All the Hydrogen in the World: February 2006

:)

I'm so in like...

Not An Addict

It's been brought to my attention that a lot of my entries deal with alcohol consumption. I would just like to point out that I am not an alcoholic. I also don't try to make a habit of crazy nights out on the town and I do not hang out with a bunch of drunkards. It just so happens that alcohol is fun, and with fun come stories.

So thank goodness for wild nights on the streets of beirut, and the alcohol that fuels them.

Moderation

Saturday night. Monot. (Yes, people still go to Monot).

A few rounds of margaritas, followed by a few rounds of B52, Sambuca and Absente shots and the topic of conversation has somehow shifted to "beb il badan" and the perks of having a future doctor right there with us. This of course is followed by a "I'll prove I'm not drunk-ask me any question" game:

Ok Rasha. What's 100-7.
66.
Wrong. What's 7+4.
51.

My math teacher would've been proud.

Fast forward a couple of hours and we've completely embraced the idea of "moderation is masturbation". A friend's semi decent apartment, someone using a rather narrow halogen lamp as a dancing pole, a rather tall gentleman bally dancing, and 2 other ladies on a tabletop dancing to Need You Tonight. Very nice. Approximately 37 seconds later, and a lady is screaming at us from a balcony across. "Ya zo3ran, ya bala marba, taffouli hal mousi2a w ndabo! Ya bala akhla2...." etc etc, the latter part of the reprimand drowned out by a combination of the gasps and giggles of drunken fools really.

I wonder what was REALLY going on in her mind watching that.

Freedom

Tomorrow marks the day I get fired.

Absolut Bumming

So it's 4 am and I just got home. Not a very good idea, considering I have work at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning. A bunch of us spent the evening at my friend's house, just drinking, talking..blah. We always get together at the same place, drink the same alcohol, play the same game (truth or dare) and ask the exact same questions. But for some reason, it never gets old. We've figured out a way to see a new dimension in every question every single time we play. Weird.

I don't know what it is about truth or dare that's so captivating for us. Every time we play we end up acting like lame-ass teenagers binge drinking for the first time. We' just can’t get enough. It's like we're doing what we couldn't do growing up. And for the oddest reason, we never cease to be amused by "i dare you to kiss ... (insert name)". Ah the innocence.

The latter part of the evening consisted of just me and 2 other friends sitting around, listening to Damien Rice and belching out the lyrics to tracks 1 through 7 (some even in arabic...haram Damien). I say belching, coz there really is no way of justifying what we were doing as singing. Way too much Absolut. Again, haram Damien. It was a good night though. I haven't done the whole "let's sit around and listen to records" thing in forever (ok maybe not records but u get my drift). I felt like a student again. Nothing like it.

And so in keeping with the student spirit I seem to have reconnected with, I'll be ditching work tomorrow to go hang out with the same people and listen to more records. We've made a pact, and I’ve never wanted to honor a pact more than now. I’ll mysteriously be getting a really bad migraine/tummy ache/case of severe nausea. Yay for me.

More Senior

So I got a promotion at work today. Ok it wasn't exactly a promotion, but considering what a miserable person my job makes me, I may as well consider it a promotion. I was informed that I would now be responsible for all artwork done for one of our clients, a major bank. My creative director's exact words were "so basically ur now more senior when it comes to **** Bank's design work". Oh yippie. MORE SENIOR. Love that. I love the emphasis. More senior...like I've been anywhere near senior since I started working there 8 months ago.

Honestly, I'd rather be Ego Trip's full time caretaker than **** Bank's bitch, coz basically, that's what they should change my business card title to. Oh wait. I still haven't gotten my own business cards. Right. More senior.

Does anyone out there have a job for me? Something that doesn't entail me having to deal with an old spinster for a boss (ok she's only in her early 30s, but she acts like a mean old spinster), a creative director who insists on changing any design that comes out of the office (even if it's only moving a line 1 mm to the left) and having to refer to a lame-ass bank as my biggest client?

Oh the stories I could tell.

Who Wants To Be A Porn Star?

Last night I endured 2 full hours of pulling, stretching, and tugging. I came home after work and spent the better part of the evening with a lady called Ghada who was on a mission to remove any evidence that I, in fact, was not a prepubescent teen. Over the 2 span of our 2 hours together, this is how our conversation went.

Me: Ay.
Ghada: Baddik Imlik kil sha3ra.
Me: Ma daroori.
Ghada: Yi ma tisti7i.
Me: Mish Mist7iyeh.
Ghada: 7a tshoofi ba3ed ma tit7ammami 7a tseeri mitel il baby. Ma 7a ykoon fi wala ay fare2.
Me: *GASP
Ghada: Ana hek. Min period la period ba3mol 7afleh la 7ali. B7ot hal mreyeh w yalla. Ma bkhalli wala ay shi.
Me: Lok keef btista7ikmi?
Ghada: Yi 3adi. Yalla brimi ta illik. Tawbzi, w shiddili jildik min hon, w khalliki hek.
Me: Ra7 ou2a3.
Ghada: La2 ma btoo2a3i.

Surely enough I lose my balance and desperately struggle not to fall on my head.

Me: Kinet ra7 ou2a3.
Ghada: La2 3adi. Yalla msikili il culotte, 3ali, 3ali.
Me: Ya Ghada wein ba3dik ray7a.
Ghada: Ma baddi khalilik wala ay sha3ra aw wabra.

The rest of the conversation alternated between an extended version of the "ma baddi khalilik wala sha3ra" routine, stories about "we7deh zbouneh khityara" (who turned out to be only 45) who likes to remove everything except for 1 line down there (a design as she likes to refer to it) and the occasional not so subtle reminder that "Nadine njem, maliket jamel libnan, hiyeh zboonti". Interesting.

20 minutes after she'd gone and I could do nothing but look in the mirror, questioned whether any of the events of the past 2 hours bordered on molestation, and think "I look like a porn star. A prepubescent one, but a porn star non the less".

Biology

Is it the heart that follows the mind or the other way round? I don't remember any of my biology teachers every tackling the subject, and if they did, I must've been pondering something completely different at the time. Is it possible to suddenly develop a slight infatuation or be willing to hold talks between your heart and mind, between you and friends desperate to see you "involved", and between the whys and why nots in your head. What is it about a person that turns that neon sign in your head that flashes "potential" in bright red precision? Is it personality, a certain look, or just knowing that there is interest from the other party? Could that really be all it comes down to?

Makes me wish I'd paid more attention in class.

Von Hump

Screw Karkar.

Who the fuck is Karkar? And what the fuck gives it the right to screw up people's lives.

Everybody join me in saying SCREW KARKAR.

Goodbye and farewell.

6th Sense

I'm at my friend Dima's place. A friend of hers is attempting to analyze another friend's personality through an empty shot platic cup with cigarette ash inside. He sees, thick eyebrows, a goatie and her trying to escape through a hole.

Apparently, all you really need to know about a person lies in alcohol and nicotine remnants tossed in a cheap plastic.

Honestly now, is this a 6th sense or the alcohol talking? And more importantly, is there really no better way to spend a Saturday evening?

My Bloody Valentine

I remember it like it was yesterday. A line like this belongs in the movies, but then again so do the events of February 14th 2005. I wasn;t in Beirut when it happened, but I should've been. I remember I was still in bed when I got a txt from my friend in Beirut. All she said was that there'd been a huge explosion in beirut that day and no one knew what'd happened. I got up, walked around my apartment in Austin and really didn;t think much of her txt. I always felt disconnected from everything back home when I was in Austin. It was like I led 2 different lives, each on a different continent. I little later she sent another txt saying that they think Rafik Hariri, our ex-prime minister, had been targetted.

When I read that I began to worry. I had never cared much for Lebanese politics. It was all a load of bullshit, the ravings of a bunch of overstuffed pigs looking to wake from the lethargy they'd gotten used to. Total bull i thought. And I honestly never bothered with it. I did know though that Hariri was sort of a contraversial figure in the Lebanese political scene. Not contraversial in the provocative sense, but just in the whole Lebanese "is he a godsend or just out to make more money" kind of way. A lot of people never liked him, I'd always been neutral. I knew of teh charitable acts he'd been involved in and, naive as it may be, I just figured he was relatively a good person. End of story.

The next message i got practically froze me in my place. I think i was somewhere between the kitchen and living room when i pressed teh read button on my phone. "Hariri's dead...." was all it said. I couldn'e believe it. I became so upset, felt like someone had targeted me personally, like i wasn't safe in my own apartment. I couldn;t breathe. i'd never felt like that before. I'd experienced death before, death of people I'd actually cared about and it's always been upsetting to me. Hariri's death somehow managed to force me to react differently. I didn't understand it at the time.

A year on, and I still haven't fully grasped the impact of the death of a public figure like Hariri. A few days ago marked his 1-year passing. I went to the demonstration they'd organized to mark that day along with what they said was over a million other people. I wasn't here last year to denounce this act of terror, and I wasn't able to make my voice heard. No one in Austin particularly understood the impact of what had happened. I couldn;t explain to them how upsetting his assasination was, and how it would affect the country. So I left it at that.

In Martyrs Square, or Freedom Square, or whatever they're calling it these days, I saw nothing that helped me voice my opinion. It was typical Lebanese jargon, supporters of the milliona and two Lebanese political parties, and the occasional insult to our much respected president. Very disappointing to say the least. I held on to my flag, held my head up high and left. I figured I'd sort of left my mark, or at least allowed strange men to momentarily leave their hand prints on my back and buttocks while pushing through the crowds.

So much for national pride and integrity. Welcome to Lebanon I say.

One Hell Of An Ego Trip

I have a pet iguana. His name is Ego Trip and I love him. I refer to Ego as him although I'm not quite sure of his gender.

I went to the supermarket to buy some pie filling and ended up bringing Ego back home with me. He tends to poop a lot and when he does his little bum makes a squeezing noise. Weird and disturbing. He likes lettuce and seems to only remember me when I have some in my hand. I love my little Ego Trip. He brings joy to my life on a daily basis, and he's oh so beautiful.

This is a picture of him last summer. I like to think of him as my baby, although it's obvious to anyone that he has no particular emotional attachment to me. I guess that's just the way it goes. Just because you care about something, don't expect to get anything back from it. Aside, of course, from occasionally being able to gloat or boast about your pet/baby/ little bundle of joy..even if it is a bit scaly.

Hydrogen

It's not so much about hydrogen as it is about being. Being, much like hydrogen, is colorless, odorless, nonmetallic, univalent, tasteless, and highly flammable. But enough with the formalities. Welcome to my blog. My name is Rasha, and I'm not the blog-posting type. I'm also not the sort of person to stick with anything. Boredom, I fear, is my kryptonite so to say. And with kryptonite comes the end of things.

When i was a kid growing up in Beirut, I used to sleep in our apartment corridor on nights when the bombing was more severe. I remember staying up after my mom, dad, brother and sister had fallen asleep, and just staring out the window for what seemed like hours. I loved watching the lights. I liked to think of them as lights, when in fact they were works of fire..fire art. I loved the colors, the magical mesh of oddly colored shapes and lines, and the way they all came together. Fast forward a few years later and I began to remember the lights as the beauty of destruction. These days, I remember the lights as exploding hydrogen, brightly colored, intense and pressured to the point of explosion.

Or implosion. Afterall, is that not the malice of everyday. Everyday, faced with stories, pictures, trauma and all that causes us to distort or inner body into malnutritioned bundles of loss. Sad really. Nothing is what we say it is, and nothing is as at should be.

Now, all the drama and glory of hydrogen put aside, I think this blog should be thought of as the glory of thought. I also think this is a happy occasion and this blog should be filled with happy thoughts. Happy thoughts make the world go round, and happy thoughts make everyday fun. I'll try to remember that everyday brings about a new story to tell, something fun to think back on and laugh, and that being young is not something I'll remember forever. So cheers darlings, and happy thoughts everyone.

All the Hydrogen in the World

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

:)

Not An Addict

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Moderation

Freedom

Friday, February 24, 2006

Absolut Bumming

Thursday, February 23, 2006

More Senior

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Who Wants To Be A Porn Star?

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Biology

Von Hump

Screw Karkar.

6th Sense

Saturday, February 18, 2006

My Bloody Valentine

One Hell Of An Ego Trip

Hydrogen

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