Film: Kung Fu Hustle. (one hell of an original plot, don't think there was a single cliche in the story- except the obvious spoofs which were necessary to make it a...well, spoof.)
Sound: You Already know -Devotchka (we're spreading our musical interrests to the Balkans now. Japanese was extraordinary for a while, but the novelty is wearing out.)
Literature: Everything is Illuminated. Again.
Inspiration: Falling In Love, 1791-1830 is the most beautifully written chapter in the history of beautifully written chapters.
Imagination: Somewhere between an Egyptian Oasis and the Jewish/Human fault line of Trachimbrod/Sofiowka.
Withdrawl Symptom: It's not what you're thinking. If it was, it might be much easier, and less scary. Because sometimes nothing seems more right.
Angst: A would-be writer reading a brilliant writer is like a hamster in a hamster ball. The ecstatic inspiration you draw from a piece of literary genius makes you want to run a marathon with your own words, but you're always restrained within the orb of your mediocre tallent. You'll get to where you want, but only in hamster-in-a-hamster-ball way.
Something to be proud of: I dropped my mom's mobile phone into the soup during sahoor (and that means the time when you wake up before sunrise to eat. If you don't know that, that means you aint Muslim or Shakila. And that means tough!)

Mom: Give I'll show you the message.
Me: Here-
SFX: Plop.
Mom & Me: AAAAARRRRGHHH! (arms waving about. extended and exagerated expression of horror, Greek tragedy chorus style.)
-It survived though.

Speaking of Sahoor: ...

Huden: 1, 2, 3, 4...errr, Why is there an extra egg at the table?
Mom: Because someone whose kismet it is will show up to eat it.
Elest: What, at this time of the night?
Mom: Shutup!

Huden: It's way past the time now, stop eating.
Me: Everyone spit it out! Spit it out!
Saimecan: Nooo, I have to drink water. Where's the water? QUICK!
Mom: Huden, you finished all the water again!
Me: Spit it out! Spit it out!
Saimecan: I have to drink water! Give me water quick!
Huden: You can't man, it's past the time.
Me: Ha ha ha ha ha-
Saimecan: You shut up, you sponge! you finished all the water!
-I'm going to miss Ramadhan.

Sound II: Sura Ya'sin (that's a bit more befitting.)
Angst II: ...So I'm going to curl up in a foetal position and immerse myself back into my brilliant book and not come out.

I am not sad.

I swear by time
Most surely man is in loss
Except those who believe and do good, and enjoin on each other truth, and enjoin on each other patience.

-Holy Koran: Surah Al Asr-

(Thanks Jarrad.)

• Steven Spielberg must be one hell of a pain in the ass to watch films with, because ever since Saimecan started this media course, she has been meticulously scrutinising the life out of every film I've attempted to watch with her. 'But this is what they teach us. This is what you have to do to be a director!' -I don't give a toss, take it some place else!
• Cute guy sitting next to me on the 29 bus takes out a copy of Alan Hollinghurst's 'Swimming pool Library' and begins reading it. Said book is an incredibly graphic piece of Shi(K)t about the escapades of gay men (I know this because of Queer Theory.) ...'should have sussed it by the way he was dressed too cool.
• What's that? ..Oi SHUDUP, I can't help being attracted to metro-sexual men!...and any way, how was I supposed to know he'd crossed the border?
• I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: Tauwba, lower your gaze in the month of Ramadhan at least...otherwise direct it some place else!
• And I'm thinking: You are absolutely right my friend. See if everyone in my life actually gave me some advice instead of just thought things, I may have been a better person.
• Since we're on the topic, notice how in the Koran it's: 'Tell the believing men/women to lower their gazes.' Whereas in the Torah and Bible it's: 'THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOURS WIFE!' and '...And if thine eye offend thee,(in regards to oggling thy said neighbour's wife) pluck it out, and cast it from thee!' respectively. (Wow, sometimes I reallys surprise myself.)
• ...And yet it seems I won't hear the end of people telling me Islam is harsh.
• Meanwhile I've decided that life is too short and it could be too beautiful to waste away doing things you don't want to. I'm talking about office jobs. I'm talking about admin or racking your brain energy for the benefit of some empty, boring, greedy fatso you gotta kiss up to coz he writes your pay cheques. I'm talking about selling your soul, and I hope to God I don't regret saying this one day.
• If this means that I'm never going to live up to some people's standards of a respectable individual complete with mortgage, car, family and good bank credit -I show said people my middle finger. And I show it some more to everyone who asks me if I have got a graduate-befitting-job yet, because I am very generous with my middle finger.
• And I'll tell you why. Because I aint living for this life. I aint gonna build an empire I have to leave behind when I'm DEAD!
• The plan then, and I mean the immediate future plan, is to get one or more remotely interesting part time jobs, which will not only be intellectually stimulating or fun or rewarding or all of these, but will also give my brain the space to breath and work for itself, so that I can concentrate on what really matters, which right now is: Writing (tada!). I think I could do this until the opportunity for a drastic change in my life shows itself at some point.
• Also, maybe I can start trying to change the world, one good deed at a time, like Amalie.
• Sarah, I think You're right, I think my Blogs are starting to get very serious and maybe a tad dark :(
• In that case, let's lighten things up: I WANT CUTE SNOOPY UNDERWARE FROM H&M! I WANT IT IN PINK!

Time: 01:16

Oww: Head ache.

Ha ha ha -notice the tone of sarcasm: 'Elest, does any one ever mistake Haido for a guy?'

'Riddle me this': Has any one heard of The Mars Volta? Televators? No?

Sigh: Ramadhan is not going as well as I'd like it to.

Grrrrr: This is because I'm just real crap.

Ah! Is that me? make it go away!: I think I'm gaining back the weight I lost this summer- according to some people, that's a good thing, but personally I was feeling the Ramses's mummy look, hence, am not feeling this. Not to mention, hair has now got a red tint to it. Thank you shiKt henna treatment- next time, I'm putting the whole pack of ebony in there, and I don't care if I turn out goth-black. Apparently we are Dark and there is nothing we can do about it. (and by 'we' I mean that in the multiple personality sense of the word, not the queen's-anal-retention sense of the word.)

Clang clatter clatter: Time to pull off emotional armour and start losing appetite and losing sleep again. Might as well turn Dark into Tortured-Byronic-Poet Darkness, think I can pull it off with my new Highway man coat too (and I mean Highwayman, in the cute-heroine-out-of-Shakespearian-cross-dressing-play sense of the word. Freedom to the female roles! Or Freedom to boy actors from the indignity of wearing dresses on stage, even if only for a little while! -Take your pick.)

Hmmm: Oddly enough though, as unattractive as we've been feeling (and by 'we' I mean that in the Shakila and I sense of the word, not the multiple personality sense of the word.) apparently two silly young ladies turned quite a few heads down in London today! Oh behave! -By the way, we've decided to speak Jane Eyer English from now on. Out with the 'crushes' and 'liking' and 'chemistry' nonsense- a direct result of the bane of our day and age; being cynicism and scepticism, and basically the Beauty-of-Simple-Innocence making cartwheels in its grave.
From now on, I'm falling in love man, there and then, on the spot! Ideally my true feelings will be concealed by deep hate, intimidation, or fear, until the fateful moment: OH MR. ROCHESTER! -'reader, I married him.' end of story...and no false promises of anything happily-ever-after either...after all the guy is too old, ugly (though I refused to accept it throughout the book.) and now blind too!

Here's my spin on what Jane Eyer should have said at the end (mind you, Bronte's ending sucked): 'Reader, I promise you we encountered a great deal of human waste in our lives- and the kind that thoroughly disagreeable company generally use that obscene 'S' word to describe with. That kind.
Our relationship was far from smooth, our lives hardly Barbie, and there were many a rainy day when we could find no bread to have with our broth, because the last shilling went towards paying for the marraige councelling bills. Not to mention, I hate dogs, and Mr. Rochester is so attached to his guide bitch.
But you see reader, if I didn't marry him, I would have regretted it till the day that my miserable essence ceased to linger in this cold and lonely world...Because I believed for an instant that flawed little me and flawed little he were meant to perfect each other. Jigsaw puzzle style.
So do you think me daft, that I call this, the ability to endure a togetherness that was often times very vexing and taxing and all that stuff, love? We are human after all, very capable of hating one another...so why is it I must understate those kinder feelings in me?'

I think once upon a time we believed we were deserving of wielding an emotion very near to something divine. A heroic, romantic history of poetry and stories attest to it. When did we lose faith in ourselves?

Close parenthesis. I'm going to bed.

Know, oh beloved, that man was not created in jest or at random, but marvellously made and for some great end.

(Al-Ghazzali)

-Daifuku Mochi...yumm :)
and it's an acquired taste, thank you.

You know what rocks about writing free lance and earning peanuts for the articles you are then forced to edit, re-edit and cut down (damn, unappreciative creativity stunters!) even when you were originally given a large word limit?

Walking up to the ticket desk at the Barbican and saying "I'm press". That rocks! Especially when you're then pointed in the direction of the press desk, where you will be collecting your free, pre-booked tickets :) Heh Heh heh...But remember:

1. Shakila is never on time.
2. DON'T RUN IN YOUR KNEE HIGH NEW ROCKS!
3. Never take your 17 year old sis to see Kronos Quartet, and expect her to behave herself or refrain from making very politically incorrect remarks, and loud enough for you to wish you were invisible.
4. Never try to be in two places at once.
5. A Kronos and Asha Bhosle concert, Bollywood as it was, is by far more enjoyable than any private view full of Shakila's idea of 'buzzing beenies!', especially when said beenies are pissed.
6. (In fact, I rather enjoyed it (The concert.).)
7. (...augh, hate being arround people who've been drinking. Human beings get so stupid when they're in that state, it's insufferable (and if you think making small talk with people with whom you have nothing in common is bad enough, try doing it when the barricades of self control and self awareness have fallen, and you're standing there trying to console a complete stranger when she's ranting at you about how difficult it is to be a phtographer in a male dominated system (I really felt sorry for her, not only coz she's been having a hard time, but God, the state she was in! (It's not that she was doing anything really embarrassing, but you can see it: that numb resigned look, the loss of human grace, an absence of dignity...and it's times like this i really appreciate why alcohol's haram (So why do we do it? To fill the emptiness? For lack of something to cling on to? -sorry, it's just that I'm having a hard time grasping how ending up like some of the people last night is fun (from what angle like? (Am I not seeing something? (Have I boxed myself in too many brackets? (Aaaah snuggly bug...this is comfortable- feels like receding into your self on a train of thought.).).).).).).).).)
8. Right, out we get (9 of them!) ..where was I? -ah yes:
9. Posting yourself by the toilets to say "Heyyy, you gotta pee too eh? ;) " to the said pissed beenies in the toilet que, is a hilarious chat up tactic, but is not to be put into practice under any circumstance. (This is feeling a bit shallow after my parenthesis thing.)
10. Heh heh, it's a funny thought though...Shakila you crazy cookie!
11. And finally, Never eat anything after midnight, no matter how many meals you've skipped and how starving you are.

So far Ramadhan hasn't had a very good start at all, but I swear I felt something the first two days, and I aint giving up yet. We're still at the beginning. I'm getting this article out the way and pulling myself together. Lets hope we stay together for the duration of the month...and, perhaps if we're lucky, the duration of what follows.

My next door neighbour died two days ago. He was really nice. Now his wife's all alone, and she's an old lady and i don't think they had kids. I'm ashamed of myself when I see how strong she is. Allah (swt) rest his soul inshallah.

Right, I'm off to find myself some more brackets.

'...And whoever fears Allah, He will make for him a way out, and will provide for him from where he does not expect. And whoever relies upon Allah, then He is sufficient for him.' (At-Talaaq)

• Bloody stupid two-hour-long-anti-climax-of-a-film!
• (Why the hell can I not get onto Blackwells Online?)
• (Sod it, getting back to yesterday...)
• ...Howl was fit though :)
• Yes I'm immature, you got a problem? I still have a crush on Peter Pan!
• (And Aladdin)
• (And inspite of the fact that now I'm old enough to see just how politically incorrect Disney's little spin on Sherazade's immortalised quite-litteral-life-saver is, I still go all fuzzy inside watching it.
• (I suppose that just makes me a stupid girl, right? Dispite the New Rock boots, and freaky don't-mess-with-me jewlery.).)
• (Sod Aladdin too. Where were we? ...ah yes.)
• I'm a bad daughter who got lectured yesterday. But it wasn't the thought of fit Howl that got me through it, and yet also added some turbulance to the bumpy ride that was Guilt Trip.
• Come up to meet you. Tell you I'm sorry. You don't know how lovely you are. I had to find you. Tell you I need you. Tell you I set you apart. Tell me your secrets, and ask me your questions. Oh let's go back to the start. [...] I was just guessing, at numbers and figures. Pulling the puzzels apart. Questions of science, science and progress, do not speak as loud as my heart. tell me you love me. Come back and haunt me. Oh when I rush to the start. (Cold Play- Scientist)
• Wow, what a waste of time...It's 4:00 in the morning, should probably go to bed and try to sleep.
• I kinda feel like Ice cream though.
• Well since we started this blog with movies, maybe I can finish it on that note: Motorcycle Diaries has made me want to buy a one way ticket to the remotest corners of some random country (preferably South America or Morocco), and just try to survive. In the hunter gatherer sense of the word- like screw hotel lobies, it's all about hitch hicking and taking shelter with strangers.
• There is a great deal of comfort in the thought of getting lost.
• Don't think anyone would come back packing with me though :(