Happy Nafoora Day!!

Congratulations Bahrain on a beautiful Nafoora (fountain), which will has now given a new facelift to the Manama seafront!

I am so excited about this new gift to the people of Bahrain that I really can't wait to get back and enjoy it! It will certainly make a huge difference in my life and the lives of the 600,000 people who inhabit my land. How much have I missed since coming here?

It is indeed a moment of great pride for me .. that we now have a fountain "similar in height to the renowned Jet D'Eau in Geneva." So what if it is a bit smaller? Who cares if it isn't appreciated by a few disgruntled people who are eluding that the money wasted on building this state-of-the-art marvel, should have gone towards feeding the poor, ensuring decent dwellings for the needy and job-creating schemes for the jobless?

Why are all issues so tangled up in Bahrain? Why don't people do what I just did and sit back and enjoy the show.

Like it or hate it, the Nafoora is there to stay .. and I like it :)

Just wondering how many foreign advisors have been recruited to work full-time round the clock to ensure that the pumps and lights work for it would be a disaster should I arrive in Bahrain anytime soon and the fountain doesn't welcome me with its spray!

We all know that the 'locals' are useless at operating such hi-tech novelties!

Bahrain and the Golden Mosque

News of the barbaric attack on the Golden Mosque in Samura, Iraq, was shocking but didn't entirely take me by surprise. It is the aftermath of the blast that we have to deal with now.. of Muslim blowing up another Muslim and Shia and Sunni mosques reduced to rubble in a stupid battle between mindless factions, whose only goal is to see Iraq sink deeper and deeper in the mud.

For me personally, Iraq has a soft spot in my heart. As a Shia, I share with my people the feeling of loss and injustice they have suffered over the ages. As a human being, I really don't want to witness the start of yet another civil war in our part of the world, or any other part, for that matter.

I was really touched by the overflow of emotions by people in Bahrain and the large crowds that gathered to express their pain at the destruction of the shrine I visited as a child.

Once again.. everyone feels strongly for his religion.. Let me paraphrase that, in case I get shot: everyone with a religion feels very strongly for it. But maybe, just maybe, we need to be a bit tolerant of other's views and beliefs and try and co-exist peacefully, in a world which still has a place for black, white, red, yellow, brown and all the colours in between.

Photo Credit: www.karzakan.com

Allah

Dana is my three-year-old niece. A great conversationalist I tell you, who speaks in the sing songy Bahraini accent of yesteryear. Don't where where she picked it from, but it is a mix between Riffa3i and Muharraqi. hehe .. too alien to my Ba7rani ears!

I enjoy chatting to her on MSN, on quiet days, when I manage to get her attention from slaying the monsters and squashing the beasts in her computer games.

Dana: Auntie Amoor.. Will you slay the monster? (Khalah Amoor.. eddeb7een el wahsh?)
Amira: No Dana. I will leave that to Allah. (la Dana. Allah yakhdheh)
Dana: Why? Do you have an Allah in Canada? (laysh..intu 3indikum Allah fee Canada?)

hehe
Just as her toddler brother thinks I am inside the computer, she thinks that Allah is restricted to Bahrain!

Had she been older I would have grilled her! What makes her think there is an Allah in Bahrain only? Or Allah in the whole of the Middle East, where the most Allah-fearing people live under the most Allah-doesn't-matter-to-us-regimes in the world!

But she is only a child and we are all His children.. and one day.. just one day.. we will be able to grow up and deserve to be treated like adults!

Stop the Blockage!!

My aunt forwarded the following letter to me.. hehe .. It is hilarious. Thank God it wasn't in Wonderland ;)

Happy Birthday Mahmood

Mahmood's blog has been acting up lately. Tried it in yesterday afternoon and it gave me a funny message about a "fatal error"!! Error is bad enough without it having to be fatal, thank you!

And now, there is an explanatory note from Mahmood. It is as Mahmood is, hilarious.

I think the server (specifically mahmood.tv) is under an immense attack at the moment from spammers and bots. I've disabled the site for the moment until I have time to fix it.

I will not be able to do anything with it today as I'm swamped at work and have commitments until late evening.

So for the moment, go out and do some gardening, walking, talk to the wife, walk the dog or do whatever you do other than engaging in furious and beneficial debates on mahmood's den!

sorry for the trouble

hehe

Spammers and bots? Masakeen walla.. they really don't know what they are getting themselves into messing up with Mahmood!

And walk the dog or talk to the wife???!! Ya salam.. a7na ma3a el kelab in the same paragraph ?? That bad, huh?

Hope all your server problems are over soon sweetie. Happy birthday and many happy returns. Thanks for sharing, caring, ranting, raving and making us smile every once in a while!

You rock man!!

Homesick at home??

Can you be homesick at home?

I am homesick and I have my legitimate excuse. I am away from home, family, friends and all the things which make me tick, which make my blood boil and which bring a smile to my face.

But there are some people who are homesick at home, like this father and daughter duo.

Have we ever sat back and thought of Bahrain's forgotten sons and daughters, people who pay allegiance, love and loyalty to a land, they have never lived in but heard tales of from their parents?

People who now have a home, but whose undying love to the homeland grows stronger by the day?

People who are torn between the reality of their daily lives and the imaginary land of Dilmun, my homeland, the land of the infidels who worshipped a bull's head, whose relics an MP is so much in a hurry to get rid of to erase from memories our flirtation with civilisations before the dawn of Islam?

The unconditional love of Bahrainis to Wonderland never ceases to amaze me. It is real, raw and in your face.

Why would Bahrain want to import more "Bahrainis" when its own sons and daughters declare their love to it with every heartbeat? And why is Batool still alienated, now that she is finally home, among family and peers and people who have showered her with flowers and chocolates at the airport?

What is more lonely and sad? Being homesick when you are away from home or feeling homesick when you have finally reached a home that pulled you to it in your fantasies, until you woke up one day to see that it was all just a dream?

Where my heart is...

This is where my heart is. This is where I want to be ;) Doesn't she look beautiful? Isn't she perfectly shaped?



Photo credit: NASA

Silly Goes Insane

Silly has really gone bonkers.. Silly can't stop shopping. Silly is shopping and not yet dropping. Silly has gone mad.

I can't stop Silly, no matter how hard I try to reason with her. How many more shoes, coats, hats, gloves, dresses, skirts, jeans, jackets and handbags do you really need?

What is it with this new obessesion of yours Silly? What are you trying to do? Even if you break the bank, it won't fill up that void inside you. It won't make your life like it was back home. It won't bring your mother, sisters, brother, nephews and nieces and friends closer to you. They are miles away. Hundreds of miles. Thousands. Millions. Zillions. Oceans, lakes, rivers, continents, ideologies, backwardness, corruption, masses of people with crazy ideas, the Danish cartoons, the misery, the loneliness, the sleepless nights - all separate you from your loved ones. Burning dollars won't bring that feeling of love, warmth and togetherness. It won't make you more real. It won't change your destiny - a destiny and a destination you walked to with your eyes wide open.

Buying things which you think your loved ones would love won't bring them to you. Being obsessed with everything Orange won't bring Dana to me. Touching all the material and colours Mum loves, won't bring mummy to me. Walking into the children's department and looking for things for the silly nephews and nieces will not transform them into flesh and blood and bring them here. All I have is vivid real images of them calling out my name and asking me: Auntie, when will you come back home? When will you take me to Seef?

Oops.. those aren't visions. They are real. I talk to them all the time..thanks to MSN and Googletalk! And the webcam works wonders. Ali thinks auntie is locked up inside the computer. He's only a year and three months old. Wait until he becomes my age and realises that was all live in boxes and circles, that he wasn't really far off from the truth when he was a toddler!

Enough said! Hope I find something I really like at the mall today!

The Glass is Half-Empty and LEAKING

Yes.

The glass is half-empty and leaking. And the water in it is so murky and full of germs. A lot of dirt, too infested and soiled, yet I don't understand why so many people want to sip from it.

Yuck! I would rather drink my own pee!

Religious Policeman Exposed!

Our Shawarma-loving friend has just posted an interview with the notorious Religious Policeman!

Off to CW to read the interview!

Silly Find

Forget the Danish cartoons.
Look at what I have found on the Internet.
Oh blasphemy! The mother of all horrors!



Haven't the people responsible for this prank read the Bahrain Constitution? Instead of calling for the TAME Bahraini bloggers to register with the Ministry of Information, I suggest that the aforementioned governmental body should call upon ALL websites worldwide to register with the ministry, in a bid to contain such abusive posts from being published.

Boy am I annoyed today!

Out to shovel some snow.. eventhough I don't have a driveway, a shovel and the snow is melting!

Is Silly Brown? Or Is Brown Silly?

Here's an msn conversation I had with my good friend, let's call him Abood:

Abood says:
ana a7mar (I am red)

Cinderella says:
no abood.. WE R BROWN
even I AM BROWN in Canada

Abood says:
lool.. Yeeesss..
what did u think?

Cinderella says:
ma adri (dunno)
i was under the illusion that arabs werent brown

Abood says:
arabs are brown..

Cinderella says:
that we've trespassed the colours and now only look at our sect

Abood says:
looooooooool
well they dont see it that way yet

Cinderella says:
so is it coming
Cinderella says:
give me hope that we arent the last ones living in the dark ages

Abood says:
looooooooooool.. ofcourse it is... ofcourse it is.. they just need to tell the difference when looking at us first.. lol..

Cinderella says:
it's nice to know there are different categories of Brown

Abood says:
yup

Cinderella says:
let's disect the brown issue
maybe even write a scientific essay about it .. for the blog of course

Abood says:
lol.. lets not

Cinderella says:
its only for the blog abood
ya3ni (meaning).. it isn't serious .. and for a silly blog.. it's only for fun

Abood says:
lool.. well ur famous... i'm not ... I wasn published in alwasat..
but I have work now

Cinderella says:
Envious and Brown.. There cant be a worst combination. You know what happens when u mix green and brown don't you. You get black.. like all the black in the hearts out there!!!

Silly Goes Cold ..

I am getting goosebumps.. and it isn't the cold outside trust me. I did't draw my curtains yet this morning and I wont. I don't want to face the music. But it was snowing yesterday and last night and TV warnings show that more bad weather is coming our way. Hurray! That's my weekend fucked up already.. unless I want to go skiing and attempt to break my back, neck and leg in the process!

The above picture is one I clicked on December 31. It is the same today, I presume. You just know what the temperature is outside after sometime. Your body builds up its own met. observation and measurement systems and acts accordingly. Worrying thing, this human brain, I tell you!

But what's worrying me more today is what I would call the encroachment of mainstream media into the world of bloggers. Ok. I agree. This sounds so ironic coming from me, for until a short time ago, I used to wear two hats - that of a news editor of an English daily and a blogger.. but I separated the two.. I swear I did. Each had its different world and set of rules, for in our Arab world, the two can't meet eye to eye.

The fact that Arab media is taking a close look at blogs is alarming to say the least. A few months ago the Information Ministry in Bahrain, for instance, had ordered bloggers to register their blogs with the ministry or else face action, the minute some twit up there realised that there was a new craze called on-line journals. And now Al Wasat is trying to draw attention to bloggers and then the Cabinet and Parliament will hold extraordinary sessions to discuss the matter and we will, I repeat, we will petition the UN to .. to .. I don't know what.

I hope my ability predicting the end of blogging in Wonderland isn't as good as my expertise in forcasting the weather here! Will Mahmood end up behind bars for posting lewd scenes of parrots mating? Will Silveroo be banished to New Zealand for complaining too much about everything? Will Chanad have his gills gutted and thrown in the Arabian Gulf to rot? Will Zarnooq have nails drilled into his skull, in a bid to put things in perspective in that over-active brain of his? Will Jadd William (he brought the wrath of the media upon us!!!) be forever tied up to one of the posters he criticised as punishment for expressing his opinion? Will our smart and sharp tongued Bahrania be resurrected? And me.. oops...I don't want to open a can of worms..but what happens to me?

I am exhausted. Really. I need some sleep. And when I wake up, I want to be in a different place. Canada isn't a far enough place to escape away from Bahrain and its headache.

Perhaps the North Pole would be a good idea...or the South Pole? Don't know.. off to the travel agent!

Silly Silly World

The silly person in me likes to make life a teeny bit more complicated.

hehe

I have just started another blog: Silly Silly World, where I will update you with some of the silly things which make me tick!

hehehehe

hehe hehe

I hope no one finds this cartoon offensive ;)

The Blogfather :)

The GDN has published an interview with our very own Godfather, the Blog Father of Bahraini bloggers.

Thanks Mahmood for the mention and Tariq for the great interview:

How did the handle 'The Blogfather' come about?

You have to thank my good friend Nader Shaheen for that honour. I have no idea what brought that term into his head while he was entering a comment a while ago; it seems to have stuck and was further perpetuated by another good friend Amira Al Hussaini. It does make me feel old, however!

It's good to know that some people back home still remember me! Off for dinner now ;)

The Mob Mentality..

There is no doubt about it. Muslims are enraged (too toned down a word) about the cartoons (you know the ones), as they should be.

And the issue is blown way out of proportion (which was expected), with people, intellectuals, mobs and parasites, from both ends, banking on the situation, building on the insecurities, concerns and prejudices, which some of us - hey, we could be carried away with our optimism at times - thought would be mend by education, understanding and tolerance.

Hehe .. try explaining these words to the mob. Oh no! An angry bull sees only red, the colour of blood and the sweet agony of martyrdom. Who said bulls were colour blind and that they get agitated by movement. Must have read that somewhere long ago, but I, like many, read a lot, and never sit back to seep in all the verbal diarrhea out there. But there is time for this later.

Why is the mob so angry? The cartoons. Yes. And some other things as well...including internal affairs, a feeling of great helplessness at the international wave threatening their ago-old traditions and way of life - the life Allah had decreed upon them and us, and of course, the lack of a voice in international affairs.

Remember we (well most of us except the notorious Bin Laden and his sleezy niece) have always been spectators, with internal and external bombarding us daily and literally shaping our destiny.

And now we get the chance to get angry and angry are we, mostly at the Danish cows and cheese. Papers in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, New Zealand and even Jordan published the cartoons, but we still didn't have the stomach to ban Ferraris, Chanel, Dior, Mercedes, Zara, Armani and all the sheep which make their way to the Arab and Islamic world from New Zealand.

Talk about a lactose senstive nation!

The King and I

A land for every Bahraini?

Sounds promising but with all the Bahrainis and the Neo-Bahrainis, plus all the wannabe Neo-Bahrainis who will soon become Bahraini, there will sure be a lot of damage to marine life.

But who cares about fish, when all that poor people want to do is live a dignified life, with a roof over their heads and a deed to a home, they can call theirs.

It is such a great feeling to own a home. Tell me about it, for I am yet to own the home of my dreams. I don't know whether it will be in Bahrain though and it doesn't matter really, because in my will of all wills, I will make sure that I am buried in Bahrain, my Bahrain, my Wonderland, where my silly spirit will continue to haunt all the unbelievers, those who under-estimate the power of the silly.

Will there be space for my last wish to be granted, presuming of course, that every citizen, even the not so national ones, each gets a plot of land? Don't know and don't want to get there... but please preserve a place for me in the Manama Shia cemetery, near all the dear and near ones! Shia cemeteries are more fun, besides I will get visitors during the Happy Hour every Thursday!

Back to the land issue. I really am excited. Seriously. A land for every citizen..wow.. But citizen should have really been described more carefully.. so that women don't get their hopes really high up.. because in our world, our mad mad world, citizen refers to MALE species only! Those who have evolved and shed their tails are not exactly put on the same pedestal.

hehehe

hehe hehe hehe hehehehe

I can't access my BLOG.. help .. Has it been saboutaged by people enraged with His Majesty the King's interview which safeguards the freedom of speech, particularly to writers and columnists like my esteemed self?

Is it a lashback because of my lack of stance towards the farcial Danish cartoons, not because they didn't annoy me, but because I didn't attempt to burn the Danish flag, didn't stop eating Danish cheese and didn't call for all the heads of the Vikings to roll?

Or is it because of some silly other thing I did or did not do ?

Help.. I can post .. but I can't see what I posted!

hehe.. Bahraini Lesbians.. hehe

My daily Google search for random things, in my ever-dying quest to dig up dirt, took me to uncharted waters ;)
I stumbled across this today!
hehe.. hilarious.. really..

I write short stories as a hobby and I have seen, and been in, a lot of sexy, weird and erotic situations here in Lebanon and in other Arab countries. You, and I am sure many other Westerners, would be shocked to know what happens behind closed doors in Arabia. Arabs are intense when it comes to sex in private. There are Saudi Sheikhs with billions who suck the toes of Russian prostitutes in Dubai and get whipped on the ass— princes who have four wives and ten lovers and fuck the Fillipino maid on the side— horny Lebanese girls who live on Acid and orgies— Kuwaiti she-males— Bahraini lesbians who come to Beirut in the summer to taste teenage Lebanese mountain girls— Egyptian bellydancers who fuck corrupt politicians— women shrouded in black who are married to Islamic fanatics but fuck their Pakistani drivers. Though sex is taboo in public, in private the possibilities are unlimited.

Speechless

Shiaphobia ??

Since it is the season of spreading hate, discontent and defragmenting an already torn-apart society, let me add my two cents - in a bid, of course, to spare Danish cows our wrath!

I just stumbled across this on the www! And it left me gasping for air.. breath in, breath out.. I am hyper-ventilating - really.. and I, from this podium, call for a relatiation, against all those who poke fun of our religious symbols, icons and most important, our ideology!

There were other offensive things as well.. but I will leave them for later ;)

fight! fight! FIGHT!

I really don't know how many fronts we should fight at, especially when there are more pressing problems to solve at home!

To Boycott or Not to Boycott

They obviously aren't boycotting us? What are we going on about??