The Suffragettes

Actually...

2009-09-15T00:14:00.001+01:00

... it's not all that bad.
But life surely is complicated.

A long time since

2009-09-07T16:38:00.002+01:00

Someone recently suggested I should start writing again. The thing is that emotions have got the better of me, and battle scars so raw that I may vomit words and regret them later, which seems to be the story of my life the past couple of years...
That's why I set up La Gueule du Monde. It's easier to speak in images these days. I have slowly given myself to vulnerability, and the anonymity and apparent distancing through the lens allow for the filthy/gorgeous to spill out without compromising my integrity.

But I maybe will pick up the keyboard again if I can practice self-restraint and the same pseudo-objectivity that I have come to enjoy with my cameras.

The List.

2006-11-17T23:59:00.000+01:00

I always feel nervous when I am being controlled by authority, even if I theoretically know I have nothing to fret about. Like in Beirut when stopped at an impromptu checkpoint by the army. Or on the bus when they check my Oyster card. I feel 'guilty until proven innocent'. Or when I'm queuing for a party and I know I'm on the guest list, but a part of me feels that my name will have magically disappeared, or that I just imagined it all...

I went to a big invite-only party last night. A trashy rival magazine's birthday bash. My name was on the List, my colleague and I were both on the confirmation email of our names being on the List three hours before it was due to roll.
I get there on my kitsch bike, and take my place in the queue. They're all in groups, greasy teenagers with ripped tights, bleached manes, and thick-framed emo eyeglasses. I get to the lady with the clipboard. She's got the List. It feels like a test. "Your name?", I think she was chewing gum. She had bangs and a long ponytail, white killer heels and the attitude of a bitch.
She's got to be, she's in possession of the List.
"Your name?
- Rasha."
She chews her gum and looks over the List. I glance at the clipboard, but she notices and swiftly hides it from me, like the nerd schoolgirl who wants you to fail in class.
It's taking longer than I expected.
And then she turns to me and says:
"You're not on the list, step aside.
- What?! I should be on the list, S. put me on it today. My colleague's already inside.
- Sorry mate, step aside now, behind the rope."

Everyone's looking at me with a smirk. I'm a 'blagger'. I don't look like one, though, I'm not wearing any make-up, not wearing heels and my dress in made of wool for fuck's sake! Blaggers are tall, caked in green eye-shadow and pink foundation, and wear gold mini-skirts even in sub-zero celsius. I didn't fit the part, yet everyone was staring at me, an underdressed un-cool blagger in brown wool...

List-lady's assistant the bouncer looks at me, after I've been pacing for ten minutes dialing number after number:
"- Can I help ya?
- Yes, my name is supposed to be on the list, my friends are inside, but I can't call them cause there's no signal inside."
And he looks at me with dead eyes and says:
"Well, that means it's time to go home."

I've got to admit, it's a pretty good line.

So I go back to chewing gum lady with the List, and I insist that she looks at the List again. I'm ON it, I must be. Can you look again? She rolls her eyes, but I'm sure that she gave me a break because I was just some plain, short girl, and I couldn't possibly be a blagger looking like I did.

"It's Rasha. R-A-S-...
- R-A...?
...
Yeah, you're on the list. I looked at R-U-S before. Yeah, let her in."

And, with that, I was ushered through security and into the dingy sweaty party.

Russia, again.
Old damn story.

Daft White

2006-11-15T23:25:00.000+01:00

OK, I must try to understand why blogging has suddenly become one of the hardest things to do at the moment. I used to effortlessly rant on about this or that. I'd simply open the New Post page, and from the whiteness of the box would spring a witty observation about something trivial yet fundamental.

Now the whiteness remains white.
Why, I ask myself?

My life is not less interesting. Quite the opposite, whereas I used to be unemployed, drained in beer-piss, theoretically penniless and selling my soul to any design firm with an extra computer at hand, I am now happily employed, on my way to a raise, out every night on the other side of the bar (drinking white wine, not beer-piss), invited to parties and music festivals. I've got a lounge, a cat, I go to the gym, I cook to eat -not to drown my frustration-, and I don't fret about going to places by train and not by bus.

Is this what they meant by life sucking the soul out of you? Has my semblance of balance stolen my creative spark??

Is my life suddenly uninteresting because I nag less????

I kind of miss the good ol' days of desperately trying to sniff glue to be one of those teenage delinquents I read about in novels, the drama made me a queen (in my head). Or later on, being jilted and having half of my heart ripped out of my chest... at least I became poetic.

So it's true that being happy kinda makes you boring.

But, then again, I'm not really that happy. Human and happy don't mix. I mean, I'm me, and me loves melancholy. I just drown myself in white wine these days, not in words.

I will one day return to the life of a student, and going cold-turkey on the ability to shop at will shall probably return to me the power of witty observation.

Until then, here's some pictures...

Hello again

2006-11-01T16:45:00.000+01:00

Fine, I'll get back to writing because staring at the same posts over and over and trying to summon some form of witty comment on life and whatnot is a bit depressing. So I'll just write about nothing. A daunting Nothing, that is.

I got myself a little kitten that I can project all my lack of affection and winter-fear onto. She's just about the most adorable being on earth, and has become the only thing at the moment that makes me laugh. She's all black, but she really is the most un-black thing at the moment. She's so black actually that it's hard to take a picture of her. She's just a black outline in all the photos, and if I use flash, her eyes make her look like the devil. But she's cute, trust me.

Apart from all of this black talk, well, there's nothing much to say...

I promise I'll be better tomorrow, and might even find something remotely interesting to write about.

At least I got a new post!

Ya Beirooooot

2006-10-10T22:42:00.000+01:00

London is becoming more and more like Beirut.
There's too much Hummous in my fridge. Everyone says Yalla all the time. My arabic has improved in the last two years. And my flatmate does a riz aa djej that rivals that of my mum's...

Maybe that's why I love my job so much, I can pretend I'm actually in London again.

Although they've now asked me to help curate an exhibition about Beirut Art (that's Kerbaj and Zeina El-Khalil to you and me.)

Akkkkhhhhh....

Can I?

2006-08-12T22:34:00.000+01:00

There is a rumour slowly travelling across blogs that the war will be over in two days. On Monday, they are saying...
Can I dare to believe?
Can it be true that they want nothing from us? Can it be this simple?

-- POUF --

Go away. All of you. And never come back.

Madness

2006-08-10T23:20:00.000+01:00

A horrifying article in The Independent today.

My country is being torn apart like Lego blocks. Some select fuckheads who think they can decide for the fate of a whole country, a whole people, a whole section of the globe, are playing a game of Risk on my country.
They think tactically, they think profit, they snigger and they cheat and take sides. And all the while, my country is being uprooted and turned into a bloody rubble.

The Independent article coldly discusses Israeli military tactics as if some cheap gameboard. From their comfortable conference rooms, with coffee and cigars, and their mint suits and ties, they look down on the map and move around their little plastic soldiers. With one flick of their fat finger, they decide to send 30,000 troops into my country. MY FUCKING COUNTRY. They want to win, whatever the cost, whatever the loss. The article says:

--------------
Eli Yishai, from the ultra-orthodox party Shas, abstained [from some fucking military meeting] on the grounds that while it was right to expand the campaign [on the ground in Lebanon] there should be a longer aerial bombing campaign before an intensified ground operation was launched. He said after the meeting: "In my opinion, whole villages should be removed from the air when we have verified information that Katyusha rockets are being fired from there."
It was Mr. Yishai who disclosed the military's belief that the operation would last a month, adding: "I think it is wrong to make that assessment. I think it will take a lot longer" he said.
--------------

And they make the call from their mobile phone to wipe out whole villages from the map, regardless of any inhabitants. And they transform their plastic soldiers into thousands of camouflage-painted troops who march into my land and destroy my country. They think, "It looks in Risk, so it must work on the ground..."

But where are your plastic civilians on that fucking boardgame of yours? Where are the plastic homes, and farms, and playgrounds? The little plastic schools, and hospitals? And how about the little plastic relief convoys with water and food and medication that are waiting to head South to help the stranded and trapped? Where are the plastic fuel trucks that the plastic hospitals need to have electricity and treat the wounded plastic civilians you ignored?!

While you play your game til the death, because you are so frightened of losing, I am losing my country. And believe me, I never asked to play your fucking game. Who consulted me before you opened the box and let all your plastic shit out?

So I broke down today again at work. And this time, I couldn't really pretend, and get back to work. I was in hysterics, shaking and blubbering, so much so that I left. I was more productive staring into space in the coffeeshop than staring at my computer's screensaver at work...

At least I got the relief of knowing that my boyfriend has gotten a full-year artist working permit and is coming to London. He even managed to get back into Beirut from Syria without getting blown up on the way, just because he has a beard.

SMS

2006-08-09T11:34:00.000+01:00

Last night, I re-read a message that my boyfriend, who is back in Beirut, sent me on the 13th of July. We were scheduled to meet up in Spain five days later for a music festival.
"My aya, let's just wait and see what's going to happen these two days. It's not going to last."

It's almost been a month.

He's now in Syria applying for a visa to come to London, just in case.

What frightens me the most is that this is what people must've thought back in 1975. "It'll be over this week, let's just wait and see." And before they knew it, fifteen years had passed...

What I fear more than coming back to a disfigured home is coming back fifteen years passed, like my parents did once before.

Day 28

2006-08-08T12:50:00.000+01:00

It's hard living a normal life on this side of the continent.

Suddenly, all conversation beyond world politics and media bias seems futile and only lasts a couple of minutes before it starts irritating the brain. I have become the epitome of anti-socialness, only partaking in group dynamics with the presence of my body. My mind remains somewhere in anxiety and dread.

How will I my city appear to me when I go back? Can I pretend none of this is happening? Am I still allow to dream of my return, of the children I want to raise there, of the apartment I furnish in my head, of my blue pebbled beaches, of my dusty mountain roads and turkish coffees in plastic espresso cups on the Corniche?

Is it shameful to say that I don't want to neither fundraise nor demonstrate anymore? With every chant, it makes it all sound so much more real...

I go to work in the mornings and spend 50% of my time doing work for a city whose government I resent, and the other 50% of the time reading up on the news. But it's the blogs, and most essentially them, that give me a more poignant and accurate report of the ongoing sordid events.

BBC will never tell me that my friends and family are receiving automated calls from Israel in which they equate Hezbollah to rats infesting our streets, and glorify their own Zionist state.

They do not tell me that the Israeli Minister of Justice (how ironic a name...) wonders why there still is electricity feeding Baalbeck.
And they do not tell me that Israel has a worse coverage of the war than the ranch-owners of Midwest America.

They do not tell me that the people of Israel chant "A good Arab is a dead Arab", which makes the military's half-hearted sorry excuses for civilian deaths in Lebanon a cover-up for their dream of annihilation and ethnic cleansing.
We are told and retold stories of the horror of the Holocaust and of the plight of Jews throughout history, through Spielberg movies, and endless documentaries, and here they are wishing upon others what they love to spread guilt about themselves. And I almost believed them when I was a spotty-faced teenager...

It's all maddeningly heartbreaking. A surreal nightmare I wake up to every morning with the on-switch of the computer. And that I am now starting to live in my slumber too. Slowly, the war has crept into my dreams and has placed me in the heart of it all. And I want nothing more than to wake up from the nightmare, and then wake again from the reality...

My father has told me that he has enrolled my sister in the Lycée of Saudi Arabia. They will not be going back home any soon. I could not stop bawling all day...

...

2006-08-02T00:21:00.000+01:00

The Independent did not cover us on its front page today.
I died a little.

Does it take another Qana to keep your attention for a little while longer?

Cyber-soldiers

2006-08-01T23:52:00.000+01:00

The Times newspaper printed an article about new Israeli army recruits whose operation is to flag Lebanese blogs and flood them with pro-Israel propaganda comments. This explains the many virulent taunts propping up on Lebanese anti-war blogs.

It also means that they are scared of the world opinion overwhelmingly swaying against the Israeli military actions.

I can imagine them scavenging through Blogspot, barely able to catch up on the reports, and vomiting their comments in a rush, which explains their dyslexic spelling and muddled logic.

But they only manage to enflame and irritate, coming across as the new web viruses.

It's all really sad...

Badge

2006-07-30T21:30:00.000+01:00

Beirut

2006-07-30T15:02:00.000+01:00

It took time to take to the keyboard and speak, but I think it is now time...

I think that most of all, I was ashamed of not being in Beirut.

I am not in Lebanon.
I am in London, cooking my dinner, celebrating my birthday, going to work for the British, looking for a new flat, and all the while, I am halved. My brain is functioning in London, but my heart is being torn apart in Lebanon.
I am glued to the net, reading up on the news, following the blogs, and I want to cry.

***

Last night, Qana was massacred again, 10 years on, and the same pictures, the same history. Repeating itself.

***

I wear my badge, it is my resistance during the routine, "Stop destroying Lebanon", it says. It is small, but it works. The guy at the check-out counter of the supermarket is reminded, the woman facing me on the tube looks on and will think of it once more today. "Are you Lebanese?", they ask. I nod, and in their eyes I know they are with us.

***

I went to my third demonstration two days ago, in front of an empty and unresponsive 10 Downing Street. As usual, policemen were all around, quiet yet observant, waiting for any sign of restlesness to call for back up. I approached one of them, Lebanese flag and white flower in my hand, and asked him: "Do you believe in our cause?". He smiled a small smile, and I insisted: "Are you with us? Do you believe in our cause?
– I can't answer to that, ma'm, I'm just doing my job.
– I know, but I need to hear it from you. I need to hear if you are with us. Are you with us?
– My uniform does not allow me to answer to that, I'm sorry.
– Please, I need to hear it from you...
– I'm sorry, but if I was out of my unifrom...
– Wink. Wink if you believe in our cause...

And he winked.

And I smiled relief.

– Thank you."

***

Every morning, I check the papers to see if we still make the headline. The day we will be relegated to page 5, with stories of the heat wave or some sex scandal taking priority on our demise and stealing our front page, is the day my will breaks.

***

I've added a list of links to blogs that keep me sane. They say more than any CNN or BBC ever could.

The Grand National

2006-04-08T21:57:00.000+01:00

Well, today was the Grand National here in the UK, i.e Horse-Racing Betting Day.
I've always categorically refused to bet, ever since I lost £1 to my then 6-year old brother forever-ago over a Batman album sticker card. I learnt my lesson pretty early. But since all my friends were betting this morning, well, it was part of the attraction of the day and I had nothing else to do. I usually fret over £2 for a coffee, yet there I was knowingly throwing away £8 for nothing. I have learned to trust and think by my streaks of bad luck.

To aid the act of choosing a horse out of 40, The Sun newspaper is smart enough to offer a whole spread dedicated to the horses' history, as well as the sacred bet-odds list. So, after a whole year and a half of boycott, I finally drowned over the Sun newspaper. Yes, the journal infamous for its page three girls was now going to make me rich!
The horses' names: Lord of Illusion, Shotgun Willy, Nil Desperandum, Just In Debt, or Tyneandthyneagain... but I chose Numbersixvalverde. Because he wasn't the favorite, thus lesser odds, and because his name was kinda cool. And also because Samer, who is doing his PhD, bet on him too. You see, I trust people with PhDs. So, £4 on Numbersixvalverde, and another £4 on Iznogoud, one of the three shittiest horses, but with a 1-200 odd, so, what the heck...

And off they go!! All bidders in Bethnal Green staring at a bunch of horses running on the TV screen of the local pub. Of course, it's all a jumble of horses seen from the stratosphere, and the commentator with a tone straight out of the 30s mumbles out random names, so you don't really know what the hell is going on. Sometimes you catch him saying the name of your horse, and you squeal with delight, and then realize he could've said "xxxxxxx is a real goner" for all you know. Until you get towards the end, and you realize Numbersixvalverde is in the top three, and your heart starts to beat, and you're fucking scared because there are horses falling at every hedge, and your whole life depends on those £4, when you realize that Iznogoud just is no good, and Numbersixvalverde (no nicknames allowed) goes in the lead, and there are no more hedges, and he's whipping his horse's ass, and Samer screaming "whip him harder! harder! faster! Faster!!!!" and... NUMBERSIXVALVERDE IS A WINNER!!!!!!!!!
And my £4 are now £48, and I think, Damn! I'm one inch closer to being a gambling millionnaire! And you beam left and right at the Bethnal Greeners coz they bet on the favorite, Clan Royale, who, with a 1-5 odd, would've brought them almost nothing anyway... And you're there, throwing it all in, taking a risk, and it pays off!
Damn the sun is warmer when that happens!

...

2006-02-28T10:30:00.000+01:00

I just love it when life spins around and slaps you in the face... All it's trying to say is never to contemplate relief, and see it all as a goddam mountain of mashed potatoes where repose only awaits us on our deathbed.
Yipee yey. Can't wait.

(Nice piece of advice from myself to myself on a Tuesday morning after a shower and a fourth Gitanes.)

Zara

2006-01-28T01:11:00.000+01:00

He brushed her hair, removing strands floating in her face, he patted her waistcoat. She was very still. He adjusted her collar, peered in her eyes, and gently brushed her hair again, fixing her fringe so that her eyes showed. He buttoned her shirt, and stroked her nose. She still stood poised, and now perfect.
She was Zara's new clothes mannequin, all plaster and plastic, and he a simple floor manager... but it was the most tender scene I had seen in a long time.

Hoorah!

2006-01-25T18:50:00.000+01:00

Dear All
(who still check in despite the recent drought, and for that, I thank thee),

A simple announcement:
I have at long last found a job.
Not just a job, but a satisfying wonderful experience-to-be, and an answer to my year and a half of struggling in this Goddamn designer-infested city.
Not any ol'job that I could've done in Beirut, but a job for which my stay in London makes worthwhile. A job that is, as yet, inexistent in Beirut, and which I will ultimately re-import back to the homeland (if I sound arrogant, I do apologize).
Not any Dr.Health, not any psycho-boss, not any " non-paid :-( " exploitative mini-companies...
I am officially designer within an established magazine, part of the small yet efficient team. It took me 6 months of flirting on and off, 6 months of popping in, 6 months of "have a good vacation!", 6 months of slaving for free (yet enjoying it all the while, I must admit)... 6 months! 6 x 31=186 days of 'hanging around'. Ouf. Feels immensly good...
I congratulate myself, and do give myself a firm and amical pat on the back. Well done, me. Well done...

...

2006-01-22T19:42:00.000+01:00

I feel tragically empty, and little things irritate and turn my owl-head into obsessive mania.
Like my 'space' key on the keyboard: it squeaks lightly when I press it, and I know it is a conspiracy to make my quest for balance quasi-impossible. And the fact that I have a blue haze on my screen that no amout of calibration can make disappear. And my 'acharnement' to buy those Pantone books on eBay, always being outbid by some anonymous ****head from Devon, or Putney, or Strafofooajdjfha-shire... The remnants of Blue-Tak on my pristine new room walls cause glitches in my brain. The sound of mutated pigeons gloating at my window at 6.00am, the squashed dog shit on the corner pavement, and the smell of my own cigarette fumes that I can't seem to cut down on! And there's never any soup left at Cofee@ when I want some!! The squeaking! The squeaking of the Space bar!!! UGHHHHHH!!!
Ouf. Did not help that I have added yet another design job to my list, with the little PS that goes "unfortunately, it is not paid ;-("... I run a design charity. Jolly me. How do people envisage buying cars? Or sofas, or microwaves, for that matter? Let alone a chandelier for £785?
I feel empty, and it is quite disturbing.

Good to Be Back

2006-01-17T11:32:00.000+01:00

God, that trip to Spitalfields Church feels like years ago!

In the past month, I've been to Beirut and back, celebrated a hectic and very drunk Xmas, as well as an origami-filled home New Year's, designed a whole magazine for £250 instead of £4000, moved flat for the 5th time in a year and a half -after the mice found me again-, and am now starting on a the design of a new magazine where I am paid, wait for it... zilch.

Basically, I lasted two months in Spitalfields. My flatmates ended up being worse than the cockroaches or mice of Bethnal Green, with moulding food in the kitchen and hairballs in every corner of the tortuous Amsterdam-type house. And they were very big fans of the heating system, which turned my tiny room into a sauna by 3am. The last straw came with yet another mouse roaming in the kitchen; and knowing that there was as much food on the floor as there was in the cupboards, there'd be a new civilisation within 2 weeks. It was all a sweaty, vomit-inducing experience that I am happy to close the chapter on...

I feel immense gratitude when my feet get cold in my new room.

It's good to be back in London, where business is yet again slow, and the skies grey, and cheek-pinching family members of the 13th degree are far, far away...

A Merry Afternoon

2005-12-18T22:55:00.000+01:00

As I was cycling home this afternoon, the bells of ChristChurch of Spitalfields were on full blast. There was to be a Christmas Carols mass, and for some strange reason that happens once in a blue moon, I decided to participate. I usually only ever go to church at odd hours when it is eerily quiet and resounds with the echos of my steps. But a bit of Karaoke seemed alright for a Sunday afternoon of Xmas shopping.
And as the violin played, and the choir did its tremolos, and the old and young, and babies, and fathers and teens and bright young ones sang with their croaky voices, with photocopied Bethleem lyrics in hand... i was touched. I was touched because I realized that not once since school did I ever stand up and sang dedicatedly with a hundred others. Not since Independence Day in Beirut, not since Singing classes in Primary classes, not since the school plays of my 5ème... Never does it ever happen that we sing with strangers with the will to hit that note right and melt in the masses.
It was heartwarming for the first two songs, and then I said Amen, and went home, all relaxed and yoga-like, and cooked myself some Tesco Kiev.

++ MISSING ++

2005-12-01T02:10:00.000+01:00

Someone stole my white leather gloves tonight at a pub. They were dirty and grey from all the smoking and general mis-handling, but it still pissed me off. Who'd so desperately want a grey pair of white leather gloves?! I had to cycle back without them, and now my fingers are blue. I really need a new pair of gloves. Gwen doesn't work in this weather without them... Shit.

UAE to London

2005-11-29T22:36:00.000+01:00

You know when you have so many things to do that you end up doing nothing. I've been very lazy lately, especially with blogging, but i'm hoping to get back on track starting as of now! So i did go to Dubai and my conference talk went extremely well. I was a bit nervous beforehand about speaking to such a large audience, but i have to admit the minute i was up there i enjoyed it so much (i think i may secretly love the limelight) and it felt good to be sharing my work with everyone. People were very much intrigued by the research and the blogging phenomenon in these 3 countries that it went to two newspapers and a local TV (this better not be my only 15 minutes of fame, i swear!). Anyway, the conference in general was interesting, some views were a little extreme and a little disappointing, but there was definitely a general sense of enthusiasm and interest in new on-line movements and journalism, and their projection on our societies. It was a very short trip but also my first time in the Gulf and a relief to be away from freezing London for a while.

0800-Self-Employed

2005-11-28T23:35:00.000+01:00

I like being Self-Employed. It means that I can never be Unemployed again. It's technically impossible. If I have no projects to work on, it is because "business is slow".
I still have office hours, but I set them myself: 11.00am to 8.30pm, with a 2 and a half hour lunch break. I can work in my pyjamas and lick my plate with one hand while I type with the other. I can put Brel's Amsterdam on repeat and no one can object. I can scream curses out loud. I can give myself a pedicure while on the phone with a client. I can -and will- claim tax-back on any book or magazine I buy, and that includes OK!, Marie Claire or Harry Potter, because they are my "source material, my inspiration" as a publication designer... Hey, I can even claim tax back on bike mileage: 20p for each mile!
Including unpaid projects (and that accounts to 60% of my workload, but that's OK because they're great projects), I have never had as much work as when I stopped being employed with that demon... I am now working for a clothing label, three magazines, an insurance company (OK, curtesy of my father...) and a jewellery designer (SCHRmm, for that matter).
God damn, I loooooove paying my own taxes! Because they're mine! ALL MINE!!

Sunday Bloody Sunday

2005-11-27T22:37:00.000+01:00

Yes, This is how I feel today.
Multiple full-frontal stab wounds from a Hegellian British boy idiocy, but still looking really sleek and design-y...
It would make a wonderful Xmas present from me to me, especially that there aren't actually any sharp knives in my house, which leaves me to slice up my bread loaf with a spoon.

1920s

2005-11-26T12:18:00.000+01:00

I was lead impromptu to a little private function at a traditional English pub, where it turns out, the theme of the night was the 1920s. Not being in the least twentified, I convinced myself and others that I was a chambermaid of the time, wearing the ragged old clothes passed on by my rich mistress, a tatty skirt, a grey ageing jumper (which I bought second-hand anyway), and a friend's red lipstick applied in haste to bring on the pout. Oh, and my name was "Gazelle of the Desert"; much more Kamasutra than Surrealist, but I've started to get bored of "Like the country?" at the sound of my name...
In any case, it was all pretty fun, seeing the length to which people fit the glove of the theme. I could imagine a dusty part of their Millenium closets from which they whisk out the feathered head bands, the sequined dresses, lace gloves, bowties, tweed vests and bowler hats. Everyone looked very authentic, and played the part perfectly as they tweaked their accents to match the clothes. Apart from a couple of stray futurists, everyone was very Moulin Rouge. The Three-Piece-White-Suited Count who flew the glass of white wine out of my hand even gracefully replaced it with a shiny white smile and bow of the head. Perfect 1920s manners...
The only fault to the seeming perfection was the anachronistic breakdown of class segregation: the paperboy flirted with the Madam, the mine worker conversed with the Courtisane, the chambermaid (me) with a Baron named Marcus...
Oh, a perfect world...

Hello Unemployment!

2005-11-18T22:36:00.000+01:00

I haven't blogged in ages, and an hour after having quit/been fired/being made redundant/driven my boss to insanity/been driven to insanity by my boss/decided I hate design studios/mutually agreed on personality clash - or whatever you want to call returning to unemployment, I had the most uplifting revelation of the year... WORK DRIVES US TO INSANITY.
My mind was sucked into the FullTimeDesigner9to6MonToFriThenWatchAMovieBeforeBed sleep mode and nothing else in the world ticked me, thus the lack of blogging activity. Very simple math, really. When you hate your job/boss/chair/studio music, it becomes your only obsession, and everything else is void. A very sad thing indeed.
Actually, some author -whom I will shortly try to recall- wrote a whole book about the subject of Stupidity, of which a chapter highlights the dictatorship by which earthlings are forced to comply to a life of automated routine into the full-throttle mode of Highest Productivity. "I Produce, Therefore I Am (Worthy)". Anything else, seen as laziness, is abnormality in the Capitalist state of things and beings (the text does run along those lines, but I have allowed myself a little freedom of interpretation, bless me)...
Yes, unemployment now feels bliss.
Actually, my boss was a psycho-tette. Heavily threatened by my presence, and resorting to agressivity and abuse of "boss" power, she loved a smirky comment (and a nervous twitch of the neck). And that little guttural giggle of the mid-life crisis pitch! I tried to play dumb employee, I swear I did! But I realized along the way that I am not dumb. So after being confronted with yet another display of Boss's sentimental bicker and over-zealous anxiety yesterday, I did the undo-able and snapped back. Sha-BAM! I reached the point of no-return, and unemployment was scheduled for 6.30pm. Which felt great... and not... but still great.
Horrible how money and the allure of a paycheck makes us settle into bitterness. Because, even though I was miserable and driven to madness by that Mary-Poppins laugh, I was Productive. I was Employed.

Actually, I wasn't technically employed, and it turns out she is unethically bending the law and liable to a big fat fine, and I to a little compensation, which might be a nice thing to investigate now that I have free time on my hands again.... HA HA HA (my rendition of evil laugh).

And Hello Again blogosphere. It's good to be back!

Blogging in one word/sentence

2005-11-11T16:38:00.000+01:00

As you all know im preparing for the conference which is in about 10 days and converting an academic thesis into a lively presentation is definately not, as ive tediously gathered today, the easiest job on the world. So to liven it all up, maybe not the best of ideas but hey i will give it a shot (anything to keep me away from actual preparation), I would like your feedback: If you had to describe blogging in this region in one word or a very short inetersting sentence, what would it be? Im expecting the award might go to Schrmm given her wild imagination but i have faith that all you bloggers are quite the intellectuals and creatives that came about in the results ( a little hint: 42.9% of all of you are educated to a degree of masters or higher and 38.5% are in design, art, journalism and multimedia). So lets start rolling them in....

Return of the Chronic Bronchitis

2005-10-28T19:20:00.000+01:00

I know that I am very ridiculous... I have been battling a heavy bout of Bronchitis for the past week, which feels as if I am spewing out most of my bronchiols with every cough. I have been prescribed an inhaler, which is heaven-sent when I am startled in the middle of the night by the sound of my own rasping breath. I am also on maxi-dose antibiotics, and was scolded off to the nearest hospital to get an x-ray for my 2-ton chest. I have insomnia from trying to find an adequate position to fall asleep in, which will not squash my aorta and kill me from suffocation. Not to mention trying to balance the lung-clasp with fraying a position between the protruding springs of my new old mattress. If I walk 5 minutes on flat ground, I need 10 minutes to catch my breath...
And still I cannot even cut down a teeny bit on smoking. I insist on having my morning coffee with a cigarette, even though my throat is barely a millimeter wide, and I have to scrunch up my eyes in pain as the smoke forces its way down to my clogged lungs. If I'm smoking in a cafe, everyone tuts at me for making such a racket with my bouts of coughing.
Between two puffs of smoke, I need one puff of my inhaler. Talk about masochism...
I am ridiculous, yet I cannot stop. The thought is inconcievable. I am irreversibly addicted to nicotine.
And it freaks the living daylights out of me!

New Home, New Flat... New Anxieties

2005-10-23T19:48:00.000+01:00

I've finally settled into the new flat, even though I still do not consider it my home. I know it needs time, but I don't like change. My food is in a box on the kitchen counter, because I haven't managed to pin down any of my other 4 flatmates to empty out my cupboard space. There's beard hair all over the bathroom floor, empty pepsi cans in the lounge, not to mention an unwashed plate of dried up and shrivelled pasta next to the sink. I can't remove the blotches of Blu-tak on the wall, because they seem to have super-glued to the paint. The ceiling in the lounge is leaking water (and winter hasn't even started yet), and my next-door room neighbour listens to heavy metal.
But the rent is cheap, the flatmates seem nice (though untidy), and there are neither cockroaches nor mice wandering about.
So I guess I'll give it some time...

And I'll wait til tomorrow to dissect the New Job part, because, yeah, I got the job.

Ugly Brown Closet

2005-10-19T22:16:00.000+01:00

I never thought that moving home would be so difficult. I have been trying my best for the past 4 days to send my stuff a few blocks south of my chicken shop flat, but it has proved almost ridiculously impossible. And the reason is pretty simple: an ugly brown closet.
There are two closets in the new room, and not owning a clothes factory, frankly, I don't need the extra storage. But it's obnoxiously there, and there's no way of getting it out of the smack-middle of my new (teeny) room. The house is 4-floors high and Amsterdam-narrow, and the window's too small to chuck it out...
I've been having delirious fantasies of breaking it into a million brown pieces with an axe, but only I managed to shatter my mirror (which is not so bad, cause it distorted me with a few extra kilos anyway). Basically, my clothes, shoes and scanner are in one flat, my bedsheets, laptop and desk are in the other, and I'm in the middle of the road with my wet bike. So I escaped the torment by sitting at the coffeeshop for 3 hours, writing endless To Do lists while engorging astronomical amounts of caffeine to drown the mental paralysis.
I know there's a way to resolve the curse of the ugly brown closet, but til then, I will sit on my wet ass and wait. If I smoke enough roll-ups, it might just disappear...

"A Perfect Day"

2005-10-16T22:09:00.000+01:00

Coming to a big screen near you is the new movie by Lebanese film-making duo Joana & Khalil Joreige, "A Perfect Day". I am not going to repeat the synopsis of the film because it's everywhere on the web, and here and here too... Basically, the movie has been travelling around festivals worldwide, has won the FIPRESCI prize at the Locarno Film Festival, and Ziad Saad (Malek) was awarded the Best Actor Award at the Namur Film Festival in Belgium, making it the first time an Arab has ever earned such a merit!

The reason why I am dwelling on this cinematic event is because Ziad is a very close friend of mine, and having attended required Drama classes at college together, I can attest to the fact that he has always been a reluctant pupil, and not a very succesful one for that matter. While I shone in class, really, he sucked... Never had he had any professional acting experience before, and I am proud to have been the first to cast him in one of my university short-movie back in the days when I still believed I could win an Oscar for Best Director. Actually, if I recall correctly, only his arm appeared in my movie, but nonetheless, I believe I do have some credit in his fine breakthrough performance in A Perfect Day.
So the award came as quite a shock for the both of us, and not being jealous in the least of my friend's award (which he was not able to personally collect for absence of a visa), I am proud to be the one to urge everyone to support this movie by your paying presence in festivals everywhere! I will be (finally) viewing it at the London Film Festival next week, and, armed with a cardboard cutout of an Oscar statuette, I will be delivering my speech of acceptance at the end of the movie on the sidewalk somewhere near the ICA exit doors.
Be there in numbers!!!! Thank you, thank you so much!

2005-10-14T22:58:00.000+01:00

I like being tipsy. Or drunk, pissed, hammered whatever you want to call it. It proves how weak our human little bodies are: a sac of hormones, blood, organs and secretions that are too easily derailed and lead into momentous havoc. When I am drunk, it means that I have tipped over the perfectly fragile balance inside with my little finger, machiavelic drunken smile plastered on my face, and sent my microscopical hormones into apocalytical hell. Synapses short-circuited and alcohol spilled among my hemoglobins. How strange the feeling that my body loses control, that my eyes fill with blood til the veins almost burst, making the green of my iris blinding. Mary Magdalene blue-green bloodshot eyes, like the most well-composed Rheims INRI photograph...
And that smile. That daft smile of all is beautiful, and pretty and dumb.... Which panicked hormone creates the smile? Not the coy sober smile, but the dumb grin that only my drunken mind finds pretty, but that actually makes me look like a poodle on speed. Not the drunk of the red-nosed Clerkenwellers, not the drunk of the Shoreditch bus-stop pukers, but that private drunkeness, that hormonal state of un-control where everyone is worried because I look much too happy.
I don't really know why I am talking about being drunk. I have not wined enough, or else I would've been too selfishly happy to disgress on my state. I have raised my tolerance of wine too fast in the past year, and only the corners of my mouth curve up. I just wish I did not need to drink to feel the dumb ecstacy of tipsiness. I wish I did not need to poke my hormones and acidify my veins in order to grin like a fool...
I finally got my National Insurance number. I am happy to be a valid i-D number in England. Cheers to barcodes.
Upon re-reading this post, I feel I have spoken the words of an alcoholic in the making... I am just bored on a Friday night, and I do believe I may have some kind of intolerance to wheat, as the pizza has made me bloat like I'm 8-months pregnant.
The mouse has said twice hello to me. It is very small. I think we may have killed its mother. What was her name, Mandy I think? She goes into my flatmate's room and hides under the closet. The cockroaches have moved out, because I am too. I am leaving my chicken shop smells on Sunday and moving to EC1. I think that they may be hiding in my suitcases: they have become so cunning, and planning a stowaway trip with me.
I think I should stop ranting now, because writing this post is making me feel a bit drunk. Stop writing and watch The Madness of King George, which came free with last week's Guardian.
Or was it the week before?

Yes! the news in English...

2005-10-12T16:57:00.000+01:00

To all those who suffer with Arabic and Persian but have an interest in the Middle East, a service that summarizes the news of the area in English is actually out there called MideastWire . There is a small yearly charge which I think is highly worth it as it provides daily email summaries of a diversity of newspapers in the region. Also it’s refreshing to see such a project initiated by a few highly motivated young journalists with no hidden agenda but to provide a service that is so lacking in the Middle East and expose Arab opinion and news sources to anyone ineterested. check out article written on project last week in the Guardian

Ich bin ein Berliner

2005-10-12T00:56:00.000+01:00

I too have returned from a well-deserved 4 days in Berlin (needless to say that Maha and I travelled together), and I am still in an envious daze.
Berlin is truly poignant in its specificity. Most European cities are quite alike in their topography and structure. Most of them have a busy core center, fast-paced and crowded, flanked by areas of decreasing density and heightened character. Berlin however is quite an exception. Not only is it a huge city, but it works its way in a exploded, un-structural way: there is no center per se. It is spread out, airy and light. Roads are wide, buildings are imposing, and contemporary post-reunification architecture wants itself monumental in scale, but it is all balanced by the fact that the city is fanned out on the terrain, quiet and tinged with history.
Boutiques, pubs and markets are discovered, stumbled upon by chance after a stroll along seemingly residential stretches of buildings. Berlin teases, it presents itself unannounced. It is humble. The perfect city to take a break from fast-paced restless London. Berliners are funny too, in the sense that they don't give a damn. You talk to them in English (hopefully a hint that you don't speak German) but they will reply in German monologues and expect you to understand. They will not make an effort, but you take it in their stride. They will even joke with you in German, all the while knowing you won't understand a single word. They will also raise their butt, and fart loudly, because they need to. And then they laugh (no language barrier there, though)...
And Berlin is so cheap!!! Which makes you buy ten times more on the account of cheapness... And OK, so I fell into the classic tourist rip-off of buying myself something from a tourist stall near Checkpoint Charlie, and then finding it for 10 euros cheaper in another stall five steps away: BUT it is still a 24-hour watch with Stalin's head on it! When it seems 6 o'clock on my watch, it is actually noon! With all the crap they sell at tourist stalls around the world, Berlin has the best crap of them all!
They're still selling remains from the Berlin Wall around the area too, but wouldn't you think they'd run out by now? They even have them incrusted into postcards to send back home to the family...
If I weren't in London, I would be in Berlin. Enjoying wursts on Alexanderplatz and drinking wine on Kastanienallee...
But I'm back in London, with the current obsession of finding a new room to live in, and applying for my Masters degree. I think my Stalin watch will come in handy, now that I've got a full 24 hours to fan out my anxiety...
Tüs!

Berlin Observations…

2005-10-11T14:48:00.000+01:00

Just got back from a long weekend away in Berlin, with two friends and it was amazingly refreshing. While I was expecting a cold city divided between eastern communist architecture and western corporate society, grumpiness and the kind of negativity you feel in many eastern European cities. I saw instead a air of vigour where so much has happened and so much is changing that it has a certain kind of intensity to it that I have only felt in very few cities of the world and certainly did not expect it here. Maybe it was the numerous older men with moustaches (reminds me of Beirut) or the angry people and confrontational society but it felt real, unvarnished and earthly. All in all it was a much needed break. I completely zoned out of my reality and on numerous times forgot where I was in my life and confused which home I’m coming back to. This detachment from my everyday has not happened in years. So here you go, my 4 day observation of a city that I definitely recommend to everyone and to myself at least one more time!

Professor Blog

2005-10-02T11:21:00.000+01:00

I have been invited to participate in a conference on on-line journalism taking place in UAE in November about no other than BLOGS. It'll be my first time speaking publicly to such a large crowd and I'm super excited and a little nervous.....More to come

Celebrities, anyone?

2005-09-30T23:43:00.000+01:00

I have decided that a career change is in hand. Still in my aforementionned two-week trial, I am hard at work on a case of designing sale banners and "20% OFF TODAY ONLY!" cards for loyalty members of a declining high-street store, and when the brief said "Include butterflies and flowers"... well, I realized that something was not quite right.
It's quite an un/fortunate predicament to see oneself at the onset of total professional obscurity. I used to ramble that it was unconceivable that one should choose his life path at the age of 18, and that at least 2 years of post-school experience were needed to make a wiser decision. Now, with the onset of my 25th year on this planet, 7 years were still not enough...
I almost envy those young designers/writers/actors/capitalists/fashionistas that can boast a published interview in some or other magazine about their "exciting young talent!" and "promising breakthrough ingenue!" tags in two-page full-color glossy feature (photo-retouching galore!). But then again, they only make up 0.1% of the worldwide 18 to 35 population, if not less.
Hey, I could be worthy of a two-page article: "Lebanese Designer's CV Twice as Exciting As British Peers... In Only One Year!"
Maybe that's why I have decided to be the boss of my own magazine one day. I would make celebrities out of all my struggling underrated friends, and get ourselves up to 0.15%... One day.

...

On another note, did you know that Kate Moss snorted 5 lines of cocaine one night?! Oooooooh...
Funny how the British need that one story that will get them going through the week, ooohing and aaaahing among each other just about everywhere, from the hairdresser to the bus, to the local pub to the chicken shop under the house. Kate Moss must be proud to have spurred on a long line of new encounters, strangers bonding in her demise (or her iconification, more so), and couples forming in a bat of eyelashes as Ms. Moss is used as the trendy new pick-up line.

AND... What is it with the British always wanting their celebrities "publicly apologizing"?!?! Prince Harry had to do it when he wore the swastika, Jude Law had to apologize to the British people for cheating on his wife, and now Kate Moss is being put under pressure to publicly apologizing to the British nation for causing so much grief and sorrow!
Love to be offended, these British people...

....

Final rant of the day:

Why do the British always put a slice of lemon in their water?!

Drives me up the wall.

I TOLD YOU SO!!!

2005-09-26T22:21:00.000+01:00

Turns out that my two weeks trial is exactly just that: a two-week trial.
There was a Japanese girl doing two-weeks trial before me, and after mine, there is another girl doing hers. So basically, we are three competitors for the job, à la queue-leu-leu.
And after the last bitch's two weeks, I will know if I were the better of the trio. And then I might get the job.
I WAS DUPED and I don't have the job (yet).

I have to call the pub and tell them I am not quitting after all, and that I LOVE being a barperson and don't fire me if I called you all bastards behind your backs... please.

I told you I should have tiptoed... (in the study with the dagger).

2005-09-25T23:25:00.000+01:00

Cluedo has absolutely positively got to be most riveting game ever invented.
I know that there is a Risk mania out there somewhere, but as long as I never have to learn the rules of it, Cluedo will remain the Absolute.

By All Means A Good Week

2005-09-23T01:20:00.000+01:00

It has been one of those great weeks when you start to tiptoe around for fear of breaking the spell.
Apart from working yet again for free at some East End magazine under the title of "design intern" (for lack of justifying the No Pay policy), the good things just kept on rolling:

1) The last two shifts at my pub have brought me a grand total of £17 in tips, as well as a generous amount of flirtatious talk culminating in the expression "salivating over you". It may sound pretty sleazy, but, hey, it works for me.

2) I bought what I refer to as a Monster Bike from some bloke on the street for £25, when it would usually go for £150 second-hand! I do not want to know where he got it from and did not ask... BUT. It is way too big for me (I am one of those short people), so I will remain faithful to my Gwen and sell Monster Bike and make LOADS of profit. Because I am sometimes the most achieved of capitalists.

3) Next week, I will be working a shift at the pub where all I have to do is sit around and watch Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench act a scene from their upcoming movie. I needn't pour drinks, I needn't serve food, my only task being to oogle them and be starstruck for 5 hours, and earn money for it.

4) The phone company made a mistake and send me loads of money in my account, hence covering the cost of an upcoming pair of winter boots that will rival with my 8-year old DMs, as well as a weekend in Berlin.

5) I have been offered... wait for it... wait some more... (I waited 7 months!)... a position at a design agency!!!! I start a trial 2 weeks as of this monday... wait for it... Paid! And then I will wow them with my dazzling skills as an artworker and a brain, and will hopefully land myself a full-time contract and start a new-life as a proud employee, sucked into the 9 to 5 office job where I crave for the weekend, fight post-lunch drowsiness in front of the computer screen, and live off a MONTHLY paycheck (and not the measly weekly payslips of the pub)!!!!!
I am going to start a routine, and I have never felt so good about myself!

And now that I have boasted the week's little perks, I will shhhh again, because I may get hit by a lorry tomorrow, and would've wasted 20 minutes of my time being all stupid-happy writing this post...

(hooray)

As Full As A Doughnut Hole...

2005-09-14T18:21:00.000+01:00

A very ambitious friend of mine has spoken today:

"I see myself in the future as either a bum, or a crook --but a good crook."

I love people with a plan...

The Blog Survey

2005-09-14T10:16:00.000+01:00

Just found out that my dissertation is currently on one of my professors’ desks being scrutinised before it goes on the desks of 2 more people who will continue to scrutinise( the thought makes me a little nervous!). However rather than wait for correction , which could still take weeks to come out; I’m currently preparing a summarised report of the findings and will be publishing them in a week or so. Thanks again to all those who participated, published survey and passed the message.

Moving house

2005-09-11T22:41:00.000+01:00

Like Rasha, I have been a bit off on posting as well. I did finally hand in my dissertation almost a week ago and since then I’ve been blogged down with work and finding a new place to live which any Londoner can testify is a complete NIGHTMARE. I finally found a place and will be making my move on Thursday from the circus courtyard of Hoxton Market to the hustle and bustle of Brick Lane. I’m experiencing a bit of separation anxiety; almost revelling Old street tube station for example which I have to admit is the ugliest tube station in London and has the worst chicken smell early morning coming out of Lennies sandwiches but you know how the story goes… But I’m also looking forward to the move and having SCHRmmm be my neighbour.

2005-09-11T13:04:00.000+01:00

True, I have slacked down on blogging since I came back from Beirut, but not for not wanting. On the contrary, I have been desperately trying to shoo the fog of anxiety and tune down my self-indulgence, but my mind has been stubbornly one-sided.
I would love to rant about the demise of the New Orelanders, the sensationalist headlines of British newspapers ("Tesco Put Porn On My Phone!"), my love of filthy Bethnal Green road slackers and the state of my toes after an unexpected downpour in sandals... But it is the realization that I am now battling against the pearly crop of graduate designers from RCA and StMartins, who are going to steal all job opportunities out there, that has won over. I am not jealous, just resigned. They will be waving those lovely certificates of theirs, and stampeding on my efforts.
But it's OK. I've decided a change of career is in hand anyway. Being a designer is over-rated, and making things pretty for corporate greed is not what I had in mind. Isn't it in moments of utter disillusionment that people have bloomed and turned to the unplanned? I am not a labelled worker. As I said in one of my last-resort applications to a magazine I'd loved to join:
"I can write, design, clean, answer phones, make a delicious cafe mocha, i can illustrate, take amazing photographs, i don't do drugs, but i smoke like a chimney, i cook great Lebanese food, can guzzle white wine, need to poop in solitude, i have designed a whole book about my naked body, and own a bike called Gwen."
(He turned me down: Advetising Sales Executive was still not part of my amazing capabilities.)
To Be Continued...

Grenades: Not for Sale

2005-09-03T21:08:00.000+01:00

SCHRmm, a jewellery designer from London, is going through with what I consider to be a breath-of-fresh-air project, with all the commercial shit ransacking our impressionable minds these days. I am the recipient of one of the Grenade pieces (and very very humbly honoured to be so!) and I urge everyone to check out her project (see post of Tuesday August 16th).
Too busy vying to be an employee with a salary, I forget that, before begging to sell my soul to the Capitalist machine, I am foremost my own employee... I don't know if the lack of motivation qualifies as laziness (probably so), but SCHRmm shook me out of my self-pitying mode.

Back To Black

2005-09-03T19:40:00.000+01:00

I went to the Whitechapel's Back To Black exhibition today, focussed around contemporary Black art, and, frankly, I was quite touched. Someone there remarked that he had never seen such a strong proportion of black people in a exhibition, as opposed to the masses of white intellectuals that usually roam the sterile rooms. And it kind of hit me that I did not know this culture very well. Apart from the commercialized Malcom X, Black Panthers and Luther King, I do not know their medium of expression and their cultural manifestations. And, especially, I wondered if black people themselves were in tune with their art and cultural history.
Stupidly, I could've asked one of them, but I feared it somehow un-politically correct as a casual (white) reader to inquire about such a predisposition. I know it may sound stupid, but there still is a lot of stigma and controversy around the subject of racial black and white, and, as a general observation of my surroundings, they are quite a closed-knit exclusive community. And having lived in Beirut for so long, where the black community is virtually non-existent, I admit that I have only met a handful in my past year in London, and "black" areas on the outskirts of the city always feel uneasy for the whites...
Why is it still a touchy subject? The recent events of New Orleans have angered me in the sense that the degeneration into anarchy is almost exclusively among the black population: that could easily lead into more stigma about black communities being violent and dangerous, anchoring the prejudice against the black. It is the same with fundementalist Islamists creating a distorted view of milllions of 'regular' muslims.
I don't know where this post is leading to, but basically... what the fuck is going on with this world?! And when the fuck is this all going to end?!
Ouf...

From Middle East to East End

2005-09-01T21:19:00.000+01:00

So I'm finally back... and the routine is about to settle in once more: CV, application, portfolio... Send.
"To find a job" as my everlasting mantra, I am battling yet again the purpose of my fierce zeal to work in London. Beirut is beautiful, but EVERYONE nags. Out of all the encounters in Torino of my graduate peers, there was only my cousin, back from 4 years of exile in Boston, who was genuinely loving her job and her life in Beirut. Everyone else is either underpaid, overworked, bored AND is made to feel that they should be grateful to be employed as slaves. I am being applauded for choosing to struggle in Europe, even though, on the downside, I have been actively doing close to zero for the past 5 months. Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side, but I still can't decide which side that might be...
So, yes, there is a general umph and ukh about the fresh crop of graduates, but I've mostly hung out with my graphic design friends from college, and there is still a long way to go for the country to accept design as a valid craft deserving of recognition, and not simply as a luxury. My Business or Finance friends seem to be doing alright, though, but that's understandable... The economy is crap for those who don't work in the economy.

Oh, and there was a bomb during my stay there, and I just wanted to point out how strange the reaction when that happened. Fate. Simply fate, and... acceptance? When there is no verified enemy, it is easy to be made to imagine that they just drop from the sky by no one and nothing. They're just there from time to time, and they make a rubble on some empty street. People wave from behind the news reporters, and wonder if Starbucks will be re-opened the next morning in time for their morning coffee. I was told that people were avoiding going out on weekend nights, since most bombs 'decided to explode' either friday or saturday nights, so Torino was busier on Tuesday than on Saturday. But when the last bomb happened on Monday night, the pattern was disrupted and people went back to the normal weekend drinks. When there is no logic, no culprit, or no way of prevention, there is almost no more discussion, simply... fate.

Oh, and I ate a lot of Moujaddarah and Loubieh Bil Zeit, which was was just perfect.

Batroun bay

Site of Hariri assassination

Torino my love...

Almost Back...

2005-08-26T14:28:00.000+01:00

I am still in Beirut, still trying to make sense of the chaos, though I have to admit it was quite a beautiful slap in the face. It is my last weekend here, and I have yet to squeeze a coffee here, a lunch there, and soak in as much sun as my skin can take before I head back to the quiet life of London.
There is so much to say about Beirut, about the youth enthusiasm, and lack of it, about the social/political situation, and the general nonchalance of summer, but as long as I am here in the midst of it all, it remains hard to define.
Yes, it is hectic in the political sphere, but I was selfish enough to bypass it all, and curse my denial of Lebanese politics if you wish, but seeing my president sunbathing in the mountains on a Friday morning, wearing a clingy speedo and innocently spreading his legs to maximize the tan on his crotch, made me a bit weary of it all... Between the "Tsuna Mi-chel Aoun" and the "I heart Geagea Kteer" and the Hariri Father and Son embrace, well...
I preferred the cozy smell of coffee and jazz music of Torino in Gemmayzeh, where, I have to admit, I spent at least 4 hours daily, sipping on wine, and seeing the familiar faces of my extended family. I know it sounds all corny, but dammit! i love that neon sign flickering at the window! My epileptic sigh of relief...

One WEEK to GO

2005-08-13T17:43:00.000+01:00

Ok Bloggers, one more week to go for survey, im closing it on the 20th August. So to those of you who have not participated or know anyone who hasn't, shido el Himi , im relying on your grassroot efforts and on getting at least 60% of the total make-up of bloggers in area.

Click Here to take the survey

Countdown to Beirut

2005-08-05T15:01:00.000+01:00

In 4 and a half hour, a mini-cab will be picking me up from home straight to Heathrow... I am going to Beirut. My mind has been empty for the past week, already transported to sunny Atlas beach, and the comfort of my Broumana home. No mice, no pantry bugs (yup, a new infestation...), no chicken shop smell, no draft beers, and flat tyres, and no more Zindibad phonecards. I've waxed my bikini line, stocked up on rollies - smoking 2 packs a day when on Gitanes! - bleached my tummy hair, plucked my eyebrows, gotten the familia their gifts, bought sunglasses, and packed my suitcase 5 hours ahead of time.

I've been a carcass these past days... can't wait to be home.

Apparently I'm a Geek!

2005-08-03T22:23:00.000+01:00

I got emailed this: London Girl Geek Dinner, with the title 'Thought you might be interested'. So to all you geek girls out there, be proud, as from the list of the other geeks attending, it seems pretty awesome to be one!

"Can I get a lift, love?"

2005-08-03T08:48:00.000+01:00

I worked my shift at the pub last night, and the Staropramen lager tap exploded 3 times in my face, which drenched me in what I refer to as piss foam. But that's not what ticked me...
120 poured pints and 6+1/2 hours later, I ammassed a generous 75p in tips, but that didn't tick me off either.
It is the drunken bastard who decided it was funny to sit on the luggage extension of my bike after my shift, and who flattened my tyre, that really pissed me off.
Who knows, I may have been the one who got him drunk in the first place.
75p and a flat tyre... thanks, mate!

Lobster, yum?

2005-08-02T01:32:00.000+01:00

I had lobster today, for the first time. It was actually half a lobster, chopped smack down the length-middle. The cut was so perfect, they could've used a chainsaw for all I know. The weird thing is that I'm not sure if I liked it so much, even though I ate all that I could scrape out of it, and left nothing but it's beetroot carcass. And that's precisely the thing that made me all queasy... The carcass! It's actually half a lobster, with its dead eyes, and legs, with the little hairs on the end, and humungous claws, and all the joints and cartilage still intact. I used the appropriate tools (pliers and a claw-like poking device with fangs) and I scraped the inside out of a carcass that still stared at me, and ate it all. I played with it all the while, opening and closing its claw, and examining the way the transluscent joint slid up and down as traction played its biological part... A giant spider.
Basically, it's like being served a delicious piece of sirloin steak attached to the cow's head on the plate... no one says it's not still a delicious piece of meat, but when you realize the liquid is blood, the red stuff is muscle, and the cow's eyes are staring back at you, it's hard to swallow properly.
It was nice, but I won't be doing it soon enough...

2005-07-31T22:14:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I wish that I were anonymous, so that I could scream, without the need to find the right words, without resorting to political correctness, without having to justify my prejudices with any form of argumentation or back-up statistics, but simply out of pure subjectivity and personal vendetta, that
1) german women are sluts
2) cigarettes are pure bliss, and all non-smokers are just jealous of seeing us suck on something with so much passion
3) a pint of Staropramen lager looks like a pint of piss
4) relationships are a poor excuse for a selfish ego-boost, and God bless homosexuality
5) graphic design is a sell-out job, and all philosophy around the subject is masturbatory: we make ugly things pretty for money, and that's that.
6) men are sluts too (all nationalities included)
7) I HATE small-talk, so leave me alone, especially if it's dark outside, or if i'm not drinking coffee
8) Clubs are overrated, and shifting from one foot to the other is not dancing, it's just pretending not to be bored to death, so drop the act and go home.......

But I'm not anonymous, so I'll shut up.

"Stuff On My Cat"

2005-07-31T18:46:00.000+01:00

This site is kind of stupid, but it made me laugh on this very blue (sun)day... I know that if I tried to put stuff on my cat, I'd get a good thorny slap on the face and a hiss.

But I know she would still love me...

Notting Hill Gate Tube Station 'Advice'

2005-07-31T10:43:00.000+01:00

Hangover Update

2005-07-30T17:59:00.000+01:00

Wine belly, my ass! It ain't the wine, it's the shitload of food you eat throughout the next day to try and drown the acidity of the wine and the pasty taste of too many cigarettes... Feel I'm going to burst after today's late lunch feast (a colourful mixture of spicy chilli con carne and rice, aubergines, hummous, tzatziki, fries, feta cheese, bread and butter, couscous, and 1+1/2 cumberland sausage). But, as my fellow hangovered feast friend rightfully said: "It's that little piece of Willy Wonka chocolate we ate at the end of it all that's gonna tip the scale and make me puke."
.
.
.
Yes, I'm a sucker for movie marketing products. Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka... in a chocolate factory?? YES PLEASE!!!

An Ode To Wine

2005-07-30T10:35:00.000+01:00

Another morning, another hangover, EastEnd induced this time...
I had never been an alcohol-drinker before coming to London, preferring the bitter taste of a Virgin Mary. But I have finally been broken in, and have slowly raised my non-existent alcohol-tolerance to featherweight status. From using the word "tipsy" too long, I now admit to "being drunk." It took me a while to accept it, though, having always imagined 'drunk' to be a vomitif state of utter embarrassment. But, no, for some months now, experimenting with alcoholized behavioral patterns has become a little past-time of mine.
My eyes become drunk more than anything else. I find it hard to keep them open, and prefer the obscurity of dancing in blindness. It's always a little trip, where I find myself being led in a tango or a dizzy twirl by strange male hands on the dancefloor. I feel vulnerable, yet empowered. And, oh my God, it's true that inhibitions get washed away with white wine! Not that I resort to vulgar flashing, but I do feel that I am contained in an expansion of me that floats in a mass of stroboscopic neons and blurred silhouettes. Individuals are washed away and bodies become accessible playthings: a little smile there, a little touch here, and millions of little words exchanged in the haze. People become enjoyable, and a smile can drown anything...
I reached my limit yesterday of a whopping three medium-sized glasses of wine. I think I will platform at that for the moment. I did need a healthy serving of fries with garlic sauce and a samosa at 1am to cool myself down, and I am not ready for a wine belly just yet.

S & M

2005-07-28T09:34:00.000+01:00

On her blog, Eve recently posted a link to something she found on the web, which is one of the most entrancing piece of uselessness I have ever come across. Like her, I sat still for ages, totally fixated on the falling figure. But, it struck a chord inside and I now find it to be right-on-target revealing about the Human Condition...
I'm not sure if this wizardry programming of the human body freefalling in abstract space touches upon our inner masochist... or sadism. I completely believe that we are all made up of a combination of both Masochism and Sadism, and that the balance between both-or lack of it- drives our relationship with things and the world around us.
The reality quotient of the body (which is female, of course, I have to note!) and the lifelike movements of her joints makes us scrunch our eyes with the intensity of every blow and twist of the figure hitting the obstacles; but it is the inertia and apparent indifference in her expression that arouses the dormant masochist in us. I almost wished the figure had mid-length brown hair, green eyes and smaller boobs, so that I need not project myself in her, but actually see myself mangled and puppetted around.
However, a few minutes later, I clicked my mouse on her and realised that I could control the fall: so I started bashing her around, left and right, propelling her against the bubbles... or curving her fall so as to avoid the obstacles. But, yeah, mostly thrashing her around the screen and seeing her bend about like a dead fish.
Amidst all the wierdness of the net, this is a jewel. Thanks Eve for sharing it with us... The perfect example of the human's twisted mind.

Highlight of my lunchbreak

2005-07-27T19:57:00.000+01:00

Was just walking out for my lunch break today and i happened to stumble across a small demonstration that was taking place right outside of Scotland Yard, against the 'shoot to kill' policy. Anyway, the minute i stepped out, a young woman happened to be walking past and got really hysterical at the demonstrators and screamed at them (and i have to note here that they were mostly English), ‘’if you don’t bloody well like it, then go back to your own fucking country’’. No comment.

Untitled Street

2005-07-27T13:58:00.000+01:00

Bahi Ghubril, an ex-expatriate Lebanese, has been long working on a street map 'atlas' of Beirut, to combat the lack of any formal indexing of our labyrinth city - which is a great idea for tourists, returning Beyruthians maybe, but feels kind of dubious to me. Not that I wouldn't mind knowing how to navigate through the maze with far greater ease, but I seem to have a deep-engrained love of our total road anarchy and organized chaos.
The Daily Star article rightly tells of the spontaneous absurd conversations between lost driver and well-meaning aider when pinpointing directions; and I love, as a designer, drawing a crazy map of my Broumana home for a party, complete with "turn left on traumatized tree at red gas station corner" to "shift to first gear on very very steep dotted lane under olive trees." A stamped & posted letter even managed to find its way safely to my door landing, sporting the hilarious address of "2nd floor, orange-brick building, behind Bellevue hotel, Broumana" or something of the sort.
In a way, for confirmed Beirutis, the street index would be a precious reminder of what we do not really need, but would love to know: Cleopatra Street?! A sort of 'funny' formal, yet miscellaneous, layer beneath the more confirmed navigational landmarks of "ALBA university roundabout" and "nazlet Pharmacie Berty". I believe it would take another decade, and at least a couple of new-generation drivers, before referring to tarmac roads as "Xxxx Street". I would still definitely get one of those A to Z, though, for the sake of laughter, that of History (probably the mentionned 2nd updated edition, then), and to maybe find the new traffic-beating shortcuts before they too become bottleneck avenues...

A Prayer for Clerkenwell

2005-07-26T12:41:00.000+01:00

www.je-sus.com ?

2005-07-25T23:33:00.000+01:00

The Design Observer has posted an article on Signs of Religion in the American South, which is a very interesting read about how religion takes its toll on sanity... Excuse my cynisism about over-zealous religious piety, but with the rising fear of Islamic Fundamentalism taking up everyone's time, who's monitoring those people?
And I thought I took the Lord's name in vain when I cursed...

Post-24/7 Blues...

2005-07-25T21:51:00.000+01:00

It's been one of those days when all your mind can really focus on is: "Right, what am I going to cook for dinner tonight?" when it's barely even lunch yet. I was asked to tag along on a shopping-spree in Primark, which I happily obliged to, and bought myself half a dozen rainbow-colored panties. Primark is tailor-made for bingeing on useless underwear, especially while the mind is busy concocting a recipe using that lone courgette in the fridge that might have to be soon thrown away, if Tesco's expiry date is to be trusted.
I finally got to dinnertime and revelled in cooking myself pseudo-chilli sin carne. I'm not a vegetarian, but despite the day's calculations, I had forgotten to defrost minced meat.
And, now, my stomach is so fat and big that I feel like I may just give birth to a whole honey-mustard roast chicken in time for tomorrow's lunch. And people still insist my little non-pregnant tummy is sexy...

24/7

2005-07-25T01:29:00.000+01:00

After 9/11 and 7/7 there was 24/7.
It poured all day, so the Greenwich field-trip went down the drain.
Instead, it was all massive breakfast-binge, wet sandals, organic fruit juice, a panty-revealing short skirt, bee sunglasses picture-posing, Cluedo, wine & pizza, Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, tingling massage and... more Cluedo. And I got to be Miss Scarlett both times!
Felt good to be a spoilt brat.
And tomorrow begins the first day of the rest of my life...

Happy Birthday Me!

2005-07-24T00:00:00.000+01:00

I am officially a quarter of a century old!
I hope this year will bring me merry copulations, a jolly-good salary, the ability to fit back into my jeans, and the fulfillment of having those exquisite cushions from Coco de Mer! ...and the Sophie Calle book! ...and that cabinet from Unto This Last! ...and a cockroach-free appartment to put it in! (hint hint)
...and World Peace, of course.

West End Hangover

2005-07-23T17:23:00.000+01:00

Have treaded to the Far West of London last night, to a party in Mayfair (!) too far for my bike to escort me. I let myself be dragged past the borders of my beloved EastEnd, to mingle with a new crowd, rightly described by a friend as "Very rich kids, with careers on the side". So, the tube it was. I can't say I wasn't a bit edgy, but that's not the point of this post.
I just wanted to note how daunting it is to live in a elevator-clad building of such minutia that I would not be allowed to hang my mismatched socks to dry at the window, with a rooftop patio overlooking the precious US Embassy, illuminated flag at half-mast, and spotless iron fences that discriminate my 2nd-hand shopper bike with a hefty "Bicycles Found Parked Against Or Chained To These Railings Will Be Removed Without Further Notice." Suddenly, my landlord's Perfect Fried Chicken shop under my flat has never felt more cosy, even if it does send the mice and cockroaches up to us.
At least I have gotten my first ever hangover today: I finally feel like a normal person! And I have the West End boys to thank for that...

On another note, London police have approved a "Shoot to Kill" policy against suspected bombers, pub-filled Monnot Street in Beirut was bombed last night at 10pm on a Friday night, and it's my birthday tomorrow. Cheers anyone?

Interns: Cheap Labour

2005-07-22T12:41:00.000+01:00

I've just read an advertisement for placement opportunities at a new magazine here in London. Yes, they are offering work experience for brilliant design students, generously helping them to gain knowledge of the publishing field by getting hands-on into magazine design.
The truth is unfortunately far-removed...
Having been interviewed by this same magazine a few months back, I know that they are actually understaffed & overworked, and it seems they are not willing to pay a second designer to join their permanent team. The answer is simple, it being a solution devised by many employers to exploit the endless new crops of unemployed and desperate designers: cheap labour under the appellation of 'Placement' ("Travel Expenses Paid" -- wow.)
They had almost given me the job, but resorted to someone who already had experience in magazine design (which I still hadn't at a time before D&C). I had sensed that the magazine would not be able to cope with just one designer, and I hoped that they would eventually contact me to join their team: a logical development for the escalating growth of their new publication. But they have resorted to slavery, and I see myself denied a job.
Maybe placements become a pool for recruitment, and could eventually lead to a permanent position, if one shows merit. But that is very rarely the case, seeing that designers hop from one placement to another after graduation, in a series of unpaid CV-building intern positions.
I count myself lucky to have had a callback as freelancer after D&C, but that was my 3rd placement, and I've got a 4th one in December. Yup, there even are waiting lists for design slavery.

The Pitter-Patter of Antennas

2005-07-22T00:36:00.000+01:00

Ok, I promised myself I would stop talking about the vermin and rodents of my lovely East End home, but tonight, I have witnessed a circus...
From the safety of my bedroom desk, I can see the kitchen, and most specifically, the Washing Machine, home to the uninvited inhabitants of Bethnal Green road. And for the past 2 hours or so, I have been observing the comings and goings of the mouse. I shall name her Mandy. Mandy comes and goes as she pleases: she scours the kitchen tiles, darts out the kitchen door to the hallway, rushes under the door to the landing, comes back into the house, and after a little loop inside the bathroom, settles back under the washing-machine. When I am busy staring at the computer screens, the shadow of something scurrying past disturbs the corner of my eye, and I just have time to see her tail waggling through the doorway. She's been at it for hours now. It is dark in the kitchen, but my eye can grow accustomed.
I shall not chase her, she is too fast. But she makes me nervous, and I find myself gazing in the darkness of the kitchen for hours, hunting moving shadows...
But will I get up from my computer for another type of shadow emerging from the Washing Machine? This shadow is much smaller, much slower, and hovers on the floor. It is the cockroach, and I shall name it Ron. God knows how many Rons live in my house, but I am wearing new sandals, and do not want to soil them...
I shall let Mandy and Ron live tonight.

London is just annoyed

2005-07-21T22:17:00.000+01:00

I was never really scared or frightened about the events that took place 2 week ago on '7/7' as they call it on the PA announcements on the tube (yes Rasha, your predictions were right!), but as i have just started a graduate training program at London Underground, i must admit that when i came back today from my lunch break, i did get a little nervous when Liz (my boss), came up to me the minute i gleefully glided through the door with my Mocha Frappe (which has become an obsession now and which i have to say was a big factor in the gliding in part and the big smile on my face) and told me not to panic but that there had just been 3 incidents on the tube and taught me the emergency evacuation procedures. So i did get a little nervous after that, but mostly i couldn’t concentrate at all. I had all these weird and detached daydreams like being stuck in the daunting office for days or thinking about London Underground office’s location, how its a bull's eye for terrorists being opposite Scotland Yard, the Home Office, 5 minutes from Buckingham Palace and White Hall, basically all the government buildings. cringe!

Nevertheless, despite my wild thoughts, which of course i kept to myself and actually put on the "i'm so tough, i'm from Beirut, of course im not scared" act, everyone pretty much seemed to carry on with their usual office business but with the TV blasting in the background. Nobody seemed panicked this time, just mostly annoyed. The same attitude was on the tube as well. I had to get on the district line to Bank and walk home from there, and i thought the tube was going to be deserted or that people were going to be really paranoid, but it was as busy as ever, and nobody was looking suspiciously at the bags of dark skinned people similarly to the days following the previous attacks. They, again, just looked really annoyed. I do not want to go into details of what i think of the attacks and terrorism etc...partly because last time i was accused of being "like the news", but mainly because i dont really care this time. I'm just really annoyed!

Safe Beirut/Dangerous London?

2005-07-21T20:05:00.000+01:00

There have been more bombs today in London. Actually, they didn't seem to be bombs as much as small detonations aimed at creating panic, security alerts and disruption in the city. And how successful that's been! More stories of friends thrown off buses or trains and trying to forge a pathway home from work through cordonned ares, and evacuated streets.
As usual, I was at a friend's house, eating and totally unaware - actually, with the first set of bombs, I was simply sleeping and unaware, having no job to commute to at 8am.
This time, one of the the 'bombs' inched itself much closer to home... a bus on the intersection of Columbia road and Hackney road. Hearing "BOMB IN BETHNAL GREEN" repeated on the radio felt quite unnerving, seeing that I live on Bethnal Green Road...

It is strange to hear of bombs in both cities I call home.
Just 2 weeks ago, a member of the Murr species was almost assassinated in Beirut. Now my beloved London East End has been attacked. It is almost risible how Beirutians are urging me to return to the homeland, saying that London is now officially unsafe! Wasn't it a couple of months ago that even my suburbian Lebanese hometown of Broumana was targeted by a bomb?
It seems that, wherever we go, there is anger and disquiet. I don't want to point fingers, and I don't want to throw blame. Politics and rebellion have become almost too complex to fathom. Or, actually, they have been diluted into a perpetual and metaphorical dissatisfied bellow that screams a "East vs West" chant...
Is it really as simple as that?

And now I have been invited to have a drink on Hoxton Square, 50m from the bus incident. Because, as you have heard, London Is Defiant, and London Goes On In The Face Of Terror...

Magic Mushrooms

2005-07-20T13:23:00.000+01:00

++++++++++++MAGIC MUSHROOM CLEARANCE SALE++++++++++

Anyone up for a lifetime stock-up?

Crappy Job: Final Installement

2005-07-19T17:32:00.000+01:00

By some miracle, Dr.Health's assistant called me to say that they were offering me the job on these terms: £9 per hour for 3 weeks full-time to design 21 product labels, and then a bonus if I complete the project within deadline. Yup, a Bonus Round for the design slave! And she gave me 60 minutes to sleep on it.
So I called back 90 minutes later with a couple of questions: what exactly do I have to design (21 labels and boxes too?) Will payment be weekly? Are travel expenses included? etc, to which she replied as accurately as possible. She was very understanding of my queries, and not British, so that kind of helped... And then I sold my soul: "Yes, I'll take the job." I asked her to write me a 'contract' with all that we had said on paper, and that I would see her on Monday.

...

90 minutes later, Dr.Health himself calls me up, with his squeaky Mary Poppins impression, and, "why oh why are you complicating everything so much, Russia, with all of these questions? I don't know what exactly you are going to be doing, because I don't know what's on the disc you're going to be working on, so what do you say if I pay you £10 an hour and you just jolly come in and do some design for us for, say, three weeks?! I don't know what is up with all of these questions! I don't know about all of this bonus stuff, because, you see, I am a turnaround manager, and companies come to me and say "Brian, can you turn around this company?" and I say "yes, I can" and that is my job, you see?" To which I told him, very irritated indeed, that it is my right to know what my responsibilities are going to be, and to what I am binding myself to if I say yes, and that they are contradicting themselves, saying 6 months one minute, and 3 weeks the next, and that they are making things complicated because I had already said yes... "How many companies have you worked with Russia?" and I shoved it at him that 3 big studios, and countless freelance jobs. And he said: "Why don't you just come along on Monday, and open that disc, and just do some design for us, if we are going to go through with this?", to which I hesitated...
"Russia, I don't think this is going to work out"
"Yes, you're right, it's not going to work out"
"Thank you and goodbye"
"Goodbye"
...hang up...

And that's that.

I guess, I could've just said yes, seeing that I have no income, apart from that other crappy bar job. It would've been easy to accept the £10 an hour for three weeks deal, just for the money. But thinking that I'd have to work with that asshole 9 to 5 / 5 days a week made my craving for money seem fun after all... I do not want to sink to these depths, and shoot my pride if you will, but I still got my dignity.

Crappy Job Callback

2005-07-18T20:59:00.000+01:00

Well... I went to the call-back, with the joyful prospect of turning a useless full-time position into a more adaptable freelance project. This, being a more logical approach to the brief, would save me wasted time, and him wasted money (although I would not, in the absolute, spare a client some 'wasted' money...). In fact, who in their right mind could work on the same corporate brief for 7 hours at a time, 5 days a week for 3 months, without repose to the brain? I just needed to explain to amateurs how the design process works, and how to go about for this specific type of project. Simple, really.
But, beyond what I had predicted, I was dealing not only with mere amateurs, but a total pompous bastard. He dared utter the dreaded sentence: "Even I could do the design, if I had the time!" which made my poor heart choke on itself and almost upchurn my lunch salad. There we go again with total idiots who consider graphic design to be a hobby, achieveable by anyone mid-weight enough to own a PC, Corel Draw and a wireless mouse. It is ignorants like Dr.Health who undermine the profession, and create the visual pollution of screaming 16pt italicized fonts, neon picture transparencies. and 'pretty' ornementation. He actually proudly showed me the flimsy pamphlet he had designed himself, admitting that "it could be a little bit better," but that he had some experience with design, and: "there, you see that?!" By the way, it included the three aforementionned horror traits...
Dr.Health deemed himself, oh no, no, too busy to write a design brief, even though I explained that it needn't be done in writing, and that a small discussion would do. Dr.Health felt indignant that, if I had to chose between working for his company or Pentagram design, I would go for the latter. Dr.Health could not fathom the idea that I could write a freelance quote for his project, his brain comprehending no other than pay-by-hour basis, and dared to think out loud that I "might rip him off." Dr.Health simply wants a design person to sit in the basement office staring at the screen of his mega-cool PC from 9 to 5, safely knowing that the design person is waiting for him to free up his time and throw him a: "yes, that looks good, just make the letters bigger." Basically, Dr.Health smells of Ignorant Bastard.
And, me not giving off the "design slave" vibe he so desperately needed, I think I may have sabotaged my £10/per hour wrinklefree-miracle job.
Dommage...

HEDONISM

2005-07-17T22:55:00.000+01:00

My word of the week has to be Hedonism!

I had one of my most fabulous friends Hala visit me this week, and after having just come back from a very inspring course and a week of hedonistic pleasure in NY, she came to London with one of the most positive energies ive experienced and i have to say it really put a lot of things in perspective for me! (thanks Hala)

First of all, lately myself and just about everyone around me is so overwhemingly wrapped up in their lives, getting things done, being the best, getting that job ect, that we've forgetten the most important thing and that is OUR PLEASURE. As simplistic as it may sound and as differrent the idea of 'pleasure' is to everyone. Being hedonistic, positive and loving everyone around you even for one day is amazing and feels great.

Group Acts

2005-07-17T21:28:00.000+01:00

Group dynamics are a fascinating thing. There is something slithery about the way we adjust to our particular set of peers and take up our costume for the night. We do each retain an almost genetical personality make-up that transpires through the costume, a specific set of traits that keep us recognisable as ourselves, as 'Rasha'. However, on the whole, we seem to slather and morph into ever-adapting personas according to what the group dynamics require, or ask of us. I am continuously disconcerted by this fact, being noticeably more at ease within one-on-one discourses. Groups always seem much too threatening, as personality readjustments are forced into the equation....
Once I think I have discovered a person and eased myself into a 'viable' relationship (and vice-versa of course), I am always thrown back by the way this dynamic is shifted in the presence of a group. There always seems to be walls that build up between individuals as personas get shaped within dominant/dominated discourses. Always the need to be witty, to be a cut above the rest, to establish a hierarchy. I have noticed this in groups of more than 3 people.
It may be because dialogue is almost always at a very fast pace, bouncing back and forth within the group, and keeping up requires a certain leadership trait: to be heard and acknowledged, one has to deliver with decisiveness and force. One has to make a mark. And the inevitable hierarchy can therefore be formed, as the group struggles to take shape.
This, of course, rarely happens in a (compatible) one-on-one relationship, or even between three people. There is much more room for expansion in dialogue, and authenticity of persona. We still do play a role, since we are social being first and foremost; nevertheless, the costumes are less contrived, and there is more space for the inner to shine through.
I guess I just don't trust groups. The real is always diluted in the mass of frisbeed words and corseted appearances...

Reflection On Thy Worthiness

2005-07-15T20:04:00.000+01:00

At work today (my last day of freelancing, by the way), the picture editor was showing a young intern the inner workings of this particular trendy UK magazine. Actually, she's so ruthless (yet so yummy, bless her!) that the young boy was probably not an intern, but someone's kid-brother or so... or else she was pretty damn bored.
In any case, she stepped in the design part of the huge office, and showed the kid "the layout people." Yup, us. Those are the crummy MACs where all is pasted together, that's the scanner for the design intern to slave over, and that's the board where the pages are printed and pinned as the issue comes together, and... "Argh!" she yelped, "that Amelie Nothomb gal is too ugly, man! You gotta crop that picture! I thought we were using the black and white picture that burns half her face!" or something of the sort. And then she turned to the boy and solemnly parted her words of wisdom unto his virgin brain: "You gotta be a beautiful people if you wanna make it in this world, kiddo. Remember that."
I had my back turned, thankfully, because the expression in my face would've screamed, not revolt, no, but a semblance of perplexity, as I silently thought to myself: "Am I one of the beautiful people?"

Yes, for a second there, I doubted...

Now the problem is not whether I really am a beautiful people, but the fact that I was not initially struck by the absurdity of the comment, by that, giving validity to such a superficial statement.
I recall the first day of my placement within the magazine, telling Maha that they're all soooo beautiful! The girls are all skinny and tall and pretty, the guys are skinny and tall and pretty; and if they're not, they ooze a style that just screams "Yeah! I'm so fucking gorgeous!" And the one girl that's ugly and not stylish (she's born without shoulders, if you can picture that), the girls all groan and piss behind her back, referring to her as the "fat cow" in front of everyone... I mean, it's a fashion magazine, for fuck's sake! In my mind, it became an unwritten requirement that, in order to be included, you just had to be a beautiful people... You can imagine my ego-boost when I was let in on it all. The party invitations, the VIP passes to exhibition openings, the chance to gaze at the father of Kate Moss's child every day...

So, am I a beautiful people? As much as I try to be all intellectual and sensitive and feminist in my reflections about the whole "beauty is skin deep" mantra... it all boils down to: "Hell Yeah!"

Oh... Crap!

2005-07-14T20:27:00.000+01:00

I got the dreaded call-back... must meet with them on Monday... I sounded so excited on the phone which made me feel so hypocritical... I have the whole weekend to sort out my conditions for taking the job... if they still say yes after I tell them I want big money, 20 days holiday in summer, working from home, and free ice-cream every afternoon on my desk, well, then, I guess I'll have to take it.
CRAP!

Another Crappy Job Interview

2005-07-13T23:06:00.000+01:00

I went on a job interview today. Some derma clinic I shall not name, magical producers of anti-ageing high-tech creams and lotions, preventive massages, health screenings that would probably make a healthy twenty-something reach for the Valium, non-invasive treatments, i.e. Botox (if that's non-invasive, then what is?!) and all of that "Love Thyself" armada of beautification... need a graphic designer. Oh, how I felt sorry for myself, while they tried to convince me that they would rather I worked on a PC instead of a MAC, coz theirs had a 19" flat screen and wireless mouse, which is sooooo mega-cool!
In a way, it's money. It's experience. It's gratifying in the sense that it would be all my OWN work, since I would be the sole designer... But I am actually scared of being offered the job!
Am I really ready for one interminable freelance-type project with 2 additional lines on my CV, and a picture of well-lit anti-ageing products in my portfolio to show for? Accepting this job would mean I'd have to reject all opportunities of freelancing for highly creative magazines, or placements in challenging studios, where there's no money but such opportunity to grow...
Where's all the glitz and melting-pot creativity of London?! Did I come all this way to sell the merits of wrinkle creams and the cryogenic properties of bum-hydrating milk? I feel like that blog Tighten Up I mentioned earlier...
Why didn't anyone tell us it would be so hard? That sterile pseudo-dermatologists would love us, but the interesting people would use our talent for FREE? Is "wanker" posted on my forehead?! Or am I just another one of those graphic designer people who think they're just a misunderstood God's gift to the world?

OK, maybe I'm rambling too soon... I don't even know if I got the crappy job. Hopefully I won't, because I could just shrug at a "missed opportunity" instead of having to tangle myself into anymore of this existential dilemma bullshit...

"I'll let you know these two days," doctor said.

ANOTHER ONE!!!!!!

2005-07-12T22:44:00.000+01:00

IN MY ROOM!!!
And a new breed!
With long spangly legs, all wobbly, and slow!
With WINGS!!
...
They have MUTATED!!!

Bastard and Bitch, til death do them part...

2005-07-12T20:55:00.000+01:00

Last night, They re-emerged. "They" I say, because they have formed an alliance.
I enter the kitchen, and freeze... black as shit, the cockroach is back. As I quietly ponder the thought of rushing back to my room to get my camera, I hear a scurrying noise, and whizz! the little mouse darts past my feet towards the safety of the washing-machine, which, in turn, startles the cockroach, as he runs under there in turn. The brown bitch and the black bastard just disappeared together. I swear, the mouse saved the roach! Had she not ran inches by him, he would have just stood there waiting for my foot. It was all eerily disquieting.
"Kiss ikhtkon sharmouta," is all I could mutter.
But, I do admit that the mouse was probably more freaked out than me. I can tell by the way her bum skids on the waxy floor, and the sounds of her body hitting stuff on her way to the washing-machine. She first climbs down the electric wire from the kitchen top down to beneath the fridge, and bumps her head everywhere in the process. Then she has to pause and assess the situtation before jetting from under the fridge (where she bumps her head again), darting acroos the open space of the floor to under the washer, where she bumps her head for the millionth time, and finally manoeuvering one of those 90degrees twists to slide to safety. Then, she probably bumps her again one last time under the washing-machine, and crashes on one of the side cupboards to break her speed. During that long anguished trip (which only lasts 3 seconds, but must feel like an eternity for her), she's like a cross between a Formula One car, and one of those ugly racing dogs on the cover of Blur's first album...
Anyway.
So I tried to get to sleep, but insomnia hit. I could imagine them both celebrating under the washing-machine, giving themselves high-fives (after having calmed their little frantic pounding hearts), and laughing at me, clumsy human-thing... DeLaFontaine would've loved this one.
It was too hot to cover myself with the bed sheet, but I was obsessed with the idea that they would come out from their washing-den and observe me from under the door, let alone crawl up and walk all over my skin for fun, poking my eye and waving their infested butts in my face.
So I got up (it was 1.30 am, mind you), turned the kitchen light on, and saw the bastard! I did not give the bitch a minute to think of warning him before I squished her friend to a pulp. And then I took victory pictures!

Who's laughing now, huh?
I could have mercy for the mouse, knowing the harrowing effort she goes through to escape me. But, save for her speed, she's just as dumb as her roach friend... And her turn will come.

And I know I'm not the only one... read this.

Brick Lane Sightings

2005-07-11T23:03:00.000+01:00

London Weather

2005-07-11T22:48:00.000+01:00

You know what's annoying? London weather SUCKS!
If it's freezing, it sucks, because it's mid-July, and we're all wearing jumpers and knee-high woollie socks.
If it's cold, it sucks, because we wear jumpers and knee-high woollie socks, and then it decides to be hot, and we sweat like pigs.
If it's cool, we wear sandals, and then our toes turn blue, because it's freezing all of a sudden.
And if it's hot, it's panic! Because there's nothing to prepare you for the heat, soaring humidity, no A/C, and no beaches to jump into. So we drench in our sweat, waiting for it to be cool again.
And it starts all over again...
Sux.

Mindblowing Blog!

2005-07-10T18:46:00.000+01:00

Just found a blog that HAS to be checked out: Tighten-Up. I started reading and was, like, what the hell is she on about?!... and then it made sense.
Very enlightening stuff indeed.

George 'bloody' Orwell

2005-07-10T18:12:00.000+01:00

I am currently reading a bloody good book by Sir Orwell called Down And Out In Paris And London, and I must say that he has some bloody remarkable things to say about a swear words in the English language. The novel, first published in 1933, recounts the semi-autobiographical tribulations of young Orwell among the beggars and scum of London and Paris at the turn of the century. This is what he had to say about the particularities of English blaspehemies:

"The swear words also change–or at any rate they are subject to fashions. For example, twenty years ago the London working classes habitually used the word 'bloody'. Now they have abandonned it utterly, though novelists still represent them as using it. No born Londoner (...) now says 'bloody', unless he is a man of some education. The word has, in fact, moved up in the social scale and ceased to be a swear word for the purposes of the working classes. The current London adjective, now tacked onto every noun, is 'fucking'. No doubt in time 'fucking', like 'bloody', will find its way into the drawing-room and be replaced by some other word."

However, even though Orwell has been straight on in his predictions with 1984, it seems he has wrongly underestimated the pulling power of the word 'fucking'... Is 'fuck' and all its denominations the Ultimate Swear Word or am I clueless about new currency swear words in our time?

The 'terrorists'

2005-07-09T09:16:00.000+01:00

Notice how on Thursday at the very beginning of the episode when the word terrorism was announced. It was like everyone had some sort of confirmation. People went ahhhh ok it’s the terrorists and continued on. But what does that mean, ‘the terrorists’?
The word is used to call someone’s enemy. It has become a condemnation rather than a description or explanation. This is nothing new. In the second world war, the German occupation force called members of the Dutch resistance ‘terrorists’ while the latter’s self image was that of patriots and resistance fighters. In effect, for much of the modern era of terrorism, all liberation movements have been called ‘terrorists’ by their opponents. Indeed, Hizbollah is labelled terrorist by the U.S and Isreal but not the Lebanese or the EU. Is terrorism, then, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder?

Not this kind of terrorism, or what some people like to call ‘super-terrorism’. The old terrorism was followed up by an announcement of responsibility of the act followed by long speeches that state the ‘terrorists’ objectives and what they want. This new kind of terrorism is confusing even for an Arab, Muslim and bearded man.

Freedman in his Superterrorism-Policy Response (Very good book for anyone interested in topic) believes that a threshold was crossed in 1995 with the Tokyo subway attacks by Japanese Cult Aum Shinrikyo. It was the first time an independent sub-state group, acting without state patronage or protection had managed to produce and use biochemical weapons on a large scale. Then came the September 11 attack. This kind of terrorism has led to a new theme in terrorist thinking. Rather than on trying to understand the organisation themselves and their objectives, counter-terrorist thinking has focused on the means and technology at the disposal of terror groups This is unfortunate as it has got some states to terrorize themselves far more than the terrorists themselves. We all heard the vengeful cries of Americans after September 11. People in a moment of crisis tend to be willing to sacrifice freedom when their security seems to be seriously threatened, even when a democratic tradition is strong. Scapegoating and indiscriminate labelling are two of the most spiteful anti-democratic symptoms of generalised public fear and insecurity. Overly dramatic depiction of events by media and shallow coverage are all the elements that enhance these sorts of reactions.

So far this does not seem to be the case here. Riding on my bike on Thursday towards in the centre of London, I have to say i was in awe of how organised and calm everyone was. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve been in Beirut way too long and the slightest thing there causes utter chaos and people screaming and in comparison London seemed so Calm or whether…

1. The English in general are serene and composed
2. The English have had experience with terrorist attacks and world wars before so this is nothing new
3. They were expecting this any day given their prime ministers external political affiliation

Feel free to comment….

Are we really?

2005-07-08T22:22:00.000+01:00

Still working on that illustration for a UK magazine article on the Beirut demonstrations earlier this year. While tracing one of our most overly-printed beloved banners, it just got me thinking on what being 100% Lebanese really means...
I know that an American would have a whole speech to vomit about what it is to be 100% American, with all the ethos of Patriotism, Freedom and Justice For All, but us Lebanese are less keen on developping the virtues of being, well, Lebanese.
Our passport is seen as a mere burden to be overriden by anything non-Middle Eastern, when in Beirut, we nag constantly about the shit we go through by our own government, the non-existence of any worthwhile and well-paid work, the superficiality of the young generations, the sheer boredom of it all... when in Beirut, we long to escape.
But, i guess, that really doesn't mean that we're not 100% Lebanese, and I'm just twisting my own screw... I guess that's exactly what being a Lebanese is: escapist, nagging, westernized Middle-Eastern mutants, and somehow, after having been away for almost a year, I miss that environment. London is great, but it's too... non-Lebanese?
I miss siyadieh and Torino (even though I heard It's not what it used to be...). Plus, London's not the best city for a self-professed nagger.
100% Lebanese? Yup, bring it on...

Akhhh to be Lebanese...

2005-07-08T17:40:00.000+01:00

Sometimes, it's too complicated to be a Beiruthian. With it, the weight of responsibility...
How do you show all the complexity, all the underlying frustration, all the corruption, all the lassitude and excitement, the disappointment, 20 years of war, 15 years of reconstruction, all the politicians and their million of frozen smiling faces, hundreds of years of history and a Cedar tree, all in a single 420x160 mm duotone illustration?
HOW?!

The End of a Long Day

2005-07-07T23:07:00.000+01:00

After having listened for over 6 hours to the repeated advice by London Security to "Stay indoors, Stay wherever you are," we decided that we wanted to get a bit of the bomb action, and cycled along the terrorist path... but it was too late. Everyone had already been walking home for the past 4 hours, everything had been cleared, and apart from some masses around the affected tube stations, and a tight security cordon around the bus site at Russell Square, everyone was basically gorging on their usual pints at the pub, and generally celebrating their day off work...
Liverpool Street was all smiles, Moorgate was boring, and the bus site was out of sight. Cycling to King's Cross and Edgware Road was too much an effort, especially as it started to pour down on us, and bikes and umbrellas are quite a tricky combination... All of which made for a pretty useless photography field trip
Basically, we had listened to the folks on TV too seriously, and had missed all the blood and gore. The only thing that reminded us of any sort of tragedy were the Evening Standard's usual all-encompassing 5-worded slogans of: "Terrorists Attack London-Many Dead."
In any case, it was all a good excuse not to work, and an alcohol-fuelled celebration for all those city folks that had survived.

PS: Bastards and Bitches

2005-07-07T15:19:00.000+01:00

Last night, I came home from the pub late, and, as usual, cautiously turned on the lights in the kitchen, awaiting the cockroach scrunching... but to my surprise, the floor was deserted! No bastards in sight. I peaked in every coner of our tiny kitchen, and did not find a single one. To tell you the truth, I was almost disappointed...
And then, suddenly, I heard a little scurrying from behind the fridge, and there was my answer: a mouse darted by my feet, from under the fridge straight to under the washing maching. The bitches are back!
If it's not a cockroach, it's a mouse. They take it in turns to bid me good night...
The Health Service people who earnestly practice rodent-control were scheduled to come today, but, of course, because of the explosions, they never showed up...

The saga has begun...

2005-07-07T14:46:00.000+01:00

"There is always that nagging fear as a Londoner and particularly as one that works in the financial centre of the capital, that you are in a dangerous place and that you are gambling with your life every time you get on at Bank, or Liverpool Street or any of the major tube stations." (taken from a witness account on the Guardian NewsBlog)

-- There it is: the Britishized discourse of fear and victimization has begun to take shape...

WAR ON LONDON!

2005-07-07T14:07:00.000+01:00

Let the media circus begin...
The Terrorists Have Struck Again!
It's all very unfortunate, but I can't get over the thought that the UK has been waiting for this day, preparing it ever since 9/11, to get a piece of all the terrorist action and justify the high-alert status forced upon the population for the past 4 years. With all the terrorist warnings, over-vigilence, plastic bag rubbish bins, shows on BBC enacting what would happen in the case of a nuclear terrorist bomb on Liverpool street... it has finally happened. All the effort, all the military training, all the intellengencia (is that how you write it?) has finally payed off: the eagerly awaited bomb has finally hit Liverpool Street Station, among others. Far from nuclear, but a bomb nonetheless...
And the wheels have been set in motion. London can start the victimization rhetoric, just as the US has repeatedly sampled since its attack, and splurge out the same speeches of Freedom, Liberty and Justice to all but the un-civilized barbaric bearded men out there.
I'm not taking the bearded men's side, though. Both nations are idiotic in their own way. But let's look past the immediate effect of the explosions, and predict the repercussions of these attacks on the new policies that a Labour party, with diminishing popularity and rising criticism by an unsatisfied following, will start to adopt to highten support and engage as a leading figure, with more power and greater justfications, in the race for World Democracy... With an attack under their wing, the UK will be as determined as ever to play their eagerly awaited Joker card.
Seven seven nine eleven, sing with me!

To all you Clerkenwell pubbers...

2005-07-07T00:30:00.001+01:00

What the fuck is up with your 5p?
Is there some sort of magical aura to that measly coin that makes you wait for it so damn patiently at the bar?
You order your 10000 drinks, wait about 15 minutes for me to serve all your goddam pints (while spilling a shitload of Kirin all over my priceless DMs), after having waited 20 minutes to get served in the first place... And as you pay, you are still able to wait another half-hour to get your precious 5p change back!
I see you fiddling around nervously with your drinks as I cash in the £20 of your £19.95 order. I see you zip up your wallet, scan your drinks, re-open your wallet, wipe your brow, and pretend that you can't hold three pints in your hands. I see you stall in your place, pretending that you've actually forgotten about the change I 'owe' you. But deep down, the wanting of that 5p sweats out of you like a kid who will absolutely burst for some strawberry roll-ups.
I take my time, and you still fiddle around the bar, zipping your wallet up and out and over. So I return with the magical coin in my hand, as you look down the piss-yellow beer in your pint glass, aloof and idiotic. "Here you go, enjoy your drinks," I say, holding up the sticky coin, and you glance up with a semi-surprised look, "oh, yeah... thanks!" I swear, the grin on your face makes you look as if I were the one tipping you. And suddenly, leaving the bar with 15 glasses in hand, and the 5p safely in your pocket never seemed so easy for you...

At the end of the day, I don't really care about a 5p tip... they usually get lost beneath the tills. But it always amazes me how much a Clerkenwell advertising executive, lugging around a laptop and gorging on 10 pints and 2 JD&dietcokes s a night will be entranced by his 5p change. Really, how many 5p coins does it take to make a man?

Maha?

2005-07-06T01:13:00.000+01:00

Where have you disappeared to love?

The Roach

2005-07-05T18:39:00.000+01:00

I saw a cockroach today, just one, as I finished eating my early dinner. It wasn't even dark yet! So that's a kind of premiere... The fucking bastards are getting cocky!

I usually see them by pairs these days. Always when I come home late, when everyone is already asleep. I turn on the lights in the kitchen, and there they are, black as shit, frozen on the floor.
Lately, I've also been seeing them on the landing of the flat door. I can just barely make out the little shadows as I heave my bike up the stairs... My bike weighs 40 kilos, I must remind you. So when I'm wearing open-toe sandals and midway up the flight of stairs, with the bike balancing precariously between two steps, seeing a little shadow scurry along past my feet is, if not horrifying, a pain in the ass. Imagine trying to haul the bike up the last couple of steps, with as much caution and silence as possible, so as not to let the poor bastard freak out and walk all over my toes, and up my leg... Quite a delicate situation, especially that the light on the landing is always turned off and I have to squint to track the movements of the little fuck.
And then, SCRUNCH! Did you know that cockroach guts are white, with some slather of light grey?

I must have squished 20 in the past three months... I cannot imagine what lingers on the sole of my beloved sandals.
And the most irritating fact in this gory story is that, although I live with two other girls, it always seems to be me to have to encounter the bastards. One of my flatmates has not seen a cockroach for months! The other has tried to exterminate just one by spraying some mosquito poison. Sometimes I wonder if this infestation is not simply a mere figment of my imagination. Or maybe it's a conspiracy. They seek me out at night...
And these days, i'm even seeing double.

And so begins the saga of the cockroaches...

2005-07-04T23:10:00.000+01:00

Welcome!

2005-07-04T22:11:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone!!!!
We were sitting in Maha's room, bored as hell... so we decided to set-up our own blog!
We've come up with really daft names, as we were incapable of thinking straight and just wanted all the formalities to be over with. So we are officially The Suffragettes, which has something to do with chicks at the beginning of the century going on riots for women's right to vote, which is pretty cool. It's also the name we used to describe ourselves riding on bikes in the East End (courtesy of Chris).
So here it is, the 100 millionth blog on this www world.

Feel free to comment, i guess...