The Mirror Effect

•February 23, 2009 • 4 Comments

face_down_ii_by_istoleyourthunder

Everyday we go out into the world and we see people… we interact with people… we like people… we hate people… we hurt people… we get hurt by people!

When I was a kid, I guess I was kinda observant of things around me… I loved to understand things and determine why and what they are from a distance. I noticed how the ugliest kids in fact had the ugliest personalities. I realize that this is an extremely prejudice generalization… but my conclusion here is that people with ugly personalities generally seem ugly on the outside…

They could be the faces of a beauty magazine, and that still wouldn’t matter! A lot of the time, you can look at a person and see beyond the pretty face, pretty body, pretty mask!

There probably isn’t a scientific field of study for what I’m saying, or any hard solid evidence other than that of your own experiences. If you’ve ever looked at a person and knew right away that said person is rotten on the inside, then you know what I’m talking about.

If you know this is true… then you also need to know that it applies to you. You’re a mirror of what you are inside. People might not be able to see who you are on the inside, but they can see what your reflection is on the outside.

You cant do bad things and then go out into the world and expect good things to happen to you… Because if everything I just said is true… then it would have to apply to everyone else in the world as well!

Still dont understand?

Ok…

Lets say you’re a bad person… you’ve got a wife at home that you beat up for example… The second you wake up every single day… everything will suck… the people you meet… the places you go… the things you say… the things you feel… everything seems so damn bad and ugly. Why you ask? You’re reflecting bad things onto other mirrors… so welcome to a life of mirrors that keep showing you how bad you really are.

The reason i’m writing this now is well… the other day I was getting a haircut in surra, and this guy walked into the same place where I get my haircuts. He was extremely cheerful! Very polite, smiled alot! He received this relatively warm welcome from everyone that worked there!

This guy seemed to be a really nice person… and guess what? People loved him!

You can call this karma, the mirror effect, or whatever you wanna call it… fact of the matter is… you cant hide what you are if people can always see it. And no matter how pretty you think you are, you’re gonna look seriously ugly if thats what you are inside.

Picture: Face Down II by istoleyourthunder

Pretty Heavy Diaper – PhD

•February 3, 2009 • 5 Comments

Hamad: One thing I’ve never understood…

Is why professors think they’re better than their students?

Imaginary: Yellow spandex.

Hamad: … o_O

R-R-Right… well… when you look it up on Wikipedia… a PhD is defined as:

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated Ph.D. or PhD for the Latin philosophiæ doctor, meaning “teacher of philosophy”, (or, more rarely, D.Phil., for the equivalent doctor philosophiæ) is an advanced academic degree awarded by universities. In many, but not all countries in the English-speaking world, it has become the highest degree one can earn (but see also the higher doctorates awarded by universities in the UK, Ireland and some Commonwealth countries) and applies to graduates in a wide array of disciplines in the sciences and humanities. The Ph.D. has become a requirement for a career as a university professor or researcher in most fields.

So we’re in the clear when we describe a PhD holder as someone who possesses a great amount knowledge… You’d think somewhere in the midst of all that knowledge there are some sort of grounds for BASIC MANNERS! Why the hell can’t they respect their students just enough to make them feel like they’re not in the presence of some talking walking grading god?

Imaginary: Poor you, all your professors are out to get you!

Hamad: … Why are you even here?!

Imaginary: What you’re saying is extremely incorrect.

Hamad: Oh yeah? Let me guess, you’ve got a PhD too and I have no idea what I’m on about?

Imaginary: It is fairly insulting of you to assume that I don’t have a PhD, but I’m going to excuse you because yes, you have no idea “what you’re on about.”

Hamad: …! o_O

Imaginary: You see young one, what you’re saying is based on what you see. To assume that all PhD holders are ill mannered is an incorrect generalization. However, it would have been possible had you assumed a smaller scale, such as all PhD holders in Kuwait, or even at your own college.

Hamad: Ok fine! For the sake of being politically correct, some PhD holders in Kuwait are extremely “ill mannered.”

Imaginary: Tight yellow spandex.

Hamad: … o_O

Imaginary:  Excuse my fascination with things that are far more interesting than the topic at hand, how is it that they are ill mannered?

Hamad: You’re not real.

Imaginary: Only to the untrained eye, I assure you.

Hamad: …

Its everything they do!

Here’s a list of things that bug me:

1) Tardiness. PhD holders tend to be extremely nosey and ask you questions like “Where were you?” or “Why are you late?”… WHATS IT TO YOU?! Where the hell do you get off asking me why when where or what I was doing? Oh I get it, its so you can tick me off on attendance? fine lets move on to number two…

2) Attendance. A lot of professors grade me on this… and the only way out of it is if I have a valid and signed off document that states that I was SICK that day… So if anything ELSE comes up, like oh I dont know… I had a sick father… I had a flat tire… I had any of a billion other set backs… I automatically get written off as absent for the respective class.  At my college, if you’re absent for what adds up to three entire weeks of said class, you fail the course automatically. Ok so fine, I’m entitled to being able to cut a certain amount of classes so I can tend to other urgencies that pop up in my life without failing said course. Isn’t it bad enough that I fail the course automatically after three weeks worth of not attending? Do I have to get my grades shaved off too? So Mr. PhD holder, you give the person who hasn’t cut a single class a full mark, and you give the person who had to cut your class a couple of times a lower grade? Does that even seem remotely fair to you? Where the hell do you get off determining what I deserve for not maintaining a 100% attendance rate? In fact, where the hell do you get off even comparing attendance rates? Attendance isn’t for you to grade me on Mr. Doctor of Philosophy!

3) Office Hours. You’re a well mannered first class son/daughter of two parents that have put blood sweat and tears into bringing you up the way they did. So when you go see your professor at his/her office for whatever reason, you politely knock on the door in a very unintrusive and respectful manner that would make mummy and daddy extremely proud of you. What happens then? Oh I’ll tell you! Doctors of Philosophy happen! You end up waiting for a ridiculous amount of time at their door while they have tea/coffee and one heck of a conversation either on the phone or with the neighboring jackass Doctor of Philosophy. Yet you toughen it out, keep on waiting. Then the bastard has the nerve to step out, lock his/her office and asks you to come back later because Jack-ass has a very important issue that requires Jack-ass attention. Not you, ohhhh not you, the Jack-ass’ issue. As if you weren’t the reason he gets paid. As if you weren’t the purpose of his/her waking up every morning and going to work.

4) Compliments  “to” the Chef. Some professors love it when you compliment them on how fuzzy they make you feel inside. Let me make this clear, I despise it. Whether you’re the person giving the compliment or receiving it. I despise you both. Unless your feelings for this person are GENUINE and TRUE then you’re clearly sucking up to said professor and encouraging this type of behavior which you end up getting a higher grade for. This is a high for some professors believe it or not.

5) Hypocrisy. I was once late for class and Mr. Doctor of Philosophy made me stand for 15 minutes at the door while he gave a lecture on how I  wasted the students’ and the professor’s time before he eventually let me in. So he dedicated 15 minutes to explaining how I wasted everyone’s time instead of dedicating those 15 minutes to explaining course content [So wait... I wasted everyone's time?]. Guess what happened after I was let in? Jack-ass was supposed to be lecturing us on the Theory of Mechanics… instead, he deemed it more productive and less time-wasting to talk about traffic congestion and political figures of the Arab world. Gosh… if only I knew what my fellow students missed out on due to my being late for class.

6) Can’t Beat em? Join em! I’ve recently heard that in the history of all the students of Kuwait University that have asked for an administrative review of their course work because they know that they deserve a better grade than the one given to them by the respective course instructor, not one of them has ever won this battle. Is KU not 50 years old? So in around 50 years… not one of these students was done injustice? Oh come on! Don’t take your PhD holders off their damned pedestals here! After all, they’re not human! They can’t make mistakes! Theoretically, this kind of thing would cut off all hope of students having the courage to step forward. So congratulations people, you’ve managed to develop the sucking-up student-professor relationship which in turn formed the popular idolization of PhD holders. Theoretically at least.

There is no measure to how long I can keep on listing things… but that’s not the point. PhD holders aren’t GODS. They shouldn’t have power over students.

Imaginary: Maybe someday you can change this.

Hamad: Maybe someday you can tell me who/what you are.

Imaginary: All in good time my paralleled debater, all in good time. Say, what do you think of spandex? Yellow in particular.

Hamad: You have issues. o_O

Imaginary: Yes… very well, I shall be off now.

Hamad: I think they’re annoying.

Imaginary: Have you tried wearing them?

Hamad: … no. o_O

Imaginary: You should.

*Imaginary disappears*

Hamad: I’m officialy going crazy.

Inflammable

•October 3, 2008 • 8 Comments

Towards the end of last July… I’d been going to the beach a lot with my friends… I kinda have a thing for swimming…

For almost a month I’ve been coming back home with sunburns all over and eventually kicked into a tan…

We went one morning again… swam for 4 hours… and I came back home with really bad sunburns to my shoulders… I was very indifferent to them and figured they’d go away soon enough as they always do…

That night… I slept for a bit… woke up at around 3:00 AM feeling very light-headed… I got out of bed… walked towards the bathroom [3azkom allah]… made it halfway… and realized I was gonna pass out…

before I actually passed out… I threw myself onto the floor and turned on my back… made sure my head was tilted to the very back… and all went black…

I passed out.

everything was black and in the center of all the blackness I could see a white circular shape with rugged edges…

I woke up later on… not knowing how long I was out…

My shoulders felt like they were on fire… I got up… realized that everyone was still asleep… and continued my venture towards the bathroom…

I finally made it…

I walked in…

I looked at myself in the mirror…

I noticed something very awkward about my shoulders…

As if they weren’t mine…

I looked harder… only to see a huge amount of blisters that have formed over the sunburns on my shoulders…

I didn’t tell my dad about them… I didn’t want him to worry as he had enough on his mind as it was…

I stayed up till the next morning… headed over to my sister and asked her to take me to the hospital…

I didn’t show her though… I didn’t want anyone to see them but since my sister was driving me over to the hospital it seemed more and more inevitable that she was going to see them…

We walked into the doctor’s office, I explained to him what happened… and he asked me if i was able to take off my T-shirt… as painful as it was.. I did it anyway…

My sister helped me… not prepared for what she was about to see…

We managed to get the T-shirt off and she couldn’t help but to inhale in a shocked manner…

The doctor saw them and looked at me as he began explaining to me how these second degree burns on my shoulders could have happened…

It could’ve been a number of reasons but most likely these:

1) I swam through an oil patch that could’ve leaked from a Jetski or whatnot… and the oil acted as an accelerator to the heat emitting from the sunburns on my shoulders…

2) The clogging of skin pores due to applied cream over the sunburns prevented the heat from being released and building up from within my skin instead which in turn burned through my skin…

3) Ultraviolet madness!

My shoulders are ok now… the burns have cleared up and left my skin a tiny bit whiter than it was… It sounds bad… but in reality its a lot less worse than I’d imagined it was gonna be…

As for the passing out, well lets just say I have an appetite problem… I don’t eat much… and from what I recall… I had not eaten anything at all that day…

Point of this post: Sunburns suck. Eat food.

Dead End Race

•September 30, 2008 • 6 Comments

It’s the first day of Eid. I still haven’t slept… because yesterday… was something else.

So I wake up yesterday slap happy and whatnot, didn’t do much all afternoon… come futoor time, I headed to my uncle’s dowaneya where we usually have futoor everyday. Cannon fired, calls for prayer started, food got digested. So afterwards, I went back home and messed about.

[Phone Rings]

[I pick up]

Hamad: Hala yubah.

[Trans: Hey dad.]

Dad: Haaa… jahez?

[Trans: Haa.. ready?]

Hamad: emm.. la2… 7ag shino?

[Trans: emm... no... for what?]

Dad: Bacher el 3eed.

[Trans: Tomorrow is Eid.]

[Jaw drops as I realized something]

Hamad: Haa? ee ee jahez…

[Trans: Err... yyyeeah.. i'm ready...]

Dad: Enzain, ana raye7 shwai5 taboon shay?

[Trans: Alright, I'm going to shuwaikh do you guys need anything?]

Hamad: La yubah salamtek mashkoor.

[Trans: Nothing but your safety, thanks dad.]  [Don't laugh at that translation. It sounds less weird in Arabic]

Dad: Allah esalmek.

[Trans: God keep you safe.]

[Dad hangs up.]

Now, what I realized is that I was far… faaaar… faaaar from “jahez.” All I had was a dishdasha… thats the only thing that I salvaged from the mess of moving into a new house. So I grab it, run out, start the car, and head to Al-Rowdha.

[7:30pm shop opens.]

[7:30pm I walk in.]

[7:31pm I ask for a gitra (white chmaagh to be precise).]

[7:32 I pay for it]

[7:32 Now as the exchange is made, all of a sudden the shop becomes packed with old men and women and their kids/grandkids]

With that many people in the shop there was absolutely no way I was gonna be able to try for a 3egal and a Ga7feyya and still have time to do other things. So what I did was I headed out to the dry cleaners to get my dishdasha and gitra dry cleaned and ironed for Eid. Dropped them off at a dry cleaners in Surrah where they told me that they’ll be done and ready at 2:30AM… I was ok with that, gave them the green light then I went off to buy a pair of sandals from Hawalli. Of course, one graphic detail I forgot to mention is the amount of traffic everywhere during all this… sooooooo yyyyeeeeaah…

Anyway, after getting my sandals I went back to Al-Rowdha and got my 3egal and Ga7feyya.

Things look bright!! I went back home very happy and basicly all I did was kickback and relax to the fact that I’d finished 90% of Eid preperations in less than one night!

Great!! Right!?

WRONG!!!

At around 1:30AM I started having an argument with a very dear friend of mine…. But i’m not gonna get into details with this…. I’ll I’m gonna say is that it is now 5:41 AM and the scars of war are showing on both sides. So yeah, I went out at 2:15 AM and got to the dry cleaners at 2:30AM… I walk in, hand the guy my receipt and he suggests that I come back in 30 mins due to the amount of distraction and chaos, I decided he was having a rough night, I’ll give him a break and come back after an entire hour, which I did… So I come back an hour later and the guy looks everywhere in shop.. only to tell me that he cant find it.

What….?

Did I hear him correctly?

Did he just tell me that he couldn’t find my dishdasha?!

So I stood there for 2 hours making sure he really couldn’t find it.. and to my surprise he wasn’t lying…

But good news!! My gitra wasn’t lost! They had it all dry cleaned and ironed very nicely.

So here I am… first day of Eid… A dishdasha-less person with a gitra!

Everything I did yesterday was all for nothing… how cool is that?

Point of this post: Procrastination bites… eventually.

Judicandus Homo Reus

•September 24, 2008 • 5 Comments

I wake up, in the middle of the night. It’s 4:40 AM. I look around and realize I’m not in my room. I’m in my new room. I miss my old room…

I put on a pair of jogging pants, and head up to the roof…

The roof still has screws and rock pieces all over the floor from recent construction and yet I walk around letting all sorts of things cut and pierce my feet as I head over to the northeastern corner of the house. I stand there… topless… cold…. I look out into the horizon….

I wait…

And wait…

And I wait…

The sky is lit.

And strangely, it is a good day to die.

Judicandus homo reus (Guilty man to be judged.)

The Open Wound

•September 23, 2008 • 5 Comments

My dad has been happy recently. He seems content and at ease. I think it’s because of him keeping busy running things and working at our new house… I guess it gave him a chance to take his mind off of the divorce for once and allowed him to regain whatever it is he lost in the process.

Eid is coming up. It’s about a week away and as always I’m just not ready for the painful four-hour formality… One thing I know for sure is that if I hear any of my aunts/uncles giving my dad lip about how he failed to “control” his woman and whatnot… Eid isn’t gonna just get ruined for my dad… I’ll make sure it gets ruined for everybody.

*Cracks Neck*

UN Technicians

•September 19, 2008 • 1 Comment

I was hanging out at [classified] minding my own business, and two Filipino UN technicians walked in on me.

UN Guy 1: “Baba Hada shoghol mal antenna khalas.”

[I felt him struggling to say that sentence, so I decided to give him a break.]

Me: Do you speak english?

[UN Guy 1's Face lights up.]

UN Guy 1: Ahh! Yes! We’ve set up the antenna and we just wanted to tell you that everything is finished.

[Since I was the only person at [classified] I guess the responsibility automatically falls on my shoulders to confirm it.]

Me: Ok can you guys just show me it before you leave?

UN Guys: Ok!

[We all go upstairs to the control room.]

[UN Guy 1 shows me the grounding cables.]

Me: That looks a tad bit dangerous… the manager is gonna have to confirm this with you guys when he sees it ok?

UN Guys: Yeah sure no problem.

[I begin to walk the guys to the door.]

UN Guy 1: Umm is it ok if we drink?

Me: Yeah but you’re going to have to stay inside… because its ramadan.

UN Guy 1: Yes we don’t want the police catching us.

[I laughed at the irony of being arrested for drinking to quinch one's thirst.]

[I gave them both drinks and they both asked me questions about my english and how come I speak it. I explained to them and watched their faces light up as they stood there in pure awe for some reason.]

[Apparently, two indian guys were also helping them with the antenna and they walked in desiring a drink.]

[I handed them drinks and there I stood, surrounded by four people who were drinking whilst I was fasting.]

[I can honestly say... it sucked. xD]

Anyway I got to know both the Filipino guys, we talked for a bit before they left, Ron & Rosaro were really nice guys… I mean like really really nice…They explained to me how they used to be in the military and now they’re radio communication technicians for the United Nations. And Rosaro looked like Hiroyuki Sanada [The actor that played Ujio in The Last Samurai][Whom I think is insanely awesome at acting]. They all drank and thanked me before they left.

Thank you Ron & Rosaro. You guys were awesome.

Point of this post: Meet people. Talk to people. Some stories will amaze you.

Outside

•September 19, 2008 • 3 Comments

Friday, September 19th, 2008.

I feel like I’m the only one on the outside of it all… looking through… looking at everything and everyone. I feel like I can see every single mistake people make…

I know so much about everyone… I know so little about myself… I feel like there’s nothing I can’t understand… Until I try to figure myself out… none of it makes sense…

I’m outside… they’re all inside.

Does this qualify me as crazy?