35 Stuff

1. I’m 100% Indonesian

2. I just a Saudi citizenship

3. I’ve been to 19 countries; at least 40 cities

4. Between those travels, I lived in Jeddah for 22 years, in Amman for 3 years, in Aceh for a year, and I'm now residing in Central Java.

5. I travel so much that I can build a nest anywhere

6. I converse in three languages, and curse in 5 others. Do you wanna know?

7. I love food and - of course - I’m fat!

8. I can't be bothered about appearances, so you don't worry about trying to impress me, I already am!

9. I’ve been writing since I was 9 years old, and my diary was my best friend since

10. My other best friend is the cigarette, but it's a one sided love, I know.

11. I love cats and dogs.

12. I'm a great therapeutic masseuse, ask anyone I've massaged

13. I used to love to booze and funny-cigarettes, but the Timekeeper told me that I can't do that anymore

14. Oh yeah, and from March 2008, he took me under his wing, so that I don't get lost anymore

15. I have a rocky relationship with my mother.

16. Which is my explanation why I have a strange self-image.

17. I think romantic love is overrated, just like everything else in life

18. My friends ask me about sex & relationship, and my advice works like wonders, just not for me.

19. For a long time, I confused sex with love

20. I used to think that I'm bisexual, then I found out the hard way that I'm not.

21. I think homosexuality should be as sublime as heterosexuality, but it's fun to tell until it's embarrassing to know

22. I think that world moves on two purposes: satisfying the stomach, and what's below it.

23. I'm always right until proven wrong

24. I don't have a plan, so don't ask

25. I'm not in a rush, so don't tell me about biological clocks.

26. I love physical activity, as much as it scares me to ache.

27. I try everything, at least once!

28. I like people, seriously, the more I know is the better I feel about myself

29. I’m comfortable with what I don’t know

30. Freedom and money and long-term commitments scare me

31. I’m very proud of my siblings and cousins

32. I'm well-aware of my neurotic tendencies; that I’m self-centered and egoistical, but the Timekeeper doesn't mind

33. I'm nice to hang-out with as long that you don't bring textbooks

34. I love stories, so tell me some

35. I think you're my best friend, otherwise you wouldn't read all of this narcissistic garbage

If you hate living in Saudi Arabia, if you hate your life wherever you are, read this.

I'm leaving the country in four hours from now. I don't know if it's permanent or not, but I'm not leaving my cat behind, just in case.

Tell you the truth, I'm as sad and terrified as I am excited about going. What if I don't make it out there? What if I don't have the stuff to keep me from falling back to this 'comfort zone' that I'm so used to? What if, after all the fuss to keep me from coming back here, I realize that this is HOME?

I've heard lots of people congratulating me for leaving in the last week. As much as I've heard people lamenting it. Everyone wishes me luck, though, I just don't know if that's all it takes: A slice of Lady Fortuna's cake.

Anyhow, even if I do come back, I know that I can at least gloat about the fact that I've tried to break the barriers and do what a lot of people wonder about. Whatever the results may turn out to be, there's no denying that what I'm doing now is just another step in actualizing myself. It could be a wrong step. But it's a step that I'm putting my whole mind and heart into it. And that's all that matters right now.

So, Mr. Head and Aadi, if you're reading this, consider the fact that it doesn't matter where you live or what choices you're stuck with. The question is, are you living your life being true to yourself? Are you sincere in what you're doing?

Because in the end of the day, the ONLY point of our life, in working, in living, in learning, is Ibadah (All acts of worship for Him).

Please take care of yourselves.

Beginnings and Endings

Does it take only words to destroy or build everything?

When God said, “let there be light”, did He also set the general rule to how words are going to affect His creations?

There is a bunch of powerful words used in human interactions that bonds or separates, does or undoes. Words like “I do”, or “I divorce you”, are stuck in my mind right now. I didn’t think that just by saying “I do” people automatically transfigure into the perfect couples. Just as I think that by saying “I divorce you” doesn’t dissolve a marriage.

But it does mark the beginnings and endings, doesn’t it?

One way or another, words are all that it takes to define the beginnings of beginnings, and the endings of ends. Words cannot dissolve hurts and disappointments, children and assets, memories and longing; but – boy – those things sure get fortified in multitudes with the more words spent on them. Imagine saying, “I’m a chicken” few hundred times a day, chances are that by the end of the month you’d be fainting in every Tazaj and Albaik restaurant where you see your relatives on your plate.

So the possible reason why some marriages don’t work is because some couples forget to repeat the words that they started their marriages with. “I love you as you are, and I’ll be with you till I die, whether you like it or not.”

What’s so sad is that, despite of its irreversible finality, and because they’re so filled with the sense of hollow, words of endings seem to echo more persistently than any other word every spoken or thought about. “I miss you. I’m sorry. I’m leaving. Goodbye.”

And the ultimate words of a conclusion:

The end.

Neighbor’s girl has been coming to our house every day for the past week.

Pardon my lack of posting. I have been disoriented.

Husband knows of my overly-suppressed bisexuality. So he makes the initiative to invite neighbor's girl over, you know, to use the computer and stuff. He actually enjoys seeing my disgruntled look over her presence; either I get her on the floor, or I throw her out of the nearest window.

Today, Neighbor’s girl took off her abaya and headdress as soon as she got into the house. At least today she’s not wearing a tank top to make it harder for me not to stare at those milky shoulders and arms and…cleeeeeavage.

Neighbor’s girl pulls a chair to sit beside me. She’s freaking just 20 cm away from me.

My stomach turns into a block of ice. Eyes glued on laptop’s screen, stylus furiously clicking from one embarrassing webpage to the next, and here’s this horny teenager subtly offering herself to me.

She leans from behind me and the alarms go off. I cussed quietly, “Damn bitch, this table is 180cm wide, and she couldn’t find a way to put the phone away without pressing those 34-C boobs on my head?”

She reaches to hug me. Quick! Brainstorm solutions to get me out of this!

a) I could hug her back, which definitely would lead into feeling her breasts, her ass and what’s between her legs. Then after an hour of that and some more, maybe we could feed Lay’s Potato Chips off each other’s nipples and stuff.

or

b) I could just gently move away from her hand, and keep all limbs and gazes limited to the handles of my computer chair. Definitely a more reasonable option.

Except that when I did option b), I almost slapped her arm raw, flipped her off the chair, and made me wish for an option c).

She notices my discomfort, but then totally blunders in figuring out why I’m so frigid in my chair. She squeals in that spoiled, seductive tone, “Hey, I’m so sorry that I’m bothering you like this,”

“Hey, don’t mention it. You’re sole purpose in my life is to take advantage of my kindness anyways. So, whatever.” Yeah, baby, throw the rotten eggs at me now!

Neighbor’s girl is taken aback from cold bluntness. She coos and whimpers, she packs her things, and is very glad that her brothers or boyfriend demand her to come back downstairs where all the genetically-no-brain-gifted people dwell.

I keep my limbs closely glued to my chair until I’m sure I can hear my fantasies walk away for another 24-hours break.

I take a deep sigh and get off my chair and walk away from the livingroom. I lucidly curse the husband for putting me through temptation, despite knowing how susceptible I am for sin. I thank Heavens for still make 'em like the neighbor's girl. If I make it like this without breaking my leash through Summer, I should get discounted mental therapy sessions for it.

I pressed my palm on a new boob today. I did it in a simple flowing gesture. For a brief, sizing, moment.

The boob owner couldn’t swallow the gesture, so she just kept talking away.


When I told the husband about it, he guessed correctly, “small boob?”


***

After looking at a Bang-Olufsen Catalogue, I asked the husband "What kind of job would make a person have everything in this life?"

Husband said, "Drug dealing, corruption, money laundering, withholding zakah, Jewish-style business making, to name a few."

I said, "So the question to that question is actually, do you really WANT everything in this life?"

Cool fact about blogging

Blog Readers Spend More Time and Money Online
By Sean Michael Kerner
August 10, 2005

The blogosphere is big and its readers spend more time and money online than Web users who don't read them.

Fifty million Americans, or 30 percent of all American Internet users, visited a blog in the first quarter of 2005, according to a new report from Comscore, and sponsored in part by SixApart and Gawker Media. Traffic increased by 45 percent from the first quarter of 2004.

The average blog reader viewed 77 percent more pages than the average Internet user who doesn't read blogs (16,000 versus 9,000 for the quarter), the report found. Blog readers average 23 hours online per week, compared with the overall Web user's average of 13 hours.

Blog readers are 11 percent more likely than the average Internet user to have incomes of or greater than $75,000. Similarly, blog readers are 11 percent more likely to visit the Web over broadband either at home or the office.

Blog readers tend to make more online purchases. In the first quarter of 2005, less than 40 percent of the total Internet population made online purchases. By contrast, 51 percent of blog readers shopped online. Blog readers also spent six percent more than the average Internet user.

"Blog readers are an attractive audience to advertisers: they are more likely young, wealthy, on broadband, and spend significantly online," said Rick Bruner, co-author of the report. Bruner has since joined DoubleClick as research director.

Nearly 40 million blog readers visited blogs hosted by BlogSpot, LiveJournal, TypePad, Xanga, AOL Journals, Blogs.com and MSN Spaces. As blog readership has grown overall, so has the traffic on the hosted blogs. Six of the major host report growth of greater than 100 percent on a year-over-year basis. Blogs.com had the highest growth rate at 241 percent, followed closely by TypePad with 240 percent growth. Overall, BlogSpot holds the top spot in terms of the greatest number of unique visitors, at 19 million, up from 7.7 million a year ago.

Bruner told ClickZ Stats the scale of consumer-generated content was among the notable findings in the report. "Blog hosting site Blogspot, owned by Google and affiliated with Blogger.com, with more than one million blogs hosted, gets more traffic than NYTimes.com, USAToday.com or WashingtonPost.com," Bruner stated.

Click on graphic to view chartAmong the 30 million users who also visited a non-hosted or stand-alone blog, news and political blogs held the largest audience share at 43 percent. A "Hipster" category was a distant second at 17 percent. Additional categories include tech (15 percent), women (8 percent), media (8 percent), personal (6 percent) and business (3 percent).

www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/demographics/article.php/3526591