The FAN!

Yesterday night, at around 9:00 p.m, Lana and I hopped into the car to go to Villagio to return some stuff she had bought. Before we headed there though, we dropped by Hairy Baguette* road to grab a drink from Hardee’z. The traffic was insane but the good thing is that the area is close to the house. We grabbed what we wanted then headed back out to the main road, instead of taking Hairy Baguette again, which has no street lights and was jammed with cars.

*Digression: Lana christened that road “Hairy Baguette”. Her reasoning is that it’s got so many potholes and speed bumps that it’s annoying, like a hairy baguette. I don’t know whether or not I agree with her logic, but the fact remains that the road will forever be known by that random moniker.

Anyways, so we head back out and, since there were so many cars, I couldn’t change lanes all the way to the left to make a U-turn and continue our merry way to Villagio. Lana pointed out a smaller road perpendicular to the one we were on and we figured it might be a less packed detour.

Ooooh, how wrong we were. I forgot that that road usually happens to be insanely jammed up, and much more so on that night because it was the last day of Ramadan, it was Eid the next day, and it was after iftar (breaking of the fast). It’s usually the time EVERYONE leaves the house to wreak havoc on the streets. However, we weren’t worried—-we’d get out of the jam sooner or later, plus there was decent music on the radio for once. As we were chatting, I suddenly felt something odd about the car, and a second later Lana piped up, “Why’s the car vibrating?”

Stupidly, I responded, “I think it’s the music.” (I should’ve known better—-I blast music in the car all the time when I’m alone and the car never vibrates to that degree).

Lana switched off the radio. The car was emitting a steady growl and I could feel the wheel throbbing in my hands and even the floor was vibrating. My brilliant mind offered another explanation, “Maybe it’s the brake?” (This came from the fact that my driver’s car had a tendency to shake like crazy when he was waiting at traffic lights).

“That’s not normal—-even if it is the brake.” Lana said. The traffic started to move and I gently pressed the gas to move the car when all of a sudden there was a loud POP!! and smoke started rising from the hood.

Me and Lana: “Oh no…”

The Legacy of Mr. Reck

Yesterday (or rather today in the early morning), after the movie was over, our talk came around to our high school experiences. When this happens, one name almost always pops up and the stories start to roll out. Many people already know the real name, but for the sake of anonymity I will give him a pseudonym: Mr. Reck.

Mr. Reck was my economics teacher in Grade 11 which was my senior year in high school. (That’s how they roll in Quebec). He also taught my class Career Education, Personal and Social Development and Moral Education. But mostly, I just refer to him as my economics teacher because that’s the only subject out of the four that should mean anything. He was also Madi’s Grade 8 homeroom teacher and taught her several subjects as well.

Before I go on, let me give a background of my school: It went from Grade 1 to Grade 11. It was very small, only about 150 students. Each grade had one classroom, except for Grade 10 which was divided into two—-depending on the kind of math you’re taking. Madi’s grade was maybe 20 or so students. Mine was 15, including me. (That means my graduating class was a whopping 15 people. Yessiree). Anyways—-Mr. Reck graduated from my high school and got his degree in education from McGill University. Then he came back to teach.

Usually, our teachers were competent enough to keep us under control, even if we were being noisy. (In my class’ case, were only fully quiet when my chemistry teacher was there—-because we liked him a lot—and my English teacher, because she was very strict and had that kind of aura that made you not want to mess with her).  But Mr. Reck? The poor guy didn’t know where to begin. We have tons of stories about him, but I’ll just give two cases to illustrate my point:

Pot, Meet Kettle. Or is That Not the Right Phrase?

#1

RAMADAN MUBARAK TO EVERYONE!!!

First day of Ramadan today. People are still not quite in agreement whether today was the first day or if it’s tomorrow. In any case, we all fasted today so yay for that. WOOT!

#2

Thought I’d share a funny thing that happened yesterday. Remember that time one of my friends thought he lost his car keys in a rather huge mall where we were catching a movie? And we ran all over searching for it? And then he finally realized he had it in his pocket the whole time?

I still rib him about it whenever I remember. But…

Chef? CHEF!!!!

Why is it that I drop by WordPress and my blog practically every day but I can’t seem to think of anything to write about? It’s not like my life is empty or anything and there’s always stuff I like to talk about. Especially now that my whole family’s here. But for some reason, whenever I click the “new post” link I just end up staring at the page and then opening up all these other tabs and distracting myself with them. It kinda sucks to be honest, because I don’t like leaving the blog hanging. I created it, so I’d like to keep it alive—-even if very few people read it. Those people are the ones I care about the most anyways. If there are any lurkers that read this, well thanks for following along, duly appreciated!

I just came back from a family dinner in the Intercontinental Hotel. The food was great! Better than when we went for my birthday—-the birthday that I never ended up actually making a post about. Ah well, I’m sure I’ll get around to it, even if it is two months late. My mom had salmon, my dad had risotto, and my sisters and I all had pizza. (Technically mine was a calzone). We were stuffed by the end and ended up taking quite a few slices of pizza home with us.

Here’s a story for you people:

The place was quite crowded and we sat near where the cooks were, and the entertainment of the evening was a man who played classic songs on the piano and sang—-which made for a pretty loud atmosphere. We recited our orders to the waiter and then chatted loudly (could barely hear each other ), drank and ate the awesome bread while they prepared it.

A Drivin’ Milestone!

I never talked about it on my blog before, since Madi (my little sister) reads it and I wanted to keep it a surprise. Lana deduced it from snippets of conversation with my mom—-whom I told even though I wanted to surprise her too.

Anyways, on April 28, 2009 I got my driver’s license. I’ve been terrorizing the streets ever since. Well, really, I’m an all right driver. I’ve ticked some people off with my novice lane-changing skills but most of the time I’m at peace on the road. Over time the number of people who get mad at me have dwindled to the point where I’ve been on the road for an hour or two without getting anybody to honk at me and wave their arms. The feeling’s not always mutual though—-but then again, it’s driving in Qatar. People here usually can’t drive to save their lives. It makes me feel better about my own mistakes

Anyways. Today I drove myself to ‘work’ and then came back home. My mom requested a few things from the Mall, so I grabbed some cash and headed back out. I realized the car (a Jeep Grand Cherokee that is a notorious gas guzzler) was running low so I dropped the stuff off at the house and went back out to a nearby gas station to fill it up. I told my mom that I was planning to fill it and she told me to save it ’til later.

Toilet Lids Diving into Pools of Chapped Lips!

The title is a Junk written several years ago (by yours truly) that I’m quite proud of…mainly because I think it’s really oddly amusing. 

Actually the Junk is a bit longer than that, but that’s the best part of it. For those who don’t know, Junk is a form of writing that my sisters and I made up that consists of making up grammatically correct sentences using the weirdest imagery possible. The results can be downright hilarious…if that kind of humor is up your alley.

Lana was the original creator—-though creating an odd form of writing wasn’t her intention at the time. She was studying for a computer test and Word was one of the things she was going to be tested on. So, if I remember correctly, she typed up random letters, and then deleted them systematically until she came up with a sentence that wasn’t underlined in red and green. I walked in (I was 13 and Lana was maybe 15, almost 16) and read what she wrote:

“So bored of stuff that don’t need a fee to plop in the trill”

“No cucaracha can dance on an igloo with a fish in his brute”

I then proceeded to laugh so hard that anything I tried to say turned out to be completely incoherent. I tried to say the first one out loud but couldn’t get past “stuff” because I couldn’t breathe. I thought it was the most hilarious thing ever. I don’t even know who would find it as hilarious as we do…but we think it’s pretty freaking funny. I guess you could also say it’s can be pretty disturbing too. Like a smile creeping over a bald spot (Lana’s creation). Or streamlined thigh hair (my creation).

We went through a phase where we banged out several pages of Junk and laughed super-hard every time. I know we printed them out at one point but I don’t know where they are. Maybe in some abandoned box in Lebanon. I hope they’re not all lost, because we had so many! I even had a bunch memorized but it’s been a while and most of them have flown out of my head—-save for the really odd ones that stuck around my brain.

Speaking of which, Lana—-there was this one Junk you wrote that had something to do with turtles…and moisturising cream? Or something? Bloody hell, I can’t believe I forgot it! It was one of my favorites! I even rounded off one of Mr. Rapa’s tests with it in high school. There was a bonus question I didn’t know how to answer so I put that Junk in there instead. I think his comment on it was “interesting!”. At least he had a semblance of a sense of humor.

To round this off, here is a Junk written not too long ago. Our Junk writings are few and far between nowadays, but this was a collaborative effort we wrote on each others’ walls on Facebook. The black is Lana and the red is mine.

And as the liver-scented feather duster knitted the wind chime, it sighed deeply at the thought of its creation leaving the nest and one day becoming the world-renowned Molding Tick. It was deeply saddened by the thought and instead decided to crochet a fork. This fork immediately decided to spring to the life-falls of Babylon, where it began to hang around the tree trunks of yore and warty underground writers. Soon the liver-scented feather duster felt that it had developed enough gangrene to continue reciting the freakishly lengthy but gorgeous tome of “The Wretch of Boon”. The grizzly bears of Quark Raccoons were finally able to rest in their verified state.

FIVE FIVE FIVE SIX NINE TWO ZERO!!!!

Let me start this post off with an amusing little anecdote:

Recently, while I was in the doctor’s waiting room with my mom (I had a dentist appointment. Joy!) a Qatari man sat next to me and took his cell phone out. I was in one of my dreamish-trance-like states, so I wasn’t really paying much attention to him. When I’m in a situation where I have to wait for a while and get bored, I tend to withdraw into my head for entertainment. (Can you blame me?) Anyways, despite this, I did notice that he was punching a number into his cell phone, but wasn’t doing anything with it. He had it on his lap and the number’s text was large and glowing in the phone’s backlight. I noticed it was a nice number–definitely an expensive one, since it was very easy. (It had four 4’s in it). I kinda waited for him to friggin’ press the call button or something but he didn’t. The phone remained on his lap with the number glowing ’til the backlight shut off. Justifiably losing interest, I withdrew into my head again until he got up and left. The following conversation ensued:

Mom: Heh heh. Hala, that man sat next to you showing off his phone number for ages and you didn’t even notice.

Hala: Oh? HA HA! No, I did notice that he had a number on his cell phone! I just didn’t know it was HIS! Ha ha ha! I was waiting for him to press the call button or something!

Mom and Hala then engage in silent laughter

Yeah. This dude was trying to silently pick me up by punching out his cell number on his own cell phone and holding it out on his lap in plain sight for at least a few minutes. Mom said he stayed until the backlight turned off TWICE. (I had stopped looking after it turned off the first time).

You want to know the only thing I noticed about him? That he smelled like an old used ashtray. It was pretty disgusting. So much for the effort he put into trying to get my attention!

And, that, my friends, is exactly what I find completely hilarious about the way Qatari men try to pick up women in this country. They don’t come up to them with some lame pick-up line. Nor do they offer buying them drinks or even simply flat-out asking for a phone number. No, what they do is they recite their number at you at the most random moments.

Take a couple of days ago, for instance. My sisters and I were walking to the Mall from our house. And just as we were rounding the corner that leads up to the door, a car sidles up near us and I heard a deep voice go “Khamsa, khamsa, tis’aa, arba’…..” etc. I couldn’t even see the dude’s face because the car was going faster than we were. (Plus, I knew what he was doing, I wasn’t about to give him the benefit of knowing that he got my attention by staring). But it there was enough time for him to repeat his number twice in his gruff-voiced Arabic.

Yep, that’s how he gets action from girls. He yells his number out the window and hopes the object of his interest whips out her cell phone fast enough to punch it in.  He’s not the only one…it’s like the “Picking up chicks — GULF style!” thing.

Thing is, culturally, Qatari men and women don’t really mix. They are often educated in sex-segregated schools from childhood, so they aren’t exposed to each other for long natural periods of time. Thus, they pick up much less overt ways to get each others’ attention. I even had a Qatari dude mumble his number at me when I was simply passing by him in a gym clothing store. Only I didn’t even know. I saw Madi doing a silly little imitation and I didn’t get who she was making fun of. She didn’t hesitate to tell me that a man just recited his number at me as I was cluelessly walking by, distracted by something in my own head.

Hehehehehe….well, it adds some kind of humor to your day, that’s for sure.

Nicknames

It’s funny how nicknames come along. You can earn ‘em, or you have ‘em shoved down your throat. Or you get them by some weird conversation. Or you can have a sister who picks one for you every six months or so. (Only it wasn’t every six months—I’m exaggerating. But she’s responsible for a significant chunk of my nicknames. Heck, for a significantly long time, I used to answer to ‘Chubs’. Why ‘Chubs’? No idea. But that’s Lana for you.)

In the Who Am I page, I said that I put my domain name as Planet Jubne because ‘Jubne’ is one of my monikers. It came by when Kris was asking me how to say certain things in Arabic. She is the first person to ever NOT ask me how to swear. Usually that’s the first thing people want from a different language—for reasons I don’t quite understand. No, no, what SHE wanted to learn how to say first was “Where is the bathroom?”

Her cuteness knows no bounds.

Anyways, one rather unremarkable day we were walking around in the mall near our college when she asked me, “How do you say “‘Where is the cheese?’”

It was random, but I like randomness. This is a paraphrase of the ensuing conversation:

• Me: Where is the cheese?!
• Kris: Yes.
• Me: It’s ‘when el jubne’? It’s just like ‘where is the bathroom’ but replace ‘hamem’ with ‘jubne’, which is cheese in Arabic.
• Kris: So ‘jubne’ means cheese?
• Me: Yes.
• Kris: Jubne…jubne…I’m gonna call you that from now on.
• Me: *Laughs and thinks: ‘That’s cute’*

I SO didn’t think it’d catch on. But it did. I think I answer more to Jubne with her than I do to Hala. (I have a strict rule though–no one’s allowed to call me Jubne but her. Either make up your own nickname for me or just call me Hala…I really don’t mind my real name. Really.)

And there ya go.