It's over!

My week from hell is finally over. It was good that i was mentally prepared, because it has been both physically and emotionally exhausting (my poor baby car is hurt real bad).

Reflecting on the last few days i was delivering a training course at work, and i just realized, not once have i rolled up my eyes and thought "oh what idiots". They were all actually really smart, and interesting.
It's nice to meet smart people at work, makes your job a hellovalot easier and fun-ner :P

A perfect end to a long week

My long week has finally come to an end. I was adamant about avoiding Air Algerie at any cost, and the cost was an extra day in Algeria, chillin' by the pool and catching up on the office gossip with a colleague who was equally adamant about avioding the same airline :)

Here's a pic based on Kent's request

I am sooo relaxed now. I should do this more often.

you can run, but you can't hide

I read this interesting article on BBC News about the so-called operation last chance.
"The search for the 94-year-old former SS medical officer has taken investigators from Germany all around the world"

At 94 the dude must be sooo friggin old! I wonder why they even thought he was alive...
Well this is why:
"Heim's daughter has said that her father died in 1993 in Argentina, but a death certificate has never been produced. Neither she nor her two brothers, who live in Germany, have claimed the estimated $1.5m (900,000 euros; £750,000) that sits in a European bank account in Heim's name."

Man i wonder what it feels like to have a father who was a mass murderer! A Nazi! I don't think i'd want his money... or his name...
Oh and how the fuck does a SOCIALIST make this much money 40 years ago! i can't believe there are still those who believe this system actually works. It's like believing the calendar method qualifies as a birth control method, and you can't have alcohol if you want to conceive. You have to be drunk off your ass you want to conceive anyway - i.e. alcohol is a must. (sorry for the reference here, but everyone seems to be popping out little ones around me - so it's the theme for these days)

Here's what the old wrinkly Nazi has done

"According to Holocaust survivors, he performed operations and amputations without anaesthetic to see how much pain his victims could endure. "
"Injecting victims straight into the heart with petrol, water or poison was said to have been his favoured method at Mauthausen. And when he was "bored", he apparently timed patients' deaths with a stopwatch. "
"...cutting off the head of a murdered Jewish prisoner and boiling off the flesh to enable the skull to be used as an exhibit. "
"removed tattooed skin from one victim and turned it into a seat cover."


The argument here is at 94, should the authorities just give up? A frail old man?
Well i think not...

I say find the sicko, get all the relatives of those he killed and have them give him a taste of his own medicine.
In a public square.
Broadcasted live on TV.
All over the world.
In slow motion.
And the background music, should be an evil laugh, muahahahahahaha

But seriously, should they german authorities should be spending their money tracing around 70, 80 and 90 year old sickos? Shouldn't this money be invested better elsewhere? Or donated to charities?
I think it's time for ze germans to move on....

An embarassing day for Superluli

I decided to wikipedia the actual independence day of egypt not the bull shit 23rd of july date.
In the mean time i checked our national anthem, turns out it's made out of not just the one part i know. It's actually made up of 5 parts! and i do not know them.
So i decided to wikipedia Germany's national anthem in the hopes that the song i know by heart is only the first part, there must be other parts too that i do not know. Turns out no - i know the full German National anthem - all of it. I know who wrote the music, when, for whom all of it!
But the Egyptian one? Not!
I am not German, but my school obviously taught me well.
So in my quest to overcome this sheer and utter embarassment i am learning the egyptian national anthem by heart! ALL OF IT!

Shame on me...

empty fridge

My mom was here 10 days ago. That was probably the only time where we had to put some serious thoughts into how we organize our fridge. There was food in it, vegetables of all sorts, rice, soup and loadz of things. For the past 10 days these things have slowly been consumed, the pots have been emptied and some mold has definely grown on some of the green things.
So today i cleaned out the fridge and our fridge is back to it's normal state, a couple of jars of tomato paste, some bread, eggs, cheese, ketchup, and a can of mushrooms.
Order has been restored in casa de luli, nissy and yoyo!

Gender X

In my early AIESEC days the issue of gender came up, and some how it ended up with me saying this quote that has haunted me since then: "I'm gender X"
I can't remember at all the situation in which i have said that.
It's been a while since then, but these days that sentence just rings in my head a lot.
Perhaps it's because Hilary lost the primaries, i was never a supporter, but still a woman in the white house would still be cool.
It's a little upsetting though; the general impression i got was that she'd be taking a huge step for women in Politics. I will purposely neglect the Ghandis and the Buttos, coz let's face it, it don't count unless it's democratic! and there's no democracy in dynasties. But what about Margaret Thatcher? Angela Merkel? Golda Meir? Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (Africa's first elected female president)?
Perhaps it's because of Kuwaiti women not having a single seat in parliament or the shock i got 2 weeks ago when i found out Swiss women were not allowed to vote till 1971! Seventy One!
Perhaps it's because there's a new power woman appearing around the horizon, and i can't wait to see her run the show.
Or perhaps it's because i work with someone who manages to mention gender issues almost on a daily basis.

You set the limits for yourself, some put their limit at woman. I put mine at Gender X!

"One TV" takes cencorship to a whole new level!

If you live in the Arab world, censorship is something you're used to. Usually it's focused on nudity and sexual content. In the Cinema in Egypt, expect to see the kisses, heavy make-out scenes are sometimes there sometimes not, but anything past that -- enter Scissors!
On TV MBC2 and 4 and One TV (Dubai's TV) the kisses are at a minimum. I think they draw the limit at tongue. No tongue --> ok yes tongue --> Scissors!I have never imagined that sitcoms like Friends and Mad about you would be censored! Seriously!
Annoying as it might be, they're for free - so you can't complain.
If it bothers you so much, get cable, and watch freely.

Yesterday One TV took censorship to a whole new level. They censored content! Actually specific words.
It was that episode where Ben was spending Christmas with Ross, so Ross - being a Jew (gasp) - wanted to teach him all about Hanukah, the festival of lights, a Jewish holiday that is not that big of a deal for Jews. It's seems to me like a good excuse for TV to please the Jewish audience by adding it to their Christmas specials, that way they don't need to dedicate a whole episode about some other more significant Jewish holiday. And all the non-Jews don't mind, coz I mean, it's all about Christmas anyway!
So back to Friends. This episode included a number of words and scenes One TV deemed inappropriate to show.
The word list is: "Jew" "Jewish" "Hanukah" "Festival of Lights"
The scenes included: Lighting all the candles by the window, the story about the Maccabees and how they rebelled against Antiochus IV Epiphanes.
What they forgot to censor is the back-ground music at the end which was so typically a Jewish theme.
After I got over my shock of the lengths they would go to censor, I started thinking why would they possibly censor that! a) it's history b) it's a religion that the Arab Muslims believe in. I mean it happened! It did! What were they trying to do? Erase it from history? What harm could have possibly been done by showing those scenes?
What were they thinking?!
What puzzles me is that they show Seinfeld all the time. WTF?

It used to bother me that Egypt censors all movies that show how the Jews were kicked out of Egypt with the excuse " we don't want to raise sympathy for them" while actually it's an attempt to deny that our country has any dark spots in its history.But it gives me some comfort that at least we don't erase them from the shows and movies! We're not at the absolute bottom of the censorship scum...the gulfies oh so proudly take that spot :P