English or American English ?

Found this cute quiz at red-enclave , thought I'do it for fun. Here are my results.

Hmmm no wonder the sales rep in the shops in Europe keep thinking I'm American and I have to insist that 'no sorry I'm Libyan' ( could never understand why they asked in the first place, petty conversation?) ....and here I was all this time thinking I had a British accent :) and now I learn it's yankee *sigh* where on earth did I pick that up !

Your Linguistic Profile:

60% General American English

30% Yankee

10% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

Try it ! What kind of American Engish do you speak?


PS Khadija I'm working on that pet -tag thanks :)

The Escort Business

Do you recall my earlier post about an Iraqi blogger saying she was working as a 'mistress' ( euphemism for prostitute)? This post generated an interesting discussion especially by DM who said that if she had dressed more modestly she would not have been lured into that business. I still maintain that she had to do this in order to survive. And because of the rigid code of honour in the Arab world, she has gone down that path because nothing else was available anymore ( I'm not condoning this ok -so please spare me the blows). However, I found a disturbing post about the rising number of teenage girl Iraqi prostitutes in Syria , who had run from the war and who are the only breadwinners for their families, sometimes their own brothers acting as pimps . Because of the war on Iraq, these girls have resorted to this kind of work instead of going to school. Please remember that like I said earlier there are hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees in Syria. Many complain that they do not get assylum visas anymore because their country is 'free and democratic' now so they have no excuses. Another human tragedy of this crazy war I guess. please read the article here on Joshua's blog and remember the issue is NOT Syria but the consequences of war forcing young Iraqi girls to become prostitutes and break all these taboos to feed their families despite their newfound freedom and liberation in Iraq.

Mohammed from Libya cycling around the world

I found this interesting story recently, I'm thinking how come it was not mentioned in our media earlier ? Anyway according to LJBC.net, Mohammed started his cycling for peace in 1999 and hopes to return to Libya by 2008. Read the whole story and see photo here .
Good luck to him and I'm really impressed, because the longest bycicle trip I made was to the bakery or supermarket

Interesting blogs

I've been wanting to share these blogs with you for some time, so here I go:

Welcome Myst who has an alternative eye opening spin on current affairs, if you're fed up of mainstream media tune into Damned Empire .

Also

The alluring Baghdad's Mistress , whom I first came accross at Iraqi Bloggers Central. Baghdad's Mistress, calls herself an Iraqi mistress, by that she means prostitute not school teacher or headmaster. You will love her story and attitude. On her blog she is recounting how she got into the escort business to survive even though she is a straight A university student. It breaks your heart to find out that she had to do this after being orphaned and divorced. Baghdad Mistress has a cool wit and a sense of humour, however along with the sleazy details the careful reader will notice that her posts all have a purpose and a moral at the end; she's got some sharp political slant too; this is no 'madam'. What's more she knows how to keep us in suspense !

Aliens

Aliens and alien abduction stories are a recurring fad; witness the latest Star Wars series and Dr. Who. However, this is not the stuff of Hollywood or books, there are ordinary people out there like you and me who claim they have been 'abducted' or have met aliens or ETs.

I'm not ready to dismiss them all toghether because I'm thinking that it would be boring if there was only us out there. Moreover, the Qur'an decribes God as 'Lord of the worlds ' not Lord of the world so I'm open minded to the theory that perhaps there are other worlds out there..... or maybe the 'worlds' are the different dimensions of zoology, virology, bacteriology,and all the other '..logy'.

Usually people who have had this experience are denigrated and asked to put tinfoil caps on etc..
Yet one professor saw their need and reached out to them and did a study about that.
John Mack " turned the academic community upside down because he wanted to publish his research in which he said that people who claimed they had been abducted by aliens, were not crazy at all. Their experiences, he said, were genuine. " Please see the rest of the BBC article here. He died last year .

The world 'alien' is also used to depict a foreigner in the USA, I was surprised at this word when I first saw the ID ( or residence or driving licence I think) of a French friend of mine which said ALIEN... :) I felt it relegated foreigners to the status of that beast Sigourney Weaver was fighting. But that is an offside note

So has anyone of you had any 'close encounter' of the strange kind and if so do you want to share it with us here ? What about the others what's your take on that ? I'm really curious as this has always been a fascinating topic for me .

...and NO I'm not an alien!

A book meme (what next !)

First MaGdee then Sandmonkey tagged me for this book meme. Thank you both. I also have to thank DNA for its definition :‘chain email for blogs thingy’.
I thinks what we read says a lot about the person. Moreover, I noticed that one more thing we Arab bloggers have in common ( apart from English language skills) is we READ a lot. So welcome to my world .

Total number of books owned:- Let us say that I had to have them professionally catalogued last year, and to order made to measure bookshelves. Also my mum has threatened to build a 'penthouse' ( read send into exile) on top of our home to ban me and the books if she sees one more book lying on my bedroom floor - oh and I'm very possessive about them seriously.

Last book bought:- Between God and the Sultan by Vikor Knut and Hugh Miles' : Al-Jazeera

Last book read:- L'islamisme en face by Francois Burgat - highly recommended. For non French speakers you can check the English version here.

Five books that mean a lot to you:- Well I am placing the Holy Qur'an out of any competition that goes without saying ( my personal opinion). So here are my top 5.

(1) The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand; since I discovered it at the age of 14 in my uncle's library I fell in love with the main character Howard Roark - no man has measured up to this fictional hero yet ;)
(2) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig
(3) Sun Signs - Linda Goodman
(4) The Bible, The Qur'an and Science - Maurice Bucaille
(5) Dictionary of Chemistry

Tag five people to continue this meme:-
(1) Khadijateri(2) Red_enclave(3) Iraqispirit(4) AK_Land(5) Wired Temples .

Wanted to tag Sandmonkey but someone beat me to it. Also Twosret was on my list but she was already tagged.

Of course readers are invited to share their favourite books etc....Please do.

I'm back

To all of you who emailed me, sent comments or phoned to ask about me:

A BIG THANK YOU !!!!!!

Sorry had to be away, and now I have a lot to catch up on in the blogosphere ( and other spheres ;) ) .

Is there such thing as 'humanity' or are we all 'monsters'?

Over at DNA's blog - prompted by all the horrors that we have been witnessing in the news - he was asking himself and the readers : ' Humanity : forward or backward?' , a topic which generated an interesting debate, especially from Egyptiansandmonkey who says - please read his complete post here - as the following is only an extract :

'People are monsters, the majority are evil, and we are all doomed. [...] We are not more civilized, we just learned how to hide our brutal nature better.It’s like political correctness[...] We ignore the disease, and instead we fight to suppress the symptoms.But the question arises: how do you fight the disease when you yourself are the disease?I mean, sure, we all think ourselves to be good, but just give us some power and tell us that there will be no consequnces to our actions and just watch what kind of monsters we turn into.I don’t need philosophy to tell me that man is evil, i know he is. Anyone who reads the news knows what kind of horrors we human can unleash on eachother, and you can’t help but marvel at our efficiency to destroy as opposed to our inability to heal or rebuild. But did anybody ever think that maybe we are suppsoed to kill each other off? That maybe earth’s only hope in survival is for humanity to wipe itself out? [...] Or maybe it’s because every religious book i’ve read told me that the end of days scenario involves the outnumbering of evil people to the good ones and how it’s all part of god’s plan.[sic]'

I'm wondering whether because of our inherent cruelty we have been sent religion to learn to unlock our humane side?

The 'birth' of a new STAR

A little bit of humour for a change, here is an Arabic cartoon ( thanks B. for sending it to me), critical of how today's (Arab) female pop star become a success. It shows the various process of transformation from an ugly duckling to a 'sex goddess'. You've got the cleaning up phase, the silicone and collagene phase, the liposuction and lifting phase, the slimming phase, the 'painting' and make up phase, and the straightening phase ( hair). The dustbin shows the script or song which seems to be irrelevant, then you have the video clip :).

Today's star all seem to be a little bit 'unnatural' and like in the western press, speculation about whether they had plastic surgery or some extra stuff are ripe especially those before and after photos which can be really embarassing . Enjoy.

Highlander in Japanese ? (cute)

Somebody sent me this link, I want to thank those reading me in Japan for the effort they made in translating this post :). Thank you, I did not know some Japanese people where interested in what I had to say, but I appreciate their interest in Libya. We love Japan too.