going for hajj

i'm going for hajj in a few hours now alhamdulillah, only found out yestrday that im going today (it was originally tues), i hadnt even packd!
so if i havent already asked you all , please forgive me for anythign i have sed or done to offend you, and for those comments i deleted, which come to think of it were actually quite funny...

al rescate amigos to the rescue my friends

im doin some volunteer work at my mums school at the mo, just a day a week.. but its actually more fun than i imagined, the teaching assitant was like "u teach maths with such passion"!

at the mo, im workin with foreign kids who dont know much english. i remember my first day i was working with this polish kid, he was very quiet, he just wouldnt talk, i thort maybe he lacks confidence, so i thought id talk about something familiar to him- so i asked him to describe his family, his parents, what they do at christmas time etc... then i went home bcoz i was just workin half a day that day. then later that day in the evening my mum was like, "u kno that polish child you were workin with, i don't know what it was but he just cried all lunch time. i kno his parents hav been going thru a divorce for som weeks now, but i wonder what triggered him off all of a sudden.." ...woops
but it's also quite fun, and at times challenging liek yestrday i was working with this girl on english comprehension and the word "mud" came up and she didnt know what mud was, i tried explaining it's the dirt that flowers, plants and grass grow out of, etc but she still seemed unclear so i drew a plant pot and an arrow (i happend to draw a curved arrow) pointing into it at the mud so she's liek "oh u mean like jumping"! lol ther quite funny sometimes like when i asked if she knew what a rock was and she replied "u mean like music?" ..awww bless their little cotton socks

obama

im not much into politics, but even even i felt quite happy about barrack obama winning presidency, perhaps itll help the US gain bak som of the respect it once had. i rember seein something about his campagn abt a year/year and half ago and remeber thinkin tht a black man would neva b president, esp if he's got a kenyan (hence muslim) background, but wudnt it be awesome if he did, and now, mashallah, perhaps there's hope for the americans yet.

Tijuana, Mexico

Tijuana is just at the other side of the border but you can certainly tell when you've crossed the border, there's a world of difference between san diego and tijuana, as you cross the border you see hundreds of crosses for all the mexicans that died trying to sneak into USA... it is a very poor country with people living in shanty buildings and just absolutely anywher they can, in fact there was this statue of a woman just outside tijuana and there were people living inside the statue (wonder where the front door was)!
and theres a lot of drug trafficking there as well so they check you pretty thoroughly on your way back into the USA, but people go to tijuana for shopping, leather and silver, they sell high grade silver very cheaply, we bort a fair amount of silver coz the shop keeper gave us good deal bcoz i had that "spannish look" about me he said.. and i was also given a spannish name- roseta... ther so friendly there, trying to sell you things, lol one of the mexicans even tried to sell my 16 yrs old brother viagra!
and then there were the Zonkeys (donkey with zebra stripes) round every corner, which we all took a picture with wearing sombreros...but unfortunately we didnt go much further than tijuana, as we only spent a day there

good answer little boy

I was talking to my 3 year old nephew the other day and he was stood with both his hands behind his back so i said..
"what's in your hands hamza?"
so he opens both his hands in front and replies
"lots of fingers!"

good answer i thought

wild west

toook me a lot longer than i expected to re-adjust to british time, 8 hours is alot!
but i did have a brilliant time when i was there, i met red indians, cowboys, and biker gangs, its jus like on tv! also went to a real cowboy town, went horse riding near the canyons, saw the settings for sooo many movies and watched a live performance of "phantom" (phantom of the opera) in las vegas, which was just amazing! but a good holiday jus makes it all the worse wen u return... imagine spending 3 weeks in the hot desert then coming home to rainy england...
still one thing i can say abt here is we jus don't realise how lucky we are when it comes to eating halal food. it is VERY HARD eating halal in america, its nothing like england, they don't do vegetarian, they dont have those lovely little "v" signs everywhere. you may go into a restaurant and order fried shrimp and rice but the shrimp will be beer battered and the rice boiled in chicken broth, veg. soup also contains chicken/pork broth! so you really gotta wise up... guess you don't become one of the fattest nations by eating vegatables!

san francisco

unfortunately the peru trip got cancelled but i can't really complain because alhamdulillah i've been to soo many places, hollywood, san diego and even tijuana, mexico but ill just blog about san francisco, since that's more recent.
its an interesting place, we did all the touristy stuff, went to fishermans wharf, walked across the golden gate bridge, saw alcatraz and angel island. san francisco is a beautiful city with an awesome skyline with tall skyscrapers, and amazing victorian style houses.. however, if you take a wrong turning into one of the side streets or carry on too far down the same road, you'll end up backstage where you'll see true america, streets smelling piss, full of crime and poverty literally in your face...

but we were shopping on market street which is kind of a posh street with stores like macy's, bloomingdales, Tiffany &co and all tht sorta stuff. then i rembrd reading about a seafood restuarant on market street tht sounded alright so we thought we'd give it a try. now some streets in america can literally go on for miles and this was one such street, we didnt realise that and it took us 2 trams to get to the area this restaurant was in. like i said earlier, you don't wanna go 2 far down the same street or you'll end up at the wrong sorta place... this area seemed a bit wierd but we eventually found the restuarant and it lookd posh, it had floor to ceiling windows from which we could see that it was absolutely packed out, all the tables were full... with men!
yes, that's right i had lead my mum, dad and my younger bro and sis directly to a gay bar! so we jus kinda stood there awkawardly for abt a minute lookin like a bunch of wallys before catching the next train outa there!
so that was san francisco, tomorrow, VEGAS!

somebody gonna get a hurt real bad...

i was in the in the waiting room for x-rays in dews few days ago and i was jus tlkin to this woman, who was in a wheel chair with a nasty lookin injury..

"so what happend to your leg?" i asked
"it wer' kids arguin and bickerin, i was yelllin at them to shut up and they wouldn't listen so as i ran to them, i ran right into broken glass"
"i'd give em a good hiding!" i laughed
"oooh no!" she said sternly, "i'd never touch my kids, they wouldnt have any of that! ill send em to bed at 6pm instead"
(woah, easy tiger)
...

lol i immediately thought of russell peters (commedian) and his bit on beating up kids, (chek it out on youtube, its quite funny)... i didnt realise parents actualy used such punnishment, i seen em do it on tv but i didnt think they really did that. truly is a difference between the way white people bring up kids and how everyone else brings up kids!

graduation

was my graduation on wednesday, am now 21, got my masters of engineering and am freeeeeeee. tho som of my frends hav really got it goin on, dais workin for toyota in belgium, maria's in new york workin for som investment bank and lena's workin in vietnam... as for me im goin to dublin on wednesday or thursday then to claifornia in august, stayin home for ramadhan and to peru in october (inshallah), this time am gonna try update my blog more wen im abroad, i shuda don that wen i went to uganda, but u want to spend the least amount of time possible in front of the computer wen yor abroad

another year

so i'm finally home (for the foreseeable future), i was rather suprised my dad managed to fit all my junk into his car, but he's good at making shapes fit together and finding space and being efficient (the logical thinking of a good engineer) so i stood back and watched in awe...
so as we were driving bak i was like "yeh i got a 2.1 and i'm really happy with that..." etc and he says..
"could you not resit some exams or something and turn that into a 1st"
"HELL NO!! i jus spent 4 years in coventry! i aint wasting another year for the sake of vanity, u know a 2.1 is a very respectable mark..."
i was slightly annoyed at that remark, can't imagine another year at warwick, i started the year ready to leave, no way am i doing another year there, or at least not now and certainly not to try and up my grade, that would jus be such a waste of a year especially because i'm very prone to moodswings and so i can't perform consistently, jus look at the past 3 years, i got a 2.1, a 2.2 and a 1st...
i'm gonna take abt 6months-year out now till i work out what i wanna do, i got a lot of exotic ideas for a year out...

woop! woop! its the sounda the police!

i went to london for the first time in 10 years last weekend, and i had a really good time...at first when i arrived i wanted to show that i was from the north so i topped up my oyster card in a scottish accent and made the assistant tell me to take the northern line (the underground) to leicester square even though i knew... but london was fun...

watched a musical in the west end, went shoppin on oxford st and watched the street perfomers on the banks of thames, some of them were quite good, there was this one group of break dancers we were watchin, shazia was a bit reluctant to go upclose but i told her "ther break dancers, its not like ther gonna pik u out the crowd and ask u to do a headspin!" so we went up close, they were jus warmin up the crowd, so we stood there clappin and he walks towards me and picks me out! he made me kick the air and go "woop! woop!" so i did... then he tries to make me do something else and im like "mate, could u jus do the show" and hes like "yeh, jus do this and ill leave u alone" "leave me alone!" so he pinched my cheek and goes "aww yor so cute" and carries on with the show... much to shazias amusement.

We went to quite a few places in central london, all the places i wanted to go but unfortunately i didn't bump into sweeney todd (johnny depp) even though i cunningly spent more time near near trafalgar square (going to fleet street would have been a bit too obvious), perhaps next time i'll try hanging out at the strand instead (its closer to fleet st)...

15th June

Played football today for the first time in years! forgot just how fun it is, shame girls don't do 5 a side or som form of football...altho to be perfectly honest i wouldn't mind playin with my older brother and his mates (he takes my younger bro afterall) but i kno that its not "proper" or woteva so it jus wouldn't be possible, oh well....

had my last exam on monday... cant say i felt perticularly relieved or anything... but i guess am glad its all over, was a pretty stressfull 2 weeks, now i gotta sort the rest of my life out, first things first, i need to find mself a place to live....
my contract for this place runs out at the end of the month and we got building work goin on at home so my parents r like "yeh yor not gonna b able to live here right now, its 2 dusty" (i hav a mild allergy to dust) "err ok.. so wer am i sposed sleep/live?" "dunno... yor brothers front room?" so i shud sort that out (not perticularly keen on crashing on my brothers sofa)...

then i need to sort out wot am actually gonna do in my amazing year out, job or career, etc...

i soo cant be arsed to do any of that... tempted to jus see wer life takes me (but i guess that wud b an arranged marraige back to mount p, lol tht shud b motivation enough to get my arse in gear)...

Worrying that I'm not worrying

we had our group presentation today (presentaion on our dissertation) and i handed in final pice of coursework (ever!) i feel so relieved! i now neva have to see zakary again...come to think of it, he wasn't really a bad guy...

now i got 6 modules to learn and revise for in less than 2 weeks! WOOP! WOOP! bring it
its gonna be AWESOME

I am just a stranger

i was watchin my super sweet 16 the other day (coz we only get freeview and i got bored of repeats of antiques roadshow) and some girl actually hired a fashion designer for 10 grand to help her buy the right dress for her bday!! it was in dollars but thats still more than ill spend for my entire wedding lol, i just lov how dramatic americans r bless em... like my american lecturer who spent the first 5 minutes of the lecture running round tryin to find wet wipes (wet paper towels) to wipe the slightly dusty but clear black board, such drama...beautiful...

featherwieghts and giants

Well we've just handed in our group dissertation, what a beast, cost us like £180 to print it out, but its cool we managed to charge it to the department, and i've jus handed in this other rather large piece of coursework, its full of obvious and sillly mistakes but am hoping they'll see the inner beauty...

a crippling habit

there's this really crippling habit of mine that i gotta break out of and that's doing the first stupid thing that comes into my head without giving it a second thort... like when i'm writing an email, i don't sit and think for ages, i jus write it as i think it, i don't proof read it if its longer than 3 lines and i jus hit send.. i was writing an email to my group jus now and i made a sarcastic joke abt my supervisor (good ole zakary) and hit send... then realised after it went to him as well.... tht's not gonna b a joke well recieved lol its like my mum once sed to me after i made a silly suggestion then tried to retract it, she sed "yes but the problem with u is that u actually go and do these ideas u get"... i don't know y i dig mself those holes and i don't know y ill do it agen

No giving and no winning

not a lot to do in cov, so its a bit of a bitch that i gotta spend the vacation here, but its not all bad, decided to hav a go on the piano 2day (we hav a piano in the kitchen coz well, u kno, am tht sorta person), so i got the piano notes to november rain online, i sat on the piano stool, put my right thumb on the c note and positioned all my fingers correctly, back straight, took a deep breath before commencing, then i thort....."oh wait i cant play the fuckin piano!"

!xobile

was watching balls of steel yestrday, quite disappointin it was. think its the sorta thing u find funny the first and second time u see it, then yor jus like "wtf?! y are u making a fool of yorself then showin it on tv?? i feel embarassed for u" it jus wasnt funny, it was jus plain stupid, pointless and tasteless, the sorta immature and pointless thing a 16yr old boy might like... speakin of immature boys, i managed to trick my lil brother into admitting he liked som1 and then i blackmailed him into tellin me who it was, quite cleverly so if i may say so myself... but i will hold my end of the deal and not broadcast it (lol not that any1 who reads this wud care)...actually i've forgtten mself who it was, oh well...

hey raisa... i got somthin to tell u which i think is best i don't tell u directly... i kind of let it slip to my dad that we may be plannin a weekend trip to dublin and he sort of took it as an invitation for himself and yor dad, which then lead to an extended invitation for the slave girls, and i think u know wher am goin with this... errr...soz... but i think the situation is still rescuable... wen we get to ireland, we'll find a rainbow, sprint to the end of it, break the little pikey leprechauns legs, steal the pot of gold, kiss the blarney stone, wish the family wer bak home and with the gold we'll rent out hotel bono, replace all the guiness taps in ireland with kibla cola then buy tickets for a river dancing show... sorted

msn

u kno, browsin he msn homepage sometimes impresses me.
the ppl that com up with the article subjects are good...they always seem to know the less obvious stuff that ive been discussin just that week...like wether life in the north or south is better or what the best places in the world to visit are, and i find tht a bit impresssive but the articles themselves...wot a fuk up indeed, like take todays article...

"Recognising Depression... The signs and symptoms include: a pervading feeling that you're 'blue', down, feel despair, are sad, not yourself, low in spirits - essentially depressed."
who would have thort it...if you feel depressed then u may have depression..wow...

dsfhykh

i swear my supervisors jus tryna piss me off now...
Spent the best part of 5 hours gettin these drawings upto scratch, so we go to show him and he says:
"where's the date and title? How am i sposed to read this with no date and title??"
wtf?! perhaps i should have also included what zodiac year i was born in? or maybe who my favorite childhood hero was???
the technicians making the component from the drawing are not gonna give a fuk wether it was drawn on 18th or 19th of february or whether ive given it the title "final fantasy" or "valve casing"... he's jus doin this to piss me off now

a big fat nothing

i was jus thinkin about som of the funny things my frends have said or done, like wen saaran made her pasta and brussel sprouts and out of date spinach porridge with a dash of vinegar and a squeeze of lemon, man i laffed so hard when she offered me some and when my other frend said "yeh i went straight from goofy to soofy"and the best was my mate last week...

me: "so how comes yor flatmates got a problem with u?"
my mate: "i dnt kno wots up ther ass! jus little things like noise, music and oh, coz i smoke weed in my room, and let my frends get hi and raid the kitchen. i mean of cors my frends are gonna eat first before clearin up the plates they broke..."

in shop and office

last week was quite a week, on sunday night i went to sleep at 11.30 then woke up naturally at 9.30, i went to all my lectures, workd, and alla tht shit then came tues..thort id workd hard enough to take it a bit easier so went to sleep slightly later, woke bit later, etc then come thurs and friday, forget abt it! my fkd up sleepin pattern was one of the better things goin on, ill not go into detail but the week was enough to tell me that the higher you climb the further you fall

so children, the moral of the story is: dnt climb too high coz ull jus hav more to fall...