We Should Seriously Stop Talking About this!!

I've told myself that enough's been said about the Egyptian - algerian match, n that i shouldn't think about it or -God forbid- post anything else about it.
So i turned off the TV to spare myself the headache.. but it didn't really stop there,since the aftermath of the game is all what everyone or anyone would talk about ;at work.. n the streets, at home..in facebook.. so it only fits that am posting my 3rd post on the matter in less than a week!
So i know we'd be stuck with these war drums for quite sometime now, and probably wouldn't get rid of this headache anytime soon.
it is a shame that all this is going on over a game of soccer, but all three countries feel it's not about the game anymore..and started taking it as a competition in patronism or a display of natinal pride.
The thrill in Sudan for hosting the game on our land, and considering it a win-win situation, regardless who wins the game, now sound both ridiculous and naive.
and it's clear now that no matter what we did, or didn't do.. we're still to blame- by the egyptians at least- for everything under the sun.
Insults tinted with mockery.. like:" Sudanese are incapable of organizing a birthday party, let alone a soccer game"!, is all over the news, thanx to the influence of the Egyptain media.
A couple of days into this media war,apparently after being condemned by Arabs in general for insulting sudan.. and maybe for their lack of evidence, many egyptian artists who earlier insulted sudan and acted as if Sudan was hell on earth, suddenly decided to switch gears and compliment Sudan instead.. contradicitng their earlier claims.
Even muhammed Foad who fueled this war on us by insulting our security forces- who allegedly abandoned him-and claimed he was being massacred in Sudan, shamelessly changed his claims, as if nothing's been said or done.. and even declared doing a concert here, as an apology i figure, for the Sudanese people.
Now, am not sure if many- if any- Sudanese people will be excited about this concert.
and maybe sometime in the future, relations between Egypt and Sudan will go back to normal, but for the time being the general feeling- which unfortunately matches my own- is that we're just a little too fed up with all the hypocrisy.. and any kind of apology is just too little too late..since the damage is already done.

**and i hope everyone-myself included- would stop talking about this! or maybe keep talking about it, until we bore ourselves into dropping it for good.

*** Below are images i found in facebook ( couldn't find out who took them.. to reference them).. of some algerian who stayed after the game to help clean the Airport.

WAR ON AND OFF THE FIELD

I truly thought the update of the match.. would be simply: ALGERIA WON!..
n then moving on to talk about something else..
but so much has happened in one day, since the game..that i felt a couple of lines won't do it.
After Algeria won yesterday..although me and my friends supported it.. we felt a little upset about egypt's loss..since we know how strong the egyptian team is.. and how strongly Egypt supported its team, and would probably be devastated over the loss.
But as Sudanese we were just thrilled about having this game in our land..and impressed by the effort and the achievement of our country.. to make this game a success in a short period of 3 days..
And since we lived in Sudan long enough to know that this is an extraordinary effort that's unpreceded in our short history at least.
There have been daily urgent meetings between our president and high sudanese officals to insure everything goes according to plan.
Schools been closed the day of the game, offices and workplaces closed at 1 pm, seperate paths have been defined for each team to use before and after the game.. to minimize any clashes between the fans..and at least 90% if not all the Sudanese security has been summoned and stationed in the streets extending between the Stadium and the airport.. to the point that made some of us joke.. that we could've been easily invaded that day.. cause all our forces were dedicated to the game.
All Arab media commended our efforts and how well we met the huge challenge imposed on us in such a short notice.
but i guess the more you try to avoid a crisis.. the more you find yourself in the middle of one.
Four buses carrying egyptian fans and media figures were heading to the airport when they were attacked by Algerian fans..apparently as a reaction to the also brutal treatment the algerian fans recieved after last week's loss in Egypt.
We thought we'd be leaving the game behind and go back to our normal life.. but were hit by a media war by the egyptian media calling our security incomptent to say the least and even went as far as to say that this must have been a conspiracy cooked between Algeria and the Sudanese government against Egypt!
Naturally that was infuriating to a lot of us Sudanese..and a media war is going on all over the television, youtube, and facebook.
Accusations and obscene insults are exchanged, demonstrations in Egypt.. and anger in Sudan.. over a soccer match! which we know is just a symbolic contribution to the World Cup..i mean.. it's not like we're gonna win the World Cup anytime soon!

All this unnecessary drama is making me feel a little too embarrassed to be an Arab.

Egypt vs. Algeria

Today is the day! the match is 8 pm tonight.. between Egypt and Algeria for a slot in the World Cup..
Am a basketball girl.. so i don't usually care too much about soccer.. but there is something about the world cup that makes me feel excited..
i love the vibe in the streets, n the commitments of the fans ..the flags, the thrill and mos. def. DA NOISE!
It's addictive!

i hope Algeria wins.. actually judging by the number of flags i see in the streets..i think the majority of Sudanese people support Algeria..

And the traffic is just ridiculous! it took me over an hour today to get home.. it seems like the algerians and egyptians all arrived in Khartoum at the same time..and started roaming the streets immediately, making as much noise as they can.

But as much as i like all of this.. i know today it would be a run-for-dear-life gangesta war in Khartoum!
We were waiting for the green light when i saw a man selling axes in the streets.. n was thinking to myself that it's definitely not the right day to be selling axes.. five seconds later i saw 8 algerians chasing the man.. frantically trying to buy an axe!

a blood bath.. that's what we're having for tonight!

Panaromic Pictures

just thought of uploading some pix i took from the office balcony..
why do i always have to have a picture taken from every office i work in ,i wonder!

A Pessimist No More!

image above is courtesy of migreyes.com
After four months of unemployment and two months of hibernation, am finally back on track
,or so i keep telling myself!

I finally managed to get a job..and will try to hold on to it a little longer this time.
I also got myself a car; a little picanto, so i guess so far so good!
My only concern though is trying not to go back to that depression phase again.. since it seems to get me ages to snap out of it..
So am gonna try this widely embraced concept.. called optimism .. and be one of those people who are just happy and hopeful for no apparent reason.

Doesn’t sound like me at all..but pessimism clearly didn’t do me much good anyway.
Only problem is.. I don’t like happy people.. and as far as I know, not a lot of people like them either (regardless of what people say).. they make the rest of us “unhappy people”, feel like losers, like there is something we are doing wrong..we just can’t put our hands on it.
So if turning into a too-thrilled-to-be-alive person doesn’t make me suicidal or send the assassins after me.. then it’s all good.


my car!

**An Update: Right after deciding to be the happy butterfly, that i know exists deep DEEP down inside, i went down with a minor infection in my kidney..right after it, Malaria which i recovered from only yesterday.. then TODAY.. i got into my 1st car accident and now my brand new car is wrecked!

Now, if am allowed to be my old cynical self for a moment, i would blame it all on my blind optimism and decide that pessimism wasn't too bad afterall,
but a brand new me would put all that behind her back, take the car to be fixed, take the bus to work.. and pretends to laugh the whole thing off.

On Hibernation

i haven't blogged in a while.. i guess the fact of nothing going my way for the longest time finally got to me.
i don't have anything positive to blog about..and i think am wearing everyone thin (including myself) with my rants..

so when everything's going wrong.. a good idea would be to stay on hibernation mode, till i eventually snap out of it..and to take Ramadan as a chance for reflection.

So Ramadan Kareem everyone..may all our prayers be answered this month, and may we recieve God's forgivness.



*image courtesy of deviant art*

Rashid Diab Centre

Last week, me and my friend decided to visit a number of galleries, so we'd stop complaining about not having enough places to go in Khartoum.
Our first stop was Rashid Diab's Centre, who is a well-known sudanese artist. he built this centre as his own studio, for teaching art, and for occasional seminars and gathering.
we walked into his centre.. to find Rashid Diab himself..wearing a jalabiya with unique green sewings on the sleeves, sitting infront of his iMAC which is a weird contrast to the traditional way the studio is built.
Ironically he was looking up some details on traditional architecture, so the minutes he found out that we are architects, he started discussing architecture with us, and showing us around his studio, which he designed himself, to show us how he managed to provide natural lighting and ventilation.
he was talking to us like we're old friends, and by the time we left his studio it occurred to me he didn't know our names, but that didn't stop him from asking me to come work with him on some artistic projects.
The 1st thing i worked on was this logo for this non-profit organization.. truth is, am not a logo-person, i actually hate everything that got anything to do with symbolism. so i came up with the ugliest logo there is. The problem is not that it’s ugly..the problem is that i designed it..
actually the only reason i got the nerves to sub such a hedious thing, was that the client loved it, and wanted just the way it is.
i half expected Rashid Diab to throw me out of his studio for presenting him with such work, but he didn't.. he just flipped the logo on the side, and said it looked like a bird, asked me to do a few adjustments, and voala! the logo was done.
This little flip made me realize the difference between an artist wannabe like myself and a famous artist like Rashid Diab.

the unprofessional side of the profession

So, after 3days of fever and dehydration, which I mistook for malaria.. I went today to finally collect my money on this job I did 2 weeks ago
Judging by my previous experience with this office, and being familiar the normal trend here in Sudan, of being extremely mean when it’s time to get your money, I surely didn’t expect to be given the money with a smile, and I did expect some “negotiations” before they finally agree on giving me the money I asked for.
So I walked into the boss’s office, to what turned out to be one of the most unpleasant experiences I’ve encountered.
It all started out with him saying, that he evaluated my work and decided to give me 400 SD, which is exactly half what I asked for.
I casually reminded him that I didn’t just do the 3d rendering, but I also did the modeling, and changed the whole exterior of the building.
That one sentence was apparently enough for him, to end whatever “negotiation” I thought was gonna happen and turned it into one, long, painful lecture on work ethics.
Of course, assuming I have none!
I sat there dumbfounded, as he went on an on, about me being too young and greedy to think about the money, and that my “mentality” won’t get me anywhere in business, and that I should put into consideration that he is my teacher- he never taught me!- and on top of all of that, he totally took credit for my design, all my ideas are apparently his, he voiced them, and I just drafted them!
He seemed to have a pre-prepared lecture, and was answering to a dialogue in his head. Cause apparently he didn’t need me in this conversation.. for all this time I sat down and said nothing,-taken aback more than anything- so i was clueless to what his speech was based on.
So after he was done lecturing, and looking at me like am a bug to be crushed, I numbly stood up took whatever money he offered me and left.

Truth is, I’ve never been spoken to like that, but I know that common courtesy is not so common here. And this is how businesses are run in this country, so I would probably find myself in this kind of situation more often than I would like. But I wasn’t gonna go cry in the corner or anything, so later that day I went to another business appointment, with this interior design office I was supposed to be working in, to meet this client, which turned out to be one piece of work!
We all drove up to this apartment which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. And when we reached there, the client simply opened the door to the apartment and stood there, with an expression on his face that says : "bored", at the very best!
He didn’t say anything, and any question we asked, was answered with the shortest answer possible.
And just when I was wondering to myself, why was he so quiet, he started talking.
And I’ve never worked harder in my life to fight back the urge to punch somebody. And I could sense that my two colleques felt the same urge, but I guess we all figured out that beating up our 1st client, might not be good for business. So we all drew this blank look on our faces, waited for him to finish a 20-minutes talk of pure B.S. to walk back to our car, and break down in laughter.
The man was hilarious, I don’t even know how to explain him in words, but it was like, u brought someone who works in a chocolate factory to discuss how to launch the latest cure for AIDS,
The dude was a business man, and according to him, had a lot of money, that he LOVED to brag about. And ”he doesn’t care what we do or how we do it, he just wants to know what we can do for him!”
As mambo jambo as that sounds!
He was really treating us like 3 plumbers he found on the side of the road, and brought down with him to fix this pipe that won’t stop leaking.
But of course, we agreed to do whatever he wants us to do, since after all we can’t choose our clients..but am hoping that maybe we can kill them, and hide the bodies..

Random pix from sudan

a view from the office am working in ..





a more peaceful look of the capital



was walking over Mc Nimir bridge to fill an application form for a job.. and no they didn't call me yet!

My own Business.

So yes.. am still settling..and been looking for a job.. so far i don't seem to find a 9 to 5 job or anything.. all i could find are little jobs, mostly 3d work.
which is much more flexible than having a full time job, and should be more financially rewarding, if you decided taking several jobs at the same time.
So am supposed to do the modelling,the rendering and eventually get paid for it,
or so is the plan,

didn't get a penny yet!

for some reason, here, it is very difficult to get people to pay you. Somehow, they seem to think of you asking for the money you deserve as inappropriate!
now, why is that? i will never know.
i thought maybe because young people here are expected to work for nothing..as if we just love doing all this hard work, as one big favor, for a boss who is as mean as hell.

So after subbing ma work two days ago, and still no sign of a penny coming my way,
i sat this morning, to draft a business plan..so i wouldn't have to rely on those old sharks throwing a couple of pounds at me, when they are feeling generous.
cause if am not getting any money anyway, then i really got nothing to lose..am thinking let's do something stupid like doing what i REALLY wanna do.
So yeah, the plan is to find someone who would pay me, for being the designer, the drafter, the boss, and my own admirer, why not!
So if my narcissist plan doesn't work, i will be back to working in stinking offices, with no pay, no respect, no appreciation, no nothing!



praying time!