Hallo Ich bin ein Grammar Nazi!

 Looking randomly for something to mindlessly read while I have my coffee, I came across "spelling" contests. It makes me wonder, how come we never had this in school? I mean surely enough I always loathed dictation, in Arabic, English AND French. But now I think we hardly spelled enough, call me a sadist but I will make sure my kids will get plenty of dictation contests....

I mean did anybody else notice how the only reason the proper usage (not necessarily proper spelling) of English is on the rise solely because of mbc4, mbc2 and the likes? They are re-learning English from movies...

Our new source for "Anglish", double negation, and other linguistic impediments.

 And let's be honest, are they only watching movies that promote proper English? I guess Oprah (which long over back in the US but we're still re-running it...) is the closest they ever are getting to proper spoken English.
This mess of a learning process is quite a bad idea when combined with literal translation from Arabic.
 Allow me to demonstrate:
"Open the light", "Are you angry from me?". Well maybe this was the old problem  non-english English speakers had (not necessarily aware of having them...), now it's been replace with "I kno im gud thx y r u nt cumming over no more? I dowanna u t b angry on me" or something equally frustrating that sets my Grammar Nazi radar through the roof. I am not and-never-was perfect at spelling but I was sure as heck very attentive to the mistakes I make.

You know what else gets to me? when you type in txt lingo while using a normal keyboard through a website that perfectly allows you to send messages that are "infinity characters"* long! Am I the only young adult who still uses coherent sentences in mobile messages?! Or is it just my tolerance to bad spelling is rapidly decreasing?... "Hi H R U?" is enough to drive me up the wall, I don't care how nice this person is, how much trouble he went through his life, how much he had to strive through his\her "Edjukayshun". Spelling, like hygiene, is not exclusive to a certain class or financial situation. 

We don't pay enough attention to our kids, and now they are becoming what kids in the west probably were 10 years ago. While the west is combating their decades-old mistake we are rushing to pick up their trash and filter through it for some recyclable stuff that we can poison our kids and young adults with.

Talking in broken multilingual fragments to your kids is definitely gonna teach them the language...NOT!  NO! IT WON'T WORK! Teach them PHRASES...Grammatically CORRECT phrases! Kids will pick up the right usage, even if they don't get how the grammar works, they will still be able to distinguish the flaws phonetically! And eventually (provided you've shown enough devotion and didn't rely solely on school) They will THINK in that language.

And maybe years later, they will be able to write actual correspondences, resumes, motivation letters without relying on spell check! And most importantly they might ..just might  integrate proper spelling and grammar into their daily lives! 

Now that I put my two cents...or two fils.. or balsa.. or any other copper-plated coined currency of your choice...Back to our regular schedule.

Happy spelling!


*by "infinity characters" I mean Enough to write one long fully-spelled coherent sentence. 

Skype: It's like you're with me..for our wedding?

So as I was having my morning coffee and doing my work (which consists of skimming through online articles related to the UAE), some irrelevant news manage to interest me.
like this particular article on  The Huffington Post.

The first couple is quite understandable, they were together and couldn't fly back home for their wedding, the second couple however, left me skeptical. So the guy is in the hospital with lung infection, and his bride to be miss Oh (maybe short for"Oh what have I done?") but yeah maybe its just me, but I guess lots of people in the US will do it for media coverage.

Naturally a Skype wedding with the bride and groom apart is bound to be more celebrated than if bride simply flew to his hospital in California (assuming she absolutely couldn't wait for him to recover), I mean, how fatal is lung infection compared to a dying cancer patient, in terms of attracting media attention?

When I skype I barely care about my upper half. I could be wearing a potato sack for pants for all I care.. Maybe the bride opted for financial efficiency and skipped the bag and shoes.
Did the all the bridesmaids fit into the camera frame? Did the priest Skype from the local Church as well?

I don't know about you guys but if I show this to my gran in Algeria she'll say something like "pfft..May God block that cave you crawled out from!" الله يسد الغار إللي جيتي منه. Pearls of wisdom indeed. I love my grandma, too bad she's in the advanced stage of Alzheimer's now.

What was I getting at is, life gives us precious moments, let's stop ruining them for convenience's sake!

Another day another nail

I have been cursed with the inability to ignore stressful events, instead I have this amazing ability to find things to constantly worry about, of course with great powers comes a great responsibility which is to ruin my fingernails! (HA! Bet you don't have this superpower..!neenerneneeener!)

okay.. so my hands look hideous, and I wish I can go and buy some nailpolish, like...bright colorful ones! Eh.. as you can see from exhibit A (below), any attempt to apply bright colors on such length (and circular shape) will result in an uncanny resemblance to m&ms and fails to have the same appetizing appeal. 

Exhibit A (or U for UGLY!)

 What I really want is to go to a nail salon and have my miserable nails done! With nail art.. I secretly loathed it because I couldn't do it! *deep sigh*
As you can notice Exhibit B (above...lol gotcha..! *avoids shoe*)

Exhibit B (yup..beautiful T_T)

Motivations? What about big events you ask? ( I'll still assume you did...) so I went to Nails salon in Abu Dhabi Mall and booked an appointment one day before my sister's wedding! Yup, fake nails, I gotta admit they were appealing, and made my hands almost look normal!
I didn't feel too adventurous and was already patting myself on the back for making such a drastic move so I skipped the nail art.
Feast your eyes on exhibit C!

Exhibit C (And I fell in love with my fingers)

Isn't it efficient? Isn't it beautiful? Well, I wish someone told me they're heavy. I mean it didn't stop me from my regular bathing and showering, problem is they came off three weeks later. (The beautician did tell me to be careful with hot water and stuff...but my Algerian side knows better than to take cold showers-but that's for another post!)
I then gave up.. I managed to grow them for a while, then come examination period. Hurray! An actual reason to stress out! I chomped through them like pacman would wakawaka his way across the maze.

Maybe...I'll start again.

Religious Hoaxes:They still make (and believe) those?

So as I was peacefully doing my work I somehow ended up surfing one of those many many many arab Forums...

You know..The ones with one HUGE font post and loads of  pictures that are a repost of a repost of a reposted repost? The ones with a single starter post and the rest of the replies are merely variations of "مشـــــــــكــــــــووووووووووووووووووووووووووور على المساهمة!" followed by an even bigger signature usually containing some passive-aggressive statement of how everybody is gonna die for not loving the post writer, and loads of glitter graphic that puts myspace profiles to shame....

In case you didn't notice,I never liked these forums, don't get me wrong, I do go on some of them and I find some good useful info (*cough*still a repost..*cough*). This is all fine and dandy! BUT! What I hate the most is religious hoaxes, whether it's by anti-muslims, Arab athiests or the followers of great jumping god schmockarumba....It remains a darned hoax! Stop reposting it..stop being amazed at it and most importantly stop bashing those who revoke it!  

The one with the Quoran bashing girl-turned-ape-, or the one with the Djinn in a cave, or the friggin' apple with "Allah" on it...well...took them long enough to realize it was a hoax...
Now the post I came accross this morning went something like this ..

قطة تموت وهي محتضنة القرآن

أنهت السيدة أم طارق قراءة القرآن ثم ذهبت إلي المطبخ‏,‏ وحين عادت لتستكمل ما بدأته وجدت قطتها من النوع الشيرازي نائمة محتضنة المصحف الشريف‏,‏ فأبت السيدة أن توقظها وتركتها لتستيقظ وقتما تشاء‏,ثم أخذت تشغل وقتها بترتيب المنزل وعادت بعد أكثر من ساعة لتوقظ قطتها من سباتها العميق‏,‏ وكانت المفاجأة أن القطة ماتت علي شكلها المبين بالصورة‏,‏ فتعجب أفراد الأسرة مما حدث وزاد تعجبهم أكثر حينما أخذوا بالقطة إلي أحد الأطباء البيطريين الذي قام بدوره بالكشف عليها‏,‏مؤكدا أن الوفاة حدثت بشكل طبيعي‏ ..!!

The story in short is, "This cat died embracing the Quoran!" And it states how the cat died of natural cause...etc etc. Does this look like a picture you'd take of a dead cat? Unless you have some sick fetish, you wouldn't grab a camera and take this picture at such a photogenic angle!

This certainly made me feel sick, and embarrassed. most likely this is a picture taken by an artist on Deviantart of his\her own pet.

يا أخي لا تفولوا بالشر على القطة المعترة! 

Now that I have gotten this off my chest... feel free to move on. 

If you're still sipping your coffee, care to share your experiences with similar stories?

Epic first post of an epic first blog

Well, woohoo! 

I just added one more blog the already-flooded world wide web! Will it be any more informative, entertaining, provoking, or even interesting than those already out there? I cannot guarantee that. I can, however, guarantee that it's definitely  written 100% by me,  expresses100% my own opinion! And adds 200% to your daily dose of "bleh?"

I have chosen to start a blog because I needed a bigger diary, one I can show to everybody else. Call it a cry for attention, or just self-gratification, I feel on a daily basis I accumulate tons of good ideas or just thoughts that disappear by the end of the day, I may have even found the meaning to life I tell you!!! 

So...yeah!