Ramadan Karim, Happy Ramadan

I should've posted this on Saturday, anyway.. here it is:


Mai

just thoughts

Thought (1)
I am increasingly emotional these days because of Ramadan coming up, I am excited about my first Ramadan with my husband, I am sad because I really wanted to be with my family even for a few days during this month. Discovering a way of listening to Radio Cairo online a couple of days ago made it worse. It brought back very happy memories of our iftar traditions and made me even more homesick.

Thought (2)
Sitting facing the patio door, sipping my coffee on this rainy and gloomy day, I just saw a squirrel in my garden and it made me think about my life here and how fast it changed.

Thought (3)
The musical background now is a very short piece of typical eastern, kind of religious, music accompanying a Happy Ramadan greeting ecard I received from one of my friends in Egypt which just keeps playing on and on. It reminded me again of how much I miss my friends and the whole Ramadan atmosphere.

Well.. they are just thoughts.

Mai

why was i born?

It's a nice day, it's sunny, I'm sitting on the swing in my small garden, having a cold glass of pomegranate juice, and listening to Billie Holiday singing:

Why was I born?
Why am I livin'?
What do I get?
What am I givin'
Why do I want for things
I dare not hope for?
What can I hope for?
I wish I knew.

I'm meditating.. I'm thinking about life, love, the future, the past, Ali, family, friends.. I close my eyes.. I enjoy the feeling of the nice cold breeze flirting with my hair.. I'm getting poetic.. I'm meditating..

I open my eyes.. I hear the buzzing of a big bee coming towards me.. I'm scared.. I run inside the kitchen, I see that the washing is done and I have to air the laundry, I pass by the pile of books on the dining table and remeber the loads of reading I have to do today. I hear Billie now saying:

Can't you see
What love and romance have done to me
I'm not tthe same as I used to be
This is my last affair

I'm blogging.. :) God, I love it.

Mai

Sinatra and Gaddafi

So did you figure it out yet? Well ok, there are two things that Sinatra and Gaddafi have in common: both have performances in their names in London and me and Ali saw both. It was such an entertaining (and expensive) week.. on the 11th we went to see Sinatra and then on the 16th we went to see Gaddafi. Both shows were a very good choice. Actually, from the artistic point of view there was another thing that both shows have in common.. the combination of live performance and screen shots. This style is very new to me and I like it. In case of the Sinatra show of course that was essential since no one can actually immitate Blue Eyes so it had to be him singing on the screens. The production was very good, and I liked the way it explored his journey of life from "come fly with me" to "and now the end is near" against the background of the dramatically changing America.



The Gaddafi performance, on the other hand, was surprisingly impressive. The music was awesome, the script very well written, the choreography very good although I thought the dancers' implementation could be better. Of course the character itself had a lot to offer, with it's known eccentricities and streaks of madness.. And again major historic events provided a rich background for the story. The actor playing Gaddafi was very good, so was the one playing Regan.. those two had a lot going on between them :) Anyway, if you want to have an idea about how American diplomacy works, go watch Gaddafi. Of course there is a lot that has been claimed to be Gaddafi's own doing but still the truth is no one really knows for sure. Well.. when it comes to politics, can anyone be sure of anything?

Mai

it had to be you..

Why do I do just as you say? Why must I just give you your way?
Why do I sigh? Why don't I try to fortget?
It must have been that something lovers call fate
Kept me saying "I had to wait"
I saw them all, just couldn't fall till we met
It had to be you, it had to be you
I wondered around, and I finally found
The somebody who, could make me be true and could make me be blue
And even be glad, just to be sad, thinking of you..

Yeah, it's our 4 months anniversary today. And since we will be busy tonight I thought to blog about it now instead. Since early morning I've been listening to Sinatra.. hmmm.. I wonder why is that? Could it be because we are celebrating our anniversary tonight by going to the Sinatra show at the London Palladium? Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.. yes it is :) I'm so excited about this.. I'm so excited about today, I'm so excited about this week, actually I'm so excited since yesterday when we finally had a mixer in our bathroom basin instead of the weird English tradition of two separate taps.

Oh oh.. and I'm also excited about next Saturday.. why? well, I'll just leave you with a clue and you try to figure it out: what do Frank Sinatra and the Lybian president Gaddafi have in common? :)

Happy Anniversary my hubby..

Mai

news flash

We went to Notting Hill carnival, first time for me, I expected more, we danced for a while behind one of the floats, Caribbean memories all over the place :)

We were involved in a game of murder mystery with a group of friends, very interesting, no one guessed who the murderer was correctly, I played the role of Chow Pat, a Chinese young daughter of HE Hung Dung (Ali) but actually a secret martial arts expert on a mission :) p.s. at least I had a silk kimono and chop sticks in my hair :)

Finally, time is still tissue.. :)

Mai