My mother happened to be in Riyadh on Mother’s Day last year. I didn’t know whether to think it was funny or sad that she and her lady friends, whose kids are of my generation, gathered one another and “invited each other out” for a Mother’s Day brunch, complete with gifts and all.

Cute, I guess, but this little incident reflects the ultimate truth about life in the Palestinian world of Saudi Arabia; there always comes a time when an entire generation goes away to college. This truth is so sharp and so severe that I really do not have the words to describe it. You just have to live through these cycles of change to really appreciate it’s importance; you have to grow up watching the older generations of kids disappear one at a time. You have to learn to classify families under labels pertaining to whether the kids of the family are at home or away, and live through dreading September when depressed parents would return from the summer holidays alone.

Most of the time, the generations get their degrees and return to work in Saudi Arabia. They usually stay with their families for a few years, then these kids would get married, usually to one another.

I spent most of my life watching these cycles go round and round. The internet makes it easy to track these cycles even as I participate in the “away” part; every day when I open Facebook, I see pictures of my friends in colleges and universities all across the world. I see the generation right above mine putting pictures of themselves getting married off to each other. I see pictures of the younger generation standing right where I stood, learning the dabkeh just like I learned it.

The latter pictures (one of which is above, I can’t believe those kids are old enough to remember routines) triggered this post. I miss the dabkeh days. Life was all about putting on the dabkeh shoes and dancing.

I miss that simplicity. I miss living in that tailor-made, perfect little universe where everyone is a cookie-cutter copy of everyone else. I miss the world where there are no misunderstandings, where everyone loves one another, and where there are never any ulterior motives. I miss the people I grew up with. I miss my dad’s Friday outings. I miss weekends by the pool. I miss the Ramadan tents. I miss shopping for the heck of it. I miss the first 18 years of my life.

I miss them a lot, but as my generation boots up to dive headfirst back into the cycle (I just discovered that a dabkeh person who was also my schoolmate is getting married), I know that I do not miss it enough to dive along, as tailor-made and as appealing as it may be. 

We always laugh at how young we were when we look at the old Arabian Sunshine pictures.

I’m still really happy to know that’s there’s still a Lawee7 (below, check out his shoes). Let’s hope he’s as shater as Sami :)

I didn’t know to feel when I read that Absolut is retiring it’s iconic ad campaign after 25 years of abundancy, especially as much of Absolut’s fame is directly tied to it. The campaign, featuring an object shaped like the distinctive Absolut bottle in the center and a title “ABSOLUT ____” at the bottom, started around 1980 and has had more than 1500 ads, making it the longest running ad campaign ever.

The Absolut Vodka bottle has become something of a modern icon, and the Absolut ads, having stretched the boundaries between advertising and art, have already been collector’s items for years. I’m sure their value as such will increase exponentially with the retirement of the campaign, making me wish that I buy/bought magazines.

Over the past 25 years, chosen artists, including sculptors like Arman, crystal glass designers like Bertil Vallien, fashion designers like David Cameron and John Galliano, were given complete creative freedom, the only stipulation being that the bottle must be visible in the work. The campaign has even made it to an 11 meter high ice-sculpture done in the Swiss Alps, and features works of every conceivable style from Dali-type surrealism to cowboy-kitsch.

Naturally, the campaign also has a golden star in the hall of fame of the advertising and design industries. Absolut is to date one of only three brands inducted into the American Marketing Association’s Hall of Fame, along with Coca-Cola and Nike. It is also the only product in history to have won both the most coveted prizes in the US advertising business – the Effie and the Kelly awards. On a scholastic level, complete design courses that dissect the campaign and nothing else are offered in several art schools. Even locally, I have seen the campaign make its appearance on slideshows and presentations a lot of times in my design classes at the UofJ.

Of course every campaign has to see an end, but 25-years is such a long run that I’m actually absolut sad to see it go.

The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are the only two movies I was ever excited for.
With the book coming out in the summer and the movie as well, a lot of Harry Potter goodness to look forward to this summer.

But anyway, when Gus just came home with a mohawk, I started screaming out of excitement. I know it is his head, but it feels like he sort of made one of my dreams come true. MY BROTHER HAS A MOHAWK.

I always wanted a mohawk. ALWAYS. Actually, I still want a mohawk, and it’s on my list of things to do before I’m 25. A pink one.

If I have the guts.

And if certain people promise they won’t ex-communicate me :)

Now I really want to give one to Whitey.

It is almost the time to look at what’s been deemed worthy of further experimentation, and fold away what’s not. Of course the folded pages will probably be looked into every now and then, sometimes by mistake, others by chance. The moment now is full of stress, a milestone attempt at paving a better way for the future of what was deemed worthy.

How do you translate “sleeping bag” into Arabic?