Tuesday, December 31, 2013

New Years Crap


No offence to the tweet's writer, but come oooooooon! 
I am a positive person, I bore my own self with my positivity, but I simply don't have the guts to say this to people, right to their faces. 

Ps: Do we say "tweet's writer" or is there a word coined out there that I have never heard of? 

Monday, December 30, 2013

Of Mothers



It just brought tears to my eyes as I was reading it in the kitchen to my mother and her guests. Not only for the huge agony reflected in his words, but for loving his mother for her intelligence and intellect, and leaving her delicious food for the fourth line. 

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Aida: The Infinite Possibilities



Ever since I started watching "Aida" I had a "meh" feeling. I got to Aida after watching 5 season of Aqui No Hay Quien Viva and all the available seasons of La Que Se Avecina.

It is not that "Aida" is not good, but I got some kind of "Aqui No Hay Quien Viva" addiction, that made all other shows seem boring and nowhere close to attractive.

But I was show-less while I was in Turkey, and I just got to the conclusion that I cant survive living on my own if I was not accompanied by characters of a TV show -sue me- so I had to start Aida and go through the first season without actual interest.

But today as I was watching the 11th episode in the second season, I felt that in this specific episode the writers had put some actual effort in making it like no other.

The episode went along with two story lines, one about Aida being in a relationship with Mauricio, or being in a relationship with Chema.

The two possibilities were shown to us consecutively, until we go back to the first scene when she tries to change the way she drinks her coffee, which supposedly lead her to falling for one of them.

At the end of the episode she takes her coffee as always, and she sits in the bar, and then there is wide shot of the entire place where she is sitting to the side and the lights blare in the bar and the episode ends.

The possibilities... they are there, and we are so miserably limited, why can't we see what might have been under our noses all the time? Why not?




The Best Friends Ever



Today, I was simply ridiculously happy.

Nawaf, Ali and I went to have breakfast at Doa'as place. The idea was there for relatively a long time, but as I was not in the country those last two months, the breakfast was postponed various times, and I had the old feeling of worry when two groups of my friends do merge.

I don't know... I am so talkative and I can always come up with "something to talk about" but still I always worry before such gatherings.

But I could not imagine how good it was, and let me put aside the great food, and the great Najeeb Mahfouz movie that we watched on Rotana Zaman, and just focus on the two gifts that Nawaf and Ali brought.

They got her a somehow purple frog and the zoo animal's plastic figurines!! She was thrilled about the gifts (well, thrilled is not exactly the word that goes with Doa'a but let say she was excited) and I just sat there and wondered: How on God's name, does people in their twenties get the idea of bringing such a gift?!

When I was younger I made some kind of a promise to myself that I will not become an "adult", that I'll never be boring, repetitive, predictable or mature in the negative sense of the word. And for a long time I thought that I kept the promise, but it was until I became good friends with Ali (above all Ali) when I realized that I grew some how old and lazy.

What does it take to come up with a silly yet innovative gift, and to actually go and get it and present it solemnly and have a good laugh about it?

The best friends ever are the ones who never let you feel old, act old or think old, and this is why I believe that I have the world's best friends. 

A workbook on mental illnesses: My Very First Bulky English Translation

Lately I have interpreted a workshop of 8 days on chronic mental illnesses, in which a curriculum was taught regarding how to make a patients life as good as possible given that those illnesses have no "cure''.

It was a very enlightening experience, and although the workshop took place on snowy days, in which arriving to the hotel was a daily adventure but it was worth every minute.

The participants came from all over Jordan. They were either psychologists or social workers, some of them worked in mental clinics (turned out that there is a mental clinic in every governorate in Jordan) and many came from Fuheis mental hospital. And there was this very interesting lady who worked in a jail, to psychoanalyze the inmates!! (Is not that a cooool job for a novelist?!)

The speaker Dr Carol simply a very intellectual, smart, well educated sweetheart. She is simply the one you would want to take care of your loved ones if they ever get an illness of this kind.

She emphasized a lot on the social stigma upon schizophrenic people, and she was presenting realistic and applicable examples all the time, which for me -as an interpreter- is something I rarely witness. I am always attending conferences and meetings where people talk about "strategies'', "policies", "approaches" and "methods", nothing was ever as real as this workshop.

When it ended, it still continued for me because I had to redo the translation of the work book presented in the workshop. The first translation was a total mess and I was offered the job I got the usual scare, you know, all of those technical psychological terms, but I was like: If I had interpreted the topic during 8 days, I must be the most capable person of translating the document.

And so I started working for an entire week. It was such a short time, but hey, I believe that a close dealine is the best inspiration.

I worked for days in the university's library, and I was lamenting -all the freaking time- the miserable Arabic resources for a topic as important as mental illnesses. After a long search I found a somehow encyclopedia online, which is the fruit of an individual's effort, it helped me a lot (I always feel guilty when I find shortage on the Arabic content on any topic,,, but this is unjustified guilt, I am not a psychologist!!)

The workbook is now done and sent back to the council that hired me, where it is gonna be used as a base for interviews with schizophrenic patients in order to evaluate their cases and to offer them the medical and social support they need.

Besides the great feeling that translation usually gives me, this time I felt like I served the community .. I just love being a Translator,,, the best job in the world.

Here, see the words I checked in the dictionary ...  


Saturday, December 21, 2013

Of Lovers and Spouses: Amen!


فالعاشقان هما زوجان دائما؛ سواء قبل المعبد أم لم يقبل، جمعهما بيت أم لم يجمعهما. 

بل سواء قررا هما ذلك أم لم يقررا.. فقيس زوج ليلى، وإن لم يتزوجا. 

وفي هذا المنطق؛ العشق يسخر كثيرا من الكاهن في الحلال والحرام.”