"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."