Thank You for Being an Ass

The task of taking mother's car in for routine servicing was placed upon my head today. My brother had called in and made the appointment for 5pm (not the usual time one would take or give for such an affair). So I was supposed to take the car and all, but at 4 I was asked to make something to go with lunch. Pasta. I got done by 4:30 and was starved so I took the liberty of a few extra minutes and ate. I think I must have been in the car by 4:45 at least. Anyways, I get on the highway and just a few kilometers down I hit some really bad traffic. That highway never EVER has traffic in the evening unless there is an accident. 'Dammit' was the first thought that came to mind. I was going to be late getting to the toyota shop. Called my bro who was supposed to meet me there. Turned out he hadnt left his office yet. Preparing to sit in traffic for a while the thought "this better be worth the traffic" briefly passed though my mind. It took a while to actually get to the accident scene, but man, it was wicked. Quite a while before I could even see the actual car I saw a mangled tire and various other bits and pieces of the car scattered all over. A few fire trucks were there. There was lots of water all over the highway. On the side I was driving on to my right there were huge skid marks in the grass. It looked as if the car was trying to enter the highway from a ramp, lost control skidding across the grass while flipping and finally landing on the other side of the highway into the on coming traffic. There was very little left of the smashed in charcoaled remains. I mean I am usually pretty good at telling what a mangled wreck had once been, but that thing was totally unrecognizable. There was an ambulance there as well, but I highly doubt there was much left to take back to the hospital. It was pretty sad that the cars on my side of the highway had slowed to a crawl just to get a peak at what was going on and no sooner were they a couple of feet away they'd return to speeding like there was no tomorrow.
On my way back I took the same highway, now on the side where the car had landed. There was a bit of traffic. I couldnt imagine that they were still out there. When I got up to the spot where the car had landed there was still a police car there with its emergency lights flashing. There was also two, looked like fire fighters but could have just been clean up crew, out there. They were shovelling and scraping vigorously at the charcoaled remains burnt into the pavement. Metal bits and car remains.. possibly even human remains. "Oh God." I really should learn to control my thoughts and imagination, it went pretty far tonight. It wasnt long before I started thinking of the person's family. For everyone out there tonight it was just something to see, a temporary traffic jam, but for the people related to that person time must have stopped for them. I was just imagining how tragic it must be for the family to know that someone that was around at morning time, or even afternoon time and had just gone out for whatever would never be coming back. My mind was really out there, so out there that I was actually doing less than 100km on a 100km highway. I didnt even realize that till the guy behind me started flashing. I was in the middle lane. My first reaction was to check my speed. It was above 80 but not 100. I sped up a bit but couldnt really go more than 100, my mood just wasnt with it. The guy was still behind me, and then flashed again. I was getting agitated, I mean who the flip flashes someone in the middle lane and then no sooner had he flashed then he flashed again, and his headlights were no joke. I cursed at him (done under my breath not actually at him with him hearing or anything) and wished I had an LCD screen in the rear window so I could call him an ass and him actually see it. The left lane and extreme right lanes were both totally clear so I could not understand what this dude's beef was. I was tempted to get in the right lane, let him pass and then get behind him with my high beams on just to let him see how truly annoying it was. Again I so wasnt feeling the mood and he finally passed on the left. He wasnt even going that fast. Even after he passed he was just like a car ahead of me or so. He switched back to the middle lane but by that time I was already in the right lane. I was so tempted to get back in the middle behind him and flash a couple of times. Somewhere between dropping the idea and just going ahead with it I look down on the dashboard and realize my headlights werent even on. It was already way dark and all the other cars had theirs on, and the highway lights were all on. If an officer had seen me I would have gotten a ticket and probably a few black points. The guy I had thought was just being an annoying ass was actually being a considerate guy and trying to spare me the trouble, or an accident. I was pretty damn glad I hadnt went with road rage instincts and 'retaliated'. It made me think though, just how many incidents do we misinterpret as the other person being a total ass when they are actually just trying to do us a favor?

عند العيايز كل شي يايز

[ Um Alawi displaying the fruit of success ]

I really like that picture. Um Alawi looks very cute.. Brings to mind a certain person who will get hers soon as well inshalla. I'll definitely capture the moment of her success (inshalla ya rab!) though I won't be able to share it here =P

Somehow even though I have 6 courses they didn't get evenly spread out amongst my weekly schedule. Three days a week I have 5 classes in one day and finish at 4:00. The remaining two days I only have 1 lone class which starts at 11:00 and ends 12:15. I'm happy though. Yesterday (Tues.) I started to get really annoyed in the IT class. We take it in a computer lab. The computers run along the walls so in the corners the person on the computer beside you sits with their back to you. I sit in the corner, usually there are two boys to my left behind me. I don't get any trouble from them except for the occasional chair bump if they happen to push their chairs too far back or whatever. The IT teacher managed to short out all the comps in the lab and he couldn't get them to come back on so we moved to another lab. Two girls now sat in the corner to my left. I was pretty happy about that.. my happiness was short lived though. Class hadn't even re-started yet and the girl had bumped the back of my chair at least 10 times with hers. She was swivelling her chair back and forth and each time it pass the back of my chair it'd bump it. I tried pulling in closer to my computer table but she still managed to bump my chair. It was pretty damn annoying and what was more annoying was the fact that I couldn't get up the nerve to tell her to stop. I tried to focus on something else. The girl to my right was having trouble with her laptop. We were supposed to be working with MS word and she wanted to get rid of the paragraph marks that would come up in any document she tried to work with or open. She called a third boy over (there are only 3 boys in our class and the girls only flirt with one of them) and chatted him up as he tried pathetically to get the paragraph marks off. When he finally gave up and she ran out of things to say she called the IT teacher over. He (surprisingly) didn't know how to fix it - and wouldn't admit to such either. After getting up the nerve to butt in I offered to fix it for her and she totally ignored me! I mean completely and totally. I'd shrug it off and say maybe she didn't hear me but I had pointed at the paragraph mark and was practically touching her laptop screen when I was trying to tell her how to fix it. Nigerella. I know it's her loss in the end and all but I felt pissed about it. Next class I'm going to look for a comp place farthest away from those heffas...

That same day I had my first classes in Principles of Management and Principles in Marketing. I'm not sure what the coming classes will be like but my first management class was love at first "attendance". If it were an anime, hearts would have poured out of my eyes - filled the room and spill out into the hall b3ad. The guy seems like a great professor. Enthusiastic about the class and teaching it. Funny. And so far understandable. After a brief intro about the course the first thing he told us to do was split into groups of four. We did so. Then he handed out little sheets of rectangle shaped paper with lines on them. Each paper had a place for our names, student id # and telephone # and a spot to write down the name of our group. He gave a sheet to a few girls and made them the leaders of their respective groups. It took us a while to come up with suitable names. The Tornadoes, The Flowers, The Black Roses, The M's (cuz all four girls of that group's names start with M), The Leadership Group, The Decision Makers, The Chocos, hmmm the remaining two groups I can't remember what their names are.. The girls in my group came up with "F4" (Hana yori dango). It turned out that they are Jdrama fans. Lol I'm lucky to have watched HYD otherwise I would have been lost and not have known what the heck F4 was. (Arigatou Kath =) ) Our groups are meant to work on case studies throughout the year and even though I had said I never wanted to be in another group work position again this promises to be interesting at the very least.

Gosh I'm tired, these days I can barely stay awake past 1:00 am...

The Longest Moment

Look over shoulder and check for on coming cars, a few are coming – but I can make it… accelerate, more.. more.. car number 1: gray Honda civic gaining, accelerate.. more.. more *beep beep beep beep* needle passes 120 mark. Slow down, this is a 100 kph highway, 20 over is the “grace limit”. Check mirror.. Honda Civic yields to black tinted Lexus LS 400.. Lexus coming fast.. not in the mood to play with his mind, yield. *Yawn*. Call sister and tell her be ready to go to the ladies club. Get off phone, *yaaawn*. Check time 4:47pm. Went to bed today at 4:00am, woke at 5:00am. *Yawn* Be there in 10 mins I told her, come in 15 she pleaded. Pass Sharjah airport, Is it going to take just 15 mins to reach home from here? Needle moves down to just barely touching 100. accelerate. So many things to do back home, can’t waste all my time on the road – accelerate… needle pushes past 120 *beep beep beep beep* whatever, reach over and turn up Al Khalayeg, start singing along.

ياليت كل الخلايق مابهم حساد ..........ياليت كل المشاعر صادقة بالناس

*Yawn* continue singing, time will fly…

ياليت نملك قلوب ما بها أحقاد.... ياليت نقدر نسامح غيرنا لو زل

Last interchange before I get off…

تكفون خلونا نمشي دربها ياناس... والفرحه نرجي من الله دوم نحصدها

*Yawn* When did I memorize this song? Here’s my exit.. Al Jabari and his background singers repeat the last line of the nasheed. Get over…*Exhale*…ah, the a/c feels good..*blink*.. darkness, silence - calmness… moments pass, I want to stay like this just for a bit more.. no something isn’t right,… SHEEMOTA, I was DRIVING and it’s not even a straight drive the exit was a curved bend.. WAKE..UP!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was probably only a moment or so that my eyes were closed but I really felt like it was longer and that I had sunken deep into sleep, thought I’d wake up and find the car already totaled or worse.. Either way if I wasn’t already dead, mother would definitely not let me hear the end of it since I had insisted I needed to go get brochures from the Horse Riding Club for my speech tomorrow. Sheesh, that was down right scary, especially given the reoccurring day-mare I’ve been having of a vampire sucking all my blood away and all the news articles loaded with deaths and obituaries..

Speech Comm.

Entering my third week in Uni now. I have my daily class schedules, my ID number and the number password for my uni webmail all memorized =) That’s a lot of numbers.. I guess that means as long as I don’t to do anything/ convert those numbers as in math, geo, algebra etc. I am fine with numbers. Lol.

Even though we haven’t started anything really challenging yet in any of the courses I’m already starting to enjoy them. Everything is just so different in comparison to home schooling.

Only one thing is seriously eating at me atm: SPEECH COMM….

Deep deep down (as my bro says) I love the class. I love listening to my classmates, the first week when we did “Introducing ourselves” (all except me) and last week when we did “Experiences” (in the end of this post I have to mention a few really good ones my mates presented.). This week we’re moving on to a third topic (Presenting something meaningful to us) and I’ve yet to even do a single presentation!

I prepare the speech and everything (he tells us to prepare what we are going to present at home before coming) and then as I sit in class and watch a few of the other girls going I keep telling myself “Ok, after her I’ll raise my hand and get this over with.” The next girl goes and I tell myself the same thing till the teacher is announcing what we have to do for next class before bidding us adieu. Then I realize that I’ve yet again let a whole class slip by without participating. It’s really frustrating, especially since I at least show minimum participation in all of my other classes.

What to do, what to do, what to do….

Anywayz,

Today two girls gave really good presentations. Their English wasn’t great great but they tried and the experiences they told about were interesting.

The first girl told about the time she and her family went to Thailand when she was 13 years old. She said she was a Pepsi addict and every day had to have a couple of bottles/ cans. One night she opened the fridge and found there was no Pepsi to be found. She started to cry. She asked her father to go and buy some (the store was 20 km away and it was after midnight) but he refused. She then took her brother, who was 7 years old at the time, and snuck out. They walked all the way to the store and just as they walked in the last bottle of Pepsi was being sold she said to a “Black Man”. She asked the store keeper did he have anymore Pepsi. The store keeper replied no. Her brother then turns to the black man and says: can you give that Pepsi to me? The black man replies no. The girl said she kicked her brother and told him when he speaks to people he should have good manners with them. She turned to the black man and says: Hey nigga, can you give me that Pepsi?

The black man stared at her before asking what did she say. So she repeated it thinking it was a term of high respect and that he either didn’t hear her or misunderstood her accent. (Btw, the girl is Emirati) the guy was shocked and kept asking what did she say so she kept repeating. He got really angry and dropped the Pepsi on the floor. Told her he wasn’t going to give her that Pepsi and instead he was going to ‘show’ her something. At that point he pulled out a knife. The girl took her brother and ran. They ran and ran but of course being just kids they couldn’t outrun the guy. He caught up to them and slashed her brother. Thankfully another guy came and rescued them from the angered black man.

We have to state the lesson(s) learned from our experience at the end of the presentation. She said the lessons she learned were: That Pepsi isn’t the most important thing in the world and to never say a word she doesn’t know the meaning of.

The other girl’s experience was about the first day she got her license. She said that morning she was so happy that she begged her father to let her start driving that day. He refused. She said she sat in front of him in the living room of their house and begged from morning till late afternoon. Finally her mother came in and said she wanted something from her friend’s house. The girl told her father she would get it for her mom. The father said fine, but he had to go with her. She said ok but if he saw anything she did wrong to either tell her quietly without shouting or wait till after she finished driving cuz if he shouted at her while she was driving she’d get nervous and get into an accident. Her dad said fine. So they were off. They got there safely and all and when they arrived at her mom’s friend’s house she wanted to park the car inside of the lady’s gate. Her dad told her that was “3ayb” and that it was better to park the car beside the house outside the gate. The girl argued that when the lady comes to their house she parks her car inside their gate so it would be ok if she did it also. The father refused. The girl was angry and instead of pressing the brake to stop in front of the house she pressed the gas by mistake. She said their car went right through the lady’s front gate. The whole gate (cement, bricks and all) came crashing down on their car. It totaled their car. (here the speech comm. Teacher asked the girl – she’s our student union president- what her dad said about that, it being her first day and all and already in an accident.) she said he remained silent and then she added “kil minh” (It was all from him or rather it was his fault) so like of course he’d be silent. The teacher asked how long did her father remain silent.. She said he remained silent till she went inside drank juice and calmed down.

Can u guys imagine the embarrassment though? Not only getting into an accident on ur first day out but totaling ur car AND demolishing ur mom’s friend’s front gate (for all of my readers who might not know, around the houses here in UAE are really big cement brick gates.. kinda like fortress walls surrounding the whole house)

Gosh, there was another experience presentation one of my mates did that was good.. now I’m too tired to write about it. I’ll save it for another time.

::Yawns:: I am so looking forward to a cold Chocolate & Caramel drink I had this morning at the uni. I’m going to order the same – minus the z3tar and cheese sandwich- tomorrow inshalla.

God, talking about a future breakfast, I’m really REALLY tired so it’s off to bed for me before I start singing or something else weird!

Ironic

When I remember, and when I'm not late (80% of the time I am in fact late and much to my chagrin it's slowly becoming my trademark..ugh!) I do try to make an eXtReMeLy 'concentrated' effort not to speed.

I actually went through the trouble of analyzing myself to see what actually helps me not to speed. Among those things were:

• a good tape (preferably with a good beat...if not it must be Al Safi)
• talking on my cell (carrying on a conversation with anybody of higher intelligence rank - only unfortunate problemo about that is when said intelligent person decides it's dangerous to talk and drive and order the conversation to be ended that very second! Hmph, and u know exactly who u are!)
• THE Arabic teacher (my former arabic teacher from school, for some reason it was impossible to drive 'normal' with her in the car. Some hidden force possessed me whenever she stepped in the car and forced me to be eXtra 'muadthaba' (well behaved) )
• Cappuccino or Karak (lol, either of those two hot are deadly when spilt in one's lap.. anything spilt on my abaya in general makes me go crazy, so yeah in the case of being in danger of spillage I slow down.)

That's what I can remember of the things I found that make me slow down, I'm sure there's other things though.

It was yesterday though that the irony of speeding smacked me right in the face. I was going to my friend's house in UAQ, its a city here not very far from Sharjah. One takes the highway to get there. Highway is basically one of those long straight ones with a few curves - it just invites speeding. Anyways at the beginning of the highway there was this altima infront of me. It refused to move (I didn't flash him or anything though). Even though he was infront of me he wasn't driving slow. After a bit I forgot about him. Next thing I knew he was way ahead of me and I was doing 140 (Meaning that guy was doing *at least* 180). 10 mins past and it happened that he was going the same way I was going cuz guess what? After 10mins of his super speeding (I didn't pass 140) I was still right behind his bumper like we had been at the beginning of the highway. It was really ironic. What was the point of speeding when we still ended up at the same place at the same time and it was so obvious that we weren't both doing the same speed??

That thought remained with me the rest of the day (until I realized it was 3:40 and the ice skating show that a certain person and my sis were supposed to be in was going to start at 4:00..then I flew.) and obviously decided to revisit me today, otherwise I wouldn't still be thinking about it and posting. Come to think of it, this should probably be on the other blog...