10 normal things that people do or believe in

In "The winner stands alone" - Paulo Coelho's latest novel - there is a list of *normal* things that people do or believe in.

I have picked 10 from the list, some that I had break off, and others that I am working on:

1. Working from nine till five every day at something that gives you no pleasure at all just so, after thirty years, you can retire.

It is actually from eight to six for me! Long working hours - I know. That is something that I still need to do, but I won't wait till my retirement. I will for sure find other doors that would change this (already working on it).

2. Retiring and discovering that you no longer have enough energy to enjoy life and dying few years later of sheer boredom.

I CAN'T let this happen, and I won't! To be honest, I feel less energy now being in my thirties than being in my twenties or teenage. Maybe it is due to hectic long working hours, or maybe it is age. I am afraid that it is true that their won't be enough energy for me when I retire, but who said that I need energy to enjoy life? ;). That is the beauty of being a lazy man - you never die of sheer boredom :P

3. Believing that power is much important than money and that money is much important than happiness.

I see it everywhere, but I have never adopt it. Happiness always comes first for me. I know that pursuing money have ate from my happiness in the past year or so, but that is something I felt needed for more happiness in the future. I may be wrong, I will try to balance, and keep a smile.

4. Making fun of anyone who seeks happiness rather than money and accusing them of 'lacking ambition'.

Same as in the previous point, but I know that people who do this, do it from sheer jealousy. Those who are happy are truly gifted. The truth is that no matter how we claim that money is everything, deep down inside, we all know that happiness is what really matter.

5. Waking up each morning to an hysterical alarm clock in the bedside table.

Akhhhh! You know what, the day I stop waking up to my phone alarm would be the day where I would declare that I have wonderful mornings.

6. Believing absolutely anything that appears in print.

I am a person who prefers to give trust rather than doubt, but I also have the ability to smell when something is fishy and when it is not. Unfortunately, I know many people who don't just believe anything in print, but also they believe everything that hit their email inbox! (especially those related to religious myths)

7. Eating three time a day even if you are not hungry.

I eat 6 times a day and I don't mind more! This is one of the beautiful things that people do.

8. Assuming the women don't like football and that men aren't interested in home decoration and cooking.

Strict gender roles! I have broken mine and do enjoy what ever make me happy. Cooking and home decoration do sound really more fun than watching football!

9. Blaming the government for all the bad things that happen.

People who do that really annoy me! I believe firmly in the saying: It is better to light a candle than to curse the dark.

10. Being equally convinced that aggression and rudeness are synonyms with having a 'powerful personality'.

I feel sorry for people who believe in this and actually build their personality on it thinking that they do really have a powerful one where in reality it is just a stupid thing to do because deep inside they know that aggression and rudeness is just a form of protecting their fragile inner-self

Social Hypocrisy 2

In Jordan, a woman may disable her facebook account after she gets into a serious relationship, do you know what else she may do? Fake innocence! That is not an uncommon advice, where married women would advice their friends who got recently into a relationship to act *surprised* if her boyfriend/fiance tried to touch her hand. If it is her wedding night, then the advice would be for the woman fake shyness and ask her husband to shut off the light!

Sadly, Jordanian women are still expected not to be sexually active before marriage. Although many are indeed sexually active, in discretion, but with no intercourse (to maintain the hymen), it is nothing acceptable to be mentioned infront of your future husband. The common perception, if a woman made out with a man, he won't marry her! So if she made out with her first boyfriend, and his didn't marry her, she won't make out with her next one and end up marrying him! He, on the other hand, would try with her before marriage, and if she refuses, then she would have passed the test, and then he would end up marrying whom he thinks to be the pillar of virtue (in his own moral values ofcourse).

Well yes! That is a great advice. With such social values, and such mentality of men, women must have learnt how to trick them! and then again, it is a trick that most men are willing to take because it spares them the hectic of carrying on with what society expects from them if they know the truth!

Well let's look at it closer:

A man waiting for his wedding night, he is eager to have halal sex with the woman he has married but he expects her to act cold, shy, and inexperienced. He still hopes that he will have good sex - that is the reason he got married afterall!!

Well that doesn't really work! It takes two for good sex. But if she is going to please him, then she would show some knowledge, and thus alert him of a potential pervious experience which would push him to divorce her.

Do we really have to be this hypocrite? Can't women just stand up for themselves?!

Haya's 30 years bday resolution regarding men.. and women

I thought that 30 years old would be the number where people would stop/shy of asking me questions about when am I going to get married. I was wrong. I now know that people have no shame... no shame at all.

When I am talking about people here, I am mostly referring to other women, those who call themselves friends and seize every little chance to ask me: "Haya, nothing yet happened with you?" "dear, you are 30 now, you have to work harder?" "Haya, you need to change, you are too serious, men don't like that!"

What the heck! Suddenly, every woman who have a ring in her hand, becomes a relationships expert! The ugliest one from school who married her own cousin, the self-centered one who was madly in love with her boyfriend for 10 years only to leave him for the first wealthy groom who knocked her door, the unconfident, self-pity, woman who drove me crazy because of her fear of never getting married and seized up the only chance she got, and the woman who is nearly my age who only got married 2 months ago and now behaves like she is the queen of the world. All experts now! heh!

But hey, I am Haya. Haya who knows exactly how to strike back; women can ever be good enough, right? I know where to hit. "Aren't you pregnant yet?" I hit the one with no children yet. "when are you plannin on getting the boy" for the one with a girl child. "only one boy? you need to get him a brother" for those bitches with a son! I always manage to find a way to hit on their nerves.

Honetly, like every other woman, I dream of my wedding day, I dream of finding the right man who would love and cherish me for the rest of my life. That is hard to find these days due to different cultural and personal reasons that sometimes make no sense to me.

Anyway, recently I came up with some realizations that would help me increase my chances of finding the right man, I will do the following:

1. Drop my fear package: Throughout the years, I built this shield of not trusting men. Men have proved to me to be assholes over and over again, and thus, I have always let this barrier of mistrust to eat out from any potential relationship in the horizon and eventually killing it. If I am going to love someone, then I am going to love him fully - with no fears

2. Hit the gym: No matter how much we try to trick ourselves in believing that men do really appreciate our minds, it is always our bodies who they appreciate first! I will take a loan and subscribe at VY. There are many wealthy bachelors out there for me to target.

3. Read the book "why men marry bitches": It has always amazed me how those women who treated their boyfriends like garbage managed to get them to the alter! Me, being the nice girl, never managed to keep a man for more than 3 months!

4. Social butterfly: The more poeple I meet, the better chance of me meeting the right guy. Whether it is a wedding ceremony, a birthday party, or a cultural event, I will make sure to always be there. That is offline.

For the online, I will make sure to use the power of social networking. I will keep on updating my facebook account with pictures that I take on various events, I will write more here on this blog - if the observer allows me -, and I will be more active on twitter.

5. Expand the pool of *acceptable* husbands: If there are few single men older than me now, then why not looking out for younger? People would talk, but so what? It is becoming a trend anyway.

What else? help me out

Your's,
Haya

Social Hypocrisy

It baffles me how many female friends/acquaintances have disappeared from my facebook friends' list. I don't take that personal as I know that it is always related to a new kind of relationship in that friend life - usually an official one like in engagement or marriage -.

Disabled facebook accounts, male friends' removal, or tightened privacy settings are not uncommon among Jordanian women when they engage in a serious relationship, actually it is becoming more of something that is expected! Why would a married woman keep male friends on her facebook list? We still can't think of people's relationships outside gender binaries, do we?

How many women are out there who have suspended their online social relations for the sake of their families? which is, in other words, to avoid problems that may arrise with their husbands. How many women are out there who do expect such behaviour from their men? and actually give them legitemacy by claiming that it is our culture. We can't break off it, can we?

How many men are out there who carry on such behaviour not because it does really threaten them, but because it is what they believe people expect from them, including their own wives? Would she lose respect of him if he didn't get mad over her facebook account? Maybe some would, and it may better to act the way they expect me to act, no?

Isn't it easier to just break off - even slightly - from social expectation? When will Jordanian women stop excusing men abusive behaviour under the name of our culture?

Jordan with no death sentence?

There seems to be some efforts towards abolishing death sentence in Jordan. A small news was published today in al ra'ee newspaper about a session held about the matter between human rights activites, some officials and law people. In addition to that, there has been a reportage on Al Arabieh news channel tonight about the state of prisons in Jordan and death sentence.

In the reportage they mentioned that among the 8000 prisoner in Jordan, there is only around 250 woman. They then focused on women prisoners and interviewed some who are sentenced to death along with a femal offical from the prison who highlighted that most women who are charged of murder, have murdered their own husbands. One of the prisoners said that she stabbed her husband out of rage because he used to torture her. I felt that this is somehow a way to draw people's compassion towards such cases, and as the news host said: this matter is left in the hands of the government and the parliament.

I am personally against death sentence, no matter how horrible of an act one have done. It is a violation of the rights of human to live. Let's hope that these efforts are going in the right direction.

Jordanian bloggers and Twitter

I have been using Twitter for sometime now and it is growing on me, especially that I barely have time to write full posts recently. I haven noticed some Jordanian bloggers with accounts on twitter but only few are partially active. Twitter has been a great tool for me to connect with many other arabian bloggers and social activites. They are also many Jordanians who even enjoy microblogging and are active on twitter without having a blog for their own.

Twitter is a great tool for us to share information and communicate with each other. I list the Jordanian bloggers whom I found their twitter accounts below:

@tarawnah @tololy, @RobaAssi @ramiar @mab3oos @jadmadi @humeid @razano @maliksoft @moeys @journalistoula @Qwaider @alidahmash @styloholic @7akifadi @lina18 @shagfeh @Farah654 @za3tar @sabbah

and I hope to see them more active, and to see some others joining in. In specific, I hope to see: Kinzi, Hareega, Devil's mind, Batir and Bam Bam

Please let me know if I have missed anyone, or point me to other Jordanian bloggers on Twitter to follow.

My 31, I mean 21 birthday

I really miss this space. I miss this blog and miss the Jordanian blogsphere. I feel guilty for not being able to post here as much as I used before. I feel guilty partially because I can see that there are poeple who still come and check it out eventhough I haven't posted anything in the past 2 weeks, I feel guilty because even before that, and for around 3 months, I have barely blogged once a week. At some point, I was enjoying seeing my blog stats growing, but then again I failed to keep the momentom. I have been so busy lately, not just with my full time job, but also with Licky Licky (I will update you in a minute) and with another blog that I have been contributing to for a while. The other blog is about social media. I find it very interesting and challenging at the same time. I love that I have to research, learn and practice areas that develops my skills in something that is becoming the core of how people communicate these days. Check it out here: http://blog.thoughtpick.com

Anyway, it was my birthday today. I have been telling people since the morning that it is my 21th birthday but I can't fool you here. It is my 31th lovely birthday. I had one of my best birthdays. I had my close friends and family for a gathering at my house. We spent a great time, and guess what I got as a gift? mmmm, well, I asked for it a year and a half ago, and today I got it as a my birthday present: A nintendo Wii :) :). Although I love the feeling of maturity and more confidence that come with age, I also love the child inside me that keeps on growing. I like to play, laugh and enjoy life. With such people around me, I know that I am blessed.

As for Licky Licious update, I have learnt the hard way that it is hard to start a business without having time to follow it up. It has been a tough time for me and my business partner (my best friend) for the past year. We both carry a full time job, and we both cherish our social life. We had barely only few time to run the shop. It only took few months for our enthusiams to drawn. Although we had a good start and did a good job in building the look and feel and the service of the shop, we ended up not being able to keep up a good quality service. As a result we looked out for someone else to take over and hopefully to run it in a better way. They are now re-decorating the shop and will open back on wednesday. They will be offering some new products inluding crepe and better coffe options. They have also changed the ice cream supplier. Check it out in your next visit to the Rainbow street and let me know what you think.

The more age I put, the more I learn to enjoy life better. My 30 has been better than my 29 and I know that my 31 will be even better. I just hope to be able to have more time for this blog because it does really make me happy.

I want to thank everyone who sent me birthday wishes today, whether on facebook, twitter, sms, phone, or in person. I love you all.

And thanks mother for taking care of everything. Alla ya3teeke el 3afieh.

I am a happy man

Sometimes, in special moments, when I am in euphoric state of mind, I feel that I am so happy and that happiness can be a constant state of mind that can be carried along one's entire life. Sometime, I wonder if being happy is a learning process where one, and with life experience, realizes what makes him happy and what eats from his happines, and as a result work on minimizing the effects of thing that makes him unhappy, and exposes himself more to things that make him happy.

Is it as simple as this? To know what to choose? Sometimes I believe that it is, but at other times, I let myself slip into the daily hectic activities of life, and end up losing focus and forgetting about the necessity of smart choices to keep up my level of happiness intact. I let stress in, I let my busy schedule tire me, and I let myself scatter my attention in different matters that are irrelevant.

I am the kind of person whose goal in life is to be happy and feel it spread among people around me. And yes, it is most imporant to me that many other things. Things that I keep on letting them messing up my priorities and focus.

Throughout my life, I have always managed to define myself as a happy man. I always knew that the question of: Are you have in your life? has a Yes answer to me. In the other hand, I have always wondered why some people around couldn't give the same answer. Is it a gift? a biological inherited advantage? or a wisdom that I have acquired since childhood? or maybe it is just a choice, or maybe a projection of internal fears force me to believe that I am happy?

Is happiness a wise choice? a learning process? a genetic inherited attribute? a destined faith? or a piece of all of it?

The shift towards being more religious, why?

I don't know how strong is the relationship between the numbers of veiled women and the indication of a shift in society towards being more religious. Looking at pictures of Jordanian women in the 60's and 70's of last century one would certainly acknowledge the shift in dressing towards more conservatism. Our mothers used to go to Jordan universities wearing mini skirts without any fear of sexual harassments that today even some veiled women fear in our streets.

So what triggered such change? It is not specific to Jordan but also one can see it in the whole area of Arabian countries in the middle east. Egypt can be a better example of the dramatic change that took place. It is very clear and reflected in their film industry.

I have been hearing two explanation so far:

1. Some people claim that the othmanians left us in complete ignorance especially in matters related to religion and that people didn't really know Islam. Now we are better educated about our religion and thus know better how to follow its rules.

How true is this? Were Jordanians less religious in the 70s because they knew less about their religion? or were they no less religious than today but with a less cultural focus on women and what they dress?

2. Other people claim that due to the cold war and the competition between capitalism and communism, the USA lead a policy of supporting religion in the region so that to guarantee that ME countries won't turn into the communist atheist party. They clearly supported Islamists in different Arab and Islamic countries. They put a lot of their weight and power in supporting the mijaheddeen (fighters) in Afghanistan against the USSR. In jordan, the government even put our school curriculum in the hands of the Islamic party.

There is a third reasoning that I heard in Egypt where people rationalize the shift towards being more religious to the amount of Egyptians going to Saudi Arabia for work and coming back to their country with the wahhabi mentality. Some also claim that Saudi Arabia Wahhabi's, being very rich, are using their money to preach their own way of thinking. This is also clear in Jordan, I am not sure whether it is wahhabi's or not, but religious in-house classes have been popluar for some years now. I have seen some young men taking the leap of faith and turning into more strict reglious people in little time.

I am not a religious person myself, and while there are aspects that came with the current religious wave that scare me, I can say nothing about people's choice of faith. It is just sad when you realize that such major trend that affected an entire nation has been built by foreign hands for their own interest in the region! Real education may be our way out, not out of being religious, but out of following up blindly what others preach as being a true religion. There must be a way to guarantee our individual freedoms with the blessing of our belief system. Islam has been so progressive when it came to us, it can do it again.

I wish I can reach out my hand to Laila, Mariam and Aziza!

** spoilers a thousand splendid suns

khaled al Hosseini has just managed to make me cry again. I had to stop now at the moment where Laila was letting go of her daughter Aziza because of the famine. I feel so much anger and rage inside of me. Anger for the injustice those women had to endure because of the stupidity of men. They are no fictional characters, I can see their suffering reflected on many women in the history of humanity in a way or another.

I wish I was there to hug both Laila and Aziza, to hug also Mariam, and maybe Nana (Laila's mother). 3 generation of women suffering at the hand of man for different reasons. One being a maid who got pregnant by her master and then having to pay for it for the rest of her life by raising up a so called bastard. And then the so called young bastard girl who had to pay for her parents mistake the whole of her life, being forced to marry a much older man at the age of 14 in order to get rid of her!

And then comes Laila, the beautiful young girl whose life turned upside down when her parents got killed in a missile that hit their own house, she woke up in a house of a stranger, the same man who is married to Mariam. With no way out because of the war, and with a child in her womb herself (the child she gives away later on!) from the man who she adored and whom also died because of the war, she agrees to be the second wife and pass on her daughter as his.

How many women are their in this world who has been forced to protect their children this way? What kind of justice is this where the only way to protect your child is by passing him on as another's man child? What kind of justice is there in this world when a woman gives away her own daughter because she can't feed it? and what kind of justice is there when you are called a bastard for something you have nothing to do with?!!

When would men stop abusing women?!! Really?!!