Sesquipedalianist

As a Muslim, I know I say Al Hamdulillah, a phrase used to thank Allah, a lot. I'm sure most of you do too. However, do we just say it, or do we actually feel it? Do we actually feel thankful for everything we have? If you are reading this, you probably have a place to call home, a considerable amount of food and water in your kitchen, money in your wallet, and dozens of pieces of clothing in your closet; I would also like to think that you are relatively healthy. Congradulations, you are among the top 8% of Earth's 6 billion citizens. That percentage, believe it or not, is very close to the acceptance rate of Harvard College. So yes, you are extremely lucky. Be thankful. In the world we live in, with all the technology and advancement, everything we could ever need or want is within our reach. Things people a couple of centuries ago dreamt of, we could now get in an instant. Almost none of us have to stuggle as much as our ancestors had to in order to achieve something. Yet, t...

Coming back from TEDxDubai a few days ago, I felt really inspired. I imagined myself up there as a speaker. To qualify as a speaker in a TEDx conference I would obviously have to be an expert in my field, I would have to have an innovative idea. I do. The implementation however, is the hard part here in Dubai. For over a year I've been thinking about universities and the majors that I might possibly pursue. There are over 30 universities, colleges or institutes in Dubai alone, and over 45 in the UAE. Obviously, there are many options to choose from, both in terms of university and in major. Everything is available here; law to medicine, engineering to fine arts, psychology to business, almost all of the majors available in the most developed countries are also available in the UAE. However, the problem isn't with the majors, its about what you're going to do with the knowledge you gained after your graduation. As developed as the UAE is today, it still lacks many things. Be...

** I would like to dedicate this post to some of my friends, they'd probably know themselves if they read the post. This is something I've been wanting to blog about for some time now. By trend, I don't mean fashion trends like most of you would think; I mean trends like in economics, the direction in which things tend to move. More specifically, I'm talking about the correlation between friends and relationships, and how each is affecting the other. From an Emirati's point of view of course. In the near past, if you think about our parents' generations, you wouldn't have seen many relationships . You'd see some, but the numbers wouldn't even be close to what they are now. If you haven't realized what kind of relationships I'm taking about yet, I'm talking about love or romantic relationships or whatever you may call them. If you spend time with your parents, you would notice that they are still in contact with some old friends of theirs ...

Yes, I am local, don't get me wrong; but there's something really annoying about the majority of us (including me) that just has to be said. Our school keeps us very aware of somethings that happen here in Dubai, and we are very fortunate for having that because most other schools/universities here do not, I realize that. Two days ago on Friday, I went to the annual Burjuman Breast Cancer Walkathon. It was through our teachers' efforts that many people signed up for the walkathon, and we were all excited about it. I hadn't gone to the Breast Cancer Walkathon before, and I thought that it'd be fun and interesting, and also beneficial in terms of breast cancer awareness and fundraising for research. So me and a few of my friends went. Emphasis on the few. Yes, most of us signed up, yet only me and 3 other locals from our class actually went. Our friends of other nationalities? Almost all of them came. I'm not trying to put my friends down or anything, no one was ...

I stopped putting up poems on the blog for two main reasons: - I haven't been writing any new poems ( because I had no time). - I felt like I didn't have the time to keep the blog running and updated. Both of those reasons, or excuses should I say, go back to the subject of having no time. I think everyone has this issue of having no time, right? Sometimes I say if only there was an additional hour in each day; I would say that 25 hours would be enough, but 24 hours just isn't. We'll lets do some math, a day contains 86,400 seconds. How is that not enough to finish what we have to do? An extra 3,600 seconds, an hour, will not really affect anything. We do not have enough time for anything, because we waste our times doing basically nothing useful. Then we make up for that wasting of time by reducing our sleeping time, which negatively affects the way our brains function. With a tired brain, we would be less effecient and it would take us more time to do things that we w...

I was going through my stuff looking for a g9eedeh to post, I found this. It really sucks, in my opinion, but it kind of has a message. At least it was meant to have one. I remember I wrote this around two years ago. I was chatting with someone who had just added me on msn, I had no idea who she was, but she was upset and she kept talking about how fake her friends were. Later that night, I felt like writing something, so I wrote this. At that time I had just started, so its probably very bad in comparison to the other g9eedeh I've posted. I just feel that something that comes from the heart would be way better than the most beautiful piece of writing in the world. Though there are four horrible lines that I think you guys could do without.. غرقانه في بكىً كان عني غايب مثل ماي البحر على اليرح قسوته بكاي و نوحي على معنى كلمه يعايب الصداقه الي من الصدق طالعه كلمته وين الصدق عند ناسٍ كانوا لقلبي حبايب و اليوم كلٍ منهم بان على حقيقته كل من دخل حياتي كان الحزن يايب لصدري ياب الضيق و...

A villanelle is a form of poetry. I love using this form because it gives a poem a sense of rhythm and rhyme. This specific poem was an in-class assignment, which meant I probably wrote it in less than an hour. It’s probably far from perfect; I rarely bother with doing revisions. I cry my eyes out each night All I ever think about is you I need you back in my sight With you my days are always bright I love you and because I do I cry my eyes out each night Kill myself from pain I might Even though you said we’re through I need you back in my sight I don’t know if what I’m doing is right My days seem all very blue I cry my eyes out each night I sit here feeling hurt tonight About what to do I haven’t a clue I need you back in my sight I bleed now from the lips I bite My love for you is ever so true I cry my eyes out each night I need you back in my sight Another love poem: simple, easy, doesn’t require much imagination. I’m not a great fan of love poems myself, but I find myself leaning ...

I spent a lot of time in thinking of what poem I’m going to post first, since I’m just starting, most of my Arabic poems simply suck. At least that’s just my point of view about them; whatever I write, no matter how shitty it turns out to be, people say that its great, and I have no way of knowing if they’re being sincere or not. I decided on a poem that was really hard to write, maybe the hardest one I’ve written; it’s not even complete. It’s the first poem I tried to write 3ala ba7ar, or ma3arf maybe it’s the first one where I succeeded in doing so. I haven’t been able to do that in any other poem I tried to write afterwards; that probably indicates how long a road I have to down in order to be a good poet. Ktabt bs 5 abyat, hayail I really like, ana katbeh 3 abyat zyadeh bs a7s y5arboon 3al g9eedeh bdal may3adloonha. Its still incomplete to me, bs I couldn’t manage to add anything to it without ruining it. I love this poem because through writing it I discovered that ayshay maktoob ...

Before I post anything new I'm going to post some of the poems I've written a few years ago, I thought I'd start with an English poem... This poem is one of my favorites. I've written it for a class last year; we were asked to write a poem about loneliness, that was the only restriction we had to writing this poem. The first thought that came to my mind was to write about a child, or any person, who's sitting alone or in a dark place. But while brainstorming, I realized that that's a very literal representation of loneliness; I changed my idea. In the end I wrote about a real person, a friend who I think as being very lonely; that might not be true, but it’s how I think she feels. I got a 100% for that poem, I tried to include as much emotion as I could; I would never have managed to write such an effective poem as this turned out to be if I'd written about that lonely child. She’s the center of attention; Wherever she goes they go. She knows the latest goss...

Definitions- Sesquipedalian: A long word, or a word with many syllables Sesquipedalianist: A person which uses long and unusual words. This isn’t another story blog, its basically going to be my online poem book. I like poetry, I never knew I would, I guess sometimes extreme boredom has its good sides. Maybe someday I’d be a good published poet, but as for now I’d like to share both my Arabic and English poems with everyone so that I can get encouragement and criticism. Many people hate poetry, I used to hate it too, but that was because I never really understood it. We've all, at some point, felt like going to sleep while reading a poem in elementary or middle school; and many of us probably still hate the mention of poetry...but that's basically because we tend not to bother reading it as it is supposed to be read... A poem is like a coded diary entry. A book of poems in chronological order of dates is basically a coded diary, one that anyone can read, but one that can only b...