Swalif!!

Dear Readers – Dear Me,

A lot of things are going on recently, it's almost impossible to catch up with everything but here's some of the so many swalif* I feel like sharing with you all... :D

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. I came across the Online Donations portal today morning. This portal allows you to make Online donations to Oman’s biggest charities like The Association of the welfare of the Handicapped, Oman Hereditary Disorder Association & Oman Charitable Organization.
It's a simple idea yet so practical and useful. You can just click on donate now and do it in a matter of seconds! Worthy to mention that it's the idea of young ladies working for ministry of social development. Great job :)

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. World Cup mania rages across my company. This is an email I got from my big boss today:

-----Original Message-----

From: Mr. Big Boss
Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 11:19 AM
To: All department staff


Dear all,


The company has provided some tickets for the semi finals (Jul6th, Jul7th), match for thrid place (Jul10th) and final match (Jul 11th), and RO2 coupons. They are limited so if anyone of you is interested please come over.

Best regards,
xxx

Can it get any cooler? :p

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. A couple of years ago I had a falling out with a person who used to be really close to me. I cant tell you what the falling out was about, and the reason I cant tell you is because I dont remember, or actually, there was no reason at all [from my side at least]!!

Anyhow, what made me mention this now is that I'm supposed to meet up with her and other old school mates tomorrow - although am quite sure I'll come up with a good excuse not to go to the gathering for some personal reasons...But it really hurts whenever I think about it. She missed my graduation, she missed my first job, my first ride in my car...my a lot of things!

I missed her engagment, her wedding, her graduation...and seems that am going to miss her first baby.

Was it worth it?
Does she think about it the same way I do?
Should I go? What would she do when she sees me? Or it's been too long? ...and maybe too late?

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Till next time folks

* Swalif: Gossip or pretty much telling people what you heard and what you're up to!

...

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It's summer time!!

Dear Readers - Dear Me,

. My first painted mug is ready! For those who haven’t been to Ciramique Café, it’s a must visit café! You can choose any item of pottery, paint it and leave it with them for one week to glaze. It was a cool experience, totally worth every penny!

I was totally out of artistic ideas when I started painting my mug. The only thing I could think about was just to cut the hassle and draw yellow, orange and red strips…and it turned out to look somehow like bathroom tiles :p




. I started a campaign called “Every day’s a holiday” few weeks back, as am apparently not going to have a single day off from work during summer. Loads of fun activities and projects in my list. Nowadays am quite busy preparing and working on a project with my sister Spot anddd of course the world cup!

It sometimes gets really boring while waiting for some action in the matches, specially in the first half of most of the games. Here's what we usually do in such times:

Till next time! :)

Scary childhood tales & characters - Part II

Dear readers,

As I promised this is the second part of scary childhood tales & characters. Check out the first part in case you haven't read it yet. Enjoy :)

Mghayab


There’s a famous myth in Oman that claims the existence of some creatures called “Maghayba”. It’s basically a person who’s been taken by witches/wizards. When a witch or a wizard puts their eyes on someone –it could be anyone- they’d take them and leave the body of the person “so everyone thinks that he’s dead”, but actually the person would become a mindless slave in a pitiable mental and physical shape.

Irony is that many people still believe in it, and more, they believe that most of their loved ones and relatives who passed away are still alive, and that witches turned them into Mghayba (plural of Mghayab)



Ahel bismllah

The elderly people used to[ and some still do] refer to Jinn by Ahel bismllah in an attempt to avoid mentioning them – and thus to avoid their harm.

El neg6a el 7amra “The red dot”

“Go to bed now otherwise the red dot would come to you” that’s what we used to very often hear when we were kids. I still don’t have a clear picture of what the red dot is all about, all I know is that I sometimes tended to believe that the red illuminating dot on the AC’s switch is what they were talking about, in an attempt to make the whole thing rather funny and less creepy.

That's it for today
Till next time :)

Sha5abee6

Dear readers - Dear me,

Some of you might have noticed that I *finally* changed my blog's design, although it's not quite a huge change as it's still green! But anyways, I guess I really needed such a change...and am up to more changes in other aspects of my life too..

However, do you think that it is important to have a continuity in your blog's design, that people know what your page looks like? And Is the current design any good? :D

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I was trying to plan my summer leave today at work, and realized that I haven't had more than a week break from work since I started working, i.e. for the past one year and 8 months hehe! Well it's all good...I'm kinda having a good work/life balance, I'm still able to do all the stuff I want, and have some free time every now and then.

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I'm intending to start a quite small project before end of July. Will update you soon on some details :) الله يسهل

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I admire this picture for some weird reason :)

Muscat - June 2010

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So yah, that's it for today. Was such a long day!

Till next time :)
Faith

[Response] Sickle Cell Awareness Day

Dear Readers,

Update: Other Bloggers' Resposes:
Reality in Oman

Dhofari Gucci


As a response to Um 3azzan's call [here], I'd like to invite you all dear readers & bloggers to the first World Sickle Cell Awareness Day as per the invitation below:

Under the auspices of
His Excellency Dr. Mohammed Bin Saif Al Hosni
Under Secretary Ministry of Health

HH Sayyida Alya Bint Thuwaini Bin Shihab Al Said
President Oman Hereditary Blood Disorder Association

cordially invites you to attend the
World Sickle Cell Awareness Anaemia Day

Saturday, June 19th 2010 @ 10:30 am at Muscat City Centre

Kindly spread the word! And let's make a difference and help in rasising public awareness regarding the importance of pre-marital testing.

And this is a dedication to you all <3

Learn from Haya

I’ve absolutely got a lot of things to say concerning the freedom flotilla incident and about the blockade of Gaza strip but I think this time, an entire interview of 8 parts would articulate it in a better way….


Haya Al Shatti, a 26 years old humanitarian activist, talks about her experience in the freedom fleet to break the blockade of Gaza…

It replies the entire questions one might have in mind in regards to the aim of this fleet and what where they doing exactly and most; how did it happen… The truth was uncovered to millions of people from the west and the reality of those Zionists became even clearer to the world and yet, I have heard and read about a lot of people condemning the members of the fleet. يا أمة ضحكت من جهلها الأمم

To all those, and to the ones who claimed that they were warned and that they deserved what they faced I say: Learn from Haya..

Scary childhood tales & characters - Part 1

Dear readers,

Growing up I was always fascinated by some scary stories and characters my mother and my grand parents relayed to me on different occasions and which had an impact in my life in different ways. I thought of sharing them here, who knows, maybe someday down the road I'll come back to this place and show them to my kids and grand kids for them to laugh at how naive their granny used to be one day.. :p


Mother Of Palms & Fibers أم السعف والليف

Is the most famous scary character in almost everyone’s childhood life. Older people used to describe her as a tall ugly looking lady, covered with palm leaves “sa’af” and fibers “leef”. We have been told that her favorite hobby is chasing the kids who refuse to follow their parents’ instructions, and then punish the kid [the punishment details used to be a secret to add more mysterious feel and creepiness to the complete story]. I can tell you how scared I used to feel each time I heared her name on anyone’s tongue. And I bet Hollywood can never imitate the level of horror she used to bring in any movie they produce.



The Noon's Donkey حمارة القايلة

The noon’s donkey is hands down the second scariest childhood character! It shares the same level of fame and horror with um el sa3af wa el leef, however, she’s a noon person. She’s never been spotted in any other time of the day as per the experts in this field. So as a kid I used to feel relieved when the sun sets. No more 7marat el gaylah threat for the rest of the day!

And worthy to mention that 7marat el gayla used to scare the guts of everyone, not only kids. I remember women in my family telling stories about her…they used to go like:

Woman 1: “Um 3llan, have you heard about flan’s widow, flanah?!”

Woman 2: “Oh yah, poor thing, she had coffee with 7marat el gayla..waai!”

Woman 3: “What! You can’t be serious woman – leave about you يعني خلي عنج " :p

Woman 1: “I’m telling you…a strange woman knocked her door, so she asked her to come in and offered her a cup of coffee and some dates & fruits…then um flan’s son came to take his mom’s permission to play with the kids during the noon time…so she asked her son never to leave home, coz 7marat el gayla will come to you…you know, she has a body of a normal person and legs of a donkey [7mar]…and the strange woman showed them her leg: “you mean something like this?”…and um flan and her son fainted on the spot!”

Woman 2& 3: No way! No way! :
*slaps her face with two hands*

Naughty 7marat el gayla!!


Mother of Boys أم الصبيان

This is almost the only yennyah “Jinni” that is not interested in scaring the kids in this part of the world, yet hearing her name used to freak the hell of the kids.

Experts say that this yennyah kills baby boys inside their mom’s tummies during pregnancy, and so the people believed. So whenever a woman loses her baby, everyone would start saying that “bloody bloody um el 9byan is behind this, you gotta put immyaz [some sort of knives] under your pillow, woman! I’ll chop my two arms off my shoulders if I’m not right!”

To be continued...

Tropical Cyclone Phet in Oman

Dear readers,

The first day of the cylcone has almost passed. It was category 4 this morning and reached category 1 in the afternoon, thanks god. The weather coditions are still not so stable and experts are kind of clueless on whether is it going to get stronger and comes towards Muscat or just changes its direction and move away towrards Pakistan & India.

I lost contanct with my family in another region in Oman since this morning. Last thing I heard is that many small house were almost destroyed. Palm trees were destroyed too. I can't express my feelings right at this moment, but I just hope it's all going to be alright.

A group of facebookers started this page for updates about the tropical storm.

And here are pics of the clouds yesterday when they began to form yesterday afternoon:

"click for better view"

"click for better view"

Da3watkum...Let me know how each one of you doing as far as we still have internet connection!

PS: TV is not working in our house, am so thankful internet is still on!