Booooored !!

Hey all,

How are you doing?? I feel that my mind is empty! I've thinking of something to write about in the blog, but my mind is suddenly out of ideas. I have written a long post lately, but I haven' published it cuz I decided to save it for the Baghdad-Diary project with the German magazine. I will post the diareis here as well as soon I start with the project. I got an email from the same journalist asking me to send some photos (not personal ones), but rather photos of interesting places or things near home and university. Luckily, I am a "photo-ist"! I have dozens of photos to almost everything in Baghdad as I like to take my digital camera with me everywhere I go. Sometimes I think that I should have been a photographer or something like that!

I applied for a visa to Dubai. Mom will go there this month, and I want to go with her cuz I have nothing to do here except for staying at home all time switching between the national and the generator electricity! And also cuz I want to see my friend Attawie. I haven't seen her since October 2003 before she leaves the country. But there is a problem! I might not be able to get the visa cuz first, my passport reads "Student", and they might not agree to issue me a visa!! A second reason is cuz it's so hard for an Iraqi to get a visa nowadays, especially after Amman bombings

:(

But I want to goooo!! Pray for me that I will get the visa easily!

Another thing, we got an email from the Fulbright lately telling the students who will take the Official TOEFL Test to prepare themselves to get scores higher than 575 cuz the High American universities will look first at them when accepting the Grantees in the colleges. Ta da!! My Official TOEFL scores are 557!! Can't I flip the numbers to make it just 575 instead of 557 ??!! I thought of retaking the test to get higher scores, but the deadline for registration was two days ago! Now this doesn't mean that I will lose my grant, it only means that high rank universities might not look at me!! Mom says that any university will be ok and I should not feel bad about this. I don't know!

I have some sort of obsession these days which is getting to each website of an American university! I'm checking all the colleges to get an idea about, and to see which one is better for my major field of study "Modern American Novel". I still have no clue! There might another test which the Fulbrighters and I should take. It's GRE Test. Some might take GMAT according their fields of study.

Dad was in Germany on a bussiness trip for two weeks, and he just got back home two days ago. So now you can imagine what did he bring with him ;) SHOPPING IS SO GREAT!! Especially if it's from a place like Germany! He's been talking about his trip telling every detail. Many photos were taking.


What else?! As if there was anything in the begining! Sorry for bothering you with this piece of junk called "post"!


Good Night, and please keep commenting!! ;)

Dolma Festival !!

Yaaay! We had a Dolma festival for lunch today!! Dolma is one of my favourite dishes. I wait for
it every Friday, and ask for it on every occasion or family gatherings! Dolma is a Turkish dish from where it originated, but it is found all over the Arab world.Each country has its particular way of cooking.For instance; the Turks line the base of the pot with cleaned pigs trotters, the Lebanese with lamb chops, while the Jordanians make each Dolma so small, each one a mouthful. My Mom makes it kinda large, and my Grandma calls it "pillow-like Dolma" !! :)

Basically any vegetable that can be stuffed is used; usually onions, vine leaves, courgettes, tomatoes and green peppers. In Iraq, we also use chard leaves instead of vine leaves [See photo above], onion, green peppers and any other vegetables that can be filled. Once the vegetables are stuffed they can be cooked, or even frozen until they are needed.

Check out more info about my favourite dish here

Want some Dolma recipes?!

Enjoy the photo! ;)

Happy Thanksgiving to you my friends and to everyone who is celebrating this holiday. I hope that you are enjoying your turkey!:)

Baghdad Diary

I received an email today from a person who is working as a freelance journalist for the German magazine NEON. ( And here is also a translated page of the magazine's website )The journalist is organizing a story for the magazine about the daliy life of five or six Baghdad citizens for one week. The diaries are going to be published in the magazine as episodes for a whole week. So I was asked if I could participate in this project to write about my dailt life and the difficulties I face everyday in the "most dangerous" city in the world.

Doesn't that sound cool?! I never thought that would come a day when I can write about my own life in a foriegn magazine!



Baghdad bloggers, did anyone of you get such an email ??

Meowing Cat

Just trying to blog from Flickr.

I don't like cats! But I've been chasing this little one for days trying to take pics for it.. It's been meowing non-stop all time for five days now!!

A Question

Hi all,

A new post is coming in the way, but there is a lack of electricity these days in Baghdad, and I also didn't finish writing the post yet. So it might take a couple of days to be published. So, while waiting for the new post.. here's a question for you. I will be glad to get some detailed answeres.

- If you were to choose one of the following, what would you choose? To hurt someone's feeling, or to be hurt ?! Why?


See ya :)

Some Random Stuff

I finally had the chance to watch Harrp Potter tonight!! I've been waiting for years just to watch one part of that movie. I searched for the books but didn't find them. And there is Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory on TV right now It's the old version of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. I guess the new version is more fun, especially when there is Johny Depp :)

Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone, I guess that was the first movie. I was sitting before the TV set all time, and didn't say one word.. Just watching and enjoying the movie. The good thing is that the TV set is kinda "huge" one, so I could watch every little detail.

What else.. Yes. I went to college two days ago and saw some of the classmates. There are no lectures yet! Can you believe this? College started almost two months ago, and still nobody goes and attends the lectures!! However, the M.A. students started with their study. Farah, my classmate who applied for the Fulbright with me but wasn't accepted, is one of the M.A. students in my department this year. She said that her first assignement is to study a play and discuss it next week. The play was "Everyman". Good luck for her.

So when I got to college, I saw the names of the M.A. students who have been accepted this year. The names were hung on the wall at the entry of the college. My name wasn't there for sure. I applied for it, and had the competitive exam in an oven-like place. I did well in the exam, but I knew that I wasn't going to go on with my study here! I had the feeling that it's going to be Fulbright.

Everyone was saying "sorry" to me cuz I wasn't among the "lucky" students of this year. Well, they don't know that I got what everyone wants to get! They don't know that I'm going to study in the U.S.. So who is the "lucky" here??! MEEEEEEEE. And in fact I went on with it and said " It's ok, I can apply next year!" I didn't tell everyone about the Fulbright. I was told during the interview I had in the embassy that I should not tell anything about it for my own safety.


Some news from college: Very few students found a job, and it wasn't within their field of Study! Abdul-Raheem, a Sumalian student and a classmate of mine, got out of Iraq and went to another country..but not back to his home. He's been here for six years, or maybe more. The big shock for me was some news about Ali Hashim, my classmates whom I wrote a post about, and put a photo for. His girlfriend dumpd him for a "richer" guy!!!! I remember that they were together all the time since our second year at college. And last time I met them they were extremely happy together, and they even talked about some planes they wanted to do together. And they said that they would get married in a short time after they both start with their M.A. study. They both applied for Master degree, but Ali gave up before the competitive exam cuz he knew he wasn't going to make it. Anyway, what I knew is that some guy who seems to be a rich one, or maybe a little bit richer than Ali asked for Alaa's hand for merriage. And she said yes! her reason is that she got a better chance! But Ali wasn't poor. She told him to be in her shoes and think about it, he would surely say yes. Where is the love?!

I'll go watch the rest of Wonka movie. Good night for all...

Eid Mubarak to all of you, may we spend next Eid in a happier world free of wars and terrorism

Nuts in my blog !

Hey all, I recently noticed that there are two types of attacks in the blogsphere; one is the spam attack, and other is the anonyoums comments attack! Now I can see why most of the bloggers decided to close the comments section in their blogs! I swear you have all the right to do this.. it's killing.

Well, the spam attack can be stopped easly by turning the Word verification on. But what to do with the other attack! Ignoring is not a good solution for it, I guess.

I had been attacked twice by anonymous commenters. One was telling me not to go to the U.S.A., and the other one was telling me to GET LOST cuz I don't deserve to study there! He claims that I support the carbombings in Iraq and that I want Sunnis to illegally rule over Kurds and Shiites. And who knows what's next! He might give me the title of a "Terrorist"!

I have to admit that he made me go back and read all my previous post all over again to check what the hell I wrote! I really don't wanna close the comments section in my blog, but I do expect respect from commenters. Simply, why do you read my blog if you don't like what I write?! Nuts is the last thing I want in my blog!



I could recover the sidebar finally. Thank you guys for the help.

John, I'm sorry that I didn't email you till now! I'm just being busy, I found you the tavern's photo.


See you all.