was extended for ten minutes to make up for the classes that we missed. They were only ten minutes, but schedules got extended so much that a not –so –extreme case was that my Caculus 2 2pm class began at 3pm. The workload was unbearably stressful.

Part 3:  Chemistry was my favorite

During the Spring semester, things were fine. Fine is an understatement. They were the bomb! I had so much fun seriously. During the entire semester, my favorite course was Chemistry 2. Once the professor announced the details of a quiz, and after he had already erased everything from the whiteboard and started with the new chapter, one of the students asked, “Sir, what chapter is the quiz on?”

He gave him one of his tiny smiles and said, “You need calibration.”

There were many stories, but overall, chemistry was my favorite.

Chemistry building

Part 4: AH – the mic holder

I helped some of the Mass Com students with their movie projects because one of my friends took the Media Production course. I had helped her with her transcript. It was funny, because I added a line in the middle, and then later on, she came to me and said that the professor left her whole transcript and pointed out to my line saying he liked it. He was one of those really demanding professors. He kept on rejecting one of the student’s transcripts (The third friend in the next paragraph) until she made a comedy movie about how the professor kept on rejecting her transcripts…that he liked.

So anyhow, I worked for the movie as a microphone holder, on a Thursday, back in the dorms. It took so long, and I had to stand on my feet for the whole time so by the end of the shooting, my feet were aching. When someone else needed that friend as a microphone girl on Saturday I volunteered to replace her because she had so much work to do. It took so long and I had to return home to do my homework late at night. Then on Sunday a third friend was re-shooting her movie, because it turned out that her microphone was not working. Immediately I jumped at the opportunity to volunteer. This time, they nearly closed the Student Center while we were still inside – that’s how long it took. Then, on Monday my friend (the first one) was shooting the last scenes, starting from 3 pm. While the other two took place in the Leopards’ office, my friend’s took place in the new MCM studio in the Design Building. Later, on Wednesday, I joined them for a few minutes while they were editing the movies, and made sure everybody wrote A – the – mic – holder in the credits.
Then I went to watch the movies when they were being screened in class. I got introduced to the professor, and he told me to change to Mass Communication, and I was like, “No, thank you.” Even though they do have more fun and people say that Mass Comm. suits me better since I love writing…especially with professors who on their first day in that class, had said, “Welcome to the course, where to pass, you have to fail all your other courses.”

AUS MCM studio

Part 5: The Engineering Buildings

I guess every building has its story; the physics building, the chemistry building, the design building. I think it’s about time I talk about the engineering buildings, since they will soon be my permanent residence. The school of engineering lies very far from the rest of the schools. It’s seems to be in a world of its own. There’s something very funny about the engineering buildings; no matter how many engineers the two buildings create, there are so many engineering flaws with them.

For instance,the least you would expect are working vending machines, right? Also, there always seems to be friction between the Electrical and Computer students, as Electrical claim to be more superior than the Computer students. Once, there was a power outage and the computers naturally went off. An electrical engineering student told a computer engineering student, “See? Without us, you people cannot work. “

The CMP student said, “Apparently some people are not doing their work properly.” Which was why there was an outage in the first place.

Part 6: Finally Finals’ week 

The semester was finally coming to an end. This was my calender during that semester.

During Finals’ week, by the time I started studying for my MTH 205, it was 12 am. For the first time in my life, I actually stayed up the whole night. I normally treasured sleep. Even during the international exams back during high school, I never lost sleep because of a final.  By 10 am the next morning, I was a walking zombie. On Sunday, again, I stayed up all night – for the second time in my life.I had NGN 111 at 8 am the following morning, and ECO 201 at 11 am. I came out of the NGN 111 (statistics) exam feeling aweful and making a mental promise that I was not going to stay up again, no matter what the final is, and no matter how little prepared I am. What happened was that in one of the questions, the answer was supposed to be less than 1, and yet I got over 1, so that hinted to me that there was a miscalculation. I had to repeat the entire question, and I was already tired, and couldn’t focus….overall, my paper was a mess. The ECO was challenging, but I was glad when it was over. Since I was still in my first year, a lot of exams were still being done in the Sports complex, and the picture below was one walk to remember.

A walk to remember: The walk away from final exams

Weekly Writing Challenge: Image vs. Text

Forget fast and Forgive Faster

If there is one thing I wish someone had told my 15-year-old me, it would have been, “Forget fast, forgive faster.”
Don’t expect too much from people because they will disappoint. Sometimes they will hurt and say mean things, but don’t take their words to heart because you’re the only one hurting. Besides, the mean things that they say is not a reflection of who you are as much as it is a reflection of who they are. Also, remember that everybody’s going through their own personal battles, most of which you don’t know about, so forget fast, and forgive faster.

childhood revisited

Daily Prompt: Call Me, Maybe

I have to admit that my relationship with my phone is pretty much complicated. The main reason is that I use it for everything except to make calls, which is funny considering the basic function of a telephone is to make calls. I don’t know why I don’t like talking on the phone much. My friends already know that I am not much of a caller. I mostly receive calls, and except for a few people, I tend to end conversations quickly.

Maybe it’s because my favorite mode of communication happens through writing (message, whatsapp, emails, twitter, facebook…). But maybe it goes deeper than that. When I was in school, my fellow schoolmates used to call me only for help in their schoolwork, and it used to really depress me. I would complain to my diary that they’re using me and that they never even bother to tell me if they’re hanging out or something. So basically, the ringing phone was an indication for “School SOS.” And when it was exceedingly silent, the phone used to act as a reminder that I didn’t have many true friends and that I was a “loser” (in high school terminology), though now I just have to correct that by replacing the ‘s’ with an ‘n’.

But as my close friends would testify, I sorta make up for my lack of interest in making calls with my obsession with social media – which is why I have a phone in the first place. Since social media/emails requires me to type everything out instead of talk, they’re my favorite mode of keeping in touch with people, and of course, the fact that there is a wordpress application for the iphone is always a plus since I stay up-to-date with the interaction on my blog, which is why a phone like the one below would never have cut it…#ThankyouSteve

Remember those phones? I don’t remember my first phone, but my bro had this one for ages…

In response to Call Me, Maybe

Weekly Photo Challenge: Defining Home, a real challenge!

So the concept of home has always been a complicated one. Let’s start from the basic question that I usually get, “Are you Kenyan or Yemeni?”

Starting with my family, our cultural values are more Yemeni than they are Kenyan. Naturally, because we’re Arabs and not Africans – by blood. In addition to that, our skin color, looks, and dress code also reinforces the Arab label, that when strangers speak Swahili around us in the UAE, we end up grinning in delight for the perfect camouflage. But we do feel more Kenyan than Yemeni, because we never lived in Yemen. Whenever we check the news back ‘home’, we go to Daily Nation or East Standard.

Besides that, our passports claim we’re Kenyan. That means that worse goes to worse, if we need to return to our ‘home’ country for any reason, we’ll have to go back to Kenya. But the most important reason why we feel Kenyan is because of the diversity that Kenya enjoys. What makes Kenya special is how the different cultures have become so intertwined that Arabs cook Indian food, and Indians have African cousins. Despite that, tribalism is what runs the show in Kenya especially with the elections coming next month.

So yes, to answer the question, I coined the term “Kemeni” to represent people like us; Yemenis who come from Kenya and not Yemen. So that’s to answer the basic question.

But then when I really think about it, having lived outside of Kenya my whole life, I personally don’t really feel a sense of belonging whenever I go to Kenya. On the contrary, summers for me were just a compilation of one bad memory after another. I spent a lot of my summers as a teen sitting in a chair in what I call the laundryroom crying because of something that someone did to me. The laundryroom was nothing fancy. It was just an unbuilt room where people used to hang the clothes to dry especially when it was raining outside. This was the scene from the laundryroom but I outgrew that place, and it got so dusty that I couldn’t enjoy it anymore.So the good memories I have are those with my immediate family, and I don’t need to go to Kenya to see them. So I’ve always wondered if ‘home’ is defined more by the people (basically, your family) than by the geographic location?

But then I sit and think, that maybe it really doesn’t matter where home is as long as we do the basic thing that connects us to Allah (SWT) and that’s praying the five obligatory prayers. From a dusty airport archive room to a a stairwell landing to a tailor’s shop and a store’s fitting room, as long as we find that place to heed the call of prayers and pray to Allah (SWT), then we feel the tranquility that other people relate to being “at home”.

Scene from “The Laundryroom”

Resonance

 

“There was something about resonance that bridge my two worlds and brought them together. In physics, resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate with a greater amplitude at some frequencies than at others. It explains phenomena like glass breaking at the right – or not – pitch. Electrical resonance explained how radio frequencies can be selectively received.

The concept of resonance was so simple yet so powerful. Push a swing at its natural frequency and it oscillates at its maximum and you have a happy child. Resonance also explains my love for writing – and reading. Do yo sometimes read a book and find that one line that resonates with the beats of your heart, and you figure, “Yes, maybe it was this one line that I had to go away with.”

And there are times when I write and I know  my words will shake someone somewhere, because that’s exactly how I felt when I was writing them. All I needed was someone whose “natural frequency” was similar to mine.

Live Blogging from yet another wedding

I am at a wedding so naturally I’m blogging since that’s what I do in weddings when I am not tweeting or whatsapping.
I had to come to this wedding “on behalf of” my mother because she couldn’t make it. The awkward part of it is when people walk up to me and say “hi” enthusiastically only for them to walk away and for me to wonder, “Who was that?” Usually my mom is around to tell me who it was, and she can be quite patient about it since I have a malfunctional face recognition system and I might ask the same question about the same person every single event.
But the interesting thing is to be surrounded by Swahili speakers in Dubai. Feels like I’m stranded in a mini-Mombasa island. Except that’s slightly inaccurate because the people around me might actually originate from Tanzania or Zanzibar for all I know.
But isn’t it cute when the young girls actually wear identical dresses without making a big deal about it? So what exactly happens to women when they grow up and suddenly they don’t want to be seen wearing the same thing as another attendee? Is it the need to stand out or to be the most talked about, hoping the uniqueness of the dress would become a useful factor?
As for me, I just search for the table at the corner and focus on my phone/food hoping nobody would embarrass me with “do you know who I am?” remembering the last time it happened in Kenya, the person was actually my dad’s half-sister. Yet another awkward moment.
P.S. Sadly my phone is running out of charge.

Collective ADHD

So when I was in high school, MSN was the coolest thing in town, and people would log in to chat with their friends from all over the world. Let’s just say that  my interest for it died quite fast for the following reasons; a) Too many spelling mistakes and b) Some people just typed so slowly back then [Remember we were the last generation to witness a world without the internet, today's generation probably don't have their own handwriting because they're so used to typing].

During my final semester at AUS, some friends and I went for an assessment test in an attempt to secure a job. It was scheduled some time in the morning, but then they had to postpone, and one of my friends got so angry and started calling them unprofessional for delaying . Her mother -who had given her company from AD to Dubai- said something along the lines that we kids need to learn some patience in life.

And I realized it’s true, one of the net results of being bombarded by so much information is that we’ve become VERY impatient. Look at us, within one second Google can teach us how to knit, how to make shrimp fettucine alfredo, or what the exchange rate between two currencies is. We didn’t have to go far to find out the millisecond-by-millisecond account of the havoc that Hurricane Sandy wreaked. Also, many of us never experienced the anticipation that our parents felt while they awaited for letters from their family back home. Sometimes these letters came by post, and sometimes they were carried by a family friend who flew across. During Eid, they had to take lines outside the callbox to call their family (or their family’s neighbors who were the only ones with a phone) to greet them “Eid Mubarak” at a voice so high, some people from their generation still shout into their mobile phones when they call international nowadays.  In the past, their lifestyles encouraged patience, because whether they liked it or not, they had to wait for things to happen, but our lifestyle doesn’t.

It’s like we have a collective case of ADHD. So many people are so anxious about finishing so many things at once that we can no longer concentrate on just one thing without losing our patience and moving onto the next thing. Maybe it’s how we reduce our chances for success; we can’t concentrate on one thing for long enough, let alone repeat it and fail enough in it to success. And since people keep on saying that perseverance is the door to the success, we seem to have lost the key.

So what’s your say in this?

So which phone rang?