Meeting friends

yeah, first day of school and you've walked the 2 km to get there and it's just a bit sunny to do so, even though your school bag is empty. There's a lot of cars on the road and they're a bit impatient but they don't honk their horns too much because the morning is kind of too early and lazy for that. Walking by the cars and other boys walking to school and construction workers who've started probably an hour earlier reminds me of my school sandwich for some reason, and I might have forgotten it but I can get money from Abi at school so it's alright inshAllah.

Everyone's in the break yard by then and you recognise your friends in a group some way off and they spot you when you break out from the crowd. As soon as you're close enough to see each other you make eye contact with one of them. You look happily surprised like you just noticed him. Your eyebrows bounce up and you simultaneously blink both eyelids wide open.

As you approach you must look extremely delighted. This can be done by arranging your mouth so it looks like you're trying to suppress a massive smile 'cause you're so happy. Your face actually looks like you're trying to use the bathroom and you have constipation.

As soon as you cover the distance you can hug each other, which is a relief because your head is now behind his face, and you can totally relax your features if no-one is looking. Unfortunately there's probably a group of friends waiting for their turn, so you can't just do that yet. You've got to close your eyes lightly and smile a bit like it's the best feeling in the world to hug someone you haven't seen in four months and who got enough dandruff in his hair to look like a silverback gorilla.

See, it's so awkward going through all this every time you meet someone you haven't seen for a while. Unfortunately it's what my friends expect from me because I've always been like that since I had friends, and if I stop and walk in school with no visible emotion they might think I was really angry over my AS grades, or that my school sandwich had cucumber which wouldn't make me angry anyway because I forgot it at home.

reflection on my writing

Okay, so this is supposed to be a small period of self-reflection, and i'm supposed to write in this period so I can  clearly understand my reflections. Writing will slow my thoughts so I can  verify the scientific integrity of each reflection and when I read it later I'll understand myself better inshAllah.

Whenever I read some really awesome blog I so want to be able to write like that - i'm trying to scoop up any bit of concentration left after Muhammad gave Fatimah a very loud read out of cooking-safely instructions in the kitchen.

My problem with writing is I constantly asses what I've written to make sure my comparisons are accurate and will give the reader the same feeling I felt when I saw whatever it is the comparison is about. Writing also slows my thoughts down so much that they become heavy and constructed brick by brick like a building.

I want them to be like popcorn when you pour it from the frying machine into a big cup and they fall down really lightly and bounce about, and the cup doesn't feel heavy at all though it's a lot of tasty popcorn. I want reading my writing to be like eating popcorn. You don't notice you're going through it at all untill you're done.

I also get very depressed when writing because I keep going back and checking that i'm not trying to write like someone else or that i'm not being too vague or general or that i'm not writing something that sounds fake, like - just had Cinnabon Pecabon, Yaay!, its light and toasty and got roasted nuts and is very sugary, nice feeling in my stomach now - which is fake in so many ways because I don't make a big deal out of eating anything and I didn't feel so like Yaay! when I ate the Pecabon and I can't feel food in my stomach. And anyways talking about what you just ate is a trend in blogging and it's because some bloggers try to pretend they got such childish and happy lives.

It's this compulsive self-assesment which bogs me down so that I forget what I was gonna say next and get this squeezed up upset feeling in my throat and I can't focus anymore and that's why I'd stop.

playing along

erm sorry, the post before last was actually posted by my youngest sister... haha very hilarious..haaahaaa..; sorry can't stop laughing..ehm.haaha

Everything is dry

Moving makes you think, you know. Try walking round and round the dining table, or sitting in a quiet car travelling a regular speed on the highway. I got quite alot of this phenomenon in the passenger seat, 12 hours to Makkah and 12 back, except for when I was chauffeur.

You can think reflective thoughts, like there are many skid marks on the road, who made them? I wonder what happened.

You can be passive in your thoughts, like the outside view doesn't matter to your mood. On a long journey you are bound to see alot of things, which might all be almost the same as each other. Or ...there is a alot of sky over the desert and road, but you can't really stare too much at it as there's also alot of sun.

You can try to be funny. An observation that nothing is photographable. That if you happen to line up everything nicely a tree will suddenly appear, or a camel. That if you snap either of them they will probably not be there anymore because a lorry is in the way or we've already driven past them.

Or serious. What's the point of sandstorm-area signs when you'll always know if you're in a sandstorm or not.

Ok enough thinking; i'm not speaking like myself anymore. My dad bought me a phone. i'm trying to write normally but it's turning out like an essay. Anyways, it's the kind of model which requires push-ups for a text message and puts you on a permenant lookout for positive things in it, like if I didn't have this phone I wouldn't have one, maybe I can flash it about if I don't want to get mugged and at least it has a torch which you can shine in your friend's eyes if he's inspecting it too closely.

Umrah was very easy alhamdulillah. Light grey clouds were streaming over the Haram and they brougt shade and a cool breeze while were were out in the open making tawaf around the Ka'bah. The clouds were also streaming through the four minaret-corners of a massive clock which is being built as part of the King Abdul Aziz towers, and the clock is so high you can see it between the mountains some way out of Makkah.

No photos of the haram or Makkah; forgot my camera in the car in the car-park on the outskirts of the city. Haha..

                                                                  desert-side cottage

                                                              iftar by the road - on the way there

                                                      a railway station for pilgrims in Hajj time

                                                                 on the way out of Makkah

                                        we took the mountain route - Al Hada - so we're climbing now

                                                

         a disgusting representative of roadside bathrooms - it's part of a masjid, which is the usual format.

                                      hitch-hiking bedouin ? haha, no it's a dismounted truck driver.

                                                       a way more interesting view than usual

       that's a road-side restaurant. No... no, not a hospital, though it might send you to one if you eat there

                                          the Najd plateau. It means we're close to Riyadh..home.

                      To Makkah or back, this steepish incline is the first or last landmark on the road

                                                          I like it though...

sunny and colourful

Ok so how do you like it, what do you think? it looks fun and happy to me. it looks bright and colourful like my mood on a sunny day. or like a sunny day in an Enid Blyton book; when the children go for walks and laugh and have ice cream and play frisbee and skipping in the park.

Or like something I could draw and colour when the sun's coming through the class windows just before first break.

maybe

I just wanna feel what blogging's like. I've forgotten. Its been such a long time.

In grade 8 I had an eye-wateringly good English teacher, and that's not just because he brought onions to class and chucked them at students who mis-behaved. I'm not going to list his virtues here, but it's enough to know I haven't yet met a student from our grade 8 batch who doesn't think he was a great teacher.

Well, I met him the other day in Carrefour. "salam sir, how u doing?" I think he replied that he was fine, but I'm not sure. "you know, there've been rumours about your health, sir". " well, they aren't rumours..... at least the therapy isn't killing me yet ". The rumours are that Mr Isma'il has cancer.

He asked me to make Du'a for him, and I in turn ask everyone who reads this to make Du'a for his speedy and full recovery inshA'llah. A'meen.