Pretty women
Giggly women
Chubby skinny curvy women
Cooking women
Working women
Sweaty saucy sassy women
Simple women
Bitchy women
Spongy lumpy squishy women
Pregnant women
Barren women
Grumpy sobbing hungry women
Loving women
Tender women
Hugging kissing laughing women
Achy women
Tired women
Women taking care of women
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Leonardo Stiles?
I always thought Leonardo Dicaprio and Julia Stiles looked like brother and sister.
My Thoughts Exactly
One of the reasons I love the act of communication - words, music, dance, art, whatever - is the magic feeling of seeing yourself in the etched thoughts of what could possibly be a person you'll never know. It's much of an OMG moment that leaves you with the sense that you're quite possibly not so mad after all if someone somewhere at some point felt the same way about something intangible as you do now. Sometimes you haven't quite yet found the words to express yourself, so when you casually trip on someone else speaking your words for you, it's like someone threw you an oxygen mask and you can finally catch a breath and move on.
That's exactly what I felt like when I came across the following quote from economist Robert Winters in Sylvia Nassar's biography of John 'A Beautiful Mind' Nash:
"When I look at the human race all over the world I think there's zero reason for humanity to survive. We're destructive, uncaring, thoughtless, greedy, power hungry. But when I look at a few individuals, there seems every reason for humanity to survive."
I'm not sure why but for most of my life, until a couple of years ago in fact, I happily glided through my days believing in the good in people. It wasn't a flighty opinion; I believed in it with all the viscous passion found in the fiery depths of my soul. Even in the face of excruciating disappointments when individuals would violently assault my faith in them or when the global community in general would fail to act for the better interest of itself and especially for its weaker members. Who doesn't need a second chance, right? I believed that things would work out in the long run if I had the patience and the empathy and the understanding.
But as the world kept spinning on an axis different from mine and I began to see that people were just drifting through life without even realising the consequences of their actions, I started to feel as if I had lost all understanding of not only the world in general but of my painfully constructed personal world around me. I remember the day catastrophic realisation hit me. I'm not one for cliches, but it sounded exactly like the little voice inside my solar plexis suddenly screaming "noooooo...". Only I could hear it. Everything on the inside was falling apart but you probably couldn't tell from my face. Well, maybe if you looked close enough you could. I fell into an internal crisis that lasted months. It was a complete calamity. I just could not believe the reality of things, I could not believe that this was how it really was. I suddenly seemed to understand what Trelane meant when he excitedly said to Captain Kirk, "Do you know that you're one of the few predator species that preys even on itself?" I suddenly didn't know what was up or down anymore. I felt like I didn't know what language everyone else was speaking. I didn't know who I was or who anybody else was anymore. My motivation tanked until the mere act of waking up to a new day filled me with dread. I just could not believe that the people around me cared so little about things other than themselves. I was filled with dread. What ugly creatures of hell were we?? We were doomed as a race. There was no hope. Humanity would collapse upon itself and I'd have to sit and watch it go up in flames, like Cassandra tearfully watching Troy being razed to the ground.
I don't remember when I saw my first flicker of hope. Maybe it was someone who let me go first in a store line. Or someone who said something nice to me for no reason at all. Whomever it was, it saved me. Underneath the vile cloud of the ugly war that is our daily life on this planet, I began to see the volunteers of peace who went about rescuing the wounded and didn't even know they were doing it. I still have these flickers of hope when I see isolated acts of goodness, of people trying to do the right thing. I see someone stop to help a poor person when others are walking by, a young person giving up on personal interests to take care of a sick parent, a single individual saying no in the interest of what is right.
I'm not sure where humanity will eventually end up. I don't believe that 85% of human beings care beyond their base needs. I believe that the human race is pretty damn terrible, worse than anything anyone's ever seen. But I do know that it is because of these few random people quietly trying to do the right thing, even at the expense of their own interests, that humanity has trudged on since the beginning of time without completely wiping itself out. Ergo, the power of good is much stronger than the power of evil. And that is why I believe again.
That's exactly what I felt like when I came across the following quote from economist Robert Winters in Sylvia Nassar's biography of John 'A Beautiful Mind' Nash:
"When I look at the human race all over the world I think there's zero reason for humanity to survive. We're destructive, uncaring, thoughtless, greedy, power hungry. But when I look at a few individuals, there seems every reason for humanity to survive."
I'm not sure why but for most of my life, until a couple of years ago in fact, I happily glided through my days believing in the good in people. It wasn't a flighty opinion; I believed in it with all the viscous passion found in the fiery depths of my soul. Even in the face of excruciating disappointments when individuals would violently assault my faith in them or when the global community in general would fail to act for the better interest of itself and especially for its weaker members. Who doesn't need a second chance, right? I believed that things would work out in the long run if I had the patience and the empathy and the understanding.
But as the world kept spinning on an axis different from mine and I began to see that people were just drifting through life without even realising the consequences of their actions, I started to feel as if I had lost all understanding of not only the world in general but of my painfully constructed personal world around me. I remember the day catastrophic realisation hit me. I'm not one for cliches, but it sounded exactly like the little voice inside my solar plexis suddenly screaming "noooooo...". Only I could hear it. Everything on the inside was falling apart but you probably couldn't tell from my face. Well, maybe if you looked close enough you could. I fell into an internal crisis that lasted months. It was a complete calamity. I just could not believe the reality of things, I could not believe that this was how it really was. I suddenly seemed to understand what Trelane meant when he excitedly said to Captain Kirk, "Do you know that you're one of the few predator species that preys even on itself?" I suddenly didn't know what was up or down anymore. I felt like I didn't know what language everyone else was speaking. I didn't know who I was or who anybody else was anymore. My motivation tanked until the mere act of waking up to a new day filled me with dread. I just could not believe that the people around me cared so little about things other than themselves. I was filled with dread. What ugly creatures of hell were we?? We were doomed as a race. There was no hope. Humanity would collapse upon itself and I'd have to sit and watch it go up in flames, like Cassandra tearfully watching Troy being razed to the ground.
I don't remember when I saw my first flicker of hope. Maybe it was someone who let me go first in a store line. Or someone who said something nice to me for no reason at all. Whomever it was, it saved me. Underneath the vile cloud of the ugly war that is our daily life on this planet, I began to see the volunteers of peace who went about rescuing the wounded and didn't even know they were doing it. I still have these flickers of hope when I see isolated acts of goodness, of people trying to do the right thing. I see someone stop to help a poor person when others are walking by, a young person giving up on personal interests to take care of a sick parent, a single individual saying no in the interest of what is right.
I'm not sure where humanity will eventually end up. I don't believe that 85% of human beings care beyond their base needs. I believe that the human race is pretty damn terrible, worse than anything anyone's ever seen. But I do know that it is because of these few random people quietly trying to do the right thing, even at the expense of their own interests, that humanity has trudged on since the beginning of time without completely wiping itself out. Ergo, the power of good is much stronger than the power of evil. And that is why I believe again.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Revathy Johansson?
I was watching a trailer for an old Salman Khan-Revathy starrer and I suddenly jumped when I realised the Tamil star looked a lot like our buxom starlet Scarlet.
Captain Bluto Ullah?
One month of not shaving because of a hospital visit, and you'd swear my brother was related to these guys.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
All Wrong
When you hurt but everyone tells you you don't
When you fear and everyone says you don't
When you aspire but everyone tells you it's wrong
When you cry and they say you're immature
And they beat you down and mold you
Into unnatural stretches and shapes
So you think there really must be something wrong with you
You know, 'cause everyone says there is
So you feel terrible about your imperfections
The ones they insist you have
And mourn that you have not a single saving grace
And worry that there is not a single thing right about you
You can't seem to even breathe the right way
I mean you take a breath and someone says you did it wrong
So you try
Breathe right
According to formula
You pace it right
The way others say you should
You hold it then let it out
Inhale 1, 2, 3
Exhale and smile and say 'why thank you'
'No I don't feel like I'm dying at all how about you'
'Oh wait a sec let me catch my breath, there we go'
Inhale 1, 2, 3
Exhale and you're on your way
But you feel off and fall back to your old rhythm
And you curse yourself for not being like others
And you try again
Inhale and exhale
1, 2, 3, come on let's do this
You feel breathless but you say 'oh no I'm fine'
'Look at me I look and sound just right'
But you lose it again and you mourn
You can't even breathe right
Why can't you
Everyone else does
What's wrong with you
Why can't I be like them
Everything's wrong with me
What's wrong with me
Why can't I be like them
Why was I born like this
I'm stupid, I must be
I feel all the wrong things
I want the impossible things
I think some other way
I breathe the wrong way
Inhale, 1, 2, oh no
What comes after 2
I'm so stupid
What's wrong with me
I am such a terrible person
I don't mean to, I'm sorry
I was born this way
They say so anyway
When you fear and everyone says you don't
When you aspire but everyone tells you it's wrong
When you cry and they say you're immature
And they beat you down and mold you
Into unnatural stretches and shapes
So you think there really must be something wrong with you
You know, 'cause everyone says there is
So you feel terrible about your imperfections
The ones they insist you have
And mourn that you have not a single saving grace
And worry that there is not a single thing right about you
You can't seem to even breathe the right way
I mean you take a breath and someone says you did it wrong
So you try
Breathe right
According to formula
You pace it right
The way others say you should
You hold it then let it out
Inhale 1, 2, 3
Exhale and smile and say 'why thank you'
'No I don't feel like I'm dying at all how about you'
'Oh wait a sec let me catch my breath, there we go'
Inhale 1, 2, 3
Exhale and you're on your way
But you feel off and fall back to your old rhythm
And you curse yourself for not being like others
And you try again
Inhale and exhale
1, 2, 3, come on let's do this
You feel breathless but you say 'oh no I'm fine'
'Look at me I look and sound just right'
But you lose it again and you mourn
You can't even breathe right
Why can't you
Everyone else does
What's wrong with you
Why can't I be like them
Everything's wrong with me
What's wrong with me
Why can't I be like them
Why was I born like this
I'm stupid, I must be
I feel all the wrong things
I want the impossible things
I think some other way
I breathe the wrong way
Inhale, 1, 2, oh no
What comes after 2
I'm so stupid
What's wrong with me
I am such a terrible person
I don't mean to, I'm sorry
I was born this way
They say so anyway
Monday, January 26, 2009
The Americanisation of Khadija Ejaz
I led a very stable and sheltered life until high school in Oman and India. In contrast, my life in the US from age 18 to 27 was spent trying to figure out why, despite having being a social whiz all my life, I suddenly could not function beyond the level of a bumbling paranoid social train wreck.
Looking back, I am alarmed at how huge the implications of such a move at such an age all by oneself are and how no one really prepared me for it. And how could they? Most people still don't realise or appreciate how traumatic such an experience can be. In fact, they blame you for it. At an age when children derive their sense of worth from the acceptance of their peers, landing in the middle of what may as well be another solar system can jar the most solid of folks. Add to that constantly feeling inadequate in your new environment and being ridiculed for displaying signs of adapting to your new environment by those in your old environment like it's something you're doing on purpose to hurt people, and you've got a person in the early stages of a meltdown.
I don't really know at what point the process of Americanisation began in my life in America. I'd always been exposed to American culture through movies, music, food, and clothing. Maybe Americanisation is the wrong word. I felt like I was falling behind and I desperately tried to catch up by speaking the same language. I think what began to happen is that I began to show selective parts of my cultural personality, using the parts that the people in my American environment wouldn't respond to less and less until they rusted.
Isolated in a remote part of America, I struggled with my identity from my physical appearance to the basics of my existence as I lived between hemispheres. It was a horrific experience. As a student I spent 2/3rds of the year in the isolated American Bible Belt and the rest of the time I was back in Oman. I disliked the travel aspect of it because it came with weeks of personality adjustment everytime. I, in fact, felt guilty beyond belief that I couldn't hold onto one immutable personality. I wish someone had told me that I was a kid who was still growing into myself and wasn't expected to have as rock-solid a personal identity as, say, a weathered 50-year-old man. Once I started working, I could only make it back to Oman three weeks at the most every year. By the time I was over the jetlag and had started to rebond with my Eastern life, it was time to pull away again and readjust to America. I think after about 10 years of living between different planets like this and not having a proper social support system in either place exhausted me in all the dimensions psychologists (or is it sociologists?) talk about.
Funny thing is, until the last minute I was in the US before flying out for good, I felt like a misfit. After a decade, I felt like I had become more stubbornly Eastern. It's been two months since I've left the US, and I still feel like a misfit but in a horribly opposite way: I now sound like an American to everybody. I mean, I can't even control these things. In America I felt like the most unAmerican person. My unAmericanisms stood out like crazy: my British spellings and pronounciations; my fragmented knowledge of American social cues, history, pop culture, political issues; my sporadic lapses into nonAmerican accents, etc. Now that I'm out of America, it's the opposite. I open my mouth and I and everyone else hear an American speaking. It is really quite tiresome. In America I was the exotic foreign person. Now I seem to be unable to not be American, and I'm not doing anything different. I'm just being me, and apparently, even that's a relative thing. Nowadays I'm afraid to say anything lest my Americanisms start shouting at every random passerby. I think I have linguistic Turret's or something.
Some of my recent Americanisms in non-US territories have been as follows:
1. My accent sounds more American than KFC.
2. I know the name of every celebrity, even the ridiculous ones, featured on Perez Hilton
3. I instinctively extend my hand for a shake in social situations even though it's taboo in the East for men and women to shake hands.
4. I have a firm handshake
5. I make direct eye contact while talking to people
6. I use email more than the phone to connect with people
7. I cannot stop using 'Dayyum'/'Dayyung' to express surprise. Also in frequent use are the phrases 'ohhhmagawd', 'like fuh reals', 'wuuuuuut', etc.
8. I feel frustrated when my social options are limited because I'm a female.
9. I die when I want to run errands but can't because I don't have a car and have to ask my dad to help me do things.
10. I am regularly scolded by my family that my English at home sounds disrespectful and that I must cease and desist usage of the words 'stop', 'no', 'what', 'why', 'don't care', etc.
11. I miss popcorn with butter at the AMC
12. I frequently feel the call of the lonely highway
13. I derive all my information from the InterBible
14. I feel odd having people fill my car up with petrol for me
15. I seem to have become extremely direct and outspoken
16. I'm an expert at ordering fast food (Subway sandwiches and pizza delivery guys, I'm talking to you)
17. I live according to my planner
18. I seem to talk to superiors as if they went to college with me
19. My dad's accent now sounds really British compared to my apple-pie drawl.
20. Well-versed wordly people turn to me about certain American phrases like 'good to go', 'ballpark', etc.
21. An American professor in Oman marvelled at my accent and told his colleagues that I speak perfect American, from my pitch to my speed to my tone to my humour to my facial expressions.
Topping it all:
22. I cannot say my name straight, especially while talking to a customer service person or something. *screech!!!!* I am now Kuh-dee-jaa.
OMG, am I an ABCD??
Looking back, I am alarmed at how huge the implications of such a move at such an age all by oneself are and how no one really prepared me for it. And how could they? Most people still don't realise or appreciate how traumatic such an experience can be. In fact, they blame you for it. At an age when children derive their sense of worth from the acceptance of their peers, landing in the middle of what may as well be another solar system can jar the most solid of folks. Add to that constantly feeling inadequate in your new environment and being ridiculed for displaying signs of adapting to your new environment by those in your old environment like it's something you're doing on purpose to hurt people, and you've got a person in the early stages of a meltdown.
I don't really know at what point the process of Americanisation began in my life in America. I'd always been exposed to American culture through movies, music, food, and clothing. Maybe Americanisation is the wrong word. I felt like I was falling behind and I desperately tried to catch up by speaking the same language. I think what began to happen is that I began to show selective parts of my cultural personality, using the parts that the people in my American environment wouldn't respond to less and less until they rusted.
Isolated in a remote part of America, I struggled with my identity from my physical appearance to the basics of my existence as I lived between hemispheres. It was a horrific experience. As a student I spent 2/3rds of the year in the isolated American Bible Belt and the rest of the time I was back in Oman. I disliked the travel aspect of it because it came with weeks of personality adjustment everytime. I, in fact, felt guilty beyond belief that I couldn't hold onto one immutable personality. I wish someone had told me that I was a kid who was still growing into myself and wasn't expected to have as rock-solid a personal identity as, say, a weathered 50-year-old man. Once I started working, I could only make it back to Oman three weeks at the most every year. By the time I was over the jetlag and had started to rebond with my Eastern life, it was time to pull away again and readjust to America. I think after about 10 years of living between different planets like this and not having a proper social support system in either place exhausted me in all the dimensions psychologists (or is it sociologists?) talk about.
Funny thing is, until the last minute I was in the US before flying out for good, I felt like a misfit. After a decade, I felt like I had become more stubbornly Eastern. It's been two months since I've left the US, and I still feel like a misfit but in a horribly opposite way: I now sound like an American to everybody. I mean, I can't even control these things. In America I felt like the most unAmerican person. My unAmericanisms stood out like crazy: my British spellings and pronounciations; my fragmented knowledge of American social cues, history, pop culture, political issues; my sporadic lapses into nonAmerican accents, etc. Now that I'm out of America, it's the opposite. I open my mouth and I and everyone else hear an American speaking. It is really quite tiresome. In America I was the exotic foreign person. Now I seem to be unable to not be American, and I'm not doing anything different. I'm just being me, and apparently, even that's a relative thing. Nowadays I'm afraid to say anything lest my Americanisms start shouting at every random passerby. I think I have linguistic Turret's or something.
Some of my recent Americanisms in non-US territories have been as follows:
1. My accent sounds more American than KFC.
2. I know the name of every celebrity, even the ridiculous ones, featured on Perez Hilton
3. I instinctively extend my hand for a shake in social situations even though it's taboo in the East for men and women to shake hands.
4. I have a firm handshake
5. I make direct eye contact while talking to people
6. I use email more than the phone to connect with people
7. I cannot stop using 'Dayyum'/'Dayyung' to express surprise. Also in frequent use are the phrases 'ohhhmagawd', 'like fuh reals', 'wuuuuuut', etc.
8. I feel frustrated when my social options are limited because I'm a female.
9. I die when I want to run errands but can't because I don't have a car and have to ask my dad to help me do things.
10. I am regularly scolded by my family that my English at home sounds disrespectful and that I must cease and desist usage of the words 'stop', 'no', 'what', 'why', 'don't care', etc.
11. I miss popcorn with butter at the AMC
12. I frequently feel the call of the lonely highway
13. I derive all my information from the InterBible
14. I feel odd having people fill my car up with petrol for me
15. I seem to have become extremely direct and outspoken
16. I'm an expert at ordering fast food (Subway sandwiches and pizza delivery guys, I'm talking to you)
17. I live according to my planner
18. I seem to talk to superiors as if they went to college with me
19. My dad's accent now sounds really British compared to my apple-pie drawl.
20. Well-versed wordly people turn to me about certain American phrases like 'good to go', 'ballpark', etc.
21. An American professor in Oman marvelled at my accent and told his colleagues that I speak perfect American, from my pitch to my speed to my tone to my humour to my facial expressions.
Topping it all:
22. I cannot say my name straight, especially while talking to a customer service person or something. *screech!!!!* I am now Kuh-dee-jaa.
OMG, am I an ABCD??
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Poor girl
Little girl they've been lying to ya
Little woman they've been tellin you lies
That all things will work out great if your dresses match your eyes
When did you first sense betrayal
Did it hurt less later each time
When your matching bags and your matching shoes didn't make things fine
Little wallflower trained well to please
She tried harder each and everytime
Slashed words from her unique song when others couldn't hear it rhyme
Compromised in bits and pieces
But not sure why she's empty inside
Empty even though her agreeableness is famed far and wide
Asked someone whom she thought loved her
Felt she was dying as she smiled
But they said she was being difficult so she shut up for a while
Smiling like never before she lived
And grew numb some more inside
Never dared be branded difficult even though to herself she lied
A little girl grew old and bent
Twisted and bitter with lies
Imprisoned in a mold she can't believe they made her waste her life.
Little woman they've been tellin you lies
That all things will work out great if your dresses match your eyes
When did you first sense betrayal
Did it hurt less later each time
When your matching bags and your matching shoes didn't make things fine
Little wallflower trained well to please
She tried harder each and everytime
Slashed words from her unique song when others couldn't hear it rhyme
Compromised in bits and pieces
But not sure why she's empty inside
Empty even though her agreeableness is famed far and wide
Asked someone whom she thought loved her
Felt she was dying as she smiled
But they said she was being difficult so she shut up for a while
Smiling like never before she lived
And grew numb some more inside
Never dared be branded difficult even though to herself she lied
A little girl grew old and bent
Twisted and bitter with lies
Imprisoned in a mold she can't believe they made her waste her life.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Helplessness is contagious
How long can a spirit hold on
With its body broken
With its humanity stolen
How long before the spirit longs to depart
To escape to grace
To return to that place of dignity
Life in a body that's a cage
Where every day is a page of rage
Banging its head to be free of the humiliation
Every single day is degradation
But how long can this continue
Before the spirit wails for freedom
Back to the days of strength and beauty
Where is God's famous mercy
The spirit is tired, scratched, and bleeding
And bound in chains of thorns with no roses
It pushes and shoves
"SET ME FREE!" it roars
But no answer comes yet
"ANSWER ME!" it shrieks
With rage now sorrow
A whimper brings tomorrow.
With its body broken
With its humanity stolen
How long before the spirit longs to depart
To escape to grace
To return to that place of dignity
Life in a body that's a cage
Where every day is a page of rage
Banging its head to be free of the humiliation
Every single day is degradation
But how long can this continue
Before the spirit wails for freedom
Back to the days of strength and beauty
Where is God's famous mercy
The spirit is tired, scratched, and bleeding
And bound in chains of thorns with no roses
It pushes and shoves
"SET ME FREE!" it roars
But no answer comes yet
"ANSWER ME!" it shrieks
With rage now sorrow
A whimper brings tomorrow.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
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