STORIES, STORIES

After getting approached three times (in person) about my apparently 'increasingly worrying' blog posts and tweets, I did a "No Complaints Week" on Twitter where, yes, I refrained from complaining or being all mopey and blue. The experiment went well. I didn't complain, at least not outright complaints. " Thank god for stupidface idiots. They make me look smarter. " " I'm glad you're not here. It proves how right I was / (still) am. " " Thank god I had a severe migraine attack last night instead of lower back pain. " " See that girl on the left? That's me, grinning. Winning. " It went well because it made me realize that I need a vacation from all of this. Possibly a permanent one. All of this blogging and oversharing and tweeting, and expecting feedback and then not appreciating feedback for what it's worth, and then overthinking everything, and then worrying about who reads me especially when people I know ...

You know you're old(er) when A) you find yourself with a group of good friends during the holidays, creating traditions of your own, separate from your own family, and B) when the monetary value of presents cease to be the most important factor of your happiness during the holidays. I'm thankful for all the presents I got today. They were fun, funny, thoughtful presents that I appreciate. Most of all, I am thankful for the time my friends put aside from their busy schedules just to share lulz. I am old. I appreciate time. I miss my siblings, and my old friends, but I'm sure they have their own traditions. To them, I wish all the best. To everyone else, fra la la la la la la la la. Happy holidays!

I love Thursdays. They are specially designed so that they are either (or both) the calm before the storm, or after it. It's like you can't help but feel a surge of hope, for the good things that you don't know are yet to come. They are good things because you don't know if they are coming. It being the last Thursday of the year only magnifies this. It's like the ultimate sandwich day. Like a door-stop. Like a little pause. The week before this Thursday is now no longer a mere week, it's a whole year. This is the pause where you reflect the previous week and contemplate the following week, which is now also no longer a week, but a whole new year. The past week has been incredibly messy. Things scrambling to get done, people trying to make amends but instead making matters worse. It's like we have been trying so hard to forgive, and to give, to be generous, to be good to the people we care about, to become better people, to start anew, in the spirit of the...

Why should I bother?

I loved this Victoria's Secret 2010 show. It's fun, the outfits were beautiful, the models gorgeous, very creative, confident, so vibrant and just fun. (Saw it on Heba's blog. ) What man watching didn't think "I'd love to be with a woman like that"? More importantly, what woman watching didn't think "I'd love to be THAT woman"? Yes, my friends, I know, we have discussed this extensively. That whole image of the perfect woman (at least appearance-wise), and its effect on society, human behavior, and ultimately, health, so on and so forth. And no, I'm not shitting on my skinny, gorgeous friends (who also happen to be models) just because I'm not them. This is about realizing certain things. Some men who end up with plus-size women are just "settling" because that's "all they could get". Especially if they believe that women are only attractive if they look like a certain way (which is like a skinny model, or ...

I thrive on compliments. Like being told such things as "You are devastatingly smart." Sadly, it is my nature to debunk such compliments with my very own actions. Now, everyone knows Teayana. If you live in Jeddah, you have been to one of their branches. Probably to enjoy their tea, and their comfortable seats, and the nice atmosphere, their polite waiters, so on and so forth. My question is, have you ever gone to Teayana and stayed there for a total of about 8 hours, 7 of which you spent playing the Battlestar Galactica board game nonstop? I didn't think so. We're breaking conventions here, people. In many levels. (If you're a BSG fan, contact me with haste!) Anyway, so my friends and I decide to nerd out this weekend and dedicate our hard-earned weekend to reliving the show through a board game. In public. We racked up about 260 riyals worth of drinks and manageesh , and because I was the only one who didn't have change, I paid for it with my 500-riyal bill....