Trip diary - End of a rave, and the long road.

Trip diary day 4 – Bus going back to Amman [July 28, 2007]

The raves are over, now on the way back on yet another bus heading back to the more familiar and busy surroundings of Amman. Been two crazy days really. I’m kind of blank now, just sitting there not knowing what to type! Guess I should just talk about what made me go on this whole trip, the Distant Heat electronic music festival!

We finally left Aqaba’s yacht club at around 9 pm, the bus ride was fun, met some cool people, amongst them is a couple of sponsors working with radio stations (Play FM IIRC), a couple of Jordanian/Palestinian dudes and many Europeans (Irish and Dutch), of course, the first few interactions were to teach them the typical swear words in Arabic, amongst a few other more reasonable expressions such as hello, sorry, good night, it’s always fun to see how foreigners pronounce Arabic words, khmaar instead of 7maar (Hmaar as in donkey), but for some reason if the word already had the ‘kh’ part they wouldn’t be able to pronounce that part! Don’t worry, we ‘exposed’ them to a more abusive array of abusive terminology ;).

Arrived there at around 10 pm after a stop at a checkpoint and a long sandy road, I simply have no clue whatsoever how people actually managed to get there, let alone the fact that most cars were small (As in small, I mean salons, hatchbacks, and so on, not big SUVs and 4x4s), there was no signage and directions (Or at least I couldn’t notice them), no street lights and no proper roads, but hey, many people probably know the exact location, apparently that is where people usually go to camp when they go to wadi rum (Hence, the adjacent camp with many tents. Also, the small fact that this is not the first time the festival was held, it’s been held for several years in a row boasting names such as Markus Schulz, Armin Van Buuren and Ferry Corsten.

Got off the bus, got my wrist band and proceeded to the main area in front of the dj booth, BeeBee, a Jordanian talent was doing the warm-up and boy, the first time I hear a set of his and it was magnificent, he certainly knows how to get the crowd pumped up. Played a mixture of some electro, prog house and prog trance if memory serves me right, wicked stuff. Roamed around the massive ‘venue’, VIP area was neat and well-planned, seemed a tad too crowded though after midnight, not that it matters much to me as I hardly hanged out there, Wonder why I paid extra, I didn’t sit on the comfy couches, nor did I drink any alcohol, thus, coupons were gone for water bottles and red bulls. The water was supposedly being given out for free, but it wasn’t, not that it matters much now though, the whole extra coupons thing is a control measure and to entice big drinkers.

Dave Seaman took over the decks at around 12 or 1, can’t recall correctly, he was until recently a dj that I only recognize by name, but his set was magnificent, perfect for electro and prog house lovers. By the time he started mixing, the place was already busy with many ‘ravers’… I wish I could remember some of the tracks he played, all I recall is Muhannad aka. Moe (Met him on the bus, cool fella) IDing two or three tracks produced or mixed by Trentmoller, other than that, I remotely recall a track being played towards the end of his set, one that Gabriel & Dresden have something to do with, probably was either “Tracking Treasure Down” or “Till There Was You”… Before Dave finished his set, while being in front of the dj booth I saw Toni and Jono Grant of A&B talking to someone in the backstage area, I simply couldn’t stop myself from going there to try and talk to them, which I succeeded at after persuading one of the security personnel to let me in, I talked to them briefly and took pictures with them, I went again with a couple of new friends (God bless Facebook), but couldn’t get in without the event promoter, organizer, manager, EVERYTHING (God bless her!), Julian, sneaked us in, we took a picture as a group with the two Anjunaboys who came with MY CAM (Will get back to this point later), Paavo stayed back in London, it seems a habit for dj bands to divide activities and tasks between them, usually someone is more into production and the other is more into mixing and DJing =). Also met FILA of Ali & Fila! Who by the way didn’t spin at Tala Bay in the morning as I thought and anyway, I thought it was ALI rather than Fila! Heh, people will know this by the time this is posted, but the Lebanese beach-goers will be in for a big surprise on Sunday, as part of MixFM’s great beach parties called One Big Sunday, he’s the one who is the surprise, I went on Trancehits today and read comments showing how curious people were, I PMed a couple of them spoiling the surprise, I just couldn’t hide it hehe! Some went as far as thinking it might be Ferry Corsten or something, but my first impression so far is that this Fila fellow is the friendliest and most humble dj I have met personally thus far, he didn’t have ANY attitude whatsoever, and he seemed even happier than us! Respect to the Egyptian dude! Also met BeeBee, djing and party animal hehe! Tried to talk to Dave Seaman, but I guess I ran out of my luck with security guys at that point.

Above & Beyond, world number 9 djs according to the controversial DJ Mag yearly poll, who have recently rocked the Olympic stadium in Los Angeles graced the decks of Wadi Rum soon after that. Two tracks into the set, for some f***ed up reason, naïve and stupid me entrusted a total stranger to carry my camera while I was recording a video, only for what I imagined was unthinkable to happen. As soon as I turned my head, that lowlife and tactless effing cunt disappeared with OUR memories, excuse my French, but that is the least I could describe that piece of s***… I am still kicking myself in the backside for assuming he was with the new friends I met there, I don’t want the camera itself, I was whining and nagging about it in my last diary update!!! I just want the bloody memory card with all the videos and photos that I took. He can shove the camera up his backside as far as I am concerned, chances are he will not even know how to use it in the first place! Thank God I still have my baby, my Canon AND I will get another Canon when I am back in DXB, a smaller one of course than the 400D. This just shows you how precious pictures (and recently videos) are to me, they have no monetary value, but the fact that they evoke memories and good times is more than enough. And by the way, the less I say about the crappy attitude I got from people I asked for help the better, you can keep your silly advices and hoes to yourselves!

Back to the music, it took me a while to recover from the fact that everything from that night is gone, par a few pictures other people took, but I eventually got back to a state of trance, I kept track of the, err, track list of A&B’s set, I couldn’t ID everything, but I recognized many of them, which were played on their radio show, Trance Around The World, I’ll nag again and say that IF I still had my cam, I’d have been able to ID them later on when I watch the videos. (Or at least someone would’ve helped out on Youtube, Trancehits, or wherever. Here is my improper track list with a few comments:

“Welsh Morphology”. kind of an intimidating ‘vocals’(But no lyrics) in this track IMHO, but still quality beat nevertheless.
A Life Less Ordinary – Alex Morph vs. Rank 1. YES, I finally IDed it after hearing it live for the umpteenth time!! But of course, I have no clue whatsoever which remix
Needs To Feel – Super 8 & DJ Tab [Wippenberg remix]. This is one of my favorite tracks at the moment, limited, but deep vocals, I ‘overheard’ it while arguing with security at the venue entrance :P
Air For Life – Above & Beyond vs. Andy Moor. They simply had to play it, the first track I ever heard by them, still recall hearing it on the radio in Lebanon in the summer of 2005, massive, massive tune.
I Can’t Sleep – Above & Beyond. They played it at 4:30 am!!! I couldn’t quite understand why Jono & Toni were pointing at their watches when the track started playing, took me a few seconds to figure out, but I went berserk nevertheless once it started, call their productions cheesy if you want to, but this isn’t, this is a classic.
Waiting Here For You – Thrillseekers feat. Aruna. YES, they played it! Don’t think it was the original (Breakfast remix perhaps?).
Fly Away – Vincent De Moor (me thinks)
No One On Earth – Above & Beyond [Gabriel & Dresden remix]. Reminded me of a former trancehitter (S), always nice to hear this track.
Untitled Audio (Not sure)
Dangerous Power – Gabriel & Dresden (I think!). Another track that I didn’t expect to hear.
“Touch Me” – Mike Koglin & Jono Grant mash-up/remix. Crowd went absolutely nuts when he played it, again. Great timing as the sun was rising!
Sun Is Shining – Bob Marley [MLV remix]. Wohooooooo! Orgasmic, simply orgasmic, with the sun literally shining on the rocks in the magnificent natural setting!
Tri-state – Above & Beyond. [Some remix, I think Robert Nickson]. No comments!
Nothing – James Holden. Top notch.
Sand In My Shoes – Dido [Above & Beyond remix].
Good For Me – Above & Beyond.
Alone Tonight – Above & Beyond. This was it; I’d have been content if they stopped playing after this!
Home – Above & Beyond [Club mix]. I expected a “Satellite” finale rather than Home (I think this was the last track of their set), but it was good to hear it nevertheless… “Looking for a place called home” :(

As mentioned before, there were several other tracks that fall in the HIB category (An acronym I made up for Heard It Before type of tracks). They finished their set at around 6:30-7-ish…

BeeBee, did the after-hours set, only recognized Armin’s Rush Hour, the third track of the set. I left the area soon after and met up again with some of the guys who were on the bus, what was after that was an organizational scramble, as we could NOT find the bus that brought us in the first place, and kept on asking the bus drivers till after more than 30 minutes of canvassing, we finally found one. Don’t recall the time we got back to Aqaba at, but it was a long journey nevertheless. Was too knackered to go to the after party at Tala Bay, where some upcoming local Jordanian DJs were spinning till sunset… Went online for a while before sleeping till the evening, headed to the Yacht Club, where the ‘smaller’ rave was taking place. Arrived at 11, only to be told at the doors that the ticket was NOT sufficient to guarantee entry, what else was needed? COUPLES, they must be freakin’ kidding me, luckily, Stamina, one half of the BO18 club residents in Beirut Gunther & Stamina was entering at the same time, I talked to him for a bit and he managed to convince the bouncer to let me in, chatted with him, Gunther and another Jordanian DJ called Ashtek when we got in the club briefly about what set they’re going to play (Hope I got the spelling right).

At the time of writing, we are about 90 kilometers away from Amman. In total, it’s more than 300 KMs. I wonder how much time would it take me IF I was driving my own car, the last time I drove to Abu Dhabi in UAE, it took me about 50 – 60 or so minutes, with ‘normal’ driving it takes one hour and a half.

I stopped writing at around 7:30pm as the bus stopped for the passengers to refresh for a bit by buying some overpriced stuff. Chatted all the way back with some more new friends, yey! Will continue later, got to consider what I am supposed to do now…

Trip diary - in Aqaba [July 26, 2007]

Trip diary – Day 2, @ Intercontinental Aqaba hotel

Well, well… Second day in Aqaba, three more hours to go before I get on another transportation medium, the bus that will take me to Wadi Rum and Distant Heat, apparently there have been buses to take people from Amman to the festival and back, but I wasn’t aware of that, but hey, some touring around the country (In Arabic ruboo3 il wa6an! Heh) won’t hurt anyone. The hotel is much nicer than Holiday Inn, almost as good as the Four Seasons in Amman, the family’s preferred accommodation in the capital. Actually, it might look better, it’s roomier in general and has nice décor, the interior design is spot on. Won’t go into architecture and exteriors, all the buildings in general look alike in the Levant region with no distinctive features (Apart from a few trying to look distinctive). But the service here does not match the Four Seasons, the interactions, the small details, the unspoken things as well; the ‘feel’ you get from people is lacking here (First impression? Having to drag my bags up the stairs leading to the entrance, a misunderstanding with the bellboy, and some minor errors in check-in)… But hey, it’s way better than many, many properties around the world, and it is probably amongst the top hotels in this country, I am just being mean and picky I guess!

Extended my stay as I wished for another night, meaning I can still recover here without bothering to check-out and find another hotel. Yesterday was quite good, after chilling in the guestroom for a while, went downstairs to have dinner. After that I contacted a very friendly and cool guy whom I’ve arranged to buy my rave tickets from, had a brief chat about how things will go, some small tips and such… Went afterwards to a beach/pool type of café at the hotel which serves argeela/sheesha and drinks, was very calming! Made me miss the cooler months in Dubai (Although it is humid here, but not as bad as DXB! Trust me!). Took some pics around the property, including a representation of my infamous long exposure dancing ghost picture, but this time on the beach, better background than a parking lot! Bet people were wondering how bored and silly I am, but hey, this is me, I guess I’m destined to always be the odd one out and quite eccentric. ;)

Now I’m bored out of my skull, waiting for the minutes to pass, I just hope everything goes according to plan, no unpleasant surprises such as any cancellations, technical failures, terrorist attacks (lol) or even worse: My cam’s batteries to die! Talking about that, I think sometimes that I shouldn’t have gotten a point-and-shoot Nikon which doesn’t offer much flexibility to control the outcome of the pictures (Well, it probably can, but I’m a manual mode whore, shutter speed and all that crap), but hey, it really, really makes up for it by having a flexible body and quick responses or whatever the actual description of something that, err, responses quickly. (Google it, Nikon Coolpix S10). Two batteries and three memory cards with a combined capacity of almost 3.5 GBs, that should be enough, eh? ;)

This will be the longest party I’ve ever been to; I think I’ve been in Dubai for too long! But I’ve been sick, I’ve been knackered and shattered before, only to be ‘saved’ by EDM, so, I think and hope I will last till the very finale of above & Beyond’s 3-4 hour set… I guess the trick will be to not get too excited during Dave Seaman’s set that precedes the Anjunaboys’ few hours of madness. (Tony, Jono and Paavo, heard all three are coming… I really want to meet them :()… Before I end this, currently ’warming-up’ by listening to TATW # 173, this track rocks: “Saved Again” – Cerf, Mitiska & Jaren (I think, I have the track list though somewhere)… Hope they play it, along with Falling, Shadow World, Waiting Here For you and Dave202’s Generate The Wave (Don’t think I heard it at any clubs live yet, I’d go mental if they actually played it, although it’s a bit old now…

Fingers crossed… Let the voyage into the rum commence (Well, in 2:30 hours time ;))

Trip diary - Going to Aqaba

Trip diary – Day 1, bus going to Aqaba [July 25, 2007]

Overslept today (surprise, surprise), but was able to check-out on time and rush to the bus company to book my place on the bus, which was leaving in 10 minutes. Opted not to fly by plane as it turned out to be a hassle, lots of waiting and commuting, by the time the flight would’ve landed in Aqaba, I’d be already or almost there on coach. It isn’t that bad, the ‘music’ is horrible, lots of the new cheesy Arabic tracks that I do not even know. Such songs were al I knew really a couple of years back. Thank God for the iPod and the stuff I downloaded on the laptop before traveling, the 2MB connection back in the Academy has proven to be very useful when it comes to downloading torrents and uploading videos to Youtube, I guess I should reduce the size of the videos I take, I was checking out some old videos yesterday, including some videos of the Above & Beyond gig almost a year ago, the video quality was OK, more like webcam quality, but the sound was almost as good as the videos I usually take with my point-and-shoot Nikon camera, the size was significantly lower.

Didn’t see anyone yet, doubt I would, apart from the few Facebook friends which I contacted and will probably meet there in Aqaba or Wadi Rum, there is a gig in Lebanon that has been pushed forward to this Friday instead of the following Friday as originally planned, it’s tooo tempting to go, Dirty South and Ron Van Den Beuken, would be something! But for the time being I should be content with Above & Beyond, Dave Seaman and the bunch of Arab talents, such as Bee Bee & Aly & Fila. Didn’t eat anything yet in Jordan, not hungry, I guess it’s psychological, would probably eat well and not feel stuffed if I forced myself. (Late correction: That was wrong, RVDB plays on Friday August 3rd, 2007 in Forum De Beirut, excuse the spelling).

On another note, apparently Above & Beyond won’t be spinning at Peppermint come September as originally planned, the last time I checked, their website still had Pmint pinned for the 6th of September, before Ramadan, but nothing has been confirmed yet by the club itself. Would be gutted, was looking forward to telling them I saw them live at Distant Heat as well, lame, I know. But also, they really have to unleash their talents at a big club like Peppermint, hope they change the set-up for them like they did for the recent Sasha gig. But I also hope that Deep Nights bring a cheesy house DJ on the same night, that would do the same effect as Markus Schulz vs. Benni Bennassi, I think I mentioned it on the other blog, but many people went like “Markus who?!” when it should’ve been the other way around. At least we had more space to ‘shake it’! The whole (Well, almost) two or so rows of people that were in front of the DJ booth are more ‘ravers’ than posers, would be fun to party with them again once everyone’s back to DXB, too bad one of them is leaving to Canada though for good, all the best to her! (Although we hardly spoke to each other, but Peppermint connects people, how cheesy, eh? =))

Trip diary - Greetings from Amman

Trip diary – Day 0, Holiday Inn, room # 1315 [Evening of July 24, 2007]

So, I’m finally in my hotel room, if I want to briefly describe the hotel, I’d probably say that the exterior looks unique and somewhat modern, but the interiors are outdated. Anyway, I’m supposed to check out in 12 hours anyway, hope I manage to find a flight to Aqaba, my bum can’t take 3-4 more hours of sitting, especially NOT on a coach… Will I be able to go to Petra? I doubt, although it would be a pity not going there, but hey, three months ago I couldn’t even envisage myself making this whole ‘rave’ trip in the first place.

So, after checking in, I settled in my room, finally got my phone to function (Well, it was an electricity socket problem rather than a technical problem within the phone itself), checked my e-mails, jotted down the important numbers, then changed and went out with my trusted camera, took some nice pictures. Well, to be fair they looked good on the LCD screen, on a normal laptop/PC screen all the flaws become far more obvious. Fingers crossed, I won’t get many other chances to take night shots during this brief trip.
Lots of walking, for some reason I went to Starbucks, couldn’t get anything as the Point-Of-Sale system was down, I was impatient and it was getting late… I did somethin stupid though, I’m always a fool, unfortunately.

I forgot to mention how brilliant the weather is outside compared to Dubai, it was breezy, a bit too breezy in fact that I was wondering if some of the photos will suffer from motion blur. It’s obvious that I didn’t upload them yet to have a look, I will have a LOT of time to see them and play around with them later on anyway… I just hope that I wake up on time tomorrow morning; I really don’t need my sleeping disorders, not now!

Tomorrow is another day…

p.s. For some reason I didn’t (And probably won’t) check out the family’s flat/apartment here.

Trip diary - Dubai Airport

Trip diary – Day 0, Dubai airport [July 24, 2007]

Hmm, didn’t think that I would take my laptop out of its bag before boarding the flight, I don’t know why I’m calling it day zero, should it be day one instead? Magazines, newspapers, etc. always start with issue number one. Well, whatever. Flight was originally scheduled to depart two hours ago, but there has been a ‘little’ delay and the gate has been changed as well (Apparently it was changed twice). Checking my bag every two minutes, to make sure that I haven’t lost anything (yet).

Has been so random, unexpected as well, but thankfully the planning of the trip worked out, now the fun part should start once I arrive in Amman. I walked around the whole terminal probably twice already (In terms of total distance), guess that’s my workout for today! Took several photos, saw people from literally all walks of life, some sleeping on the floor, others playing with whatever gadget they have, some totally engrossed with their books. Talking about books, NO, I didn’t read the latest Harry Potter book, and I don’t know why people actually want him to DIE in the latest edition of his book. I don’t even read my school books. School? Hmm, what about it? Oh yeah, I ended my 3rd year last Thursday, was an OK semester, one could always say that there is room for improvement. Apart from a couple of courses, any efforts are wasted (Got my lowest grade EVER in one, the other’s grade is not out yet). But hey, I’m less than twelve months away from graduation, part of me is happy, another part of me is shocked that time flew and went past so quickly, it still feels like yesterday that I went to the Academy on a somewhat foggy day in a suit that was a bit too big, sitting in the café, anticipating my ‘fate’ quietly with two fellow students, somehow ended up talking about football (One turned out to be a Manc, the other an Arse fan), another part is NOT looking forward to working hard, and yet another part is looking forward to finally being productive (Despite the hard work bit!) and earning money… This is life at the end of the day and one’s gotta do what they gotta do, right? ;-). How many parts are there of me already? Hehe! If that implies that I’m torn, then yeah, it kind of how I am these days. (“Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia comes to mind).

Flight’s boarding now (Finally!)… Will get back to my lovely laptop if I got bored on the flight, fingers crossed, hope no screaming and crying kids are nearby, also hope that no XXL-sized person is seated next to me. Aah, always feels good to go back to economy class… NOT!!!!

Sick...

It’s finals time… Finally, that dreaded week in the middle of July has come, already halfway through. Three days to go, seems they will be the longest few days I’ve gone through in a while… That economics teachers f***ed us over in yesterday’s final, just like last semester, but the major difference is that I had a cushion to save my backside the last time around with good course work. That cushion has vanished this semester. Will I fail? Not really, failing is not an option. I will graduate in four years, period.

Why the three remaining days seem so long? Well, I’m sick, it’s not the first time I’ve gotten sick this year, in fact, I had several one to two day colds (If not less), but this ‘sickness’ has lingered since Thursday if memory serves me right, headache, throat, coughing, running nose, you name it! But hey, Hamdilla (Thank God) for everything… It is bothering me as it’s annoying, but it’s not affecting studying THAT badly, at least not yet… I’m not that stressed either yet, I’m just sick… This semester has been a roller-coaster ride, actually, the whole year so far. Much has changed even if I can’t point it out directly off the top of my head, but I know that things did... I still would have a LOT to do even after finals are over… I’m quite not over the fact that I’m less than 12 months away from graduation, but hey, c’est la vie =)

Before I forget these, I’ll just post them here before copying them to my other little blog… Not sure about them, but a good attempt at it nevertheless ;)

Wear that dress tonight
The one that I have seen
The one that does it to me
I don’t care that it was cheap
I think I will like it more

Wait for the moment
You can’t control it
You can’t look life in the eye

Wait for the moment
You can’t control it
You can’t look life in the eye

Agnelli & Nelson “Wear That Dress” (Deep Blue Productions)

Hug-less...

Someone indirectly reminded me of one of the sweetest videos that I recall seeing on youtube (Or wherever else for that matter), it's about a campaign for free hugs... I don't mind a hug now... Actually, I NEED one!

I don't think I've made someone's day for quite a while... Assuming I ever did in the first place :-(

Even Spider (Our infamous kitten) ran away when I tried to hug him... *sigh*

If you can, then do it! You don't have to hug a stranger, just find a good friend and do it, brighten up their day a bit, cheer them up, there's enough depression and negativity going around in the world... Doesn't it make you feel a bit different when a total stranger smiles to you? ;-)

*BIG HUG!!!!!*

p.s. totally irrelevant to the above, but here goes nevertheless: if anyone reading this, who by any chance is an AUD student, then whatever you do, never, EVER take economics (Either macro or micro) with Muhamed Zebib, I don't know about the other courses that he might be teaching there, but as far as these two are concerned, just do yourself a favor!

Alas...

Ironic how a routine design class can bring out such... so-called creativity... Didn't have a go at this for years...


I don’t know if this should matter
But alas, I still face this daily stutter
Although it has been a while
I don’t think I have ever crossed that mile

Your absence during all that time
Has made me attempt a silly rhyme
I hope these words are read someday
Although your life has been hectic everyday

Summer has come, sun scorches and glows
Unlike my hope that no longer grows
Trying to keep that so-called faith alive
With prayers for something that seemed would last

*sigh*

Temporary agony

I underwent a surgery on Saturday, thankfully this time it’s a minor and very small one, nothing like that major 5+ hour jaw surgery a few years ago. Turned out I had a lump and I had to remove it, hurt a bit during and after the operation, but within a few hours I was back to normal, hamdilla.

Although it paled in comparison to the jaw nghtmare, but it still evoked similar memories, at least this time it didn’t feel as lonely and emotionally painful.

Being a bit down recently, the Liverpool win in midweek lifted the mood briefly though.

Random question that I ‘should’ answer by myself in my next entry: What is really important?

p.s. started another blog, not very active really yet, but here goes anyway:
http://lyricalo.blogspot.com

Joyful tears

Exhausted, sleepy, yet happy...

How many times in our lives do we get to cry out of happiness and cheer delight? Not many times I assume... What thing or event has that much of an effect on one anyway? Some people might be moved by anything, and others are ice cold.

Tuesday night was one hell of a long evening, the level of tension, fear, optimism and a couple of hundred other feelings probably were all present, it was the biggest game of our season (So far), we had to shut up a certain so-called 'Special One'... Daniel Agger, heavily criticized the previous week for his bad performance and his mistake that led to Joe Cole's goal, he scored this time for us from a cheeky Gerrard free-kick, 1-1 it was, what followed was a bore-fest for the neutrals, but nerve-wrecking stuff for fans of either team. We eventually won the game on penalties after Pepe Reina saved a couple of theirs, while we scored every single one of our 4 spot-kicks to make it to our 2nd CL final in THREE years! Only Milan have had a better record in the Champions League in recent year, and surprise, surprise, we're going to play Milan in Athens in 19 days ;).

I couldn't help the "tears of joy" from going down my cheeks, it's not like everyday that one's favorite team makes it to the final of such a prestigious competition and in such a 'fashion', I went out and drove around, with a big smile, even saw a complete stranger wearing a Scouse red top and hugged him! Couldn't curb my excitement at all... Was equally delighted the following day when AC Milan dominated and outplayed a clueless Manchester United side in rainy Milan. Made a minor scene at the uni's library congratulating a Milan fan.

Call me crazy, but I will quote lovely "S" here, "they say it's just a game, game my arse. This (And EM) is what keeps me alive"
Another quote by a great manager of Liverpool FC:
"Football is not a matter of life and death, it is much, much more important than that."
- Bill Shankly (R.I.P.)

What makes your tears fall down of joy? Is it a special someone? Certain events or milestones in your lives? Whatever it is, cherish it forever like me :)

I'm a rainbow too!

I want to update my little blog before the current state of optimism that I am currently in fades away…

Listening now to TATW w/A&B, episode number 161, tracks that stood out personally:
MLV re-remix of Bob Marley’s “Sun Is Shining”
DT8 Project “The Power Of One”
Super8 & DJ Tab “SURU”
Above & Beyond’s club mix of “Home
Amadeus vs. Aly & Fila original mix of “A Dream Of Peace” (Massive tune, Lebanese and Egyptian EM pioneers collaborate! Was also played by PvD in his sets sometimes! Brilliant ;)
The first one and the club mix of “Home” are stuck in my head, freakin’ amazing… Can’t wait to see A&B visit these shores again

Had an eventful day, was pretty tired due to lack of sleep which in turn is due to the lovely insomnia I have nowadays, had a small career fair/talk at university today, will come back to that later, but when I woke up I went on XT to read comments on my beloved Liverpool FC’s crucial champions league tie which is due to kick-off in less than 20 hours, and our great moderator, Arfy, posted this, it literally sent shivers down my spine and brought back some amazing memories, celebrating like a maniac with a bunch of Norwegian classmates to name one! Hopefully will SOMEHOW manage to go to Athens if we beat Chelski… Make us dream you REDS! The kop will be on fire, the players will not be able to even hear each other on the pitch due to the unprecedented sound levels… I haven’t felt so nervous, yet emotional about a Liverpool game for quite a while now… Will we win number 6? Will we shush all the doubters who said that the night in Istanbul was a fluke? Will we make it clear to everyone that we are NOT the freakin’ easy pushovers and underdogs they thought we were? Let’s see today at 10:45pm (UAE time ;))

Going back to the career fair, we had four guest speakers at university today with vast experience in the hospitality industry, we had:
- The former VP of food & beverage at Hilton, not bad at all! Was a chef, executive chef, food and beverage director, GM and so on, quit being a chef back in 1974 (!)
- A writer about wines who has her own company with its own publications etc., who started off being a business writer/journalist, but found her passion in writing about wines and beverages in general
- A lecturer at EHL, was a food and beverage director as well, until he tried being a teacher and it turned out to be his ‘thing’, his talent, been there for 15 years and never looked back
- Finally, a photographer, a big one (Well, not literally), he was a general photographer who got into photography by coincidence, now he has published more than 20 books (11 just for Le Notre), he’s a food photographer basically and he turned his passion into a successful agency…
They shared their overall experience in the industry, the main point that their talk revolved around was finding yourself and what you’re made for, you have to find what you excel at, your talent, it doesn’t have to be something obvious or tried and tested time and time again, 10 or 20 years ago probably nobody gave a toss about photos of dishes or articles about how great this Chilean wine is in comparison to a Spanish one or whatever, you never know what will the next big thing be, it’s as much as the general assumption (Or I’d rather call it misconception) that it doesn’t take a lot of hard work to run and operate a hotel property, think again mate! Trust me, it’s NOT easy! So, it kind of a good question: What are we really into, and what are we really good at? I have to find myself, somehow…

I’m starting to love myself… Hope it doesn’t turn into even more arrogance though

I can't...

... sleep

Been having insomnia for God knows how long... Sleepless, tired, blank, kind of stressed and worried, combined with feelings of miserable apathy.

For once, I don't feel as if I am behind, feels alright, but something's missing...

Good luck to everyone who's having finals these days, I feel you, will be in the same crappy situations come July...

Untitled...

Another untitled (but short) post

Fate can act in a curious way
When all that mattered means nothing today
All that concerns me, that drenches my thoughts
Is the sensation that seeing you brought

I was alone out there, with no one else around
Now I've fallen for you, and there's no coming down

Things to ponder

Random, very random...

Some things to consider in the next two or so years, thanks A!

Cornell, MBA, Masters, GRE, GMAT, TOEFL (Again... Argh), SAT, GOETHE, DELF (Not sure about this one)

Thinking about starting another blog, one where I post lyrics that resemble my ever-changing moods and/or my thoughts.

Time to... Start doing something

Dreams...

Now here we go again
You say you want your freedom
Well who I am to keep you down
It's only right that you should
Play the way you feel it
But listen carefully to the sound Of your loneliness
Like a heartbeat...drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering what you had
And what you lost And what you had And what you lost

[Chorus]
Thunder only happens when it's raining
Players only love you when they're playing
Say women they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean, you'll know

Now here I go again, I see the crystal visions
I keep my visions to myself
It's only me
Who wants to wrap around your dreams and
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
Dreams of loneliness Like a heartbeat...drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering what you had
And what you lost
What you had And what you lost

[Chorus]
Thunder only happens when it's raining
Players only love you when they're playing
Say women they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean, you'll know


*sigh*

Can't even find myself...

... in the choices I make

So odd, so insecure, so unusual... This is how I feel now, when you think you're well aware of what is going on in your life and your small world, only to realise you're so lost and so clueless about everything and everyone who it consists of.

When you try to convince yourself that this whole life is a one big fat arsed game. If you do not know how to play the rules of the game, you pay the price to play it. If you DO know how to play it, someone else pays it...

If only one would have the will to change things, but what if changing things around means that you have to let go of what you lived by for all your life? Your habits, the people, the thoughts, the mentality and beyond, the good and the bad of all of them...

So lost... so... alone...

One of these days where you feel you're on Mars and everyone else is partying on the moon while you're physically in the same freakin' room/space with them, but your mind and thoughts are elsewhere

Fade...

Fade…

Note: This was written yesterday afternoon

OK, after a minor encouragement, I decided to update this little blog of mine, I always wondered why the spell checker always shows that “blog” is NOT correct, showing alternatives to weird words like bloc, bog, blot, etc.

Anyway, at the time of writing I was at the pool, this is looking quite nerdy, picture a guy tanning while typing away on his laptop!! Actually, I got so bored sitting at home doing nothing, so decided to go outside for a bit and wait for my car to come back, finally got to fix the stupid dent…

Been off for about 10 or so days already, got 13 more days till school resumes… Enjoying sleeping at random hours, going out cruising at weird hours and not having many things to worry about, I should be thankful that all my parents expect from me at the time being is attend classes when I have any and pass my courses, almost nothing else. Well, they obviously expect me to not do stupid things like come back home trashed or break a leg and some other body parts by jumping off the second floor of a building!

OK, I will talk now about a couple of things, they might be unrelated or sound ‘normal’ or ‘3adi’ as we say in Arabic, but they meant something to me. Last week, while being in a similar state of boredom, decided to go out and start walking late at night, really late. It wasn’t one of my usual thirty or so minute strolls, I actually was crazy enough to walk all the way from my house to my university and back (Excluding the last 1 or 2 kilometers where I couldn’t walk anymore and went home by cab), I have no clue how long the distance is, but it took me about 2 hours and a half to get there including tiny toilet breaks and refueling myself with H2O…My feet and legs hurt me for the next 3 days, left leg was bleeding after coming back home, but heck, it was fun nevertheless! As “S” once asked me, “when was the last time you did something for the first time?” This was the last time I think.

That leads me to my next point, I was talking about my long (and crazy) walk with an online friend the evening after, and mentioned how much my lower body generally felt (It hurt, obviously), earlier today while talking, she popped a simple question. All what she said was, “How is your foot by the way?” it was a pretty straightforward one as well, but what made me ponder it is that I haven’t been asked such an unpredictable question for a while… Questions out of nowhere that relate to things you got over or forgot, but were so important and overwhelming not so long ago… Enquiries that show sincere curiosity about our so-called wellbeing & feelings… There’s nothing wrong with them, they’re actually appreciated… But it’s the combination of the timing, the circumstances and the current lack of such enquiries that makes one halt and start thinking… Or maybe it’s only me and my weird thoughts.

Been forcing myself to eat over the past 3 days, have had those shitty mood swings for a while now, they suck, but heck, people can’t be the same every single day, maybe some people are better at hiding how they feel and their mood swings, but it’s not easy to control them or at least hide them ALL the time… We’re not freakin’ robots

As usual, been listening mostly to the same Staind stuff in addition to house & trance (TATW 153 KICKS ASS, personal highlights: Inner Touch, Analog Feel, Paul Moelands’ remix of Beautiful, Sjamaan, Bluebird & Deep Breath Love Over Sedna), there’s a song that reminds me of someone special whom I miss their presence in my life, it might indicate otherwise, but this just relates to the last two months ONLY when things have taken the wrong turns time and time again… Maybe time will get things ‘back to normal’ somehow, and maybe it just won’t. People forgive, well, I did, but they do not forget, but fuck that, I am willing to forget and open a new page as they say… I might be “inconsiderate & pushy” at times, but I’ll boast here: My loyalty determination, dedication to the cause and anything I put my mind to and anyone I really like are all second to none, and these are traits that the people whom know me well (Including that person) know. Will she ever read this? Well, I would appreciate it, but at the same time I would be surprised if she did… anyway, enough blabbing, here are the song’s lyrics

I try to breathe
Memories overtaking me
I try to face them but
the thought is too
Much to conceive

I only know that I can change
Everything else just stays the same
So now I step out of the darkness
That my life became 'cause

I just needed someone to talk to
You were just too busy with yourself
You were never there for me to
Express how I felt
I just stuffed it down
Now I'm older and I feel like
I could let some of this anger fade
But it seems the surfaceI am scratching
Is the bed that I have made

So where were you
When all this I was going through
You never took the time to ask me
Just what you could do



And oh, in case any smart asses are wondering, I am still at the pool now, but I will attach the lyrics when I have access to the internet. Yesterday I had my laptop with me while cruising in my father’s car, I wanted to check something on it so I pulled to the side of the road, and to my surprise, there were two wireless connections detected, unfortunately there aren’t any here. Talking about his car, it’s nice to abuse the prowess of an overratedV6 like the one he drives (Pajero)…

Clubbing front: Saw Ferry Corsten & Nick Warren, top djs, quality guys as well… Was kind of gutted that Ferry didn’t play “I Love You”, but I was going mental when he played a couple of songs I requested (The Ones We Loved & his own remix of Adagio For Strings). Nick Warren rocked the house the following Friday, “1983” & “Mr. Brightside” still stuck in my head since then, wish he had played the latter at the end of his set though like he did in Lebanon last May at the defunct Beirut Train Station… Looking forward to Christopher Lawrence in two weeks time :-)

krazi :-)

So, time to update this little blog of mine… Its funny how I always feel like updating it when I am busy, but when I am free I go blank! (Like now for instance). Interesting weekend, watched Will Smith’s movie “Pursuit of Happyness”, quite a fascinating story, great deterimination, went after that for shisha at Fudo (Gotta love that place!), ending it with my usual late night cruising in Jumeirah.

Friday was one hell of a day! Was told late on Thursday night that the VW & Audi club here in the UAE are organizing a drive to Abu Dhabi & Al Ain, was so much fun! Took some wicked pics and videos, I just hope that no radars caught me, was speeding over the generous speed limit! (I just couldn’t resist it ;)). We went as well to Jabal Hafeit in the outskirts of Al Ain, the highest mountain in the UAE, when back in Dubai we went for shisha at La Marquise, was cool as I got to shower and change after that long day (My house is within walking distance). I don’t recall I ever drove for such a long distance (500+ kilometres) in one day, was it worth it? Hell yeah! Can’t wait till the DVD for the trip is out! Was well planned by M and co., S should join with his yellow devil the next time around! Just a note to myself: Don’t eat a lot zeit & za3tar at night!

Finally went to Peppermint as usual although I was dead tired, the Japanese master Satoshie Tamie was on the decks, unique mixing style I should say, can’t comment on track selection really as I couldn’t ID a single track (As if I am THAT knowledgeable as far as EDM is concerned!) but it wasn’t as uplifting as I hoped, lacked ‘energy’ IMHO apart from the last 15 or so minutes. But on the other hand I learned something, I should NOT listen to a lot of trance before going out, that usually builds up a different ‘mood’, and you can figure from the videos posted that trance was on full blast for most of the journey! Apart from bits when I switched to beloved Staind & tuned to some warm-up tunes, don’t recall by whom, either Greg Stainer or Judge Jules (Or maybe even both or neither! mixing up between Thursday and Friday night I guess!) Saturday was a typical day, nothing really exciting, ventured around blogland, studied for a bit, uploaded some stuff and finally went to the mall to do some shopping and have dinner with mates from high school.

Car’s due to be serviced today, I dread the consequences, I know for sure that the brakes and the suspension perhaps, speakers and the dent in its body have to be sorted out, God knows what else might need fixing or changing (gears maybe?). I hate being car-less, even for a short period… Will have to rely on the driver to pick me up and drop me for tomorrow at least (Jeez, how spoiled). I hope I get it back ASAP, got to change a thing or two in it as well next month. Will see if I can have the S4 bodykit put on it as well!

The partner of one of the VW & Audi lovers had an amazing looking mobile, turned out to be called HTC S620, a hybrid/collaboration between I-Mate & Q-Tek, thin, full-keyboard, nice screen and it has style, something that can’t be said about most I-Mates out there. Got my eye on it, It’s on sale at Plug-ins, and the price is not bad. Went there late last night, it was out of stock at the Madinat branch but they can get it. Sales executive there recommended it over the SE P990i.

Came across this today, was mentioned by the lecturer. Quite fascinating, people became lendant dollar millionaires (And on the other hand some lost a lot of money), funny how obsessed we can get with virtual, well, in this case it becomes virtual reality. Companies held meetings on it instead of doing so in an actual meeting room physically. You learn something new everyday!

Enough blabbing for now… I am pretty sleepy, thus, no personal messages this time around :-D, when I am fully-awake I might be in a blast & bash mood =p

Tag time!

Hello people... I've been tagged by Jaz, I have to talk about 5 obstacles I encountered when I started my journey in the maze of blogland

1. I don’t know about Wordpress, but for Blogspot, before the new beta/google version was introduced, one had to struggle with everything. Changing a small little thing like a ‘link’ would require a lot of messing around with the HTML codes and such.

2. Time constraints. I did and I still struggle with consistency, I don’t update my blog too often, the reason for that though is that I’ve involved myself in one-too-many things online, I lost track of all the forums, online communities, photo sharing websites, news sites, etc. that I am supposed to frequent! It also a mood issue! I need at least 30 or 40 hours in a day to be able to do everything! Unfortunately I will have to battle like the rest of the world with the measly 24-hour days we have ;)

3. Finding what to write about… I think I even mentioned that in my first ever blog entry, I had no clue what to write about… Ended up filling this cyberspace with a lot of personal stuff and what I’ve been up to (Or not)

4. Wondering who’d read it, well, it’s not an obstacle but in a sense it was puzzling me if anyone bothers/bothered to drop by and actually visit again =p

5. Layout and how it looks… I don’t bother much about that now as I find it neat and somewhat professional the way it currently is :)

Another post to follow with what happened yesterday!

p.s. a bit rude & mean (But who said I am nice anyway? I can be but depends), but have to say it nevertheless to some people:
Don’t like my attitude? E-mail us at feedback@FUCK-OFF.COM
At least I BOTHER

Staind

Great week as far as uni and family and concerned, small sister resumed class, father's happy, sister has been offered a great training offer (Well, great on paper and benefits, not in actual working conditions, but that is Dubai for you). She just called to tell us that she's been offered a job interview at Dubai Media City tomorrow, so happy for her! Personally, things are normal, chilling and enjoying being almost free, I like crash courses. You don't have to multi-task and balance one thousand things at the same time, just got one thing to concentrate on & khalas! Got a quiz tomorrow as usual, not bothered to study yet. So far this is my third crash course and it's been pretty smooth (Hamdilla), the last one was OK, but lacked organization and proper communication between the lecturers and us (Risk assessment project anyone?!)

Yesterday (Well, technically it was today as it was 1 am), went on my longest walk to date, about 2.5 hours, Sheikh Zayed Road, stopping to fetch water from star bucks, on to dhiyafa road, a nature call and refuelling with more H2O at a petrol statio (In addition to bumping into a coupla 'friends' I didn't even recognize), moved on to Jumeira beach road and then finally heading back home. Equipped with a jacket and the trusty iPod, was (and still in) a Staind mood... Switched to Trance Around The World (Episode # 133) for the last hour or so to give me a final push, Kuffdam & Plant's "The Ones We Love" is one of them vocal trance tracks that make you grin like an idiot but be on the verge of depression at the SAME TIME. *Take a deep breath love*

From the Staind songs I listened to, "Falling Down", it's such an amazing track, I think everyone can relate themselves to the words of this song at some point or another of their lives. *sigh*

Was thinking about the people who left (And came), L is gone for a month, the two Ss are busy, busy, busy with work (Bless you two!), A is back but couldn't give a flying fuck for someone who wouldn't give a toss back, another S is still country-hopping somewhere in Europe but due to come back soon (We will go to Bizza hut and mcdonalds again I assume) and the final S is in a certain autocratic country getting tipsy while H is being sent into a state of shock after shock (Thanks to her uni), R is "fayet bel 7ei6", like me, should see him today. Good luck to you all! (Even the ones I couldn't bother about, they need it)

Clubbing front: Satoshie Tomie, Tiesto, Ferry Corsten, Nick Warren, John Digweed and God knows whoelse are all coming in the next 2 months. Can't wait till I see Ferry live again, wicked, wicked few weeks coming up!

And oh, get well soon kus kus!!!

Kaputt...

Hmm... Tired, sleepy, stressed and to some extent: lonely... Fate and things can change so dramatically and radically suddenly... Don't know what to say really, but I hope that amazing state returns somehow... Everyone needs to talk and express themselves somehow I guess.

I am still relatively clueless and out of it... One can't adjust to a massive change in such a short notice, maybe to make matters worse: never adjusting.

Keeping one's fingers crossed, in addition to hope and pray is the best I could do, for the time being

*sigh*

Feel like taking photos...

I feel like going out and start taking pictures now... I really do... Can't do so though, both cameras are out of order (Lens issues)...
Also feel like going out cruising and listening to some more trance... But can barely move...
Wish I could go jog... Too tired to do so though

It's official... I am back to my very worst... I am as clueless as I've ever been, I'm in shambles all over again... I lost any sense of direction that I ever had... I just want time to pass... I don't want to look forward to anything because the future's bleak... Anyway, que sera, sera... Should revert back to having NO expectations whatsoever in life in order to be 'surprised' (hopefully positively) by whatever it throws my way... But all in all, things are pretty messed up generally...

On a bright note, Liverpool have given Chelsea the freakin' hiding that they deserved... The special one can stuff his injury excuses up his backside and can whine and rant as much as he wants, the team in Red that was playing was not worth 25% of the scumbags in the blue shirts, yet we OWNED them... Now if only we would carry on from this game and kick butt for the rest of the season... Still, there are 42 points up for graps... So let's see how things go :-_

Finally decided to blab...

First of all, I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas (Bit late though), Eid Mubarak and a happy new year!

Haven’t posted for over a month now, since I turned 20 to be precise… Feeling very apathetic now, couldn’t care less about anything, so numb, so lost… I finally have a brief break now which is due to come to an end in a few days as classes resume again, but heck, at least it will give me an excuse for everything that might go wrong. I was waiting for this break for ages to sort out stuff and get things sorted out but been too lazy to do anything significant (But I cleaned up my room maybe that counts!).

I don’t know what is the point of posting this anyway, doubt many will read it, much has happened, but due to my indifferent attitude I would struggle to remember many things which might be far more important than what’s to be written, but anyway, here are some random things/updates in the next few lines…

I was a pain in the ass in the group projects we had at uni, shame on me… Not motivated at all… Everyone was so stressed back then and during the finals period, and then you had me, the so-called former top student sleeping in the middle of group meetings and dozing off for hours rather than napping for a couple of hours before a final exam, three grades are out already and I got two Bs and a B-, it’s O.K., I just want the freaking 19 months to end ASAP.

Now I finally have a cat! Yes! I really do! It’s a lovely three-month old male Persian cat, it has some sort of an identity crisis though, I call him katkoot, my elder sister chose a weird name: Spider (!) and my smaller sister insists on calling him Lolo, but anyway, he’s a bit dumb, playful but mind you, he sleeps a LOT! But on the other hand, what is a single (lol) cat supposed to do really apart from eat, shit and sleep?! Thanks to my amazing girl for showing me the cute thing online initially, inshalla you will get your own lovely katkoot my K! For the time being, I have to face some competition from the white kitten :-D

Since I mentioned my SM… She’s the best thing that has happened to me in recent memory, it’s true that we sometimes have bad moments and some arguments, but we always seem to resolve them and it just gets us even more closer… Nothing’s gonna shake us! HOUSE ON HAYATI! Toz bil fejel! *I love with the thought of possession yaba*

A couple of good friends are gone for three months now, one went to Germany to basically freeze her ass off and the other’s gone to Saudi to chill his ass (Ans muscles) off… Will miss them big time, I wasn’t able to hang out with them as much as I wanted during the semester, but I sincerely hope we somehow will manage to spend more time during next semester… Fingers crossed! Have a blast!

Clubbing front: Hmm, been a month dominated by Peppermint, started off with a brilliant set from the Dutch master, the person who’s making trancers go into a ‘state of trance’ all the time: Armin Van Buuren! Next came Sander Van Doorn, missed that one though but been to the following two parties which were basically back-to-back sets by the resident DJs: Afroboogie & MadJam… Boy, sometimes these two guys leave us thinking to ourselves: We don’t need international djs every weekend! This wek, Bon Sinclair and Aramnd Van Halden were in town, didn’t go as I had a cold, plus, they were at a club I detest, small, overcrowded with idiots, picky bouncers and not a so good vibe or atmosphere about it (Referring to Trilogy), OK, Peppermint is basically a ballroom cum club, but the guys behind it are so good at what they’re doing that personally, it has more of a club feel to it than the Jumeirah clubs (Boudoir, Apartment, Trilogy and the rest). It’s the nearest thing Dubai has at the moment to a ‘rave’ club, somehow reminds me of the only club I have been to in Lebanon: The Warehouse (Which is literally a warehouse turned into a huuuge club)… Anyway, I am not a big fan of Bob Sinclair that much :-P.
I went yesterday to Apartment club, the original plan was to go to 360 degrees bar/lounge but it was closed due to the cold weather and the strong winds out there, so opted to go to the s**thole, to be honest, the resident DJ they have there is the worst I’ve seen since I started partying less than two years ago, poor mixing/transitions/EVERYTHING, bad choice of tracks, very, very cheesy set, for f**k’s sake who plays “Put your hands up for Detroit” right after a masterpiece like Supermode’s “Tell me why”? Not to mention that I think it was the first time i ever heard the voice of Eminem in a club! Was my first visit to the place in over three or four months, think it will be another 4 months till I even think of visiting that shithole again.

Enough blabbing I guess… I need to sleep, today’s a busy day, got to buy tickets for PAUL OAKENFOLD’S gig tonight at the Dubai World Trade Centre in addition to some whistles and glow lights (RAVE MOOD!). Might finally get an external storage drive to put all the excess music I have and live sets on in addition to an iTrip and a car charger for my stupid power consuming mobile in order to be able to stay in touch with ‘her’… It’s a crappy feeling when we’re having the time of our lives messaging only to be hit with the stupid low battery warning on the dam thing! *I need ya, I need ya sooo much!* “Cassandra Fox’s classic: Touch Me”

Some messages:
K & K: Love ya!
S: You’re a wonderful person, people out there just don’t appreciate individuals like you because they’re messed up in the head... Screw them!
S, S & S: Miss you :(, have a great vacation though!
M: Where (And why!) do you disappear?
M: Stop it! I like you, you are a good friend, but if you want to know what’s up there are better ways to know! And also, if you do not mean your words, then simply don’t promise anything! (The second bit goes to me as well sometimes)
A: I thought you were my best friend… Too bad, you don’t even recognize me anymore… It’s YOUR LOSS afterall… Might make me sound big-headed, but that’s the case I guess
E: Stop asking the same questions over and over again, I know you don’t care, if you did, you'd remember
S: Where do you disappear as well? Good luck with everything nevertheless
R: What’s wrong?! This has been the case for years, why do you have the same effed up reaction every single time?

Post over… Maybe someone will enjoy reading this crap 30 years from now! :)

I Love You

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZmBo-lmZDk

Fell in love with this track... Trying to find it as an mp3, it's so freakin' amazing... Stuck in my head for the past two days...

8 more hours and I say goodbye to my non-existent teenager life!

I'm Not Dead

I'm not dead just floating
Right between the ink of your tattoo
In the belly of the beast we turned into
I'm not scared just changing
Right beyond the cigarette and the devilish smile
You're my crack of sunlight

I'm not dead just yet
I'm not dead I'm just floating
Doesn't matter where I'm going
I'll find youI'm not scared at all
Underneath the cuts and bruises
Finally gained what no one loses
I'll find you
I will find you


Expect a proper post soon... How soon? No clue... Depends on my mood...

And here is your late, late doze of bullsh*t

Well, another late, late night update… Here I am in my cold room lying on my bed, supposed to be reading about China’s fascinating culture, but I keep distracting myself from studying for the upcoming midterms.

I don’t understand life, I don’t understand where I stand in this world and I certainly have no clue what lies in the future… Why do things happen? How are things related in this vicious cycle called life? Why don’t I understand things unless I was thoroughly engrossed in them or if I came to know of them from the very start?

Those feelings that suddenly appear from nowhere hurt, moments of worthlessness and futility haunt me, willingness to disprove myself disappears when faced with my indifference in yet another stunning vicious cycle of eternal internal conflict.

Also: Am I living on a whole different planet to everyone else?! Why is it so hard to integrate?! I am thankful that I am not desperate at all to fit-in with any group as I am fully-convinced after 19 years which make up my relatively short life so far that I will never fully be part of a group or a particular cult no matter how hard I try. I cannot be arsed really nowadays but it surprises me how hard it is for me while it is so natural to others… Anyway, one thing I learned from my adorable, beautiful and amazing soul mate and the few decent people I can consider good friends: If one likes you, they would like you for who you are, not for whom they want you to be or due to materialistic and shallow reasons such as how you look or dress for instance or your credit limit (Which is still non-existent anyway in my case).

Sometimes I wonder: What -and why-the f**k am I BSing, seems it’s a new hobby.

One last note: As usual, God bless you bibi! Hehe, I should be trying to sleep now if there is any chance of making it today, but heck, challenges are lovely :)

Somewhat lost

Don’t know how to organize my thoughts and think of what to write, it’s not like I usually do that but I put some little thought before writing, but for now, I’ll just BS…

Exhausted, full, sleepy, satisfied yet somehow depressed at the same time… Been up since 2 AM yesterday (In other words, been up for over 19 hours). Had my first midterm, went well thankfully (For a change), had a long day at uni, have another long day as well tomorrow, there are rumours circulating that we have another midterm tomorrow but the teacher seems to have gone AWOL or something, now I can’t study even if I had to, I can’t be arsed to open a book now, too drained emotionally and physically

In life, when we simplify things and make it so straight-forward someone must come from nowhere and screw things up and complicate matters (And vice versa, when one complicates things other make them seem to be so simple and easy)… WHYYY?! It’s killing me... It’s hard enough to find people to have decent and constructive conversations with, let alone friends and certainly let alone soul mates. You simply do NOT find such people hanging on trees or auctioned somewhere on eBay (Or Souq for that matter)… Reality hurts, but one must try their best to get along and make do with what they’ve got… I hate saying goodbye, who likes it anyway? I know I should be thankful and extremely appreciative for everything but I find that quite hard, I’m insatiable in some way I guess, always wanting more… Patience might be the key though. I reckon it is our only choice.

Well, as our lovely song goes *everything is beautiful, let the music carry you, maybe I will follow you forever!*… Bless you and see you next week despite everything bibi! Allah la ye7remna min ba3ad bas ;)

Ball, Peppermint-doze, Souq, etc.

Finally decided to update my blog, over the past two or three weeks I sometimes sat down and started typing only to change my mind and postpone it to a later time…
Well, nothing much has changed really, still so terribly out of touch, sleeping and eating disorders remained but not as severe as they were during Ramadan… So, some bits and pieces from my very ‘interesting’ life (Yeah right!)

The Academy’s ball was on Thursday, was an overrated one (Typical of the Academy), people complained about the limited selection of complimentary alcoholic beverages (Yeah, as if we usually get free wine and champagne everyday), but I couldn’t care less, had a great evening thanks to K, L & S, hope they did as well! Things didn’t go exactly as planned though but heck, we’re still alive & kicking (And trancing :D)

Been to Peppermint on Friday again, Usual Suspects (Resident DJs Afroboogie and Madjam) and loved it as usual! MadJam’s set was great (Maybe because I managed to recognize several of the tracks he played, something that can’t be said about Afro’s set or Hernan Cattaneo’s set the week before :p)… One track that I fell in love with was Changes – Chris Lake (Original vocal), really describes my life nowadays… I dedicated it right away to my best friend, we are having a week to forget now, but no matter what, you know that despite all the changes in our lives, I’ve got you by my side ;)… God bless you, always!

Uni’s been OK, got a quiz and three midterms in the space of one week, in addition to three projects to hand in the next four weeks, a couple of them are group projects and so far, despite having two ‘group meetings’ we haven’t done s**t. We’re a good group, but for some effing reason we’re too effing lazy to move our asses and start, but on the other hand, two of our group members seem to work best when under pressure so we might as a group do things last-minute and get a good grade, anyway, I am not THAT worried as I have that inner feeling that things will work out pretty well. We just need the time factor to kick in and the scare of handing it late to motivate us ;)

Talking about uni, I need that kick in the backside; I stopped worrying as much as I did during my first year at uni thanks to a very unproductive internship, after that internship I got to realise that being a ‘top’ student is useless when it comes to the workplace, it might help you land a better job but it’s what you do (Or at least the effort put in) is what matters… No HR manager/director will ask you why you got a B- in Finance let’s say or a D+ in Stats, it’s all BS to them, they’d only look at the school name! I hardly have any motivation or ‘fear’ to work hard anymore… I remember how I used to literally lose sleep over silly f**k-ups I made in small assignments, was like a perfectionist, I tried my best and hoped for the best but somehow knew how to get my way around things… Now I barely try my best, I barely do the required, I just want those damn 19 remaining months to pass by as quickly as possible. But as the saying goes, no pain, no gain.

Hmm, what else? Think my future plans are a bit more organized now, stay in Dubai after graduation, work for two or three years then start working on a part-time masters somewhere in Dubai (The Academy’s supposed to start such a programme soon, but I’d rather go somewhere else, AUD hopefully, assuming they have/will have anything). Fingers crossed that the Ritz Carlton will employ me! If that doesn’t work out, then I can always nag like the spoiled brat that I am to parents to ‘assist’.

Started going regularly to Souq.com, already bid on a small and cheap DVD player, a watch and a Motorola mobile phone besides a couple of food vouchers, I haven’t gone to the bank yet to apply for that damn credit card, I am so f***ing lazy, can’t wake up an hour earlier even if my life depended on it! Once I get that I will order a lovely Liverpool long-sleeved jersey, wondering what to write on the back, either Omie 11 or Omar 86. Anyway, whichever name and number I choose, it will be my favourite top! Liverpool have won the last four games in all competitions by the way, although all four were against mediocre opposition, Arsenal AWAY are next on the league fixture list and I hope it’s about time that we finally beat a ‘big’ team away, we never did that vs. Man Utd, Arsenal or Chelsea :S, Arsenal’s form has been up and down this season, they drew three games in which the opposition stifled their style of attacking football, I hope we beat them at their own game (Although we are faaar from an attractive attacking team like them)… We will see!

Looking for a new camera, my current one (Canon Powershot S2 IS) is just too big, guess I will opt to go for a point and shoot instead of going for a SLR one that I will never be able to use properly (Nikon D80 is the one I thought of getting lol!)… Seems I will go for the Kodak V610 although I never thought of Kodak as a good digital camera maker but it looked more attractive than the point-and-shoot Nikon cams and its got 10 optical zoom (AND Bluetooth!). Should have this one before the end of the month, actually thinking of bidding for it online as the price on Souq.com is almost half the retail price, why are cameras overpriced here?! The newer version of my current Canon costs AED 1,400 online, but almost AED 2,000 at local stores! Anyway, whatever will be, will be!

And oh, for f**k’s sake can someone tell me if Above & Beyond are spinning in town next week?! They’ve had Dubai as TBC for Nov 16th on their site but I’m still to read/hear anything about that! :S

Anyway… *Goes back to reading Rooms Division Management book*

p.s. K: You ROCK! I7na o bas o il ba2e 5as yaba. La 6eezna :D !

New 'look'

Thanks to the Friendly Lion for helping me out with the settings for the amazing new beta blogs!

Looks quite cool and it is MUCH easier than having to figure out HTML codes!

Two posts in one day, hmm, that's a record :D

Untitled...

Another update, yey!

Sitting in the auditorium at uni, quite early today, for the first time in a while the traffic was NORMAL! i.e., it didn’t take me more than 30 minutes to get to the Academy, yesterday it took me about 35 to 40 minutes to do that, while today it barely took 15 minutes, hope it is like this every single day :)

Got a tiny quiz in Economics later on today, studied as much as I can for it but it all sounds the same after repeating it… Think I should have invested my time in preparing for a midterm in French (Tomorrow), but there isn’t THAT much to study for in either.

Trying to find new places to study at and/or waste time at nowadays, Starbucks on SZR has been an obvious option (Besides being a good one of course), Shakespeare café is excellent as well, but I doubt it stays open until 2 AM like Starbucks! Been at Cosmo yesterday (Well, technically today as I was there at 1 AM) and noticed that they had other branches such as Hakawati in Marina and SZR and some other ones, I asked for specific directions/location details from the waiter and he had no clue (Predictable), heck, one of them had the phone number written and it started wit 04, thus meaning it was in DXB, when I asked the waiter he informed me it was in Abu Dhabi *Bangs head against table*

Less than a week left for Ramadan, and since I have no classes whatsoever on Sunday that could mean that I will have up to six days off (Normal Friday + Saturday, no classes on Sunday and three days of the Eid break from Monday – Wednesday, not bad at all! Haven’t got any plans really, not the type of person that plans things successfully, but I can confidently say that I will be at Peppermint (na3na3 club :D) on October 27th as Hernan Cattaneo will be back, missed his last gig due to the fact that I had to be in boring, boring Amman with the family. Had a laugh the other day, some people on Mahjoob believe that Paul Oakenfold, Ferry Corsten and another dj (I think Tiesto) will spin in Jordan in one single event, well, it would be good enough if one of them showed up, let alone all three!!

Got some pictures for you guys, guess it will spice up the blog a bit!
Hope you like them :)

More pictures at those links:
Random pics: 12/10/2006
Random Pics: 15/10/2006
And of course, my dA gallery :)

There are some pics that are supposed to be 'viewed' with this entry... Doesn't work obviously!

Ramadan ranting + other stuff

Well, finally decided to post something on my little online blog, so much has been going in the past two or three weeks, school started (Well, it is university but I’d rather call it school), L’s turned nineteen, Ramadan started and it’s almost over (THANKFULLY!) and I finally found my soul mate.

I’ve been nagging throughout this holy month, and it’s due to a reason, I didn’t have such a bad case of sleeping disorders for such a long time, add to that eating disorders and lack of any proper studying. There’s no time to do anything really due to iftar, one is sleepy and hungry before iftar and is even sleepier and pressed for time after it. Ended up putting on weight and couldn’t really study anything in the past two weeks, something’s wrong and that is certainly Ramadan!

Been rather disconnected from many people lately, I should stay in touch far more often with some people but for some reason I haven't done so… I owe apologies to some people I guess, feel like a stranger sometimes, lost, but I am hoping that I get my ‘life’ sorted out soon. I must, got no choice to be honest. Somehow must find a balance between my studies and my so-called ‘social life’.

Hmm, after my parents got fed up of my ‘expenditures’ they decided to give me pocket money instead, it isn’t that bad, at least I can save up some money and do whatever I want as long as I have saved up enough money, on top of that, it is not that bad as I was promised a brand new laptop, I doubt I would get it before the end of the current semester in Mid February, but it should be well worth the wait as I can practically get any laptop I want (The magic words: Price is not an issue). Currently this is the one that I intend to get (Assuming that no better or newer and more attractive models are released from now till I finally get my new toy which I will hardly use =p)


Should be able to finally get my own credit card soon, Emirates Bank seem to offer the most suitable credit card for little students (Fa3afee6 :D) like me. Inshalla will call up the bank tomorrow and double-check what is required. It would be much easier to buy things online without going through the parents that way. *Expects to spend more time on souq.com now!* My next plastic

Hmm, my thoughts are mixed up, jumping from one topic to another as usual, but Ramadan is almost over, that means the return of club nights! The line-up is amazing, Groove Armada, Hernan Cattaneo, ATB, Axwell, Deep Dish, Max Graham amongst many others, S should be back for eid so that is a plus as well, Hernan Cattaneo the first to spin at the Peppermint club on the night of the 27th, whoaaa! I’ve gotten sick of trancing and dancing in my room and my car and sometimes even in public!! Need some MINT in my life… Can’t bloody wait. David Newsum informed me that Above & Beyond are expected to come back again to the little Apartment club at some point in January or February and guess what? On their official site two gigs in Dubai are yet to be confirmed in November and December, not bad at all, eh? ;)

Some personal messages to different people, no initials this time though.

- I know I should stay in touch more often, been bad to you guys :(.
- You’re so adorable, bless you! Maybe I will follow you forever ;).
- Had a blast with you guys! Hope we do it far more often :).
- You p*ss me off, don’t throw accusations around; we try our best but sometimes there’s a limit to what one can do.
- Don’t like it? F*** off!
- To me: Pleasing and satisfying everyone is impossible, you know it you idiot out of past experiences.
- I strongly dislike how you appear and disappear all the time, stop acting as if you are always ‘around’ when you are not there.

Hmm, guess that is enough ;)

WOHOOO!

So it's 4:44 a.m. now and I decide to update my lovely blog... Thanks everyone for the comments and replies, really appreciate it :)

Been a great day and week in general... Thanks to all the people I met and hanged out with for making it so good!

OK, where to start, hmm, OK should start with what is still fresh in my memory, was at Peppermint again, season-closing gig and what a party it was! Fortunately it was on a weeknight, thus, it wasn’t as packed as it usually is when held on Friday nights. That meant less posers and losers and MORE space to dance! Was at the front with the ‘ravers’ most of the time and I think I will appear in one or two of the videos that they post on their website. Not bad!

What is bad is that the Municipality has not given any licenses for clubs to have DJs this weekend, Peppermint had a great line-up for Thursday and Friday which is now cancelled, but heck, Marco V. dropped a stunning set, looked like a very friendly guy as well! Smoked quite a bit today and last night (Darren Emerson @ The Apartment, was the 5th birthday party for Time Out Dubai magazine), but I don’t think I will smoke cigarettes that much for a while as no parties are taking place during Ramadan… Bye bye fags, welcome to even more sheeshas ;)

Football-wise, thanks to my lovely sister and ‘that’ SMS buddy for keeping me updated today regarding the game while I was warming-up for the gig, Liverpool have FINALLY won, and we actually played well. We played against Newcastle United, a team where we usually have no major headaches beating; we had enough scares at the back and Newcastle had 3 penalty appeals, but overall they didn’t threaten much and we wasted chance after chance, our new Dutch dude Kuyt finally broke his duck and scored, although he should’ve come out of the game with a couple or even three but heck, he works his damn ass off every game, fighting for every ball, etc. but the highlight of the match was a moment of utter brilliance by our midfield maestro Xabi Alonso, who has been struggling with form since the start of the season but he’s been one of our best players in the last 3 games. He neatly won possession back in our half, took a few steps, looked up twice before unleashing a beast of a shot from his own half which went in despite Newcastle’s goalie desperate attempt to save it. We didn’t play THAT good but overall we are going in the right direction thankfully :).

By the way, the valet parking service at the Mina A’Salam hotel is horrible. Had to wait for my car for 15 – 20 minutes, and when it FINALLY came an idiot driving behind my car it (Another one of the valet parking staff) touched the rear bumper of my car, I mean how retarded can one be to do such thing? Thankfully nothing was damaged in either car but it was pretty stupid. I know that they sometimes have to park the cars on the other side of the road but heck, why do they have 20 men literally standing there doing nothing? When I was looking for someone to give my parking ticket to one of them three bored-looking parkers rushed my way! Why don’t they provide better service by having a few of them stay in the massive parking lot across the road and phoning them or something whenever a guest gives them the ticket? Anyway, I heard worse stories happening with stupid valet parking staff, if only extra parking spaces are created, a place like Madinat Jumeirah for instance or Mercato definitely needs bigger parking facilities, too late though to do anything about it.

Also since we are talking about service and quality, what is it with Japengo at Madinat Jumeirah?! I went there with S & S before heading to Peppermint with yet another S, but Japengo wasn’t even in our original plans. We arrived at Madinat at around 9, and after getting lost for some time we decided to head to the Meat Company only to be told that we’d have to wait for an hour, went to Trader Vic’s and was told that it is full until at least 11 pm, we went to the very casual and laid-back Italian restaurant (Tuscana) and it was the same case… We went to Japengo and were surprised about how empty it compared to the other outlets that are all situated within 50 years of Japengo. But we learned the hard way why the place is aweful! The service is bad, the music is bad, there are way too many waiters around the restaurant, much more than needed. There is no back-of house area so we saw waiters polishing glasses in front of us and some other bored ones chatting for quite a while. Also something which pisses me off, I worked as a waiter before and I know that if it is the same waiter who takes and serves the order then he or she should know which order goes to whom when they’re serving, or at least ASK before placing anything on the table, when our drinks came the waiter just put them randomly without asking, we quickly changed the glasses but even when it came to the last glass which was obvious to whom it would go he served it to the wrong person… Hmm! A place called Japengo which has Japanese & Chinese food (And some Mediterranean as well) should have some music reflecting the former two, but I don’t think that Mariah Carey, Ragheb Alama and Kelly Rowland do that! The guy doing the juices kept on blabbing on the phone while working, a couple sat on a table nearby and they decided to leave for some reason, the manager was standing around talking and God knows how many waiters, did anyone bother to ask them why they left or if they want to change tables or whatever? NO! To be fair though we feared the worst for our food but it seems that the food made up for the service. It wasn’t perfect of the highest quality but it was good enough, at least way better than the abysmal service staff!

I guess I will sign off… Can barely see infront of me anymore and I am kaputt as our fellow German friends say… Guess I will have more to talk about tomorrow…

Take care everyone :)

Last few days...

If one ignores the crap going online, this week has been going quite well and it was amazing... My team (Liverpool) somehow ost against Chelsea although we ruled the whole game and created shitloads of goalscoring chances... Well, our next game is against Newcastle so it should be good :).Was satisfied with the performance overall but our finishing MUST improve. So, some things I did over the past three or so days:
Went swimming, bowling, wacthed football, shishaing God knows how many times!, ripped, burned and listened to some awesome music (As usual ;)), listened to Trance Around the World by my fav. DJs: Above & Beyond (Listening to it now again, they are so bloody amazing. Here is the link!), been hanging out at cafes most of the time, for you folks in Dubai I think you should try Momo Almaza by Harvey Nicholas at Mall of the Emirates and the nearby Armani Cafe :). Both classy and, trendy & nice

Some messages:

To SB: I owe you BIG TIME. All what you say is 110% true, too bad it falls on dead ears like mine... One day, one day I will learn that lesson

Another S: I love you despite everything, and you know that :)

L & S: OK, I've been a jerk, I promise I will make it up for you two :)

A few others: If you don't care about me, why should I give a flying fuck about you? ;)

You have your normal people, and you have your sick and retarded forumers

If you thought the previous post was long, then this is MASSIVE… But it is massive for a reason :)

Hmm, this will be one fucked up post, to some it will be shocking that this is how some sites on the internet are, for others it will be normal as the virtual world is full of morons like it's not that I care much now about the whole thing but people are asking what happened and stories were made up and such.

OK, here goes:
Since I am an internet geek who spends at least 4 hours daily glued in front of the pc/laptop screen, I ended up registering at shitloads of forums and online communities. I lost count of the number of football forums, photo gallery websites, newsletters, etc. that I have registered at or signed up for. One of those sites is what used to be a very respectable Jordanian-based forum called Mahjoob.

The current problem with this website is that things are mixed up between what happens publicly ON the forum, via Private Messages, via e-mails and via instant messaging. If you -for instance- abuse a girl that is registered at the forum via msn, you get banned or at at least you would receive a warning on Mahjoob (The FORUM!!). MSN and Mahjoob are two whole different identities, if some idiot is stalking or bothering you on msn or e-mail you can just ignore him/HER by using the amazing feature of MSN of blocking and deleting someone or in case of e-mails treating whatever shit is sent as spam/junk. Easy, isn't it? But there are some sick, sick people in this world, and unfortunately it seems that the majority of the sick and pathetic Palestinian/Jordanian people were fortunate enough to have internet connections and register at Mahjoob (An amazing place, until a year or so go).

I won’t really bother much about the sensitivity of people in this issue, it’s not like I ever did that and it’s not like people involved really did either. In the early hours of Saturday morning I had one of those sickos of Mahjoob online, I was characteristically hyper having came back from a fantastic gig at Peppermint Club, they had the number 4 DJ in the world Ferry Corsten spinning and mixing for almost 3 hours, so I found a certain Mahjoobian called SherryBerry, now more known as the whining, moaning, lying, two-faced BerrySherry, for one week at least as her former username was banned. We started having a conversation and I brought up the topic of the party and the amazing parties and the world class DJs that come down here to club nights like Peppermint. Gave her the link to the club’s website which had videos, she checked one or two of them and then went mad starting saying retarded stuff like the ladies are almost nude and the guys look more like gays and such, and blabbing shit… Anyway, the conversation is posted online here. She started accusing my sisters of being whores and me being a fag just because we go clubbing together every once in a blue moon.

After stating that she DOES go clubbing herself and after saying that Mahjoob is for losers like me who worry too much (According to HER) and saying that she won’t bother gossiping or talking about pathetic people like me online or anywhere else for that matter. I think this girl thinks that birthday parties and proms are considered clubbing… LOL!

Hmm, yeah, she is a typical conservative person who minds her OWN fucking business and is shocked about such things are happening in the world. A few hours (Or even less than hours) passed before I found this thread posted online by SherryB****h:
Clubbing Thread
Now we can see how ‘religious’ she is and how she is really not into taking the piss and gossiping and discussing other people’s lives. My name (Or nickname for that matter, which is Forlorn on that site) wasn’t brought up. When I noticed that thread I sent her a PM asking her with my typical dose of sarcasm about the reason she posted that.

Received a reply via a PM around 24 hours later from her saying that I should mind MY OWN BUSINESS! What own business? She’s the one who interfered in my bloody personal life not me! And she ‘advised’ me to be peaceful and quiet in order to avoid any more revelations, or so she thought she was blackmailing me. Called her a whore (Sharmoota bint Kalb, literally translated into: A bitch and daughter of a dog, see guys? I am useful, I teach you useful Arabic terms to use with some pathetic Arab ladies that you might come across in your life:)) and after I was threatened by her that she would forward the MSN conversations and the PMs that had the insults to the site’s forum administrator I just couldn’t bother or give a flying fuck anymore and I told her that she’s the administrator’s little whore anyway. So, this is the probably the 30th time I talked about this in the last 48 or so hours, I sent an e-mail with the fellow formers I know and it seems I had some backing by the Moderators as it wasn’t the first time that girl was involved in such fracas. Eventually after explaining my case to the site’s administrator (Banihani), both me and her got a 1 week ban… So, if I go now and say on msn to another guy I never met and I barely know that his sister is a whore I would probably be banned forever. She does just that, starts a huge ridiculous thread that she has nothing to do with and blackmails me and gets one week, fair enough (NOT!). Even worse, her advocates were out in full force immediately after finding out the tragic news that she was banned asking for full explanations about the scandal
Objection!

Back to the thread and the point being discussed about girls going clubbing with their brothers, well, I am into clubbing and I enjoy it a lot especially if the music was EDM (Electronic Digital Music, i.e. Trance, House, Techno, Vocal House, etc.). My sister tags along sometimes, she is NOT a drinker, not a flirty type of person and she does not even know how to dance even if her life depended on it (Trust me on that last bit). And even if she was doing all of the above and more for instance, it is none of anyone’s God dam fucking business!! She is MY sister, not yours! Thankfully she does none and she is amazing but also, what is it with the majority of us bloody Arabs and night clubs? (Or as some still call them, discos *bangs head against nearest wall*) Once they hear the word night club thoughts of people getting totally wasted and trashed, flirting, dirty dancing, etc. spring up to mind, they would think that khalas whoever goes clubbing is supposed to do all of the above in addition to getting laid perhaps at the end of a night full of sins, well, I’ve been going clubbing for over a year now and trust me, I never did any of the above and I AM A GUY!! Anyway, it’s something in the people and their culture, how can you explain that to some nutcase living in the 17th century? I think the answer to that has been perfectly made by my fellow blogger, Forexia:

“I learned in life that there is NO use arguing with someone who only and will only see thier side of the coin no matter what.

I tried and tried but especially in matters of right and wrong that has something to do with culture and religion regardless of psychology, sociology, platonic or familial love especially if it is unthinkable to be an argument in the first place by the outside 'evil and dirty' western world.......futile.

accept it. Like i said to a friend yesterday its in the bloood and total type blood change is impossible.”

And anyway, if your sister/wife/whatever was to go out ANYWHERE, regardless of place, wouldn’t you want to go with her? Don’t you ask your sister a thousand times where you are going, with whom, etc.? Then if you are going to a club the best person to actually be with is your brother or a direct relative because you know that this will decrease the potential of guys trying to hit on her, and because she will (should actually) be safe with you rather than with some random guy who might take advantage of her God forbid.

OK, I guess this is my side of the story, will anyone read it? Hell yeah, it’s about SherryBerry, the most innocent, lovely, religious and respectful on the planet! People want to know who is the wanker, the garen (don’t ask), the idiot who got her banned although she didn’t do anything. YOU CAN FUCK OFF IF YOU LIKE SUCH A LYING TWO-FACED BITCH WHO LOVES DOUBLE-STANDARDS AND LIVES A LIE. People I met and talked to from that site said that we have some really sick and fucked-up people and girls on it and I kept on denying that thinking everyone is so perfect on it... Thankfully this happened to prove me wrong. I am happy now, I was proven wrong :)

Will my ban be removed after one week as promised after me writing all this crap?! Maybe yes, maybe not. Will it change anything in the mentalities of the people? No! Clubbing will still be a major thing for the people who replied against it and SherryBerry is still Shareefet Macce (Meaning very innocent, yada yada yada).


You know guys what’s the best part about this all? It’s so ironic that my sister that night (Peppermint on Friday, Ferry Corsten gig) stayed with me for not more than 30 minutes, her reasons for leaving so early were:
1. Didn’t enjoy the music (No offence MadJam, your warm-up set was amazing as usual but she just isn’t into house or trance)
2. Got bored
3. The ladies were indeed wearing skimpy clothes and she didn’t feel comfortable with that since she was not.

My regards to *Glamour* and Forexia *hugs!*

Hmm

Didn't update my blog for a long time (As usual), I always feel like ranting and blogging but when I finally sit in front of the PC I just go blank and decide to do something else... This might be long.

Had a good and quieter week than the last one, last one was unbelievable… Can’t recall much but what I remember is going partying four times, smoking a LOT and driving all over town (And outside town as well to Ghantout, Awir Road and Sharjah... This week smoking has been less, average of 2 – 3 ciggies a day, calmer, no clubbing yet and not feeling really like it anyway but the driving is still there! To be honest with you Sharjah is an adorable city late at night, very peaceful and quiet.

Football wise this start to the season was horrible, my team (Liverpool) has conceded in every single game we’ve played so far (Apart from tonight’s 0-0 draw with PSV in the Champions League), we’ve lost the derby vs. Everton 3-0 on Saturday, OK, I can argue that they were lucky and all that (And they were, we had 20+ chances while they only had 4, we had three penalty appeals turned down by the dickhead ref G. Poll and hit the post twice. You can also add having 8 or 9 corners and controlling most of the possession. Hope we get back on track ASAP, we have a tough game vs. Chelsea this weekend, fingers crossed!

Hmm, what else…Haven’t been sleeping or eating properly in the last few days, not a big issue though as I find something to keep me busy. Oh yeah, I just remembered something, what is it with people and mobile phones? Once you take it out of your pocket they ask to have a look, being the naïve and stupid person that I am I always assume that they are just looking at the phone and checking it out its features and design but 99% of the time they tend to check out whatever pictures, sound clips, messages, and everything else you can imagine that is on your mobile. I had a Sony Ericsson K800i with its OVERRATED 3.2 mega pixel Sony Cybershot camera and being into photography I used to take pictures of everything and keep them on the mobile, some people were arguing that what I have on it is “Not suitable to have on a mobile”! Does everything have to be new, cool and fancy on the mobile? Do I have to put pictures of celebrities, silly java games and annoying ringtones on it to satisfy you? Hell, why do I have to bloody make you happy it’s my mobile! It’s up to me whether to put Elissa’s crappy tracks or Nancy’s pointless giggles or to put my favorite tracks! Anyway, thankfully a couple of days back a friend dropped a whole glass of lemon and mint juice on it, the thing was functioning normally but it ‘squeaked’ whenever I used the keypad, was sticky and had an ‘interesting’ smell to it, sold it off yesterday and supposed to get my new Sony Ericsson M600i tomorrow. For the time being, my good ol’ Nokia 9300 is perfectly fine ;)

Weather’s hot and humid, it improved a BIT for a couple of days but it’s back to the normal crappy heat. Also, traffic has been HORRIBLE… The new weekend here (Friday and Saturday) hasn’t only affected traffic negatively on Thursdays and Saturdays but for some reason it’s been ridiculously awful every day of the week… There are these new road projects on the way:
- Two new crossings on the creek (I think they’re the floating bridge and the new bigger Garhoud bridge. There might be even a 3rd one on the way)
- Widening of Al Wahda road in sharjah, the bottleneck basically
- Double-decker roads near my house: Defence Round About/Al Doha Road (Coincidently next to Al Murooj Rotana which has the Double Decker bar)
- The behind schedule and awaited for Dubai Metro
- All the road construction in the Dubai Marina and The Palm area

Many smaller projects being taken care of now, but it won’t be before 2010 when all of those are up and running, by that time the city’s population will increase and the number of cars will probably double and these projects will be obsolete and we will literally have to go back to the drawing board!!!
The brother of a former classmate works for the RTA (Road & Transportation Authority) in Dubai, and he told me that a new system will be in place in which cars will be charged when commuting between Dubai and Sharjah, and other certain routes, for instance for crossing the bridge. I don’t see that happening anytime soon as the concept of charging the cars automatically (Chips, readers on the roads, etc.) would take ages to implement.

Anyway, enough ranting for now, I probably will post this, read it again tom and remember 10 other things which I wanted to talk about but forgot… Anyway, for the time being, the above rants are more than enough me thinks :)

Back in hot & humid DXB

Arrived in Dubai on Friday night.

Last couple or so days were better, I got enough trance albums to keep me entertained for a month I guess and did some shopping. Hanged around with some people from the 'Hara', wasn't bad and played with a tiny cat that was a bit tooo playful (But cute!).

Not very interesting when compared to Dubai, as soon as we arrived back home from the airport I was advised NOT to drive or stay out late, ended up doing both! Partied with a couple of friends and had to sleep for more than half a day yesterday due to the fatigue. Back in DXB, and loving it!

*Still waiting for a SMS*