All I Wanna Do is Dance

Okay, here is a much more positive post, as promised:

All righty, I know it’s been ages since I’ve even mentioned it.

BUT!

The Scribe issue #3 is out! I had thought it wouldn’t be out until tomorrow, but apparently the printers have already completed their job and everything! Nine hundred copies are now stacked in the SRC office awaiting distribution tomorrow. I already took one for myself (I’ll get more tomorrow) to show my dad. I think it’s miles better than the last one, which was even better than the first one. Hopefully improvement will keep up this upward slope, hehehehe.

I find that the colors in this one are more consistent, without it sort of spontaneously jumping from one color scheme to another. Another highlight? They actually included my ‘Letter from the Editor’ page this time, hehe. So that’s a definite plus. The photography style in this issue is also more artistic and cleaner. I’m seriously happy with it, and I can’t wait to send it out to you guys! (You know who you are, hehehehe)

Well, I’d love to stay and talk everyone’s ears off about this, but I have a lovely presentation tomorrow and I need to review the material so I can at least give off the illusion that I know what I’m talking about. All I hope for is that I don’t get one of those unstoppable coughing fits in the middle of my speech. Or engage in a sudden super-messy sneeze. Good thing I have a partner in this one, ’cause doing this by myself the way I’m feeling now does not sound appealing. Not in the least.

Wish me luck!!!

The Scribe Issue #2!!!!1!!!!11

It’s out! And it’s been distributed! To everyone! Students! Staff! Even other high schools (soon)! And it looks great! And we got awesome feedback! Everyone’s impressed! And everything’s really cool!

‘Cept, of course, for the fact they didn’t include my goddamn ‘Letter from the Editor’ page!

I’m seriously ticked off about that. I put in an introduction and everything and asked for student feedback and stuff. It’s practically the only thing I wrote myself, not counting an interview with me. (Jay wrote up some questions and actually tape recorded my answers but later I just typed up the answers myself, since it was easier than transcribing my verbal version). I’m glad that interview was made or else there’d be no mention of me in The Scribe save for my name in the credits list. Frickit, I don’t understand why it wasn’t included! When I saw the layout before it got sent to printing I saw it there and it was the first page, just like it should have been. I know I saw it…at least I hope I know I saw it. How it got to be the only missing page in the whole damn newsletter is perplexing and, quite frankly, making me agitated just thinking about it. (I didn’t yell at anyone in school though. I was actually fairly calm about it, seeing as it was too late to correct it anyways).

Other than that, and a few random typos and missing photographs, the end result was pretty freaking cool! And much better than our first issue. (I will be sending copies out to y’all faithful readers. All three of you.)

STRESS!

Man, being an editor of the newsletter just gets harder and harder.

I started off last semester with eleven people.

Now I’ve got sixteen. SIXTEEN. And it might go up to seventeen or eighteen if the two people who are thinking of joining do end up doing so.

So many e-mails to send. So many things to keep track of. I need a secretary! Only that won’t help because I’d have to follow what he or she will be doing as well, and I’m doing enough of that already with my other Scribe teammates. Ooof…

SCRIBE MANIA!

I *just* picked The Scribe up from college.

And. It. Is. Awesome.

I am Pleased.

And giddy.

And just feeling awesome.

Awesome doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about it.

It’s just so cool!

And yeah. I’m feeling pretty accomplished. Woot!

Kris, I shall definitely send you a copy. I got, like, five from the Resource Center at the college. I may even sign it for you, so it’d be more worthy for you to put in that shrine you’ve got of me that you’re ashamed to admit you have. *Ruffles your hair. Dances off.*

Pickle Ice Cream

I’m back!

And I chose a picture. It’s this one:

This lady in the marketing department at college saw it and said it looked like a modeling picture. I know it kinda does, but I wanted something that looked good and kinda professional without being overly sophisticated. I’m not sure if this pulled off what I wanted, but I like the picture. My sister, Madi, took this of me—-one of several, several pictures she took in one shooting session. (She loves photography). I’m actually behind a white semi-transparent curtain in front of her bedroom window.

The Scribe is officially done and printed out!!!! I will be picking up a few copies tomorrow. I can hardly wait!

I had a pretty good day today, despite my reluctant wake-up call at 7:30 in the morning. Lana and I went to catch an aerobic/Latin dance class at the gym, which was at 9:00. (The gym’s kinda far, we need an hour just to get there with some time to spare). The class was pretty fun, though I don’t think I’ve ever sweated that much before—-not even during my two years of Karate classes! We also went for a swim when we got back home. The water was friggin’ freezing but enjoyable once I stopped slowly easing myself in and squealing about how cold it was.

My vacation’s going pretty well so far. I’m not sure when my grades come out, but at least I can check ‘em online, so I don’t have to worry about going to CNA-Q to pick them up. I’ve been going to the gym with my sisters (not lifting weights or anything like that, we mostly attend classes like aerobics or dance) and generally enjoying my freedom.

Quite a few of my friends are leaving the country for the summer too. Sarah and Jayson, who are both members of CNA-Q’s Student Representative Council are traveling to St. Johns, Newfoundland as part of a college trip. They’ll be attending a conference and they also have to write about their trip when they come back. Only SRC members and some staff are allowed to go, but at least I can gloat that they only got to go to Newfoundland instead of somewhere COOLER like Montreal, Quebec. (No offense to Newfies, I can’t judge because I never visited your province. I just like to gloat). They’ll be going there for a week starting from this Friday. I really hope they enjoy themselves ’cause it’s gotta be better to go to Canada than it is to stick around in Qatar. (Again, no offense to Qataris, but honestly, this country can get pretty freaking boring sometimes).

My summer plans include five-day trip to Dubai on July 1st followed by a trip to good ol’ Lebanon on the 16th. Can hardly wait!!!!!

Well, it’s getting a little late and I have an early wake-up call again tomorrow for gym. At least it’s at 10:00 this time instead of 9:00 so I get an extra hour of sleep. I can’t help the fact that I’m not a morning person. I hate waking up early…it’s just a Fact of Hala.

Ciao for maintenant!

It’s Hard!!!!

…to choose a picture.

I have to choose a pic of myself to put next to my little “Letter from the Editor” piece.

I don’t want it to be cheesy.

But I want it to look nice.

Blech.

Salutations Y’all

Hey, it’s been a while.

Sorry, I haven’t been updating…if anyone’s reading this anyways, heh.

Well, I’m finally DONE with my Spring classes and I have my one final (Mathematics of Finance II) on Monday the 16th. Then I’ll be free to enjoy my summer vacation which, hopefully, will include a trip to Lebanon! *Does Dance of Glee*

I should be studying for said final, but I can’t be bothered. I’ll get down to it sooner or later.

Oh, remember that college newsletter?! I wrote about it more on my old blog, but I’ll give you a reminder and update: We’re working on a new newsletter for the college and we called it The Scribe. I have a team of about ten people (eleven including me), and we’ve been spending the entire semester working on it. We’re basically starting it from scratch and our first issue was supposed to have come out last semester, but due to certain circumstances, we had to postpone it’s release. But now we’re almost done! We got a new student graphic designer who is really doing his job (unlike our previous two who did jack-squat) and he’s done a crackin’ good job! If we manage to get everything finalized by Sunday, our newsletter should be out by Wednesday at the latest. I highly doubt we’d get much circulation going, since it’s finals week and I doubt anyone cares about a newsletter when they’re cramming for exams, but at least it’d be out! And then, during Fall, we’d have learned enough to get better and better issues out. I can’t wait!

Blood on My Side……

This whole newsletter thing is going pretty well…I’m really happy because it’s running so much more smoothly than I ever thought it would!

Don’t wanna jinx it though. *Crosses fingers*

Everyone on my team’s decided that they want the newsletter to be called ‘The Scribe’. There was a bit of a problem with this for a while because we suspected that a lot of our readers wouldn’t know what ’scribe’ means. (The newsletter team is made up of expatriates with pretty good backgrounds in English and even some of them had to have ’scribe’ defined. This made us wonder exactly how many of our Qatari English-as-a-second-language readers would have that problem). We solved it by saying we’d define it on the front page in both languages, as a kind of little introduction to their brand new college newsletter.

Woot!

The deadline for my writers and photographers to submit everything they’ve been assigned is tomorrow, and I already got a lot of articles handed in. I have three book reviews, a restaurant review, a large article on the college’s Global Village event, and a small list of the current Top 10 songs here. I still have a movie review, music review, pictures, interviews as well as the rest of the coverage of the Global Village coming up. Jayson also showed me a few of his cartoons–and they’re great too.

I think this thing can turn out to be something pretty special. When I have everything handed in and do some editing, I’ll be able to meet up with my design and layout people as well as the school’s graphic designers so we could finally put everything together. The only thing I’m a little disappointed in is the fact that my design and layout people aren’t really pulling their weight. They’re kinda lagging around in the background…but I guess I can give them a prod. You know…the cattle kind. HA HA HA!

Yes…

Easy Does It, Easy Does It…

Well, the newsletter project is going really well so far–and hopefully, it’ll continue to do so. I’ve already held a meeting last Sunday with everyone and the team had lots of ideas. They weren’t exactly falling all over each other to talk–I had to prod them a couple of times–but I got a good page-and-a-half of my hurried chicken-scratch, which was nothing more or less than what I had hoped for. Woot!

On Wednesday,  I met up with my two Layout-and-Design people (whom I’ll name Smiley and Bahsein, ’cause I ain’t sure if I should use their real names on a public journal) and Dr. Mike–who is the faculty member who is supervising the whole project. Mike arranged for us to meet with two graphic designers, who work at the college. They seemed very eager to help us out–even offering to help us spruce up the pages once we got a layout set up. Then Smiley and Bahsein went online to check out newsletter templates and found quite a few good-looking ones. I’m hoping they worked on them over the weekend so that we have something tangible to work with this Sunday, which is when the next meeting is. Once we get the design done, the writers would know how long, or short, their articles should be–and how many pictures each page can withstand.

Thing is, we can’t make the articles too long because 80% of CNA-Q is made up of Qatari nationals, many of whom don’t speak English as a first language. So making it too word-heavy is going to guarantee very few readers. We want to make the newsletter about tabloid-size–rather large–because we have a lot of features we’re planning on making recurring. (Interviews with teachers, book/movie/music reviews and such). Plus I’m thinking of making the text larger than average, so it’s easier to read. (I’m sure smaller text is not well-liked when you’re not fluent in a language).

Well, newsletter-wise, this is about as far as we got. We still don’t have a title for it…Jayson suggested ‘The Scribe’ and another girl thought of ‘Papyrus’. They’re both good names but I’m leaning more towards the former. It sounds…I don’t know, kinda cool. I still have to discuss it with the rest of the team though. The Vice-President of the Student Council suggested making the naming of the newsletter a kind of competition with a prize. That’s not a bad idea either…I just hope the students give good suggestions. I mean the school mascot is a moose named “Mahmoose” which is one of the worst names I’ve ever heard–and that was a result of a mascot-naming competition. So, so long as it’s not as bad as that, I’m all right with it. I s’pose we’ll see.

Letter from the Editor:

I haven’t mentioned this before since I didn’t know where it was headed. Now that I’m more or less certain, it’s time to let it out:

I made editor of my college newsletter! I applied for it a few weeks ago and was chosen–though, really, I have no idea who my competition even was, but who cares? This is something I can really dedicate my free time to.

Thing is, this newsletter doesn’t even exist yet. So my little team and I have to pretty much bring it up from scratch. I’m optimistic though, because I think I can gather some pretty cool ideas from my team and I’ve been exposed to newsletters from college and university in Canada, which is a good background so far. Moreover, my writers, photographers and researchers are mostly people I know–hell, one of the writers is Mikey and the cartoonist is Jayson.

This is pretty exciting…we can really make something out of this if we try our best to not let it go down the porcelain throne because of disagreements or general inefficiency–which, unfortunately, my college is notorious for.

Oh yeah, basicallythis newsletter is also the reason I stuck around for Global Village because, if we were going to write an article about it, I might as well know what goes on. Too bad I couldn’t really do that though, thanks to the frigid, windy weather. Gah!

Anyways– hey, if any of you readers have ideas for things we can feature in the article (nothing political or religious though), that would be deeply appreciated. Anything you enjoy in your school newsletters or even regular newspapers would be great. Thanks!