SOME contrast

Posted By Yousef

I just read an interesting article on one of my favorite blogs, intlxpatr’s blog, the article is taken from BBC news and it says that a veiled Muslim woman was denied citizenship in france coz she, allegedly, practices “radical” islam.

Guys and Girls, Tell me, enlighten me please, Isn’t this story and countless other stories where we read that girls are not allowed to wear Hijabs to schools in certain european countries are prime examples of pure hatred and discrimination?

If I wear to say the N word I would’ve been called a racist, if I wear to say women belonged in the kitchen I would’ve been shunned by women and most men, if I were ever to say, God forbid, AC Milan suck and Qadsiya rules, I would’ve been assassinated by Milan fans. We’re always called out, without tolerance, always stopped mid sentence when something wrong is about to be said. Yet, we see the same self righteous people publicly displaying their hypocrisy without being called out often enough.

France, being the country that it is, which was responsible for so many constitution and has influence on most of the world’s constitutions as well, I think it the country I hate the most for being so hypocrite and racist. I googled and found that the french people are against the veil for 2 main reasons, the reasons are:

1-Wearing the veil symbolizes a woman’s submission to men.
2-women who wear the veil display their religious and community affiliation, which harms the unity.

My reply, respectively, to any person who believes in those 2 reasons:

1-Denying any woman education coz she wears a veil would make her even more submissive to men, coz she’ll end up with no education and no personal freedom to practice her faith, her choice of clothing and the school she wants to join.

2-So, by this reasoning, Unity will only be enforced by discriminating against minorities and their personal beliefs? is this some sort of an oxymoron? or just plain ignorance & stupidity?

This video say it best.

“Freedom of religion is guaranteed in France by the constitutional rights set forth in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
However, in recent years, some legislation and government actions were taken against some groups considered to be dangerous or criminal. Officials and associations fighting excesses of such groups, justified these measures by the need to have appropriate legal tools and the need to fight criminal organizations masquerading as legitimate religious groups. Critics contended that those actions unfairly targeted minority religions, jeopardized freedom of religion, and were motivated by prejudice.” - from wikipedia

Sure, yeah, now I understand their stance on the Hijab, I was so out of line with this post, coz you see.. France is a big nation that should put it’s national security and it’s people’s safety first, and those little school girls wearing the Hijab can be very dangerous! don’t be deceived by the cute faces, those girls are a threat to their national security! especially with their little scarfs on! they can smuggle weapons of mass destruction and nobody would be able to tell! You don’t want to happen, now do you!?

Posted By Yousef

When I first discovered foret noir, or black forest, the cake (duh), I was not so fond of it. What is there to like anyway? it is supposed to be some kind of a chocolate cake that doesn’t taste quite like chocolate, it has this sour syrup that everybody on this earth hates with a vengeance, and its covered with this thin layer of cheap whipping cream (the ones I tried are cheap) then covered again with something that is supposed to look and taste like chocolate flakes. It is hatable. Almuhaissin, I think, is one of the main reasons why I’ve always hated the black forest, the other reason being the egyptian movies and the way they pronounce it’s name; belack foorest.

Anyway. I discovered this AMAZING cafe (actually, I didn’t discover anything. Mom took me to this cafe 2 years ago and made me try their foret noir) their foret noir is nothing like almuhaissin’s! its nothing like any other black forest i have ever tasted. First of all they got it right and won major points for cutting that sour syrup out of the recipe, then they scored even more points for including a chocolate paste (is it called paste? its a layer of melted chocolate) that works perfectly with the cake, very subtly sweet, it adds this whole other dimension to the otherwise boring cake and it kind of redefines the cake. Then there is the award winning whipped cream layer which takes it to a new level.

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Posted By Yousef

Mont Salève (1380m) is in france right next to the swiss borders. Its one of the nearest mountains to geneva and once you’re up there, you’ll have a panoramic view of geneva and all the cities next to it. I think I can see all the way to lausanne (I think Montreux is blocked by the Mountains near Evian).

You can go up there either by using the Telepherique (Cable car) or by car. I prefer using the car, gives a sense of adventure (I’m afraid of heights). We went there last week, by car ofcourse, my brother was in the driver’s seats, driving the manual car (which makes our heads go back and fourth with every gear shift!). The trip took less than 15 minutes. There is a little cafe on top (many cafes) which overlooks the whole thing and just a few meters away from the cafe there is this flying-edge where (crazy people, as mom would refer to them, elmeyaneen) jump off and fly with their parachutes.

This is the stadium where some of the UEFA games were held.

The giant football hovering over geneva’s skies.

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Posted By Yousef

Every year Mom goes to the botanic shop near us and buys some more hydrangea plants to replace the old and dying ones. Sometimes she buys 2 and sometimes more, depending on how bad/good last year’s plants are holding up. When I’m here when and we go to the botanic, I always try my best to steer her away from buying the same flowers, I try and try AND try! but to no avail. I don’t know what is it with these flowers and I don’t know why all the other gardens around us have this same flowers. these and the lavender. Once the mission to buy a different plant this year failed (failed miserably. We bought 3 new hydrangeas!) I insisted on buying these little dividers/partitions just so I would feel like I made a tiny difference this time

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Posted By Yousef

Going to the hospital all through last week in this country made me realize how lucky we are in Kuwait. We’re beyond lucky, We’re blessed in Kuwait and we don’t even know it.

We had to go to hospitals many times during last week and every hospital, doctor or waiting room we’ve seen (and smelt) was an eye opener to us all. Not only they’re understaffed, overcrowded, inefficient, stupid and retarded, but they also suffer from a serious lack of TIME-awarness! they don’t give a damn about the time the patients spend waiting inline. I mean.. we were in a hurry to get an injection, almost a routine injection, yet we had to wait inline for 3 hours just to get this done. 3 hours for a simple injection. Had the same thing happened in Kuwait we would’ve been in and out of the hospital in 10 minutes.

The other hospital we’ve been to was something else, the doctor whom my brother waited so long to see was an english illiterate doctor. She knew nothing about english, english was an alien language to her. She couldn’t treat a goat if her life depended on it! let a lone a human being! which made my brother get up and leave, without getting the proper med care he waited hours for.

You can’t go and get treated for a flu, cold, fever, broken arm, broken neck without waiting inline for hours. and I literally means HOURS.

We’re very lucky in Kuwait. Very. I’m not saying there is no room for improvement, I’m just saying that every once in awhile we need to stop and realize how fortunate we really are.

Posted By Yousef

As promised, Goats Town! in all its glory Its in France, near Chamonix. approx. 30 mins away from both Chamonix and Geneve. Its in a mountain where a city called Morzine is located nearby, The obscure place in which this Goat’s town reside is called Les Lindarets.

The town is pretty small and filled with, well, Goats. They lay and walk around freely, you can buy specially packaged food and feed them (rizg lig6awa) they pose and follow you whenever they spot the plastic bag, which contains their food, in your hand. sometimes, in not so rare cases, they hassle you and pull the plastic bag out of your hand, leaving you feeling both angry and silly.

They’re all gathered around this giant salt cube, licking it and there are many other cubes lying around the place from them to suck into. From what I understood, Goats love salt and they’d do anything to have their salt fix. In Kuwait I saw them licking the cement around their cage just coz it got some salt in it. They actually made a dent in the cement from all licking!

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Posted By Yousef

A whole post dedicated to Goats’ town is coming up soon.

Posted By Yousef

Well, I hesitated for a bit before really going ahead and make this post, I didn’t want to show the extent to which I went to make the sky that shade of blue, or the grass that green.. not to mention the sun which I created from a scratch But what the heck. Here are both photos, both in HDR but with no photoshopping whatsoever. promise.

The Original Picture

The Photoshopped Picture

Can you tell the difference? They’re identical! getlekom mako farg

Posted By Yousef

Playing around again with photoshop and the camera. Click on the pic for a bigger version.

Posted By Yousef

A picture of Evian’s lakeshore. (yep in HDR )

We went to Evian and I made sure this time to visit their source of free Evian water. They park their cars infront of this little water fountain and fill up their empty bottles, costing them nothing but the gas money to drive up to this place. which is very near the center of the town anyway.

It doesn’t stop running, 24/7. fisag.

These 2 ladies were there filling their bottles. I asked and they didn’t mind me taking pictures.

Me, pouring and refilling the bottle a hundred times and it was COLD! just the way I hate it.. makes my teeth ache.

This is the Evian water museum.

Samples of the bottles old and new and their entire collection of Evian products.

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