Beautiful Day!!

ياللا بينا ياللللللا نقضـــي يوم جميــل
دا انهــارده واللـلا يوم مالوش مثيـــل

... It makes me laugh too :D

This little refrain Mama used to sing it to me every morning on our way to the pre-school nursery of Mme.Alice across the street in El-Daher before she goes to work… that makes me 3-4 years old then!!!
I am amazed how fresh and clear the picture of this little daily walk stayed in my memory. We always laugh so much when we remember it :)

But this morning, just like every morning since many months ago, I wake up bored, lazy, sluggish and uninterested… think Garfield in his worst Monday.
And suddenly while getting off the bed, I find the very old morning jingle popping in my mind unexpectedly.
It just made me reflect for a second why my daybreak mood and spirit is becoming so apathetic. Why don’t I sing my song every morning?? ...

Bolitics: Presidential Elections

This Washington Institute article is one of the best commentaries I've read lately about the Presidential Elections. This analysis is written by an egyptian political analyst for the USA's Washington Institute which is a very recognized political research establishment that is solely focused on the Middle East. Ahmed Nazif and Osama ElBaz and many others lectured and posted articles there.

As he mentions in the last few lines, the November parliamentary elections will be practically more critical and contested. The problem is that our parliamentary elections are historically very misregulated and chaotic... Hope the people won't forget about Kefaya after the presidential elections are over to their dismay; and the egyptian judges won't take long vacations after September to participate in parliamentary elections monitoring! I think the dormant political parties would have better chances to come into the picture in the parliament and start being heard from there on...

Blueberry Muffin Cake

I am delighted to post on this memorable day that my very first successful Blueberry Muffin Cake is just out of the oven in a perfect shape .. color .. softness .. and taste :D

حلوة يا بلدي

I've been out of homeland for only one and a half years, so may be it's too early for this ... But I see it coming anyways ... and I already feel most of the words of this song.

We had an amazing dinner gathering today at Maged and Katia's place. It was simply wonderful. It's just hard to say how much I love those guys and their company... Maged and Katia surely deserve a post only about them :) ... Anyway, today we laughed, ate, talked, played and sang songs... Lovely songs from home. And one of them was this one ...

كلمة حلوة و كلمتين حلوة يا بلدي
غنوة حلوة و غنوتين حلوة يابلدي
أملي دايما كان يابلدي اني ارجع لك يا بلدي
وافضل دايما جمبك على طول

و ذكريات كل اللي فات فاكرة يا بلدي؟
قلبي مليان بحكايات فاكرة يا بلدي؟
أول حب كان في بلدي مش ممكن انساه يابلدي
فين أيام زمان قبل الوداع

كنا بنقول إن الفراق ده مستحيل
و كل دمعة على الخدين كانت بتسيل
مليانه بأمل ان احنا نبقى موجودين
في بحر الحب على شطين

فين حبيب القلب يا بلدي كان بعيد عني يا بلدي
كان بعيد عني يا بلدي وكل ما باغني بافكر فيه
قول يا حبيبي انت سايبني و رايح فين؟
أجمل لحن ده حنغنيه احنا الاثنين
يا محلى كلمة بلدي في غنوة بين صدرين

Elabreviate!

To be understood, elaborate ... To be heard, abbreviate!

http://one-line.blogspot.com

Scrambled

- Write something down.
- I don't have anything to write.
- But it’s time to post. You’re loosing the new Blo2’s momentum.
- I am not going to make up something just to write a post.
- Just pick a random interesting thing from the top of your head and write about it.
- Nothing’s on top. Everything’s just scrambled there in my head.
- Ok, what were you doing the last couple of hours?
- I was meeting with Sameh and Mina to prepare for Friday... We had one of those fights! Nothing unusual… being who we are; we normally disagree then quarrel then scream at each other and all… then cool down at the end and get things done. It was funny actually being so typical (the fight) :)
Speaking about typical. I have to say I have always been receiving repeatedly reports from different sources agreeing on me having such an irritating way in discussions!!
I find that particularly frustrating because I love discussions and arguments and debates more than life; and almost all the people I love in life either hate getting into debates or can’t stand me when arguing! ... That’s so bad. Life is unfair.
BLO2!

Boredom

Warning: This is a very boring post

I have always had this tendency to analyze, trace reasons and try to look at things from outside. And now that I am bored I want to track down my thoughts about Boredom … and since we’ve started The Blo2, then I’ll blo2 them down as well.

You can guess already that this post has a high potential of adding to your boredom … first because it’s about boredom ... and second because I am in the analyzing mood, which always proved to be very boring to people around me.
However I mentioned before in the welcome post comment I am not blo22ing the boredom thoughts for you anyway.

Now to boredom . I think it’s unarguably the MOST common feeling on the planet today … It’s like the default feeling of our era … in the sense that unless I am something else then I am bored.
The funny thing I discovered is that “boredom” is a relatively new word to the English dictionary!! Only 100-150 years ! … And they added it then just to have an English word for the French “ennui” :) … and since Arabic lacks Internet documentations so I couldn’t find similar info about “malal” or “zaha2” etc … but my guess is that they won’t be too old.

Also as far back in time as eye-witnesses can tell me, boredom wasn’t that common in 50’s or 60’s …Definitely not like now. It’s the trait of nowadays.

I tried to think of definitions and found few on the web that made a lot of sense to me. Boredom is a state … a state that a person may run into as a reaction to a stimulus. The boredom stimulus may be an active one such as routine and repetition of events that is perceived by the person as boring. Or the stimulus might be a passive one which is basically a lack of interesting and entertaining stimuli (things to see, hear or do, physically or intellectually); and this lack will lead you to getting bored.

Mmm ... bored of getting nowhere?? I have to make it clear that you shouldn’t expect to reach anywhere when I am in the analyzing mood :)

I am not writing about boredom to reach solutions … I have always tended to put blames when analyzing problems... So for the sake of throwing blames, I will blame negative perception and lazy passiveness for now.

Negative perception is the main catalyst for the active boredom stimulus, the routine and repeating events. I sometimes feel bored even while being very busy at work. I often wake up extremely bored just from thinking that I will do the same boring stuff again for another day/week …but this because of perceiving what I am doing as dull which is not always the case and perceiving my day as uninteresting which is not a fair way to describe it.
The challenge here is to decide to think of what you are doing as interesting and not to sleepwalk through the day, to take everyday as a unique adventure and that is a decision to be taken with the morning shay be laban. It is an attitude.

Lazy passiveness is the medium where the passive boredom stimulus grows. In English … I will get bored because nothing entertaining is happening or nothing interesting to do or to watch or to hear … I accuse me of being passive and lazy for waiting idly for something to come and take the role of a clown to entertain me or somebody to come and tell me some jokes or suggest me some things to do to fill my time.
If you ask Mee, that’s the fruit of TeeVee!!

Another way to look at passiveness, that was written on The Duke’s blog, Nevine wrote about people who would get VERY bored and annoyed of waiting for somebody who is late. I will paste the words … While you are waiting for someone or something, you have the option to choose what you will make of the waiting experience. You can actually just sit there and wait; you can choose to walk away (not a good idea if it's your wife/fiancee - somewhat suicidal actually); you can choose to do something completely different to fill the time. You can choose to be angry, and anxious, or you can choose to meditate, and relax. But what you make of the waiting experience is entirely up to you - not the person you are waiting for.
I think same relates to almost all free time … you have the option to choose what you will do with the free time experience … you can passively give up to the lack of entertainment and get bored .. or you can crack your fingers ( no names here :D )

I am terribly bored of writing and of this analytical mood … Time to get out of it if I want to have any chance of you coming back to The Blo2.

…

I logged in now to post what I have written … and to my surprise … I found that Rosa posted a blo2 of her own just few minutes ago… of course you don’t need me to tell you what’s in it because it’s right down here … but what’s really really nice of her is that it serves as a perfect case study for my own blo2 :D