BLAH BLAH BLAH.....
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i do actually have alot to say but i dont have the energy....

ever been in a situation (my god just typing those words a realisation hit me, i start many of my blog entries with 'ever been in a situation) where you find yourself laughing at yourself just for the sheer fact at how stupid you where?


the other day i arrived at work early in the morning, took out my keys, its so routine that i don't have to think about it any more, or so i thought..


i literally stood there for 10 minutes trying to open the main door with my keys, the stupid key wouldn't even go in, i kept looking at the key, examining it, then trying to place it into the key hole, but for some weird reason it wouldn't fit, at this point i was getting frustrated and to top it all of i was wet.


i then came to the realisation that some one must have changed the locks, no other explanation.. so i stood there cursing every one i could think of who might have been involved in changing the locks.


i started to rummage around in my bag, looking for my mobile so i can call the manager, when i felt something at the bottom of my bag, low and behold it was a bunch of keys...


my god it was my work keys, i looked down at my hand and it struck me what the problem was, i was holding my house key, i was trying to open work with my house key!!!!!!!!!!


it doesn't even resemble my work key, and not only that my work keys come in a bunch attached to a key ring, my house key is a singular key, how in the world did i confuse between them??????


walahi guys i stood there laughing at myself for what seemed forever.


seriously why!!!

sometimes it seems that life hands out a case of 'everything going wrong' and just when you think life hates you, it turns itself around and gives you a tremendous hug ;)

the other day i was sat at work eating a bowl of cornflakes (bran flakes actually), it was 9 am, and i was cherishing the moment of silence cause i new that ahead of me would be a day of constant 'blah blah blah blah blah'.

anyway so I'm sat eating breakfast and contemplating on writting to gordon brown and kindly asking him to scrap Mondays from the weekdays, when a patient walks in and interrupts my line of thought.

'what you eating there sinder?' (i love how my name has so many different versions).

me: 'breakfast'

patient: 'oh, what is it?'

me: i had the urge to say camel hair for some reason, 'its bran flakes'

patient: 'oh, do you like bran flakes?'

me: 'yep i certainly do, it fills me up and gets me ready for work'

patient: 'ok'

and that was that...

next day i leave work, I'm walking towards oxford road, and i can clearly hear some one beeping continuously while I'm walking, but being an Arab girl, I've been brought up not to turn around when hearing the beep of a car, so the car continued to beep and i continued to walk until the car literally parked in front of me, it was the same patient.

patient: 'hey sinder, i was beeping you'

me: 'oh was you, sorry i didn't realise'

patient: ' where you of to?'

me: 'the beach... only kidding I'm going to the hospital to visit a friend'

patient: 'oh, you going to come back to work?'

me: 'nope, Ive finished for the day, praise the lorrrrd'

patient: 'oh'

me: i wanted to walk away, 'why is there something you need?'

patient: 'ummmm no i was going to pop in later but i will leave it for Thursday when your next in'

me: 'ok then, well you have a good day now'

and that was that...

next day i come into work, and the patient had brought me a little gift...

3 boxes of bran flakes looooooooool

how adorable is that?

basically she used to work for Kellogg's (the makers of cereal) and she still has contacts and gets given offers, so when she had seen me eat it for breakfast she decided to get me some more.

bless her, i swear people, she made my day :))))))))

don't you think that the Libyan traditional dress is so cute, its simply lovely.

amazingly enough when i was a kid i hated it, couldn't stand the look of it, the ladies dress that is, the mens was cool, but for some reason i couldn't stand the ladies 3arbee / irday.

i never realised that there where sooooo many different types, and they differ depending on what area your from as well, cool!!!

i only started liking them recently, not all types i have to be honest, some give the illusion of an over dressed peacock.

but some are totally funky, especially the Bedouin one (ph i am one at heart lol), my ultimate fav has to be the 3abroog with all that silver funky jewelery, yeh man...

i guess my hatred for it stems from the fact that as a 7 year old child, for one of the eids, my mums friend dressed me up in the whole 3arbee gear, including the helmet of gold,as well as the frontal gold sheild (loads of gold involved), then we went to the local mosque for a eid party, how traumatising, picture me in the whole gear, sat in a mosque in Scotland, surrounded by children from different ethnic backgrounds all asking me what i was wearing.

i couldn't even participate in the games because i couldn't walk, i had to be assisted as i had been wrapped like dolma. walahi if i had a scanner i would scan the pic, i looked like i was not impressed in the least lol.

after that episode of my life, the word 3arbee sent shivers down my spine. but i have gotten over that after much counselling ;)

seriously though, the past 2 years I've been to quite a few weddings and some of the brides looked majorly funky in there 3arbees, so yeh I've been converted, but in all honesty i would rather take pictures than to wear it myself. take for instance the picture above, it was so funny to watch her trying to walk, bless...

i remember one time at uni, we had culture week, and i decided that i would feature Libya as one of the cultures, so i booked an area and for a whole week i offered shahee 7amar, arabic cofee, ghraybah and ka3ak, as well as a gallery of photos and art work, and of course historical info including a section dedicated to the shaheed umar mukhtar and my friend bless her came in one day wearing a pink 3arbee and stood all day with me wearing it lol, lets just say we got a crowd going :)

my first trip to Libya was in 2002, my brother and i had gone through the Tunisian border, so my uncle had picked us up from Tunis and we drove to Tripoli, when we entered Tripoli it was eid morning and people where leaving there homes to go to the eid prayer, and cause it was cold some of the men where wearing jard, and the image of sun rise with an old man wearing jard and an old woman wearing irday was one of the most beautiful scenes i saw when i was in Libya.

wow that was quite a rant...

i have been craving roasted chestnuts for like the past year!!!

i simply adore them mmmm.

and yesterday a good friend of mine came back from Turkey and handed me a bag full of chestnuts that are ready to be roasted yipeeeee.

when i went to turkey in 2005 the weather was still chilly so the chestnut men where everywhere, i didn't need to hunt them down, this was the first chest nut man i saw and i literally ran to him bought so much of him and then requested to take his photo, for some reason the man thought i had issues, why would he think that!!!

at the moment i am rubbing my hands in glee, gastil gastil gastil, i could sing a song about chestnuts.

you know what else is amazing for winter season, batata 7elwa (sweet potato) put it in the even, let in cook, simply gorgeous.

and then to add to that the most amazing drink sa7lab, yeh man...

ever been in a stituation where you thought you heard something but it turns out you miss heard what the person said?

you see i seem to make a habit of miss-hearing people but i blame it on peoples pronounciation, although my friends will say otherwise but dont listen to them :)

the other day i was chatting to my mums friend, she is one funky dudette, she is one of those mothers friends who you can have a laugh with, see mothers tend to have different types of friends, some are of the type who speak down to you, extremley patronising and will not be convinced that your capable of doing anything on your own, i.e treat you like your still 3.

other types are the kind that speak to you or give you some sort of attention when they need something from you, other than that they wont blink an eye lid at you. then you have the second mother, and then some are the funky variaty, the whole been there done that and permenantly wore the t-shirt, the type you could seriously enjoy yourself with.

so i was having a general chit chat with her, talking about the wedding we went to, her taking the mick about me falling, then we started talking about what we wore, she was asking where i had bought my dress, she then asked my opinion of what she wore, to which i replied 'mashallah, tala3ti zay il ghazalah' - you looked lovely mashallah.

she smilled and then i thought she said 'mitakda matla3tish zay il feelah' - you sure i didnt look like an elephant'

to which i replied '7ashak feelah, musta7eel' no way elephant, never.

her facial expression alerted me to the fact that i had said something she wasnt expecting and before i could ask she said: 'feelah? feelah? anee magiltash feelah'

oh my god some body ask the earth to swallow me whole please, what do you say...

all i could say was 'sam7eenee khwelah, shin giltee?' -pardon me aunty, what did you say?'

to which she replied 'giltlick libsee makanish ikhee' - i said my dress wasnt horrible?

??????????? where in the world did i hear elephant???????

she then said ' mala can fe balak feelah lama shiftinee' - well then you must have thought elephant when you saw me.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaah

to which i kept muttering on about how that wasnt true and she looked amazing, and how just the other day i mentionedto my mum how she had looked really nice.

but i dont think she was convinced :(

saying that though she did laugh and poke fun at me to my utter embarrasment. why do these things always happen looooool

recently i was asked to be the photographer at a friends wedding, she wanted me to take photos of her henna as well as the zafah (wedding).

i don't have the best of luck when it comes to my cameras, for some bizarre reason things keep happening to my cameras. my first camera was a Nikon, absolutely fantastic camera, my dad borrowed it when he went on holiday to Greece, it ended up in the wrong hands, i.e stolen from my dads back pack.

so of i went and bought another camera, a Fuji fine pix, my Bangladesh shots where made by that camera, in October my mum was heading of to Dubai and requested to borrow my camera, so i handed it over, 10 days later my mum is back safe and sound,as for my camera, well lets just say that it some how landed at the bottom of a fountain in one of Dubai's hotels ????????

my poor mother was traumatised so she bought me a camera as a replacement, a Sony, now I'm particular about my cameras, it takes me a while to buy one as i review it, check out the pros and cons, test it out etc... before finally buying it, i couldn't this time as my mum had made the choice for me, i smiled, took the camera and plugged it into the charger.

between October and now, the camera has been functioning okish, its not what i would have chosen but its functional, so of i headed to the henna, and began to take pictures of the future bride, just before they started the ritual that is henna, my camera went on strike and decided it wanted to commit suicide, thus preventing me from taking any more photos, and unbelievably not a single person in the room had a camera on them!!!! my camera is stuck to me like glue, you never know when it could come in handy.

so unfortunately i wasn't able to take any photos of the henna.

the wedding was 2 days later, i borrowed 2 cameras from friends and went to the wedding hall, the bride entered and i began to take snap shots of her, she was walking slowly to the sound of specific bridal entrance music, people where sat from both sides and she was walking amongst them on a white carpet, i was ahead taking snap shots from all angles, walking backwards, walking walking walking not realising there was a a huge vase with flowers directly behind me as part of the decoration.

no one warned me, what ended up happening was i fell backwards due to stumbling over the vase, the vase topples over, smashes to a thousands pieces, the flowers scatter everywhere, white african is on the floor, camera still in hand, the brides mother is looking horrified, every one is watching, pointing, whispering, my mother is hiding under the table, the bride isn't even aware that anythings happened lol.

i had 2 options either get up, run away and never be seen again in the Manchester community OR get up, smile and continue to take pic, i chose option 2, but i did have the courtesy to apologise to the mother of the bride who responded 'khadit sawha'.

so yeh again i fell, i swear the floor seems to have some sort of attraction for me as I'm constantly falling, although i have to say in my defense i was wearing a long abayah and had heels on.

isn't it so annoying when some one is in a mood and they instantly spoil your own mood because of the intense messed up mood of theres.

you could be having a perfectly fine day up until you sit with a person who is in a foul mood and there mood rubs onto you so by the end of the day you finding yourself being all grumpy due to some one elses mood, how messed up is that!!!

whats worse is when they wont talk about it, theres only so many times you can say: 'is every thing ok?' and when they say fine you just want to bash them over the head with an inflatable iron because clearly there lying because the the whole world and its dog knows that some thing is up.

then later you get accused of not giving a damn!!!! well excuse me, but when i asked you a zillion times whats up? you told me nothing, so it took it to mean that NOTHING was up...

NOOOOOOO im supposed to read between the lines, i didn't realise im supposed to be telepathic, see im one of those people who cant jamil (i dont even know what the english word for this is, but its basically when you go over the top with politeness and asking if a person is ok, help me out bloggers what is the english word for mujamalah?) i might ask a person 3 times but then i feel stupid for continuously asking, so i will just say 'im here if you need me for anything' and thus leaving the ball in there court.

but some people need to be asked a trillion times before they finally break the ice and confess whats eating them up,

you know what really gets me as well is when they admit somethings up but say 'its not you, its just that i have issues at the moment' ok fine we all have issues but the fact that you have chosen to be in my presence i.e met up with me, means that you want to change your mood, you want your mood up lifted, now i am going to try my best to achieve this but please for the love of god its a 2 way thing, help me out with at least a smile, a sort of laugh, but to fold your arms through out and sulk and not say 2 words in an hour is slightly pushing it, what do you want me to do jump up and down and dance the Copacabana?

human moods are such funny things, why do we have them?

i learnt something new today that i would like to share with the blogging world.

its probably the best advice you might receive today, cherish it you never know when it can come handy.

its common sense really...

basically....

if it has ever crossed your mind...

even for a milli second..

to wear high heels when its icy outside...

DON'T EVER DO IT.....

best advice i can give for today..

don't be a whitelibyanafrican this winter and wear heels,its sure to make you look a fool if you do ;0)

tomorrow will be arafat, this time last year i was with 5 million others performing hajj, i cant believe that a year has passed, subhannallah!!!

i feel a sense of sadness for not going this year, that may sound selfish but believe me once you have tasted hajj then your heart yearns to perform hajj each year.

usually I'm not a t.v watcher, i don't really care for it, Arabic or English channels, but this year each time i walk past the television and if there showing anything to do with hajj then i find myself staring at the screen, and i could stand there for half an hour absorbed with the scenes unfolding on t.v.

oh how i wish i was there.....

inshallah i intend to fast tomorrow.

so much has happened since i came back from hajj, time flies yet so much change can occur, i pray that Allah swt grants us all the chance to perform hajj.

eid mubarak to you all, may you have a blessed eid full of happiness and la7am mmmmmm.

the other day me and tawhida where walking towards the mosque in town having a general chit chat, we turned round the corner, when i noticed that one of the buildings was being renovated, the whole front of the building was purely window, ie glass, so we could see what was happening inside, the builders must have gone home but what they left behind, to me, was what being British is all about :))))

the good old cup of tea!!!

cant live without it, put the kettle on and you receive instant relaxation, i love it...

why oh why is it so hard to wake up in the morning?

the initial process of opening the eyes when the alarm goes of is agony to the eye lids, but whats worse is processing the thoughts to your legs to get them to get out of bed!!!

you begin by sending messages to the legs but half way through your mind decides it doesn't really want to get up so the end result is half the body hanging of the bed with the head still stuck on the pillow aaaaaah.

and why is it time flies by when you don't want it to, the 5 minute snooze is more like a 2 second snooze, one of the most annoying sounds to be heard is the sound of the alarm, pretending to ignore it doesn't work because it gets louder and louder until you have to get up and shut it up.

life would be more easier if getting up in the morning wasn't such a chore...

or if we functioned through our dreams, now that would be cool, sleeping yet dreaming that your wroking, kill 2 birds with one stone, hmmmm now which drug on the market gives this affect.....

why does the weekend fly past at a speed of a squirrel being catapulted into the air? why? and the week goes by slightly slower, but today is Thursday, tomorrow is Friday and the weekend begins again :))))

anyway the issues raised this past weekend was smoking

i was basically walking past a corner shop fiddling with my mp3, when i noticed some one was talking to me, i looked up to see a teenage girl, you know the look, huge hooped ear rings, geled down hair with a pony tail, track suite bottoms, etc...

i hadn't heard what she had said so i said 'excuse me'

to which she replied 'can you buy something for me?' waving a five pound note in my face.

'what would you like me to buy?' i said

'pack of 10 ciggs, please' with a look of desperation on her face.

to which i said 'fraid not, i wont do it'

she walked away upset but within 2 seconds had found another 'adult' to ask, and from the looks of things he didn't mind getting her what she wanted.

see things like this irritate me, the fact that certain so called adults will buy ciggs and alcohol to under aged 'children', with out a care in the world.

the shop keepers are sticking to the law (not all of them) but many adults wont blink an eye lid to buying these products to juveniles. its disgusting behaviour...

the lack of responsibility and the failure of being an example to the youngsters is seriously frightening, the fact that decent role models are quickly diminishing in our societies is a scary thing to ponder on.

role models is an extremely important element, as humans its natural to look up to some one, especially a person that you admire, but if the persons qualities are questionable then admiration can be a dangerous thing that can have drastic affects on others around.

i think next time i see an adult buying such things for children then defiantly i will report them..

I'm feeling better hamdullilah, thanks every one for your kind words and advice.

what i did was i grabbed my camera, put my headphones on and went for a long walk and eventually found myself in one of my fav parks.

i sat down, and gathered my thoughts together, i was alone in the park, and for a few seconds it felt like i was the only person in the world, niceeeeee :)

my eyes where looking around observing small things, concentrating on the nature that surrounded me, and eventually my eyes landed on a lonely tree, and a ray of light was hitting this tree from the top and it looked so beautiful, and for some reason it brought a smile to my face and a sense of relief, and my mood instantly lifted, i tried taking a picture of how it looked:

i would have sat in that park for a longer time but i had to go to my course....

ever been annoyed but you really cant pin point exactly why it is your annoyed?

I'm having that feeling at this moment in time, I'm mega peeved off but when i think about it i don't really know why aaaah frustrating and its making me even more annoyed.

its kinda funny really, but right now I'm not laughing i just want to rip a pillow in half and stuff the feathers down some ones throat.

actually typing that has helped slightly, hmmmm there really is more to blogging....

breath in breath out......

ok so since the last post, i have been pondering about magic carpets and broomsticks, weighing up the options, thinking of the advantages of both and the disadvantages as well.

imagining what it would be like to fly by both, wow just think of the possibilities.

flying to other countries on a carpet or a broomstick, whatever takes your fancy, so cool, advantage of carpet is that if you got tired you can sleep or if you needed to pray then hey presto your already on a carpet go for it lol.

i genuinely am interested to know which you would prefer to travel by:

magic carpet?

or

a broomstick?

London makes me laugh so much, it really has the weirdest combination of people and they all seem to be based in the underground. i swear London city is one of those places where people watching could be turned into a sport.

i really doubt a person can be bored sitting at a window of a cafe watching the weirdness that is humanity walk by lol, i love it :)

i was in London this weekend and sure enough weirdness seemed to follow me. before even reaching London me and my friend ended up sitting next to a man who was desperate to know whether we spoke Urdu? he wasn't Asian, he was an English man who was learning to speak Urdu as he is intending on flying to Pakistan some time in the future to attend his friends wedding, cool, we replied that unfortunately we didn't speak Urdu although i new a few words and i could count to 4 but i doubt that means that i had grasped the language.

we said we spoke Arabic instead, later he asked what 'Arabian' food was like, i seriously get annoyed with that phrase 'Arabian' what is that? when i was at collage i had a couple of friends who asked me whether i was 'Arabian' and whether i listened to 'Arabian' music, once a guy asked me if i ever visited 'Arabian' lol, yeh all the time mate!!

anyway the guy was pretty funky, a practicing Buddhist who asked us 1001 questions about Islam, we tried answering to the best of our abilities.

when he found out i was Libyan, he told me that his mother had recently come back from visiting Libya and said she had the best time of her life ever!!! well I'm glad she did thank god.

i found out from this dude where you can get ostrich meat, in borough market in London, ostrich burgers, i so need to try them out, I'm being serious I'm craving ostrich meat, a huuuuuuge chicken...

so we get to London eventually, euston station and our friend meets us and off we go to the underground, 3 hijabis sitting next to each other, it must have been a sight cause the dude sat in front of us looked at us and then said 'so what are you, the 3 Grace's?' looooooool to which i laughed at, my friend nodded and then we continue dto chat about the state of Palestine.

couple of seconds later the guy then decided to lean forward and asks:

'do you ladies travel by flying carpet, have you ever travelled on a flying carpet?'

????????

we just stared at him and then my friend pointed at her rucksack and said:

'actually yes, come to think of it i have one in my ruck sack'

to which he rubbed his hand with glee, and announced to the rest of the train, 'these girls travel on flying carpet, they zoooooom around there room on a flying carpet'

laughs hysterically and walks of the train, 2 seconds later a man dressed up as Elvis walks in with a guitar and starts singing 'i said a one for the money, 2 for.....

looooool i love London...

i love it when the leaves change colour and fall to the ground, and that feeling of winter approaching, soooo nice.

the best time for hot drinks, seriously...

just wanted to share some of the photos i took the other day of my favourite thing....

TREES....

seriously for me taking a walk in the park is a de-stressor, and gives me the chance to contemplate on my life, day, hours etc...

a nice hot chocolate later or a chai latte perrrrrrrfect...

i hate rush hour, between the hour of 8-9am and 5:30-6:30pm, its a killer. its not that i even use public transport, i walk to work, what really annoys me, what really peeves me off, is having to cross the road.

picture it in your mind, i walk out my house at 8:10am, everything is cool until i get to the first busy road, every day its a chore trying to get across, i can easily stand there for 20 minutes trying to find an opportunity to cross the road, and as the seconds go by I'm getting more and more annoyed, so that by the time i finally get an opportunity to cross my face is handing out evil looks to every single driver that i pass.

i hate it when the drivers are driving past me knowing that I'm struggling to cross the road and not a single driver gives me the opportunity, they just continue to drive by me, its times like these that i think to myself if i ever become a driver then i will make sure that i will let people cross the road, i will give them the way because i white african have been there, done that and over worn the t-shirt.

it doesn't even take time for me to cross the road, I'm fast, blink of an eye lid, yet 99% of drivers will not give me the right of way, i always say to my friends 'god created human legs before the wheel'.

so in conclusion to this rant on Friday morning, please with a cherry on the top let me cross the road, i will pray for you if you do :))))))))))))))))))))))))))

sometimes i ponder about the relationships we have with people and how we really can take such matters for granted, take friendships for instance, we all have friends, some are more closer than others, we have different degrees of friendships, those people whom we class as being like 'family', then others who we occasionally meet up with, and then others whom we bump into at events but we get along just fine. the bonds of friendship can be as strong as a metal chain.

some one once told me that you know your close friends from the amount of missed calls, received calls and text messages you have on your phone from them lol, he told me that when he was getting married and when it came to inviting his friends, he took his phone and went through it and invited those people whom he was in constant contact with, any one he hadn't heard from in months or years he took of the list, interesting....

sometimes i think is it really worth making close friends with special people when the end result is that they will pack there bags and leave?

the answer is yes of course its worth it, if anything those memories of friendship will be cherished forever, and we are affected by our friendships, our inner growth and change in ourselves can be partly due to the friends we have.

the reason i started this blog entry to begin with is due to the fact that a dear dear friend of mine is leaving me waaaaaaaaaa.

shes packing her bags and moving to Dubai on Tuesday and although this was on the agenda for some time i guess i never truly thought it would happen or come so soon. its always sad when good friends are no longer a walk away, in Muna's case its going to have to be a fly away.

sometimes we may not speak or see our friends for some time but it gives us peace of mind that they are only a phone call away or a bus or drive away, its going to be hard not having Muna in the same city as me, the prophet PBUH once said that the good friend is the one who reminds you of Allah SWT each time you meet them, and truly Muna is that type of friend, she is my mirror.

i pray that her journey is a safe one and that wherever life takes her it hands out goodness and khair to her and may Allah always forever keep her happy.

remember always be appreciative of your friends...