There is nothing I adore more than baking pizza at home. It reminds me of my childhood, when I used to sneak to the kitchen and grab handfuls of grated mozzarella cheese while the pizza was being prepared. I usually almost always have pizza ingredients Read more »
Dear Al-Zain posted the following sentence on her instagram page yesterday, “State what do you believe in with one word”. It got me thinking of what I believe in that is usually disputable and hence I decided to share and see if Read more »
Every year as I age -err- gracefully I prepare a list of 30 things I wanted to do before turning 30. Today is my birthday so I’m checking out the list and seeing how much progress I’ve done. Happy birthday to me, and to Standy my birthday twin, and to Read more »
I have a little secret to confess… I love baby food!
I love the sweet baby food that is. I love the tiny little jars with Read more »
Last week as I was trying to fall asleep because I had work the other day, the clock showed that it was 2 AM in the morning and all I could think of is a Read more »
Whenever I see a big white fluffy cloud I have the strongest urge to reach out and grab a handful, squeeze and feel its softness. Ever since I’ve seen Heidi as a kid who has a dream of sleeping and jumping over the clouds I believed it was possible indeed therefore I dreamt about it too. I would give anything to be able to sleep over a cloud. To sink into the softest pillow on earth and let it move forwards and take you away, moving over the lands below and having the wind tossle your hair and touch your cheeks lightly.
Of course I know now that its not possible. You cannot touch clouds nor are they solid enough to hold your weight at all. Yet again whenever I see the clouds I cannot let go of my childhood fantasy. I love clouds.
Do you love clouds? What do you want to do with a cloud if you could capture it and get hold of it?
Today is Thursday! Happy National Day and Liberation Day holiday! Today is also my Bu Toote’s birthday, happy birthday sweetheart :* So its a happy happy day and lunch should be a big deal! Where are you having your lunch? At home? at work? In zwara? In the chalet? On the air plane going somewhere?
I confess that I have a bad weakness towards something really unhealthy: Fried Mozzarella Cheese Sticks. I cannot resist them. I could eat my self a dozen’s worth of those stringy chewy deep fried cheese sticks and I would still want some more 
I am craving some for lunch really badly!
In my humble opinion the best cheese sticks around K-town are the ones in Chilli’s. Really chunky and flavorsome. I used to make them myself from low fat mozarella cheese and grill them in the oven instead of frying them but now I don’t have the time. Chilli’s would do. Maybe with a vegetarian fajita and a mound of chips dunked in salsa. Now that’s what I call lunch <3
Shino ‘3adakom elyoom?
Lets say you have this friend, she is an avid blog follower and knows more about what is going on in the Kuwaiti blog scene than I do. She talks about the blogs all the time discussing their topics and latest news. Right up my alley you’d say. What a good friend.
Except she doesn’t read my blog. Or follow me!
Of course there is no reason for people to follow or like your blog just because you are friends with them in real life. People are free and have different tastes. But its been bothering me a bit. I can’t help but have the question “Why not my blog?” jump out whenever she goes on about blog X and blog Y. What makes blog X so much better than mine that you rave about it all day long while you wouldn’t spare 2 minutes glancing at my blog? What is missing? Is there something missing?
Its not so much the fact that she doesn’t check my blog. Whats bugging me is that every time she talks I begin to doubt myself, my blog, my posts, my choices. I hate that. Really hate that. Eshda3wa ya 7afoth?
I know I shouldn’t really care but on some level it hurts. Its just like saying I am not good enough or something. It makes me a bit blue!
So dear bloggers: have you ever had someone close to you not liking your blog but liking almost every other blog out there? If you do, do you think its OK to doubt yourself? Is that normal? I am really confused here.
1- The odor! Its like being wrapped like a mummy in bandages made of cheap wet wipes for hours on end!
2- The reclining seat in front of you that suddenly blocks your airway when the person occupying it decides he wants to be comfortable.
3- The tiny bathrooms with the noisiest flush on earth that scares the hell out of you and the sneaky door locks that I can never figure out.
4- The fact that there are no trash bins and you are stuck with your own trash for the entire journey g63.
5- Babies screaming bloody murder in every single flight that takes off on planet earth. Can’t there be a baby free flight? Or seats or zones?
6- The seat trays! Useful yes but the plastic used to make them is ugly and if they are dirty they would be so disgusting you just want to kill your self!
7- Turbulences. They scare me. They always happen and when they do I am almost reduced to the point where my entire life plays in front of my eyes. I hate them.
8- The annoying safety videos played in the very beginning which you must pay attention complete with the emergency exit signs. We have them memorized by heart! And frankly after watching LOST I doubt anyone would be organized in case of emergency!
9- When you order a vegetarian meal and they mistake you for a goat and fill your tray with every kind of unidentifiable green produce available to munch on! What’s wrong with Spaghetti and tomato sauce?
10- When your watching a movie, if you are lucky to have your entertainment screen working that is, and they keep interrupting the program to announce something over and over again in every spoken language known to man kind on planet earth until you forget what you were watching all together and the whole movie is ruined for you!
May god help me for I am boarding a plane back home tonight. Happy new year every one. See you tomorrow back home insah2 Allah 😀
I was flipping through In Style magazine when I saw the picture above. It was a tip by the /magazine’s editor her ghd hair straightener to straighten out creases in their shirts!
I think this is a brilliant idea! Many times I am too lazy to set up my ironing board and heating my iron or switching on my steaming iron which takes forever to produce steam! Using a hair straightener is a quicker more convenient way to straighten out creases for sure.
I usually use, erm, my hair dryer to blow out creases in my 7ejab. I would be using my straightener next time for sure.
Would you use a hair straightener on your clothes?
The other day when I was asked to stand in front of the news camera I knew I shouldn’t I am not really an off the top of my head talk in front of a TV crew person. I always blabber and say nonsense in front of the camera, or when publicly speaking to a crowd in general. There is a famous family joke that dates to my teens when I appeared in Faker Werba7 and said something so unbelievably shameful in an answer to a question that my family still taunts me to this day x_X
I don’t know why! Some people have no problem standing with a microphone in front of the TV camera and talking. Others are even more hopeless than me! I wonder if there is some training or exercise that you could take to help you talk better to the media, fashla in the age of youtube and I am still blabbering y3ni.
What about you? Do you do well in front of a TV camera or do you avoid it like the plague?
You know what I mean. You are broke, or almost broke. You have bought too many things recently and should be a good girl. You find something RIDICULOUSLY expensive and you don’t really need it. Yet you are overcome with that ‘I must have it now or I will never be happy again’ feeling. You take out your VISA card and buy it regardless of the circumstances. Life is good and you are content again.
For some women its Diamonds. That’s my baby sister for you, she cannot resist diamonds. For other women its shoes. Others nail polishes or hair accessories or perfumes… etc.
For me it is, in order of importance, Books, anything related to Coffee, Gourmet Chocolate, Arabian Perfumes, DVDs, and Transparent acrylic housewares. I love diamonds but I don’t allow my self to splurge on them that much. Same goes with electronics but I can put a leash on that and other cravings.
What is your nonnegotiable irresistible craving item? Yalla confess 😀
1- Your hair starts drying in the shower even before you are done showering, with the water being so hot and the air even hotter. It takes forever for your hair to dry in the damp UK weather :p
2- The UK water and my hair DO NOT go along. Period. My hair become a frizzy loofah. Kuwait’s water restores my hair immediately.
3- We have Qaymar, Labnah, Khobiz Irani, KDD Mango Juice, Cocktail Juice, darabeel, alphonso mangoes, and Liban (buttermilk). They are all not available in the UK -except in specialty shops y3ni-.and I miss them dearly.
4- Pizza Qaysar! I miss it! I also miss our local restaurants: The Burger Hub, Pizzetta, Prime & Toast, The Cocoa Room, Lenotre, The Chocolate Bar, Cafe Bazza, and Nino! Truly miss them! Why won’t they open in the UK? Cilantro did!
5- Believe it or not I miss Cinescape. Its just the collection of movies in Kuwait is better than the ones in the UK and movies tend to open up in Kuwait before the UK for some reason. Do not miss the crowds, screaming babies, burnt popcorn, and the censorship though.
6- I miss the independence of having my very own car and not having to share it with anyone. I miss my long drives with my own songs blaring.
7- I miss the smell of Bukhoor. Even though I have my own bukhoor kit that goes wherever I go but I am always too afraid of lighting up bukhoor and having the smoke of incense set of the Smoke detector. I’ve been told several times that its OK but I still am too chicken to light bukhoor. Mali kholg loya.
8- I miss how normal daily stuff we need and require are I normally priced in Kuwait. Gasoline, Soft Drinks, Groceries, Fruits, Sandwiches, etc. Also that we have no taxes and how we have free dental facilities especially for emergencies.
9- I miss the sound of prayers Athan, especially when its maghrib time and if the mo2athen has a beautiful voice, so serene! Its just different when you hear the athan and you get up to pray than when a clock ticks and you know its time for athan.
10- Sometime, not always but sometimes, especially when I’ve been gone for over a month, I miss the Arabic language and Kuwaiti accent: Arabic news, Arabic TV, Arabic radio, hearing Arabic chatter here and there.
See, there is a silver lining in returning back home even if its hotter and less fun :p What do you miss most about Kuwait when you are abroad?
Although I love the month of Ramadan Allah y3oodna 3leeh insha2 Allah I confess i sometimes miss breakfast. Also, as I am still on Fahad the Diet Ninja’s diet and he is not a fan of toast or bread, I miss having a big gooey cheese sandwich <3
Don’t you miss breakfast?
I have an incurable addiction to Arabian perfumes and to boxed or packaged sets of anything. Yesterday when I was in 52 Degrees to check out the Ramadan Exhibition I went a bit mad and Read more »
Well it was quite a day actually. Fahad the Diet Ninja said I was allowed to have a cheat meal, not a cheat day. I Solemnly swear I was up to something good 😉 So I said I wanted that cheat meal to be my breakfast.
I bought a ton of Read more »
I am a huge fan of Fred’s quirky crazy items. I am almost a collector of whatever they have on sale. A few days ago I was shopping in Virgin Media Read more »
1- buy Aurogra over the counter Breakfast at work. We do’t usually do breakfast at work with big gatherings and hoopla but it so happens that the first day of your diet always coincides with having breakfast at work. Which ruins the entire weekly plan :p
2- Family Gatherings. You have been good all week. Then comes the weekend with your family gathering looming. You lecture your self and say you will eat two spoonfuls of this and than and nothing else. Then your mama’s hot apple cake is sitting there and it smells so good and you already ate the entire fattoush bowl at lunch and oopsy daisy you are tumbling out of the wagon into the abyss!
3- Food Ads and Brochures. Is it just my imagination that the day you start dieting those damn brochures appear out of no where on your door step and newspaper’boxes and even at your cars window with yummy pictures screaming eat me eat me I am a phone call away?
4- Living with a man. They just can’t stop eating, 24 hours, the most delicious food ever and they have testosterone to the rescue. What is a girl to do? Wear a blindfold?
5- Food gifts from abroad. If you receive a mountain f chocolate from Geneva or a carton of the latest flake from London, do you think it would wait four months for you to end your diet? Really? Yeah I didn’t think so either.
6- Celebratory Invitations. We celebrate by food. A’s birthday, B’s Graduation. C’s promotion. You go into a restaurant in the middle of the diet week, you try to stick to salad and water… they suddenly that gooey chocolate cake is in the middle and you take a bite and everything is ruined for you
7- Courses with Buffets. You go to a course without having breakfast. Then the break comes and you try to stick to your diet by looking at the buffet spread ahead of you. Luscious croissants, gleaming danish, golden samboosas. You try to resist then you realize you won’t have this buffet every day and your defenses crumble and in no time you are waving bye bye to your diet.
8- Twitter & Bog Posts. Well I am guilty as charged. Its just too damn hard to not crave something badly when the pictures are so graphic and the description says good and yummy. 7ram :'(
9- New Restaurants. It so happens that restaurants decide to bloom like mushrooms, one after the other, exactly when I start my diet. Everyone is talking about try restaurant X or Y. We are human after all, we say we need to try it to get it out of our system. Then you try it and your diet takes a suicidal jump out of the window.
10- Coming home after grocery shopping. What’s a dieting girl to do when she returns home to find her coffee table filled with all the forbidden goodies shown in the picture above? You can resist for a day or two waiting for them to vanish, but eventually your hands will betray you and grab a piece of chocolas with one hand while strangling the diet with the other.
What usually ruins your next Sunday’s diet plans?
My dear friend the owner of Baked bakery told me she was sending me a special cake to try. Knowing her tendency to think out of the box and come out with different thing I let my imagination run wild with Read more »
10 years ago… a decade ago… yes it’s been a decade already… there was a rockin Q8y group called Getara that took Kuwait by storm. A hit song “Ya ‘3ali” came out and people went crazy… every one played the song for weeks!
It was really one special song… i was driving on 4th ring road the other day and i while listening to it… i was a college student again, getting out of the College of Engineering library at 12 am after working hard on a project, getting into my Mercedes CLK, putting the song on, thinking of Butootee, and driving at full speed while singing my heart out… only to arrive at my house and meet with my project partners continue our project… we were done at 2 AM in the morning…
I returned to the young college girl i was then… a person that is no longer there… in circumstances that no longer exist. It felt good to reacquaint my self with my former self. Especially when you don’t really know recognize your self any more. To return to those days… to capture a glimpse of who i used to be, all i have to do is put on Ya ‘3ali… if their is a song that can transform your mood and your surroundings entirely and take you back in time… it is Ya ‘3ali…
Do you remember ya ‘3ali!?
P.S. A special dedication to you, my Butootee, because you adore this song 
21 years ago on June 1990 we left Kuwait for our summer vacation in Austria and UK. Planning to return to Kuwait on 2 August 1990.
20 years ago on June 1991 we finally returned back home. It was surreal… returning at last to Read more »
Since today is going to be the longest work day ever… i would thought i would entertain both my self and my readers with something… well spooky! I am really curious to what other think about this and whether or not people out there have actually seen something?
Now i have a question that have been going on in my head for quite a while. I personally believe in ghosts… not Jinn i know they are gods creatures and live in a parallel dimension and all of that… no no ghosts… as in somesort of spirit or something roaming around. Always did, always will. and whenever a light flickers i believe also that its someone playing around. I had a post once about lights flickering strangely… another by my reciever changing my recording as if someone pressed it’s buttons not by being scheduled. Fa maybe i have my own little ghost who says hello once in a while
A friend of mine swears she woke up one night to find a man perched at the side of her bed who vanished later on. Another woman i know swears she saw some sort of “fog” near the ceiling of her room that convinced her it’s a ghost.
So now don’t be shy… and i won’t laugh… if you believe in ghosts tell me: have you ever seen one? Or known someone to see one? Long work day ahead so lets share stories 😀
I know that people around the world are always intrigued by the question of who is behind that mask/website/book/blog etc. I know that Q8y people in particular are, how shall i put it politely,inquisitive. I know some people who are obsessed with knowing the real identity of bloggers/bloggerettes…
But when one of my friends told me that a family member of hers had told her about my blog and told her my real identity with my full name, i was beyond shocked!!!
My family & my closest friends know who i am of course but all of them are sworn to secresy and they wouldn’t tell. I have a select few of bloggerettes whome i have met and they know my real identity like i know theirs. But then blogerretes (and bloggers) all know the importance of anonymity and act with the rule of not exposing a fellow blogger’s identity for the public, it goes without saying of course.
So i am curious… how on earth did people find out? As in it’s public knowledge that flana is Danderma?! Not that i care of course it’s not like i am doing something wrong and i would happily shake hands with any one who asks but then there is certain level of mystery and vagueness that i would like to keep especially when a rant is brewing!!!
Now a show of hands… how many of you know my real identity and bloggers, how anonymous do you think you are?!
Tip: To keep your identity secret, do not comment on blogs with an email that you use for your real name profile in Facebook 😉
Do you have a list of things you always imagined completing before turning 25 or 30? Please do share… and a word to the wise… what are you waiting for?!
