Don't judge a book by its cover
I am a big fan of Masarat's and this post reflects a lot on what I have begun to realise about the burkha.
Let me say outright - I am not Muslim. I DO NOT wear a burkha/hijab/niqab. But the thought of not worrying about what I'm wearing - whether its good for my image or will it offend someone or take away from who I am and what I stand for - is liberating.
I am not saying that it is for everyone but I think we should stop and think. The Hijabi woman is no different than women everywhere. They are living what we preach so often - don't judge a book by its cover.
The debate will rage on and there are some deep issues that need to be dealt with and I will not even begin to touch that topic but on the question of the hijab, I think its time we moved on and stopped focusing on that.
Take a bow, Carol Hyland, you should be proud
My friend Carol Hyland has been working her socks off the past couple of months putting together the Mad Hatters Ball. All I've done is tweeted, facebooked and generally been a sounding board for her but she's borne the brunt of all the hard work. While trying not to piss off her own clients.
Well Carol, you did a fabulous job.
It was a superb evening and we (its the royal 'we' you understand - most of the work was Carol's) have a lot of people to thank.
To all our prize sponsors - for donating the most wonderful prizes that enticed close to 100 people to make the effort to wear some sort of headgear - not sure a lot of them qualified as hats!. So hats off to (in alphabetical order): Coral Suites; Fujairah Rotana; Himalayan Holidays; Le Meridien Al Aqah; Mojo PR; Richard Munroe; Ritz Carlton Muscat; ShoCho; Sia Select; The Harbor Club and last but not least Tilly & Pinch.
We had cash donors including Siobhan Malley, Richard Munroe and Parmar Tailors. We have to thank the team at the Harbor club for their help in providing us with the venue and accommodating our demands. Thank you to Paul Henessy for providing us with entertainment and his wonderful music and getting everyone on the tiny dance floor.
THANK YOU to the expat residents of Fujairah. Some are friends but most are in the community and come to our fundraisers and support us in our cause of providing a future for a handful of Nepalese orphans.
- Posted from Kathmandu, Nepal
Inner peace
This had to be shared... Inner Peace: This is so trueIf you can start the day without caffeine, If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains, If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles, If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it, If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time, If you can take criticism and blame without resentment, If you can conquer tension without medical help, If you can relax without alcohol, If you can sleep without the aid of drugs, 
...Then You Are Probably The Family Dog! 
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You couldn't make this stuff up
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We're fundraising again
A few years' ago we had a very successful MadHatters' Ball in Fujairah. You can see some of the fun stuff from the event here.
We're planning to host another one on Thursday 19 April 2012 at the Harbour Club in Fujairah. We need your support in any way you can. Details below.
We have had several successful fundraisers (see below) and would appreciate your help once again.
RIP Dante
This story broke this morning on Gulf News and the posts on his wall have been coming thick and fast.
Death is inevitable but this one is affecting me today and I can't seem to concentrate on anything. Not that I knew him well unless you count spending three weeks in his company during our trip to Tibet knowing him. But then it was very intense and you get to know people and their character under trying circumstances.
He was only 28 but he loved the adrenaline rush. He pushed himself on that trip and almost didn't make it until we physically stopped him, made him take rest and let his body recover. But within no time he was back on that cycle.
He loved those mountain kids. He was always one of the first on the campsite and was surrounded by village kids. He ate and drank a lot and pee-d a lot too. We called him 'piddler on the roof'. He was outrageous and made us all laugh.
He was so talented. The ads that ran on OSN were, to a large extent, designed by him. Very clever man.
Such a waste but his time was up. There must be a reason why. If anyone knows, please tell me so I can lift the lead weight in my heart.
"No Smoking" in Arabic
A friend sent this to me and I had to post to be able to share. So believable!
A new fuel tanker arrives on location somewhere in the Middle East. The HSE manager tells the fleet supervisor to ensure that the tanker is clearly labeled “Diesel Fuel” and “No Smoking” in Arabic. This is what he got!
Women’s Day tribute
This blog post (link below the photo) inspired me to talk about not quite a second mom but definitely an older sister that has inspired me no end.
My mom was always rescuing waifs and strays and not necessarily just four-legged ones. We had a maid (more like a housekeeper) who's 'husband' turned out had already been married in the age-old tradition of the villages in the 60s - where there was child marriage and the little girl stays at her mother's until she reaches puberty. I'd like to think this practice is dead but sadly it is still perpetuated. Anyhow - I digress.
This young child bride came to the town we grew up in and brought her very cute, chubby young son in the late sixties. The 'husband' spent more time with our ex-housekeeper (had three kids before confessing about his marriage) than with his young child bride and my mother took great umbrage at this injustice and took her under her wing.
This young girl (in very traditional custom) could barely read or write accepted her lot but was very very grateful to my mom. We loved having a live doll to play with while she helped my mother with the house and took great care of us. She has become an extension of our family. Indeed we still keep in touch with them.
What really inspired me is what followed about 5-6 years later. Our ex-housekeeper died in a tragic accident that also took the life of one of her three children - leaving the other two (a girl and a boy) orphaned. Without a blink, she just took them both under her wing and treated them as her own. I defy anyone that sees them together to tell me which is her natural son and which are the adopted.
She leads by example. She treats each one the same. I do not think that anyone educated or otherwise could have shown the grace, class or total absence of any prejudice the way she lives, loves and cares for her family. All of them. Including us.
Koshidi, I love you. Always.
Facebook’s Disappearing Friends
By Nick Clayton
It is probably a sign of the increasing maturity of social media. Judging your popularity by your number of Facebook friends seems to be falling out of fashion. The findings of a survey from the Pew Research Center are described by Read Write Web:
Social networkers are becoming more selective, managing their accounts and “pruning” people from their lists. More users are untagging themselves from photos, deleting comments and unfriending others. Women and younger users tend to prune more than others: 67% of women with social-network site profiles have deleted users compared with 58% of men… Today, more than half of social networkers (58%) say their main profile is set to friends-only; 19% set their profile as viewable to friends of friends in addition to just friends. Only 20% of users leave their profile completely public. That last set of people are most likely a mix of Facebook power users, whose profiles are meant only as hubs for discussion and conversation, and uninformed users who do not know how to adjust their privacy settings… The study also reveals that 11% of users say they have posted content they regret. Men are more than twice as regretful as women: 15% say they wish they hadn’t shared certain information, versus only 8% of women. But men are more likely to set their profiles to public or partially private, which leads one to infer that perhaps it’s less about the content they post and more about the pruning they should be doing… Most social network users are concentrated on Facebook. According to Pew, 93% of profile owners have an account on Facebook, which is a 20% increase from 2009. Twitter has grown significantly since 2009; more than 55% of social networkers are on Twitter, up from 45% three years ago.
Read Write Web: Facebook Defriending is on the Rise
Had an interesting conversation with a friend yesterday and she shared how an increasing large number of people in UK and Europe are cancelling their Facebook accounts or keeping it minimum because of the new face recognition algorithm.
Most of these guys are taking off personal photographs - deleting them - especially of their very young children.
I wonder whether this trend will pick up worldwide or are there enough people like me that just don't care. But then I'm not likely to be approached by perverts.
Tech-friendly Sweden
Image via Wikipedia
Sweden may be a small country but it makes very good use of technology.
While none of the airports I went through in Europe have the e-Gate card (extremely useful), these airports more than make up for it with their scanners and barcode readers meaning we don’t have to carry a million pieces of paper – just the smartphone. There are self-checkin counters everywhere of course. KLM even specializes itsQR code to the type of smartphone you have and all you have to do is stick the phone under the scanner. How neat is that.
While air travel and traffic seems to stop in several places (read the UK), Europe just gets on with life. In Sweden they use boiling water pushed at high pressure under the roads to clear snow instantly – leaving very drivable road surfaces. As simple a solution as that.
In parking spots, there is the option to plug in your car to heat it up at a pre-programmed time so that the car is warm when you’re ready to go to work. How very cool if we could do the same to cool down our cars in dubai – must be a way to do that.
The supermarket was a revelation too. You registered for a supermarket card that you use to swipe and get a bar code scanner. You scan all your stuff as you shop, so that you know exactly how much you have spent. You weigh your own veggies etc and then scan them. At the check out counter, you just hand over your scanner and pay by card or cash and then leave. Every one brings their own bags. You are encouraged to recycle and get money back for things like bottle etc that you can then spend in the supermarket. No long check out lines (even on a busy Saturday) and you’re always aware of just how much you are spending.
Dubai prides itself of staying ahead and adopting new technology but these would be oh so useful in Dubai.
And don't get me started on the Internet connections - despite the weather or anything else you could throw at them.
