STORIES, STORIES

Diversify yoself before you wreck yoself. My weekend read was Bloomberg 's cover story on Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince and alpha millennial Mohammad Bin Salman. It made me feel like Saudi was a lifetime ago. ~END~ This post is part of a series of photos and stories very creatively called 100 Days of Malaysia .

Making (Radio?) Waves by Nessreen It’s Sunday, the sun is shining painfully bright through my window and falls right on my bed, where I have thrown my laundry. I’m sorting through my clothes thousands of miles away from Jeddah, here in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, and I’m laughing into a freshly laundered shirt.  Listening to The Low Priority Que (The LPQ).  “And where the hell was Ghost this whole time?” Hakeem says, outraged, in the middle of a discussion about -SPOILER- Jon Snow’s demise on Game of Thrones. “Sam gets in a minor scuffle and mashallah Ghost is there to save him, but while his master was getting shanked by his own people, where was this Ghost direwolf?”  “He was probably up there on the wall, heard Jon Snow was in trouble, looked around and thought, Uff meshwar ,” says Tamim .  Well, never mind that I bungled the transcription of that sound clip (you can listen to it yourself and point out where I made mistakes right here ), and never min...

RANTINGS OF AN ARAB MALE by Hakeem Jomah Unpopular opinion time!  I believe that man is a product of his environment.  I ALSO believe that, given certain catalyzing factors, man can regress or progress despite his environment.  The Arab male is molded to believe from day one that he truly is a king in his own right; with that comes the mandatory responsibility to provide for and nurture a family financially and emotionally, and play a part on the disciplinarian front.  And right off the bat, that's gargantuan pressure. They're ALSO bred and molded to believe in a mandatory self-entitled pride and unearned respect from his family, and it's up to the Arab male to figure out on his own how he goes about doing that. But he's so used to being spoonfed everything that he skips the "how to earn it" part, and jumps right into the "expecting to be respected" part. I'm an Arab male, I've lived this. A lot of people have th...

I have been roped into a beautiful opportunity to share my voice with the world. Not my real sound-making voice – more like my thoughts through (hopefully) size 12 Time New Roman font. ( It's Arial. - Ed ) But my words are meaningless without context of who I am and what I do. So allow me to begin with a brief explanation.  I may belong to one of the few genders the human race has to offer, but my heart strings strum with the natural beauty that surrounds me. Food has, and always will be a comforting companion of mine. I am a jack-of-all-trades and an expert of none, but I am quite learn-ed in the ways of business, visual arts, how to operate useless gizmos and delivering awkward jokes. Like the one about women's rights in Saudi Arabia, that one's a knee-slapper! I identify with the Arab community as well as with Virginian "culture". Although truth be told, I am generally considered a weirdo here and there and everywhere else in between and beyond.  ...