Caffeine Urges..

I awoke this morning with two desires: A large Caramel Macchiato and to get some studying done for my finals next week.

Realization: Today’s Friday – school café is CLOSED.

Fine, I’ll settle for a homemade instant cappuccino..

A search in the kitchen cupboards turns up a “Carrefore” brand weak imitation instant coffee.. Ha, ha HA – as coach would sarcastically laugh. Ain’t no way EL Hazard would lower herself to drink such vile, weak liquid..

sErIoUsLy! The trademark cappuccino “froth” in that stuff is merely two bubbles clinging to the side of the mug! I mean even the VENDING machine at school can manage a semi-glorious froth on your cappuccino! Ha, fine when you don’t have a horse ride a cow right? I’ll drink tea with milk. I search the cupboards again and find every exotic and weird tea the stores carry: Vanilla & Pineapple, Raspberry & Echinacea, Green tea w/ orange, Green tea w/ mint, Green tea w/ apple, Green tea w/ java, Green tea w/ lemon, Green tea w/ ginger…..(Ya waylna min Green tea afan allah!) lemon & ginger tea, sage tea, anise tea, Earl Grey tea, Darjeeling tea, M- something tea (purple box).. Allah yasamhich Umee! Ma 3andna “normal tea”?!

I searched some more and found a box of store brand imitation Lipton. “Fine” I thought digging the box out from underneath “Exotica tea land”. It was oddly light. I opened the box and found it was EMPTY! Nooooooooooooooo! I could hear the exotic teas snickering mockingly.

Allllllll the way in the back of the cupboard I saw a container with tea granules. Aha! I can make karak. Dismissing the appearance of those tea granules (I think they were old and it wasn’t good tea quality aslan..) I turned them into a sick looking imitation karak. Even the color looked miskeen! I drunk it even though I’m very picky about my karak. There are only three karaks that I really like (believe me I’ve tasted many), from the karak shop down the street from my house, Karak at Bookworm’s house, and Karak from a Shamsi lady’s house (her karak was to die for.. it was a cross between cappuccino and karak.. kinda creamy with froth on top).

I drank two cups of my creation and looked like this:

It definitely didn’t arouse desire to study.. so instead of studying I hung around online. It wasn’t until after I went to go reheat that stuff (I had to study and can’t study without some caffeine..) I noticed the cute jar of dried tea leaves Bookworm had given me some time ago. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW I’m saved! (I made tea with that before and it was great) I normally don’t like to waste but I had to toss that awful karak and make a fresh pot.
Hehe, with Bookworm’s tea my karak looked and smelled marvelous. Lol Such great tea would definitely need great milk.. Stole a can of mother’s sacred Rainbow Cardamom flavor milk and dumped it into my concoction. Perfect-o! (Lol, she’ll have plenty to say when she sees the emptied can in the garbage…I’ll justify it, she has more in the closet =P )

Equipped with passing Karak (not as great as any of the above mentioned 3 but a pretty good imitation if I do say so myself =P ) I shall dive into some grammar for my Language Development final..

Ediilee, Allah yakhaleekum!

The Price of Addiction

I’m glad this round of exams is finally over.. I feel I need to go and throw up all of the diet coke and Lays salt & vinegar chips I consumed all this week during study time.

Back when I was going to MPS I usually would stop on my way and buy a bag or two of those same salt & vinegar chips. They quickly turned into an addiction. I’d usually have no less than two bags a day. I thought BW’s equating them to dried oil was funny in a way, I never saw the chips like that. One morning I brought them and had opened them preparing to eat when I took a sniff (yeah I know that sounds kinda animal-ish but it’s a habit I have of smelling food sometimes before I eat it – I do it more if it’s something I have never had before.) the smell really turned me off. I was holding the chip and looking at it and it suddenly looked extra greasy to the point where it was like transparent and shining. *Ugh* Needless to say I couldn’t eat them after that. Instead I switched to the French Cheese Lays (LOL as if!) they looked better than the vinegar ones. They at least weren’t gleaming from the oil. Finally I just stopped eating them all together.

A couple of weeks back I started eating them again. For some reason they didn’t smell ‘greasy’ anymore and the vinegar tasted really good. I ate them off and on that week. My stomach grumbled. I ignored it, I thought it was just hurting to be hurting.. It does that sometimes. Then one day during the weekend I had a meat sandwich (one of those fatayar things) a bag of those lays – or maybe it was two bags – and a diet coke. Not even an hour later I was doubled over from the pain in my stomach. I thought maybe the meat sandwich might have been the culprit. Actually I was almost sure it was, never for a moment suspected those chips.

I hadn’t bought any chips till this week when exams started. I suddenly had a taste for coffee again (really fell outta touch with my former fave drink since the time I had to abstain from it last summer.. I was down to like a cup once a month.) I figured it was perfectly ok to go and indulge since I didn’t think I was anemic any more. Ha ha HA. I ordered the best cup I ever remember tasting from the 1st Avenue Café we have there at school. It was a Caramel Macchiato. (now that I think about it it’s an ESPRESSO coffee with flavor and a fancy name.) As soon as I took a sip my head felt funny. I finished it and went to wait for the bus to go home. I felt light headed the whole short walk to the bus and as soon as I got on the bus I slept like a log. I was afraid I’d miss my stop for sure and even dreamt that I missed it. (lucky for me I kinda woke a bit before my stop and then fought off the strong screaming urge to drift back to sleep.)

Don’t u know the very next day EL-stupid-Hazard absent mindedly went and ordered the LARGE version of the same Macchiato! I mentally kicked myself when I realized midway through that I was drinking coffee again after the day before. I had hell for the rest of the day. I was in the store that evening and while I was waiting in line I suddenly felt so dizzy. I was sure I was going to fall. I stood near the wall and closed my eyes (can u guys just imagine the embarrassment?! I’d never be able to go to the Co-op again had I fainted in there – and it was my favorite co-op.) Ok so that means either I’m still anemic and just imagined I was all better or coffee has decided to hold a grudge against moi for deserting it for so long…

At any rate I drank diet coke more often than coffee now so I’d just stick with that I thought. During exam time a diet coke 3-4 times a week became at least 3 times per day starting with one at breakfast while I’d study at the last minute in the cafeteria. You know, I’m only now seeing that that was really bad – and it’s not because I wanna puke out this week’s worth of diet coke and chips! I had those vinegar chips a couple of times this week even though it wasn’t as much as the coke. This weekend I decided to continue with those vinegar chips. I woke up Friday morning craving them. By Friday night my stomach was killing me like that time before when I had that sandwich. This morning was when it finally dawned on me that it was those damn chips that have been hurting my stomach. I still had diet coke today with a croissant – bad idea. I hope this wanting to puke feeling goes away by tomorrow. I sure don’t think I wanna sit through Islamic Culture with this feeling.

One good thing has come from all of this though:

I.HAVE.LEARNT.MY.LESSON!


I’ll go healthy this week so the effects of all that garbage will wear off…





I wanna drink Macchiatoooooooooooo!

Cappuccino on my mind

I officially love my university.. yes love with a capital L.

Only had pocket change today and was seriously craving coffee. Craved it so bad I didn't care what kind it was. Black expresso, latte, cappuccino, mochaccino- heck even arabic coffee would have been fine. As I waited for my 9:00 class I was eyeing the coffee machine. (it's one of those machines u just put coins in, this cup comes down into a holder thing and then the machine makes all sorts of swishing sounds as it prepares the coffee...super cool.)

40% of the girls stop in front of the coffee machine - which is right beside the snack machine- and buy coffee and chocolate before class. Looks really good but since I'm on a diet and currently very proud of the fact that I have managed not to eat any junk whatsoever for a whole month now - the exception of a mini snickers and a mini bounty, the really really small inch size minis, which so can't count - chocs are out the question. I was dreaming about coffee throughout my classes today.

At the end of Speech Comm (my last class for the day) my friend called me and decided we should go to the cafeteria and get something to eat. I wasn't much in the mood for anything though I would have settled for a milk shake but they don't sell any there. In the end neither of us got anything. We walked over to the student affairs building to see about getting student ID cards and behold there in the main hall stood a coffee machine. (Come to think of it I think all the buildings in each hall HAVE a coffee machine!) The machine was literally shining in my eyes. "I will definitely have that coffee." was the only thought on my mind.

I was amazed at the choices. I think there were like 6 or 8. Expresso, Cappuccino, Chocolate Cappuccino, White tea (tea with milk it said in arabic but it was translated as "white tea" in english- Karak wannabe no doubt. Ha ha, I don't think I even wanna try that.) Hot chocolate..... I can't remember the rest! I decided one could never go wrong with cappuccino. Only time cappuccino is disgusting is when it doesn't have enough sugar. There was a button that said extra sugar - beside another button that said no sugar. I assumed the cappuccino would have sugar then.

It was pretty weird buying a hot drink from a machine. I had only seen a coffee machine like that in the movie Terminator 2. I put my 2 dhs in, made my selection and down came the cup. The LCD screen read: Drink in Process. (COOL!) Swishing sounds were coming from the machine and after a few seconds it beeped and the screen read: Take your drink. It was really foamy and looked as a proper cappuccino should look, lol. I was 60% sure I was going to regret not selecting the extra sugar option though. I was 99.9% wrong ;)

Durn best cup of cappuccino I've tasted since the great cappuccino I used to buy at the Emarat gas station's bakeria!

From this day forth I will never leave for uni without life saving pocket change - hahahha my cappuccino shall depend upon it!

HS - Where bad habits are born!

Today - no actually this whole MONTH has been the worst I've had since finishing High School... The absolute worst - made a hundred times worse by having to refrain from my favorite bad habit... My beloved coffee. It's bad enough I had to quit tennis. But quit tennis AND abstain from even tasting my beloved black liquid is more than I can stand! I've come to the conclusion that this is "Divine Punishment" for knowingly breaking a promise. In the end it serves me right.

I remember the time, before I started HS, when I was a normal-once-in-awhile- drinking- a -cup - of- hot-chocolate-with-a- marshmallow- in- it - teen. Other than that 'hot' drinks were so 'out' for me. I used to read about, see people on TV and watch people around me drink and 'enjoy' coffee and wonder how people could bring themselves to drink it. To me coffee in all its flavors and kinds was just pure bitter tasting sheemot. I couldn't even begin to figure out how one could be addicted to it. I don't remember exactly when (those crazy days of HS are mostly fuzzy...I can only imagine what they must have been like for the people who actually went to school for them!) but somewhere during that first year I developed a strong liking for huge mugs of coffee with creamer. All hell would break loose on the days I found no coffee in the house. Those days I had to settle for 'tea' (something else I never used to drink before, unless it was 'iced tea'). Most people need coffee to stay awake - El Hazard on the other hand, couldn't sleep most nights without it! Nearing the end of my HS days I decided to be a bit more adventurous and try other sources of caffeine to satisfy my daily cravings. On the mornings that I had no time to get coffee I'd usually down two righteous cups of tea ("karak" they call it here ;) ) an Oronamin C and if I had a few fils left (ha ha more like a dirham) I'd blow it on a diet coke. During that time I attended morning classes 5 days a week from 8 am till 12pm. With all that caffeine singing through my veins it's amazing I managed to stay awake!

With the end of HS that phase was over and El Hazard was back to her beloved coffee - only this time it had to be cappuccino! Of course some days the cappuccino was put on the backseat while other flavors were explored. Some of the most interesting and memorable cups I've had were: The Emarat Station's Bakeria Hazelnut and Vanilla flavored Cappuccinos (two seperate flavors not both in one ,lol), Eppco's Mocha Cappuccino, My Mocha Almond Cappuccino (personal invention...now watch Starbucks steal the idea...) and of course my good friend's Chahwa. I'm not allowed to spill what that was (use ur darn imagination!) but it was AMAZING - as I like to describe things I truly enjoy...

Ok enough said about the coffee - it is after all only one of the bad habits formed during the horrors of HS!

Thankfully I dropped nail-bitting in elementary...