I'm one of a million.I'm so un-original in my feeble attempts to be original.I'm so mundane in my attempts to be one of a kind .I'm mediocre in my attempts to excel.And still I try.
I am my own hero in the making.
I am my own star.
I am special...like everyone else.
Oh that illusion! That cruel cruel illusion of the search for uniqueness...That wretched ambition to thrive.Ah!! That Goddamn potential...It physically hurts sometimes.
There's absolutely no good reason why I haven't blogged for the past six months..definitely not for lack of events or things to say! I'm a lazy fuck and I don't have the discipline that's the long and short of it .. I'm trying to squeeze one in now so that my last post of 2010 to be July's...
Anyhow there's another voice in my head now saying I'm actually using the blog as yet another way to beat myself up! Tremendously true!
This could be a whole New Year Resolution post where I promise to lose weight, be healthier, more organized and call the people I love more often! Not a fuckin' chance!
I do however want to look back at 2010 as it's been really good to me... Will do that when I feel like it.
Sayonara 2010 you've been a darl!
OOOh just before it ends.... (4 mins to go!) Best thing about 2010...This beautiful man curled up on the sofa beside me ... There's no one else I'd want to be with in New Year's Gourriiiii ...
Right at the beginning: And things just get better!
My buddy Ron and I having a serious conversation. He let me in on a secret that had to do with ...well..I aint tellin!
Russ Abbot, who plays Fagin now may be nasty on stage but he's an actual sweetheart! Very nice, very chatty!
Kate and her glamorous sausages and mash! Yes! in a Martini glass!
Mark Lester (The cute boy called Oliver all those years ago) et moi
Ron Moody addressing the cast and the Audience at the end of the show and celebrating 50 years of Oliver! Can you tell I'm not excited at all?!
Me toootallyyy blending in at the after party heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Okay, this is one of those things that just happens and is PERFECT! Had I worked months on trying to arrange this it couldn't have happened like that! Carolyn Bodley you have no idea ho happy you made this girl right here!
It just so happened that a colleague had tickets to Oliver! And it just so happened they were on offer and it just so happened that I got in at the right time and claimed them and it just so happened that they weren't any tickets but OLIVER! 50th ANNIVERSARY tickets (with drinks after and all)! and it just so happened that the lovely Kate was available that evening.
So it just so happened I was at one of my favourite musicals on earth with the best company! So yes special , special and more special! The seats were great! I could almost touch those miserable workhouse kids as they came out from everywhere possible singing 'food glorious food'
I wont review the play. You can find this in manymany other places. But I will tell you how it made me feel. To call it a feast for the senses is, well for lack of anything else that comes to mind, is the only way I could describe it at the moment.
At points in the play I was so overwhelmed by all the performances on stage I hardly knew where to look and what to look at. The 'Consider yourself at home' and 'Who will buy' segments come to mind quite strongly. But equally Fagin and boys' performances when Oliver first arrives!
Russ Abbot's Fagin is brilliant. Very true to Fagin but with a Russ Abbot take that I thoroughly enjoyed. Kerry Ellis was a wonderful Nancy and Steven Hartley a very convincing evil Bill Sikes. Both Gwion Wyn Jones as Oliver and Ben Wilson as The Artful Dodger owned the stage and were equally adorable!
All of this aside and more than how spectacular everything about Oliver! is, it's the way it made me feel! How it took me back to the first time I laid my hands on the book a good 19 years ago in school and read and studied Oliver for the first time. It was a grim story painted quite morbidly by our teacher who was trying to be true to the times.
So it was quite a surprise when right about the same time I saw the film and was greeted by one of the best musicals I've seen. With every song , every scene of the play I went back to our room in our old house in Alex where I saw Oliver for the first time.
And being the desperate reminiscing fool that I am of course I shed a tear or two (or a lot!). But nothing could've prepared me or anyone in the audience for Ron Moody aka THE FAGIN appearing on stage at the end of the play to celebrate 50 years of Oliver!
And nothing could've prepared me for meeting him, the original Oliver (Mark Lester) and the current Fagin after the show and having a lovely chat about how much this all meant to me! Not a bad night out I say!
There's so much I can say about this amazing little fishermen village. I can be all tourist guide'y and talk about the silky-sand clear -water beaches in the middle of green mountains that even on a grey day like today were absolutely magnificent!
On the footpath to St Ives
Seriously...cheesy as it sounds Carbis Bay and St Ives are a feast for the eye and I haven't even seen that whole of Cornwall yet!!
This is the kind of place you need when you don't want to do anything but have lovely walks, chill on the beach and tread cobble stone roads and browse little cute shops... Well at least this is what I and my better half did and it was one of the best days we had!
Not a sexy look but I can't walk with a pebble in my shoe!
There are so many things I'll remember about that trip: The picturesque footpath we took from Carbis Bay to St Ives ( we wanted to buy every single house we saw!) , the divine views, the self-drive boat ride we took at Porthminster beach, the beautiful hotel we're staying at,my lovely dragon (ehem temporary) tattoo...
If I'm honest though all of the above was made extra special being chronicled with my boy's extra extra special camera app...Really cool.
In a cool little antique'y shop where there's so much stuff you don't know where to look!
The streets look like they came out of a 19th century novel! So beautiful!
This girl has it all figured out. Not just her sense of style oh no!! that is a crust to a richer more delightful core that is Hana Tajima-Simpson.
We met to talk about her label , her style and when and why she decided this is what she wanted to do. We ended up talking about that and so much more:Family, religion her outlook on life and work.
I tell ya she's got it figured out! And to think of how much younger than me she is!!! (Nope not gonna tell you my age or hers!) All I could say is that at her age I was no where near being in the right place with myself and the world as she is (probably still not!)
Anyway we digress! OK Hana,her designs,her style and her label ...I stumbled across her blog Style Covered when I was researching for a piece about Islamic fashion. I took one look and I was hooked.
The one thing I noticed about her style is how simple and expressive it is. It's quite understated but there is no mistaking that the looks that Hana puts together are very deliberate and thought through and more importantly very true to who she is. (Check out her Abaya inspired wrap dress)
"My style is very eclectic." she tells me."I like different things." And it's true the looks she puts together vary from the super feminine with soft fabrics and clean lines to the layered funky boyish look.Like this one that I LOVE!
It all started with the blog ... "I started by reviewing catwalk shows and different looks and got good responses. But I found that I got most responses when I started styling myself and putting photos up on the blog. I had many positive comments about the looks an decided this is the way I wanted the blog to go"
And you can tell how well the relatively young blog is doing from the avid following. "It was just this instant thing where Muslim women can see a look and try it for themselves right away because it was on a real person.There wasn't anything like that for Muslim women before."
From Style Covered to Maysaa The success of the blog revealed a marked that was hungry for more."I've always made clothes for myself, especially when I became Muslim there was nothing out there that was stylish and was covered up at the same time and I felt I lost a big part of my personality in the beginning of my Hijab days. It took time from when I started wearing Hijab to my look today."
Another Hana look I adore (Maysaa headscarf and skirt)
But how did it go from making her clothes for herself to starting a label, launching it and turning it into a business? "Well, first of all I didn't want this to be a job. I wanted to remain passionate about it and not to be jaded. Especially that I had studied fashion before and left it because I saw what the industry was like from the inside and decided I didn't want that."
"After I'd settled into my religion(She became Muslim 5 years ago)and got married I though about what I wanted to do with my life.I asked myself what is it that I wanted to do that didn't feel like a job and it was designing.My husband suggested that we work on it together and so here we are. He handles the business side of it and I handle the creative part."
They've just launched her label Maysaa last month and have already met all their sales targets.Hana is now thinking about her next collection which she says will feature more colour and prints than the first one.
"I wanted the first collection to be a foundation for any wardrobe pieces that you can play around with and dress up and down.Timeless pieces that could work for you where ever. The next one [collection] I've added more colour and prints."
We finish our coffees and roam the streets and look at clothes.I show her the shoes I'm currently drooling over at Zara and she gives me her stamp of approval! During shopping I ask her about trends and whether she thinks about that when she designs her clothes. "Of course you follow what's going on in fashion but my clothes are very personal,timeless and that's the most important thing."
Watch this space for more Timeless pieces to come! Hana will be guest blogging and I'll be dropping in on one of Mayasaa's photo shoots soon.
Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call today his own: He who, secure within, can say, Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today. Be fair or foul or rain or shine The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine. Not Heaven itself upon the past has power, But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour
I was asked after Osama Anwar Okasha's death if my blog was named after him. It's not. Okasha is my mom's family name but I always told mommy how I wished he'd be one of her relatives.
This is late, it's very late actually but I'm not going to let that be an excuse not to do it like many things in my life!It's been almost a month now since the death of one of Egypt's and the Arab world's most important and influential television writers. But that's not why I'm writing this.
I'm writing this tribute to Osama Anwar Okasha because he's helped shape my life with his work and not in the cheesy sense of 'the big message and inspiring a generation'(even though he did do that and it's not cheesy at all) .. What's very special about my relationship with the late Mr.Okasha was that his influence on me started long before I became inspired by him and began to understand his influence as a writer and historian and how important his work is.
Oh and this is in no way an attempt on my part to analyse his work and technique it's not my place and I'm not equipped to do it. This is about a writer whose characters came to life right in front of me for so many years. I loved some, hated many,fell in love with a handful and remained loyal to the man behind them.
Ramadan and the sound of my childhood
El Shahd Wel Demoo' Intro
Osama Anwar Oksaha had become synonymous with many things for me over the years but first and foremost he was synonymous with Ramadan. Among the many sounds of my childhood the intros to his TV series which mainly aired in the holy month remain engraved in my memory and associated with family gatherings and after-Ifatr teas and sweets. His series brought families together around TV sets to watch his characters live their lives.
El Shahd Wel Domoo', Layaly El Helmeya, Ana Wenta We baba Fel Mish Mish, El Raya EL Bedaa, Dameer Abla Hekmat, Arabisque, Zizinya and many others were the staples of Ramadan and companions of my youth. Even though I caught up late on some of them after we came back from the US they remain part of me.
By no means do I intend to narrow him down to this list and the effect they had on me, but this is how he came into my life and many other millions of lives; in our homes, through our televosion sets. He came into our lives with the struggles of Zeinab in El Shahd Wel Domoo,through the eternal animosity between Seleem El Badry and Suleiman Ghanem in Layaly EL Helmeya that for the years of it's existence remained amicable and amusing. He came into out lives with Ali and Zuhra's epic love story in the same series and through the fallen hero that is Hassan Arabisque.
He dared to challenge TV tradition by presenting 2 seaons (parts) of El Shahd Wel Domoo' when it was unheard of and 5 whole seasons of Layali El Helmya. He confused and baffled audiences and critics alike with his quirky and innovative Ana Wenta We Baba Fel Mish Mish, changing the shape of Arabic TV drama and discussing everything from corruption to the freedom of press.
Ana Wenta We Baba Fel Mish Mish Intro
He stole our hearts and minds completely when he took us to school with Dameer Abla Hekmat with the legendary Faten Hamama hitting it right in the head with a question about why education in Egypt is in the dire state it is.Is it the lack of educational facilities or the lack of human resources or both? (Twenty years later the question remains unanswered and Egyptian education goes from bad to worse..That is another blog post!)
He managed to transform Sanaa Gameel into the notorious Fada El Me'addawy in El Raya El Beda where in the end of the last episode I was so ready to go out and join the sit-in in front of Dr.Abulghar's villa in Alexandria to save it!
El Raya El Beda clip
This is why, in my view, Osama Anwar Okasha will remain alive; because his characters are. They're real and alive because they were real and alive in Okasha's mind when he wrote them. Everyone had a story that was intricately related to the stroy of another that was all linked in the end to the story of a country ..told by those who loved and lived her.
Mommy and Layaly El Helmeya
Layaly EL Helmeya Intro
I once asked my mom why she,an avid TV hater and despiser, was a keen follower to Layaly El Helmeya and she said "because Osama Anwar Okasha writes life, when you watch you feel you're watching people's lives, you feel they are real." Only he could manage to get my mom away from her books and lecture preparations. He'd also managed to get conversations between me and mommy started on so many things starting with my questions as a youngster on why the King was bad and why the July 23rd revolution was good and why everyone loved Gamal Abdel Nasser so much and why Zuhra was so cruel to her mom when she grew up and what she'd suffered and why I should be grateful for mine and why Tawfiq El Badry was mommy's favourite character and what was so noble about him.
The other reason why Layaly El Helmeya in particular is so special to me is that I, quite literally, grew up with it. The series started in the mid eighties when I was a child and ended in the mid nineties when I was a teenager. Through the years the characters changed and grew and so did I ...How can you not connect with that? How can that not be part of who you are!
Alexandria
Zizinya Outro
The other major reason why Mr.Okasha holds a special spot in my heart is his love for my home town Alexandria. I fall in love with it over and over and over again when I see it through his eyes and I live in it with his characters. I get tears in my eyes everytime I hear the outro to Zizinya and remember Ramadan nights watching the series and listening to that song in the end; how it felt, where I was and man oh man how things have changed sisnce then!
There's so much I still haven't grasped in Mr.Okasha's work, a- because I don't see it often enough and b-because when I do see it I watch it with a sentimental nostalgic eye. I think one of my missions should be finding his work on DVD and watching it closely.
Okasha was an immaculate historical dramatist and a writer of the highest calibre some call him the Naguib Mahfouz of televesion and it's true; both the men's charachets are so alive you can smell them. Their dialogues ring so true you could swear someone you know had said that before! Okasha has managed to create a niche in Arabic television drama I have yet to see someone else fill.
He always had an eye on our past and was keen for us to understand and learn from it. He was constantly critical of the present and ever so worried about the future. Okasha was desperately in love with Egypt and I think it's safe to say that over the years Egypt grew desperately in love with him.
You know how sometimes you just don't want a film to end? No? Well sometimes I don't... and I haven't felt that way about a film in ages! But yes..I didn't not want this one to end!!!!!! EVER! Love Anna and Grace!
I was again glued to my TV set last night in utter disbelief at the course the events of the day had taken. Britain woke up on Tuesday morning still not sure when or indeed it'll have a new PM.
And by the end of the day, Gordon Brown had resigned delivering the most genuine and emotional speech I've seen him give and letting in the first conservative PM in thirteen years.
It was a breathtaking day as Nick Robinson put it on his blog.
However all these dramatic events did not take away from the night's suspense. Despite his trip to Buckingham Palace and his speech in front of No.10, David Cameron had so much more to tell the people of Britain, like:
What does a full and proper coalition with teh Lib Dems really mean? What jobs and how many are the Lib Dems getting in his cabinet? And how just HOW is a Lib-Con gov. going to work???
My favorite moments:
When GB's voice broke as he spoke about his family. Really touching.
When the Browns (including the two boys who are super cute and made GB look all sweet and human just for a moment) came out to greet the press on their way to Buckingham Palace.
Samantha Cameron starting to wave at the press and then breaking into a timid smile as if to say 'I can't believe I'm doing this!'
This should've been written months ago (in Feb to be specific) but since I've only just returned to my beloved blog, here we are.There's so much I can say about my first EVER London Fashion Week, Well, me first EVER fashion week full stop!
The S/S 2010. So much that it would be very hard to know what to say or where to start. I mean here I was in the midst of one of the most important fashion events in the world, jaw dropping and completely in awe when I realised this could never be something I do full time.
There's something to be said about getting too close to something you love, you get to see the nitty grittys; the not so glamorous side of it. When you're there you become too close to the actual putting together of the event, the dealing with models, seating arrangements, the press, the egos and the ridiculous amount of pretentious people all trying t get in and all trying to look like they belong ( I know I'm very safe in that category because I very much DID NOT look like I belonged at all!) The thing that struck me the most is how very VERY serious most of the people I met are about themselves and fashion.
But what did I expect this is LFW it's not the World Economic Forum (not that the latter doesn't enjoy it's fair share of pretenders and wannabes as well!) and they are both very serious events within their right.
This is not at all to say that I didn't enjoy London Fashion Week but I guess it was the complete outsider that is me being struck by all this ...hmmm..sartorialism shall we say. There were so many great looks on and off the catwalk. I managed to get really nice photographs and this one just below has got to be my favourite.
This cool fashionisto works in fashion production. I couldn't resist his Hermes bag and his D&G military jacket...Ah I WANT that JACKET!!!
Me
Me and the Alexander McQueen Tribute Wall
Fashion Blogger Katie Wright.Looove that red cape!
Rebecca
Lulu
A journalist for an Italian fashion magazine. Why can't I ever pull an outfit like that off!
Me just outside the venue at the entrance of Somerset House
Ok before I go, My favorite moments:
My first ever catwalk show. I loved every minute of it!!!!Eun Jeong's S/S 2010 collection was very true to her signature draping. I loved the necklaces hanging on the backs of the models.I loved the live music as the models walked down the runway.
At the end of the last day I saw a couple of fashionistas looking all glam and 'we're so important we're one of the event organizers' and as I was leaving I saw then take off their heels in agony and put on flats. And to make things that much better I saw them on the tube on my way home. All normal hee hee.
Szofia Cassidy: My first chronicled Style Inspiration. Love that jacket and the vintage'y bag!
Ok, I promise I'm not trying to be Face Hunter, Street Peeper or The Sartorialist(see my blog list;). Although I must, now that I'm talking about them admire what they do and thank them for it.
When those three entered my world; by sheer chance may I add, a whole world of style and uniqueness was open to me. It became less about fashion and more about style for me.They've made 'the beautiful people' very accessible. And in the midst of the pretence and wannabe'ism that we face everyday, a great deal of these photographs are about people with real individual style and originality. Thanks you guys we need more!
I must here mention the respect I have for them now that I tried to do what they do on a much much smaller and amateurish scale.
So yeah, back to me and my feeble attempts, I'm not trying to do what they do. I am, however, forcing myself from time to time to face one of my fears and walk to absolute strangers, tell them how amazing they look and ask if I can take their photographs...
Yes, you cynics out there and I know many of you (as I am one of you!) it is part of my self cleansing through blogging and trying new things and all that sort of shit. Yes this is what it is and I love it! So shut up! (me, that includes you too!)
I mean this whole blog whatever I write about is supposed to be first and foremost about inspiration people and things that inspire me and make me feel good and alive. Holding on to anything that captures my imagination and chronicling it and may be just may be being a little braver on the way.
Have I been successful so far??? yyeeeeeenoooooo... Well, I chicken out most of the time. I see so many amazing looking people and either convince myself that they are in a hurry or indeed that I am, or that my camera is not ready... but then out of the handful that I actually approached and the few that told me to go away nicely (or not)a couple of people said yes.
Szofia Cassidy is my first ever style inspiration subject and so she'll always hold a great place in my heart an on this blog!
I saw her in my local mall and she just looked absolutely effortlessly fabulous... Everything I love about a look. Simple and stylish with careful attention to detail. Loooved the Chanel style jacket and the vintage handbag.
Of course the second thing I thought after 'oooh look how stylish' is how I can adapt that to a hijab look? So let's see...I think the top and jacket are perfect may be with a baggier pair of jeans but not slouchy. may be flares or a nice boot cut. Or some nice linen baggy trousers I'm thinking navy (especially for my figure!) Zsofia, thanks for the inspiration and for the photos.
That's gotta be one of my favorite ones! When I saw it I told Kate I wanna be one of those children!
Me and the fun elephant
Me and the Henna Elephant
If this print was on a dress i'd toootallly buy it!
Bear looks happy!
Love the colours
I've always loved fiery colour combinations especially on elephants!
Around the world on 80 elephants
Those eyes!
Me and the monkeeez elephant
Fun fun fun calaaaz!
Today started out really shitty and ended fab. I went elephant spotting in Green Park with the lovely Kate and the combination of her,hot chocolate in Green Park and those coochie elephants made it all ok! Thank you Kate, Thank you Elephant Family.
Looking good in the hood, he's on eof my favourites that one!
Just opposite Trafalgar Sq. Ah woman step away from me elellphaaannnt!
I call this one below the Zen elephant
Ahhhhhhhh how cute is that!!!!!! (both of us I think!) The Lion ELepahnt!
If you're walking around your hood and suddenly notice a colourful life sized fiber glass baby elephant, fear not. This is not a remake of Planet of The Apes:The Elephants Return. Its actually the elephant parade. It's part of a campaign to save the endangered Asian elephant. It's organized by the charity group Elephant Family.
260 life sized baby elephants have been creatively painted and embellished by top artists to add some colour and awareness to the city.I must say I'm in love.
I walked around Covent Garden and Trafalgar Sq.giving tourists stern look to get away from me elephantz so I can take proper pics.And as you can see it worked ... ehemm at times. I'm on the hunt for more and will be adding them to this post. Sloane Sq. and Green Park next.
By the way this brings to mind one of my favourite (slightly made up) Arabic words... 'Feyoola'. 'Feel' is the transliteration of the word elephant in Arabic. The correct plural is Feyela (elephants). My more ringy ziny plural is feyoola. Hmmm this is the most I actually thought about this word ever!
After a marathon of a UK general election, the British people still have no idea who their Prime Minister is. It's a case of HP; a hung parliament. Which is fancy talk for 'no one won and the big boys have to play together after all'. Till this minute though; Gordon Brown is still resident at No.10, James Cameron and Nick Clegg are in talks and the world is left to watch and speculate.
Even the veterans of British politics (and there were many up all night last night) couldn't predict what would happen. The media muscle in all it's glory (that includes the virtual fortress of Jeremy Vine!) could only tell you what would happen if....
And more than 24 hours later that's still what they're doing. This post isn't really about political analysis but more about my personal reflections of the night and how I surprised myself in staying up all night last night watching it and staying up all night tonight blogging about it.
But before I go on I have a confession. Having lived in the UK for the last three and a half years I must say British domestic politics bores the shit out of me! Apart from Andrew Marr (with whom I have a real fascination) and the governments' stance on immigrants (like myself), I'm bored out of my head with domestic news.
I don't really care about UKIP ,UCAS , Unite, U name it! And still don't know my Berkshire from my elbow! (I'm not proud of it...I'm simply admitting that some of it confuses me and the rest is watching paint dry.)
BUT BUT BUT, last night was different. Actually the whole of last month was different. Thanks mainly to the PM debates. Suddenly there was a real race, the three men were... well, just that men, human. People whose policies we could discuss to our hearts' content but really, you just wanted to watch what they did, how they responded to each other and which one was going to make the first gaffe (ehemm Mr.Brown that would be you!)
And then came election night. The BBC's star cast pulled an all nighter to make sense of the results as they happen and to announce the potential resident of 10 Downing Street. As the night went on and the results came in ,things got quite unpredictable.
With each result announced, it became clear that there were no real winners. Oh, except (in my view) the Green Party's Caroline Lucas in Brighton (Parliaments first ever Green Party MP) and Labour's Margaret Hodge in Barking (eat your heart out Nick Griffin).
By the next morning this much was clear. It was an election of failures:
Labour lost 91 seats in parliament with only 258 it manged to grasp.
The Conservatives gained 97 seats but failed to get a majority with only 306 seats. 20 seats short of being able to form a government.
The Lib Dems..Oh the Lib dems! They were the biggest disappointment of the night. Not only did they not manage to cash in on the Cleggmania and gain a larger more proprtionate existence in parliament, they actually LOST 5 seats ending up with only 57.
All right,all right... I know,you know, I know! But seriously I was eating this stuff up like it's going out of business! Not really because of how unprecedented it was or because every expert alive and awake that night was saying they saw nothing like it.
Frankly this is the first ever British election I consciously follow. When Blair made history in 1997 I was more worried about being fat, my summer vacation wardrobe and whether the gang back in Alexandria would welcome me back or if I'd been officially ousted because I'd moved to Doha. Thirteen years later and I'm still worried about being fat. Oh! and about the outcome of this election.
Last night was more about that feeling I had when Obama was elected (not comparing the man's charisma or the night's outcome!) But the feeling that was a part of something big that I was watching (tweeting and facebooking) a new page in the history of this country. Even though I didn't vote, I haven't been here long enough, I still felt curious and anxious to know how this was going to turn out. But like everyone else I'm left to wait.
Just before I go,my own highs and lows:
My highs of the night: C4 and The Two Jeremies!
Jeremy Paxman. Loved him , loved him , loved him! He was animated as always but a lot less scary.
Jeremy Vine and his virtual bubble! Loved the dominoes, the tiles and the UK map floor!
