early morning reflections

It's 6:45 am and I am sitting in the kitchen sipping a cup of tea with honey and lemon. I'm much better, thank God, but still recovering and at the same time trying hard not to catch a cold. Didn't want to disturb Ali so thought I would sit downstairs for a while. You know, just now I was thinking that this has been the first time any of us was really sick since we got married, and God he was great. Without going into details of how he took care of me, it's enough to say that he really showed me a new meaning of love.. It's simply awesome.

Mai

shingles shingles little star, how i wonder what you are

Well, it's a lot of pain, followed by a lot of pain, complemented by a lot of p a i n. I'm just grateful that I had the time to prepare and enjoy Ali's birthday on Friday because right the next day the pain was starting to be too much to take and we had to go to a walk-in clinic. Since then I've been in bed, suffering from the painful electrifying shivers of pain from the blisters on my arm and the back of my neck and the sleepless uncomfortable nights. Just today I am starting to feel a little better, although I'm still incapable of lifting a finger.. the medicine is really exhausting me. I really hope it ends soon and with no marks.

In the mean time, my time-out of the world of real work has been depressingly filled with news watching. First, I was appalled with the rest of the world with the "shit" Bush comment, then I was reassured of the biased coverage of the CNN when they insisted on calling the British Foreign Office Minister "Junior" because he said something they didn't like, and finally my faith in a little bit of honesty was restored watching Jeremy Bowen on the BBC saying that it's not logical for Israel to say that it's war is with Hizbullah only because it's destroying the whole of Lebanon.

Ah... I was wondering today if it's ever going to be possible to watch the news one day without hearing that someone died somewhere..

Mai

it's all about him today.. :)

Yes, because today is a glorious day in history.. the day when Ali was born :) And of course as this is Ali's first birthday since marriage, it had to be special. I think today I proved that I could do a few surprises of my own. Let me explain a bit:

Surprise (1):
You should have seen Ali's face when he opened the door and walked in back from work to see the stairs opposite him lined with flowers and papers on each step telling our story of when we first met, our first emails, our first text messages, our engagement, our wedding, our honeymoon.. all with dates and pictures. It really looked nice.

Surprise (2):
On our coffee table I assembled all our honeymoon photos which I finally got to print, plus other photos from our trips to Margate and Devon.. he didn't expect that.

Surprise (3):
Well.. we had to have a special dinner. So today I cooked for him stuffed chicken breasts served with rice and green peas, very tasty, and for dessert.. nothing but his favourite: creme caramel.

Surprise (4):
This is a major multilayered surprise which involves his gift. without going into much details, let me just say he worked a bit of a sweat to find it. It was like a game with written rhymed clues hidden all over the house, it involved 3 presents and a card and it's all on video. This was just awesome, he really enjoyed it and he loved the presents.

So.. I spent weeks planning and thinking, and days buying and implementing, but it was all worth the happiness I saw in his eyes and his sweet words.. "I can't remember a birthday better than this in my whole life"..

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY HUBBY.. :)

Mai

and a little linguistic note from Torquay

"I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant."

Written on a card, in a shop
Torquay, Devon

I tried to convince Ali that it's interesting from the linguistic point of view, but I think he found it a little boring :) What can I do?, I just like the embedding :)

Mai

celebrate a l'orange

Yesterday was our 2 months anniversary.. and this is how our celebration began:


and this is how it ended:


am I a great cook or what? quack.. quack.. :)

Mai

28, 28.. surprise, surprise

My first birthday as Mrs. Ali Hafiz.. God it was a very nice birthday. The best part is the surprise element and the suspense involved. Let me explain:

Surprise (1): Thursday 6/7
Ali tells me before going to work don't cook today, we're eating out. We had dinner at a very nice Italian seafood restaurant in North Finchley.

Surprise (2): Friday 7/7
Ali tells me the night before make a small suitcase for both of us and come and meet me at Moorgate station at 6. He doesn't tell me where we are going. It turns out that we are going to Devon by train and spent the whole weekend there. We had a great time, enjoyed walking by the beach, eating stuff from the French market, we even had a bit of a tan before it turned windy on Sunday noon. We came back Sunday evening and watched the penalties of the world cup final at King's Cross station.

Surprise (3): Sunday 9/7
Ali tells me on our way back in the train that the minute I walk in the house I will find my birthday present. I didn't have a cluse what it is and kept asking him questions but he wouldn't tell me. It turned out to be a cute swing in the garden. He had a friend go collect it and set it up while we were away.

Surprise (4): Monday 10/7
Ali tells me in the morning we are eating out this day too. The whole time he convinced me that we are celebrating my birthday this year alone without telling anyone because it's my first birthday after marriage.. he had me fooled for a good while :) Then when we stepped in the restaurant it turned out that he invited a group of friends and they had cake for me and everything. When we came back home he even had a surprise birthday card for me.

Well.. what more can I say? I really enjoyed it.. HAPPY 28TH BIRTHDAY TO ME :)

Mai

rediscovering me

Well, after a lot of concerned messages and comments worrying over my long disappearance from the blogosphere, I am back. It's not that I spend too much time cooking, it's not that I am crushed by England's defeat in the world cup, it's not that I gave up on blogging.. it's simply that I was rediscovering myself. June was one of the most important months of my life. I was experiencing the full fledge of the new me: the married/student/socially active woman that I am now and will be for a long time, and all I can say is: wow.. it's exciting, demanding, surprising and tiring :) Let's take each one at a time.

• Being married: well, there a lot of 'nice' things about being married ;-), but there are a lot of demands too. But fear not, I'm doing great in the cooking department (so far) but the housework has been too much since we had a lot of things to organise in our first month in the house.
• Being a student: well, I have to admit, this suffered a lot during the preparations before marriage then there was a long holiday. My biggest challenege now is time management, i.e. to organise my time so I can spend a fixed number of hours studying each day while doing all the little and big things in everyday life too.
• Being socially active: well, this is also important and I know I will be able to enjoy my weekends better if I study well and not feel guilty every time I go out.

So, June is over and I think I pretty much did well. For one thing, we really sorted out a lot of things around the house. Of course I still have to learn to take care of our garden since I have no clue and I still have unpacking to do, but we're getting there. For another, I was lucky to have this conference presentation on the 30th so I had to prepare for it. It went very well, except for the fact that by the end of the day I was falling asleep. But my poster was great and looked interesting, I met some Syrian students at Essex University who passed me the important piece of information that PhD really means "permanent head damage" :), and I attended a lecture by Andrew Radford, dubbed "the most read living linguist" compared to Chomsky who apprently is "the most cited living linguist" :) linguists and their superlatives, hehe..

So now it's July.. and we all know what this means: celebrations celebrations celebrations.. my mum's birthday was 2 days ago, my birthday is coming up soon, Ali's birthday follows, then my bro's birthday is the last. Exciting, isn't it? We got engaged on the 11th of Jan, we got married on the 11th of May and it's exactly 11 days between our birthdays :) it's fate I tell ya.. Of course our birthdays this year are extra special and so will be the celebrations.

Well.. I just want to say that Mai the blogger is back.. she has been very busy lately but she is all so enthusiastic as ever.. :) ok, I better go study some more before I have to think what are we having for dinner tonight to get it ready before the match.. France and Portugal.. wow, I love Zido but I also love Figo so I don't know what to do.. :)

Mai