Qatar 2022 - That's Right!

I've had a relaxing if not uneventful month and now the holidays are coming. I was so happy to hear that Qatar was selected for 2022. I think the stadiums are going to be phenomenal. So congratulations Qatar!

Shopping in Dubai!

Barbie Shoes - Yes!

Just Feeling Like Posting A Video

The Official Barbie(TM) Video.

Sawed-off Pointy Shoes

I like shoes, and I notice shoes. It seems to me that a lot of men in the Arab world are embracing sawed-off pointy shoes. That's the only way I know how to describe this look.



Window shopping for shoes?

 

Of course, I've seen the pointy-shoes look too. Check this out.



Sarah Palin Has Nothing On Yemen

I read a brief Associated Press interview recently that Sarah Palin’s unwanted biographer has completed his research. During his six months in ‎town, Sarah and her husband had installed a hastily-constructed fence to shield her ‎neighbors from viewing her home in Alaska. While her home improvement is probably a sight in the wide open spaces of Alaska, it’s nothing to what ‎a friend calls the Yemeni house abaya. ‎

Take a quick look at the house abaya of Yemen.

Eid Shopping Bags!

Just found wonderful bags for the last day of Ramadan (or Eid shopping) but the one below is perfect for BIA. I just love the caption. Oh and the bald eagle bag to the left says "See the World". I'm doing it!

       Happy Eid to all!

Bag Text: Live Foxy Sugar! Where's My Couture?

More on Camels

I’ve also been asked why if I am culturally sensitive I use camels in my blog. Answer: Because I can.‎

Seriously while I have been reminded that I might be sharing the wrong image of the Arabian Peninsula, like ‎I’ve said before, I like camels. I like to take pictures of them. And I can take pictures of them.‎

And I was just reminded about how much I like camels after reading this brief Smithsonian article on an "old sport" known as camel jumping. ‎Hum, I’ve never heard of a famous Yemeni high jumper.‎

Styling in Yemen

Shirshaf in Old City Sana'a

This poor Arabian country is in the news a lot these days but even as analysts debate its future, new businesses have hope. Good luck to the new store called "Styled in Yemen"!

Stunning Photo

I just saw this photo on National Geographic MyShot. It's stunning--I need to convince Tweet to visit this wonder in Arabia!

The Morning After

Breaking news . . . it's a wedding!‎

The back of a several meter-long wedding tent

Well it’s not really breaking news—this is wedding season in the Arabian Peninsula!









With Ramadan only ‎a few weeks away, there is a rush to tie the knot. Apparently, there isn’t a prohibition on weddings ‎during Ramadan; it’s just not that convenient to arrange.‎

The season means wedding halls are booked, so what is one to do if there’s no hall available? In Sanaa, ‎Yemen, many families opt for the ultimate block party – street wedding tents. The tents are filled with ‎groups of men who gather in celebration of the marriage by chewing the narcotic leaf known as qat. ‎The tents get really warm but the tents lack the ACs one can find in the resort camp tents in Qatar. Fortunately ‎Sanaa weather is incredible during the summer months when much of the Arabian Peninsula faces ‎extremely warm temperatures. More importantly, Yemeni men prefer warm places as they enter the ‎Elysian Fields of qat dreams. I've been told that the morning after the big chew day, which is usually Thursday, feels like the morning ‎after a heavy metal act!‎

Inside the Wedding Tent on the "morning after"

Screen Shots and Other Bloopers, Part One‎

Been out of commission a bit here but have some humor today from my husband’s Arabian ‎workplace. ‎

Tweet is the kind of manager who likes for colleagues and employees to think through technological ‎problems themselves in order to solve them. When they reach an impasse, he suggests they send ‎him screen shots of the technical issue (Prt-Screen) and a brief update (text) on where they are/why ‎stuck. (Tweet does the same with me by the way because he subscribes to the PEBCAK theory! If you ‎haven’t heard of the PEBCAK theory that’ll be a future blog post for sure.)

Yes, I Like Camels!

Camel herd with (rare?) baby white camel

Someone recently asked me why I’ve included a photo of camels on my site. Simple answer, I am ‎fascinated by camels, and I always have been. ‎

As a young girl, I actually used to play with my Barbie and Ken dolls (I admit to having them), creating all kinds of adventures ‎for them as they traveled around distant places. I remember having a fairly elaborate script with them and some camels and Arabians traversing ‎the Western Sahara and even the Arabian Peninsula. These adventures must have been “created” after I ‎watched the film Lawrence of Arabia.‎

Looking back it’s really strange that I did that and now here I am in lands famous for their camels. Fortunately I like to take pictures of them!

Daylight Savings Time - No Prob!

One advantage to living in Arabia that comes to mind today – changing my clock isn’t necessary for the end of daylight savings. There is no daylight savings! This is awesome!

It's International Women's Day!

This morning I saw groups of women come to a café and shake hands with other groups of women who were already seated before them. What a nice greeting for international women’s day!


Congratulations to all women – mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, and friends!

Person of the Year?

I mentioned Yemen in a recent post and a friend of mine shared with me an article from the Yemeni English daily, Yemen Observer. I have to share a snapshot of this article, "Person of the Year." I think it is a good thing I scanned a copy because it wasn’t posted on the Internet pages of the paper.

Enjoy!

"Titanic" and Old and New

Looking back at the Hollywood figures I’ve mentioned, I remembered something Tweet recently said to me. Tweet believes that the "Titanic" soundtrack will never disappear, especially now that its director has made another hit, "Avatar." I think Tweet is right. I just heard it again at a restaurant.


BIA to waiter: “Please this movie is over ten years old. Surely there is another song you can play!”


Waiter: “Yes, ma’am but this very beautiful.”


Why do old songs never seem to disappear here, but old buildings do?

Just Like Home? Desert, Tribes, and Pickup Trucks

In my travels, I met a Yemeni petroleum engineer who had studied in the U.S. He had lived and studied in Tulsa. I don’t know much about Oklahoma as I haven’t been to that state yet. I did add that I have a friend of a friend whose father moved out there to work at the state university. The ‘father-of-a-friend-of-a-friend’ comment was apparently sufficient encouragement for him to keep talking about Oklahoma.


The Yemeni engineer loved his time in Oklahoma. Finally, I asked him why. His response: “It was just like home.” I hope I didn’t look too surprised and I tried to ask him casually how Oklahoma was just like Yemen, an Arab country that seems to be in the news a lot lately! He responded, “Well both have desert areas, tribes, pick-up trucks, and guns.” He felt the only difference was that Yemeni pickup trucks didn’t have gun racks. Uh, ok?!

View of the desert sea shore from the pick-up

Learning Arabic and 'Waj'

From my perspective, it seems to me that some aspects of Arab culture revolve around the word “face.” I gather, for example, saving face is very important in Arab society. Interestingly, the word for prestige is wajaha, which comes from the root word, waj, or face.


All that being said, in all honesty my Arabic is very weak and I am not as serious a student of the language as I should be. This means I really shouldn’t be surfing Arabic websites as I often haven’t a clue about the words I am looking at – especially commands.


Nevertheless, while on Twitter I saw an Arab woman who writing in English and Arabic (that's helpful!) mentioned using the site www.wajhy.com to create an avatar. Wajhy means my face.


Naturally I had to check out the site and I think I may have learned new words in Arabic, although I’m still not sure how I reached a final product! Trying to design an avatar for friends was a lot of fun. However, more fun was in store with my own avatar design. Well she has deep red lips. I had that choice or gray! Her hair is supposed to be a light color which is not white or gray! Sigh! Blonde is not an acceptable hair color yet but thanks anyway, wajhy.com!

And Now Hulk Hogan is Here!

R, one of Tweet's grad school friends visited us some time back. R is from the Upper Peninsula. In case you don’t know much about the Upper Peninsula, I recommend you search Wikipedia. I can’t really provide too much detail as I have been to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan only once in my life . . . to visit Tweet’s friend, R. That's when I learned about the Yoopers – they are usually Finnish in origin, very fair and very blonde. As an aside, that area of the country has the best blueberries IMHO.


R grew a moustache (naturally blonde) for his trip out to the Arab world to see us. I guess he heard that facial hair would help him fit in better and so he grew his moustache long. R liked to go out and about by himself especially in the early morning hours. The kids in the neighborhood on their way to school would see him trying local warm breakfast foods and started calling out after him, “Huk, Huk, Huk.”


The kids thought he was Hulk Hogan. I can’t believe we got Rambo and Hulk together in one place!

Rambo Is Here Too!

I’ve not thought of Rambo in years, when I was a lot younger. After all, hasn’t it been like twenty years or more since that movie was a hit? Well my husband and I were walking on a narrow Arab street, and some shabab called out after my husband, “Rambo mogood [is here].”

BIA [thinking to herself]: “Yo, dudes, Rambo isn’t, really isn't, anymore.”

I wonder why Rambo is still a big deal in the Arab world! Any ideas?

To Valen-Ban or Not

Just read more about the Kingdom’s Valen-Ban this year. The mutawaa will be out watching for and removing every red heart, red ballon, red flower, and of course any colored cupid, dove or teddy bear. Very sad but also not likely to be a successful enterprise in the rest of the Arabian Peninsula where these are available any time of the year! Floral shops are full of these items year round!


To be honest I’ve never been a real big fan of Valentine’s Day. From my brief study of history, I think it’s only a greeting card holiday. Americans have made into a friendship holiday which is sweet, I think. Anyway, if it lost its luster in the U.S., my sister-in-law would be put out since she got engaged on that day!

So while I'm not a fan of Valentine's Day, I am even less of a fan of bans. They only encourage doing the forbidden – and one sees much like what the Arabic expression describes, everything that is forbidden is desired. It rhymes in Arabic, I believe. Anyway, I’ll be curious to learn if any bloggers write about how some "broke the ban."