News!

I know things have been slow around here and I haven't updated my blog in quite some time but the good news is MAK and I got married in June! Technically, I am married (we did the kitb kitaab/marriage contract thingy) but the wedding is to take place on the 27th September, inshallah. Less than a month away.

 

Here are pictures of my beautiful ring.

 

 

Most little girls dream of being a bride. Except me. I spent my childhood climbing trees and playing soccer. My dream was to save the world. I don’t ever recall dreaming about my wedding. I dreamt of being married but never “being a bride”, I blame it on the fact that I never attended a wedding till I was a teenager. Unlike the little girls in Libya that are present at every wedding and spend their playtime pretending to be a “3aroosa”. I never got to experience that.

As I got older, I always prided myself on being a non-girlie girl. Not that I don’t like clothes and shoes – I do. But I don’t want to spend the day chitchatting with a friend about her fight with some other friend while shopping for said clothes and shoes. I want to eat salad and shop online. So the idea of planning a wedding seemed, hmm, not fun. Daunting. Horrible.

There was no family pressure from either side about how MAK and I planned to have the wedding. My entire family has been in Libya for the past two months and his family is wonderful and only ask how the preparations are going and if I need any help but without interfering whatsoever.

So after signing the marriage contract, I decide it’s time to get my butt in gear and starting preparing for the wedding. I ask my best friend where the hell do I start? She said the first thing you need to secure is your Wedding Dress. So she sets up a number of wedding dress appointments for me in Dubai (did you know you need an appointment to shop for a wedding dress? I did not). So my friend and I drive to Dubai on the weekend for the wedding dress hunt. In my head I was convinced that this was not going to be easy. We walked into the first showroom with over 1000 wedding gowns on display: lace, chiffon, white clouds of tulle for miles – it’s a sea of estrogen. The dress consultant (real person, real job) says that as per their policy, I could only try on two gowns so I should chose wisely. What kind of crap policy is that? There’s like a thousand gowns and I can only try on two! Anyhow, policy is policy so we spent an hour picking the two I would try on, looking at every gown carefully. We finally decided on two and the dress consultant took us into this private dressing room, with the three way mirror and the pedestal and flatteringly lights. She asked me what shoe size I wore so she could bring me a shoe to try on with the gown, I blurted out 42 and her jaw hit the floor. “Those are quite big feet or a woman”, in which I replied, yeah I know thanks for making it obvious. Anyway, they didn’t have shoes my size so I had to stand on my tiptoes while trying on the gown.

I carefully step into the first gown with the help of 3 people (the dress probably weighed 10kgs). The consultant clips me in. I slowly, carefully, get up on the pedestal and turn to face the mirror. And that’s when it happens. I am a bride! And more than anything, I want a beautiful wedding! This is the effect of trying on a wedding dress. You suddenly, shockingly, become that girlie girl.

I didn’t even try on the second dress or go to the other wedding dress appointments. The first dress was perfect. I walked out of the shop with my wedding dress. Much easier than I thought.

 

 

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2011 in Review

2011 Personal Discoveries, in no particular order:

• 2011 is the year I found out what I’m allergic to
• 2011 is the year I developed an irrational fear of curvy roads
• 2011 is the year I understood my sleeping cycle. I need 6 hours of continuous sleep to be more human and less of a monster.
• 2011 is the year I discovered my love for broccoli, green beans and carrots
• 2011 is the year I learned how to become a witness of my thoughts
• 2011 is the year I was introduced to Detox and it completely changed my eating habits
• 2011 is the year I embraced Pranic Healing
• 2011 is the year I invented three different types of homemade salad dressing using a variety of herbs like oregano and dijon mustard and fell in love with them
• 2011 is the year I broke away from my comfort zone
• 2011 is the year I started baking.
• 2011 is the year I discovered www.pinterest.com and it has become my new addiction

The Best of 2011:

• Libya was liberated
• I went for Hajj
• I was promoted at work
• I got engaged
• I decided to take the PMP exam
• I shifted to organic food and products

Traditionally, at the start of every year I like to pick an attribute to associate the year with or something like a word for the year. In Jan 2011, I chose 'Progress' as the word of the year and alhamdulilah, the year certainly did bring with it a lot of progress for the Arab world, Libya and for me. Personally, it was a good year, full of experience, growing and self-actualization. 

This is for 2012

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Happy new year everyone!

Hope everyone has a great and memorable 2012. Inshallah Allah helps each and every one of us this year and guides us to the right path, right decisions, peace of mind, health and happiness. 

At the end of every year, I look forward to reading all the year-in-review lists that are usually all over Facebook, twitter and local magazines and newspaper. I can't get enough of the over-opinionated people shooting off their 'Best Pictures of 2011" and "Most Important Events of 2011" lists. I actually still have, somewhere in the recesses of the "storage" portion under my bed, numerous magazines over the past few years of the Most Important This or That.

This morning I was going through TheWeek's cover story about 2011 and couldn't help but notice how they didn't mention anything about the Libyan revolution. Gaddafi Killed. That's it? How about all the people that were killed in the name of Freedom? How about the long 9 months of war and suffering? The paragraph just focuses on Gaddafi's death being a "war crime" and how his body was dragged through the streets (Is that true? I want to see a video!). If this publication was from anywhere else it wouldn't have bothered me much, but this is published in Oman and the editor is most likely Omani. I'm going to write an email to the editor.

Anyway, in line with the buzz of saying goodbye to 2011, I figured I would do my own year in review. Just so everyone knows, this is a serious test of my attention span to dedicate so much time to a singular theme. I wrote the first post of my Hajj experience and have like 4 Hajj sequel posts in my drafts folder that I just cant get myself to finish. So this is just a fair warning... 

Also, I welcome comments or emails you might have concerning my feelings on 2011. What to know the most embarrassing thing that happened to me in 2011? Just ask! Want to know who I thought was the biggest idiot of 2011 was? Just ask! (you see where this is going.)

Before I end this post, this is a good read -

12 Really Stupid Things I Never Want To do Again

I think I've done all 12 at some point.

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